by Devon Monk
Shame looked over at Zayvion like calling the ref in for a replay. “Are you seriously going to let her drive?” Shame asked.
“No.”
Shame flipped his hands out in a told-you-so gesture. “Terric’s going to drive,” Zay said. “Give him your keys.”
At Shame’s look, Zay added, “We don’t have time. Just get in the damn car—your car—and let Terric drive.”
If his words didn’t clue Shame in, Zay’s heartbeat, pounding strong, impatient, would.
Terric held his hand out to Shame.
You would have thought Shame was removing his own spine for the look on his face, but he finally dropped the keys in Terric’s hand.
The keys hit his palm, and Terric glanced down. I caught a glimpse of a man’s ring, gold and silver and glyphed, on Shame’s key chain. Terric’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. He looked up at Shame.
Okay, maybe I was wrong. Maybe there was more between them. Shame said he wasn’t gay, but that ring could mean something else. A brotherhood-of-magic or class-ring sort of thing.
Shame just gave him a steady stare. The kind of look that started bar fights.
“Okay,” Terric said softly, as if he was trying to regain his breath. He closed his hand over the keys. “Where are we going?”
They all looked at me.
“Seriously? How were you people going to track him down if I wasn’t here?”
“Through a process of elimination,” Zay said.
“Why doesn’t anyone in the Authority Hound?” I asked.
“Huh,” Terric said. “She’s right. Why is that?”
Shame just exhaled smoke.
Zay shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s probably a part of the history.”
“No,” Terric said. “There used to be Hounds. A couple of them. Remember? Theo and Kaida? Back when Mikhail was the head of the Authority. What happened to them?”
“I wasn’t involved,” Zay said, “Wasn’t old enough, or around then. Neither were you. Do you think you can Hound Greyson, Allie? If not him, Chase?”
“Chase ran down that road. I know that. But if she got in a car, and wasn’t casting magic, I won’t be able to find her.”
“Do you swamp-walk?” Terric asked.
Color me impressed. I didn’t think anyone in the Authority kept up on those kinds of things. Swamp-walking was pretty woo-woo, even for people who threw magic around on a daily basis.
“I can. Do any of you have something that belonged to her? Or that she’s recently touched?”
“How about a car?” Shame suggested.
Yes, I was full of smart tonight. “Yeah, I think that would work.”
I crossed the parking lot to Shame’s car and felt the gossamer caress of Zay’s Illusion sliding away from me. The night felt colder outside that spell, outside his touch.
I opened Shame’s car door again, but instead of casting spells for my senses, I simply knelt down and placed my fingers on the seat of the car. I could still smell too many scents, and still smell Shame’s blood and sweet cherries over them all. I wondered if they’d gotten into a magic fight before she knocked him out.
I pulled on the magic inside me and drew a glyph for finding, then concentrated on it, letting the magic pour through my fingertips and wash over the seat of the car. It picked up on the high emotions Chase had left behind, picked up on her energy—not on a particular spell like Hounding.
That was another problem with swamp-walking. The emotions any person left behind on any object were transitory at best. If the person was in a high-enough state of emotion, a good swamp walker could sense at least something of which way that person had gone before the emotions faded away.
Chase had very high emotions. The magic Ouija’ed my fingers east, and I got the faintest impression of green. Lots and lots of green. Like Forest Park.
“East,” I said. “Maybe Forest Park. Would she go there?”
Zay, who had been pacing behind me, started off toward his car. “We’ll find out.”
Chapter Thirteen
I jogged back across the lot to Zay’s car, glancing over my shoulder once. True to their word, Terric was driving, and Shame got in on the passenger’s side.
“Forest Park?” Zay said. “That’s a lot of ground to cover.”
“Get me there, and I’ll try to Hound her. Or him.” Once we were there I could use a Seek spell. Seek had a pretty limited range, so we’d need to be close for it to do us any good.
Zay put the car in gear and with Terric following, we made good time heading through the city, then up along Highway 30 to Forest Park. Ahead and to our right, the Gothic arches of St. Johns Bridge flashed with red and white lights, the broad cables scalloping the skyline. St. Johns lights were electric yellow and white, without fancy magical enhancements. Since St. Johns was off the magic grid, it looked like it belonged to an entirely different city from Portland.
Zay pulled off in a gravel lot in front of a spooky old brick building with a clock tower and enough peaks on the roof, it looked like it belonged to another century. The old Portland Gas and Coke had been abandoned for years.
“Here?” I asked. “We can’t get into the park from here.”
“Best to check again before we go in.” He paused, and the headlights from Shame’s car slid across his face.
“Don’t trust my swamp-walking abilities?”
“I don’t trust Chase.”
Right. I got out of the car. Still no rain, only clouds clotting the dark sky. I saw a spark of a star against the black, before the gray snuffed it out.
Terric killed the engine. He and Shame got out. Zay walked with me, though he gave me plenty of room.
I cleared my mind, something that always seemed a little easier when I was close to St. Johns. I didn’t know what it was about that part of town, but it always made me feel better.
I set a Disbursement, then drew the glyphs for Sight, Smell, and Taste. I drew magic out of my bones and blood and poured it into the glyphs.
The world came into hard focus, every color brighter, every shadow sharper.
I looked for magic. I looked for Chase. I looked for Greyson. And I looked for signs of blood and violence. Spells pulsed against the chain-link and barbed-wire fence that cut the forbidden building off from street access. In that building was something else. Something magical. I couldn’t tell what it was. But none of that magic, not the ward spells nor whatever magic lay crouched in that building, smelled, tasted, or looked anything like Greyson or Chase.
“Not here. Not them,” I said. “Something, though, but not them.” I walked along the road. Scented, maybe, just the slightest hint of vanilla and blood up ahead.
Crazy. This was no way to track someone. I could try Seek, but if they were in Forest Park, they’d be out of the spell’s range. I returned to Shame’s car.
“Shame, ride with Zay,” I said. “Terric, I’m going to swamp-walk, and you’re going to drive.”
And, wonder of wonders, all the men listened.
I let go of the sensory spells and got in the passenger’s side of the car. I closed my eyes and pressed my fingers down on the seat next to me, focusing on the emotional residue there to sense Chase. Got a flash of Shame, angry, and, strangely enough, hopeful. But there was still a hint of Chase’s emotions beneath that, her emotions vibrating even higher than Shame’s, high enough for me to follow.
“Okay, we’re going in the right direction. Right. Turn right.”
“Over the bridge?”
“If that’s a right.” It was hard to sense the subtle tugs of the swamp-walking in a moving car with quickly fading emotional energy.
I heard the sound of tires on the bridge. Just as Chase’s energy faded for good, I felt a tug to the north.
“Shit.” I opened my eyes. “That’s it. All I got was a slight shift north. Where are we?”
“St. Johns,” he said. “Does she have a place out here?”
“I have no idea.” I didn’t feel l
ike I had been much help at all. As a matter of fact, I might have just led us on a wild-goose chase. I needed something more. Something that was still connected to her. And the only thing I could think of was Zay.
“Stop the car, okay? I need to regroup.”
Terric found a grass and gravel stretch along the road, and Zay pulled up next to us.
I got out of the car and jogged over to Zay’s window. He rolled it down.
“Listen, I lost the trail. I need something else that Chase has touched, some other way to connect to her, and I have an idea.”
“What?”
“I want you to call her.”
Zay’s eyebrows rose. “Because?”
“I’m going to try to follow the connection.”
“Have you ever done that before?”
I wanted to say yes. Wanted to tell him I could track down people by cell phones in my sleep. “No.”
“Then we do it my way.”
“What—get out the search-and-rescue team?”
Zay ignored me. He pulled his cell out of his pocket. “You think she’s in this area?”
“This is as far as I could track her. She may not still be here. Does she have a house here? Family?”
“No, but this is the only place in Portland off the grid. It’s a good place to hide. Except she knows we know it’s a good place to hide.”
He pressed a button on his phone. I was pretty sure my phone didn’t have that button. Then he chanted, pulling the tiniest bit of magic up from five miles away, on the other side of the railroad track. And he did it like it wasn’t as hard as sucking water out of stone.
The glyphs encasing his phone rolled with silver light, then went dark.
“She’s not close,” he said.
And then his phone rang.
Zay frowned at the caller ID. “It’s Chase,” he said calmly.
“Chase,” he said.
He didn’t tip the phone so I could hear. He didn’t have to. I was a Hound. I had good ears.
“I knew they’d send you out to look for me,” she said.
“Where are you?”
“I’m safe. I know where Greyson is.”
“Are you with him? Are you hurt?”
“You don’t understand. You just believe everything they say. But it’s not true. Lies. It’s all lies. You’re on the wrong side, Zayvion. You can trust me on that. Don’t come looking for me.”
Zay’s lips pressed in a thin line. Chase sounded a little hysterical, and out of breath.
“Tell me where you are.” Zay traced a glyph in the air, drew a circle and line through it to cancel it, turned south, did the same thing, until he had drawn four spells, one at each compass point.
Chase’s voice changed, went down a little, trying for normalcy. “Don’t do it. Don’t look for me. Or him. You can’t . . . I don’t want you mixed up in this. Two of us is enough. This is war, Zayvion. War.”
The connection ended and Zay put the phone in his pocket.
“Anything?” Shame asked.
“She’s on the other side of the river. Vancouver,” Zay said.
So it had been a goose chase.
“Goddamn it,” Shame said. “Let’s go.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Can you sense her here?” Zay asked.
I shook my head. “I thought so. Nothing I’d swear on, though.”
“She’s good, Allie,” Zay said like I shouldn’t blame myself. “One of the best.”
That was what I was worried about. If she was good enough to get us out here, she’d be good enough to lead us to where she wanted us to be.
Shame stayed where he was in Zay’s car. Terric nodded to me, offering a ride again.
“We’re better than her, right?” I asked Zay.
“We are.” He hesitated. Nodded. That worried me, but I didn’t tell him so.
I got into Shame’s car next to Terric.
“How good is she, really?” I asked Terric once we were on the road and speeding to Vancouver.
“I haven’t worked with her for a couple years.” He was silent for a minute, navigating traffic. “She is very good. I’ve always thought Zayvion was better.”
“Is he?”
“He is if he doesn’t pull his punches.”
“Which means?”
Terric rubbed the side of his nose, then brushed his hair back, even though it was banded at the nape of his neck. Boy had a lot of nervous twitches. I wondered if he was always like this or if this kind of thing made him nervous.
Wondered if I should get my worry on too.
“What does that mean, Terric?”
“They used to be lovers.”
“And?”
He glanced at me, maybe glad I already knew that. “How easy do you think it would be to kill someone you’ve loved?”
A knot in the pit of my stomach clenched. Memories of Zayvion flashed through my mind, his smile, the easy sense of humor that he kept so carefully hidden under his dutiful exterior. His touch, the weight of him next to me, in me. Could I kill him if I had to? If he did something stupid like what Chase was doing?
“He doesn’t have to kill her,” I said a little doubtfully.
“Maybe not. But he might need to.” Terric shifted his grip on the steering wheel, and pushed his shoulders down as if settling an uncomfortable weight. “It is always possible when you’re a Closer.”
“To kill?”
His eyes were a darkness in the night. “To destroy the ones you love.”
Creepy. Sad. And so not what I wanted to deal with. “We’ll all be there. Enough of us to stop her and find Greyson, and what? Does the Authority have a jail?”
“There are . . . places. Out of the way. Guarded. Betraying the Authority doesn’t always end in your death. There are worse punishments.”
There he went with the creepy again.
“So that’s where they’ll take Greyson. And her?”
“That’s where I’d put them.”
We were on the other side of the river now. Ever since magic had been found and piped, Vancouver had become Portland’s darker sister. Maybe it was because there were so many wells in the area, or maybe it was just geographic luck, but somehow all the light seemed to shine on Portland, while Vancouver huddled in Portland’s slick, dusky shadow.
We were following Zay. He drove like he knew exactly where she would be. Terric and I didn’t say much. Zay took the exit right on the other side of the Interstate Bridge that dropped us immediately on the other side of the river.
Fort Vancouver spread out to our right, a collection of historic buildings in brick and clapboard, with barracks and winding neighborhood-like streets, huge oak trees, and fields surrounded by split-wood fences.
Zay stopped by the brick three-story buildings down in Officers Row. It was late. There were no lights on, no one out on the street. Zay killed the engine and got out of the car, striding, then bolting into a run, heading between two of the big brick houses. I couldn’t see where he was running, but I felt his heartbeat, kicking strong against my wrist. I felt his emotions, grim determination with the heady thrill of the hunt. Shame was out of the car too, not running.
He walked a short distance from the cars, turned on his heels, spinning so he faced the cars while he walked across the street. He had a lit cigarette, and held it in his mouth, the cherry glow of it marking his place in the shadows.
He motioned with one hand for us to get out of the car.
“This is it,” Terric said. “Ready?”
“Always.”
He didn’t give me flak, just got out, paused as if scenting the air, then headed to the left of where Zayvion had gone, breaking into a jog.
Shame waited until I was next to him. He hitched his hands forward, which drew the sleeves of his jacket off his wrists, and flicked an Illusion over the two cars so that they faded from casual observation.
He grunted, and swayed, his heartbeat under my wrist missing a beat, then pound
ing hard to make it up. I reached over and caught his elbow. He was shaking.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He pulled the cig out of his mouth. The cherry trembled and jumped as he tried to push his hair out of his eyes. “Just. Fucking tired. I’m okay.”
And that was when I smelled the pain on him, and the blood.
“Bullshit. She hurt you, didn’t she? Where? How?”
He gave me a considering look, noticed I was fuming mad. He exhaled. “My gut. I’m fine.”
I gripped his elbow tighter and dragged him back to his car. “No, you’re not.”
“What part of the language don’t you understand, Beckstrom?”
The very fact that I could actually force him to walk with me told me just how badly he was hurt.
“You need a doctor?”
“No.”
“Stitches?”
“No.”
We passed through the Illusion he had cast, the slippery green scent of aloe filling my nostrils and throat. I opened the front door of Zay’s car. “Get in.”
“For Christ’s sake,” he started.
“Duck.” I pushed on his shoulder at the same time I shoved him into the car.
He gave in, or more correctly, his knees gave in, and he folded down into the seat. Groaned.
“Let me see.”
He turned his pale face in my direction. “I’ll call my mum. Honest.” He pulled out his cell phone and flipped it open. “You go make sure Z. and . . . Make sure Zay’s okay.”
He looked sick, greenish even in the low light. Casting that spell must have exacerbated his wound.
“How badly are you bleeding? Don’t bullshit me, Shame.”
“She stabbed me once. With a knife. I remember that.” Dead serious. What did you know? The man could tell the truth without going up in flame. “The bleeding isn’t too bad. She planted a Blood glyph and when I cast that spell, it started bleeding. It’s not enough to kill me—you can trust me on that, Beckstrom. But she is seriously fucking up my fun.”
“Show me.”
He scowled. Gave in. Lifted his jacket. Even in the low light, I could see the glyph of Blood magic spread out across the width of his flat stomach, just catching on his hip bone. It bled—not badly—from one edge, probably the entry of the wound. The rest of the glyph snaked out under his skin, like deep red ropes. Blood magic was strange stuff. The glyph formed itself to the caster’s will like a time-release capsule after the incision was made.