“Thou Who,” I whispered, and shut my mouth. The prayer had no place here, but it kept going under the surface of my conscious thought. When I repeated it, the wasp-noise retreated, left me alone.
Thou Who hast given me to fight evil, protect me; keep me from harm.
Except it was useless. I’d ended up dead. There were Weres hiding in the barrio. And Anya was still here, instead of back over the mountains in her own territory, keeping the scurf down and the Traders under wraps.
The bathroom was white tile, clean as a whistle, and my dirty clothing had been whisked away by a tight-lipped Amalia. The shower was ancient, the kind with the curtain attached to a hoop bolted to the wall, and the mirror showed a gaunt woman with mismatched, exhaustion-ringed eyes and a habit of not meeting her own gaze. I was milk-pale, but the shaking in my hands went down with every weapon I strapped on.
Oh, yes. This was what I’d been missing.
The knock startled me, and I thought it was Anya. But when I swept the door open, it was him.
He was still too thin, leaning against the wall. The plaid flannel shirt and jeans hung scarecrow on him, and his hair fell in his dark eyes, scarred with small silver charms. His cheekbones stood out sharply, his proud nose a blade of bone and skin, and his mouth turned down at both corners.
My jaw dropped. I stared.
Weres are beautiful. There is no corruption in them, nothing like a hellbreed or Trader. Hunters can track ’breed; humans have an advantage in hunting what we’re akin to. But in Weres, everything is burnished. It’s humanity, yes…but with so much of the crap burned away.
He was holding something up, his expressive fingers just knobs of bone and skin. “I thought…” His voice was a rasp, he coughed and the words came a little easier. “Thought you’d want this.”
It was a stick of kohl eyeliner. I grabbed for it. “My God. Thank you. I didn’t even know I was missing—”
“Are you all right?” The words cut across mine, and all of a sudden the leather on my back didn’t feel very much like armor anymore. “What happened to you? I couldn’t find you anywhere, Jill. Not even the wind carried a hint. You were gone.”
Everyone keeps asking where I was. You’d think I’d know. “I woke up in my own grave.” The words were beginning to sound routine.
Not really.
He stared at me. Not disbelievingly. Apparently the idea that I could wake up in my own grave wasn’t very outlandish to him.
Of course not. He knew me better than anyone.
I searched for something else to say. “I’m here now.” I clutched the eyeliner like it was going to try to escape. “The last thing I remember is screeching up to the Monde, because they’d taken you. Right outside Galina’s. Perry…” Perry, I knew him. I shook the thought away, damp strings of hair touching my cheeks. “Devi says she’s got a way for me to remember how the case ended up.”
He stepped forward, stopped. Braced one shoulder against the wall. I thought of the bone underneath pressing out through wasted muscle and skin, how much that had to hurt. “Are you sure you want to?”
The only thing I’m sure of right now is that every bit of firepower I strap on makes me feel better. Oh, and that I’m going to put a bullet or twelve in the head of anything that hurts you. A good grocery list to start out with, right? “She says she can do it. She’s got an idea, I guess, and as soon as she tells me I can get started—”
“No.” A shake of his beautiful, wasted head. One of the charms—a silver wheel, tied in with faded red thread—moved against his temple. “Are you sure you want to remember?”
“I…yeah. Of course.” I backed up a step, shifted my weight as if I was going to turn. The fragile stick in my fist creaked a little, and I eased up on it. “I’ve got to. There was Perry, and Belisa was mixed up in it. The Eye, too—Gilberto’s probably got that. Gil’s at Galina’s, I’m betting.”
He thought this over, watching me, those dark eyes soft. Almost wounded.
“Yeah,” Saul finally said, heavily. “Locked up tight, poor kid. Just let me get some more food, and we’ll get going.”
That might not be such a good idea—I opened my mouth to protest, but he beat me to it.
“Don’t even start with me.” His head dropped forward wearily, and he glared at my chin through his lackluster, silver-scarred hair. “If you’re going, I’m going. I’m not losing you again.”
“You didn’t—” I began, but I couldn’t finish. The words lodged in my throat, because I was suddenly sure that I had been lost, and in a big way.
Utterly lost.
“Here’s what I know.” He reached up, brown fingers gripping the doorjamb. “You told Theron to make sure the first thing I heard when I woke up was She loves you. And Devi, God damn her, always finding a reason not to be in the room when I showed up. Until I cornered her and she told me you’d been…that you’d bargained yourself away. For me.”
I blinked. Was that what happened? Who did I…My brain shivered inside its bone casing. I shuddered.
“And I couldn’t find you,” he continued. His free hand flicked, and flashes of silver chimed as they hit the floor. My gaze didn’t drop down to check, riveted to his face. “I couldn’t find you anywhere. Even inside. You were gone. I went half mad looking for you. Then I came back to the barrio to die.” He waved aside my instinctive protest, knobs and spindles of bone moving under his skin. “And now, here you are. Inside and out.”
“Saul—” The thing in my throat wouldn’t let anything else get past. Just his name.
He shook his head, so hard I was afraid he’d snap his wasted, scrawny neck. His fingers tensed against the jamb. Wood groaned. “No. Everywhere you go now, I’m going with you. Everywhere.” He turned on his heel, sharply, and stamped away. The hall almost rocked around him, one gaunt Were with the burned-candle smell of anger trailing behind him in eddies and swirls.
Even their anger is clean. It doesn’t twist into hatred. You won’t ever find a Were Trading.
But you might find a hunter Trading, a deep voice whispered inside me. You just might. Especially for what she loves.
What she can’t do without.
I found out I was trembling. A wave of shudders went through me, but I bent over anyway. I found the charms and tweezed them up delicately. Three of them—a tiny silver shoe like the one from the Monopoly game, a Celtic cross, an exquisitely carved spider.
It was there, on my knees, clutching the eyeliner and the small bits of silver, that it hit me.
The blue-eyed mute who had paid for my breakfast and given me my gun. He had seemed familiar. Too familiar.
And now I knew who he was. The knowledge opened up another door in my head, but only halfway.
Halfway was enough.
“Shit,” I muttered, there on the floor. “Oh, God. God.” My arms came up, and I hugged myself, rocking back and forth.
God didn’t answer.
He never does.
16
I stamped down the stairs and found everyone in the kitchen. Everyone, that is, meaning a crowd starting with an unhappy-looking pair of lionesses, Theron nursing a beer, Anya Devi chowing down at a table littered with plates, and Saul right next to her, doing his level best to destroy a mountain of beans and rice. A huge pan of what looked like beef enchiladas verdes heaped with cheese sat to one side, and between pulls off a Corona bottle he was doing very well at taking the whole load of food down without chewing much.
The house muttered and sighed, because there were other Weres now too. A bird Were bent over the stove, something sizzling, as another lean tawny cat Were—Ruby; I found her name with a lurching mental effort—set down a pair of grocery bags and stared openly at me. Several other cat Weres were crammed in the living room, and the only reason why more weren’t in the kitchen/dining room was because it literally wouldn’t hold any more. The first story was full to bursting, and I was lucky to be able to squeeze through the hall downstairs.
As it was, I st
epped into the kitchen and let out a long breath. I had enough eyeliner smeared on to make me feel like a raccoon, and the long leather trench whispered reassuringly as I came to a halt, boots placed precisely and the three charms knotted into my hair with dental floss I’d found in the bathroom cabinet.
Hey, whatever works.
Everyone except the bird Were, feathers fluttering in the updraft in his dark shoulder-length hair, looked at me. I squared my shoulders and tried not to feel like a carnival sideshow.
Except it was too late for that. I was armed and dangerous now, and for the first time since I scrabbled up out of the sand with filth covering me I felt…
…human. Or, like I knew who I was. Or like I belonged in my skin. Even if the thought of a carnival sent another rippling shudder through me, ruthlessly quelled. I remembered that case, thank you very much.
Devi swallowed a forkful of paella and blinked at me. “Nice to see you up and around. Get some food, we’ve got to get out of here.”
I shrugged, rolling my shoulders under the heavy leather. The T-shirt was vintage, and the lettering on it was going to give someone a perfect target to aim at, but I couldn’t cavil. It would probably get shot off me or blood-drenched in no time at all. “I’m good. We’re headed to Galina’s?”
Saul stopped shoveling long enough to glare at me. “Jill.” A rumble filled his thin, wasted chest. “Sit. Eat.”
I dropped down into the only free chair at the table, and the bird Were was suddenly there, banging down a huge plate of steak, eggs, and crispy hash browns. Fragrant steam wafted up, and there was a fork buried in the potatoes. He took a load of dishes away, table space magically appearing. His long nose twitched once, the feathers in his hair fluttered, and he hurried back into the kitchen, dismissing my faint thank-you with a nod.
Anya grinned, the corners of her eyes crinkling. The beads in her hair chimed sweetly. “Now I have seen everything.” She took another huge forkful of paella and washed it down with a gulp of absinthe.
I shuddered at the thought, and stared at the plate.
Perry was trying to feed me, too. Everyone trying to shove something down my gullet.
Which brought me back to my blue-eyed mute and the diner. I still wasn’t sure if that was a hallucination. But he and Martin Pores had been the first to feed me.
It probably meant something, but what? No clue. I’d wait until we got to Galina’s and sort everything out. Sounded like a reasonable plan, right?
Steam rose from the browned potatoes, the fluffy eggs, the strips of medium-rare steak. Anya shoved a glass bottle of ketchup over with one hand, then grabbed her absinthe and took another long healthy drag.
The sorcery will burn it out of her. Not like Leon and his constant beer-swilling, to dull the something-extra he came back from Hell with—
My head snapped aside as if I’d been slapped. The heavy butcher-block table rattled, my fingers curling around its edge and sinking in, the gem giving a subsonic thrill all through me. Plates and cups waltzed, chattering together, and Anya was on her feet, the chair shoved back with a squeaking groan that might have been funny if she hadn’t had both hands on her guns.
“Easy there.” Saul barely looked up from his methodical shoveling-in. “Both of you settle down. Trying to eat here.”
Ruby, in the kitchen, peered out with wide dark eyes. She’d gone down into a half crouch, but the bird Were simply racked dishes in the open dishwasher, hooked it shut with a foot, and twisted it on. “Pizza next!” he sang out in a light tenor. “Extra cheese. Rube, unpack those for me, will you? Then you’re on drying duty.”
I picked up the fork, awkwardly. A thin lattice of golden-fried potato hung from it, still steaming. My other hand still clutched the table. “I, ah.” My throat was full of sand. “Just thought of something. That’s all.”
A long silence, broken only by the methodical chink of Saul’s spoon against his bowl. The rice and beans were vanishing at an amazing rate, and the enchiladas were going down just as smoothly. You could almost see the food being converted into muscle, filling him back out again. His shoulders weren’t hunched, but I thought of the way kids eat in juvie—protecting the plate, arm curled around it, and the blank look as they took it down as quickly as possible.
They eat that way in prison, too. You ate that way, before and after Mikhail found you in that snowbank. You only stopped when Saul started coaxing you to use some manners.
Another soundless explosion touched off inside my skull. “Mikhail. Something about him. And Belisa, that Sorrows bitch.” I searched Devi’s face. “And…Perry.”
Her bindi flashed, a dart of bloody light. She lowered herself down gingerly. “Yeah.” Just the single word, no more. And she, I noticed, almost hunched over her plate as well, before straightening a little self-consciously, taking another hit of absinthe, and going back to making the food disappear.
I took a bite. The hash browns crunched, salted and heavenly. I swallowed carefully. It scorched on the way down, and the bird Were came back out with another bottle of beer, so cold it smoked with vapor, and a king-sized mug of what proved to be thick black coffee.
From there it was easy. But I kept thinking of diner food, possible hallucinations, ol’ Blue Eyes, the Sorrow who killed my teacher, the gaps in my memory…
…and Perry’s snow-white table with its blood-clot rose in the crystal vase.
The burst of frantic loathing that went through me turned the food to ashes, but I kept chewing and swallowing. I needed the fuel.
* * *
The city drowned under sharp honey sunlight, dust rising on an oven-hot, unsteady breeze. A rattling, mottled-green Chevy pickup was our only transportation, Theron and Saul both hopping lithely into the bed and Anya twisting the key with a little more force than absolutely necessary. The engine roused, protesting, and I caught a shadow of movement from inside the house. Weres, peering out through the windows like frightened children.
War against Weres. I should ask about that.
Anya pumped the gas pedal, and the engine caught. “Only wheels we’ve got right now. Mine got torched, yours wouldn’t run—”
“Sorry,” I mumbled, staring out the window. Even with the leather and the pounds of weaponry I wasn’t hot, my temperature regulating itself with only a faint passing ghost of sweat touching my skin before I remembered I didn’t have to. The deep rumble of the engine was soothing, and I caught myself thinking I could probably tune this beast up. Wouldn’t take more than a couple afternoons, you can get Chevy parts easy enough. And they respond well to both threats and blandishments.
Not like that Pontiac. She was a lady, but damn she was hard to please. Something had happened to her engine, though. It was in the middle of that blank spot in my head. I’d been working that case pretty hard, and half mad with agony over Saul…
“No worries. Jesus.” She dropped it into gear, and for a moment I considered grabbing for the dash. It wasn’t a completely unwarranted thought, because she floored it, and we jounced down the street in a rumbling roar. I thought of glancing back to check the Weres, too, but they could probably hold on. Even if Devi did wrench the wheel and send us careening down an indifferently paved cross street.
This was familiar, too, only I was used to being behind the wheel as we bounced through negligible traffic. We certainly didn’t stand out in this rig.
Not in the barrio.
Anya reached for the radio knob, drew her hand back. “So,” she called over the wind rushing in through the windows, “we’re pretty safe as long as we’re in the barrio. Outside, though…”
I actually twitched with surprise. How could we not be safe? “It’s daylight!” I yelled back.
“Of course it is.” She fished a pair of Jackie O sunglasses out of her coat, slid them on, twisted the wheel, and we slewed and bumped up onto slightly better pavement. “But that isn’t stopping them, Jill. Just relax. Coming back from the dead was the trick of the week, but I’ve got one better.” r />
“Nice to know you have a plan.” I grabbed at the door as she swerved wildly around another turn.
She must not have heard me right. “We’re heading for Sanctuary,” she called over the windroar, and reached for the radio. Snapped the knob all the way over, and the wail of a country song filled the cab.
Great.
17
The bells over the door jingled, and we piled in through a sheet of cascading redgold, energy flushing deep purple as it sealed us inside. With the Weres crowding behind we couldn’t slow down, and I was halfway across the small occult shop before skidding to a stop, guns flicking out.
The ride here had been spine-tingling but uneventful—if by uneventful you mean “almost got into six different traffic accidents, lost a cop in the industrial district, and bailed out of the truck with the tires still smoking.” Now I knew how other people felt when I drove.
It occurred to me to ask why the cops didn’t recognize her ride, but with the radio going supersonic and her lips moving as she cursed steadily, it didn’t seem like a good time.
Shelves of books and candles stood against the walls like good little soldiers, and there was a large rack holding crystals and stones in small bins. Another wooden rack held amulet-making materials—leather, bits of bone, beads, feathers, and less-nice things. Glass cases slumbered under falls of dusty golden sunlight, and the air quivered a little as the walls ran with purple light. My smart eye watered, trying to pierce the curtains of etheric force.
But that wasn’t what was bothering me right now. Anya let out a short sharp yell, and the Weres behind me suddenly let loose with twin growls, shelves of books and candles and other assorted trivia—including the glass cases and the racks—vibrating as the Sanctuary’s walls resounded like the curves of a gigantic bell.
Galina spread her arms, green eyes alight and her dark marcel waves slightly disarranged. She was in full robes, smoky gray silk glowing with pigeonthroat sheen, the medallion of the Order—a quartered circle inside a snake’s supple curve, cast in some light silvery metal—running with white radiance against her chest.