“Whatever happens,” he said hoarsely, “do not touch me.”
“Okay,” she replied, and he thought that this time she took him seriously.
They entered the Youth Center for a second time. The woman at the desk watched them, a bit more warily than before. M’cal waited for Kitala to say something, but she raised an eyebrow, a faint smile playing on her lips, and murmured, “You ask. I think she likes you better.”
He also knew how to get quick results. “Alice Hardon’s boss, please,” he said in his smoothest voice, teasing each syllable with enough hints of song that he was able to infuse his request with real power.
The woman blinked once. “Just follow me.”
Kitala gave him a sharp look, the humor that had been playing across her face fading into an expression of intense curiosity. He wondered if she had heard the music in his voice. He wondered what she had made of the previous night, the things he had done to save her. He had committed violence, but more than that, he had used his voice to kill. And right now, he thought she was remembering that.
All he could do, though, was gesture for her to precede him. The woman led them past a row of doors, down a long narrow hall that was dark, like a tunnel to a cage. M’cal forced himself not to think about the walls, but focused instead on Kitala’s slender, shapely back. She had a very lovely bottom.
At the end of the hall there was a closed door upon which the woman leading them knocked. M’cal heard a muffled voice answer, and the door opened to reveal the chaos of a small office overrun by too much work. Dangerously tilting bookshelves lined the walls, while file folders reared up in stumpy stacks as tall as the desk, which was hardly big enough for a laptop and a cup of coffee.
A woman sat behind the desk. She was gray and round and wore old tinted glasses the size of teacups. Gold-plated earrings shaped like cats in cowboy hats dangled from her ears to her shoulders—jewelry matched only by the fierce red bandana tied around her forehead. A giant eye had been painted in the center of the cloth. It stared at M’cal.
No smiles from the old woman. She looked ready to shoot someone.
“Edith,” said the secretary. “These are friends of Alice. They want to talk to you about her.”
The old woman sat back in her chair, staring. “Get out and shut the door, Molly.”
Edith’s voice was sharp, and Molly blinked hard— shaking free of M’cal’s mesmerizing power. She flushed so red her skin almost matched the bandana around Edith’s head, then departed fast, head down, leaving M’cal and Kitala standing in front of the desk. Edith did not invite them to sit, nor did M’cal feel so inclined. Given the look on her face, neither did Kitala.
“Well, well, well,” Edith said, glancing at the necklaces hanging from Kitala’s neck. “This should be good.”
“That would depend on what you are expecting,” M’cal replied.
“Not a pretty boy like you, that’s for sure.” Edith took a swig from her mug and smacked her lips. “You, young man, are definitely a piece of work.”
Kitala frowned. “We didn’t come here to talk about us.”
“Just Alice, huh?” Edith smiled grimly. “And who are you, to be asking?”
“Kit,” she said, holding out her hand. “And this is—”
“Michael,” he interrupted. “Michael Oberon.” He did not offer to shake Edith’s hand. The old woman noticed, and snorted, gripping her mug. Her knuckles were white.
Stress. Anger. Fear?
M’cal wondered. He glanced at Kitala, and saw her gaze flicker to the woman’s straining hand. If Edith held that mug any tighter, it might crack.
“Molly called you friends of Alice,” said the old woman, her eyes sharp behind her tinted glasses. “Friends, my ass. You two wouldn’t know Alice from a dog turd.”
“She gave me her card,” Kitala said, revealing the scrap of paper. Edith gave it a perfunctory glance and waved it away.
“Doesn’t mean squat. Alice was always giving out her cards. You could have gotten it off anyone.”
“Not just anyone,” Kitala replied.
Edith frowned, tapping the side of her face with a short, fat finger. “You look familiar to me.”
Kitala grimaced, bent down, and grabbed a CD case lying on top of a stack of files. She held it beside her face, and sure enough, M’cal saw a very fine photograph of Kitala playing her fiddle, her expression caught in a breathtaking moment of wild joy.
“Oh,” Edith said.
“Alice has been kidnapped,” Kitala went on in a flat voice. “We were taken together. I got loose. She didn’t. She slipped me her card before I escaped. I thought it might mean something.” She hesitated, catching her breath. “Tell me it means something, Edith.”
Edith looked down. “John?”
“Dead,” Kitala said. “Shot in the chest. I’m sorry.”
The old woman nodded, her expression still empty. Her hand tightened even more around the mug. “I take it you didn’t call the police.”
“Two cops were in on it.” Kit waited a moment, studying the old woman’s face. “You’re not surprised by any of this, are you? Alice wasn’t, either.”
Edith merely shrugged, still looking down. “They’ll find out you escaped. They’ll come after you.”
“Yes,” Kitala said, glancing at M’cal. “Can you tell us what this is about?”
“No,” Edith said.
M’cal was not entirely surprised by the woman’s answer, but her reticence was just another waste of time that he could not afford. If the witch compelled him to return to her—and he was surprised that she had not already—he would have little choice but to go. Leaving Kitala behind. Without protection.
“Tell us what you know,” M’cal said, pouring power into each word, letting the syllables lilt closely into song. Simply speaking would not be enough; it was the limitation of his kind, an occasionally deadly weakness that mattered only on land, and never in the sea. He felt Kitala glance at him, wondered again if she heard the difference in his voice.
Edith finally looked up. She took off her glasses. Her eyes were ice; sharp, gray, unblinking. She stared at M’cal—a piercing gaze, bitter—and a thread of unease passed through him.
But then her expression relaxed into grief; quiet, reserved. As though Edith was a woman who had suffered a great deal in her life, so much that the heart was simply not strong enough for yet another wild rage of sorrow.
“Alice is as good as dead,” said the woman, her voice cracking. She pried her hand off the mug; it resembled a claw. “I doubt anyone can help her.”
Kitala and M’cal shared a brief glance. A tremor raced through her body, and he imagined reaching out to her, just one hand, one brush of comfort. He saw her own hand twitch and shifted his feet, ready to move in case she forgot. In case she wanted to touch him.
But she did not try. Kitala looked at Edith. “You sound like you’ve already given up.”
A flush touched the old woman’s cheeks. Again she looked down at her hands, splaying her fingers against the table. Her lower jaw trembled.
“This is a dangerous neighborhood. A lot of bad things pass through here. We do our best to stay safe, to keep our noses out of business that doesn’t concern us, but...” She stopped, and gestured at the office. “We have one of the highest success rates in the city for youth turnaround. Kids come here, they leave changed. Doesn’t matter how screwed up they are. All these files? Lives.”
Edith gripped the edge of the table; her nails dug into the wood. “Alice began poking around in something she shouldn’t. She never told me what, or with whom, only that there were people in trouble. Big trouble. Enough that she got her uncle involved. The man used to be an investigator. She said if they ever got hurt...”
The old woman did not finish. Kitala said, “I’m sorry. I am so sorry to be the one to bring you this news. But I’m trying to find Alice. I
will
find her. Do you think you could help? Maybe ask around, find out what and who she was investigating?”
“Yes,” Edith whispered. “I think I could do that.”
“About the police,” Kitala began hesitantly, but the old woman flashed her a hard look.
“I’m not stupid, Ms. Bell.” Edith reached around to the purse hanging from the back of her chair. She removed a business card and gave it to Kitala. “My cell phone number is there. Call me anytime. Where can I contact you if I find anything?”
Kitala hesitated, tucking the card into her purse. “My cell phone isn’t working, and I might be changing hotels soon. I’ll let you know when I have a stable number where I can be reached.”
“If you had any sense, you’d leave town,” Edith said. “You don’t owe Alice anything.”
You are a poor friend,
thought M’cal. He wondered if Kitala felt the same; she gave the woman a long, thoughtful look, and then quietly, carefully said thank you and good-bye. M’cal followed her example, with far less grace, and they left.
Molly was back at her desk. She ignored them, and they did the same to her. Outside, it had begun to rain.
Kitala raised a hand to her hair, grimaced, and sighed. “Why do I feel like we just wasted our time?”
M’cal turned his face to the sky, savoring the raindrops as they hit his skin. “It was not a complete waste.”
“Do you think Edith was hiding anything?”
He glanced at her, frowning. “Do you?”
“I don’t know.” Kitala kicked at the wet sidewalk, shaking her head. “Alice went to all the trouble of giving me her card, and all we got was more mystery. There has to be something else we’re missing. Unless the whole point of sending me here was not to help her, but just... to let someone know she was gone.”
“That possibility bothers you.”
“Of course.” Kitala gazed up at him, and again it took all his willpower not to touch her. His desire frightened him. Kitala seemed nothing like the witch, but he had been deceived before. The risk was terrible.
He
was terrible—to fantasize, knowing the danger to her. The monster slept, but the witch’s curse had too many layers; once she set the compulsion, he could not touch or be touched; not without causing death; not without creating a shell out of human flesh. Soul stealer, soul singer. Hardly better than a demon.
Kitala’s skin looked soft, her cheeks high, her eyes dark and large behind her glasses. The shirt she wore beneath her denim jacket was low-cut; the swell of her breasts made M’cal’s mouth dry. He tried to look away from her, but all he managed was to stare at her odd jewelry, her throat, her neck.
Her neck.
M’cal leaned closer than was safe, his gaze tracking over her smooth, rich skin. Kitala held very still, staring at him.
“What,” she said slowly, “are you doing?”
She smelled good. Clean, fresh. “Your neck. You were injured last night. There should be a mark.”
“Ah.” Kitala looked uncomfortable. “I heal fast.”
M’cal raised his eyebrow. “Not that fast.”
Kitala turned up her collar, her long, elegant fingers staying near her throat. “Curiosity runs both ways. In there, you did something to those women. You . .. manipulated them. With your voice.”
So she
had
noticed. M’cal started walking. Kitala kept pace, her gaze locked on his face. “You tried something similar with me last night. But when I sang with you—”
“You were immune to me even before you sang,” he told her gruffly. “But your voice . .. your voice did something different.”
Kitala stopped walking. “What are you, M’cal?”
He turned around to face her. “Does it matter?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I. . . had a dream last night. In it, you weren’t human.”
He fought to keep his expression neutral. “Do you always believe your dreams?”
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “I might have a good reason to believe the one I had last night.”
M’cal looked at her neck. “What was I, in your dream?”
It was hard to tell if she blushed, but her cheeks seemed to suddenly warm with soft pink undertones. Her gaze faltered. “You were a ... merman.”
Merman.
A flush trembled down his body. He could not think. He could not speak. All he could do was stare, that one word echoing through his head. It was impossible she should know. Impossible.
He was silent too long. Kitala’s expression changed, growing shocked then alarmed. And then something else crept into her eyes, something almost like compassion, which was as unexpected as anything else she could have said
to
him. As astonishing as
merman.
“M’cal,” she breathed, gaze flickering down to his throat, and there was so much pain in her voice, so little fear, he forgot himself. He forgot everything but Kitala, and his heart hurt—his heart hurt so bad— because for the first time in a long while he could imagine that someone cared. Someone
cared.
The moment died fast. He was not careful, not paying attention. Kitala touched him, her fingers lacing around his hand. Pain rained down on his muscles.
The monster woke up.