The interior of the bar was also a puzzle, because it looked to be about three times larger than the outside. The windows, which should’ve provided a view of the street in front of the building, only served to heighten the confusion. Even though the glass was clear, nothing but white, diffuse light poured in from outside.
This led a lot of people to believe that the space outside The Gray Cloak wasn’t the same space occupied by the rest of Weatherford, Connecticut. What exactly this other space was, no one knew for sure. And they probably never would.
Donnelly wasn’t the kind of man who shared his secrets.
Two and a half days after the disastrous fight at the Episcopal church, Saul Reiz hopped through the squares in the correct order, and the back door to The Gray Cloak creaked open in greeting. The midday light of a windy autumn day gave way to the smoky dimness of the bar, and as the door shut itself behind him, Saul felt more at ease than he had since the morning that troll under the Karthen Street Bridge punched him in the jaw.
Unlike everything else happening in Saul’s life right now, The Gray Cloak felt familiar and safe. He’d been coming here at least once a week since he moved to Weatherford, and now it was the only aspect of his life that the hand of fate hadn’t beaten with a wrench.
Saul took his usual seat at the bar and waited for the bartender to finish chatting with a man whose long white braided beard moved as if it had a life of its own. While he waited, Saul tried to find something to keep his mind off the shitstorm brewing back at the Castle. But all his brain managed to scrounge up were the conflicting feelings that had plagued him ever since Roland told him his whole life was a lie.
It was a bitter pill to swallow.
Everyone in the preternatural community who’d ever taken a look at Saul’s medical and spiritual records, from Laura to Momo to all manner of “experts” in the field of revenance, had agreed that Saul had simply whacked his head so hard during the accident that his brain had been unable to properly process his revenant memories. And that condition, they’d told him, was unlikely to ever change.
Saul had taken that determination to heart. Everybody had labeled him broken, so he’d done the same. He’d spent a decade of his life thinking he was a defective piece of junk…and all these years, he’d just been incomplete. The memories he was missing had been inside Tanner’s head the whole time, waiting for a traumatic event to break the ice and send them floating to the surface.
Not only was Saul absolutely furious that the PTAD brass, and many of his own colleagues, had spent years shitting on him for no good reason, but now a tide of anxiety kept ebbing and flowing through his gut. Anxiety about how the brass would respond to Tanner in the long run.
Roland had good intentions, Saul knew. The man was a hardass, but he wasn’t cruel, and he definitely wasn’t planning on ripping Tanner away from his mundane life as a professor.
But the suits in DC were another matter. If they came to believe that the best strategy for combatting the Terrible Trio involved Tanner and Saul working together to thwart the trio’s plans, they might decide to tug whatever strings were necessary to thrust Tanner into the preternatural world full time. Even if that meant ruining all the hard work Tanner had put into his career.
I can’t let that happen to him, Saul thought. Tanner deserves more than a life under the government’s thumb.
“Heard you burned down a church,” said a voice like wind chimes. “You upset that you offended God, or are you just down in the dumps because the bad guys got away?”
Saul looked up, greeting Miranda with a strained smirk. “The latter. I’m already plotting my revenge.”
“I’m sure.” Miranda grabbed a shot glass from the shelf behind her, along with a bottle of vodka, and placed both in front of Saul. “But seriously, you look like you’ve been through hell.”
“Even men with my chiseled good looks have a bad day every now and again.” He poured himself a shot, raised the glass with a flourish, and knocked back the vodka. It burned all the way down. Just the way he liked it.
“Going to be one of those days, huh?” Miranda leaned forward, dropping her elbows onto the bar top and showcasing her bare arms. At first glance, the sleeve tattoos on each of her arms appeared to be copies of various sections of Michelangelo’s work in the Sistine Chapel. The same pale-blue sky. The same fluffy white clouds. The same scantily clad bodies.
But upon closer inspection, it became apparent that the work wasn’t all that similar. There were things in the sky that you could only see out of the corner of your eye. Things that peeked around the clouds when they thought you weren’t looking. And the characters weren’t human, not a single one. They all possessed facial features a bit too sharp, builds a bit too slim, and ears a bit too pointy—much like Miranda Dumont herself. The telltale traits of that haughty race known as elves.
Saul had found those tattoos kind of creepy, once upon a time. But as he’d long learned, that was elf magic for you.
Gulping down a second shot, Saul placed the glass back on the bar top and went about pouring a third. “Given how my weekend has gone so far, you’ll be lucky if I don’t end up passed out on the bathroom floor in a puddle of my own vomit.”
Miranda pursed her lips. “I’ll cut you off and kick you out way before you get to that point. Don’t test me.”
Saul swirled the clear liquid in his glass. “Kick me out, or drag me upstairs?”
The corner of her lips twitched. “That depends on you. The drunker you are, the less I want to fuck you. Shitfaced is not a good look for you. Your eyes droop unevenly, and you talk like a moron.”
“Some people claim I always talk like a moron.” He downed the third shot and set the glass upside down, indicating he was finished. “There. Not drunk at all.”
“Ha.” She pointed at the bandages peeking out around his sleeves and shirt collar. “You sure you’re up for my kind of action? Because you look a little sore already.”
“No worries.” Saul mimicked her pose, leaning so close their noses brushed. “I know how to take a beating.”
Neither of them moved for a long moment, staring into each other’s eyes, warm hazel against a cobalt blue a touch more vibrant than any human hue. They had played this game many a time, the banter, the challenge, the push and the pull.
Early on, when Saul was new to the city and unfamiliar with the elves, he’d chickened out of Miranda’s invitation more than once. He’d been afraid to go upstairs, farther from the door, farther from the Earth, deeper into the nonhuman domain on whose border The Gray Cloak lay.
But Saul Reiz no longer feared the elves, or any other creature that rode the edge of reality. The only thing he truly needed to fear, he had realized long ago, was his inability to protect the things he loved.
“One day, that stubborn ass of yours is going to get you into serious trouble,” Miranda said, and let out a sharp whistle.
“That day has come and gone,” Saul replied.
From a slim door behind the bar that hadn’t always been there emerged another tattooed elf, this one male, whose features and colors were a close match for Miranda’s. “What do you need, sis?” asked Michael Dumont as he dried off a mug with a white rag.
“Got some time to spare?” Miranda gestured to Saul. “I need to go upstairs.”
Michael rolled his eyes. “You pamper that one too much. But lucky for you, I’m not busy at the moment, so I’ll let it go for now.”
Miranda flicked the side of his head. “You’ll let it go always, because Donnelly likes him too.”
“Donnelly likes anyone with a big mouth.”
“And mine’s the biggest,” Saul cut in, “because I spill Uncle Sam’s secrets.”
“Exactly.” Michael tossed the dried mug back through the open door. It didn’t sound as if it hit the floor, or anything at all.
“I’ll be back down when the winds change.” Miranda took Saul’s hand and coaxed him to follow her toward the narrow, winding staircase that
led up to somewhere whose name and location Saul still did not know. “Let me know if it rains while I’m gone.”
Later, when Saul was a quivering wreck of a man with rope burns on his wrists and dried blood on his lips, he spoke through the hoarseness produced by his moans and told Miranda everything. She lay beside him on the plush silk sheets and listened intently, the tattoos that traversed her nude body writhing and calming in time with the most harrowing parts of the terrible tale.
Not once did she judge him, not with a laugh or a grin or a shake of her head. She quietly absorbed his words, soothed his pain with a stroke on his chin or a gentle pat on his cheek, and turned the complex gears inside her nonhuman mind.
When he finished, she said, “This sounds like a matter that’ll impact us all. I’ll spread the word among my people. Someone will tease out the truth.”
“And you’ll tell me that truth?” he asked.
“Of course.” She pecked his cheek. “I’m a strong believer in equivalent exchange. Truth for truth. Lie for lie. You tell me about your day. I tell you about mine. You don’t tell anyone the Cloak exists. I don’t tell anyone you’re a regular customer.”
The PTAD would ring Saul’s neck if they knew he possessed, and often used, an open invitation to an elf den. Because elves traded in information the way humans traded in money, and you paid for whatever they provided you, whether it was a hard drink or soft comfort, in the secrets that you kept close to your chest.
The FBI didn’t like it when people spilled their secrets to outsiders, and in most cases, Saul toed the line on that particular policy. But when it came to the painful secrets, the ones that made it hurt to breathe, Saul had found he needed an outlet. And that outlet could not be the PTAD itself.
They had therapists on staff—they had many—and every last one wrote everything down in a file that anyone with the right clearance could read. An agent’s entire psych profile, laid bare for the suits to see and use however they pleased. To hire. To fire. To butcher. To bury.
The secrets you gave to the FBI would become the fuel they used to burn you at the stake if and when you made the kind of misstep that the bureaucracy couldn’t bear. Their tolerance only stretched so far, and Saul had already brushed that limit when he struck down Abigail Richter and proved himself a mediocre substitute.
The elves dealt with secrets more delicately, and in Saul’s experience, used them for far less nefarious purposes.
Yawning, Miranda said, “Come back Friday night. Whatever I’ve learned, I’ll pass to you. And I’ll keep an ear turned to the matter until it’s resolved.”
“Thanks.”
She flipped her long dark hair over her shoulder. “No need for thanks. You paid for the info with your own. As for my time”—she cupped his chin and kissed his bloody lips—“it was time well spent. And it was all relative anyway.”
With that, she flicked off the bedside lamp and plunged the room into darkness.
Saul fell asleep immediately, as he always did.
When he woke some indeterminate number of hours later, the light was back on and Miranda was gone. A towel, a washcloth, and a bar of soap had been laid out on the nightstand. Tossing the covers aside, Saul hefted his pleasantly sore body out of bed, grabbed the toiletries, and limped over to the small bathroom.
The water in the shower was always the temperature that he wanted that day, no matter which way he turned the knob. Today, it was close to ice cold. It beat down on his shoulders and ran along his scarred skin, washing away the remnants of rough sex along with the weight of his sins.
Though the grime wouldn’t return, the weight would eventually. And Saul would come back here, as he always did when he needed an outlet for his stress other than violent rage.
After he was satisfied that he was clean, and he could no longer feel his fingers and toes, he shut off the water, toweled himself dry, and dressed in the clothes he’d worn earlier. Which, as usual, had mysteriously appeared on the sink counter, washed, dried, and pressed, while he’d been in the shower.
As Saul shoved his feet into the boots he’d left near the bedroom door, he considered how to approach the one remaining burden he needed to lift today: a conversation with Tanner, about a variety of impressively difficult topics.
Their twelve-year estrangement, and the awkward emotional ravine it had left between them. Their split soul, and how that would affect their lives, and their deaths. Their futures, which were now irrevocably intertwined, since the Terrible Trio knew they were both living in Weatherford.
Saul had already bumbled his way through several distressing conversations over the past couple days. He didn’t want to screw this one up as much as he’d mangled some of those. This was his twin, whom he had abandoned because he was too weak to handle the repercussions of gaining the Sight, too cowardly to admit a truth about the world that his brother could not physically observe, too shortsighted to even entertain the idea that his brother might one day gain that ability.
It had been selfish, his decision to run away. And that selfishness had set off a chain of events that had ultimately dragged Tanner into what fate itself had proclaimed would soon become a nightmare of epic proportions.
One step at a time, he told himself. Just take everything one step at a time.
The first step was leaving his safe haven and reemerging into the real world, where enemies lurked around every corner and every choice he made mattered more than he was comfortable with. He came to stand before the bedroom door, slowly breathed in and out, and turned the handle. The door swung out into a dim hall, and Saul forced his legs to carry him past the threshold.
As he did every time, he tried to look to the right, farther down the hall. But his head refused to turn, his eyes wouldn’t budge, and all he could see in his peripheral vision was a featureless blur.
Humans weren’t permitted to travel very deeply into any elf den. The powerful spells running through the foundation of The Gray Cloak wouldn’t allow Saul to move past the second room on the hall, where he and Miranda had their sessions. They wouldn’t even let him glimpse what lay more than a hop and a skip beyond the edge of the Earth.
But Saul always tried to observe the truth of their world regardless. If only to stoke a vain hope that one day he’d bear witness to a world that was better than his own.
Clicking his tongue in self-reproach—sometimes he entertained the most ridiculous ideas—he turned left and plodded down the stairs, emerging into the bar. Michael was still on duty and gave Saul a wave of goodbye in between sliding mugs of beer down the line to waiting patrons, some of them human and some of them decidedly not.
Saul returned the wave and glanced at the space on the wall where there was sometimes a door. It didn’t appear, and neither did Miranda, which Saul took to mean she’d already set off for…wherever the bulk of elf society lived.
By the end of the day, the news about the Terrible Trio would have spread to all the other elf dens in the world, and the elves who lived split lives between Earth and Not-Earth would be on the lookout for these dangerous new players in the preternatural game.
Saul made a bet with himself that the elves would pin down the trio long before the PTAD. The preternatural community liked the elves a lot more than they did any agency of the human governments.
While Saul enjoyed working for the PTAD well enough—it gave him the ability to take down dirtbags like Muntz without ending up behind bars himself—sometimes, the shadow of the federal umbrella felt more like a Sword of Damocles than a sweet relief from the rain.
Outside, Saul retraced the steps he’d taken to reach The Gray Cloak’s back lot. As he stepped out of a narrow alley, he found the sidewalks and roadway alike congested with dense traffic. He glanced up at the sky, which was only a slightly darker shade of blue than it was when he’d entered the bar.
Pressing himself flush against the bar’s front wall, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and held the button on the side to switch it on. The lock scr
een popped up, revealing a clock that claimed Saul had been inside The Gray Cloak for an hour. It was just north of five o’clock.
Saul hummed softly. Most of the time, only half an hour passed in the outside world while he was in the Cloak. He must’ve slept longer than usual.
Sticking his phone back into his pocket, he set off at a quick pace, merging into the rush-hour crowd.
At the end of the street was a bus stop. In five minutes, a blue-line bus would arrive there. Saul would get on that bus and ride it around for half an hour, until it spit him out on the corner of Sumner and Applegate in one of Weatherford’s trendier neighborhoods.
From that corner, he would walk five blocks to a nicely refurbished apartment building, take the stairs to the fourth floor of that building, and knock on the door of Apartment 408. Tanner would answer that door and invite Saul inside.
Then the Reiz brothers would do what they hadn’t done in twelve long years: sit down together and share the deepest secrets in their hearts.
Chapter Forty-Two
Tanner
Marlene Witherspoon was buried on a blustery September Monday in a small Catholic cemetery on the outskirts of Boston. The turnout was tremendous.
Marlene’s parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, and cousins were all in attendance. An extended family of more than thirty people dressed in drab black dabbed their eyes and commiserated over the loss of a bright and shining young member of their family.
All of Marlene’s friends from high school, the one she’d just graduated from in May, came as well. They hugged the family members and each other, devastated that the last summer before they all went their separate ways had been dealt such a tragic coda.
Students and staff from Weatherford College were there also, even though they’d only known Marlene for a matter of days. She had made such an impression on her teachers and classmates that they refused to let her go without a formal goodbye, and they wanted her family to know just how beloved she was everywhere she went.
A Knight of Cold Graves (The Revenant Reign Book 1) Page 39