Soul Hunt (7 page)

“That gives me two months,” I said, and started across the plaza. The circle scuffed underfoot; any trace of blood was long gone, as was the mark on my throat. Inside, though, my brain was screaming
midwinter! Midwinter! That’s less than two months—I’m not ready to be torn apart by the Gabriel Hounds, I’m not ready to die—if I’d known, if I’d known I never would have—

No. I would have. And I had known. The Hounds had as much as warned me.

Nate ran to catch up with me. “Two months isn’t enough, Evie.”

“Yeah.” I paused at the edge of the plaza, listening for sound to creep back into the world. “I kind of wish I’d gone trick-or-treating with you now.”

“Jesus.” He touched my arm, and I started to push him away—I couldn’t break down here, not out in the open, please—but just then the taste of ferns and ice surged up in the back of my throat, and with it came the gray edges encroaching on my vision. I tried to brace myself and lurched against Nate instead, then stayed there a moment, sick with the cold in my gut.

I guess this was proof that the Horn hadn’t been causing these grayouts. Damn. And I’d just lost not only my last chance at a hunt, but my chance at a future beyond midwinter.

“I—” I said, then, as my mouth filled with cold water, spat to the side. “Not now, okay? I can’t—can’t deal with this now.”

His lips brushed my hair. “Not now,” he agreed, but his arms were still tight around me, as if he feared I’d run the second I had a chance.

S
o what do you do when you know you’ve got two months before a grisly end? Sleep, apparently. Nate brought me back to my office, and I fell onto the futon-couch without bothering to unfold it into an actual bed. “No you don’t,” he said, put me in the chair behind my desk, and folded it out himself. By the time I realized that I probably ought to be helping him with the bedclothes, he’d already finished and was helping me back up.

Sleep fell like lead wool around me, so heavy that I didn’t even run in my dreams as usual. I surfaced briefly when Nate’s cell phone alarm went off in the morning and he uncurled himself to get it, leaving a great cold empty spot all along my back. Usually I was the first one up—I had to be, with my schedule for Mercury Courier the way it was—but today the world ended right where my cocoon of blankets did. I heard the shower turn on, then sank back into shifting dreams of cold water over my head.

When I woke again, Nate was fully dressed—
damn, missed him naked,
some automatic response in the back of my head muttered—and by the side of the bed. “I have to go,” he said, touching my face. “Are you going to be all right?”

I blinked until he finally came into focus. There
were so many things I could say to that
—yes, for now,
or maybe
I just got a sentence of eternal punishment, why wouldn’t I be all right,
or even just telling him not to worry. But I couldn’t even muster the will to be snarky about it. “Yeh,” I mumbled. “Mmkay. See you.”

His brows drew together, that little worried line between them becoming deeper. “Evie.”

“Mmfine. Go on. ‘ll take care of this.” I tucked my head further under the covers. “Mmfine.”

His hand stayed warm against my cheek for a moment more, but even though he was no longer quite as beholden to his schedule as he once had been, there were times when he had to go. And now was one. “Come by any time,” he said, and pressed something into my hand. He was gone by the time I uncurled my hand to find what he’d slipped into it: a pair of keys on a curl of wire.

It was probably a sign of how long it had been since I was in any sort of stable relationship that it took me so long to figure out what he’d given me, because my first thought was something along the lines of
goddammit, now I gotta get to his place before his workday ends, or else he’ll be locked out.
Once I realized, I turned red and dropped the keys onto my bedside table, a grin pulling at my lips. Okay. Okay, maybe I could manage this.

My own alarm rang about ten minutes after he left, and when it went off, I slapped it away and just rolled over. Getting up took an effort of will, and once I was up it still took me five minutes to decide that yes, I wanted to shower and get dressed. Not even the unseasonably warm weather—something that normally would have been a blessing for a courier, this time of year—could make things better.

By the time I was upright, dressed, and had decided that yes, I probably ought to eat as well, I’d missed my shift at Mercury. I started to call Tania, stopped, then dialed her assistant, who’s very good at organizing
but whose response to customer service or any kind of courier dealings is to pass it on up the food chain. Tania would give me hell; her assistant would take a message and pass it up to Tania. Who would then give me two hells when I next saw her, but bothering about that just now felt outright impossible.

Instead, I wrangled my bike outside, stared blankly at the street for a few minutes wondering if this was really where I wanted to be, then started out for Mass General.

Tessie looked better and sounded worse than I’d expected. They’d moved her out of the ICU, but there were still an alarming number of machines hooked up to her, and a mask hanging over her face that she kept pushing away to talk to me. “Of course I had it worse,” she said, her voice a gargling rasp rather than its usual husky alto. “I was down there in the hold for, I don’t know, ten minutes? And that’s where the worst of the smoke was. You got maybe a breath of it; I had my lungs full.”

She held the mask up again and took a deep breath. Even without my talent, the air here smelled frighteningly sterile, with that strange blank scent that compressed oxygen sometimes has. That was some mercy in how my talent had dimmed; the scents of hospitals are usually enough to raise my hackles and draw forth a lot of unpleasant memories. Now the fog was almost a blessing.

Tessie took my expression for needless worry, and she waved a hand, strangely naked without its usual complement of jewelry. “Don’t let this thing fool you. It’s not the smoke inhalation that’s the problem; it’s that I haven’t been to a doctor in ages and now they can’t wait to get their needles in me.” She sighed theatrically, but it turned into a cough.

“Why didn’t you get out?” I said, pulling over the one chair in the ward. It wasn’t a private room; a teenager with an IV and a handheld game was in the other
bed, but he had his headphones turned up so loud I could hear the little tinkly music of the game he was playing.

Tessie paused, then gave me a coy little smile and tugged on the tubes hooking her up to the monitors. “It’s a bit hard to get free of these, and after all, it’s been ages since I had so many men interested in me—”

“No, I mean out of the boat. You were just standing there when I got in, and you couldn’t have gone far. And there didn’t seem to be anything else in the room with you.” My nose hadn’t been quite useless at that point, even with the smoke.

Her gaze dropped to her lap, and she smoothed out the blankets. “Tell me you won’t let this get out.”

I nodded to the jacked-in teenager. “And neither will he.”

“This is so embarrassing … I was too scared.”

“Of the fire?”

Tessie shook her head. “No. Definitely not that, although given this—” she raised the mask and inhaled again, “—I probably should have been. It was just … look, do you ever have nightmares where you’re being watched, and if you move even a little it’ll see you fully and you won’t be able to get away?”

I stared at her. She’d turned pale and nervous, her hands plucking at the blankets as if wanting to pull them up over her head. “Not quite,” I said after a moment. My nightmares, when I remembered them, had usually been of a much different sort. “But I think I have some idea what you mean. Like a deer in the headlights, right?”

“Yes. No,” she added after a second, raising her index finger as if to point out the flaws. “Deer are hypnotized. This was … oh, I don’t know. More like a rabbit. Or being in the dark and knowing there’s a cliff somewhere, and the only sure ground is what’s under your feet. I probably would have stayed down there till we hit the bottom of the harbor if you hadn’t come for me.” She exhaled. “I owe you, Hound.”

I shifted uncomfortably. I didn’t much like the idea of keeping a debt around after I was gone. “Only for the standard contract. I’ll add a couple hundred hazard pay. So was it something on the boat that had you scared, or someone? Can you remember?”

“I am remembering, Hound, and I’ve told you what I know. It wasn’t anything that happened, it was just a, a feeling. And as for whether it was what drew me there—” She shrugged, looking wilted. “I don’t know, and now that I’ve spent a night on land I can’t really call on my usual nets to tell me. I’m sorry I’m not more help.”

I glanced up at that. Tessie gave me a sad smile, and even without my talent I finally caught a little of the change in her. Some magicians relied solely on loci; some relied on careful ritual, and then there were those who circumscribed their own lives and made alliances based on those prohibitions. By staying away from water for the night, Tessie had lost her power. It might come back—the same way her lungs would recover, one breath at a time—but it was a lot less likely.

That changed some things. Not just the balance of power in Boston—Tessie would now be lower in the hierarchy, one more in need of the protection Sarah’s community watch offered—but, more immediately, what I could tell her. I’d been worried that Tessie might react badly, but if she was powerless … “Do you know Deke Croft?”

“The hobo pyro? I know of him; I don’t bother with going inland to see him.”

“He was on the boat too. Him and this old guy with a beard. Did you see either of them?”

Tessie shook her head. “No. I didn’t have time to see anyone. But …” Her brow furrowed. “You understand this is all a bit blurry, but I don’t think that was an oracular fire. I don’t think he set it.”

“You can tell the difference?”

“I could. Not so much now. Can’t you?”

With my talent muffled? Not a chance. I smiled
and shrugged. “Whatever scared you got to him too, I think. Would it still be in Boston?”

She turned to gaze out the window, at the gray landscape. The faint squeal of T trains slowing down on the tracks echoed from the Longfellow Bridge, and the kid by the window cranked up his volume to compensate. “I don’t know. It might have been just one time, released by that fire; it could have been a ward. Into the harbor … that was the only sense I got. It was gone, into the water.” She closed her eyes, then pulled herself together and straightened her spine, the dreamy, fragmented part of her falling away as if sliced. “And I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that if it went into the ocean, it’s no matter. Nothing can magic the sea.” Her lips curled up in a smile that made her appear maybe ten years older. “I’ve based my life on that.”

And now that was gone. On impulse, I reached over and took her hand. Tessie, startled, grabbed back, tight enough that my bones squeaked. “And you’ll go back to it again. The sea’s the sea; it won’t change.”

“Not more than it already does, at least.” She gave a surprisingly deep laugh and let go.

I made it to the door, then paused. “Do you want me to check in on your boat? I don’t know much in the ways of wardcraft, but I could maybe lock it up or something.”

“Oh, bless you, no. A, um, friend of mine is taking care of it. He came to see me this morning. Such a
lovely
man,” she added with an eyebrow waggle that could only be called wicked. “Maryam up on the hill put me in touch with him a little while back.”

“Wait. Maryam, with the—”

“Yes, the rocks. She’s not there all the time; even us grand dames have lives too. Anyway, you don’t need to worry about my home. I’ll be there soon enough, anyway.”

A nurse poked her head inside, frowned at the teenager, then turned to face Tessie. “Mr. Troyes? It’s time for your blood stick.”

I glanced at her, unsure I’d heard right. Tessie sighed. “That’s another reason I’m not so happy about being here; they’re such sticklers for what’s on my ID, rather than my real name. All right, you candy-striped harpy, let’s find a vein for you to pillage.” She gave me an exasperated look as the nurse replaced her mask and scolded her for not keeping it on at all times.

I headed down the hall and to the lobby. Whatever had scared Tessie … the graybeard? He hadn’t seemed all that scary, all things considered, but if he was a magician …

If my talent had been functioning properly, I’d have gone to find Deke in a heartbeat, first to see whether he was all right and second to figure out why he’d been there. But as it was, I might concentrate for a half hour and come up with nothing.

And did I have enough time left that I could squander it on a fruitless search?

That particularly morbid thought followed me as I got into the elevator next to an orderly in blue scrubs and two girls comparing casts. It didn’t help that we emerged into the middle of a shouting match on the ground floor.

“Shouting match” is probably the wrong term to use, all things considered. After all, it implies that there’s at least some give and take, that both parties are shouting equally. This was pretty much one-sided, and if it hadn’t been for the first words I caught as I got off the elevator—something involving “locus” and “theft”—I would have walked right by.

Well, that’s not strictly true. I could tell when magic was being worked, even if it wasn’t quite in my senses.

The parties involved were a pair at the far end of the lobby, and they looked like something out of a bad improv skit. One was a middle-aged woman with her hair up in a perm that had gone limp some time ago, earrings so heavy they skimmed her shoulders, and a black velvet jacket over a white blouse and gypsy skirt. The other—the man she was berating—was a small
Indian man in a threadbare three-piece suit, holding his bowler hat between his hands as if it might shield him from her. They could have been any arguing couple—okay, any arguing strangely dressed couple—except that no one was looking at them. No one even came up close to them. As I walked from the elevator to the front desk, the two girls in casts headed straight for them, then veered around in a perfect arc, not even looking as their steps shifted.