A few drops of rain came tumbling out of the soap-white sky, beading on the impermeable surface of Yael’s windbreaker, and on the olive skin of her nose and brow. The streets weren’t crowded, but we got curious and uncomfortable glances from the other pedestrians. Dunwich leapt down from the wall, to take a position between us.
“Do we understand each other?”
Fearless hazel eyes met my empty gaze. I do not remember who was first to look away.
“Sure.” I gave her a big, dumb smile, and extended my left hand. “Truce?”
She looked at my hand as if it were something of which she had heard, but had no personal familiarity. Her grip firm through her cat-patterned mittens.
“For as long as it lasts, Mr. Tauschen.”
“Preston.”
“Of course.” She might have smiled. “Whatever you say.”
***
We returned to the Estates briefly. I left Yael chatting with Holly while I went up to consult with the closest thing we had to an oracle at the Kadath Estates – my upstairs neighbor, Josh, who does some interesting things with data modeling and has a frightening attitude toward privacy. Like Professor Dawes, he was a ghoul. Unlike the Professor, pretty much nobody liked him, which why was Yael skipped the visit.
I had to pound on his door for a while before he finally opened up.
“Preston.” My name came off his blue lips all filthy. “What do you want?”
I pushed past him into his apartment, and immediately regretted that action.
Ghouls don’t need to breathe. The Professor is quite fastidious, when it comes to hygiene, but Josh is of the opposite mindset. His home smelled of mildew and body odor and rotting meat, comingled. I wanted to retch as soon as I stepped inside. He must have seen it on my face, and judging from the amusement on his ghastly pale face, Josh found it amusing.
“I need to find someone with no fixed address,” I said, forcing myself to choke down the thick air. “No family, no job, no ID.”
“Oh. Well, that should be easy, then.” Josh retreated to his repugnant kitchen, to avail himself of one of the prescription bottles stacked there. “Do I look like a miracle worker, Preston?”
“Not even close. I don’t need you to find her, Josh. I just need to know where I should be looking.”
“Her?” His jaundiced eyes widened as he dry-swallowed a handful of blue pills. “Oh, shit! I know who you’re talking about, now. That’s bad trouble, Preston – and you’ve been warned.”
“Yeah, I know. I also know that somebody hurt Sumire. Someone who hates all of us, here at the Estates.”
I let him do the heavy lifting from there, trying not to inhale too deeply. The windows were plastered with newsprint, giving the dim light inside a yellow hue. There was too much furniture in the living room, all of it mummified in plastic and then covered in stacks of papers and old technical manuals. A large colony of flies had taken residence, and buzzed about the room happily. The sink was full of black water, from which dirty dishes protruded like rocks from the ocean. Two enormous monitors sat side by side on a desk shoved in one corner, dormant and immaculate, in total contrast to the rest of the room.
“You think she…?”
I nodded.
“Could be. Worth checking.”
He hesitated, scratching his stubbly chin and watching me with glassy eyes.
“It’s for Sumire, man,” I reminded him gently. “Come on.”
Josh nodded slowly. Sumire has that sort of effect on people, even carrion-eating shut-ins.
“I won’t be able to give you an address, because she moves around. I don’t even know all of the places to look. But I can give you a list,” he explained, sitting down at the desk. “It’ll give you a place to start.”
“That’s all I need,” I said gratefully. “Thanks, Josh.”
Five more minutes of holding my breath and I was back out into the afternoon, which had warmed somewhat. The air tasted sweet and my eyes watered. Lovecraft passed me on the stairs, making his way slowly up to the garden on arthritic legs. I paused long enough to scratch the peak of his back, and then hurried down to the courtyard.
Yael joined me at the silver gate, with a nod. Holly had disappeared.
“Did you get what you needed?”
“Maybe,” I said. “With any luck. We’ll start with the river, first.”
The Skai is the most obvious casualty of the Nameless City’s lassie-faire attitude toward urban planning and industrial regulation. It wasn’t so much a river as a semi-mobile collection of refuse.
Holly claimed that the river had once been of significance, before it was confined to a concrete channel and burdened with the effluence of the city. The Skai typically carried enough water to soak me perhaps to the knee at its deepest point – not that anyone would have wanted to touch the frigid, discolored water, bordered by a thin scum of discolored ice. Engorged by rain, there was enough water in the channel to drown in, beneath the garbage. There are no birds in the Nameless City, but if there were, it was hard to imagine them making use of the river.
Yael bestowed nearly two hours of silence upon me, and I made good use of it, leading us on a grand tour of Sarnath’s outbuildings and abandonments, the various decrepit hotels and bars that the underclass of the city frequented, alongside the underpaid laborers of the ubiquitous factories. The afternoon warmed a degree or two, while the rain was intermittent. Weeks of precipitation emptied out the various homeless encampments and outdoor campsites, so we focused on the squats scattered throughout the vast industrial district. We made it part way through the list I got from Josh by noon, but Yael looked as exhausted as I felt.
I glanced around at the streets around us, and experienced a providential recall.
“Hey, Yael. Are you hungry?”
She had to think it over, though hours of walking left me ravenous. I wondered what sort of diet Yael followed, and why she bothered. She was already too skinny.
“Maybe a little.”
I was not that easily thwarted.
“Good enough. Come this way.”
She tagged along behind me, the silvery hood of her windbreaker up to ward off the rain. Not far from the canal that marked the beginning of Yian, in Sarnath’s relatively quiet fringe, we turned off the main drag onto an unmarked narrow street. It was an older area, filled with squat stone buildings; restaurants or bars on the lower floors, and shady apartments above. The streets were closed to vehicles and filthy with pedestrians, mainly workers from the nearby factories and the tanning yards, forced to brave the rain. They were a grumpy and harried lot, blackened with soot or covered in fine metallic dust and powdered lead, wrapped in layers of stale wool and poorly-cured leather. The public nature of their appreciation for Yael unnerved her to the point that she practically stepped on my heels, subjected to lingering glances and shouted invitations I found wholly unmerited.
Yael took it badly. I left her to it.
The restaurant I remembered was two blocks away. I glanced back to check on her as we approached the newspaper-covered windows and dead neon sign, to find Yael with her gas mask pulled over her head and hands buried in her pockets.
No one seemed to find this unusual. Her admirers had largely disappeared.
“Nice neighborhood,” she remarked, her voice slightly tinny from inside the mask. “I can’t wait to try the food.”
I held the door for her.
“Don’t worry. It’s actually really good.”
The little anteroom contained only Yael, myself, and an ominously tentacled altar, and was too small for it.
“Huh.” Yael sounded dubious. “Do you come here often?”
A thick veneer of grease discolored the wallpaper. Along the hallway at roughly eye level were a series of frames; behind several were photographs, mainly antiquated portraits, while the remainder held yellowing newspaper clippings, in a language that was frustratingly reminiscent of Mandarin. All appeared to have been undisturbed for years.
<
br /> “Just once.”
The wizened owner peaked his grey head through the beaded curtain at the end of the hallway, and I held up two fingers. He hesitated just long enough for me to suspect that his milky right eye was artificial before nodding and disappearing.
“That’s a ringing endorsement.”
“It was a complicated day. I guess I just forgot. I really did like it, though.”
“Hmm. I’m a vegetarian, you know. Do you think they’ll have something for me?”
“I think so,” I said, following the owner as he motioned for us and held the bead curtain open. “It’s funny you should say that.”
I followed the owner around the dimly lit dining room, past several occupied booths and tables of very subdued drinkers, many sporting matching tattoos on their necks and the backs of their hands. In one booth, I caught a glimpse of a ginger tabby eating from a silver dish, across from a prim, elderly woman clutching a bulb of white wine. The bulk and voluminous robes of the sailors who arrived via the black sailed ships in the harbor filed the adjoining booth, veils discretely adjusted to allow for lunch. Their table was crowded with beer cans and the stripped, fine skeletons of fish, an incense brazier suspended overhead disguising their odor for the benefit of the other patrons.
“Why is that funny?”
The owner led us to a booth adjacent to the sunken dining area fronting the bar, gestured at the empty table, tossed menus and a handful of silverware on it, and then hurried away.
“It’s nothing,” I explained, shrugging my jacket off my shoulders. “The last time I was here, I had this conversation...”
“Preston, you asshole!”
The voice came from behind me, from the direction of the bar. My skin went cold and clammy at the sound. I spun around and got my hands up fast, where I could use them.
“Hey! Just who I was looking for...”
“What’s up, Preston?” She sneered at me, glassy eyes and a trickle of bright red blood from her left nostril, matching her hooded sweatshirt. Dirty blond hair and heavily patched jeans, a curled lip that revealed sharp teeth. She brushed past me, smelling like bug spray and chewing gum. “Haven’t seen you in a while. Thought you’d learned your lesson. Who’s the new...?”
Jenny froze in place, her expression comically horrified.
Yael paused in the act of hanging her windbreaker beside her mask on a convenient peg on the side of the booth. At the sight of Jenny, she dropped her jacket and made a surprised noise in the back of her throat.
Jenny shivered and clenched her fists.
“Motherfucker.”
Jenny’s voice rang out like breaking glass in the middle of the night. I had the good sense to retreat, but the execution was a little late.
There were three steps between us, and Jenny crossed them in a skipping bound, snarling and red-faced. My hands settled uselessly on her bony shoulders, trying to keep her at a distance. I saw the flash before I felt the shock, a searing point of heat below my sternum that radiated out as if it were in my blood; convulsive pain sent me stumbling, clinging to the greasy wall with an outstretched arm. I moaned inarticulately, drool leaking from the corners of my mouth. My limbs tangled and the world spun off-axis.
“I should have killed you!”
Jenny face was close to mine, her face contorted with anger, her proximity weirdly intimate. I panted and fought nausea. The shock prod she used on me was in her left hand, a green LED indicating readiness.
I missed the knife in her other hand until it was already dyed Kool-Aid red.
Flaring pain from the left of my belly button. I grabbed her wrist clumsily while the knife bounced off my belt and sunk in just inside my right hip, sending an icy jolt of pain down my leg. I hollered and shoved her away, almost falling over in the process.
“You fucking bastard!”
I held out one arm to keep Jenny at a distance, and she grabbed me by the wrist and then jabbed her knife into my exposed forearm. I yelped with pain as she pulled the knife back out, dropping to my knees and clutching my arm. From the elbow down, everything was numb, but I felt a great deal of pain in my shoulder, for whatever reason.
“Jenny...”
“Asshole!” Jenny roared, lunging for my eyes. I just managed to catch her wrist with my good arm. I wrenched her arm to the side, forcing her to drop the blade, but she stepped through, delivering a tremendous kick to my ribs that knocked the wind out of me. “You’re fucking sick!”
The cattle prod flashed again, the sharp crack of the discharge ringing in my ears, and I collapsed to the floor in a jumble of non-functional limbs, my nervous system pulsing madly with pain, while Jenny scrambled for the knife on the floor nearby.
“Jenny Frost! Stop this instant!”
Yael shouted the command, punctuating it with a stomp of her rain boot. We all froze in the face of her unexpected anger. The expression on Jenny’s face was one of pure panic, while the elderly owner looked mildly amused.
Jenny made the knife disappear into the sleeve of her hoodie with a quick gesture. It was the best magic trick I had ever seen.
“Princess?”
Jenny’s tone was hesitant and wondering, at odds with...everything I knew about Jenny Frost. Even in the midst of agony, I was befuddled and captivated.
“No way.” Yael folded her arms across her chest and glared furiously. “You don’t get to call me that.”
Jenny walked slowly toward Yael with the clumsy, distracted gate of a dreamer.
“I don’t?”
Her voice was muddy, she sounded bemused.
“No, you don’t,” Yael confirmed sternly. “I haven’t seen you in almost two years.”
A sympathetic waiter helped me into a nearby chair, and then prevented from falling out of it.
“Aha.” Jenny hesitated. “I – uh – didn’t want you around for some of the stuff I had to do, Princess.”
“I would have helped you, if you asked.”
“You would have tried to help. That’s the problem.” Jenny shook her head, and then seized Yael by the shoulders. “That’s beside the point! What are you doing with this asshole?”
Jenny pointed an accusatory finger in my direction.
“Language! Do you mean Preston?” Yael blinked several times, shook her head uncertainly. Apparently, the implications had not filtered down to her, yet. “He’s my neighbor.”
Jenny’s eyes narrowed.
“You’re living at the Estates?”
“Yes.”
“Preston is just your neighbor? Why are you getting lunch with him?”
At this point, Jenny and Yael were standing toe to toe, like two boxers waiting for the bell. From my precarious seat in the chair in the corner, I bled and anticipated further violence.
“We are working on a thing.” Yael pushed Jenny away, biting her lip in anger. “Why does it matter?”
“Working on a thing? Working on what, Princess?”
“Don’t call me that!”
Jenny and Yael stood nearly forehead to forehead. Despite their proximity, they continued to scream at each other. Yael’s sudden lack of composure stunned me. That and the residual effects of Jenny’s cattle prod, I suppose.
“Working on what?”
“Sumire was…attacked.” Yael nodded, as if to confirm her own story. “We are investigating.”
Jenny glancing at me hesitantly, as if my face would give anything away. The waiter returned with a damp cloth for my face and a glass of water that I had no plans to drink, and I gave him a grateful nod. The remainder of the diners watched with polite interest while finishing lunch, not at all put off by the earlier violence, the staff working casually around Jenny and Yael’s confrontation.
“For real?” The anger in Jenny’s voice was losing a slow battle against uncertainty. “He didn’t...uh...try anything, did he?”
“What? No!” Yael shook her head. “I can take care of myself, Jenny.”
“Doubt it,” Jenny muttered, with a
wry grin. “You have terrible taste in enemies.”
“That must not worry you very much. Considering I haven’t seen you in two years.” Yael’s stern façade cracked briefly, exposing hurt and worry beneath. “I looked for you, you know. For months.”
To my utter surprise, Jenny bashfully shoved her hands in her pockets and scuffed her damp sneakers against the floor, a little dance of chagrin and contrition.
“Nothing for it, Princess. Didn’t want to drag you into my sh...stuff. I had to do some things you wouldn’t have liked much.”
“I would have helped you with anything.” Yael sniffled. “You abandoned me! I thought you hated me!”
“No way,” Jenny said, with an urgent shake of her head. “No, I…I was gonna come back, okay? I knew you were gonna be fine. Holly Diem may be a witch, but she’s a reliable witch. I knew she’d look after you, and then I heard you got into Carter…”
“You could’ve called!” Yael wailed, giving Jenny a little push. Instead of cutting her hands off, Jenny grimaced and mumbled something conciliatory. “You could have at least let me know that you were okay! You could have been dead!”
Jenny tried to pat Yael on the shoulder, and was rebuffed aggressively. When I called Yael Kaufman formidable, that was clearly an underestimation on my part.
“You would’ve come after me. The things I had to do,” Jenny hesitated, and maybe even snuck a look in my direction, “I couldn’t involve you, Princess.”
“Stop calling me that!” Yael roared, pushing Jenny again. “Why would you just go away and not say anything? How could you?”
Jenny took hold of Yael’s shoulders, steadying her as much as restraining her from further ineffectual violence.
“How could you?” Yael buried her face in Jenny’s sweatshirt, wrapping her arms tightly around her. “I was worried! Worried sick!”
Yael’s voice was muffled, her face wedged into the hollow of Jenny’ shoulder. Jenny’s expression reflected a complex mix of emotions – embarrassment, humorous indulgence, and satisfaction. She petted Yael’s head firmly, as if she were a good dog.
“Didn’t mean to worry you, Princess,” Jenny said, running a hand through Yael’s hair and giving me a possessive, threatening look. “I didn’t think…”
The Mysteries of Holly Diem (Unknown Kadath Estates Book 2) Page 8