It was clean inside, and large, like a warehouse. Smelled like vanilla and candy and tennis shoes. The walls had all been turned into long, sprawling murals, one of which was currently in the process of being painted by some teenagers whose dreadlocks probably weighed more than their bodies. In one corner, a miniature library had been set up; in another, pinball machines. There were several long tables filled with board games, and off to the left a row of doors that Kit thought just might lead to offices.
But at the front of the Youth Center, directly to Kit’s left, there was a desk with a pale, slender brunette seated behind it, whose smile was so big she was either a magnificently unhappy person or just slightly deranged. She wore a nametag that looked like a clown. It said MOLLY! in big letters.
“Hello,” Molly said. “Are you here for the pregnancy screening?”
Kit stared. “Um, no. I need to speak to someone about Alice Hardon.”
“Alice isn’t in today.” Molly’s smile slipped just a fraction. “She’ll be back on Monday.”
If only.
“I don’t need to speak
to
Alice. Just—”
“About her. Yes, I heard you the first time.” Molly leaned forward, hands clasped. “But see, we don’t just let
anyone
in here to
talk.
Especially
about
our colleagues. It’s against policy. So if you have a problem with Alice—”
“That’s not it at all—”
“—you are more than welcome to send a letter to our head counselor, Edith, who will determine whether or not to speak further with you. About Alice.”
Kit fought her temper. “You’re not listening to me. I really need to speak to someone.”
“You’re speaking to me,” Molly said, smile gone. “And you’re the one who’s not listening.”
“This is an emergency.”
“It always is with you people,” replied the woman coldly, and reached for her book.
Well, fuck that. Kit pulled out Alice’s business card and leaned over Molly’s desk, shoving it under her nose. “Now you listen,” she said in a hard voice. “Alice gave me this card last night. She
asked
me to come here. So you tell me who the heck I should talk to,
right now,
or else the next time I see Alice, I am going to tell her exactly how her
secretary
shot her shit up. You got that, bitch?”
“It would be hard not to,” said a low familiar voice, rumbling like the distant edge of some terrible thunder.
Kit felt all the blood drain from her face. She turned around.
M’cal stood behind her, one hand holding open the front door. The corner of his mouth tilted up, but it was a small, sad smile.
“You should have taken my advice,” he said.
He’d stopped himself, startled once again at the strength of his thoughts. He had forgotten what that felt like. He could not imagine forgetting, but there—
there
—he could feel the difference, burning in his spirit. Hunger. Raw and burning.
You used to fight harder,
he told himself, still hearing Elsie’s screams inside his head.
You used to do everything you could to save lives, to defy the witch. And now you make excuses when she gives you a command. Now you say it does not matter, because it will happen anyway, because she will force you. You are giving up responsibility for yourself. That is no way to live.
But it was the only way he had—the only way he might ever have, for the rest of his life. The brief taste of freedom Kitala had given him was more torture than pleasure.
Ivan found him only an hour before dawn, three blocks away from Hotel Georgia. A bad time of day for the big man. It was a sign of desperation on the witch’s part that she would send him to fetch M’cal at such a late hour.
Ivan drove a black Jaguar. The car had a loud engine, because the witch’s man tended to drive his vehicles without any kind of maintenance until they broke down around him. Buying cars was a sport, something Ivan enjoyed almost as much as murder.
He’d heard Ivan coming a block before he actually appeared, and waited on a street corner until the big man pulled up beside him. Ivan left the engine running. He rolled down the driver’s-side window and stared, shark eyes sharp and glinting.
“I think she already knows there was a mishap,” M’cal said. “Telling her myself would be redundant.”
Ivan continued to watch him, unblinking. M’cal tapped the bracelet. “Tell her to make me.”
Ivan picked up his cell phone, his bracelet peeking from underneath his dark sleeve. He began to type out a text message. It was painful to watch, like asking a sea manatee to perform sign language with one flipper. And it made M’cal question, once again, the peculiar limits of the witch’s powers. Surely if she could enslave a merman, a Krackeni—bind him, curse him, torture him—drink human souls like the wine she so greatly enjoyed with every meal, she could read Ivan’s little mind from a grand distance of several miles.
Or not. Ivan continued the laborious process of typing. M’cal, itching to move again, tried not to think of Kitala, wherever she might be.
He glanced around, looking for anyone who might be watching. Downtown was quiet this time of day; he had seen only one police cruiser. He wondered if it was the same car that had dumped Kitala off at the docks.
M’cal thought he heard a crunching sound; distant, hard to place, followed by an odd snap, almost like billowing sail. He glanced around, searching, and his gaze traveled up to the skyscrapers. He saw something move. Very high, above his head. A shadow, gliding. Not a bird. Not a plane. It disappeared around a building, and though M’cal waited and watched, it did not reappear.
M’cal looked at Ivan, and found the big man staring at the same piece of sky. His eyes narrowed to slits, his jowls shook and the nickel spots of red burned so bright they looked painted on.
Ivan gave no warning. He gunned the Jaguar’s rattling engine and sped away from the curb, leaving M’cal in a cloud of exhaust.
Interesting. Very curious.
M’cal searched the skies again, his tingling fingers tapping his thick bracelet. He tried to remember his history, all those legends and truths his father had been so keen on him learning. Several options sprang to mind, all of them remote. Nor did anything offer a ready connection to his current predicament.
Something had happened to frighten the witch. Something that made her believe she needed Kitala Bell and the power of Kitala’s soul. Whatever power that might be.
Power enough to save your life. Strong enough to free you from the witch.
If only. M’cal swallowed down a bitter taste, fighting regret. He had done the right thing tonight. The first right thing in a long time. No matter what happened, at least he could rest easy with that. And he had believed that if Kitala had any sense, she was already gone from this city. Safe and whole and able to keep making that lovely incandescent music.
But just in case—because M’cal took nothing for granted, not anymore—he had planned to solve one last problem for her. The only gift he could give Kitala, even though she would never know of it: He was going to make her safe again. He was going to kill the people who had ordered her death. He was going to eliminate their bosses, burn them to the ground, scatter the ashes and make it known:
Do not touch, do not kill, do not go close.
Anything to keep them from hunting Kitala, wherever she might go.
A place, apparently, not so far away after all.
Kitala was beautiful. M’cal had not forgotten, but now, in the clear, sharp light of day, her vitality, her glow, was almost blinding. He stopped breathing when she turned to look at him; felt his world lurch, collapse. But he remembered the danger in the same moment their eyes met, and it stole his joy. His shocking, surprising joy.
“How did you find me?” Kitala asked, staring. M’cal found himself wondering the exact same thing. He glanced behind her at the woman sitting behind the desk. She was staring at him, expression startled, verging on dreamy, her mouth just slightly agape. A flush touched her pale cheeks. Kitala glanced over her shoulder, rolled her eyes—and met his gaze again, this time with a small, wry smile that curled hard into his gut. It felt good. Unfamiliar, but good.
But it could not last. One of them needed to leave this place. Immediately. The bracelet was cool, the compulsion had quieted ... yet it was still there, simmering in his throat. The witch had not removed it. He was only surprised she had not encouraged it, set the monster raging. But then, he had never hunted for her in the daylight, and like Ivan, the witch preferred the dark.
As with Elsie, though, if Kitala touched him, even by accident—
“Excuse us for a moment,” M’cal said to the woman behind the desk, who smiled so widely he thought her jaw might crack. He held open the front door for Kitala, and without a word she walked out of the Youth Center and stood on the sidewalk. The strap of her fiddle case fit neatly between her breasts. She was dressed simply. Around her neck hung a golden cross and a small beaded leather pouch. He liked her glasses.
They stood looking at each other. Kit took a step toward him, and M’cal moved quickly away.
“Do not touch me,” he said firmly. “Not if you value your life.”
Hard emotions flickered through her eyes; more confusion, perhaps even hurt. M’cal wished he could take her in his arms again. He wanted to feel her warmth. He wanted to know if it felt as good as he remembered, despite the pain.
“Contagious, huh?” Kitala said, swallowing hard.
“It is not safe,” he replied, fighting himself. “And you should
not
be here. There are people who will hurt you if they can.”
“Like you?” She lifted her chin, staring at him over her glasses, which were sliding down her nose.
“Like me,” he agreed heavily.
Her expression faltered. “Are you here to finish the job?”
M’cal hesitated, unsure what to say, except the truth. “I never expected to see you again.”
Never, not in his wildest dreams. Last night should have been enough warning for anyone, man or woman. Which meant that Kitala Bell was very dense, very brave, or very crazy. A breeding ground for a bad outcome. M’cal did not want to be responsible for her death.
He almost turned and walked away. Some feat, if he could. However unintentionally, he had found Kitala. The first part of the witch’s compulsion, fulfilled. His feet refused to move.
But his heart was little better. He remembered the men who had tried to kill Kitala. They might be dead, but there were others, and it was dangerous for her to be here alone. Dangerous for him to be with her.
But if you are careful, very careful, you might just be the lesser of two evils.
If he could not convince her to leave, that was. She was still watching him. He could feel the tension radiating off her body. Ready to run, maybe. He hoped so.
“You followed me,” she said.
“I encountered the last gunman after you left,” he corrected her. “I. . . persuaded him to tell me what he knew.”
“And?”
“And he was muscle, some hired thug there for dirty work. He did not know much, except for bits and pieces about the woman you mentioned. Her home address. Her place of work. This”—he waved at the Youth Center—”was closer. I decided to come and ask questions.”
Kit narrowed her eyes, betraying no trust, only conflict. Frustration eddied through him. The woman had no reason to trust his intentions—it was better that way, better to keep her on the edge, frightened—but there was a part of him still standing in that darkened auditorium, falling in love with her music, and those notes were still buried deep, opening a place of softness where he had forgotten a soft touch could exist. He could not be cruel to her.
So M’cal struggled for words instead. It was difficult. It had been too long since he had held an actual conversation. Women in cars did not count. Neither did the witch.
He settled for taking another step away from Kitala, checking their surroundings for anything more dangerous than himself. All he found was a squirrel nosing a discarded syringe, one of many that seemed to litter the sidewalk. “You should go, Kitala,” he said in a low voice. “Find someplace safe and stay there.”
Kitala also noticed the squirrel and waved her foot at the animal, scaring it from the needle. “Who hired you to kill me?”
M’cal hesitated. “It is complicated.”
“Of course it is.” She began to walk around him, back to the Youth Center. M’cal blocked her, fear and anger making his throat thick, stirring the monster. He pressed his fist against his thigh, fighting himself, and looked Kitala straight in the eye. “Please. I did not help you last night just to have you toss away your safety like it means nothing. Like killing those men meant
nothing.’”
It worked. Her breath caught, her body stilled. Guilt rumbled through her eyes, which he instantly regretted. He did not apologize, though. Just held her gaze.
Kitala stepped close. M’cal could not move fast enough to escape her; she stopped with just a hairs-breadth between them, peering up into his eyes with a caged hunger that he felt in his bones, in the answering ache of his heart.
“Why do you care?” she breathed. “Why
did
you save my life?”
M’cal said nothing. He had no words, no reason. Just need and desire, an imperative that had shot down to his soul.
Keep her safe
had been the words running through his head; that, and rage. Rage that anyone could hurt her. Kitala, who could make music to rival the Sirens.
But he could not say that to her. He wished instead that he could use his voice to drive her away—but that had failed on the previous night, and he was afraid of what might happen if he tried again.
Kitala, still gazing into his eyes, shivered. “Fine. Don’t tell me. But I’m not going anywhere, M’cal. Not until I find Alice. Please. I
have
to find her, alive or dead. I need to know.”
“I thought you were strangers.”
Her face softened. “You yourself are putting in an awful lot of effort just for a stranger. You’re going to get in trouble for it, too, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “But I will not die for my trouble. You might.”
It was her turn for silence, but it was a stubborn quiet; no anger, just resolve.
Little warrior heart, so strong.
She reminded him of the old tales, the myths his father told of the human world. The ancient world, when the Krackeni had shown their faces and bodies to humans, and the two had mingled, if uneasily. A time of gods and monsters walking the earth as one.
Then and now. Times had changed. Mostly.
He gestured toward the Youth Center door. “Come, we are wasting time.”
Kitala’s eyelid twitched. “You’re staying with me?”
“As long as I am able,” M’cal promised. “If you want.”
“We’ll have to work together.” Her voice was soft with challenge. “Unless that’s a problem.”
“If I kill you, it is.”
“You say that like you don’t have any control over your actions.”
“Because I do not,” he told her quietly. “Not nearly enough.”
That made her stop. He could see it in the way her posture changed, the frozen cut of her expression. Kitala studied his face; he thought she finally understood, and it both pained and relieved him. But all she did was slowly nod, her dark eyes thoughtful, and in a quiet voice she said, “I think I’ll take my chances.”
M’cal stepped away from her. He wanted to run.
There was a knot in his throat, hot and bitter, and he could not swallow past it.