Midnight Blue-Light Special i-2

by Seanan McGuire

  The mice were waiting in the hall when I opened the bedroom door. They cheered as I emerged, a cry of “CHEESE AND CAKE!” rising from the throng.

  I smiled a little. No matter how bad things look, life goes on. “I have to go out for a little while,” I said. “Let’s get your communion set up.”

  Praise and exultations followed me into the kitchen. That was nice. I had the distinct feeling that no one else was going to be singing my praises any time soon. It was time to go.

  Eight

  “Don’t be careful. Be courageous. Don’t be safe. Be strong. Don’t be a victim. Be the one who makes it home.”

  —Evelyn Baker

  The rooftop of the old Department of Docks on Pier A in Manhattan

  THE ROOFTOP OF THE OLD Department of Docks building was slanted—something uncommon enough in Manhattan to be deeply disconcerting, especially when I was trying to stay out of sight. The angle of the roof was sharp enough that I couldn’t lie flat, but shallow enough that I couldn’t use it for cover. “Avoid really obvious cover” was one of the rules I’d been raised with, entry number eight hundred and thirteen in the Gospel of Staying Alive. I sent up a silent apology to my entire family tree as I disregarded their advice and slunk into the shadow of the building’s decorative clock tower. It was a short, mostly useless piece of masonry. It was sufficient for my current needs.

  Once I was safely out of view, I settled into a crouch, and prepared myself to wait.

  There’s a certain meditative mindset that goes with long periods of actively doing nothing. That isn’t the contradiction that it sounds like. Anyone can passively do nothing, staring off into space or at the latest mindless sitcom eating up the hours on their TV. Actively doing nothing means holding perfectly still while paying attention to everything around you. It’s a skill cultivated by hunters, soldiers, and biologists hoping to get a glimpse of something no one’s ever seen before. My training makes me sort of a combination of all three, and I’ve had time to get very, very good at not moving.

  I didn’t move as the sun slid slowly across the sky, counting down toward the point when Dominic’s superiors were scheduled to arrive. I didn’t move when I saw Dominic himself come walking down the pier. He was wearing that stupid leather duster that he had on the night we met. I was too far away to see his face. I didn’t need to. His shoulders were locked, and he was walking with the slow, borderline-resentful steps of a man on the way to his own execution.

  He stopped at the edge of the pier, hands in the pockets of his duster, and looked out over the water. Then he froze, going as still as I was. I held my position, and the two of us waited, together and apart at the same time.

  The Hudson River isn’t the sort of thing you mess around with. I’m not sure what I was expecting to see come sailing up to the pier. I certainly wasn’t expecting the taxi that drove up behind Dominic and stopped, disgorging three black-clad figures onto the sidewalk. Each of them had a satchel. The driver emerged long enough to help them remove two suitcases from the trunk. Then the tallest of the figures handed him a stack of bills, and he climbed back into the cab and was gone, leaving Dominic and the trio behind.

  Dominic still didn’t turn. The shortest of the three—a woman, with long brown hair pulled into a ponytail—stepped up to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. There was a pause while none of them moved; the brunette was probably speaking. Dominic nodded once, not turning. One of the others raised his hand to shoulder-height in a gesture that looked like a benediction or a summons, or possibly both. Dominic nodded again.

  This time he turned to face the three, and bowed to them deeply. The brunette woman bowed back, as did the shorter of the two men. The taller man simply stood there with his hand raised, watching. It should have looked ridiculous, an old-fashioned dumb show being carried out in front of a semi-abandoned pier, with a pile of luggage just begging to be stolen. Instead, it was positively chilling. These were Covenant agents. Three of them, in my city. Dominic didn’t count. He hadn’t been Covenant to me since the day we found William.

  Dominic gestured toward their bags, probably saying something else that I was too far away to hear. I found myself wishing Sarah was with me. She’s not usually very good at getting clean telepathic reads off people she’s never met, but anything would have been better than nothing. The three Covenant operatives nodded, and the tall man finally lowered his hand.

  They followed Dominic as he walked down the side of the pier to the rental car he had parked illegally in a nearby loading zone. It was a black Crown Vic—of course it was—and from the way he held the doors open for them, he could almost have been mistaken for their chauffeur. He even loaded the suitcases into the trunk without assistance. All three kept hold of their satchels. Dominic never even reached for them. There were apparently some things that simply were not done.

  Once the others were safely in the car, he walked around to the driver’s side door and pulled it open, taking what must have looked like a natural pause while he looked up to the nearby rooftops. I remained frozen where I was, using the shadow of the clock tower for cover. His eyes skated over me without pausing, and as he climbed into the car and drove away, I still wasn’t sure whether I’d been seen.

  I would normally have tried to follow the car, but the selection of the old Department of Docks building hadn’t been an accident. It was detached, set far enough out on the pier that there was nothing I could jump to or grab hold of. Even getting to the nearest buildings would have required running across level ground, and that would have left me visible. I did follow them as far as the roof’s edge, straightening up while I watched them disappear into the flow of traffic.

  The Covenant was in Manhattan. All I could do now was try to keep myself—and everyone else—alive.

  * * *

  The Department of Docks roof was as good a place as any to make a phone call, and the cell reception was surprisingly good, maybe because it was one of the few spots in the city without multiple skyscrapers looming directly over it. I retreated back to the shadow of the clock tower to dial, propping myself in the space created where the tower wall met the angle of the roof.

  The logical person to call would have been my father, who was probably worrying himself sick while he waited to hear what was going on. Instead, I dialed someone who stood a better chance of actually helping me. “Sarah? Hi, it’s Verity.”

  “Oh, hey.” Sarah yawned, barely making an effort to hide it. “What do you want? It’s, like . . . jeez, Very, what time is it?”

  “About eleven,” I said. “Don’t you have morning classes?”

  “I was at the Nest until almost five-thirty,” she said, and yawned again. “Besides, it’s not like I’m actually enrolled in any of my classes. Nobody’s going to notice if I don’t show up.”

  “Fair,” I allowed. Sarah probably had the equivalent of three math degrees, but she didn’t have anything on paper. Her natural camouflage meant she could show up for any class and be accepted as someone who belonged—and yet she’d never enrolled in a single college course. She hadn’t even gone to a public high school, since being a telepath in a building full of confused teenagers trying to figure out what to do with their hormones was something she and Grandma Angela both regarded as just this side of hell. Actual Hell, I mean, where the border imps live, and those bastards can strip the meat off a cow faster than a swarm of horror movie piranha.

  “The dragons were pretty calm,” said Sarah, still audibly waking up. “I mean, for dragons. Bill breathed fire on the girls when they got rowdy, and that settled them right down.”

  Male dragons breathe fire; female dragons are fireproof. Evolution works in mysterious ways. “What are they going to do?”

  “Circle the wagons and stay underground until we give them the all clear. Even if they could move Bill, they can’t shift the eggs.” Sarah paused. When she spoke again, she sounded sharper—good. I needed her sharp. “Verity, why are you calling me? Shouldn’t you be off saving
the world or something? Or at least sleeping?”

  “I need a favor.”

  “You always need a favor.”

  “I need a favor from Artie.”

  I could practically hear Sarah’s double take. “You need a what?”

  “I need you to call Artie and get him to trace a rental car for me.”

  “Uh . . . Verity, I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but real life doesn’t work like television. You can’t just say ‘trace a rental car in Manhattan’ and have your helpful neighborhood computer guy find you a name and address before the next commercial break. Remember? We went over this when you wanted us to trace Antimony via her cell phone GPS. Please stop taking your technology tips from Criminal Minds.”

  I ignored her. “The car is a black Crown Victoria, looked like either a 2006 or a 2007, rented to Dominic De Luca. He’ll have been using a foreign ID, but the card he used will have a billing address somewhere in Manhattan.”

  Silence greeted this statement.

  I kept going: “The Covenant called him this morning while we were at my apartment. I watched him make the pickup. There are three of them, two male and one female. I didn’t get a good look at their faces, but one of the men was pretty obviously in charge.”

  More silence.

  “I don’t know when the next time Dominic is going to be able to get away from them will be. He made sure I was there to see the pickup. They didn’t see me.”

  “Very . . .” Sarah took a breath. “If you’re that sure he’ll be easy to find, why didn’t he give you an address? It would have been easier.”

  “Because he’s still trying to figure out who he’s going to betray—me, or the Covenant.” I shook my head, not caring that she couldn’t see the gesture. “I honestly don’t know which way he’s going to go, either. Maybe he’ll turn his back on the only life he’s ever known. Maybe he’ll sell me out. I guess we’ll find out sooner or later.”

  “If you really think there’s a chance that he might turn you in, you need to get out of there. We don’t know if the Covenant taught him to hide things from telepaths.” Sarah sounded alarmed, and rightfully so. “You can come stay with me. Bring the mice, we’ll make it a slumber party.”

  “And when Dominic decides I’m the next one on the ‘betray me now’ list and comes looking for me? I can’t disappear completely, Sarah. If they start looking for me, they’ll find me, and they’ll follow me straight to you.” More silence from her end of the phone. I sighed. “Yeah, I thought so. Look, Sarah, there’s no good answer here. I wish there was one. Just call Artie for me, okay?”

  “What do you want me to tell him? I’m not going to be the one to say, ‘Oh, hey, the Covenant’s throwing a purge on the island of Manhattan and me and Verity are both invited.’ I’m just not.”

  “Tell him I need to know, and that I’ll explain later.” If I’d called Artie myself, I would have been explaining now, because otherwise he would never have done it. If the request came from Sarah, he’d go ahead, minimal questions asked. And then the two of them wonder why the rest of the family is betting on when they’ll just go ahead and start dating already.

  “Verity . . .”

  “I’m not leaving New York while the Covenant’s here, and you’re not leaving while I’m here, so will you just call Artie? Please, for me?”

  Sarah sighed. “Okay. I’ll call him. But I’m really not sure this is the way to go about things.”

  “I’ll tell you what: if you come up with any better ideas, you be sure and let me know.” I hung up before she could say anything else, and sank down against the roof, briefly closing my eyes. This was one hell of a mess, and it was going to get a lot worse before it got any better.

  * * *

  I stomped up the stairs to my apartment, taking my frustrations out on the poor, innocent banister, which had never done anything bad to anyone. None of my neighbors poked their heads out to see what the ruckus was about. Most of them probably had respectable jobs that kept them away from home during the day. That just served to make me grumpier. New York was about to be a battleground, and the rest of my building wasn’t even going to notice unless the Covenant decided to firebomb me while I slept.

  Somehow, that particular thought didn’t do anything to help. I dug my keys out of my pocket, grumbling as I jabbed them into the lock—

  —and froze as the doorknob shifted under my hand. The door wasn’t locked. But the door had been locked when I left the apartment. I’d locked it from the inside, and I’d left via the kitchen window, like I normally did.

  Moving carefully now, I slipped my keys back into my pocket and pulled the pistol from the back of my pants. I pressed myself to the side of the door, reached over, and twisted the knob, shoving the door open in the same gesture. It banged against the wall, and I spun into the doorway, pistol in front of me in a shooter’s stance.

  There was a tall, neatly-groomed man standing in my hall with an automatic crossbow in his hands. It was loaded, and aimed at my stomach. He raised an eyebrow questioningly. “Is that how you say hello now?” he asked.

  “Uncle Mike!” I didn’t lower my pistol. “What’s the password?”

  “There is no password,” he replied. “If you need a password, you’re probably already dead, and that makes it a moot point. Now get in here before you scare the neighbors.”

  I beamed, clicking the safety on my pistol into place before replacing it in its holster and stepping through the open door. The mice—who had been obeying my edict never to let themselves be seen from the hall, and were consequentially plastered against the wall just inside—cheered loudly. “What are you doing here?” I asked, while I closed and locked the door. I sniffed the air. “Is that pot roast?”

  Uncle Mike just looked at me, eyebrow still raised.

  Oh, right. “Before you scare the neighbors” was the first half of the family passcode. “I mean, the neighbors don’t scare easy,” I said. “I’m pretty sure they’ve seen it all before.”

  “Your father called me and said you needed backup,” he said, finally lowering his crossbow. “And yes, it’s pot roast. I figured you’d be going largely nocturnal for the duration of the shit that’s about to hit the fan, and there’s no such thing as too much readily available protein.”

  “Hail!” chorused the mice. “Hail the High Priest of Goddammit Eat Something Already!”

  I grinned. “See, I almost didn’t need to get a passcode from you. The pot roast would have been effective proof of identity.”

  “Yes, but if you hadn’t confirmed my identity, I would have shot you on general principle,” said Uncle Mike. Then he smiled. “Come over here and give me a hug, or I may shoot you anyway.”

  I went over there and gave him a hug. It wasn’t an unpleasant experience. Uncle Mike—full name Michael Gucciard, a cryptozoologist from the Chicago area who specializes in water-based cryptids—was large, solid, and an excellent hugger. He also wasn’t related to the family in any biological sense, but anyone who puts up with as much of our crap as he does should get to be an honorary relation, or at least get hazard pay. (Being an honorary relation is why he’s only a High Priest, and not a God. If you want to be a God, you need to bang a Priestess, and Aunt Lea wouldn’t approve.)

  “Where’s Aunt Lea?” I asked, pulling away. I paused. “Please tell me she stayed home.”

  “She stayed home,” he said reassuringly. “I love your family, and you know there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for your father, but the day I bring my wife into the path of a Covenant purge is the day the papers report on my mysterious drowning.”

  I relaxed slightly. “Good.” Like so many cryptozoologists, Uncle Mike had fallen in love with his work—specifically with an Oceanid he met in Palm Beach. The Covenant had a history with Oceanids. It wasn’t a pretty one. Then again, the Covenant didn’t have a pretty history with anyone, so far as I could tell.

  “Your security is terrible,” Uncle Mike informed me, pleasantries apparently
completed. “I picked the locks in under a minute. No one came out to see what I was doing. I even passed someone in the downstairs hall, and he asked if I was heading for the second floor, since he didn’t want to carry a misdelivered newspaper all the way up the stairs.” He scowled briefly. “It’s a miracle you’re still alive.”

  “I tell myself that every day,” I said. “Where are you staying?”

  “Here, at least for tonight,” he said, in a tone that left no room for arguing.

  I looked around my postage stamp of an apartment and considered arguing anyway. “Where?” I asked.

  “There’s a couch,” he said. “I fold.”

  “Uncle Mike—”

  “Your father gave me a précis on the whole situation, Verity, including your on-again, off-again boyfriend.” He fixed me with a stern eye. “I’m the last person who’s going to tell you who you should be dating—”

  “Yeah, at this point, everybody else has already had their shot,” I muttered.

  “—but if you think I’m going to leave you alone while he and his compatriots run loose in this city, you got another think coming. If it were up to me, we’d be relocating to somewhere more secure. We may have to do that anyway, but I figured I’d hear your game plan before I started packing your bags for you.”

  “That’s very considerate, thank you,” I said dryly. “Do you want the update, or do you want to lecture me some more about how lousy my apartment is?”

  To my surprise, he grinned. “Honey, I live in Chicago. I understand that this is a perfectly reasonable apartment for someone on your budget. But your security is shit, your neighbors are basically cannon fodder, and there’s no one close enough to help if things get bad. We shouldn’t stay here.”

  “You’re right.” Even the admission hurt. Not as much as the one that came after it: “Dominic knows where I live. He’s known for a while now. I can’t trust him not to tell the Covenant where to find me.”