I laid the candy and the magazine down on the counter. He looked at me curiously, but got the cigarettes and the lighter for me. “The Zijaan’s full-up. You want lighter fluid?”
“No. Thank you.” I paid with crumpled New Credit notes instead of my datband, because that’s what I would have done as a kid. He pushed everything back over the counter at me, glowering as he counted out my change—three single credits, everything in the store was priced in whole numbers and the Hegemony never indulged in the antique custom of sales tax like some of the Freetowns did. They had other ways of getting your credits.
The candy and the magazine went into my battered messenger bag. My emerald glittered, a sharp green spark crackling in the dimness. The man jumped nervously. The sight of all that blubber quivering made a completely reprehensible desire to giggle rise in my throat. It was suppressed and died away with no trouble at all. His T-shirt was filthy and barely covered his hairy chest; stub-ends of cigars lay in a plastic ashtray shaped like a nude woman with her legs spread. No doubt a commemorative item, the ashtray was half-pushed behind a stand-up holoshell calender.
Today is (blank spot). The last two digits of the year blinked—75. I shivered. The calendar was a good twelve years slow.
The extra pack of Gitanes went into my pocket. I opened the first pack, took my change, and stalked out of the store, ignoring his sarcastic “Havva good evenin’.”
It’s extremely unlikely I’ll have anything of the sort. I stepped out into the fog-laden street. My hands shook only slightly as I clicked the Zijaan with my free right hand and lit the first Gitane. The smell of synth hash rose up, nearly choked me. I blinked. My eyes watered. I walked across the street again, head down, dawdling like I used to do on the afternoons when we were free to leave school grounds. Then I glanced back at the Sommersby Store.
A chill ruffled my spine.
It was dark and boarded-up, no neon in the windows. Abandoned like all the rest. No sign of lights, of neon, or of the fat hairy storeowner.
CHAPTER 32
My mouth went dry, and the gray of shock fuzzed around the corners of my peripheral vision. I forced it away, bent over, my right hand twisting into a claw once again. The red eye of the cigarette taunted me. I inhaled smoothly, down into the pit of my belly as I’d been taught.
“Holy shit. I just bought Gitanes from a ghost.” My voice sounded high and childish even to myself. Did this mean that the gods were with me? Or was I hallucinating again? Both were equally likely.
I re-crossed the street. If anyone was watching, they would probably think I was a lunatic. I poked at the boards over the shattered glass door I’d just walked through whole, went on tiptoes to peer inside the cave of the store. A heady brew of wet decay and other garbage-laced smells poured out; my demon-sharp eyes caught sight of a magazine rack upended, a few holomags scattered, drifts of trash on the floor. The plasticine counter was shattered too, and I saw a scraped-clean circle off to one side and a blackened scorch mark on the floor. Probably a fire some transient had made inside the abandoned building.
I dropped the smoking cigarette, then opened up my bag. The magazine was gone, and the candy, but one pack of cigarettes was there. I fished the other pack out of my pocket and stared at them, turning the unopened one over to read its warning label; there was a sweepstakes to win a free hover blazoned on the back.
I crumpled both packs in my fist, feeling the sticks break inside, and dropped them heedlessly. Then I drew the silver Zijaan from my pocket.
The breath left me in another gasping rush. The lighter was battered and scratched with hard use, and etched into one flat side was a cursive C wreathed with another cursive M.
I blinked. Flipped the lighter open, spun the wheel with a click, and orange flame blossomed. I snapped it shut. I ran my fingers over the carved letters.
For once in my life, I was completely at a loss. I looked up at the boarded-up storefront again, smelled decay and that strange, indecipherable scent.
CM? Christabel Moorcock?
“Christabel?” I said, tentatively, my voice echoing against the soggy shredded interior of the abandoned store.
No answer. Except the memory of the scraping awful scream—remember, remember. The lilac smell of terror clinging to pale-pink paper as Christabel wrote her last message. The memory of her bed, neatly made; her bookshelves religiously dusted, her kitchen and bathroom spotless… Everything in its place.
In all my years of dealing with Power and the strange logic of magick, I had never come across anything even remotely like this. I held up the lighter. Swallowed dryly.
Then I slipped the lighter in the breast pocket of Jace’s coat. There’s a circle being closed here. Just like a Greater Work of magick.
It was vaguely comforting. It meant some other agency might be working with me to bring Mirovitch and Keller down. Maybe Christabel was helping out another Necromance. Who knew?
Or perhaps it meant I was to be offered as a sacrifice. That was a little less comforting. I blew out a long breath between my teeth, a tuneless whistle that fell flat on the foggy air. I backed away from the store, finally hopping down from the sidewalk and into the street. I decided to go up the Hill and—
“Valentine! Hey, Valentine!” A girl’s voice, light and young, and the patter of quick, light, running feet on concrete. My ears tracked it, the footsteps sounded as if someone was running up right behind me. My neck prickled.
I gasped, whirling, my hair fanning out. Sommersby Street yawned, the abandoned buildings and boarded-up houses mocking me. The concrete pavement was cracked and pitted here, and no hovertraffic lit the sky. Without the Hall, this district had probably gone into slow decline.
A perfect place to hide.
My own voice caught me by surprise. “Christabel?” Okay, that’s it. I have had enough of this. Everyone out of the swimtank. No more voices, no more illusions, no more delaying. I straightened, my jaw set, my right hand cramped around the hilt of my sword. When I could walk without staggering, I continued up the middle of the street in defiance of any streetside hovertraffic, my bootheels clicking on the pavement. Winter had come early here up on the Hill, and frost rimed the darker places where the sun didn’t reach during the day. Under trees and in shadowy corners, winter was creeping in without the benefit of the rest of autumn.
I continued up Sommersby and turned right onto Harlow. At the end of Harlow the gates rose up, wrought-iron with plasilica panels, an R done in gothic script on one half, an H on the other. On the top of the gates, dagger-shaped finials lengthened up like claws.
I stopped in the shelter of a doorway, looking at the gates. Be careful, Danny, Jace’s voice brushed my cheek. It only looks quiet. Don’t trust nothin’ in there.
“You don’t need to tell me that,” I muttered.
The first illegal job I’d gone on had been as a result of Jace’s tutelage, a few months into our relationship during a dry period. I’d complained that I didn’t have enough to make my mortgage even with the apparitions and bounties I worked on, and he’d looked at me, his head propped on the headboard of my bed, and said, How would you like to make some real money, baby?
I’d done bounties and I’d tracked down stolen objects, but I’d never done corporate espionage or thieving before. I’d never even thought of doing mercenary work, but the money was good and Jace and I were a fantastic team. At the time I hadn’t wondered at it, but no doubt Jace’s Mob Family connections had come in handy. Under his tutelage, I’d become so much better at tracking bounties it wasn’t funny, spending just half the time it normally took to bring them in.
The memory was strangely fuzzy, even the sharp sword of pain at the thought of Jace was oddly muted. I stared at the gate I’d seen for years in my nightmares, and my hand tightened on the scabbard once more. My heart thundered in my chest.
“Okay, Christabel,” I murmured. “You’re still leading the dance. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 33
I wondered
why the geography of a place I’d tried so hard to forget was burned so deeply into me that I had no trouble calling up a mental map of the entire complex. Behind the gate, the driveway would curve up the gentle hill, the pond to the right, the shack of the boathouse just visible on the other side. The main house, with classrooms, the cafeteria, and the gymnasium, would rear up in front of the driveway. An ancillary road would curve off to the left, leading to the four Halls, each one shock-shielded and stocked with supplies for practicing the standard Magi disciplines, intranet security and an automatic fail-safe on each one.
Behind the main building were the dormitories, two for girls, one for boys (since the X chromosome carries Talent far more often than the Y) and the fencing salle/dojo, the swimtank building, and, in the very back, the Headmaster’s House. Further up the hill and also to the left was the Morrow building, containing the Library, more classrooms, and a fully stocked alchemical lab, as well as hothouses for the Skinlin trainees closed around a courtyard that held a co-op garden for the Skinlins and hedgewitches.
The only thing missing was the stink of childrens’ fear—and, of course, the tang of Power as well as the glimmer of a security net: deepscan, magscan, and a full battery of defensive measures. Not to mention the chain-link fence, six foot tall and topped with razor wire Mirovitch had erected inside the older, more aesthetically pleasing brick wall.
Who did that to you, Danny? Jace’s voice, harsh with anger, during one of our old fights. Who made you think you were worthless? Tell me who. Goddammit, who did that to you? And he’d turned in a tight half-circle, jerking away from me as if the offender might be hiding in the living room.
“Jace,” I whispered to the empty, foggy street. “I don’t want to go in there again.”
Whether I was caught in some magick of Fate or just too stubbornly, exhaustedly determined for my own good, I was called upon to finish it. And who, after all, was left to finish it if I couldn’t?
My right hand throbbed and ached. I dropped it, touched the pocket holding the spade necklaces. If I was right—and I goddamn well hoped I was—Keller would be tracking me now. I would draw him like a lodestone draws iron filings, like a broken-down hover in the Tank District draws techstrippers. Like a fight in Rio draws the organ harvesters.
Thinking of this, I reached down into my pocket and drew out four necklaces, leaving one behind. I cupped them in my palm, examining them closely. There was no thread of Power I could detect. But of course, if it was only a passive charm keyed to Keller I might not be able to see it at all, even with a demon’s acuity. When it came to tracking spells, passive usually meant weak, but it also usually meant invisible.
I closed my right hand into a fist, the sharp pricks of the spade charms digging into my skin. The trickle of Power slid down my wrist like a razor, heat welling up under my skin. It pooled in my palm, melting, swirling, straining to escape.
I stared at my hand, the trickle of superheated Power making my fingernails glow.
Memory rose.
Crack. The worst thing about the whip is not the first strike, laid hot against the back. For the first few microseconds it is almost painless—but then the red-hot fléchette, fueled with Power, scorchsplits open every nerve, and the entire body becomes the back. Not just the back, but the entire world becomes the lash of agony. The scream rises up out of the deepest layers of the body, impossible to deny. No matter how much the will nerves itself not to scream, the body betrays begging, pleading, breaking.
I opened my fist.
Valentine, D. Student Valentine is called to the Headmaster’s Office immediately.
The fléchette gleamed in my hand, long and thin and razor-sharp. Made of Power and the metal in the necklaces, it rang softly as I touched it with a forefinger. I blew a low tuneless whistle between my teeth and looked up toward the gate.
It was open slightly, fog wreathing through the bars. Come into my parlor, said the undead Headmaster to the wary ex-pupil. The lunatic singsong sounded a little bit more like me. I grabbed at the thought, sucked in another breath, and dug in my messenger bag. I had no sheath that would fit the fléchette, so I wrapped a supple piece of plasilica around it and stuck it in my pocket with the last spade necklace.
I don’t think I’m going in through the front door. I melted out of the shadow of the doorway to vanish into the fog.
CHAPTER 34
It was still there, the old drainage tunnel. Trash drifted in the bottom of the round concrete cave, looking a lot smaller now that I was at least a foot taller. Several years of fallen leaves were turning into sludge at the bottom. I examined it carefully, reaching out to touch the concrete. Here, where the drainage ditch went through a hummock under the fence, someone had once cut through the iron grating covering the school side. Generations of students had carefully covered the hole with rotting wooden scraps from the woodshop, enough to let the water drain and cover the fact that the metal grille was broken. Since the hole went underground, it didn’t register on the shields, psychic or electronic—or if it ever had, it had been forgotten. As far as anyone knew, this was one secret the students had successfully kept. Sneaking out to roam the streets at night was a Rigger Hall tradition, indulged in even in the darkest days of Mirovitch’s reign. We were, after all, only kids. There was nowhere else to go, not as a collared psion. We were Hegemony property.
After hearing about the Black Room, I wondered if other secrets were kept. I would have thought it was impossible to keep anything from Mirovitch or his stooges. Now, with an adult’s sense of circumstance and complexity, I found myself thinking a little more charitably about the stooges and rats. They had just been terrified kids, like me.
But I’d never broken. I hadn’t broken even when he’d forced me to watch Roanna die—and now I wondered if he had known she would slip through his old, hard fingers and fling herself at the fence after we had refused to betray each other.
I had never broken, not even afterward when Mirovitch dragged me back into his office to punish me, demanding to know just what my sedayeen roommate had told her social worker—and if she had told anyone else. I knew now that he had been almost frantic at the thought of losing his personal playground, not to mention the punishment that would have been meted out to him; swift execution, most likely in a gasbox. After that, he’d had it in for me. My defiance outraged him, but I was still only one small girl in a large school. I frequently managed to stay beneath his notice.
I ducked into the end of the tunnel, my boots slipping in the scudge. Water sloshed. The air was absolutely still, and the fog made it eerily quiet. Complete blackness made the tunnel into an abyss, despite my demon sight. There were no streetlights on either side of the concrete pipe, and the thick fog cut visibility even for my eyes.
I lifted my sword, thumbed it free. The slight click of the katana easing loose of the scabbard was loud in the cottony silence. Three inches of steel slid free, and a faint blue glow flowed along the metal.
I saw the tunnel, still sloping slightly upward, a knee-high spill of water and leaf sludge coating its bottom. Permaspray graffiti tangled along the walls, some of it even glowing with Schorn’s algae when the light from my blade touched it. The concrete was crumbling, but still sound. I couldn’t see anything blocking it, and the water was still coming, so I bent down to step cautiously into the opening.
Halfway through, I paused and lifted my blade, looking at the left-hand wall. My boots sloshed; I moved very carefully, peering through the dark.
There it was. In black permaspray, the crudely-done drawing of a slender Egyptian dog with long ears, reclining; a copy of an ancient statue. I remembered biting my lip as I marked the wall, the sharp chemical reek of permaspray, and the satisfaction I’d felt when it was done. It was the mark of my personal war with the school, my badge of honor for not breaking. I smiled, holding my sword up a little higher, shaking my hair back. In the dim light, shadows shifting and crowding, it seemed the dog’s head dipped once, nodding at me. I se
t my jaw and nodded back, then carefully stepped away.
The tunnel was shorter than I remembered. At the end, I pushed aside a sheet of rotted plaswood, setting foot for the first time in decades inside the walls of Rigger Hall again. I took a cautious sniff, smelled only leaf mold, grass, and salty fog. Strained my ears, but heard only the thick silence of a cloud-wrapped night. I held the cloak of my Power close but sensed no shields on the walls; when they closed the school, a team of Hegemony psions had come out and dismantled the defenses, earthing the power. And there were no electronic countermeasures. If Keller was here, he was counting on invisibility to keep him safe.
The familiar loose tension invaded my body, my heartbeat speeding up. I chased down a demon even the Prince of Hell couldn’t catch. I survived two run-ins with the Devil. I’m the best Necromance in Saint City. I’m listed as one of the top-ten deadliest bounty hunters in the Hegemony.
That thought caused a sniggering little laugh to jerk its way out of me. One of the biggest hunts of my life, and I wasn’t going to make a red credit off of it.
That was a very adult thought, and I was glad. I still had to check to make sure I wasn’t wearing the plaid skirt, and every time the denim of my jeans touched my knees I had to suppress a guilty start.
The grass was no longer manicured but knee-high, weeds lying thick and rank and edged by frost in the deeper shadows. I saw the familiar bulk of the dormitories’ roofs over the hill, decided to go uphill and angle toward the Headmaster’s House. I could cut around the back of the dojo and avoid any possible patrolling teacher or stooge.
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