Night's Deep Hush: Reveler Series 4 (4 page)

“Yes. I do.” Her mouth drew into a needle-sharp line. “My father.”

***

Jordan’s stride warmed her body. Her hunger made her mind sharp. The blocks passed, dark and impersonal buildings loomed, but no one tried to stop her.

Maybe she
had
gotten away. Or maybe they were watching to see what she’d do, where she’d go.

There’d been a time in her life when she’d felt helpless. The world had become huge and dangerous in the split second that had taken her mother’s life in a car wreck. She’d refused to feel helpless ever again because even alone, with $4.37 in change in her pocket, and unable to turn to the police for help, she wasn’t helpless.

So she walked while her thoughts flew ahead to envision all the things she’d need to put in place and in what order. The goal was to safely contact Steve Coll and her sister, so that together they could make a plan to find and retrieve Malcolm. The
safely
part of initiating contact was the difficult bit. She had to find a way that wouldn’t entrap them in case she
was
being watched. In order to do that, and to survive in the short term, she’d need cash.

She didn’t know a soul in the city, had no one she could ask for an emergency wire, and she was unable to use credit for fear of Chimera locating her. Nevertheless, she was going to get money one way or another.

Ahead of her on the sidewalk strode a woman with a gorgeous bag hanging off her bent elbow. There was likely money in
there
,
though probably mostly credit. Jordan cast her gaze around—people coming out of restaurants, crossing the street, and walking in front of her—she noted that the women all held the straps of their purses and bags tight in their grips. No careless women here. This was the city; you watch yourself.

She stared at men’s asses for a while, contemplating the bulges outlining their wallets, but she didn’t know how get her fingers in and out without batting her eyes, and she wasn’t in any kind of mood to try to sell herself that way.

Besides, she had other skills.

She kept walking, a plan forming in her in mind. It was dangerous, and it made her, the good girl, feel powerful. She could be ruthless if she wanted.

The street began turning quieter. Steam belched up from grates in the pavement. It was past midnight, and the side streets were almost silent. For the second time that night, only her footfalls sounded in the shadows. The rest of the waking word seemed far away. The shadows had grown deeper in the hush of night. Great cavities filled with darkness punched misshapen holes in the city, as if the waking world were God’s unfinished dream.

Jordan knew she shouldn’t be alone, here, now. Fear tickled her, but she smiled at her reaction and turned down an even darker passage, picking up her pace so that her boot heels knocked on the pavement,
Come hither.

The state of humanity rose in her good opinion over the next hour as she traversed deserted streets, passed hunched and angry-looking men, and remained unaccosted. She was beginning to think she might have to steal from someone good, when a scary-looking man and a gap-toothed woman emerged from behind the cover of a bus stop, looking at her with intent.

Jordan’s nerves suddenly zapped with electricity, giddy dread breaking sweat along her hairline.
Finally.

“Could you spare some change?” The woman’s speech was slurred.

Jordan had to be sure, so she hurried across the street, hoping for the best.

The woman followed—
yes
—trailing cold breath in the air, to cut her off. The scary man came up behind, his hand closing hard around Jordan’s upper arm.

Jordan’s nervousness made everything seem to go quickly, too quickly.

She drowned the man first, a firm but gentle mental push into the dreamwaters. Too hard and he might end up in the Scrape, like the time she’d pushed Vince Blackman.

Still no guilt over abandoning him in the middle of the street.

Her would-be mugger collapsed behind her, and a gunshot cracked,
startling Jordan into a short, shrill scream. He’d had a gun.

The woman screamed, too—rough, from her belly—before Jordan could dunk her into sleep, as well.

Lights were going on in the surrounding buildings while Jordan rummaged in the guy’s pants to find his wallet—no time to search the woman—and upon clutching it, took off running down the street, expecting the police to pull out in front of her and cut her off like in the movies.

Two blocks away, she ducked into a cubbyhole of a bar that smelled of beer and urine. The floor inside was sticky. She didn’t dare examine the wallet in her jacket pocket; she just sat on a padded stool waiting for her heart to either settle or give out entirely. Her breathing was erratic. Sweat prickling on her forehead. Legs had turned to rubber.

That could’ve gone better.

In the future, if she had a future, she should consider the possibility that there’d be a gun. Stupid. And yet, laughter gurgled up from inside her. She’d just mugged a mugger.
Look out, world.

She needed a drink. She mumbled, “Whisky,” to the sweaty bartender, because why not? And then, suddenly overcome by curiosity, she ducked into the pit of a unisex bathroom smaller than any airplane water closet. The wallet was made out of some kind of thick, frayed canvas, but it held two slightly damp hundred-dollar bills and some ones, which—thank God—should help her with phase two of her plan.

Three people on the pavement, and she was still at large.

***

Vince sat up slowly, disoriented. He was on a gurney again, surrounded by a blue curtain. Someone was crying off to the left, and off to the right, muffled by a wall, were angry male shouts. The place smelled antiseptic and was bone cold.

The hospital? Had he ever left? Yes. He’d left against his doctor’s orders and caught a flight to New York, certain for no explicable reason that Jordan would be there. And he’d found her, but then—

There’d been worry and distrust in her gaze, fighting him off.
Don’t you touch me!
He remembered collapsing to the pavement. The waters sucking him under again. Felt like the stuff still clung to him, coated him inside and out. He’d never get dry.

Where was Jordan now?

A burn inside his mind flared to life—the strange, uncanny sense of her, as if she were in the same room, yet at some distance. She was
that
way. If he had a car, he could go pick her up. On foot he might fall over again. Had the same people who’d taken Malcolm Rook taken her, too?

Vince stood, and his head swam. No time for that. He lifted his arm and was contemplating pulling the IV from his vein when the curtain surrounding his stretcher was pulled roughly to the side.

“…waiting for an open room,” a doctor was saying. Then to him, with a direct look, “You shouldn’t be up.”

The doc’s identity tag read, Dr. Reed.

Vince was about to say that he had no intention of staying, but another man was with the doctor, just moving aside the curtain. He wore a long coat, and was tall, older, hair buzzed so as not to fight his bald spot. He had the reserved interest of a cop. “Vince Blackman?”

He nodded. Held out his hand.

The man gripped his. “Chimera Marshal Liam Cain.”

Relief washed over Vince. Two days ago, in San Diego, another Chimera marshal had visited him. Name of Fawkes, who he’d liked. Chimera could help. They could find Jordan together.

“Why don’t you sit back down?” Marshal Cain said. “You look like hell. Reveler exhaustion is a bitch. You were under five days, I heard. Looks like the dream almost got you.”

Vince didn’t want to think about the time he’d spent in the Scrape, the creatures that had ventured near. The one who’d finally found him. “I lived to tell.”

“So you did.” Cain frowned. “You want to tell me what brought you from San Diego when you should still be in the hospital there recovering? Your trip only put you in another one.”

“I had to see a friend,” Vince said.

The marshal’s eyebrows went up.

“And she might be in trouble.”

“If that
friend
is Jordan Lane,” the marshal said, “then yes, she’s in a world of trouble. Not the least of which, for assaulting you.”

Vince shook his head. “She didn’t assault me.”

“Security footage suggests otherwise.”

No. “She didn’t assault me.” He was not going to compound her trouble with a false charge. He’d already made her life bad enough—on the run from the people he’d previously done work for, not that he could get in touch with any of them now. His father had been his contact, and his father was dead.

The marshal looked as if he were considering telling him something and then sighed. “Mr. Blackman, you must have heard the rumors that some revelers can do uncanny things.”

Yes, he had heard. “You mean she drowned me? She didn’t do it this time.”

“This time?” The marshal chuckled. “You need to get back in bed.”

Vince remained standing. “Listen to me. She needs help. I saw people drag Chimera Marshal Malcolm Rook’s body out of a building and take off with him. Jordan escaped them by only a few minutes.”

Marshal Cain pulled out his phone to tap in some notes. “When was this?”

Yeah, he better take notes.
“Tonight. They would’ve gotten Jordan, too, but I stopped her from going back there.”

“Going back where? Do you have the address?”

“No. Not exactly. I…” He’d followed his gut, not a map.

“Then how did you come to be there at that moment?”

“Dumb luck.” Which had to have been why Jordan had been suspicious of him, too. She’d fought him when he’d tried to help her.
Don’t you touch me!

“Do you know where she might be headed? Other friends in the city?”

Vince was fairly confident he could find her, though he still didn’t understand how—the burn still came from over
there
—but he hesitated. There was something off with this line of questioning. Jordan hadn’t assaulted him. She’d seemed panicked, and the mention of Chimera hadn’t comforted her at all, and it should’ve considering that Malcolm Rook was a Chimera marshal.

Maybe she had reason to be afraid. “No, I don’t know where she is.”

“You just said she’s your friend.”

Maybe not “friend,” exactly. She definitely didn’t think so.

“I don’t know where she is.” Vince sat back on the gurney, looked at Dr. Reed. “I’m a little short of breath.” Not short of breath at all. Angry.

“You should be based on your blood work,” Dr. Reed said. “Better lie back. I’ll check on that room.”

Chimera Marshal Cain put his phone back in his pocket. “You don’t mind if I sit with you?”

“Actually, I do.” Vince lay back on the pillow and closed his eyes, biding his time.

***

“Nah, I knew you were good for it the minute I saw you.” Darren King, fifth year into his undergraduate anthropology degree, waved Jordan’s money away and sat back, arms spread across both sides of the bench’s duct-taped backrest. “Revelers who have been in the waters a long time start to know things.”

Jordan closed her hand around the cash and shoved it in her pocket. “I thought special abilities were just a rumor.”

For all she knew, Darren might’ve been able to do something interesting. Or he might’ve been trying to move their negotiations on from setting up a time for an illegal Rêve to what it would take to get her in bed with him. He had to be at least four years younger than her, and an optimist. She liked optimists, but she was taken, thanks.

A man like Didier Lambert wouldn’t play around with Malcolm. He’d use him, and then he’d throw him out in the Scrape. Panic almost strangled her, but she forced herself to breathe.
Don’t think that way.
They’d lived through one attack; they could survive another. They just had to be smart.

So she’d brought the money to purchase an illegal Rêve, a hookup that accessed a very small portion of the Darkside black market, with her as she’d made her way from the neighborhood of her crime—she still got sweaty when she thought of it and hoped her victims were okay. She’d caught a cab to a place hopping with energy and music, even though it was nearing two a.m.

Maisie had gotten her start reveling in an illegal Rêve off-campus, so Jordan had figured that off-campus Rêves must be fairly common around universities. Sure enough, with her darksight, it hadn’t been hard to pick out concentrations of revelers. Malcolm had taught her how to perceive them. Something about shared dreaming changed a person, though as far as the general public was concerned, the physiological evidence had either been suppressed or remained undiscovered. But if she tried she could see the changes in people who’d become revelers—they had watercolor auras that distinguished them. And how ironic it was to find the people she’d wanted just a handful of blocks from NYU in a small club called Poor Substitution. Poor substitution for the dream, it meant.

The bass of heavy music vibrated her bones as she sat with Darren, eerie electric violin twisting over the beat with keyboards doing atmospheric sound effects in the background. The walls were peeling, and the light was dim enough to make the milling people look pale—too much time under, not enough in the waking world. They were Darkside addicts, like vampires in the sun. But the people here mostly shared the same bright blur that identified them as revelers.