Downpour

by Kat Richardson

  I knew it wasn’t easy to shove anything in the Grey, but Willow seemed to have a greater command of the local power than she realized. Shea had been wise to keep her distracted for a while, but he’d been terminally foolish to let her stay alive so long. I imagined he had plans to change that soon. “You must have learned more since then. . . .”

  She cocked her head and pulled a sarcastic face. “It’s not like English letters, where it doesn’t matter which stroke comes first. Especially for magic, the characters have to be made right. Who would teach me? Jewel? One of the old women—oh, but I forgot: There are no old Chinese grandmothers left here. I know—I could have gone to Olympia! Except I can’t leave here for very long; the magic owns me.”

  “Maybe, but you also command it. It’s yours—or it should have been. Your mother’s family have been taking care of the magic here for generations. I’m guessing you should have been next. Shea knows it, and he’s been perfectly happy to keep you from learning what you needed to, to keep you on the run and unable to repair the damage to the leylines that were your mother’s legacy while he played games and set everyone against one another. He got the other sorcerers around here to fight and waste their time while he became stronger, keeping Ridenour occupied with May and then with hating you. Now he’s got to make a move, and banishing Jin must have been his first step to weaken you.”

  “I knew the demon worked for others, but I didn’t know who. I didn’t have the skill to bind it exclusively to me, but so long as it didn’t kill anyone else, that seemed good enough. But Shea . . .” She shook her head. “I told you he couldn’t possibly banish Jin.”

  “I’m pretty sure he did. First he bribed Jin to do work, and then he got rid of the demon now that push has come to shove.”

  She scoffed. “How? He has no power over the gate to Diyu.”

  “He only needed a banishment that he stole from me last night. Anyone can use one, right?”

  “Yes,” she replied, slowly, as if waiting for the “gotcha.”

  “I thought the purpose was to kill us, but now I think he just wanted this.” I pulled one of the scraps from my pocket and held it out to her. She took it and gave it a wary look for a moment, as if she could read what had been written on the vanished silk. Then she handed it back to me.

  “How did he get it from you?”

  “He borrowed Costigan’s zombies and attacked your father’s house last night while we were sleeping there. The zombies tore it out of my pocket and Shea picked it up in the aftermath. He probably stole things from this house to bribe Jin with, too—Jin had a pair of your father’s cuff links. And when that wasn’t enough, Shea gave him information gleaned in Seattle, where Jin couldn’t go.”

  Her face grew dark with fury and she muttered under her breath.

  “Don’t waste your time on him just yet,” I warned. “There’s a party at your sister’s tonight and I want you to crash it. Then you can raise some hell for Mr. Shea. Of course, I imagine Jewel and Costigan will have some of their own to sling around, so hold on to your resources until then. In the meantime, I want you to get in touch with Soren Faith—he’s the man investigating Alan Strother’s murder.”

  “Why should I? He can’t help—”

  “Don’t be an idiot. He has the anchor stone and he said he’d give it back if you would meet with him.”

  “He only wants to arrest me!”

  “He said he’d come on your terms to whatever spot you designate. I think he really does just want to talk. He doesn’t believe you meant to kill Tim Scott,” I added.

  She stared at me, conflicted and confused.

  “Come into the house where we can speak in private,” I suggested. “We need to get that rock back and I’m afraid it’s up to you. But if we keep talking here, someone is bound to overhear us. . . .”

  “The trees will keep them away,” she objected.

  “Maybe, but I’d still prefer somewhere drier and more private.”

  She rolled her eyes and sighed. “You’re very soft for such a hard-ass.”

  “Yes. I have a lot more to do today and hypothermia won’t help.”

  The trees swayed away from the Rover, and Quinton jumped out to join us, apparently relieved to get out of the truck at last. Willow gave him a crooked smile and shot a funny look in my direction before she shrugged and started walking to the house, letting us fall in behind her.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Willow seemed a bit uncomfortable indoors, glancing around continually and unable to sit still. She walked around the living room, noting the repositioned couch and the ashes in the Franklin stove, and grinned at us. “What have you two been up to in Mother’s house?” she quipped, not really expecting an answer and not getting one. I bit my lip and brushed absently at my cheek with the back of my hand.

  Quinton came back into the living room from starting up the generator—he’d taken the gas can from the Rover. Since the cat was already out of the bag that we were staying in the lakefront house, it seemed pointless to live rough. There was nothing we could do about the propane stove and fridge, but electricity did make things a little cozier and helped push back the Grey fog and swirls of color that seemed to be seeping into the building, deepening, and growing thicker since we’d followed Willow inside.

  “The water heater’s electric, and there’s a microwave, so it’s not going to be cold food and baths like last night,” he announced, sitting next to me. He rubbed at the dried poultice on his cheek, knocking some of it off.

  Willow hopped up from the chair she’d barely perched on, announcing, “I’ll make tea!” and darted for the door, giving us amused looks as she went to the kitchen.

  “What the hell is that about?” Quinton asked.

  “Your goop is flaking,” I said, touching the crusted wound on his face with my fingertips.

  “About time. It itches.” He scraped his fingers over it again, loosening more of the dry muck Costigan had plastered him with. Outside, the shadows were deepening under the cap of clouds as the sun headed for the ocean. I hoped we’d be able to talk Willow into meeting with Faith before things got crazy at the Newmans’—and it was a good bet they would get weird once we showed up.

  I studied Quinton’s face. The dead color had vanished, leaving pale but healthy-looking skin under the fading gauze of magic that had covered most of his injured cheek. The tiny tendrils of energy were retracting into the dried cake of glop that hid the ugly black line that had appeared when the spirit thing had touched him. “Well . . . it looks a lot better,” I offered.

  “Maybe I can wash it off, then. You think?” He raised his eyebrows in hope. “I shudder, imagining what might be in this stuff.”

  “Something worse than rum and spit?”

  Willow stuck her head around the kitchen door. “It’s mostly comfrey, red pepper, and bearberries, maybe some boneset, definitely some garlic. It brings the blood to the skin and warms it up, wards off infection. Since it was Loko who came to help, there isn’t any graveyard dust in it—you’re lucky.”

  “Garlic and red pepper,” Quinton said. “That explains the smell. . . .”

  “I wouldn’t use it,” she added with a raise of the eyebrows and a smug-cat smile, “but it does work when you’re getting some help from the loa.” Willow vanished from the doorway and went back to making tea.

  “I begin to see why she’s a loner,” Quinton whispered.

  I poked him with a finger in the ribs. “You could just go wash it off.”

  “What, and miss my chance to imitate a spicy Italian sausage?” He waggled his eyebrows at me in a way that was too silly to be suggestive.

  “You are a danger to morality,” I said, smiling.

  “I try.”

  I flapped a hand at him. “Go wash that stuff off. Costigan said it was done when it started to itch.”

  “All right, all right,” he agreed, getting up from the couch and heading for the kitchen.

  Willow redirected him up the stairs to the
bathroom, saying she didn’t want Costigan’s concoctions dirtying up the place. In a few minutes, she came into the living room with a teapot in one hand and a cluster of mugs threaded on her fingers by the handles.

  “You said he was your boyfriend,” she said, putting the tea things down on the nearest table.

  I frowned. “He is.” Then I felt a sharp, cutting pain across my cheekbone. “Ow!” I gasped, clapping my hand over my face.

  Willow shook her head. “Mates.”

  “What the hell . . . ?”

  She stopped what she was doing and peered at me. “When did it happen?”

  “What happen?” I asked, looking at the palm of my hand and expecting to see blood, but there wasn’t any.

  “When did you marry?”

  “We’re not married.”

  “Not by the state. The soul-bond. It must be new—it looks new.”

  “We haven’t done anything like that. No ceremonies, no rings, no blood, no . . . whatever it takes.” I found myself glancing over my shoulder, half expecting some Chinese ancestor to materialize and chastise me for abusing their hospitality. No one did, but that funny feeling remained....

  Willow looked around the room. Her gaze paused on the neat pile of blankets beside the couch, then on me. She looked me up and down again. “Did you two have sex in this house?”

  I blushed and gaped at her, feeling like a naughty teenager.

  She gazed around the room again, but this time with fondness. Then she shrugged. “It’s my parents’ house. It knows these things. You really have to be careful on top of a leyline.” Then she giggled. “Layline. That’s funny.”

  Quinton came clomping down the stairs and into the room. “What’s funny?”

  “You’re bonded and you didn’t know it,” Willow said, chuckling.

  “What?”

  “It’s sort of adorable,” Willow added, “in a sickening way. You two.” She started laughing. “You had sex. Here.”

  “I’m confused . . .” Quinton said. “Are we in trouble?”

  “Willow,” I growled in the most quelling voice I could, leaning hard on the Grey.

  She snapped her head up, spinning away from me and into a crouch near the door, her expression feral and her hands curling into the rising tide of energy that flooded suddenly into the house. “Don’t do that! Don’t make me!”

  I let go of everything and sat back against the couch, keeping my own hands relaxed and in plain sight. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Willow was still tense, but she stood up, slowly, unbending and releasing her grip. She let the magic pool around her feet, though. “All right, then.” She turned and looked at Quinton and pointed at a raw patch on his cheekbone where the red glop had been. “You are impatient—just like a man—and pulled the poultice at the end instead of soaking it off. It stung, didn’t it?”

  Quinton touched his fingers to the redness on his face. “Yeah. So?”

  Willow pointed at me. “She felt it.” Then she glared at me. “Didn’t you?”

  I frowned. “Yes.”

  “It will fade. You won’t feel the minor things after a while, but the major hurts, the physical and the emotional, you will. You’re bonded. Mated. When your souls were in tune and open, when you were soft and alight with love, you gave a piece of yourselves away to each other. It’s still there, knitting itself into you. You can tear it out now, while it’s still young and soft. You don’t have to . . . remain this way. If you don’t want to.” Darkness flitted across her face. “You have a few days to end it, if you change your minds.”

  Quinton looked shaken and I could feel the trembling of his emotions like a distant earthquake in my body. “Why would we?” he asked, glancing at me.

  “Because it makes you weak! It makes you vulnerable!” Willow shouted back. “It ties you to another person who can be hurt and hurt you! You’re a dependent, a thrall, a . . . an adjunct.”

  “But it’s mutual, isn’t it?” Quinton asked. He didn’t sound unsure; he was just being polite by framing it as a question. “What might be a weakness could also be a strength. We’re together. We share—”

  “Not like that, you don’t,” Willow snapped. “It’s not the powers you share, just the tugging—the horrible, horrible tearing apart when they leave you! The hollowness, the pain . . .” She curled on herself, sinking to the floor as if in agony. “Tear it out now. Get rid of it. It’s just a little pain, a little dead spot, like a place where the nerves died. You’ll never notice after a while and it’s so much better than—than . . .” She slumped against the hearth, sobbing and shaking. “In my parents’ house. My parents’ house . . .”

  Quinton looked horrified and started to kneel down beside her. I shot off the couch and reached Willow first, tugging her into my arms.

  “Who was it, Willow? Who . . . ?” She wasn’t a child now, but this was the house where she had been and it brought everything with it.

  “All of them.” She breathed against my neck. “My mother, my father, my . . . friend. All of them. Tearing pieces of me away . . .”

  I looked over her shoulder to catch Quinton’s eye. He made a frustrated little twitch, unsure what to do. I jerked my head upward, glancing toward the bedrooms upstairs, hoping there really was a connection between us, that he’d figure out what we needed to do. He blinked, then scrambled away, up the stairs. I heard him moving around and then the wheezy rattle of the electric heaters coming on for the first time in years. The house seemed to sigh and the shadows in the corners stirred.

  In a few more minutes Quinton returned to the living room and scooped Willow out of my hold and into his arms. She nuzzled against him, exhausted and trembling as he carried her upstairs. I came along behind. When we reached the top of the stairs, he turned and carried Willow into what must once have been her own bedroom. A cloud of raw ghost-stuff trailed them, passing through me and leaving a strange tingling warmth on my skin as it went. The green light that had welled up at her feet downstairs flowed up and oozed across the floor into Willow’s bedroom, spreading out to touch all the walls and send glimmering fingers up to frame the door and windows. Even asleep, the magic looked after her.

  Quinton left Willow tucked into bed with an extra blanket over her, against the chill he felt as ghosts began filling the room with swirling fog that seemed to fall from the ceiling. I turned away and preceded him down as he returned to the stairs.

  He caught up to me in front of the Franklin stove and pulled me gently back around to face him. “We’re screwed, aren’t we?”

  “Well, I wasn’t counting on a breakdown from the only mage on our side.”

  “That is not what I meant.”

  “I know, but I can’t solve that problem right now and this one, too. This business at the Newmans’ will be happening soon and, without Willow, I’m not sure how it will come out. I can’t let any of them get an advantage before we figure out how to put the anchor stone back in its proper place. Of course, we have to get the stone first, which won’t happen with Willow passed out upstairs. Why can’t the damned Guardian Beast look after this stuff him—itself? It can shove me through a wall. Why can’t it pick up a rock and put it back where it came from?”

  Quinton shook his head and made an exasperated face. “Harper, stop. You’re frustrated because you’re too focused on one path instead of on the goal. It doesn’t matter if they all destroy one another. Or not. It’s not up to you to pick the one-mage-to-rule-them-all. You’re already more than half-done with your job: You found out who killed Leung and Strother and you can turn him over at any time. Then we can get the anchor and put it back in the lake. And I have an idea how to find the place for it.” He glanced aside, and then back into my face. “This other thing . . . I guess we’ll have to figure out later what we’re going to do.”

  I bit my lip. I didn’t know what would happen and I shouldn’t have anticipated the worst, but I admit that Willow’s hysterics weren’t too far from my own thoughts
, and Quinton knew it.

  “Then I guess we fall back and punt.”

  He snorted. “Please, no football analogies. Now I have an ugly vision of zombies in shoulder pads and tight pants doing wind sprints on the lake.”

  I laughed in spite of myself. “Then, so long as we’re at loose ends, tell me your brilliant idea about the anchors.”

  “You said it made a high-pitched sound, right?”

  “The anchor stone? Yes, when you sparked it, it did.”

  “All right. Sound waves travel very efficiently through water, so if we can isolate that sound and get an electronic sample from the anchor stone, I should be able to rig a rudimentary sonophone that will help us physically locate the area where a matching tone is being emitted. That’ll be where we have to drop the rock.”

  “How are you going to get the waveguides to sing in the first place?”

  “That’s a little trickier. You should be able to see the line of both the intact and broken waveguides. Once we have the line, we can find a place to apply a current to the broken one and then follow the sound into the lake.”

  “But . . . ?” I asked.

  “But since the sound was emitted in the Grey, I think you’re going to have to apply a Grey current. You’ll have to pull a bit of energy to the waveguide.”

  “I can’t do that anymore. I don’t have that ability to simply . . . pull the grid around.”

  “We don’t need a grid line. Just a thread. Like an extension cord. You managed threads last night. We don’t need more than that.”

  “I broke them—I didn’t put them together. I can’t make things of the Grey—I can only . . . break them.”

  Quinton sighed and put his arms around me. “I don’t think that’s true. You don’t just break things; you fix them. We’ll figure out a way to fix this, too.”

  “We?”

  “Hey, we’re bound together, babe. Remember?” He struck a noble stance, showing me his profile as if posing for a dramatic movie poster, and declaimed, “Soul to soul, heart to heart, together forever!” He looked like Val Kilmer in Real Genius when he introduced the student beauticians.