Solatium (Emanations, an urban fantasy series Book 2) (8 page)

After about a minute, the silence became too uncomfortable. I had to fill it.

“Mr. Yellin,” I said, “was that thing what killed the boy in Brooklyn?”

Yellin didn’t look up. He didn’t acknowledge my question in any way. He simply said, “I will assemble a team for action as soon as Zion is functional. That is all.”

“Mr. Yellin,” Andy said, “Zion won’t be back to battery for days. Isn’t there another tracker we could bring in? How about Deborah Rosen from Atlanta? She could be here tonight.”

“Miss Rosen’s range is inadequate.”

“She can do twenty-five miles. That would cover the city itself.”

“And what makes you assume, Mr. Duff, that the entity remains in the city?”

“I’m not assuming, sir, but it’s a place to start. Miss Rosen could start here, maybe rule out the immediate area. Then Zion could take over in a few days, when she’s well.”

Yellin shifted uncomfortably.

I couldn’t understand why he wanted to delay. Heck, I didn’t want to see that thing again, and I sure didn’t want my friends to have to deal with it, but this is what people like us were for. It was the whole reason Cordus and the other powers had gathered Nolanders into organizations: weird shit couldn’t be allowed to happen because it could lead to the discovery of the Second Emanation, and that would be Very, Very Bad — from the Seconds’ point of view, at least.

In the end, Yellin capitulated. “You make a valid point, Mr. Duff. I will look into Miss Rosen’s availability. That is all.”

Andy and I stood up to leave.

I had a feeling Yellin wouldn’t be “looking into” Deborah Rosen’s availability all that hard.

“We need to talk to Theo and Gwen about this,” Andy said, pulling out his phone to text them.

I’d followed him back to his suite and settled on a couch. Yellin’s weird reaction clearly required discussion — it’s not smart to let anomalies go unaddressed when you’re the one taking all the risks.

“Okay, Theo’s on his way,” Andy said.

“Damn. Gwen can’t come,” he added a few seconds later. “She’s in Pennsylvania dealing with some baddie or other. You want a beer while we’re waiting for T.?”

“What’s the baddie? And no, I want some lunch. Aren’t you hungry?”

“Yeah, I am. Hold on.” He spent another minute texting. “It’s a green man.”

I gasped. “She’s hunting a green man? Alone?”

“She says it’s not nearly as strong as the one you dealt with in the spring. And she’s got Williams with her. It’ll be okay.”

I sat back on the couch, still worried. Green men were the S-Em’s best assassins and bounty-hunters. One had been after Justine in April. It had taken Cordus to kill it. Just containing the thing had been the best we Nolanders could do, and even that had been a stretch.

I really hoped Gwen’s assessment of this new one was accurate.

“Seems like we’re getting these incursions constantly, doesn’t it?”

Andy stood and headed for the fridge. “Yep. That’s ’cause we are. Word’s gotten out that no one’s minding the store. When the cat’s away, the mice will play, and all that.”

“Green men aren’t mice, that’s for sure.”

He shrugged. “Whatever. Still gotta catch ’em.”

“Ah. The patented Andy Duff don’t-worry-’til-you-can-see-the-food-stuck-in-their-teeth approach to monsters.”

He grinned and shrugged again.

Andy’s suite was quite a bit bigger than mine — more of an apartment, really. He got busy in the kitchenette and made a couple sandwiches.

“Drink?”

“Just water.”

He brought me my food. I balanced the plate on my knee and took a big bite of sandwich.

“Wow, this is great. What’s in here?”

“Prosciutto and roasted zucchini with camembert and arugula.”

I wasn’t the same small-town girl I’d been four months ago, but people still pretty regularly said things that sounded like Greek to me. Andy hardly ever made me feel like a rube, but when he did, it was always over a meal. The man was the world’s biggest foodie.

I looked up and saw he was grinning at me.

“Ham and cheese with veggies.”

“Thanks for the translation. I know what zucchini is. Jerk.”

“They have vegetables in Wisconsin, huh?”

“Only at the best places.”

There was a light knock. Theo opened the door and came in.

“Hey, what’s the crisis?”

Andy waved his brother toward the couch. “Want a sandwich?”

“Naw, already ate.”

I got up and pushed the couch in, so Andy’s sound-proof barrier wouldn’t have to be so big. His capacity was probably low from the attack in the sewer. Duncan’s healing wouldn’t have helped with that.

We settled in, and Andy repeated the story we’d just told Yellin. Then he described Yellin’s reaction.

By the time we were done, Theo looked worried.

“So you think the thing that attacked you was a Thirsting Ground, whatever that is?”

“Yeah,” Andy said. “A strong enough gravity-working could liquefy a human body, break it down to the molecular level, even.”

Theo nodded, thoughtful.

“So this is bad, right?” I asked. “Having this thing loose in the city? Yellin told me that killing is what these Thirsting Ground things do. Who knows what kind of body count it’s racking up. So why is he putting off doing something about it?”

Theo shook his head. “Beth, I think you’re missing something.”

Suddenly, I felt a lot more worried.

“What? What am I missing?”

“Sturluson gives you the info about the dead kid, and the very next day you encounter the entity that did it? Out of all the tens of millions of people in this area, it attacks you?”

“She didn’t give me the info. She gave Yellin the info. I just happened to be there. And today in the tunnel, it was targeting all of us.”

But even as I said it, I remembered Sturluson’s odd interest in me.

“Shit,” Andy said. “I bet that’s why Yellin’s delaying. You’re Lord Cordus’s new prize. Yellin has to keep you safe. I mean,
really
has to. To do that, he needs to know what the hell is going on.”

The rest of my sandwich wasn’t looking so appealing.

“So this is about me?”

“I think it’s got to be, at least in part,” Theo said. “Maybe it’s about something else, in the final analysis, but it has to have something to do with you.”

“So what should I do?”

Andy grinned. “You mean ‘what should
we
do,’ right?”

Andy and Theo were the best.

“It’s hard to know,” Theo said. “We’re really working in the dark, here.”

“I know who could enlighten us,” Andy said.

“Sturluson?”

“Yup.” 

“But what if running to her is just what she wants Beth to do?”

No one had an answer for that. Andy sat there pushing the crumbs around on his plate. Theo stared off into the distance and drummed his fingers on the back of the couch.

“So we just wait. Wait and let Yellin figure it out,” I said.

“I guess,” Andy said.

“Gwen might have a better idea, when we get a chance to run all this by her,” Theo said.

Maybe. I doubted it, though. If Theo was advising caution, Gwen would probably throw me down and sit on me.

After the terror of my morning in the sewers, the afternoon was far more humdrum. I worked out with Justine, rode down to the southern meadow to photograph the purple asters, made my way through ten pages of my Baasha textbook, and then joined Andy and Theo for dinner.

Afternoons like that weren’t bad: meals with the brute squad were always fun, and riding just couldn’t be beat. Admittedly, Baasha gave me a headache, and the workout had focused on strength-training, which I found tedious. But hey, batting .500 is pretty good — a lot of people spend a lot less of their time than that on stuff they enjoy.

I particularly loved the riding. It had taken more than a month of pestering to convince the estate’s stable master, Patricia, to let me ride. She’d finally said I could use one of the “more manageable” mounts and directed me to a 14.3-hand appaloosa named Copper.

She was probably laughing up her sleeve when she did it — Copper wasn’t all that manageable. Actually, I’d have put him in the “evil-genius” category, myself. He was lazy, stubborn, and deeply in love with his stall. I had a terrible time keeping him from taking off on me. Plus, he bit.

If Graham Ryzik had been right about my having a gift for taming animals, Copper was my kryptonite.

The second time I had to walk back to the stable after he dumped me down near the bottom of the property, it occurred to me that Patricia was probably testing me. After my fifth walk-back, I’d realized she was looking for humbleness, not tenacity, and had asked her for help. Now I didn’t just take Copper out on the estate’s trails. I also circled a ring as Patricia helped me learn to use tools I hadn’t needed as a kid bopping around my friend Janie’s place on placid old farm horses — things like spurs and a curb bit.

The lessons were a revelation. Once I got Copper to listen to me, I discovered he’d been well schooled and was quite able. Soon I was pestering Patricia to teach me more often. She grumbled but agreed to three lessons a week.

After I got to know Patricia better, I started seeing through her gruffness and realized she actually looked forward to our meetings. I seemed to be the only other Nolander on the estate who used the horses, and I’m sure the Seconds wouldn’t have stooped to lessons from a Nolander, even if they needed them. Maybe Patricia liked having someone around who appreciated her expertise.

After dinner, I declined Andy and Theo’s invitation to hang out and drink. I just couldn’t indulge as often as they did and still feel good during the day.

Instead, I headed back to my suite and watched the original
King Kong
.

The estate’s lending library had a big collection of DVDs, and I’d been on a classic-film kick for the last few weeks. If I had the time and energy, I’d go get something in the evening — something I’d heard of but never seen.

After watching
Bullitt
, I’d watched a bunch of Steve McQueen movies. There was just something about him, a bad-boy magnetism. You couldn’t look away from him. Andy had declared McQueen “strangely hot” and had joined me for a few of those, but when I moved on to a string of Bogart films, Andy had rolled his eyes and gone back to knocking back beers with his brother.

After
Casablanca
and
Key Largo
,
King Kong
was a real change of pace. It might’ve been the oldest movie I’d ever seen. It held up pretty well, all in all, but it made me sad. To the very end, the woman didn’t seem to have any empathy for the ape. She was horrified by and terrified of him from start to finish.

I’d just extracted the DVD and gone to the bathroom to brush my teeth when my phone rang.

My brand new phone.

It had to be one of the guys — no one else had the number yet. But they never called me so late.

I touched the screen to answer. “Hello?”

“Well hello, Miss Ryder, how are you this evening?”

The voice was female. I stood there for several seconds, quite at a loss. Then it clicked.

“Miss Sturluson?”

“That’s right, my dear. How are you?”

What the hell?

I sat down on the side of the tub, shocked and befuddled.

“I’m fine, thank you. And you?”

“I’m doing just fine. Thanks for asking.”

I let the silence stretch for a few seconds, trying to figure out how to proceed. Nothing really came to mind.

“Miss Sturluson, it’s certainly nice to hear from you, but I’m not sure why you’re calling. Is there something I can do for you?”

“Now, I’m sure you’ve been told not to make offers like that to people like me. Haven’t you, Miss Ryder?”

God, what was wrong with me? The grandma voice was so good that I’d been in talking-to-a-human mode. You don’t offer to do things for Seconds.

“Yes ma’am, I have. What is it you want?”

“Oh, not much. I was concerned after what happened this morning. I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

Every hair on my body seemed to stand straight up at once.

“Was that you?”

“Good heavens, no! I would never do such a thing. Honestly, it’s hard not to feel offended at the suggestion, Miss Ryder.”