The woman who answered quickly muffled the phone with her hand. When Mackleby came on, he knew exactly who I was. His caller ID probably said the Den on C.
“I told you never to call me again,” he snarled. “I don’t care what you think you know; I don’t talk to blackmailers.”
“You missed me,” I told him.
“Miss you? What kind of bullshit is this, lady?”
“I won’t be calling you again,” I assured him. “Whatever you said to the prophet worked. He let Theo Ram go, so I’m now satisfied. As far as I’m concerned, this is over.”
“You don’t know what over is,” he muttered.
“Yes, I get your threat. If I die of some violent or mysterious means, or I disappear, an envelope containing all the evidence I have of your acceptance of bribes will go to the police and media. This envelope will stay sealed forever, as long as you leave me alone from now on.”
“Me leave
you
alone? Lady, you’re nuts. You’ve done nothing but harass me in my own home. Stop calling me.”
He hung up. He was good. If his phone was being tapped, or mine for that matter, he had plenty of plausible deniability.
But I would get him in the end, along with Dread.
Upstairs, my apartment felt deserted without the cats. I wanted to call Lolita to ask how she was putting up with the Snow-monster and his minion, but I didn’t want to drag her into my problems.
It seemed too cruel to pop up briefly before disappearing again. I had already said my good-byes.
I also didn’t think I’d be fetching my car from the Canal Street garage anytime soon. It seemed futile to run from trouble when the end was fast catching up with me. Besides, I would have to go alone. I could see now that Shock would never run away from the city with me. She needed her fix too badly. And being back home, I was inclined to agree that I belonged right here.
I stripped off Lash’s expensive clothing and threw it in the trash on top of the Mary Janes that Vex had given me. Enough of other people’s clothes! I filled up the old, deep, scratched, claw-foot tub with steaming hot water. Pouring in the last of the fragrant sea salt, I sank under the water to relax. It turned pale pink as the remnants of the dried blood dissolved from my skin.
What would it be like to kill someone?
I’m considering it,
I slowly realized.
I didn’t want to die. I wanted to grab every moment and truly live. I wanted to find a man who made me feel the way Theo made me feel; only this time it would be real. I could forge my own alliances with other demons.
No more living like a hermit for me.
But to live, I would have to go out with Shock tonight and hunt down and kill a demon. At this moment, surrounded by everything I would lose, I tried to find some way that would be possible. Maybe I could learn to live with myself afterward. I could pick someone really bad, like Stun, and justify it that way.
Maybe I would lose my human side; then it would be my death either way. But I could at least try to live as a real demon, someone who enjoyed sucking the life out of people to survive.
But if I was capable of murder, I would have killed Petrify. It had been impulsive, a thing of the moment. I almost did it, but something inside of me had stopped me cold despite my mindless compulsion to take his essence. And now, after days of mulling it over, I was convinced it was wrong to kill to survive. There seemed no getting past it.
Shock could present me with a demon all tied up with a bow, but I was the one who had to kill him. Or her.
It was full dark by the time I gave up on adding hot water to the mix. But it was soothing to simply relax there, as if I were supported by my floating signature, forgetting everything including my impossible dilemma.
I finally got out and dried off. I was pulling on a pair of sweatpants when I felt him. Savor was coming.
Leaving the lights off in the front room, I went to the window. At first, I wasn’t sure which person walking up the block was Savor. A group of young people paused by the bar in confusion—obviously they were coming to the Den and didn’t even recognize it with the shutter down. They kept looking up the street at the signs, puzzling it out and asking one another if this was right.
When they finally moved on, a young woman was left behind. She looked no more than eighteen with pale silvery-blond hair and waiflike features. She could have been a hothouse student from Julliard or one of the ballet companies; she was even wearing black slippers.
It was Savor. She rang my doorbell, then backed up to look at my windows.
I unlocked the gate and pushed it aside so I could open the window. I looked up and down the street, but I didn’t see Glory’s spy. Maybe someone new had taken over. There was a skinny guy with a bad complexion hanging out near the fajita place, but that wasn’t unusual. Regardless, I knew somebody was watching me.
Leaning onto the sill, I said, “How did you know I was here? Did you get a text?”
She glanced at the people passing by. “Hey, Allay. Can I come in?”
“No. You can’t.”
“Allay . . . don’t be angry at me. I had nothing to do with Goad taking you like that. I got into trouble with Dread for going to see you.”
“You stood by while they threw me in the van.” A guy passing by looked up at me, startled. I had never seen him before, so I shrugged it off. “As far as I’m concerned, you were the first wave in the horde sent to get me.”
“That’s not true. I came to warn you to get out of the city. Don’t you remember?” Savor’s angelic face was stricken. She was trying to manipulate me with her looks. Most demons thought I’d fall for that because I was human, so they used the same tricks on me that they used on their prey.
“What do you want, Savor?”
She came up close to the building. We were near enough that if I reached down, I could have touched her outstretched fingertips. Savor gave a slight jump in excitement. “I knew it! You didn’t kill Vex. I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“I never said I did.”
Looking from side to side, Savor waited until nobody was nearby. “Only the fact that you didn’t kill Dread saved you from a death order. He says you did his ‘dirty work’ for him. I’m thinking he means Vex.”
“Feel free to tell him I didn’t do it.”
“So it was Ram—Dread’s people felt him when he dropped his shields. Everyone’s talking about him.”
“Good for them. Is there anything else I can do for you, Savor?”
“I came here to thank you, Allay, for not ratting me out. You didn’t tell Dread that I’m the one who spilled the beans that you were supposed to run to Glory. I appreciate—” She broke off as a couple approached.
“It’s nothing. It doesn’t matter.” I watched them pass by. “Is that all?”
Savor shrugged.
“Then go report back to Dread. I won’t be seeing you again. Good-bye, Savor.”
I started to shut the window, but she lifted her hand. “Don’t be so quick to assume that, Allay. I have interests uptown, too.”
It took me a second to realize what she was saying. I mouthed the word, “Glory?”
Savor nodded, grinning wickedly. I couldn’t believe it. Savor was a double agent, working for Glory, as well as Dread. Savor was Glory’s spy in the Fellowship.
And to think her pretty butt had been planted on my barstool all this time and I didn’t know it. I had always seen Savor as the bottom of the barrel in Dread’s organization, but maybe that was enough for her to get valuable information for Glory.
My astonishment showed. “I had no idea.”
“Not very flattering,” Savor said, and for a moment I saw a glimpse of her favorite persona, Sebastian with his supercilious manners.
I laughed. “I guess I will be seeing you around. But you still can’t go out with Lolita. You understand?” As soon as I said it, I remembered that the bar wasn’t going to reopen unless I killed a demon tonight.
I didn’t see how that was going to happen.
But Savor was too pleased with herself to notice my discomfort. As I closed the window and relocked the gate, I wondered if I had let Savor in, would she have avoided me like Revel and Shock did?
Even worse, would I have been tempted to consume her?
My desperate need was burning, really starting to hurt now. Would it become all-consuming? Would I lose my reason and all control, and attack any demon who happened to be nearby? Or would I struggle with this until I died?
I had a bad feeling I was waiting until I couldn’t help myself, taking the coward’s way out.
22
It was getting late and only a few people were around when I ventured out to clean up the broken bottles on the sidewalk. I couldn’t stand looking down at the mess. I would be able to see anyone coming down the block or driving up in a car, and get inside before they arrived.
I just finished sweeping up the broken bits when I felt Ram approaching. He was unshielded and letting his signature fly free, approaching from downtown.
My heart began beating faster. I wasn’t afraid. I couldn’t quite identify what I was feeling.
Then a few seconds later, I felt another signature weaving through, becoming more dominant: Pique’s abrasive signature. He was chasing Ram.
Straining up on my toes, I tried to see down the block. A dark-haired man veered across the street, right in front of a car. A shout went up as he turned down Second Street, disappearing out of the light of the streetlamps, heading toward the East River.
Pique came loping after him in one of his nerdy personas. He kept pushing his glasses up on his nose and his long gait was fast. He was highly charged and clearly determined to run Ram down.
My first thought was that Ram was pulling something on Pique, maybe even luring him past the bar to trick me into taking him. But then Ram wouldn’t have turned away so soon.
That was when I realized I was wrong. It wasn’t Ram. The signature wasn’t nearly strong enough.
It was Mystify.
Ram’s offspring must have come over the bridge from Brooklyn and had the misfortune to run straight into Pique.
I remembered what Glory had said about helping our newbie demons, rather than abandoning them to their fate like so many baby turtles running a gauntlet of hungry seagulls. Pique had probably already killed Petrify this week, and he would consume Mystify without hesitation if he got his hands on the poor kid.
I couldn’t stand there and watch Mystify get slaughtered.
I ran to catch up with them, passing by a series of ramshackle tenements and a new, glass- fronted condo building that had recently sprouted in a vacant lot.
I knew it was dangerous, what I was doing. But did it really matter? I had nothing left to lose.
At the end of the block, I faced the projects. I couldn’t feel either of their signatures. I ran up Avenue D to Fourth, then back down to Houston Street, but nothing but cars and headlights glared in my eyes.
“Damn!” I was angry at myself for losing them.
When the light changed, I hurried across the street into the projects. The sidewalks curved and crisscrossed between the redbrick apartment towers. The buildings were identical, with rows of small windows rising fifteen stories high. These were the Wild Houses, one of dozens of projects for low-income residents in the city, with the Baruch Houses being an even larger complex right below Houston Street.
The sidewalk was bordered by a three-foot-high wrought-iron fence to protect the narrow grass plots. The trees were mature, and the grass was nice and thick behind the fences. The housing authority kept it clean, and I liked the neighborhood feel, so I often walked around the Wild, watching the kids in the little playgrounds and the basketball courts between the buildings. Most of the Spanish I had picked up, I had learned here, not in Orange County.
I neared the upper edge on Sixth Street, at the back corner by the narrow FDR highway that ran along the edge of Manhattan. I felt the prickling of Pique at the edge of my extended senses. He was on the other side of the highway, in the narrow strip of the East River Park that bordered the river.
I ran up the turquoise ramp of the pedestrian overpass. A few boys were lingering at one end, watching the cars on the FDR speed by underneath. Their fingers were laced in the chain-link fence as if they wished they were going somewhere, too.
I came down on the other side, and turned past the old-fashioned stucco restrooms. Iron lampposts cast pools of light as I ran down the cobblestone lane. On either side were towering trees, and a wide grass border next to the concrete barriers of the highway. Squashed between the highway and the river was a grassy, oval track field surrounded by a tall chain-link fence.
Pique was still ahead of me, moving south. If I could feel him, then he could feel me. But he was focused on easier prey.
There were people in the park despite the late hour; joggers and bikers kept up with me while others idled on the benches or walked in the cool night air in sedate couples. I passed by a lane that ran at right angles a short distance to the river. Benches lined both sides, and the trees arched together overhead, making a dark tunnel. The river gleamed at the end, reflecting the lights from Brooklyn on the other side.
Then I felt Ram’s signature, closer to the river. For a second, I wondered whether it really was Ram. But it lacked the depth of the power he had, unique from every other demon I’d met.
I veered off the lane and ran between the trees, ignoring the marked pathways through the grass.
Ahead was another high chain-link fence, this time protecting a soccer field. Like the track circle, the field had been closed for the night and the floodlights were turned off.