She rummaged through her closet, digging past a few years of clutter and clothes. She found her old rolling suitcase at the bottom of the pile and threw it on the bed.
“Marie?” Janine hovered in the doorway. “You’re kinda freaking me out right now.”
Marie turned to her, fumbling for words that wouldn’t come. Her anger and her fear and her guilt all collided somewhere in the back of her throat, a flaming wreck that stopped her voice from getting through.
“I have to go away,” she managed to tell her.
Janine studied her. Her intuition connected the dots.
“The police are coming, aren’t they?”
Marie nodded, miserable. Janine rushed across the tiny room and hurled her arms around her roommate’s shoulders. She squeezed tight and whispered.
“It’s okay. If you’ve gotta run, run.”
“It’s not just that,” Marie said. “People might come around looking for me. It’s complicated. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you—”
“How long have you known me? I believe a lot of things.”
“Trust me.” Marie gently wriggled free from Janine’s arms and opened her dresser drawer. “I barely believe me. Just understand that this wasn’t my choice. And whatever they say about me when I’m gone, I’m innocent.”
Janine put a hand on her hip. “Yeah. No duh. Are you taking George with you?”
Marie had to smile, despite everything. “We’re going to…I don’t even know what we’re going to do. We’ll figure it out on the way.”
“I want an invite to the wedding. Actually, forget that. After everything I’ve had to put up with, I’d better be your bridesmaid, bitch—”
A heavy fist hammered at the front door. They froze.
“Ignore it,” Marie murmured. “They might go away.”
More pounding. “Open up,” shouted a gruff voice. “NYPD. We’ve got a warrant—you can open up, or we’re coming in.”
Janine put a finger to her lips. “I’ll get rid of them. You stay in here and pack. Quietly.”
She hustled out of the bedroom. Marie tossed clothes into her suitcase, no rhyme or reason, just whatever she could fit—and then Janine screamed.
Marie burst through the doorway. Their visitors weren’t the police. Janine wrestled with a man in a ski mask as he threw her against the kitchenette counter. A glass fell and shattered on the tile floor. Two more men in masks were right behind him. One pointed at Marie.
“That’s her!” he grunted.
Suddenly, Marie was five years old again, the night her home was invaded. The night her parents were taken from her by men in black masks. Her muscles turned to stone, pinning her where she stood.
“Marie,” Janine shouted, “help!”
No. Marie was here now. She wasn’t trapped—not in her memories, not in reality—and she wasn’t helpless.
She was a knight, and she knew her duty.
She whipped out the ASP and locked it at full length as one of the men charged her. She sidestepped, lashed the baton across his shoulders, and sent him crashing into the coffee table. A knife appeared in the second man’s hand. He lunged in and she leaned back, his blade chopping air. The baton whistled. His wrist shattered under the steel shaft and he dropped the knife, howling behind his mask.
The first one rolled onto his hands and knees. He crouched in the splintered ruin of the coffee table and leaped at her. He hit Marie from behind, wrapped his arms around her waist, and hauled her down to the carpet.
Janine reached behind her, her fumbling fingers grabbing the edge of a dirty plate, and swung it across her attacker’s face. The porcelain burst into razor shards. He let go of her and stumbled back, his shoulders thumping against the refrigerator as he clutched his bleeding cheek. Janine yanked open a drawer, searching fast. He came at her again—then he went rigid, trembling, as Janine shoved the business end of a stun gun against his abdomen.
She let go of the trigger. He hit the floor. She leaned in and jolted him again.
“You like that?” Janine panted. “You want some more? Never fuck with a librarian.”
Marie wrestled across the carpet, rolling, while the man who’d downed her climbed his way up her body and his gloved fingers clawed at her face from behind. She rammed her elbow into his gut, but he wouldn’t give up. Then she saw the fallen knife, a foot away.
She snatched it up, turned, and drove the blade through the man’s sternum. His eyes went wide behind the mask. Blood sprayed from the wound, splashing across Marie’s face and shoulders, a battle baptism. She shoved the dying man off her and wrenched the knife free.
The killer with the broken wrist staggered out the door. The one on the kitchenette floor was already coming around, groaning as he tried to crawl away. Marie rose in a crouch, her mind feral now, swallowed in an adrenaline haze.
He reached under his windbreaker and pulled out a gun.
Marie knew a dozen moves with the ASP to disarm and restrain a suspect. If she were still Detective Reinhart, she would have used them. Nessa’s knight cleared the space between them in a scramble and brought the knife down. The point speared the palm of his hand and impaled him to the linoleum. He was still screaming when the tactical baton hit his throat with a full-force swing, crushing the cartilage like a cheap carton of strawberry milk.
“Oh shit,” Janine breathed. She put one hand to her mouth. “You killed him. You killed two of them.”
Marie’s head swiveled, taking in the carnage. “Where’s the third?”
Her roommate pointed a shaking finger at the open door.
“I’m going after him. Stay here.”
“Marie, wait—”
“Can’t let him warn his friends,” she growled. “They attacked my home, they attacked you. No. He’s not getting away.”
Marie smelled blood on the stale air as she barreled down the hallway, taking the stairs two at a time. She felt alive. All her old oaths, the rules she lived by, the chains and weights she’d draped herself in, were gone. The terrified little girl, hiding under her bed while men in masks tore her world apart, was gone. Detective Reinhart, servant of the law, was gone. She was becoming something new, something wild, and free, and true to herself. Nessa’s knight.
She shot out the foyer door and into the shadowed street, searching for signs of her prey. He’d tell her who he was, and then he’d tell her who sent him. If he was on Senator Roth’s payroll…well. The night was young. She had to protect Janine—a knight defends the innocent raced through her fevered mind—which meant making sure there was nobody left to hurt her once Marie had fled the city.
Something on the left caught her eye. Wet red spatters marred the sidewalk. She loped in pursuit, eyes intent on the tracks, darting past an alley mouth—
—and a beefy arm hooked around her throat. She kicked backward, flailing, as a needle bit into the side of her neck. Blood roared like wind in her ears, whistling high and shrill, and the world went black.
* * *
Janine paced by the window. She’d doused the lights, half to try to spot Marie down on the street, half so she wouldn’t have to look at the two corpses her roommate had left in her wake. They were just misshapen lumps in the dark now, pieces of human-shaped debris.
Her fingers fumbled against her phone. She managed to misdial 911 twice. Then she gave up and hit her contact-list entry for Tony Fisher. It rang through to his voicemail.
“Tony, it’s Janine. Call me back, okay? Call me back as soon as you get this. Marie was here, and I don’t even—”
Her voice trailed off. Down on the street below, a panel van idled at the curb. The side door rattled as it slid open. She watched a masked man haul Marie’s limp body from the alley, tossing her into the van like a sack of groceries.
“Marie’s in trouble,” Janine said. “Just…call me. Please.”
The door slammed shut. The van’s headlights flared as it rumbled down the street.
She could trust Tony to do the righ
t thing by his partner. As far as anyone else in the NYPD was concerned, Marie was a murder suspect with a warrant out for her arrest. Even if they could save her, they’d just be putting her in handcuffs and dragging her off to a different doom.
There was only one other person she could trust.
“My name is Janine Bromowitz,” she told the university’s answering service. “I need to get a message to Professor Roth. As soon as possible, please. It’s about a family emergency.”
Fifty-Six
Nessa strode through the apartment door, her dark eyes shrouded by the brim of her hat. She paused on the threshold and gazed upon her knight’s handiwork.
“Marie killed them?”
Janine nodded, mute. Nessa’s lips curled in a tiny smile, a little rush of pride.
“Then what happened?”
“I saw them throw her into a van,” Janine said. “She wasn’t moving, like she was knocked out. I couldn’t see the license plate.”
“Any designs on the van? Logos? A name? A number?”
“Nothing. Just…white.”
Nessa leaned in close, scrutinizing her.
“That won’t do at all, will it?”
She pushed past Janine and made a beeline for Marie’s bedroom. Her mind was on her book and the new pages she’d deciphered. So many new games to play, but so few of practical use, save for…yes. “The Game of Sympathetic Location.” She flicked on the bedroom light, taking in the open dresser drawers, the half-packed luggage on the rumpled bedspread. She thought back to the last time she’d been here, and her gaze drifted to the framed print on the wall.
“That book.” She snapped her fingers at the picture. “Her favorite, yes?”
“Swords Against Madness,” Janine said. “She’s read it twenty times. Why? What does that have to do with—”
“Where is it?”
Janine ambled over and ran her fingers along Marie’s overstuffed bookcase. “Should be here somewhere. She doesn’t alphabetize her shelves. Physically pains me.”
Nessa frowned. Her instincts drew her to the suitcase. There it was. The yellowed paperback, its cover crinkled with age, rested at the bottom under a jumble of underwear and T-shirts. It was the first thing she had packed. The book tingled against her palm, laden with the residual energies of Marie’s thoughts, her imagination, her hopes and dreams. The pages were a palpable connection to her lover’s heart.
“This will do nicely,” she said, turning to leave. She fished her phone out as she walked. Janine followed on her heels.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m calling a Lyft,” Nessa said. “I don’t own a car.”
“No, I mean after that.”
Nessa turned, fixing Janine with a glare so intense it drove her back a step. It washed across her face like a burning backdraft, a tsunami of raw anger and hate, though Nessa’s voice was frozen-calm.
“Oh. After that. After that, I’m going to find Marie. And I’m going to find the men who took her from me. And I am going to explain to them, in explicit and most painstaking detail, exactly who they just fucked with. Stay here. Lock your doors.”
“I could—” Janine swallowed hard. “I could come with you. I could help.”
Nessa’s cheeks tightened, her cold fury cut with wry amusement.
“You’re a good friend to her, Janine. But Marie would never forgive me. You can help her by staying safe.”
“What if more of them come looking for her?”
Nessa drifted past her. She paused on the threshold.
“There won’t be any more. Because I’m going to murder every single one of them.”
* * *
Lemmy had been a ride-share driver for three months, a little extra cash to supplement his on-again, off-again bartending job. The gig economy, they called it. Tonight he’d barely picked up a single fare, and he spent most of his shift white-knuckling the wheel of his rust-spotted Hyundai as he fought through streets washed blind with rain. At least the storm was letting up. The deluge had turned into a cold and steady drizzle, though the black skies above still rippled with lightning.
His GPS pointed him to his next fare. She was on the corner up ahead, standing in the rain under the curve of a burned-out streetlight. He pulled curbside and rolled down his window.
“Hi,” he said, “you called for a—”
He froze. The woman smiled at him. The horned owl, perched on her outstretched arm, stared unblinking. His gaze shot to the windshield as the rain became thicker, heavier.
Scarlet. The drizzle, spattering his windows and rolling down in long, slow rivulets, had turned to blood. He looked back to Nessa, his eyes growing wide as the crimson rain matted her hair and rolled down her cheeks. She delicately cleared her throat.
“I need a car,” Nessa told him. “I don’t need a driver. Get out.”
* * *
Captain Traynor paced his office floor. He stared at the phone on his desk like he could make it ring by sheer force of will. It sat stubbornly silent.
He had two decorated detectives in the hospital, each one with a wound from the other one’s gun. Detective Fisher was already out of the ER—his was a through-and-through—and Detective Gorski was still getting Fisher’s shrapnel dug out of her small intestine. Detective Reinhart had gone fugitive, fleeing her arrest warrant, and as for the Roth woman—
Jefferson stuck his head into the office, popping open the door and then knocking.
“Captain? You wanted to be notified if there were any developments?”
Traynor stopped pacing. “They found Reinhart?”
“No, sir. And the roommate is standing by her story that she saw Marie driven off in a panel van. Sir…I believe her.”
“Jefferson, your partner allegedly tried to kill Detective Fisher after he caught her destroying evidence. I’m questioning your prowess as a judge of character right now. Is that all?”
He ducked his head. “No, sir. There’s something else. We just got a ten-twenty-two about a stolen vehicle. A Lyft driver called it in, and the description matches Vanessa Roth.”
Traynor’s eyes narrowed. “She was armed?”
“No…no, sir. He, um…gave her his car.”
“She threatened him?”
Jefferson cringed. “No, sir, not in so many words. He said she had an owl on her arm and he was afraid it was going to eat him. Also, it was raining blood at the time.”
Traynor stared at him.
“Once she drove off,” Jefferson said, “he realized he might have hallucinated the whole thing. Though he insists he wasn’t on drugs. Not tonight, anyway.”
Traynor dropped into his chair. He rested his forehead against his palm.
“I’m sure he does, Detective. All right, get the make and plate number out to all surrounding jurisdictions. If whoever took Detective Reinhart is leaving the city—if she was taken—it’s a safe bet that Roth is on her trail. We find one of them, we find them both.”
* * *
Nessa drove north, and the storm clouds followed.
She rode the curves of Interstate 87 with Marie’s paperback sitting on the passenger seat. She kept one hand on the wheel and one on the faded cover. She felt it pull against her fingertips, jerking like puppet strings, telling her where to go. Like calls to like, her spell book had taught her, and beloved things carry the residue of their owners.
This knowledge can be used to find you, to hound you, and to cast workings against you, the book warned. As such, you must never love anything you cannot destroy in a heartbeat. Care for nothing you cannot discard. Better still, care for nothing.
Hell with that, Nessa thought. Being a witch meant following her own rules and nobody else’s, not even her anonymous teacher’s. If the author of the book knew her so well, they must have known that much. Marie was the one thing she couldn’t leave behind.
Stay alive, she thought. I’m coming for you.
Fifty-Seven
Marie slowly stirred from a che
mical haze. The world swirled around her, woozy, lurching, spinning like the nausea in the pit of her stomach. She tried to move her arms. No give. Her wrists and ankles were trapped in bracelets of burning ice.
No. Not ice. Cold stainless steel. She squinted as her double vision swam into focus.
She sat in a stiff-backed chair, bound by steel restraints. She felt a strange pressure on her temples and followed orange wires to an oblong machine on a table at her side. Electrodes. Two more were pasted to the backs of her hands, and her blouse had been unbuttoned far enough to stick another pair just below her collarbone.
The humid air smelled musty, the odor of wet straw and dung. It reminded her of her last trip to the zoo. That was it. The monkey house. Her vision sharper now, the artificial brown painted walls of an animal enclosure rose up around her. The animals were long gone, though. Just her, the softly humming machine, and the woman in the pristine lab coat and goggles who stepped into her field of view with a tablet in hand.
“So finally we meet,” Savannah told her. “You’ve posed quite the conundrum, did you know that? And more than a small share of trouble.”
“So let’s fucking kill her already,” growled Scottie Pierce, stepping up behind her. He fixed Marie with a lethal glare.
“Not until I get the answer to a most vexing question.” Savannah tapped the side of her goggles. Sapphire-blue lasers streamed across Marie’s face. “Can you tell me what you are, exactly?”
It took Marie a second to remember how to talk. The drugs slurred her words, and her tongue felt like a dead slug in her mouth.
“NYPD,” she said. “Detective Reinhart. You just kidnapped a cop.”
“That’s who you are.” Savannah walked over to the machinery-laden table. “Who is easy. I knew the who days ago. Look at this.”
She plucked a gadget from the table, a rectangular box on a handle with a pair of protruding antennae. She waved it across Marie’s face and chest. It sat silent.
“According to my ethereal spectrometer—which I built, yes, it’s brilliant, thank you—you don’t exist. You literally are not here, not in any human sense. Yet you seem, for all intents and purposes, to be a living human being. Why?”
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