by Tanya Huff
Byleth smiled sweetly and moved a step closer. “Because I need a ride.”
“No.”
“If you give me a ride, I’ll have sex with you.” She probably wouldn’t, but it seemed to be the best currency this body offered.
He swallowed and ground his shoulder blades into the wall, feet pedaling uselessly against the gray industrial tile on the floor. “No. I took the ch…chastity oath.”
“The ch…chastity oath?” Her breasts flattened over a good portion of his chest. “Okay, if you give me a ride, I won’t have sex with you.”
“Deal!”
Nalo almost never went to Scarborough. As well as old Aunt Jen, it had another Keeper taking care of day-to-day metaphysical maintenance. Unfortunately, old Aunt Jen had taken a dislike to the man, and Nalo found herself in the unenviable position of comforter and confidante.
So here I am, back on the bus. Reaching into the possibilities, she adjusted the heat blasting out of the grille under the window—a minor technical infraction but preferable to dry roasting. I know what Jen’s thinking, calling me out here again. She’s thinking she’ll leave me that hole when she dies. Well, she can just think again. I don’t give a damn about what’s supposed to be, I’m not dropping my ass onto a hole in Scarborough for the next fifty years. The moment Jen passes, I’m hauling Diana out here and she can use that power of hers to slap the sucker closed and I don’t care if she’s got more important things to do because there isn’t anything more important than keeping me out of Scar…
Hellfire and damnation.
Her fingers closed around the cord, and she was up out of her seat before the sound of the bell reached the bus driver’s ear.
“That’s your car?” Pulling off a mitten, Byleth trailed her fingers along the gleaming black hood of the 1973 Firebird. “Who’d have thunk it—a God-pimp with a truly kewl set of wheels. Maybe I will have sex with you.”
Eyes wide, Leslie/Deter jerked back. “Hey! You promised!”
Taking a deep breath, she leaned in and rubbed against the passenger door. “I know. But that was before I saw this totally demonic car.”
“You want a ride or not?”
“Yessss.…”
“Then stop humping my car and get in.”
The hair lifted on the back of Byleth’s neck. She watched a city bus drive by, slow, and pull into a bus stop at the end of the block.
“Byleth?”
“In a minute. I’ve got to take care of something first.”
The back doors of the bus opened.
She had to distract the Keeper or they’d never get away. Grabbing the first bit of darkness that came to hand, she tossed it into the small clump of preteens waiting at the light where it erupted into a sudden slush ball fight of epic proportions. She saw the massive handful of filthy ice and snow launched; she didn’t wait to see it land.
“Let’s go, Leslie.” Dropping into the car, she slammed the door and reached for the seat belt. “Did I mention I was a demon?” she asked as they pulled into traffic.
His laugh carried distinctly nervous overtones. “I almost believe you.”
“Really?”
“You’re not like other girls. You’re not even like the other girls we help off the street. You’re not like any girl I’ve ever met. You’re not…”
“I get it. Jeez. And thank you.” She needed the reassurance as geeky as it might be.
It was getting harder and harder to touch the darkness.
As Nalo stepped off the bus, time slowed. She saw the slush ball approaching, the bits of rock and mud and ice standing out with unnatural clarity against the tiny bit of actual snow holding the thing together. She saw past it to the expression on the kid’s face as he realized what was about to happen. She saw past him to a 1973 Firebird pulling away from the curb.
Then time sped up, and she didn’t see anything at all for a few minutes.
Staggering forward, she clawed the slush ball from her face, reaching into the possibilities, past the pain and anger and certain knowledge that she was going to need to have her coat dry-cleaned again. Nalo had been a Keeper long enough that it would take more to distract her than a face full of frozen crap and the prospect of a twenty-two-dollar dry-cleaning bill.
But by the time she could see again, the car was gone.
The young man who’d exited the bus behind her, touched her lightly on one shoulder. “You okay, lady?”
“No. I have a sense of foreboding that can only mean darkness has found a way to corrupt the world, bringing down upon us a future of pain and pestilence. And I seem to have a piece of gravel up my nose.”
“Bummer.”
“Indeed.”
Taking her seat on the half-empty subway, Diana did nothing to keep the other passengers from noticing the cat. Given the invisible walls that Toronto subway passengers erected around them in order to avoid interaction with potential crazies, religious lunatics, and lost American tourists, she could have been carrying a platypus on her lap and no one would have said anything. In fact, it very much looked as if an elderly woman in the other end of the car was carrying a…
“Hey, there’s Doug!”
A talking cat, however, attracted a little attention.
“Hair ball,” Diana announced, carefully tweaking reality. When everyone accepted the explanation—and no one took it as an instruction—she breathed a sigh of relief. “Keep it down,” she muttered into the plush orange fur between Samuel’s ears. “Unless you want to end up on late night TV hawking kibble between the psychics and those live girl phone things.”
“1–800-U-CALL-ME,” Doug added as he sat down beside them, having left a trail of cheap wine fumes the length of the subway car. “How’s it going, Samuel?”
“Pretty good. Still haven’t figured out the tail, though.”
“It’ll come. I see you’re down to partial genitalia.”
Diana closed her teeth on the comment she was about to make and took a closer look.
“Hey!” Samuel spun around and glared at her. “If you don’t mind!”
“Sorry.” A self-neutering cat. Just what the world needs. “And keep your voice down.”
“No need, little lady. We’re in my cone of silence.” Doug stirred the surrounding miasma with expansive gestures, the cuffs of two jackets and three visible sweaters rising up on thin gray wrists.
Breathing shallowly through her mouth, Diana reached into the possibilities. They showed no cone of silence but, on the other hand, street people were ignored so completely by the rest of the city’s residents it amounted to the same thing.
“Any particular reason you decided to walk on the furry side, kid?”
“We needed to expose a demon.”
“A demon? In the world?”
While Diana rolled her eyes and wondered why it was taking so long to get from College Street to Union Station where they could lose Samuel’s fragrant buddy, Samuel explained the whole thing.
“A demon in the world,” Doug restated, frowning thoughtfully. “Well, now, that does explain things. And here I was blaming that bottle of aftershave I knocked back this morning. So you exposed a demon, and now you’re off after it, right?”
“Wrong,” Diana told him—or more precisely told the space next to him. She was finding it hard to focus on his face, but that could have been because of the pale green strand waving from his nose. “We’re off home. Someone else is off after the demon.”
“Her older sister,” Samuel added.
“And you got a few younger sibling issues with that sister of yours, don’t you? No need to deny it, it’s dripping from your voice. Well, you know what I think?” He leaned conspiratorially forward. “I think that TV dinners go best with a nice Chardonnay.”
“What?”
He blinked. “What did I say?” Diana repeated it and he sighed. “Whoa, train of thought got derailed. Toxic spills. Evacuate the women and children.” He drew in a deep breath and released it slowly. Samuel flatt
ened on Diana’s lap, and it passed harmlessly over his head. “Okay. Let’s try that again: I think you should go after that demon yourself. You have to save her.”
“I what?”
“Save her. From your sister.”
“It doesn’t work that way. First of all, we don’t interfere. Second, you seem to be a little confused about the good guys and the bad guys. And third, I don’t even know why I’m talking to you about this.”
“Because he’s an angel,” Samuel pointed out.
“Yeah, right, and I’m a model for Victoria’s Secret.”
Doug’s eyes widened and he cupped both hands in front of his chest. “Hubba hubba!”
“Okay, that’s it.” Diana grabbed the cat and stood as the subway pulled into the King Street station. “I’m gone. We can walk from here.”
“If the demon is an exact opposite of the young man Samuel was, then isn’t she as much of a person?”
Doug’s quiet question stopped her at the door. Diana sighed and let it close in her face before returning to her seat which was, not surprisingly, still empty. “Yes, she is.”
“And is your sister likely to take that into account?”
“No, she isn’t.” If not for an angel, then definitely not for a demon. “I think she’s taking this whole thing personally. But Claire’s being led to her, and I don’t know where she is.”
“Does she know she’s being hunted?”
“She should.”
“So, a demon in the body of a teenage girl knows she’s being hunted; what would she do?” He leaned forward, eyes narrowed. “You’re a teenage girl, think like a demon.”
My cover’s been blown, I know I’m being hunted, I know I don’t stand much of a chance but I’ve been backed into a corner…
As though he were reading her mind, Doug nodded, the green strand bobbing emphatically. “You’ll never take me alive, copper.”
“If she’s got to go,” Diana said slowly, “she’s going to flip Claire the finger on the way out, leaving behind the biggest possible mess for Claire to clean up.”
The constant pound of the Summons changed tone and timbre. Claire shifted under her seat belt and brought both hands up to rub at her temples. There were times when being a Keeper resembled sitting next to the drum kit at a Moby concert. “It’s moving east.”
Glancing across the cab, Dean made a deductive leap. “The demon?”
Claire nodded.
“We aren’t after heading for Toronto, then?”
“It doesn’t feel like it.”
“Nice to get some good news.” He turned his attention back to the highway. “Going through Toronto’s insanity enough.”
“I never noticed any insanity.”
“You’re not driving.” After his first trip through Toronto, Dean had decided that the Montreal reputation for having the worst drivers in Canada was undeserved. Sure, Montreal drivers all drove like maniacs, but at least they drove like maniacs who knew what they were doing. As near as he could figure, Toronto drivers had their heads so far up their collective arse they had to make it up as they went along.
“The biggest possible mess,” Diana repeated as the subway pulled into Union Station. “Oh, my God! She’s going to Kingston!” Grabbing up Samuel, she ran for the doors, paused, turned, and said, “Are you really an angel?”
Doug smiled. “Can’t you tell?”
“No.” The first whistle blew and she stepped out onto the platform. She should have been able to tell. Behind the closing doors, Doug spread his hands and bowed. Diana could see his lips move, but the roar of the old Red Rocket drowned him out.
He turned and waved as the subway headed north up the University line.
“I wonder what he said,” she murmured, hurrying toward the escalators.
“Lex clavatoris designati rescindenda est.”
“Good ears.”
“I’m a cat.”
“Only recently, so you can cut back on the attitude.” Diana shifted the cat to her other arm, cut off an elderly Asian man, and raced up the narrow stairs, boots pounding against the metal treads. “And while I agree that the designated hitter rule has got to go, what does that have to do with him being, or not being, an angel?”
Samuel hooked his claws through her jacket. “Don’t angels play baseball?”
“The Anaheim Angels. It’s just the name of a team—I like so truly doubt there are actual metaphysical players on it.”
“You sure?”
“No. And you know what? I don’t care.”
“Qui tacet consentit,” Samuel muttered, as she stepped out onto the tiles and headed for the train station at a fast trot.
“Fac ut vivas! And stop showing off, I can’t think of anything more annoying than a cat who criticizes in Latin.”
“A cat who horks up a hair ball in a hundred-and-forty-dollar-pair of sneakers?”
“Tres gross. You win.”
Leaning into the turn leading to a well-worn flight of limestone stairs, he smiled. “Of course.”
“That was cutting back on the attitude?”
“What attitude?”
Taking the stairs two at a time, Diana realized why so many of Claire’s conversations with Austin ended in unanswered questions.
“So why is the demon going to Kingston?” Samuel asked as they leveled out and headed across the polished marble floor toward the line for train tickets.
“She’s going to reopen a hole to Hell. OW!”
“Sorry.” Samuel fought his claws free of jacket, sweater, shirt, and flesh. “Are you serious?”
“No, I’m bleeding!”
“Hey, I said I was sorry, but you can’t just mention Hell to an angel and expect no reaction.”
“Fair enough.” Diana slid in between the velvet ropes and prepared to wait for the first available sales agent. At the moment, all three of them appeared to be on break. “That’s one powerful union,” she muttered when reaching into the possibilities produced no visible results.
“Hell?” the cat prodded.
“Okay, short version of a long story: My sister and I closed this really old hole to Hell in the basement of a sort of hotel in Kingston before Christmas. Sealed the site, saved the world—yadda, yadda, yadda—but the place will still remember the hole, so reopening it will give the demon the biggest bang for the least buck. If she gets past the Cousin monitoring the site fast enough—and from what Claire told me about the dirty old man, she shouldn’t have much trouble if she came fully outfitted—she’ll have time to get the hole open before Claire catches up. We may not have to worry about Claire erasing her personhood because the rising darkness will completely overwhelm it.”
“Not to mention overwhelm the world with pure unadulterated evil insuring that everyone on it lives short miserable lives of pain and desperation.”
“Well, yeah. That, too.”
THIRTEEN
“NOW BOARDING AT GATE RORG, VIA Rail train number gonta sev to Nootival, with stops at Gaplerg, Corbillslag, Pevilg, and Binkstain.”
“That’s us,” Diana declared, scooping the cat up off the bench as the station loudspeakers repeated the announcement in French.
“Hey, watch the whiskers,” Samuel protested as she stuffed him into the backpack she’d bought at the station shop, heaved him up onto one shoulder, and hurried toward the gate. He peered out through the open zipper at the back of her ear. “And I thought we were going to Kingston on the train to Montreal.”
“That’s right: Binkstain on the train to Nootival.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Just try to look like luggage, would you.”
The sudden blip of a police siren woke Austin out of a sound sleep. One moment he was lying between Claire and Dean with a paw thrown over his eyes, the next he was up over the seat back and into the depths of his cat carrier muttering, “You can’t prove it was me, anyone could have left that spleen on the carpet.”
“You’ve got to admire his reflexes,” C
laire allowed, waving one hand through the contrail of cat hair.
“Do I, then?” Dean asked, gearing down and maneuvering the truck carefully to the narrow shoulder winter had left bracketing highway seven. “Sure. Okay, I guess.”
Claire shot him a questioning glance, noted the muscle jumping along his jaw, and the distinct “man about to face a firing squad” angle to his profile. “You’ve never been pulled over before, have you?”
“No.” He sighed and laid his forehead on the steering wheel.
It was a vaguely embarrassed no, but whether he was embarrassed because he’d been pulled over now or because he’d never been pulled over before, Claire couldn’t tell. Some guys might be bothered by reaching twenty-one without a speeding ticket—or more precisely the story of how they got the ticket—but would they be the same guys who were bothered by un-ironed underwear? “Don’t worry, I’ll deal with it.” She twisted around within the confines of the seat belt. “There’s a demon out there; we haven’t time to jump through hoops for the OPP.”
“No.”
This, however, was a definite no. An inarguable no. She watched Dean’s chin rise as he rolled down the window and recognized his “taking responsibility” look.
“You don’t do the crime,” he announced, “if you can’t do the time.”
“What?”
“It’s the theme song from a seventies’ cop show.”
“You weren’t around in the seventies.”
“I saw it at my cousin’s. In Halifax. On the Seventies’ Cop Show Network. He has a satellite dish,” Dean added as Claire’s brows drew so far in they met over her nose. “Look, it’s not important, I just don’t want you messing with the cop’s head. I broke the law, so I’m after facing the consequences.”
“You were doing one hundred ten in an eighty. It’s not like you’ve been out robbing banks or clogging Internet access to I’ve-got-more-money-than-brains. com.” Over the years, Claire had fixed a number of tickets while catching rides with Bystanders. Once, she’d attempted to convince a Michigan State Trooper that ninety-seven miles an hour on I-90 through Detroit was a perfectly reasonable speed. Poking around in his head, she discovered she hadn’t been the first—or even the most convincing. “Dean, I’m sorry, but, as a Keeper, I have to say that getting rid of this demon has to be right at the top of our to-do list.”