Night Terrors (Sarah Beauhall Book 4) (43 page)

I had the knife, wondering if that’s what kept me alive in the Sideways. It had kept Rasputin alive through a dozen assassination attempts, or so the story went. I wish Jimmy had been carrying it.

There was a park down on Kirkland’s waterfront—a small thing with a single pier and a few benches. Basically the lovely green swathe of grass they had was covered in goose shit and the benches were full of senior citizens watching the sun rise and fall, but the pier was quiet and isolated. You could have a conversation at the end of it and not be overheard by those on the shore.

I agreed to meet Charlie there at sundown. It would be a quick exchange, a matter of formality. I didn’t trust Gottschalk, and Charlie was guilty by association. He seemed nice enough, but I’d decided to wash my hands of him.

The sun was going down as I stood out over the water. The night was warm, one of the glory days of Seattle summer. I’d ridden the Ducati out there, promising Jai Li I’d be home in time for her bath and a story. Julie and Mary had been treating me with kid gloves. I went to work every day, dealt with the horses and the mules, giving them what I couldn’t give anyone else. Well, anyone but Jai Li. I clung to that girl like I was drowning. If it wasn’t for her, I’d have packed my kit and fled, driven so far away I couldn’t find my shadow again. Part of me started to understand da a little in that.

I spent my days wanting to vomit and punch things, breaking into unaccounted for rages and black moments of melancholy. I couldn’t go back into the Sideways. Gunnr told me that we’d done what we needed to, that we’d brought Katie home, but she would not wake the fuck up.

I leaned against the railing of the pier, looking at the water as the sun crept toward the horizon. It wouldn’t go true dark to damn near ten in the evening this time of year. This was the twilight time, the longest period of transition from one state to the other that we knew of out this way.

It was a reminder of those innocent summers of my youth where the days lingered on forever and it felt like winter would never come.

“Sarah?”

I turned to see Charlie Hague walking toward me, a shy smile on his face. He was cute in a boyish way, with his sleeves rolled up and his hands in the pockets of his khakis.

“Thanks for meeting me,” he said, stopping back far enough that I couldn’t lunge forward and grab him.

For some reason that thought buoyed me a bit. He was afraid of me, and damned right to be. I had no love for his people.

“Sorry this took so long to get to you,” he said, pulling his right hand out of the pocket. He held up one of those little jewelry boxes.

I stepped toward him and to his credit he didn’t flinch. The box was grey with a soft cover, fuzzy like those you always see in movies when a guy is asking a girl to marry her.

I looked into Charlie’s eyes and laughed, taking the box into my left fist.

“Thanks,” I said.

He nodded and dropped his hand. “You can check,” he said, encouraging me with a head bob.

I cracked the case open and saw the rings I’d glimpsed once before. Paul and Olivia Cornett’s wedding rings. There were three rings, one was his, the other two were hers: a wedding band and an engagement ring. The diamond sparkled in the light of the waning sun. I closed the box and put it in the pocket of my work shirt. I’d come straight here from smithing, and I knew I smelled of sweat and horses.

“I need to tell you a few things,” he said, stepping to the rail beside me and leaning forward on his arms. “Something I shouldn’t be discussing, but with the way things are going …” He trailed off, but I didn’t prompt him. I turned and leaned against the railing beside him and watched the way the light played across the water.

“I’m sorry about James,” he said, quietly.

“Is that an official response?”

“No,” he said, looking at me.

I turned to look down at him. He was several inches shorter than me.

“Not at all,” he went on, his voice suddenly angry. “Madame Gottschalk is thrilled with James’s death. Claims you’re crew will be easier to control.”

I took a deep breath, letting my anger bubble at the edge of the world. I’d been needing a battle, something to smash. Maybe this Order of Mordred wanted to get ugly. I could deal with that.

But not Charlie. He’d said he was sorry.

“Look,” he said, seeming to come to a decision. “There’s a split, factions forming. Madame’s sister has more play here than any of us knew. Spies within the organization. Madame seems to be on one hand oblivious to what’s going on under her nose, and the rest of the time in a petulant tirade about how unfair life is.”

“Fair’s in August,” I said, automatically. Something da always told me as a kid.

“True enough,” Charlie said. His shoulders relaxed.

Maybe he’d decided I wasn’t going to throw him in the lake. Funny I hadn’t decided that answer quite yet, though.

“I heard from the cat,” he looked at me, a sheepish grin on his face.

“The talking cat?” I asked.

He nodded. “There’s something coming in from Minsk, and it ain’t Madame’s sister.”

“Baba Yaga?” I asked, my curiosity piqued.

He turned to me in a panic, hands up, pushing them in my direction. “Shhh …” he said, his eyes wide. “Don’t say her name. Jesus, are you nuts?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, probably. You telling me saying her name may get her attention.”

He shivered. “Not something I want to test,” he said, rocking his shoulders back. I heard his back and neck pop when it did it. Boy was tense.

We talked for a while, both watching the sun slip toward full dusk. He was nervous and scared. In over his head.

“I think I’m one of those expendable players,” he said, finally. Voicing the fear I’d watched him dance around the whole conversation. “I think they’d kill me if it supported their cause.”

Sure as hell wouldn’t surprise me, but I couldn’t tell him that. Did Captain Kirk ever tell the redshirts they were all gonna die? Seriously.

“You could be a double agent,” I suggested, liking the way it sounded as I said it. “Keep us informed of what’s going on over there.”

He didn’t respond right way. I could tell he was thinking about it. Heck, maybe he’d already thought about it. “Would you protect me?”

“I’ll talk to them,” I said. Gunther and Stuart would go for it. But I wanted Deidre to have a say as well.

“Not them,” he said, reaching out and touching me on the shoulder. “You. I want your word.”

He pulled his hand back when I looked down at it and up to his face.

“Sorry,” he went on. “But seriously. I want your word. Black Briar is in flux. They may not recover from this. With Jimmy gone, and Katie still …” he glanced at me, but I didn’t respond. “Anyway. We know about the defenses flaring up. Anyone with any magic sensitivity in the whole region caught that bit of fireworks.”

Damn. Why hadn’t I thought of that? I needed to talk with Qindra. Figure out a way to get something back out there.

“You help us,” I said. “I’ll promise I’ll do anything I can for you.”

A smile broke across his face. “Excellent,” he said, holding out his hand.

I took it, giving it a good, honest shake, and he stepped back, looking as calm and pleased as the first time I’d met him.

“Oh, yeah. I almost forgot,” he said, a sheepish look on his face. “I need that dagger. Madame doesn’t know I took the rings. She was holding them, thinking we could keep them and use them somehow.”

Wow, the dude went against Madame. Impressive. “She’s gonna flip her shit when she finds out you took them, right?”

He shrugged. “I’ll give her the dagger. That’ll keep her busy enough. Besides, I’m nobody. She needs to be looking out for her sister.” He gave a facial shrug, twitching his mouth to the side and raising one eyebrow.

“Okay,” I said, pulling the dagger out of my back pocket and handing it to him, sheath and all. I’d examined it, had Bub help me. It wasn’t the dagger at all, frankly. It was the sheath. That’s what protected Rasputin from all those attacks. Just like the one that Yeats carried. I needed to look that part up. Old magic.

I stayed on the pier long after Charlie left, thinking about all the shit that had gone down. At least I had the rings. I’d take them out to Black Briar. They were Katie’s now. She deserved to have them.

Sixty-five

I called Circle Q and asked them to keep Jai Li up late. I was going out to Black Briar. These rings belonged with Katie, and I wasn’t waiting a minute longer than I had to.

It was going on nine by the time I rolled down the long drive at Black Briar. The fence was brand new, twice as high as the last one and blocked the farm from the road. The old one had been a split rail. This one looked like something the Department of Transportation put up to keep the sound from bothering the rich folk. Made Black Briar look even more like a compound rather than a farm. Not sure how the locals would react, but this far back in, there wasn’t a lot of local traffic—mainly forestry people and kids looking to drink in the national forest that backed up to the farm.

I parked the bike and left Gram strapped to the side of the bike. I wouldn’t be needing her here. Not tonight. I set my helmet on the seat and climbed up onto the deck, two steps at a time. By the time I was knocking on the door, Stuart had the inside door open and was beckoning me inside.

“What’s up, Sarah,” he said, mildly surprised. “Didn’t figure we’d see you until the weekend.”

I shrugged out of my leather jacket and laid it on the kitchen table. Deidre was in the living room with Trisha, Bub, and the twins watching something on television. I don’t know what it was, but they were laughing. Well, not Deidre, but she wasn’t as dark as she’d been. Mourning takes time.

“I need to see Katie,” I said to Stuart. “I got the rings back from Charlie Hague tonight. Thought I’d take them in to her, you know …” I shrugged.

He smiled at me and patted me on the arm. “You go ahead. I’ll get Deidre to come back. You give ’em to Katie and sit with her a bit. We’ll make sure they get put up someplace nice.”

I leaned in and kissed him on the cheek, which surprised him. He smiled, though. That was good.

The hallway was dark and the only light in Katie’s room were the glow of several of the machines. She wasn’t on a breather, that was good. She was breathing on her own, but she was so thin. She’d been on a feeding tube for a while, one of those direct to the stomach things, punched through her abdomen. It made me sick to think about it, but it was keeping her alive. Qindra had spent time with her several nights after Jimmy died. The nurses were doing a helluva job, but there was only so much you could do when a body just doesn’t move around.

She was as healthy as she was going to be in a coma. Deidre agreed that Qindra could come out again in a week or so to see how Katie was progressing. Seems Qindra could encourage the body’s own healing abilities, accelerate things like a time-lapse camera, but there was nothing beyond that. No magical healing, no magic potions, no laying of hands. All this dragon and Norse god horseshit and we couldn’t muster up a good cleric?

It would’ve been funny if it wasn’t so fucking depressing.

The room was warm and smelled of unpleasant things I had no desire to decipher. The human body was not made to lie in a bed that long and unpleasant things happened.

I flipped on the bedside lamp, allowing a small warm glow to light the center of the room. Katie was so beautiful lying there, even though she was so thin to be pinched, her bones showed more than normal, and her face was gaunt.

I leaned forward and kissed her. The skin was dry and papery, but she smelled like her, underneath the antiseptic and the sick.

“Hey, baby,” I said, brushing the hair off her face. It didn’t really need to be moved, but I had to do something. She was well cared for, I had nothing to do but sit and fidget. Sit and watch.

“I talked to Charlie today,” I said, pulling a chair around to sit beside her. I put my hand on top of her left one, the one closest to me. She was a good listener, that’s for sure. I told her about my day and about my conversation with Charlie.

At one point I heard a cough and turned to see Deidre and Stuart hovering back in the doorway—giving me space.

“Come on in,” I said, waving at them. “I was just about to get to the best part.”

“You think she’s getting any of that?” Stuart asked, not unkindly.

“Hell yeah,” I said, the bravado strong in my voice. “Every damned word.”

Deidre patted Stuart on the arm, and he looked down at his hands, not saying anything else.

I was crying again, damn it.

“I got these tonight,” I said, pulling the small box out of my pocket. “Traded that stupid knife to Charlie Hague.”

I opened the box and showed it to Deidre and Stuart, who looked up and smiled.

“Good girl,” he said, quietly.

“Are those …?” Deidre asked, not finishing.

“Yes,” I said, turning to Katie.

“Katie, love,” I said, opening her hand. I took out each ring and placed them one at a time in her palm, explaining. “These are your parents’ rings. Your mom and dad’s wedding bands, and your mom’s engagement ring.”

I glanced back at Deidre and saw that she was clinging to Stuart’s arm with one hand, her other over her mouth. Tears shone in her eyes.

I folded Katie’s hand closed and moved it over her heart, pulling her other hand over it. She clutched the rings and kept her hands together when I stepped back. Reflexes, I’d explained to Gunther a long time ago.

We sat there, crying quietly for a long time, listening to the heart monitor and dreaming of better days.

Eventually Deidre and Stuart went back to the front of the house and I sat there alone, lost. “I’m sorry,” I said, giving up. I was done in. Everything I needed, everything I loved lay in that bed and was beyond my help.

Finally I got up and pushed the chair back against the wall. Jai Li needed me and it was late. Going on midnight.

I bent down and kissed her once more, tracing my fingers across her cheek and wishing

Then she spoke. It was so quiet and so rough I leaned in to make sure.

“Yes,” she said.