Three Days To Dead (33 page)

He plucked the article and read it for himself. His eyes grew wider with each sentence, letting the full meaning settle into his brain. Hot spots existed all over the city. Many were so faint they couldn’t be detected. A few, like the vampire Sanctuary, were unmistakable and made their presence felt. It wasn’t the coincidence of the location that scared me—it was the implication that Chalice had been born above a hot spot, just like Wyatt and the handful of other human beings considered Gifted. It meant she (and in turn, I) was Gifted.

“Is that possible?” Rufus asked.

“Not only possible, but it solves the last mystery,” I said. “It’s why I came back in Chalice’s body, instead of where I was supposed to. My resurrection was made possible by Tovin’s connection to the Break, so I was attracted to a body that also had that connection.”

“Do you have the birthmark?” Wyatt asked.

“How the hell should I know?”

“You’ve been in that body for two days.”

I stood up and tossed the rest of the gathered clippings onto the table, annoyed by his silly argument. “Sorry I haven’t penciled in time to stare at my own ass, Wyatt.”

“Drop your pants.”

“Now’s not really the time….”

“Evy.”

Okay, wrong time to joke. He was dead serious. Giving little thought to my audience across the room, I tugged the button and unzipped the fly, then pushed the dirty jeans down to my ankles. I bent at the waist and placed my palms flat on the table. The pose was both submissive and suggestive, but I felt no thrill—only slight apprehension of what he might find.

Wyatt hooked a finger into the waistband of my panties and pulled them down. Cool air caressed my exposed skin. I shivered. Halfway down, he stopped. Pulled back. I yanked my pants up, my suspicions con-firmed by his silence.

“I can’t believe we never guessed it before,” he said after a moment’s pause.

“We still don’t know what I can do,” I said, “or if I can even access Chalice’s Gift.”

“You said you felt the power of the Break when we were down with the Fair Ones, right?”

“Yeah, and I’ve felt it ever since my rebirth, but I just thought it was a side effect. It never occurred to me it was something more.”

“You’re already tapped into the Break, Evy. Now we just need to find out what you can do with the tap. Knowing the well is down there doesn’t help if you don’t have a shovel to dig to it.”

“But how are we supposed to do that?”

He held up a handful of Chalice’s file. “Keep looking. There has to be something here.”

We sifted for several minutes, through school records and doctors’ notes and copies of report cards. I found more newspaper clippings. “Toddler Missing; Found in Toy Store” caught my eye.

“Listen to this,” I said, skimming the article for salient details. “When she was three years old, Chalice disappeared from a sandbox where three other kids were playing. No one reported seeing her get up on her own, or anyone take her. She was discovered a few hours later by police, in the stuffed animal section of a local toy store ten blocks from the park. The owner didn’t see her come in with anyone, and security cameras showed no front door entry.” I scanned the rest. “It was a shop that the mother frequented. She said Chalice loved the big stuffed lions and tigers.”

“There are more like that,” Wyatt said. He held up something with a Child Welfare stamp on it. “She also disappeared from her preschool classroom six times over a four-month time period. Same as before, with no one seeing her get up and leave, and no one taking her. She was always found outside on the playground, away from the other kids.”

Our eyes met over our individual sheets of paper.
He was thinking the same as me, but I hesitated to say it. It seemed impossible, given what we knew of the Gifted and their limitations. But not so impossible when you factor in a return from the dead.

“Is it even possible?” I asked.

“Teleportation?”

“Yeah.”

“Theoretically, yes. Practically, I have no idea.”

“How do we test something like this?”

“Concentration?”

I balled up the article and threw it at his head. It bounced harmlessly to the floor. He didn’t react, seeming lost in thought. I stared at the pile of records, hoping to make sense of everything now swirling dangerously through my head. I pulled out a slim folder sporting the seal of a public school district more than a hundred miles away. High school records.

“Alex told me she moved back to the city two years ago,” I said. “He said she was fine for the first few months, and then gradually she started getting depressed. It wasn’t an overnight thing, so being back here affected her negatively. She obviously grew up elsewhere. Maybe her parents moved away because of the disappearances and, without that localized connection to the Break—”

“She lost her Gift,” Wyatt finished. “Which starts coming back when she returns to the source, only if she doesn’t remember it from childhood, or have any idea how to tap into the Break—”

“She ends up wallowing in depression without knowing why. It gets so bad she kills herself.”

“Then you find her body, because even though she’s dead, it’s still a tap into the Break.”

“Do you think that’s how the Halfies tracked us to the mall? Someone gave them information on Chalice and they had the place watched?”

“Possible, but not likely. I had the gremlins start wiping her out a day before that happened.”

“Right, okay.” I turned, marched back to the bedroom door.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m not done talking to Alex. Keep sifting; see what else you can find that might help us.”

“We need to talk about this teleportation thing.”

“We will, when I’m done.”

I slipped back inside before he could argue, and locked the door. No more interruptions.

Alex hadn’t moved. Tears had left stains on his pale cheeks. His cut lip left a red smear on his chin. Clear snot dripped from his nose. He didn’t look like a dangerous, half-Blood traitor, just a scared young man without a friend in the world.

I imagined a similar look on Chalice’s face near the end. Completely at odds with herself, feeling alienated and uncertain as to why. So depressed that she saw no way out of the well of pain she’d fallen into. I found no common ground with that sort of emotional agony and no sympathy for the choice she’d made—only commiseration in feeling trapped inside a body that didn’t seem like her own.

“Alex?” I asked. “It’s Chalice.”

He blinked, didn’t look at me.

“I’m sorry I left, but I still need to talk to you.”

“Are you going to set me free now?”

“Soon, but first, do you know a man named Tovin?”

“Tovin’s not a man,” Alex said, his demeanor
changing instantly. Like I’d flipped a switch with a single word. His face hardened, mouth drawn in a tight line. Every scrap of misery was gone. “Stay away from him, Chal.”

“Tovin wants to hurt someone I care about, and I need to stop him. I have to find him first, though. Do you know where he is?”

“I’ve only heard things. The others, they talked about him. He’s like the boogeyman. He’s powerful.”

“I need to find him, Alex.” I cupped his cheeks in my hands, amazed at how cold his skin was. Cold and clammy and rough. “Where is he?”

He held my steady gaze, his tinged with disgust. “Do you promise to let me go?”

Across the room, on top of an antique dresser, I spotted a discarded gun belt. Several boxes of ammunition were laid out on top of it. Nadia had certainly brought along an arsenal. Good news for us, since I had no weapon on me, save Horzt’s crystal shard. I eyed the gun and hoped one of those boxes held what I needed.

“I promise, Alex.”

“The old mill.”

“What old mill?”

“They kept talking about an old mill, said that’s where he was. The old mill. That’s what they said, Chal. Does that help?”

I searched my memory, thinking about the city’s waterfront properties. No mills came to mind.

“I told you where he is,” Alex wailed. Tears pooled in his eyes. Bright spots of color flamed in his cheeks, standing out from his pallor. Blood dripped from his cut lip to his chin and dappled his shirt.

“The old mill,” I said.

“Let me go.”

I stood up and walked to the dresser. Each step echoed like thunder. I found the box of bullets labeled “A.C.” and fed two of them into the gun’s chamber. Anti coagulant rounds were hard to come by outside of the Triads. I walked to the back of Alex’s chair and held up the gun. His shoulders shook. My finger twitched.

“I’m sorry, Alex,” I said.

“Does dying hurt?”

My eyes tingled. I bit the insides of my cheeks, tried to ignore the heartache in his voice and keep focused. Alex was already dead; this wasn’t Alex. I was stopping a monster, putting down a rabid dog. Nothing more, nothing less. Lie to him, shoot him, and get it over with.

“Dying didn’t hurt the first time,” I said. “It’s all the shit leading up to it that’s painful.”

He bowed his head. I pressed the muzzle to the back of his neck. Clean shot, perfect kill, even for a Blood. My finger twitched. I couldn’t pull it. I couldn’t rationalize the kill.

“Do it, Chal.”

I closed my eyes.

“Let me go.”

I couldn’t breathe.

“Save me.”

My finger squeezed. The gun roared. I screamed.

“This is useless,” Nadia said, fingers tapping away at the keyboard of a laptop. “There are no mills in this city. No paper mills, no flour mills, not even a puppy mill. He lied to you.”

“Check anyway,” I snapped.

I had taken refuge in Rufus’s kitchen with cling peaches and a can opener while Nadia and Wyatt made themselves useful by looking into our only clue. The teeth of the opener cut an uneven path around the edge of the can. Thick syrup pooled. My stomach rumbled. Rufus really needed to shop more often.

Nadia shot me a glare over the edge of the laptop, which I promptly matched. With a brief nostril flare, she ducked her head. Wyatt stood behind her at the dining table, arms crossed over his chest, reading over her shoulder.

The file on Chalice had revealed nothing else useful in determining the actual existence of a teleportation Gift. She had a list of child psychology evaluations as long as my arm, as well as a handful during her teen
years. And medical records for two E.R. visits in high school—drug overdoses that seemed more teen-related than Gift-related. It only confirmed that she had been a lonely, troubled woman long before Alex met her.

“The old mill,” Wyatt said, uttering the words for the tenth time since I’d relayed them. “Could it be a code for something else?”

I rolled my eyes. “Sure, maybe Tovin’s location is hidden in the text of the Hardy Boys’
The Secret of the Old Mill
.”

“I’m serious.”

“Me, too. He said ‘old mill,’ okay?” I tossed the serrated can lid into the sink and plucked a fork out of the dish drainer. The peaches were warm and too sweet, but I ate them anyway.

“Nothing,” Nadia said. “No mills within city limits.”

“Did you search the suburbs? The mountains north of the city?”

She grunted and typed something else. I chewed on a peach, somewhat unnerved by the faint metallic taste of the fruit. Oh well. If Tovin didn’t kill me first, then botulism would.

“There’s nothing relevant there, Evy,” Wyatt said, after gazing at another page on the computer screen. “Nadia, try searching the maps for street names or buildings.”

“How about company logos?” I said.

“One moment, please,” Nadia said.

Fingers flew. The laptop buzzed. She and Wyatt leaned closer. The blue light of the monitor reflected in their eyes. I slurped down another peach. On the other side of the room, Rufus continued to sit quietly
in his wheelchair. Patient, watching, not participating. It was downright spooky.

The rest of Rufus’s apartment was as spartan as a motel room. I found myself looking around for personal artifacts. Photographs or paperweights, even an old take-out bag that had missed the trash can. Something to prove a human being had lived here for a reasonable amount of time. He chose to live in a crappy part of town, but didn’t even make an effort to nest?

Then again, Wyatt lived in efficiency apartments and motel rooms rented by the week. Maybe all Handlers had nomadic tendencies.

My attention strayed to a simple white wall clock next to the ivory refrigerator. It was after two o’clock. Fourteen hours until smack-down, and we were still chasing our tails. Not even in the amusing-to-passersby way, just in the we’re-pathetic-and-have-no-leads kind of way.

“Except for a farmers’ open-air market that runs every Saturday morning from nine to twelve,” Nadia said, “we have nothing. No Old Mill Road, no symbology that makes sense. Tovin cannot logically be hiding in any of these places.” She quirked an eyebrow at me. “Perhaps you were too fast to execute the prisoner.”

“He didn’t lie,” I said. The peach can joined its lid, making a mighty clatter as it hit the stained sink.

“He is a half-Blood. They all lie. You were a fool to believe him.”

“I knew him before he turned, you Russian bitch. The change wasn’t taking; he was losing it. I was
talking to Alex at the end, not the Blood, I’m sure of it, so back the hell off.”

She started to stand, fists balled by her sides.

“Will you two quit?” Wyatt said. “The bickering might be fun for you, but it’s not helping.” He put one hand on either shoulder and pushed Nadia back into the chair. She didn’t fight him.

I felt a strange twinge of jealousy at the manner in which he was touching her. Cursing myself a fool, I focused on the clue at hand and not on my hatred of Nadia. Our current need to join forces didn’t erase the fact that she’d once hunted me and been perfectly willing to kill me.

If folks thought regular bounty hunters had it hard, they should try serving warrants on goblins for a living. We made the most hard-core dog hunters look like pussycats.

“Olsmill,” Rufus said. It was his first contribution to our conversation in over thirty minutes. He still stared at the floor, a newfound alertness in his pale features. His eyes moved back and forth as if reading. Searching for an elusive memory.