Midnight Blue-Light Special

by Seanan McGuire

  No, said Sarah, who was smart enough to do what I hadn’t. There was a soft thump as she put down her bags. Then she stepped up next to me, squinting a little at the door. I don’t . . . I can’t hear who’s out there. I’m not sure there is anybody there.

  One more problem with being a telepath in a non-telepathic society: sometimes there aren’t words for the things you’re trying to describe. Sarah doesn’t really “hear” people thinking, but there isn’t any other way to say it. It gets clearer when she’s attuned to a person, and strangers can sometimes be almost inaudible to her mental ear. Still, she usually knows when there’s someone to be listened to. That means it’s Margaret. Maybe she’ll go away.

  The knock came again.

  . . . maybe not, I thought. I looked toward Sarah. Okay. Here’s what we need to do. You’re going to say I have to jump out the window, aren’t you? she asked miserably.

  No, of course not. Not that I didn’t want to. Going out the window would have solved all our problems. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the equipment to get Sarah down safely, and she didn’t have the training to do it without help. I took a breath and thought, as reassuringly as I could, We just need to be quiet, okay? She’ll go away.

  Verity, I don’t like this. Sarah’s lower lip quivered, her eyes wide and frightened.

  I know. I drew a pistol from inside my hoodie, gesturing for Sarah to get out of sight. She started toward the coat closet, presumably to hide herself.

  There was a click as the latch released, and the hotel room door swung open. I managed to jump behind the half-wall that separated the living and dining rooms, getting myself out of sight before I could be seen. Sarah gasped.

  “C-can I help you?” she asked, in a surprisingly normal tone of voice.

  “Your door seems to have been left unlocked,” said Margaret Healy. “Can I come in?”

  Oh. Shit.

  Thirteen

  “Blood is thicker than water, but family isn’t just about blood. Family is about faith, and loyalty, and who you love. If you don’t have those things, I don’t care what the blood says. You’re not family.”

  —Alice Healy

  A suite at the Port Hope Hotel, about to potentially get into a firefight

  “UH, SURE,” said Sarah. I heard her step back to let Margaret into her suite. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  “It’s an awfully cloudy night for looking at stars, don’t you think?” The question was mild, just a comment on the weather.

  There was nothing mild about the chill that it sent racing down my spine, or Sarah’s sudden, terrified cry of, Verity, I think this is the woman from the roof.

  Sometimes Sarah’s inability to recognize people by visual cues can be a real problem. I know, I thought back, as soothingly as I could. Try to convince her that you’re harmless. We’re going to get you out of here. It’ll be okay.

  “The sky cleared for a little bit,” said Sarah. “That’s why I went up with Valerie to see the Pleiades.”

  “It’s odd that you can see them at all, with all the ambient light from the city,” said Margaret. “I was ever so excited, until I saw that the clouds had come back. Quite fast, too. I’ve never seen a cloud cover that thick develop so quickly.”

  Verity, why is she asking all these questions? She should have believed us. Why can’t I see her?

  I don’t know, I thought back. See if you can make her leave. We need to get you out of here.

  “I guess the weather does what the weather wants to do,” said Sarah weakly.

  “I suppose that’s true.” I heard Margaret take another step. “Is Valerie still here? I wanted to see if she had any other suggestions for places where I might go to do a little stargazing.”

  “No, she had to leave,” said Sarah. “I’ll tell her that you were sorry to have missed her.”

  “Left? Really? That’s amazing, since I had a splendid view of the front of the hotel while I was on the roof, and I didn’t see her going out.”

  “It must have been while you were going down the stairs.”

  “That’s still quite impressive timing. I’ll have to ask my colleague who was sitting in the lobby this whole time whether he saw which way she went. I’d love to see her again.” I didn’t need to be able to see Margaret’s face to know what it looked like. Her tone was one I’d heard before, from my sister, my mother, my grandmother. It would be accompanied by an almost feral smile, one that implied the speaker would think nothing of ripping your throat out with her teeth. A dangerous expression for a dangerous girl.

  “That’s probably a good idea,” said Sarah, in a small voice.

  “Unless you’d like to tell me where she went.”

  Verity!

  I gritted my teeth, forcing myself to stay where I was. Is she actually threatening you? Or is she just asking pointy questions and waiting to see whether you crack? Do you see any weapons?

  Not yet—it’s just questions—but I still can’t read her.

  Shit. The Covenant has wards against sorcery, witchcraft, and the various psionic powers. Telepathy isn’t common, but empathy is, and a ward against one will go a long way toward blocking the others. Sarah wasn’t going to get any readings off Margaret, and Margaret wasn’t going to be as affected by Sarah’s particular brand of mind-fuck as she should have been.

  Try and make her leave, I said, keeping my mental voice as reassuring as I could. I didn’t know how well it was working. Sarah’s the telepath, not me; there was no telling how much interference she was going to pick up from my own panic. The staff will smuggle us out of here if you can make her leave.

  “I don’t know where Valerie went,” said Sarah. Her voice was barely shaking. I have never been so proud of her. “Why don’t you go ask your friend? He can probably tell you which way she turned when she left the hotel.”

  “Doesn’t she live around here?”

  “No. New Jersey. She was just visiting me for the day.”

  “Ah. Well, if you see her, can you let her know that I—”

  The sound of the theme from Dance or Die suddenly blared from my front pocket. I fumbled for my phone, hitting the “mute” button, but it was already way too late.

  “What was that?” asked Margaret, all pretense of friendly curiosity gone. She was a hunter, and she had just received confirmation that her prey was nearby.

  “My phone,” said Sarah, hopelessly.

  “If that was your phone, what’s that on the couch? You have two cell phones? That seems a bit excessive, don’t you think?” I heard Margaret turn and start to walk. “You sure your friend left? Seems a little odd that you’d hide her from m—”

  There was a heavy smacking noise, followed by the thump of Margaret collapsing to the floor. I poked my head around the wall. Sarah was standing with her legs braced wide, a decorative vase in her hands, panting in what I recognized as terror. Margaret was sprawled facedown on the carpet in front of her. The fall had hiked both her coat and blazer up in the back, revealing the gun she had tucked between her shirt and pants.

  “Get the gun,” I said, moving to grab Sarah’s bags. “Do you have any duct tape?”

  “Why would I have duct tape?” Sarah asked. She dropped the vase. It landed without breaking, rolling to bump to a stop against the base of the couch. “Is she dead? Did I kill her?”

  “No, but she’s going to have one hell of a headache.” I trotted over and shoved Sarah’s bags into her hands before dropping to my knees next to Margaret, producing a roll of electrical tape from my own bag. “Duct tape would have been better, but this will hold her for a while. You have four minutes to grab anything else you want from this place. We will not be coming back here. Understand?”

  “I understand,” whispered Sarah, and ran for the dining room table.

  I learned the basics of tying up—or taping up—a
n unconscious opponent when I was still in elementary school, mostly by using my siblings for practice. I flipped Margaret over and got to work, moving a little slower than I would have if I hadn’t been searching her for weapons at the same time. She was armed for bear. Acid-spitting, fire-breathing bear. If I hadn’t already known she was a relative, the number of knives I took out of her coat would have made me suspicious.

  Even with that complication, I had her bound in less than a minute and a half. I shrugged my backpack off and began cramming her weapons into it, pausing only long enough to be sure the guns were resting on empty chambers and nothing was bugged or tagged with tracers. The last thing I did was remove her necklace: a thin disk of what looked like pure copper floating in a vial of water mixed with crushed herbs.

  I heard a gasp behind me before Sarah thought, I can feel her in the room now.

  “Swell—I was right. It’s an anti-telepathy charm.” I shoved Margaret’s necklace into my pocket. “They’re more prepared than I wanted them to be.” Someone had been telling stories. Dominic was no longer a friendly.

  “What are we going to do?” Sarah whispered.

  “Run.” I stood. “She’ll be pissed when she wakes up. We’ll exit through the kitchen. We can hail a cab and have them drop us at the 9th Street PATH Station.”

  “And from there?”

  “From there, we walk.” I turned to face my terrified cousin, ignoring the blood relative who was lying unconscious on the floor. At the moment, Margaret was the least of our problems. There were two more Covenant operatives in the area—three, counting Dominic—and for all I knew, they were both in the hotel. “Come on, Sarah. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  I managed to shove Sarah’s two smaller laptops into the suitcase. She held onto the third one, hugging it like a teddy bear. We took the service elevator down to the first floor, where Sarah babbled something about an angry ex-boyfriend waiting for her in the lobby to the supervisor on duty in the kitchen. The supervisor, a tough-looking African-American woman with the sort of eyes that have seen all the dark things a city has to offer, might have believed us even without Sarah’s telepathic push backing up the story. We were two women alone, and we were obviously scared, even if I was doing my best not to show it. Sarah was just the icing on the cake of conviction. The supervisor nodded at the right places, frowned at the right places, and showed us the route through the kitchen to the back door. She didn’t ask why we didn’t want to call the police. Odds were good that she had her own answers for that, and that they weren’t much better than our reality.

  Sarah was crying by the time we made it outside, huge, crystalline tears running down her cheeks. She was beautiful when she cried, since her face never got flushed and her eyes never got red. She just cried, a pale doll of a girl with eyes that seemed too big for her face. We walked along the back of the hotel—running would have attracted too much attention—to the nearest corner that wasn’t visible from the lobby. A cab pulled up almost immediately. We didn’t even need to hail it. Sarah’s semi-audible waves of distress took care of that part.

  Much as I hate cabs, Sarah’s not a runner, and even if she were, we couldn’t risk the Covenant having their third operative stationed somewhere at roof level. If we were followed back to the Nest, we’d be sitting ducks. I ushered her into the vehicle as quickly as I could.

  “9th Street PATH,” I said, once we were safely in the cab with the doors closed and the subtly tinted windows between us and the rest of the city.

  The cabbie looked dubious—an unusual reaction from a New York City cab driver, but that was traveling with Sarah for you. It’s harder for her to keep certain things under control when she’s upset. The poor guy was probably already starting to think of her as his niece, or his best friend’s daughter. “Are you sure you don’t want to go somewhere safer?” he asked. “Like the police, maybe?”

  “The PATH station,” whispered Sarah. Then, more loudly, she added, “Please.”

  It was the “please” that did it. The cabbie hit the gas and we rocketed away from the curb, merging into the traffic as it flowed past the Port Hope Hotel. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to watch the sidewalks for signs of pursuit.

  Sarah, breathe, I thought, as soothingly as I could. You need to calm down, or you’re going to convince this guy that you’re his long-lost daughter, and we’re going to wind up being taken home for comfort and casserole.

  I could have done with a little comfort, and I never turn down a good casserole. Having grandparents from the Midwest will do that. But this was not the time, and there was no reason to start dragging innocents into the line of fire.

  I’m trying, said Sarah, her mental voice barely above a whisper. That woman . . .

  I know. I put my hand on Sarah’s knee. She shuddered and slumped against me, resting her head on my shoulder. I wanted to tell her to watch the street, to keep scanning for anything that looked out of place. I didn’t. I couldn’t. Sarah may be a part of the family, but she’s not a fighter. She’s never had to be. I didn’t know how to tell her that was going to have to change.

  The cabbie dropped us at one of the entrances to the 9th Street PATH station, making one last attempt to convince us to go somewhere safer before he allowed me to pay his fare and drove away. Sarah had a tendency to stiff cabbies—not intentionally; she just never thought about needing to pay them—but I didn’t want this guy to remember two upset girls who got a ride out of the goodness of his heart. Anything I could do to make us less unusual was worth doing.

  “Now what?” asked Sarah, once the taxi was pulling away and we were alone in the inevitable crowd. She clutched her laptop to her chest like a talisman, like it could somehow protect her from what was going on around us.

  “We go down,” I said. I took her suitcase, hoisting it easily, and motioned for her to follow me down the steps into the station.

  I didn’t realize before coming to New York that the city was actually served by two different subways. There’s the municipal subway, which covers the island of Manhattan and shows up in a lot of movies and TV shows. Then there’s the PATH, the Port Authority Trans-Hudson train system, which connects Manhattan to the nearby state of New Jersey. Lots of people commute to work from Jersey City and Newark, allowing them to enjoy the benefits of being right by the Big Apple, without also enjoying the high cost of living.

  Sarah and I paid our single-trip fares to get into the PATH system. Then we walked to the end of the platform, where I checked my phone to be sure that I had the right schedule in mind, took her hand, and pulled her down into the darkness.

  Things I do not recommend trying at home: navigating an active subway system in the dark, knowing that if you’re wrong about your timing, you’re going to find out what it feels like to be on the losing side of a squirrel-meets-semi road kill scenario.

  Things I do recommend trying when there’s a chance that you’ve been followed by members of a pseudo-religious order that would really enjoy the opportunity to wipe you from the face of the planet: risking that road kill scenario. I knew the way along the tracks, but the Covenant didn’t, and we’d have ample opportunities to escape if they did decide to pursue us into the dark. Besides, only a crazy person would walk between stops when there was a nice convenient train. If the Covenant was following us, they’d hopefully assume that we’d taken some secret shortcut down into the sewers and waste time looking for us there. In its own way, this was the smartest stupid thing we could possibly have done.

  Sarah and I stuck close to the wall, walking as quickly as we dared. I didn’t pull out my flashlight, much as I wanted to. That much light would be a beacon for anyone who happened to be looking for us.

  “Sarah?” I murmured. She jumped a little. I squeezed her hand. “Are we alone down here? As far as you know?”

  Sarah took a deep breath. I glanced back, and saw that her eyes were starting to glow fai
ntly. That was a good sign. As long as she had something to focus on, she wouldn’t dwell on the fact that we were potentially being followed by people who’d been equipped to block telepathy like hers. Margaret had lost her charm, and was hence “visible” to Sarah’s specific way of looking. The others weren’t.

  Two hidebehinds watching us from behind the service door; homeless man asleep in an alcove; family of bugbears passing through, Sarah reported finally. And rats. Lots of rats.

  “Which means none of Bill’s servitors have been through here recently. That’s good.” Servitors were the lizard-man servants of William the dragon. They used to be humans, before they were kidnapped and mutated by a snake cult. These days, they mostly skulked around in tunnels, eating rats and trying not to be seen. Nothing gets complicated like a cryptid ecosystem.

  It is?

  Sarah sounded anxious enough that I doubted she even realized she wasn’t speaking aloud. I squeezed her hand. “It is. There’s nothing down here that can’t defend itself.” I was including us in that statement. I had my weapons, I had Margaret’s weapons, and I knew my environment. As long as we could avoid being flattened by a train, we were almost in the clear.

  The tracks ahead of us were becoming easier to see; we were almost to Christopher Street. I started walking faster, pulling Sarah with me. The light from the platform was like a beacon guiding us home. We were almost there when the tracks began vibrating under my feet.

  “Run!” I shouted.

  We ran. When we reached the platform, I boosted Sarah up, ignoring the startled looks from the people waiting for their train home. I threw her suitcase after her. Then I grabbed the edge of the platform and vaulted myself clear, my feet moving out of the danger zone a mere second before the train came rushing into the station. My heart pounding in my ears, I bent forward and braced my hands against my knees, panting.