“What? It’s not.” I made myself stop pacing and pretended I wasn’t listening for the sound of a car. I’d been surprised when Frost called me yesterday asking if I was free tonight — but I had to admit, it wasn’t an unpleasant surprise. “I should have gotten her something,” I said, almost without realizing I was talking out loud. “Should I have? I mean, it’s not a date. But flowers … I could’ve got flowers. Maybe just one flower, like a rose. Why didn’t I do that?”
“So you’re saying it’s serious.” Sadie walked toward me with a smile. “Don’t worry so much,” she said. “If it’s not a date, she won’t expect flowers. You didn’t screw up.”
“Yet,” I muttered, and let out the sigh I’d been holding back. “I’m no good at this.”
“At what? Not dating?”
“Talking to people,” I said. “Especially female people.”
“Well, you’re doing just fine talking to me.” Sadie moved to the door, opened it a crack and peered out, then closed it with a shrug. “Why’d you say she was picking you up? I thought you liked to be the one driving.”
I smirked. “She said something about how my van kind of horrifies her, because of all the dead people,” I said. “Honestly, it could use some airing out right now.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“Good idea. You’d definitely notice.”
I’d been taking a lot of body-moving gigs lately. As many as I could for the NYPD, and even a few from my old boss, Rufus — though I was charging him double my old rates. We were trying to save up for a new place to live, one we weren’t squatting in. Sadie had found a part-time job to help out, but she and I were the only employable ones here. At least now that it was just the five of us. The Duchenes had decided to make their visit to Louisiana permanent, and Reun opted to stay with them.
The saving-up thing was slow going. From January to now, almost the end of March, we’d scraped together almost enough for a third of a down payment. If we wanted to live in a one-bedroom shack in a really bad neighborhood.
Manhattan real estate wasn’t what you’d call affordable.
I was about to start panicking over something new, like whether my deodorant had worn off while I was pacing, when I heard a car engine outside. Somehow I managed not to run to the door and fling it open.
Sadie laughed under her breath. “Want me to leave you alone?”
“Uh, no. You don’t have to.” I flashed an awkward smile. “Thanks.”
She knew what I meant and nodded an acknowledgment.
Even though I’d expected it, the knock at the door made my heart jump. Christ, I was reacting like some high school kid sneaking Internet porn on the family computer, and we were just going to talk shop over a few drinks. Strictly business. I repeated those two words as I covered the few steps to the door and opened it.
Calla Frost looked incredible for a not-date.
Most of the times I’d seen her over the past few months, she’d been dressed for work. Either business casual or the dark pantsuits the NSA apparently favored. Tonight she wore jeans and a scoop-necked shirt beneath a leather bolero jacket. The jade combs she always pinned her dark hair back with were complemented by a silver-and-jade necklace that highlighted the green in her eyes. Everything about her was simple, almost casual elegance.
I felt kind of underdressed for the non-occasion.
She smiled, but the expression faltered. “Gideon, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I just … can I come in a minute?”
“Sure.” I frowned, stepped back to let her pass, and closed the door behind her. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing. But—” She sighed and glanced across the room. “Hi, Sadie. Sorry to barge in like this,” she said.
Sadie cocked her head. “It’s fine. I thought we were expecting you.”
“Yeah, and I thought we’d be heading right out.” Her lips pressed flat. “I just got a call,” she said, turning her attention to me. “Would’ve just texted to let you know I couldn’t make it tonight, but I was almost here already. So I thought I’d tell you in person.” She paused and drew a deep breath. “It looks like I have to go out of town for a few days, I guess.”
Great. Well, at least my nerves were calm again. No driving myself crazy until the next not-a-date. “For work?” I said.
She nodded.
“Which one?”
“The one you’d rather it wasn’t.”
“Oh.” Frost was a federal agent with the NSA, but she was also a member of Milus Dei — the cult that had been hunting me down since I found out I wasn’t entirely human. Turned out not all of them were bad guys, and it took Frost to show me that. Eventually. “Is it bad?” I said.
“Not really. I mean, it’s just a routine check-in with one of my field research teams. Pretty standard,” she said, and added in a grumbling tone, “At least it’s standard to check in personally when they don’t get signals in the middle of damned nowhere, and don’t return my calls or texts.”
“Sounds fun.”
“It’s not. It’s stupid and pointless.” She huffed and folded her arms. “I really wanted to hang out with you tonight,” she said. “I’m so sorry about this.”
“Hey, no big deal.” I hoped it sounded like I meant that, despite my own disappointment. “Maybe we can hang out when you get back.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” She lowered her arms slowly. “Unless … no, that’s probably a dumb idea. You wouldn’t want to do that.”
“Do what?” I said.
“You could come with me.” For some reason, she sent a nervous glance at Sadie when she said it. “I mean, they aren’t doing anything horrible, you know. Just routine research. It’s a boring eight-hour drive, for a boring job that’ll only take a few days, and some company would be great.” She smiled at me. “Specifically, your company. If you want to go.”
The idea of spending a few days with Frost was thrilling and terrifying at the same time. And the best thing for me to do would be to politely decline. Going out for drinks was one thing, but taking a spontaneous road trip with a woman I really didn’t want to screw things up with was probably relationship suicide. If we even had a relationship.
I opened my mouth. And what came out was, “Sure, I’ll go. Let me pack a bag.”
Yeah. That was stupid.
CHAPTER 3
I would’ve had a few minutes to mentally berate myself for agreeing to this, but Taeral followed me to my room. So I guessed I was getting berated out loud.
“Go ahead.” I wrenched open the warped closet door and unearthed one of my duffel bags, knowing my brother was standing in the doorway frowning at me. “Tell me I’m an idiot, like I don’t know that already.”
“I am not certain I’d say that.”
“Uh-huh.” Still not looking at him, I opened the bag and tossed in a few changes of clothes. My eye fell on the drais-ghan, the spelled dagger Taeral had given me, and I packed it after a moment’s hesitation. There was a gun in here somewhere. Ironically, it was one of the stash we’d stolen from a group of Milus Dei operatives the first time we’d tangled with the cult.
I’d probably take that, too. Better safe than sorry.
“Gideon. Do you care for her?”
I froze in the middle of looking for the gun. “I don’t know,” I said slowly, and let out a sigh. “All right, that’s a lie. Yeah, I do.”
“Then you are not an idiot.”
“Right.” I found the gun, added one more rumpled pair of socks to the stash, and finally turned to look at him. “Taeral, do you know how many relationships I’ve had? With women, I mean.”
He arched an eyebrow. “No. You’ve not shared that information with me.”
“Zero.”
“Come, now,” he said with a smirk. “That cannot be true.”
“It is, man. Zero relationships.” I zipped the bag shut and sat down heavily on the room’s only chair. “I mean, I’ve had dates. And sex. But nothing ever moved into l
ong-term — hell, not even short-term.” I shook my head. “I just don’t know how to do this.”
Taeral was silent for a minute. Eventually he said, “Do you not have a relationship with her already?”
“No. Not really,” I said.
“What have you been doing?”
“You mean after she got over trying to kill me?” I gave a wry smile. Frost was supposed to be the enemy — and she definitely was, when I first met her. But working together to save the world from a ten-thousand-year-old maniac kind of changed the dynamic between us. “I don’t know,” I said. “Met her for coffee a few times. Talked on the phone some. Mostly we’re trying to sort through all the Milus Dei crap, figure out who we should worry about and who we shouldn’t. But…”
But sometimes we talked about other things. Work — her job with the NSA, and mine moving bodies for the NYPD. She knew about my foster family, and that Captain Abraham Strauss was more than a friend, practically my father. I knew her parents had passed away, and that she hadn’t been close to her sister in a long time. Which was a point in my favor, since I’d kind of killed her sister. I knew her favorite color was green, she preferred dogs over cats, and she would never buy a car that didn’t have leather seats. She knew I liked being outside at night, had an irrational hatred of orange vegetables, and secretly didn’t mind traffic jams but sometimes laid on the horn anyway, just for the hell of it.
Plus, she’d kissed me once. And I definitely wouldn’t mind if that happened again.
Taeral smiled. “But?”
“But I guess we do. We’ve got something, anyway.” After a brief hesitation, I grabbed my bag and stood. “So I guess I’m going.”
“Aye, as you should.” I walked toward him, and he gave me a rough hug. “Though I cannot say I’ll not worry about you, brother,” he said. “Exactly where are you going?”
“Er. Good question.” I clapped his back and grinned. “Let’s go find out.”
We headed for the lobby, where Sadie and Frost were laughing over something. They sobered fast when they caught sight of us, and I figured it was better not to ask what was so funny. “All set,” I said, holding the bag up like I needed to prove it. “So, Frost. You never said where we’re going.”
“Didn’t I?” She smiled, and I felt better already. “Just a little town up in Maine, one of those quaint old Colonial places on the sea,” she said. “It’s called Lightning Cove.”
That actually sounded pleasant. Maybe I wouldn’t need any weapons, after all.
CHAPTER 4
We’d cleared Manhattan in about half an hour and made good time across Connecticut, headed north to Maine. Leaving a little after nine at night probably helped, since the traffic was not too bad and getting lighter with every mile. If things kept up like this, we’d hit Boston in about an hour.
The traveling was fine, but the conversation was faltering. We’d run out of small talk somewhere around Hartford. Frost found a radio station playing classic rock, but the reception was fuzzing toward oblivion now. Any minute we’d have to shut it off or look for another station.
If we didn’t find something else to talk about, it was going to be a really long drive.
“So, this town,” I said. “What’s the deal with the cell service?”
Frost snorted. “What service?” She slowed as a pair of taillights on the highway in front of us drew closer, already signaling to pass. “Apparently they’re just now crawling out of the Stone Age,” she said. “They’ve got one tower, one carrier. Zero cable. Less than half the place has Internet access, and it’s all satellite. Which they lose when it rains.”
“Huh. What about landlines?”
“Yeah, about those,” she said. “That’s the reason I haven’t been in contact with the team for a few days. All the landlines in town are out because — get this — a pissed-off moose knocked over a couple of telephone poles.”
“A moose.” I had to smile, because it reminded me of Gavyn Donatti. Looked like the half-djinn ex-thief who’d helped us take down Zee wasn’t the only one who’d been traumatized by a moose. “You’re kidding.”
“I didn’t believe it either,” she said. “But that’s what the last email I got from the team said. They even scanned a newspaper article about it. I guess the poles were rotted, really old wood, and a whole section of them went down like dominoes. They said it’s not going to be fixed anytime soon. The entire town public works department is three guys and a truck.”
“Well, damn.” I made a mental note to call Abe, and to check in with Sadie and Taeral, sometime before we got to the black hole of communication. Just so they wouldn’t worry if I couldn’t reach them for a few days. “What’s your team doing out there, anyway?”
Frost tapped a finger on the wheel, and then switched the wipers on. I hadn’t even noticed it’d started to snow a little — just enough to bead on the warm windshield as the fat flakes melted. “I told you the branch I work for deals with artifacts, right?” she said.
“I think so.” She’d told me a lot of things. But I still had a hard time listening to anything Milus Dei-related. “I’m guessing you mean magic artifacts.”
“Yes. Our … er, biological studies were never hands-on, but we’ve collected quite a few objects. We just store them,” she said quickly. “We never use them, and we don’t give them to other branches. It’s all in-house.”
“Good to know.”
She shot me a frown. “Are you okay talking about this?”
“I’m fine.” I forced the tightness out of my voice, along with the memories of what happened when we went to Pennsylvania to help rescue Sadie’s pack from the cult. The scientist who’d tortured me there didn’t have any magic objects, so what Frost was saying probably checked out. “So they’re looking for an artifact?”
“Maybe not looking anymore. Last I heard, they thought they’d found it,” she said. “It’s some kind of mirror. The settlers of Lightning Cove brought it over when they sailed here from England, three hundred years ago.”
I did the math. It took me a few minutes. “This town is older than the country?”
She nodded, and then laughed a little. “I think the telephone poles are, too.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me.”
“I’m hoping this won’t take more than a day or two,” she said. “But honestly, I might end up having to stay longer. Could be up to a week. If they really did find it, I’ll have to coordinate a retrieval crew, arrange for delivery, and wrap things up.” She glanced at me. “If that happens, I trust you to drive my car back, and I’ll catch a ride with another agent. I mean, you probably have things to do.”
This time the thought of spending a week with her didn’t scare me quite as much. “You know, I really don’t,” I said. “I can stay longer. If you want me to.”
She smiled. “I’d like that.”
I moved to turn off the radio, which was now a steady hiss of white noise, and happened to look out the windshield. What I saw drew a double-take. “Uh, Frost?” I said. “Is there supposed to be this much … weather right now?”
She glanced out and swore under her breath, kicking the wipers up another notch. The snow was falling steady now, covering the black road with white. And about a half-mile ahead was an ominous, blustering curtain of dark flakes, coming down fast and thick. “No, there isn’t,” she said. “I checked the reports on the way to your place. All clear. But that …well, it almost looks like a nor’easter.”
I nodded, but my mind was elsewhere. I’d just felt something — faint, but real. A surge of magic unlike anything I’d sensed before. And it seemed to be coming from the storm.
“Damn it.” Frost slowed as the wipers beat trails through the rapidly gathering snow. “If this doesn’t ease up soon, we might have to stop for a while. Maybe for the night.” For a second there was an angry flash in her eyes, but then she sighed. “I’m sorry about this, Gideon. Really.”
I summoned a smile. “Don’t worry about it,” I sa
id. “Trust me, I’d rather get there alive.”
“Yeah, me too,” she said, returning the smile. “I guess we’ll hope for the best.”
At least she hadn’t felt the magic — of course, she wouldn’t have. Humans usually didn’t. And I wouldn’t mention it to her, because it could be nothing, or even my imagination. I’d been wrong before.
But if we did end up stopping, I wasn’t going to get much sleep with one eye open.
The storm didn’t ease up.
By the time we found an exit and crawled off the highway, there was a good three inches of messy, dangerous slush on the road. Hadn’t seen a single snowplow, either. It looked like this storm really had come out of the blue.
And I was afraid I knew how … but not who, or why.
There was a chain hotel about half a mile from the exit, in one of those weird, boxed-off travel plazas that made it almost impossible to find the entrance. Frost’s car slipped and skidded more than once on the road, and the back end swung out as she made the turn into the parking lot. She gripped the wheel and stared grimly ahead. “Son of a bitch,” she murmured. “Talk about a freak storm.”
“Yeah.” I almost mentioned the magic I’d sensed, but something stopped me. Probably the hope that I was wrong. “At least we can get out of it before something worse happens.”
Once again, I thought she looked downright pissed for a second. But it didn’t last long.
We parked not more than a hundred feet from the front entrance. Still, we looked like a couple of abominable snowmen by the time we got inside. I had my trench coat, so it blocked some of the wind. Frost’s bolero, on the other hand, didn’t cover much. She was still shivering when the door closed behind us.
There was no one at the service desk. Frost strode across the lobby, brushing snow viciously onto the thin, bland American Mass Production-style carpet, and just about punched the little bell on the counter.
I decided to let her handle the check-in.
Prison of Horrors (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 6) Page 2