The Wind City (28 page)

He texted him, but Saint didn’t respond. Huh. Steff wondered what he was doing. He wanted Saint to
be
there, so that he could apologise for not believing him, so he could see what Saint thought of this place – he’d take to it like a duck to water, Steffan bet, and he would’ve probably taken Tony up on her offer too. Tony’s friend was just the sort of alarming that Saint would take as a challenge. Steff wondered where he was.

He was bored with his research, suddenly, bored and annoyed, and it was the strangest thing. He would never have thought he’d
miss
Saint being an asshole and distracting him from scholarly stuff.

Steffan left with a busy mind and a heavy heart, and the wind walked him home. Curled around his hair and played with the edges of his jacket, and whistled past the bus, and boomed menacingly as his little cable car ground its way from the road up to the house. Wailed softly past the windows as he sat at his limbic computer chair and rested his head in his hands and eventually, accidentally, slept, because the wind was unnerving in a way, but it was still better than silence, and silence, these days, was something he was far too used to.

Hinewai had been disdainful when they entered the Hikurangi. “A laughable pretence,” she said. “As though we could have anything even
like
real forest here in this crowded mess. But it’s comforting. I suppose. In some small foolish way.”

Which Tony took as praise. It was nice, sitting at a table with Hinewai, just talking about things – though she had to get up and move around fairly often, talking to individual atua about the hunting parties and security measures and all the rest, checking in, keeping things on track.

But that was almost good. A good distraction. Truthfully, she …she couldn’t sit down at a table for very long without remembering sitting with Whai, what seemed like a lifetime ago. Her heart ached at the thought. So. Distractions. And Hinewai’s mildly ridiculous true-love-quest was as good a distraction as any.

“Hey!” Tony said, brightening. “I met that guy yesterday. Maybe
he
could be your true love!”

In a weird but neat coincidence Saint had just entered.
Maaan
, Tony thought, wondering. How unlikely was it that he knew about atua too? The
odds
of that! But he was impossible to mistake: handsome and magnetic, with a swagger to his step and a crook to his smile, his coat flaring around him as he swirled to survey the room.

“Um,” Hinewai said.

“What’s up?” Tony asked absentmindedly. She was busy waving, but Saint didn’t see them, sitting in a corner as they were. A lot of the others had left, that cute student guy and even Ariki, who she’d been expecting to hang around heartbrokenly for a lot longer than he did. Atua just didn’t feel things like humans did, she was learning.

Case in point: Hinewai, at this particular moment, acting all shifty and weird.

“I have certainly never seen him before!” Hinewai said.

“Cool, then, he won’t hate you yet,” Tony said. She dropped her hand and gave Saint a thoughtful look. “Wow, he looks even more dashing than he did before.”

“I certainly wouldn’t know, in the least, as I’ve never seen him before and thus wouldn’t know,” Hinewai said furtively, and Tony, quite used to her weirdness by this point, just frowned a bit and nodded and leapt to her feet.

“C’mon, let’s go say hi – he’ll get cornered by some jerk otherwise,” and she towed Hinewai over despite the patupaiarehe woman’s startled protests. Honestly. This was what she
wanted
, so she could at least be a little more enthusiastic.

They reached Saint before anyone else did, and Saint, for some reason, flinched when he saw Hinewai. Odd behaviour to see from someone so full of smugness and bravado. Tony positioned herself between him and her in order to avoid any confrontation. The mistgirl was a little too inclined to attack strangers if she didn’t like the look of them, though what anyone could find wanting in the look of Saint, Tony didn’t know.

“I didn’t know you knew about the iwi atua!” Tony said delightedly, seizing his hand and shaking it before he could bow again or something. It was a relief for a normal human to be there; she’d spent too many of the last hours trying to explain basic morality to the atua, some of whom seemed to think it was a sound idea to torture random humans to see if they ‘knew anything’. This world was far from perfect. It was good work, what she was doing, but she was exhausted.

“I didn’t know
you
did,” Saint said, tearing his eyes from Hinewai’s face in order to look at her. He looked a little drawn, just at the moment. Otherwise he looked remarkably well, even better than before because he looked much more sure of himself. Which… well. He’d looked plenty sure of himself before, to be honest. This was maybe an excess of surety. “Always so awkward to mention in casual conversation, you know how it is – ‘Nasty weather lately, how about them politics, by the way I’m aware that the city’s host to a thriving population of fairies and goblins hey why are you backing away in an alarmed fashion stop that!’ Not really what you want to open with, when meeting new people.” He shook, his grip warm and steady, and grinned at her cheerfully.

“Fairies and goblins? Really? You’re
really
gonna go with that with as a description?” Tony said, not sure whether to be amused or offended and settling for a bit of both.

Saint looked blank for a second. “I… can’t say I know much about atua etiquette,” he said. He glanced at Hinewai again, like he couldn’t help it.

Tony frowned. “Something wrong?”

“I have to admit, it’s a little overwhelming,” Saint said. “I mean, it’s my first time coming here – had a hell of a time finding this place, I mean really, wow – and I expected… ” He paused. “Well. I didn’t expect this many patupaiarehe.”

“There are two of us,” Hinewai said, speaking for the first time. “In the entire city.”

“Two too many,” Saint said, savagely, and Tony blinked at him, startled. He must’ve caught the look, because he said, “No, sorry, I’ve – I had a bad experience with one of ’em, that’s all. I don’t even remember who it was, really, just… ” He kneaded his forehead like it hurt him.

“Oh, man, I so completely know the feeling,” Tony said sympathetically, and then she brightened. “Oh hey – we were gonna go out clubbing or to a bar or something anyway. You can come with us! So you can get used to atua in small doses,” because he had to be even newer to all this than she was, “and you can get to know Hinewai so you’ll know she’s… ” Uh. ‘Not that bad’ wasn’t true at all. “Pretty,” Tony finished lamely.

Saint glanced around the Hikurangi. “Swell,” he said, “excellent. And then I’ll walk you home in a dashing and chivalrous fashion.”

“It’s probably a bit out of your way?” Tony said.

“I’ll call you a taxi in a dashing and chivalrous fashion,” Saint corrected himself, gravely. “Much harder than it sounds!” and she laughed.

“Yeah, okay, dude, whatever you want, just – come ooon!” He’d thrown another glance at Hinewai, a thoughtful but nervous sort of glance, and she didn’t want him to bail out on this. Even apart from spending time with someone who seemed like the kind of person she would totally love to be friends with, Saint was probably one of the few human guys who was eccentric and nice enough to actually consider dating Hinewai, on the off-chance he felt so inclined. Tony didn’t want to neglect Hinewai’s quest in favour of her own; she would keep her bargain, regardless of how many chumps she had to shove in Hinewai’s way first. “We are overdue for that beverage-snagging.”

“Oh, well,” Saint said, “if there’s
beverages
to be snagged, then obviously,” so they left.

10

Hanging out with Tony was fun and all, and Saint was enjoying it, having a nice drink and a chat, but he couldn’t help but wish she’d just hurry up and go
home
, already. Then he could go burn that sanctuary place of theirs. The Hikurangi sickened him, now that he’d seen it, all those monsters playing at people. He’d burn it to the ground, burn it to ashes, burn it until there was nothing of it left and nowhere for them to hide. And then maybe catch a movie. He felt like popcorn.

He wished Noah was here. He just wanted to hang out with friends; was that really so much to ask? Tony was good company, at least.

“You smell of fire,” the fae woman said.

He paused. Glanced at her, wary. Tony was in the bar’s bathroom at the moment, and Hinewai, completely ignoring all the men (and a few women, and fair enough) staring at her covetously, was leaning forward on her stool, far too close to him for his liking, all jagged shadow eyes and perfect sharp teeth.

He had to play nice for a while, for Tony’s sake. She seemed like a sweet kid. Actually probably a year or two older than him, but – she was still a sweet kid. He stilled his fingers, which were inclined to tap at the bar restlessly. “Why thank you!” he said, with his sparkliest smile. “I must confess myself a little disappointed, though – this shampoo promised me something more along the lines of rainforest pomegranate, whatever that means.”

“What
are
you?” Hinewai said. “You saw me when no one else did. Are you a tohunga?”

“I have absolutely no idea what that means.”

“A witch-man, a man of power,” she said impatiently. “Of knowledge. There’s power in you, though not your own, I think. What
are
you, what are you doing here? Tell me!”

He leaned back a little, because he couldn’t help it. But he could at least pretend that it wasn’t because he was ridiculously intimidated, so he did pretend that, as best he could, like he was leaning back because he didn’t like the look of her. She reminded him unpleasantly of nightmares. (Buses, and rain, and blood wet-warm on his face, his memory of the whole thing a torn-open hole that hurt when he thought of it.) Could be that same woman, in actual fact, so he said, pleasantly, “Maybe you should try asking
nicely
, bitch,” and tapped his fingers against the bar again in a restless rhythm, half-threat. His head hurt.

What she did then was almost a grin, in the way that what sharks and skulls do are grins. “I can make you tell me.” Her hand curled around the flute-thing hanging at her throat. It was strange and shapely and made of bone and Saint’s heart was slamming against his ribs in panic. He was scared in a way that he hadn’t been when he was fighting the maero or the sea-goblins or any of the other things. There, the worst thing that could happen was physical hurt, physical pain – scrapes and slashes, bruises and bites. But this was his
mind
. If she really had the sort of power with her music that Saint thought she had then she could get into his head, she could twist it and shape it and make him…
wrong
. She could just wipe his mind completely, of course, or break it. But there were other things she could do; she could plant the seeds to make him a murderer or plant something deep in his brain to wake up at some signal, like hypnosis. She could break him in a thousand tiny subtle ways without him ever
noticing
. She could run around in the private little corners of his thoughts like they were her playground.

And then Noah was at his side again, like he’d never left, and his presence comforted Saint far more than he could say. Just standing there beside him, supportive. Saint swallowed. “Just try it,” he said, more gravelly than he intended. His heart was still beating fast, far too fast, and he wanted to plunge his face into icy water, he wanted to curl up in a ball but like hell was he going to let that stop him.

She cocked her head, her eyes very dark. “You are a fool and a sot, I think,” she said, “and nothing to be afraid of,” and she pulled the flute’s cord over her head, and Saint stood up and splashed his whiskey into her face. She spluttered and stared for a second, and it reminded him of birds of prey when they were wet, their beaks and eyes made ridiculous instead of alarming, all diminished by damp. He threw the glass at her as well, for good measure, but she dodged, dodged far faster than a human could, all lean arms and legs and white hair swaying. People were staring, had been staring since he splashed her. She brought the flute to her mouth, and he made a grab for her hand. He wasn’t quite sure what he was doing, but he was sure that he didn’t want her to play that flute, and equally sure that he didn’t particularly want to set a room full of alcohol ablaze.