Hank put his ear to the wooden panels and listened. Bocephus stood stiffly beside him, hair bristling at the nape of his neck. The dog was silent now, gaze fixed on the door. Lily's legs were trembling so much she had to lean against the wall, afraid that they'd give out from under her.
"I can't hear a thing," Hank said quietly, straightening away from the door. "It's like there's no one there."
Lily swallowed.
"But I've got a bad feeling about it," Hank added.
She nodded. "Me, too."
He tried the handle and looked surprised when it turned.
"Stand back," he said.
She nodded again.
When he opened the door, the dog slipped in ahead of him. Dark red light poured out of the room, washing over Hank's features. Lifting the shotgun, he took a step in after Bocephus, then stopped dead, leaned a hand against the doorjamb. A numbed look settled over his features.
"What … what is it?" Lily asked.
He waved her back. "Don't come any closer."
But she was already beside him looking into the room. It was like a slaughterhouse inside. The ceiling and walls were splattered with blood and feathers. Along the bottom of the walls, the floor was littered with the bodies of men and women, except they weren't entirely human. They had died in various stages of metamorphosis. In among the human faces and bodies she could see bird heads, wings, clawed scaly legs, talons instead of feet.
Before she could stop herself, she turned away and expelled the contents of her stomach. She flinched when Hank touched her, then realized who it was, let him hold her.
"Wait out here," he said.
She shook her head. "I … I'm okay," she lied.
She knew she might never be okay again. The contents of the room were going to haunt her forever. But she steeled herself and followed Hank back inside all the same. She waited by the door, staring resolutely away from the walls and the bodies while he and the dog checked the rest of the suite to make sure there was no one hiding anywhere. Bedroom, closets, toilet. When Hank stepped back into the main room, Lily pointed to the table that stood by the window.
"Look," she said.
A piece of the chalice lay there. Two other pieces lay on the floor. It seemed beyond reason that it could have caused so much damage and only be in three pieces. But however many pieces it was in was irrelevant. The simple fact was that they were too late.
Bocephus padded slowly over to the far side of the table, snuffling at a body that lay there. He gave a low bark and they crossed the room to where he was standing. This one was in human shape, a woman, but covered in blood and obviously dead.
The dog repeated its low bark.
Hank went down on one knee. Laying the shotgun aside, he put two fingers to the woman's neck.
"She's still alive," he said.
It was hard to tell, because of the blood and the way the Couteaus all looked so much the same, but Lily thought she recognized the woman.
"I think … I think that might be Dominique."
"Well, she got what she deserved," Hank said, standing up again.
"What are you doing?"
Hank looked at Lily in surprise. "What do you mean?"
"We can't just leave her there."
"Lily, this woman's the cause behind all of this damage. She broke the pot and Christ knows what she did with Katy. You think I'm going to spend any time nursing her back to fighting strength so that she can come after us again?"
When he put it like that, it did sound stupid, but it was still wrong.
"If we let her die," she said, "that makes us no better than them."
"If we let her die, we have a better chance to live to a ripe old age."
Lily shook her head. She went into the bedroom off the main suite and returned with a pillow and sheets. Kneeling down beside the woman, she put the pillow under her head and began to tear up the sheets.
"Could you get me some warm water?" she said.
"This is not a good game plan," Hank told her.
The dog made a grumbling noise in its chest as though agreeing with him.
"You're being as bad as your friend Moth," she said.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You know. You said he'll do anything for his family, but the rest of the world can just fend for itself."
"This is the enemy we're talking about here," Hank said.
"I thought you were different. I wouldn't even be here if you hadn't stopped to help me. You didn't know me at all, but you still stopped."
"You hadn't been trying to kill me, either."
"Could you just get the water?" Lily said. "Then you don't have to stay. I know you want to look for Katy."
He hesitated a moment longer before taking the ice bucket and going into the washroom. Lily listened to him run the water while she continued to tear strips from the sheet. When he returned with the warm water, she dipped a piece of the sheet into it and began to bathe the woman's face, trying to be gentle. At the touch of the cloth, Dominique's eyes flickered open and she stared uncomprehendingly up at Lily. Slowly recognition came to her.
"Wh-What are … you … ?"
"Hush," Lily said. "Don't try to move."
But Dominique wouldn't let it go. "Are … are you … mad?"
"Don't try to talk, either. Save your strength because you're going to need it."
"Ask her where Katy is," Hank said.
But Dominique had heard him. "Don't … know … any … Kuh … Katy …" Her gaze returned to Lily. "Dying …"
"Maybe we can get one of the corbae to help her," Lily said to Hank. "Like the crow girls did us."
"I don't think so," Hank replied.
He was probably right. But Lily still thought they should try to—
She cried out as Dominique suddenly grabbed her hand. The woman's strength surprised her, her pale fingers digging into Lily's wrist. Before she could pull free, Dominique's whole body went stiff, spasmed, then her head lolled to one side, her body limp.
"She … I think she just …" Lily swallowed thickly.
Hank knelt down beside her. He checked Dominique's pulse again, but this time he moved his hand to her face and closed her eyes.
"She's dead," he said.
Lily turned away. She knew Dominique had been the enemy—of the corbae and herself. But she still mourned the woman's death. Mourned all the deaths. What was the point of it all? It was so stupid. So senseless.
Hank stood up once more. Lily hesitated a moment. Then she rose to her feet as well.
"You were right," he said.
"About what?"
"It would have been wrong to not have tried to help."
She nodded. But being right didn't change what had happened.
She was dealing with being in this room of slaughtered cuckoos only by keeping her vision narrowed and focused, trying to see no more than she had to. But it was hard. The longer she stayed in here with the red light washing over her, the strange inhuman bodies scattered all around, the more dislocated she felt. But she couldn't leave yet. Not without what she had come for.
As she bent down to pick up the two pieces of the chalice that lay on the floor, she also saw the little statue that had been lying at the bottom of it when Dominique had taken the chalice from her. Putting the pieces of the chalice on the table, she bent down again to pick up the statue and found not one, but two of them.
"Look at these," she said.
Hank stepped closer and took one from her hand. "It looks just like Katy." He turned it over in his hand. "What are they? Some kind of voodoo dolls?"
"I don't know. But the detailing's incredible—right down to the cloth used for the clothing."
She gave him the other one so that he could stow them both away in his pocket.
"Here," she said. "Help me fit the pieces of the chalice together. I want to see if there are any other pieces still missing."
"Do you think it can still be fixed?"
Lily shrugged.
"I'm so far out of my depth here I have no idea what is or isn't possible anymore. Maybe the corbae have some kind of magic glue they can use."
"Crow girl spit."
Lily nodded, remembering how effective it had been in helping them.
"Or something," she said.
She fit the first two pieces together and Bocephus barked. She almost dropped them as she looked up, expecting some new danger to be coming in the door, but there was no one there. There were only the bodies. Her stomach churned and she looked away, quickly, before she started to gag.
"What's wrong, Bo?" Hank asked.
"Probably just … nerves," Lily said. "Here, see if that other piece'll fit."
As Hank brought it toward the pieces Lily was holding in place, the dog barked again, more urgently.
"I think he's telling us not to do this," Hank said. He looked around the room. "Maybe he's got a point. We don't know what we're messing with here. We might be making things worse."
"The pot won't hurt us," Lily said. "Because we don't want anything from it."
"You know that for a fact?"
Lily slowly shook her head. "It's just … under this red … there's the other light. I can't see it ever causing anyone pain. Not deliberately."
Hank regarded her for a long moment, then shrugged.
"I've been with you this far," he said. "I'm not about to back out now."
When the dog whined, he added, "Don't worry, Bo. We're being careful."
Bocephus turned his head away when Hank turned his attention back to the chalice, bringing his piece in close again to check its fit.
16.
Rory stopped across the street from the Harbor Ritz hotel, using the height of the curb to make it easier to steady the bike with his foot. A large crowd of people had gathered on the street in front of the hotel. Old, middle-aged, teens, children. And not only people, he realized as he looked more closely. There were cats and dogs, rats, raccoons, a fox, and birds of all kinds, mostly crows and other corbae. Ravens, rooks, jays, magpies. All of them staring at the light that had sheathed the hotel with its amber-gold glow.
"Who are all these people?" he asked Annie, then realized he was talking to a bird.
She regained her own form and made the bike wobble with her sudden weight as she leaned back over the handlebars to look at him, upside down. Where he felt all on edge and anxious, the situation only seemed to be making her giddy.
"They're like you. They've all got the blood."
"And the animals? I suppose they've got it, too?"
"Well, of course."
Of course, Rory thought. Like it's an everyday thing. Though in her version of the world he supposed it was.
Annie straightened up and got off the bike. Leaning on the handlebars, she studied him for a long moment.
"So how come you've never made a pass at me?" she asked.
"What?"
"You heard me."
"Is this really the time to get into something like that?"
"For all we know," she said, "the world could be ending. So I'd just like to know before everything goes away."
"That … that could happen?"
She shook her head. "Haven't you figured it out yet, Rory? You're walking under the surface now, seeing the world the way we see it. Anything could happen."
"Oh."
"So are you going to tell me?"
Rory took a steadying breath. "I was too scared to."
"Scared of me?"
"Not exactly, though at first you kind of intimidated me."
"So you didn't like me playing the strong-woman card."
"And then, when we started getting along so well, I didn't want to screw up our friendship."
Annie smiled. "I guess I know that feeling. It's kind of sad, isn't it? I mean, lovers should be best friends, too, don't you think?"
Rory nodded.
"But then there's the trust factor, I guess. The problem is, if you don't believe it'll happen, it won't. It's like everything."
"What do you mean?"
"Well …" She shrugged. "If you don't believe in magic, then it won't happen for you. If you don't believe that the world has a heart, then you won't hear it beating, you won't think it's alive, and you won't consider what you're doing to it."
"I don't—" He had to stop and correct himself. "I didn't believe in magic. This all still seems like a dream to me."
She smiled. "I know. But just because you don't believe in something doesn't mean it's not real. Sometimes it just sneaks up on you all the same. Like love."
Rory nodded, wondering if she was talking to him as a friend, or if there was something more happening here. But before he could take it any further, one of the Aunts came flying back. The sounds she made as she circled above them were only so much gibberish as far as he was concerned, but Annie seemed to be understanding her.
"What … uh …" This was so weird. "What's she saying?"
"Apparently the pot's inside the hotel and the cuckoos have been using it."
"That's bad, right?"
Annie nodded. "And your friend Lily and her boyfriend went inside."
It took Rory a moment to figure out who she meant.
"You mean Hank?"
"If that's his name."
"What are they doing in there?" he asked.
"Nobody knows."
"What about Kerry? Have any of them seen her?"
The Aunt replied, but Rory had to wait for Annie to translate for him. She shook her head. "No, but apparently her twin's supposed to be inside."
"But she's …"
Imaginary, he'd been about to say. Except, so was all of this. Or at least it should be, if the world made any sense.
"It's a long story," Annie said.
Rory looked up at the hotel, craning his neck to take in, first its height, then the enormous canopy of the tree of light that had swallowed the building.
"How long have they been in there?" he asked.
"I'm not sure. A while."
Rory swallowed. He didn't want to do this.
"We have to go in after them—"
He broke off as a spot of the amber-gold light flared bright white at the top of the building. Around him the crowd suddenly stirred. He glanced at Annie and saw that the giddiness had finally left her. She gazed up with a solemnness he'd never seen in her features before. Awe, he realized. She's awestruck.
Oh, and like he wasn't?
But somehow it wasn't the same.
"Annie?" he tried.
There was no response, not even when he touched her arm. He looked for the Aunt who'd been flying above them, but she was perched on a lamppost now, as entranced as Annie.
They see something we don't, Rory thought.
The crowd was still shuffling restlessly in place. Flocks of birds suddenly rose into the air. They weren't corbae, he realized, but birds with the blood. A vast cloud of blackbirds. Like him, they were nervous. Anxious. Nearby, a dog began to whimper. Then another. A child cried. He saw a woman that he didn't think was the little girl's mother go down on one knee beside her to offer comfort.
Annie's words from a few moments ago returned to him now, heavy with the possibility that they weren't so much a consideration as a promise.
For all we know, the world could be ending.
The building dragged his gaze back to it. The white light on the top floor made his eyes tear up.
Your friend Lily and her boyfriend went inside.
Jesus, he thought. Kit's in there.
He laid his bike down on the curb and moved forward through the crowd, heading for the front door of the hotel.
17.
Jack's words hung in the air.
You can have a lot worse sins hanging on your soul, and unlike myself, you're not guilty of any of them.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Katy asked finally.
"I've brought too much pain into the world as it is," he told her. "It's time for me to move on."
"That is
so not true. The world needs you, Jack."
He shook his head. "It needs Raven and the crow girls, but not me. What I do, any storyteller can do. All you need is an ear to listen and a voice to pass them on."
They spoke as if only the two of them were here in this place, gazes locked on each other, not at all aware of Kerry, the other corbae, or even the Grace.
"Look," Jack went on. "If the world's going to need us to make our own grace from here on out, I'm just going to bring everybody down. I've got too many sins hanging on my soul. If you know I'm your father, then you've got to know that."
"What happened to our mother—"
"Should never have happened, period. No one deserves that kind of a fate. No one."
Katy nodded. She couldn't think of a more awful thing.
"But it wasn't your fault," she said. "You didn't do anything."
"That's just it," Jack replied. "I didn't do anything. If I had, none of that would have happened."
"But—"
"And then after—that's nothing I'm proud of either."
"They deserved to die," Katy said.
"But so many? For the sins of a few?"
Maida spoke up then. "All cuckoos are guilty of something."
"Maybe," Jack agreed. "But that doesn't make me judge, jury and executioner."
"The Grace is my responsibility," Raven said. "I will do what needs to be done."
"I don't think so," Katy told him.
The other corbae regarded her in surprise. Maybe the crow girls could get away with teasing him, but it was obvious that normally no one would think to contradict Raven. Katy didn't care. This had to be said. He had to hear it.
"You claim to be responsible," she went on, "but how can you even say that when you've been asleep—or whatever it is you've been—for the past fifty years or more? You don't even know what the world is like anymore. Maybe things are getting worse, but there are still people trying to do good. There's still hope. Maybe if you were pulling your weight, things wouldn't have got to where they are now."
"But they have."
"That still doesn't give you the right to decide whether the world goes on or ends."
"You forget. I brought the world out of the dark."
"With the help of others."
Raven glanced at the crow girls and Jack.
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