For once, it was completely mundane and not anything to do with me. I’d almost forgotten what that felt like.
I couldn’t go off half-cocked on my apprentice for telling the truth. “Gil.”
He shrugged, offered me the coat. “Es muerto?”
“He’s not dead.” I took the coat, held it up and shook it a little. Slid into it, then started slipping the contents of my old pockets into the new ones.
“How you know?”
I don’t. I just refuse to believe it. “Nobody wants that much trouble from me.”
“El Diablo rubio, he might. He don’t like Saul.”
“Of course he doesn’t. ’Breed don’t like Weres. The feeling’s mutual.” I looked up. A chilly silver charm touched my cheek before I tucked the curl it weighted down behind my ear. “Wait a second. Is Perry here?”
“Si. With the chica on a leash.” Gil was pale under his sallowness. There were bruised-looking circles under his dark, flat eyes. “Sparring room. La otra cazadora is drinking some licorice shit. Says she shoulda known you’d end up like this.”
“Great.” I scooped up the caged bezoar. It quivered unhappily. If you’ve never taken a shower while keeping an eye on a twitching corruption-seed in a silver cage, count yourself lucky. Down it went into a padded pocket. “The Weres?”
“Some out watching the neighborhood. Others looking round your kitchen. I told ’em not to take el gato’s copper-bottoms.” A faint smile touched the corners of his thin lips.
I found my eyeliner. Considered just leaving it, but I needed every inch of protection I could get if I was going to face down Perry again. My hands were not steady, and neither was the rest of me. The fatigue fog was creeping up quick. “Yeah, well, if they take any of his enameled cast iron either there’ll be hell to pay.”
The sheer unreality of it rose and walloped me sideways. I took a deep breath, grabbed the counter, and willed my body to buck up. Etheric energy trickled through the scar, coiling up my arm like ivy.
Take it one problem at a time. I focused on the most immediate thing, opened my eyes, and put on my Teacher Face. “A few of the Weres will take you back to Galina’s.”
His pointed chin lifted, stubborn. “I done good.”
My temper almost snapped. I took a firm grip on it, and on myself. Don’t, Jill. He’s just a kid. He’s your apprentice, dammit. “You disobeyed a direct order and put yourself in danger.”
“Weres said I done good.” Lank hair shaken back, hands curling into fists. I was not handling this right. My entire body felt heavy and pale because replacing a few pints of blood takes a lot out of you, even if you’ve got a hellbreed mark and the benefit of sorcerous training.
Had the mark not been working because of the banefire? I’d never been completely encircled by banefire before, not while I had the scar. Another thing to set Hutch working on. Sure. I could just throw that on his plate and see what he came up with.
Wonder of wonders, my pager was still working. I know because it went off then, buzzing on the counter like a small poisonous rattler.
I swayed. Closed my eyes, eyeliner in one hand, the other making a fist to match Gilberto’s. Calmed my runaway pulse, breathed in deep. Shuffled priorities inside my head, and told the ball of unsteady rage inside my chest to sit back and let me work, goddammit. My pager cycled through the buzz and cut itself off. The Talisman grumbled against my chest.
Where is he? Are they hurting him? Whoever they are. If he’s harmed I will…
I couldn’t afford to get worked up now. I shoved the anger down into a box, slapped a lid on it, and pushed it away. As a coping mechanism, it sucked. As a short-term solution so I could think, it was all right. For now.
I breathed deeply, dispelling the rage. Now was the time to be cold, to use a hunter’s chill calculation.
“Profesora.” Gil, very close. Was he about to touch me? I hoped not.
I was so not safe right now. My bitten-down fingernails scraped against the butt of a gun, and I opened my eyes. The world rushed back in, a sharp torrent of color and hard edges. I stepped away along the bathroom counter, the edge of my coat brushing the dark wood cabinets underneath. I hadn’t stepped back into my boots, so my calluses rasped against the hardwood.
Gil’s hand dropped back down to his side. “Lo siento.”
“Get my boots.” The words were a harsh croak. I turned back to the mirror, leaned in, and brought the eyeliner up. I was going to lay it on thick for this. “And for the love of God don’t get so close to me. I am not safe.” Not for a human, anyway. And you’re still all too fragile, Gil.
“You ain’t gonna hurt me.” He sounded supremely confident. “You’re gonna kick the shit out of whoever took el gato.” But, thank God, he was moving away into my bedroom to find a pair of boots.
“Damn right I am.” Still, I had an uneasy feeling.
Now I had to face Anya. And there’s nothing like a fellow hunter for seeing right through any lies you tell yourself.
Gilberto had understated the case a bit. The warehouse was full of Weres. As soon as I stepped out of my bedroom, I had to put up with being touched no matter how unsteady I felt.
It was to reassure them, I knew. Bird Weres breathed in my face, the cat Weres brushed my shoulder or got way inside my personal space and smelled me, and there was even a hollow-eyed spider Were who walked right up and delicately laid her fingertips on my cheeks, staring at me for a few moments. She looked familiar, but her mate—smaller and slimmer than her, even—hustled her away. After trickling his fingers over the sleeve of my coat.
I suffered it. It’s the way they say they’re happy I’m still here, and it’s also how they show they care. Gilberto was bundled off with a group of four Weres, bound for Galina’s. He didn’t like it, but I wasn’t in a mood to argue.
I found Anya Devi perched on the breakfast bar, her steel-toed boots dangling and a modified 9 mm in her left hand. A bottle of venomous green liquor sat obediently at her right side, and I caught the whiff of licorice.
Anya believes in absinthe the way other people believe in immunization, football, or sex. It’s a panacea. It was the way Mikhail had felt about vodka.
Me? I’m a firm believer in Jack Daniels. But I’ll take whatever’s handy.
She lifted the bottle as soon as she saw me. Her apprentice-ring, a silver claddagh, threw a hard sharp dart of light back at the overhead fixtures. Anya is built a little smaller than me, but she makes up for it with pure dangerous brains. She didn’t come back from Hell at the end of her apprenticeship with anything extra, unless you count the utter crazed determination in those baby blues. She and the Weres ran herd in Sierra Cancion over the mountains, keeping the scurf population down and the hellbreed and Traders guessing.
Long nose, straight eyebrows, the faint shadow of a scar on her right cheek, a claw mark slipping down from the outside corner of her eye like a tear. The usual bindi above and between her eyes, this time a miniature ruby. I hear it’s a subdermal piercing, but I don’t ask. I’m not one to throw sartorial stones. The usual silver hoops in her ears, small ones so they don’t get ripped free in the middle of a fight. A dangling carnelian rosary, its cross resting against her navel. She’d put on a little more weight, all muscle by the looks of it, and her navy-blue T-shirt was ripped and dotted with blood. Some of her leather was scorched, too.
We regarded each other for a few moments. The Weres drew away, tactfully. One of them had his head in my fridge, muttering, and there was the smell of something sweet in the oven fighting with the reek of ’breed ichor.
She tipped her chin up a fraction, finally. “Kismet.”
I copied the motion. “Devi.”
Another few beats of silence, the kind of quiet that rises between two old gunfighters. Then a grin spread over her face and she hopped down, landing light and lithe as a cat. “Good to see you. We’ve got problems.”
I’ll say. “I’d ask what you’re doing here, but something tells me I’m g
oing to find out.” And it’s not going to be pretty or simple.
“Oh, yeah. And I’d ask you what that hellbreed is doing with a Sorrow chained up in your sparring room, and what the hell ’breed are doing kidnapping Weres. But something tells me I’m going to find out.” Her mouth firmed a little. “It’s him, isn’t it. Perry.”
I nodded. My neck creaked. Her eyes dropped to my chest. If I could feel the Talisman humming sleepily along under my T-shirt, she could probably sense the etheric disturbance it created.
I hooked a finger carefully under the sharp edges of the chain, and drew the Eye out. The light changed, taking on a redder cast, and the Weres all went very still for a few seconds. “Perry brought me this. The Sorrow is Belisa. Someone’s looking to bring a high-level hellspawn through, maybe with Belisa’s help as she double-crosses Perry, maybe not. There were bodies controlled by a ’breed assassin, an evocation altar, and a mass grave that lit up like a goddamn bonfire when I got there. And my Were is somewhere out there at the mercy of hellbreed.” I paused, running back over it. “Not sure they’re connected.” My pager lit up again. I dug it out and checked. The Badger, again. She was next on my list. “And my fucking pager keeps going off.”
One corner of Anya’s mouth lifted slightly. “Well. This should be interesting. Whoever they’re trying to bring through, they started trying over in my territory. I’ve been chasing evocation altars for a week or so now. Hutch called me, and when I got here that blond ’breed was at Galina’s. He said you were in deep shit; my Weres put the word out and we went out to find you. That new apprentice of yours is a piece of work.”
“That’s why I took him in.” I absorbed this. Whatever was in the oven smelled really good, but the scrim of rotting ’breed over it wasn’t going to win it any prizes. “They started in your territory? What are they using to fuel it?”
“Mostly hearts. Two nuns, a nineteen-year-old boy, a clutch of schoolgirls, and one old lady with a bunch of cats Balthazar just had had to find homes for. Apprentices.” One shoulder lifted, dropped. I had a little over half a head and several pounds on her, but if we ever tangled I wasn’t sure either of us would come away whole. Balthazar was her apprentice—he’d come out to keep a lid on things while I went on my honeymoon with Saul.
“You have any idea who they’re trying to bring through?” Please don’t say Argoth. But I wasn’t holding out any real hope.
“Just some whispers about some asshole called Julius, maybe. Whoever he is, I’m told he likes virgins.” She snorted. “Is he going to get a surprise, this day and age.”
Wait. “Julius? You’re sure?”
Her smile widened, and it wasn’t nice at all. It was, in fact, the kind of smile where you wanted to take a step back and look for a wall to protect your kidneys. “I couldn’t swear to it. I’ve just heard the name. Why?”
I don’t think Anya knows she can grin like that. It makes me wonder what my own face looks like sometime. “That just means I can stop Hutch from going on a wild goose chase and possibly aim him at something more productive. He’ll enjoy that.”
Perry’s hints about Argoth, dropped to Rutger, weren’t a good enough basis to worry about it. Anya’s information was. She was a hunter. It meant her word was as good as honest silver.
Of course, she wasn’t sure, or she would have said so. And there was the little matter of the Trader and the pile of charred bodies. A gift for you. But still.
“I don’t think Hutch really enjoys much. Have you found any evocation sites here?” She took a hit from the absinthe bottle, rolling it in her mouth like it was fine wine.
I winced. I’ve never liked licorice. “Two. I think the one at the warehouse was a primary.” But I’m not sure. “You getting graves with charred bodies?”
“Yeah, they’re burning them after they take the sweetmeats out. There was a site in that warehouse?” Now she looked grave.
“Yeah. And an orichalc-tainted cage.” I headed for the phone. “Give me a couple minutes, okay? Then we’ll powwow.”
She waved her fingers over her shoulder as she turned away. The bullwhip, neatly coiled at her side, swung just like her coat. “And eat. You need it. I think we should take a peek at what that ’breed’s doing to that Sorrow. Since they seem to be involved up to the hip on this.”
God damn. It was good to have another hunter around.
19
Jill?” The Badger, sounding a little less than calm. Which meant severe trouble. “Thank God.”
“What? More bodies?” Not like I have time for them. Jesus.
“No. Vanner. He’s gone. Disappeared from the hospital. The trauma counselor says he’s still in shock. She’s afraid he’ll…” The Badger’s voice didn’t break, but it was close.
“Tell all the black-and-whites to look for him. I’ll do my best too.” Goddammit. Shit, shit, shit. “How did he check himself out?”
“That’s the weird thing. He didn’t. He’s just gone.” Then Badger dropped the other shoe. “His uniform’s still there, though. Wherever he is, he’s in his hospital johnny.”
“Oh, Christ.” I tried not to sound aggravated. “Okay. Keep a surveillance on the scene he stumbled across, he might go back there. Put out an APB on him, and roust Montaigne.” Sorry, Monty. “Tell him to get whoever he can working Vanner’s trail. See if we can pull him in.”
“Sully’s raising Montaigne now. Anything else?”
I struggled to think. There was one more thing. “Call Wallace again. Give him the situation. See if he and Benito can scare up anything.”
“Okay.” She sounded a lot more reasonable now. Of course, nobody could ever call the Badger unreasonable. But I could hear the relief now that she had a list of things to do.
“When he shows up, have Wallace or Benito or Avery take custody. Do not put him in a holding cell. Got it?”
“Oh.” I could hear the wheels turning as she took this in. “All right.”
“Good. Have the next of kin been contacted on those bodies yet?”
She actually sounded surprised. “Not yet. Figured it was better to hold off until I heard from you again.”
Meaning, she was hoping I’d call and tell her it was all right to release them. Even the Badge cavils at telling a civilian family they can’t collect their violated dead. I hated to have to ask them to do it. “And Rosie and Paloma, do they have anything on the other site?”
“I checked with Rosie not a half hour ago. Not yet. Stanton’s having a hissy fit over the number of bodies. Going to have to start putting them in nooks and crannies.” She moved the phone a little. I could just see her at her cluttered desk.
“Stanton’s always having a hissy. One more thing. Warehouse fire, 154th and Chavez. Start the paperwork for a paranormal incident, if you find any bodies buzz me again.”
“Jesus Christ.” For a moment there she sounded like Monty. “You’re a busy little girl, Kismet.”
“The moment the nightside slows down, I will too. Thanks, Badge. Keep me updated, and I’ll keep an eye out for Vanner.”
“All right.” She hung up, and I stood there for a second staring at the phone. The Weres were quiet, but someone was stirring something briskly in the kitchen. The tapping of a metal whisk inside a glass mixing bowl sounded so familiar, as if Saul was standing there after a long night’s work, making breakfast. Probably burritos, because nothing goes down after a night of killing hellbreed like eggs, ham, potatoes, chipotle Tabasco, cilantro, and a nice cold beer.
I shook the thought away. Focus, Jill. Picked up the phone, dialed again. “Galina? It’s Jill. Put Hutch on.”
She didn’t waste time asking me what was going on. “Oh, thank goodness… Hutch! It’s Jill!”
I heard him bitching all the way up to the phone. “Worried sick about you,” he ended up mumbling, as Galina handed the phone over. “Jesus Christ. What?”
I could just see him standing there with pen and a pad of paper, bracing himself. Thank God he had enough sense to sta
y where I put him. Not like my disobedient apprentice.
“The hellbreed someone may be trying to bring through is probably named Julius.” I spelled it for him. “Cross-reference it with Perry, see what you come up with. Do you have anything on the Sorrows calendar yet?”
“Nothing, we’re in the Dead Time. Something interesting, though; there was a Sorrows House burned in Louisiana a week ago. Completely torched. Resident hunter out there—it’s Benny Cross, by the way, he says hi—says hellfire was involved.”
Louisiana. Okay. “Did he mention the spectrum?”
“I knew you’d ask. Green, shading up into blue.” Hutch’s tone dropped to a whisper. “Bad news.”
Yeah, anything above orange on the spectrum was incredibly bad news. The saving grace was that the higher on the spectrum, the less likely a ’breed was to be wholly physical, which meant sorcery and banefire could be used to disrupt them.
On the other hand, I’d seen Perry produce blue hellfire. And he was all-too-disturbingly physical. This put a whole new wrinkle in the equation.
“Did Benny say anything else?”
“Just that the Sorrows are mad as hell. He’s watching them go after hellbreed. Not getting in the middle of that unless they drag a civilian in, he says.”
Reasonable of him. If ’breed and Sorrows were looking to off each other, it made his job easier. Mostly. “Yeah. Okay, next thing. Would banefire break the link between a Trader and a ’breed? Like, a complete encirclement of banefire, cut it off completely?”
Silence crackled over the phone line. I shoved down the impatient need to say something more while he worked it around in his head. There was a sizzle of something hitting a hot pan, and I smelled eggs. Missing Saul rose like a stone in my throat. Was he in pain? Was someone maybe torturing him?
I told that line of thought to take a hike. It just laughed at me and kept on going. That’s the problem with seeing so much of the nightside. Your imagination just works too damn well, because it has a lot of food to keep it going.