She did not blink, though he could hear her heart fluttering, wild. “You rescued me.”
“No,” he breathed. “Do not trust that.”
“I trust what I see.” Kit’s voice hardened. “I trust what I feel.”
“You should not trust. Eyes betray. As do hearts.” M’cal suppressed a shiver, desperation rising in his throat. His heart ached. The bracelet grew even warmer. “Go back to your hotel. Pack your bags. Leave this city. Get as far from here as you can.”
Horror flickered through her gaze; he steeled himself against it, pushing again on her body. But she still resisted.
“No,” she breathed, fear in her voice. “No, I won’t be bullied. Tell me what’s going on. Were you part of the group who kidnapped Alice?”
“I do not know any Alice,” M’cal said wearily. “just you. You were my target. I would have taken you after your concert, at the hotel. I parked there, waiting for you. I had a good view of the street. I saw everything, and followed.”
Kitala shivered. M’cal reached past her into the car. She swayed away from him, but that was all. So stubborn. It was going to get her killed.
He had a coat in the front seat. He did not need one—the cold rarely affected him—but he had been caught naked enough times leaving the sea that having a spare set of clothes seemed practical. He found the plastic bag holding his extra pants and shirt. Keeping those, he draped the coat over Kit’s slender shoulders. She let him, without comment. The black wool hung loose and huge. His hands stayed on her shoulders, burning and burning. Right through to his heart.
“Who hired you?” she asked again, keeping completely still.
M’cal did not answer. This was taking too long. He opened his mouth and began to sing.
He did not steal her soul; that monster still slept. What poured through his throat was another kind of beast, elegant and full of the old dark deep. A siren call, an incubus song, a lure to rocks and storm and dream. His heart pounded a triple beat, inhuman; quick and strong.
Kitala swayed, eyelids fluttering. Her lips parted. M’cal remembered the taste of her mouth and found himself bending close, his throat humming his wordless song, wrapping her mind in his need, his desire for her to—
go, go now, forget me, be safe and forget
— enter the car and drive away.
I
do not know you,
he thought.
But I will miss you.
He could not help himself. M’cal kissed her again, for real this time. It hurt, but her lips were warmer than the burning, and her breath still tasted of mint. He did not press—the contact was light—but she leaned into him, and through his song he heard another melody, a counter harmony. Kitala was singing softly, barely louder than his own deep-throated whispering hum.
He remembered hearing her sing once before, in the shipping yard; it had distracted him, made him falter. It did the same again. There was something in her voice, something he could not name, a sister to the notes plucked from her fiddle: a strong and soft and powerful music. It lulled him, just the same as he was doing to her; except she was still not moving, not obeying, and he realized, quite suddenly, that he was no longer in pain.
Touching her. Still wet with seawater. Not in pain.
He broke off the kiss and stumbled back. Kitala opened her eyes and stopped singing. The pain returned, but only just; the discomfort was a dull echo of what it had been.
“What did you do to me?” M’cal whispered, staring. The bracelet thrummed against his skin.
Kitala touched her mouth, eyes wide. “Nothing.”
M’cal took a step, then stopped, holding back.
“You sang.”
“So did you.” Her voice shook. She jerked her head toward the shipping yard. “You’ve done a lot of that tonight. A lot of strange things.”
No
stranger than you,
he thought, fingering the bracelet. It made his skin tingle, the sensation traveling right down to the bone. In his throat, the monster stirred.
The witch. He had taken too long to come home.
“Go,” M’cal muttered, shutting his eyes, fighting the compulsion. He succeeded—shockingly—but only for a moment. Whatever immunity Kitala had given him was slipping fast. Too fast.
And she was still too close. She said his name. He could feel her reaching out to touch him.
No. No, no,
no
—
“Go!” he screamed. Kitala flinched, and he rushed her, stopping less than a foot away with his fists raised. This time she did not argue. She slipped backward into the car, slammed the door and locked it. Stared at him through the glass for one long moment, confusion and anger in her eyes. M’cal pointed to the road, hand shaking, and she started the engine. Gave him one last look that made his heart ache.
She pulled out and drove away. Fast. M’cal watched the brake lights disappear. The only shred of hope he had found in years, and he had just let her go.
Better than stealing her soul.
The urge to follow was overwhelming. Even after years of being subjected to it, M’cal still did not understand the witch’s curse; only that she had set him like a hound to the scent, and while distance would lessen the compulsion to hunt Kitala, as long as the witch wanted her, the desire would remain. Unfortunately, there was a part of M’cal that
wanted
to find her. Hoped he would as long as he did not hurt her. Poor chance of that.
He started walking down the road. It was late, and the air was quiet. He wanted to stop, but his legs were compelled to keep moving. He still carried his bag of clothes. He yanked his shirt over his head without stopping and tossed it on the ground. Dressed in the new button-up. The material was dry and soft. His skin felt better, though the lower half of his body would have to wait for dry clothes until the compulsion faded. If it ever would. He would not put it past the witch to keep him walking until morning.
M’cal could think of worse ways to spend his time.
Through the trees he could see the shipping containers; the distant bulk of the cruise ships. No streetlights around him. The air was cool and smelled of oil and metal; the pavement was wet from the earlier evening rain.
He pretended not to notice the light tread of footsteps behind him. Nor did he turn when something cold and hard suddenly pressed against the back of his head. A long, strong arm grabbed his shoulder, holding him steady. M’cal managed to stand still, but his legs twitched, feet scuffing the ground.
“Fidgety,” said a low voice in his ear. “Guilty conscience?”
“No,” M’cal said.
“You killed some friends of mine,” said the unseen man. “Don’t know how you did it, but it was good work. Good enough that I’m gonna have to fuck you up the ass with some bullets.”
“Okay,” M’cal said.
“Okay,” echoed the man, laughing quietly. “Right. But first, you tell me about that bitch. You tell me where she lives. And maybe I’ll put the gun in your mouth instead.”
“Who wants her dead?” M’cal asked.
“I do,” said the man. “All part of the job.”
“Surely you can tell me more.”
“ ‘Surely you can tell me more,’” the man minced. “Jesus. You sound like such a fag. Maybe I’ll make you suck my dick for the information, huh? I bet you’d like that.”
“We should do something about the gun first,” M’cal said.
And he began to sing.
It was at night. Kit was sitting up in her bed, which was right below the window overlooking Montgomery Street. The moon was out. She saw a woman walking alone down the sidewalk. A man ran toward her. The woman did not turn. He shouted something—her name, maybe—and she stopped, looked.
Then she died. Shot in the face. The man kept on running.
Later, the police questioned Kit.
A crime of passion,
they told her parents, but that did not mean anything. Not when she could still see the moonlit explosion of the woman’s head, the splatter of blood, brain.
Everything changed after that. Or, at least, one thing had changed: her vision.
Kit drove the Porsche fast. Her neck throbbed as if little needles made of fire were tattooing the wound. A doctor was out of the question. Someone with a sharp eye might recognize a near miss with a bullet, and she could not risk anyone filing a police report.
You’re in deep shit,
she told herself.
So deep. And it’s only going to get worse.
Much worse, if her instincts were right. And they usually were.
Kit located the road into downtown, following her memories of maps and landmarks, and found Hotel Georgia after only several missteps and a mile or two spent reacquainting herself with a manual transmission. She parked M’cal’s car across the street, which still had some late-night foot traffic. But down the road, where the old man had died, and where Kit and Alice had run, the sidewalk was quiet, empty. Body and trauma were both gone, with only Kit’s ghost of a memory to tell her it had happened. She wondered if Officer Yu had been the sniper. Or someone else. The dark alley stared at her, and Kit tore her gaze away, looking at her hands clutching an unfamiliar steering wheel. She tried not to shake.
Her fingers hurt when she finally pried them loose, but even though part of her wanted to run, she took her time and searched the car’s interior for anything revealing. She found nothing—except the registration in the glove compartment, which listed a Michael Oberon as the Porsche’s owner.
“Michael Oberon,” she murmured. Not
M’cal.
But that’s his name. That’s the name that suits.
Whatever. It did not matter. After tonight she would never see him again, and that was good. He was a dead man walking. Same with every other person on the planet, but having it shoved in Kit’s face— the violence and certainty of it—hurt more than she wanted to admit. A lifetime of trying to desensitize herself, and in one night all those walls were crumbling down.
She tried to harden herself. It should have been easy. The man had said outright that he had been sent to take her life—something that should have made her run the first time he said it, though she had not. Instead she had engaged him, pressing him with questions because his eyes told a different story than his voice, and the way he touched her, protected her, spoke a different language than death.
And if someone had hired him to kill her, why and who was a mystery. Kit had no stalkers, never received obscene letters, rarely had people asking for her autograph; she was boring offstage, plain and simple.
Not so boring. Not if people knew what your eyes tell you.
Which made Kit stop for a moment, trying to recall if there was anyone—
anyone
—who might possibly know her secret. Only her parents and grandmother came to mind; she had always been careful with anyone else. And she trusted her family above all others to keep secret what she could do. Not that it was enough to kill over.
M’cal would not have killed you,
whispered a persistent little voice.
He saved you. He was still trying to save you when he scared you away.
Kit just wished she understood why. She could still feel the warmth and pressure of his mouth, the strength of his arms. All of it, burned into her memory. Just like his face. And his future murder.
Blood filled her mind; she grasped for something else, anything.
Blue eyes,
she thought. The man—Michael,
M’cal
— had blue eyes the color of a cold winter sky, clear and sharp. Unforgiving eyes, hard eyes, but with flickers of such raw emotion, Kit could still feel her heart aching for him. She did not understand her feelings. She could blame her lack of fear on the fact that he had saved her life, but as for rest.. .
Feeling anything at all for him was dangerous. M’cal was not safe.
Safe enough to keep you alive. On land
and
underwater.
Another riddle Kit did not feel like contemplating.
She left the Porsche’s keys inside the glove compartment and locked the car, then went up to her hotel room, looking over her shoulder the entire time. Changed clothes. Packed. Checked out over the phone and asked the front desk to call her a cab. Realized, at the last moment, that she still had M’cal’s coat. It was a nice big coat. Her own was still wet. She hesitated, then slipped her arms into the loose, long sleeves. Found herself imagining, for a moment, that it was his body keeping her warm. M’cal had radiated a great deal of heat. She remembered that, too. Along with darker things.
Kit did not go to the airport. It crossed her mind, for all of ten seconds. Instead, she traveled a grand distance of five blocks and paid cash for a room at the Hyatt. The clerk gave her a strange look but said nothing. Kit got her key and fled up the elevator. By the time she reached her room, she had begun to shiver. Inside, with the door locked behind her, the shivering turned into a teeth-jarring shudder that racked her bones with violent chills.
Kit dumped all her belongings on the floor and collapsed on the bed. Her heart hammered against her ribs; her head was dizzy, it was hard to breathe, and each rough inhalation managed to feel like the prelude to vomit. Murder, kidnapping, mayhem—all were finally catching up with her. Kit felt like she was having a heart attack. Drowning. Her body no longer belonged
to
her. The terrible throbbing in her neck did not help either. She probably had an infection.
It’s just panic,
she told herself, trying to catch a breath.
Nothing more. Calm. Think calm.
But thinking good thoughts was not enough, nor was the tune she hummed, and after a brief internal struggle she crawled off the bed for her purse. She found her Xanax in a small bottle at the bottom. She kept the medicine for air travel, but this was as good an exception as any. Kit popped half of a pill in her mouth and let it dissolve, grimacing at the bitter taste.
It helped, though. Her heart began to slow. She stopped shivering. Breathed easier, without that frightening tightness in her chest, or the nausea. The medication made her drowsy, too. She closed her eyes and fell asleep.
She dreamed. Sharp dreams, strong; more vision than fantasy, which made her afraid. She dreamed like she was awake, and she knew the feeling for what it was: a blood legacy, like her glimpses of murder.
She dreamed of M’cal. It was not a good dream. He lay on his back in a circle of sand, naked, but the lower half of his body was inhuman. He had the tail of a fish, iridescent and straining with long, rippling muscles. His body glistened with water, and his hair was wet, plastered against his face, framing eyes so anguished, so heartbroken, Kit could feel his pain like a punch in the gut.
There was blood on him. Bite marks. Nothing held him down, yet he seemed unable to sit up. Kit listened to him scream. Felt herself begin to do the same.
The dream changed. Kit staggered, temporarily blind to everything but M’cal’s voice inside her head, begging for help. Not her help. Not the help of any one person. But just someone.
Someone, please.
Kit choked back tears, terrible inexplicable grief. She felt seared to the soul by his pain, by his impossible appearance, which had no precedent in her life or mind even if it was just a dream. She
knew
it was just a dream. It could not be more. Not after what she had just seen. It was too impossible.
Kit smelled mint. Her dream changed. M’cal’s voice died away, replaced by John Fogerty’s “Born on the Bayou,” turned way up on some radio. Beneath the pump and brawl of the song, she heard her grandmother singing along.
Old Jazz Marie, a woman of round curves, perched on a stool on the veranda, with the hot summer wind blowing through the cypresses from the swamp. Kit held her breath, staring. It had been a long time since she dreamed of her grandmother. A year, to be exact. The last time had been on the night of her death.
“Storm coming,” said the old woman, a thick bone needle in her hand. She threaded a narrow leather cord through a piece of hide. In front of her, on the battered table, Kit saw herbs and roots; a chicken foot, some bits of fur; a cup brimming with soft, rich dirt. Little stones. Little dolls. Little bones.
Kit watched her grandmother’s face, studying the high, wide cheeks, the polished amber undertones of her dark skin. Her hair had been gray for years—as steely and sharp as a thundercloud—and she wore it wild, held back only by a dark red scarf.
“You always say that,” Kit said. “There’s always a storm.”
“Hush. Don’t go twisting words on an old woman.” Her grandmother stopped sewing and looked at her, straight and clear. “You caught the mark on this one, Kitty Bella. Got eyes on you, for sure. Knew it would happen eventually. Women like us can’t go ‘round without drawing attention. Bad and good.”
“I’m nothing like you,” Kit said gently. “Despite what I see.”
“Because
of what you see.” Old Jazz Marie spat into the leather, rubbing it hard with her thumb. “Because of what you do. You got power, little cat. And you’re gonna need it.”
“Tell me. I don’t understand.”
“You never did. Enough talent to choke a volcano, but you still don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground. Hell, child. Come here.”
Kit did as she was told, and watched her grandmother pierce her thumb with the bone needle. Blood welled. Just enough to smear across Kit’s neck wound. Old Jazz Marie’s breath quickened, and she mumbled a string of words in some indecipherable patois. She ended with a high mighty cry that cut Kit right down to the bone.
The old woman slumped over, closing her eyes. She looked tired, weary, as she had only days before her death. Kit reached out to touch her, but her grandmother knocked away her hand. Her eyes were still closed.
“Get going,” she murmured, breath whistling through her teeth. “Get gone. You been dreamin’ too long.”
“No,” Kit said. “I miss you.”
“No time.” The old woman’s shoulders hunched even more. “You gotta be strong, girl. Strong in the heart. Trust yourself. Trust
him.”
“Him?” she echoed, startled; but it was too late. Her grandmother died again, slipped away with a breath, and Kit opened her eyes, awake. Her cheeks were wet. She was still crying.
Morning. Light outside. Kit stared at the ceiling and pulled her heart back together, listening to “Raglan Road” curl through her mind as she sewed and mended the cuts caused by seeing her grandmother again. By seeing M’cal.
She touched her neck, searching. Found no blood. No wound either. Her skin was smooth. The pain was gone.
Kit closed her eyes, suffering a deep chill, heartache. She did not bother rising to look into a mirror. It was not the first healing Old Jazz Marie had performed on her granddaughter. Of course, the last time she had done it, she had been alive.
Granny, Granny,
Kit called out silently, touching the gris-gris tangled tight with her cross.
What is going on?
No one answered. Of course.
Kit wiped her face and rolled over to look at the clock. It was eight. She had slept the whole night. Wasted all that time. Alice might be dead.
She’s already dead
—
today, tomorrow, or next week. You can’t change fate. Just walk away.
Walk away, as she should have done in the first place. As she had with so many others, including M’cal, who had saved her life. She’d taken the path of the cold heart, because there were just too many people needing help, and not one of them would have believed Kit if she had told the truth—which was unpleasant, unhelpful.
Don’t get murdered
were not words to inspire hope.
But this time was different. Kit had taken that step and Alice had believed her. For what good it had done. Kit sat up slowly. Her muscles ached, and her mouth tasted rotten. She perched for a moment on the edge of the bed, staring out the window. The city was gray in the daylight. Gray skies, gray buildings. She could see Coal Harbor between the high-rises, wondered how many people could say they had ever almost drowned in that cold water. Probably more than she wanted to know.
Kit found her fiddle case and popped the latch. The airtight seal caused a sucking sound, but that only made her smile. She bought nothing but the best for her fiddle, which had a smooth sweet tone courtesy of a backwoods genius in Tennessee, retired from the craft except for the occasional custom job. Old Earl, who happened to be a friend of her father’s, could make violins that rivaled any Stradivarius. Not that the man was prone to bragging. Kit’s fiddle had been a gift on her tenth birthday, and it was made of Smokey Mountain blood and bones, with a sound just as powerful.