O’Rourke nodded. “How’s she know about them?”
He sighed. There’s no way to explain this that doesn’t make me look crazy, or Ryn guilty. “She knows things. Said it creeps up from dark corners, or whatever, and that there’s between four and six of them. Thinks they’re… ghosts. Somehow.”
Surprisingly, O’Rourke just nodded.
Staring, Kessler asked, “You believe her?”
“You don’t?”
Was it a trick question? A test? He said nothing.
“It’s a weird city. Don’t worry about it.” O’Rourke leaned in. “Black binder for the ghosts, and how Ryn figured it out. The number of assailants is worthwhile data, though.”
“And what do we do about Ryn?”
“She’s not a conspirator. Now that I’ve got your read on her, that look on her face during the video tells me all I needed to know. She’s not hurting those men to get closer to the Bradford girl. Hate that pure and clean isn’t instrumental.”
“You sound impressed.”
“I tell people my idol’s Sherlock Holmes, but not really. I didn’t read Arthur Conan Doyle as a kid. I read Batman.”
Kessler snorted. “You’re jealous of her.”
“Incredibly.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Namaste
Every darkfall, Ryn shadowed Naomi by rooftop. She coasted on the metro and listened to the auburn-haired girl’s heart through aluminum. She lay supine on Naomi’s pebbled shingles, hearing the tosses and gasps brought on by nightmares. When the brassy sun rose, Ryn trailed on the street, learning to obscure herself in the city’s flow of human bodies.
Weeks passed with no trace of asura. Ms. Cross complained that Ryn had not signed into her group home at night and about absences from school.
The moon waxed fuller each night and teased the blackest regions of Ryn’s mind. Its light prickled her skin, her humming nerves attuned to the flutter of moth wings in the sky. On the night the moon burned its roundest, Naomi went ice skating in the city with Elli and Denise.
Ryn eased through the crowd, raw and moon-sick with bedlam pounding in her chest. Danger filled the air like fog, with Naomi at its epicenter, yet she scented no asura. All she smelled was aggression and sex from a slouching male who sat rinkside and stared too hard at little girls, always from the corners of his eyes.
He kept a cup of hot drink in his hands, another beside him as bait. A predator. He hunted, but not so well as Ryn. Though dull human eyes skipped over him, he stuck out to her, and in that instant they were the only two beings in the world. There was no asura in him, though. Was he the source of the danger Ryn sensed?
He distracted Ryn from hiding herself.
“Hey! Hey!”
The familiar voice snapped Ryn’s gaze to attention: Naomi coasted across the rink to the wall where she stood. The doe-ish girl wore a too-thick, teal coat and a poofy hat and scarf that made her seem tiny even though she stood a head taller.
“You’re here!” Her enthusiasm lit a fire in Ryn; her smile took away the air. “I was afraid I’d never see you again.”
“You see me now.” The moon amplified the pounding of Ryn’s heart, and some enigmatic magnetism drew her in while at once making it impossible to look Naomi in the eye.
“Tell me where you live. Please?”
This female’s power over her was such that she feared Naomi coming to find her; she could only barely stand to feel these things on her own terms and from the safety of the shadows. “Why do you want to know?”
“So I can get in touch. Where do you stay?”
“Roosevelt Place.” Why did I tell her? The moon is making me a fool.
“Does Roosevelt Place have a phone?”
This must end. I am a monster and will not be hemmed in by the glances of a mortal girl. “Do you need something from me?” she growled.
Naomi’s face fell and Ryn’s heart dropped with it.
She’d said the words wrong, and moon sickness made her want to shrink. She examined her fingers, realizing with horror that somewhere along the way Naomi had been stitched into her—what the girl felt, Ryn did too. It took only a glance for the magic to happen, a power as surely as the basilisk’s.
“You okay?” Naomi asked.
“Was that a frown?”
“I guess.”
“I don’t like them.”
“I’m all done. See?” She pointed.
But Ryn’s gaze was fastened to her hands.
So Naomi crouched and set her chin between Ryn’s hands, peering up, startling the monster. “I’ve waited weeks to see you and I’m excited,” said her friend. “I’ve wanted to talk to you like eighteen times a day, and then here you are—out of nowhere. Sorry if I come on strong, but in my defense, you totally knew that about me ever since the mall. Want to skate?”
Dozens of humans sailed effortlessly atop sleek ice, and at the sight Ryn quivered. She could think of nothing she’d rather do than fly on ice. Besides, her intuition wanted her close to Naomi. Checking, she ensured the child predator hadn’t moved and nodded. “I would like that.”
“I’ll rent your skates for an address.” She leaned in conspiratorially. “Though I’ll tell you a secret.” She spoke in a whisper that Ryn felt brush against her: “I like you enough that you could bargain me down, if you really don’t want me to know where you live.”
It was not in Ryn to deny her friend; not when she’d whispered so sweetly. “Your bargain is fair.” She told her the address and Naomi went through one of those human gestures with a vendor, trading paper moneys for skates. It was done with exhausting precision, counting them out, being handed a few back because it was not the exact right amount. Their obsession depressed and amused Ryn at once.
Finally, Naomi passed her the skates. “These look your size.”
The skates were inflexible and Ryn missed her worn-down tennis shoes or, better still, the sensation of rock and snow underfoot. But the moment blades touched ice, Ryn sensed the potential velocity within them.
“Have you skated before?” Naomi asked.
“No.”
“It’s easy. I’ll show you.”
Ryn remembered that humans were supposed to be clumsy animals, and she used her social camouflage honed in gym class. Holding on to the rail, examining one of the less adept skaters in the rink, she mimicked a tremor up her calf. But her camouflage felt dishonest here.
Naomi’s hand clapped onto Ryn’s elbow. “Easy. I’ve got you.” With the moon so high and bright, she could feel the girl’s fingertips, her pulse, almost as if it were skin-to-skin. It made Ryn want things, and she didn’t know what. “Come on, with me.” Naomi drew her off the wall, into the stream of people.
Ice flowed past her feet and the cool slice of blades over the frosty sheet slaked Ryn in a deep place. Her friend spun and skated backward, taking Ryn’s hands in hers to guide, and with her face and its basilisk’s magic right there, the monster became very interested in the ice at her feet.
“Don’t look down,” Naomi scolded. “Eyes forward.”
Ryn couldn’t resist; the magic was in her everything, even her voice.
“There, like that.” And she was rewarded with a smile—such a smile, one that taught Ryn delight.
Yet in holding eye contact the feeling intensified, jolting from Naomi through Ryn until she felt her ears and cheeks flush with heat. A crinkle knit Naomi’s brow and then she blushed too, turned away, and skated with just one hand in Ryn’s. “I think you’re getting it.”
“Yes.” Ryn allowed her feet to move more naturally, easing into clean strokes that propelled her side by side with the other girl. Through the static of cool air and the riot of full-moon sensation, she could feel the shape of her friend’s body. It distracted her.
But then a cool dread pooled in her stomach.
Danger. It prickled the fine hairs on the back of her neck, but she didn’t know from where it would come.
~*~
Casper Owens had sl
ipped into the office and cleared off the desk, pushing it near the window so that he had something to lie prone across. It was not flush to the wall, but set back far enough that he could balance his Winchester away from the cracked-open window facing the skating rink.
He lit a cigarette to steady his nerves, smoking, ashing into someone’s coffee mug.
Through the scope, he observed the rink. It sat in a gap between buildings a city block away. Fast-moving revelers zoomed across the lens and he struggled to pick out Naomi Bradford.
~*~
The moment stretched, Ryn scenting and listening, finding no obvious threat. Yet the danger was there, unsprung.
Denise broke between them and shattered the tension of the moment. “I’d say I’m surprised to see Ryn here, but there’s a full moon. Seems somehow appropriate you’d show up.”
She bristled.
“Relax! So testy. I’ll keep my claws to myself if you do.”
“She’s lying about that,” Naomi said. “But I do think she had something to say.” She shot Denise a look that communicated something without words.
Denise rolled her eyes, retrieving a velvet case from her jacket. “Here.” She thrust it at Ryn, who took it cautiously and sniffed it. “God, it’s a gift, just open it, dumbass.”
“Gift?”
“Sure. It’s what people who suck at nice words do to make vaguely apologetic gestures. Don’t read anything into it, it’s just to make me feel better, okay?”
Denise was better at explaining human customs than anyone else Ryn had met.
“Did that burn so badly?” Naomi asked.
“Right down to my soul,” Denise said.
The box contained sunglasses with blue-tinted lenses and elegant, wire frames. Though the lenses were smaller, the side shields would protect her eyes from view.
“They’ll make you look less like you’re casing government buildings.” Denise tapped one lens. “If you’re hanging out with us, I’d like it to be with a modicum of style.” She hmmed softly and went to touch Ryn’s hoodie. “How attached to this are you?”
Ryn recoiled. “As spirit and flesh.”
“Unfortunate.”
“Try them on,” Naomi encouraged.
Ryn changed glasses by shifting her face down to hide her gaze. They tinged the world blue, the color not too different from her irises.
Denise examined them. “Just your color.”
Does she remember my eyes?
“I can see more of your face.” Naomi reached out to straighten the glasses, and the sheer liberty taken in the act somehow thrilled—no one before had dared. “You’re pretty and now it shows.”
Her smile was too spontaneous to stop.
“Holy shit, I made an emo girl smile.” Denise shook her head. “Guess my karma’s balanced.” She skated away, leaving Ryn to feel abandoned under Naomi’s scrutiny.
“You should smile more,” her friend said.
“It’s odd.”
Naomi laughed. “Looks odd on you, but not bad. You know, I think you might have won over Denise in just about record time. She normally takes months.”
“Won?”
“That’s what a fully ‘won over’ Denise is like. The wild Madison brat, you see, expresses her affections through complex social signaling. Once she’s been reduced to playful snark and taken an interest in your wardrobe, it means you’re invited to the tribe.”
Now it made sense. Why couldn’t humans always be so succinct?
“How about it?” Naomi leaned closer in a way that made a loose tangle of hair dance against her cheek. “Want to spend more time together?”
Though excitement leapt in Ryn’s chest, she bit it down before she could too reflexively nod. Of course, with days lasting longer, there’s strategic sense to it… She cleared her throat. “Very well.”
~*~
Too far, Casper thought. He hadn’t been told the shot was five hundred yards—his benefactors had only texted him the vantage point an hour ago. If he’d known, he’d have asked for a larger rifle. His favorite .308 could bring down a bear at two hundred yards, but the cartridges were packed for efficiency, and outside of 250 yards there wasn’t enough powder to give the round punch. It would go rainbow-arced and wide.
True, in the military he’d used the same gun to shoot at commies at seven hundred yards, but this wasn’t a communist: it was a seventeen-year-old girl. He didn’t want a kneecap or a gut wound, he didn’t want her to die after a half-hour of bleeding out. He wanted it clean—it had to be humane. Casper had a girl about that age and, necessary though this was, he’d never sleep right again if she died screaming.
And it was necessary, because her father was the Antichrist. Casper had read the prophecies, seen the scripts with his own eyes at the anti-Bradford site. The benefactors had shared photos of the ancient scrolls found in a Jerusalem dig site, but the mainstream media never talked about them because they detailed the End of Days, and the MSM was full of atheists.
Tom Bradford couldn’t be killed by normal means. His black heart beat in the ribcage of his own daughter, carried beside her own.
A stark choice: Kill Naomi Bradford or let the whole world burn.
Including his daughter.
~*~
They skated a wide circuit through the rink, the din of voices softened by an envelope of quiet that held them both, punctuated only by Naomi’s intermittent talk of classes. She loved them all except government, since her teacher singled her out for being the daughter of a senator.
Listening, Ryn tracked the crowd; the air still held a dark energy, and while she smelled no asura, she sensed their meddling.
Naomi changed the subject to those boys from the Nine Lives, so Ryn focused on locating the source of danger—but it was still a fog, not yet sharpened into a threat she could dispense with.
“So do you want to?” Naomi asked.
Ryn’s attention snapped back. “What?”
“Go on a date. Wes has been asking about you, and Horatio invited me out. So a double date, technically.”
Her nose crinkled. “A mating ritual?”
Naomi laughed. “You don’t have to mate, I promise. It’s just to figure out if you two like each other.”
“I know already who I like.”
“Who?” She came closer then, as though it were a secret.
But it wasn’t. “My psychiatrist.”
“Holy crap, your therapist? Um, not judging, sorry. Is he… handsome?”
“She smells of rose water.”
Naomi’s cheeks turned slightly pink.
“I like you too.”
The pink bloomed further across the bridge of her nose.
“As well a detective named David Kessler and my roommate, Susan. Wes is acceptable. I don’t want to kill him.”
Now she was tittering, the fits shaking her shoulders. “No, God, I didn’t mean who you like. I mean… well, you know.”
I do not.
“Who you want to go out with.”
Ryn opened her mouth to speak.
“Don’t you dare tell me you go ‘outside’ with your therapist.”
Now she didn’t know what to say.
“I don’t mean outside. I mean—geez, you’re going to make me spell it out for you, aren’t you? Dating is about romance. They have that where you’re from, don’t they?”
“So it is a mating ritual.”
Exasperated, Naomi threw her head back. “Fine. But it’s one that doesn’t have to include mating at the end if you don’t want.”
Ryn had seen humans mate, but from the dark beyond their campfires their rituals always seemed hopelessly complex and demeaning for all parties. In principle, the silly dances served their purpose, but she’d never wanted to involve herself. Realizing Naomi did want that, she felt an abrupt surge of anxiety. “How do you want it to end?”
“I don’t know,” she said, pinking again and glancing away. “Maybe a kiss.”
An image of Naomi’s
mouth joined with Horatio’s heated Ryn’s blood. “You can’t,” she sputtered.
“Okay, fine.” Naomi beamed. “I will lay down the law with the boys and make sure they know it will be utterly chaste. No mating, no kisses. Will you go then?”
Again, it was hard to tell her no. “When?”
“I’ll set it up, but probably not for a few weeks at least. Horatio’s out of town. Now that I’ve got you roped in, how about we celebrate with some hot chocolate? I’ll be right back.” Naomi skated off and Ryn shivered in the void left behind.
She waited at the wall and kept an eye on the auburn-haired female, who waited in line. There was only a distance of forty-odd feet to cross, should the noose tighten.
Denise skated over again. “I heard you two.”
Ryn ignored the comment, unwaveringly focused on her ward. Naomi briefly caught her gaze from the line and smiled, which made the corners of her own mouth twitch in sympathy.
“I guarantee you won’t ‘mate’ with Wes.”
Truth.
“Because you’d rather with Naomi.”
“No.” Her cheeks blazed at the lie, and she shook her head to cast off the fleeting impression of her mouth pressed into Naomi’s. Yet the image was so searing it burnt Ryn in places deeper than she’d believed her nerves could root.
“God, you’re hopeless.” Denise leaned into the railing, silent as her hands twisted into knots. “Listen, about the other night.” Yet for several moments she just stared at a featureless spot on the ground. “People don’t like me, as a rule. I come on strong and bite too hard.”
“So do tigers.”
“I know, right? And everyone loves tigers, but they don’t like it when girls are mean—that’s somehow defective. At least you understand that much.”
She did.
“I’m a tiger because Naomi is very much not. See, we grew up together and I admit I might sometimes be the tiniest bit protective. I scratch people I don’t think are good for her, and because she doesn’t know how vulnerable her big, dumb heart makes her.”
“You guard her.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
Ryn nodded, again satisfied with Denise’s explanations.
“Here’s where it gets weird, though. I am not Naomi, and there’s part of me that’s wild and stupid and wants to be that way. Maybe I’m just naturally contrarian, or maybe Naomi drives me so crazy with her goddamn soul of pure white light that I need to introduce some bad into the picture. Like a kid bouncing on the ice, yelling, ‘It’s okay! Come out and play, it’s really thick!’ And the way she looks at me, like it’s not okay to be out there—makes me want to be on the ice more than anything.”
The One Who Eats Monsters (Wind and Shadow Book 1) Page 18