The part of the undercurrent that dealt with other spirits, entities that weren’t close to human—what Roger called “alliances”—was one I did not like venturing into, and not just because it had bitten me. Some of them, the ones the Fiana had dealt with, or the lingering ghosts, they were fine. Others, though … Humanity isn’t a monolithic good; we can be very petty and vicious, capable of calculated betrayal or even just ignoring the rules. Bring human and divine together, and sometimes the divine would teach the human to transcend those flaws. And sometimes the divine would latch on to them like a three-year-old psychopath with a flamethrower.
Even when both sides retain their selves, contact changes the spirit. Look at the Morrigan, chained to the Fiana so long that she was reduced to seeking help through me and in the end chose to die instead of rise again. Look at the Gabriel Hounds, who through their association with a dead man had gained a shred of mortality (and what they’d taken from their time with me, I didn’t even want to know).
This stone, though … I remembered the pictures fading behind Venetia, the silver in Katie’s eyes. Fear, I thought hazily, the link is fear. Venetia was scared of losing those she loved, the way that Angela was lost, the way that her friends had gone on … and Katie, she was afraid of what she saw, how she saw … and Nate was scared of himself, not just his curse but his own capacity for anger.
There was something in that. Seeing fear. Something about what Dina was, or perhaps what she’d been reduced to by the theft of the stone. Only there had to be more to it, and to Meda’s plea: Be not thief but murderer.
I shook my head, and the room seemed to wobble as I did so. I couldn’t do that. Not even for the woman who’d led me to the stone. But I could maybe use the stone as leverage, make Dina do more than I’d asked originally. I switched off the light and lay curled up, one hand around the sunstone, trying not to think about anything beyond the noise of the fountain.
When I got up—really late, but this was a Sunday and the chance of Tania calling me in was if not zero then very damn close—the fog hadn’t cleared. “What is this,” I muttered, staring out at the dimmed view of the street, “San Francisco?” We didn’t get fog like this in Boston. Not usually, anyway.
I tried Deke’s number without much hope, but he did pick up. “Hello who is this,” he said, the words flat and without pause or inflection.
“Deke, this is the Hound. I found what your friend’s looking for.”
“Already? Oh, that’s … No, that’s good. Yes. Good.”
Great. What planet was Deke on today? “You remember, right?”
“Oh yes.” A long pause. If I listened close, I thought I could hear a voice on the other end, too low for me to make out much beyond the murmur of speech. “Yes,” he said finally. “Yes, we do.”
“Where’s Roger?”
“No!” Almost a yelp, that. “No, you don’t have to worry about him. Please.”
“Okay …” I took a deep breath. “I want to talk to you both before we go to Dina. I want some assurance that I’ll get what was promised me.”
“We can talk about this later,” Deke said wearily. His voice sounded distant now, as if he was holding the phone away from his ear.
“No, Deke, we need to talk about this now. I’m sorry, but—” I sighed, turning the stone over in my hand, thinking about Deke by the grill, turning the fire back and forth. “I have what you want, and without some kind of guarantee, I can promise you won’t get it. Okay? There’s—I want to know that you’ll hold up your end of the bargain, and then we’ll talk about payment.”
“Payment?”
“Yes.” The stone had warmed in my hand, and I set it back down. “Like I said, I have what you want. We might need to do some renegotiating.” If Dina wants this thing so badly, I thought, then she can lift two curses instead of one. “Now, when can we meet?”
Another long pause with the indistinct murmur of voices, back and forth. One of them was definitely Deke’s. The other sounded too light to be Roger. Too soft, as well; I couldn’t imagine Roger speaking in anything resembling an inside voice. Dina, maybe? That was worrying. “Two hours,” Deke said finally. “Give me two hours. I didn’t think you’d be so quick.”
I permitted myself a smile at that. “Hey, chalk it up to my general awesomeness. But I’m not happy about carting this thing around.”
“Two hours. Meet me where you met me before. At the house.”
“Okay.” I paused. “Deke, are you okay? Is there something—” Hell, how do you ask “are you being coerced” without tipping off whoever might be listening?
Deke interrupted me, sounding a little peevish. “All’s well. We’ll do what you ask, okay? We’ll even talk payment. Just—just be there in two hours.”
“If you say so.” I clicked my phone shut and tucked it away, tossing the sunstone hand to hand. After some thought, I zipped it into the inner pocket of my jacket (the lighter one, less effective for the weather, but since the other was now hanging up and drying I had little choice). Better to keep it with me.
I thought for a moment about just trusting Deke, going out to the house in a show of good intentions. It might earn me some brownie points, and it would have been a more ethical thing to do—I still couldn’t believe I was entertaining the thought of extorting anything from such a wet rag as Deke—but this wasn’t just about making nice. This was my life at stake, and Nate’s sanity. If I could get Dina to lift both curses at once, that’d be worth any number of excuses I had to make later.
Trust was a worthy cause. But it would also get you killed in the undercurrent. I unlocked the second drawer of my desk and took out my gun. Deke would understand, I told myself, checking the ammo. And I’d try not to scare him.
The fog lifted slightly as I drove Sarah’s car inland to Allston, my bike bungeed to the back (I had no intention of waiting for the T today). The Goddess Garden had minimal Sunday hours; Sarah had claimed in the past that they were in place just to establish her pagan cred. I parked a block away, dug in the glove compartment until I came up with an out-of-date map of Boston, then walked my bike over to give her the keys.
I came in just as she was ringing up a stack of books and a pack of Gryphon Blend Incense Sticks for an older woman in a headscarf and black turtleneck, and Sarah immediately turned on her smile to demonstrate her usual charm to any new customer. Her eyes widened as soon as she saw me, and I could see her swallowing her words down. I stopped at the door, the jangling bells right next to my ear, while Sarah hurriedly made change and handed the woman her purchases (“and we’ll be having a sale next week, so stop by!”) then watched with a frozen smile until her customer left. “What the hell happened to you?” she snapped as soon as the door jangled closed again.
“What do you mean?” I glanced over my shoulder, then down at myself—I hadn’t forgotten to put on pants or something like that, had I? And I knew I’d washed all the blood off … “I parked the car down on Cambridge Ave.—it’s filled up and everything.”
“No, you—” She came out from behind the counter and, to my surprise, pulled one of the shop curtains closed. “Screw the car, Evie. You look like the unseelie host itself just dropped by for cocktail hour and you didn’t have enough weenies on sticks.”
I stared at her for a long moment. “You’ve been waiting forever to use that expression, haven’t you?”
“No. Maybe. It doesn’t matter. What does is that you look both like death warmed over and—” She stopped and stood up on tiptoe to look into my face. “Well, like something caught fire in you. What happened?”
“Went swimming.” I managed a grin, and Sarah blew a tendril of hair out of her face. “No, seriously, Sarah, I found what I was looking for. Not just the information, but everything. I just need to get it to Deke, and then, well, we’ll see from there. That’s part of why I’m here.”
“Deke, huh.” She tweaked the curtain back and glanced out into the street. “Haven’t heard from him lately.”
“He’s been busy. Sarah, what’s up with the curtain and the hush-hush bit? No one’s going to care if I’m visiting.”
“That’s what I thought a week ago. Now, though …” She shook her head. “There was another fire, this time at the argentium in Brookline. And a pair of shadowcatchers down by the Charles got their drain raided by someone who knew to smash every locus. Things are getting bad, Evie.”
“Shit.” Now I could put a name to the feeling I’d had when I entered the city: dread. This wasn’t the reasonable fear that the Gabriel Hounds sowed in their wake, nor the anger that plain sparring would produce. This was something else entirely, something paralyzing.
But the water this morning hadn’t smelled of corpses, and the sunstone was with me, out of the Quabbin. If the tension between it and Dina was what had been affecting Boston’s undercurrent, shivering along their exposed nerves like firedamp affecting a canary, then I’d put a stop to it already. It just needed time to take. “Have the cops been by?” I asked.
“Yeah. And yes, the skinny Latina chick was one of them. You’re not going to be able to avoid her forever.”
“Goddammit.” I ran my fingers through my hair, still damp from the fog. “It’ll get better,” I said, though I had only hope to base that on. Sarah didn’t quite roll her eyes, but it was close. “Look, I need a favor. I have this—this sunstone that I’m returning to someone.”
“Part of a job?”
“Sort of. Not really one on the books.”
Sarah’s eyes narrowed. “How off-the-books are we talking here, Evie.”
“Well, this is a little different. And a little more urgent. See, I really—I need Deke’s partner to hold up her end of the bargain, and I know she wants this badly.”
“Bad enough that she might just forget to pay you?”
“Something like that.” I took out Sarah’s metro map of Boston and unfolded it, pointing to the harbor bridge. “I’m going to meet Deke here in about an hour. If I don’t call you, say, half an hour after that, can you, I don’t know, put in a nine-one-one call or something else to get the cops out there? Tell them you saw a drug deal taking place or some terrorists or something.”
“You’d sic the cops on Deke? Evil woman.”
“He’s scared enough of them that I figure he’ll deal if he knows there’s a time limit. And I can get out of it. Really, don’t worry. Just call if I don’t, okay?”
Sarah took the map and gave me a sour look. “Like I need to get in trouble for making a false report … fine. I’ll think of something.”
“You’re a lifesaver, Sarah. And don’t worry about the rest of it; as soon as this is taken care of, we’ll be able to fix it together. Working for the community, right?” I took her hand and pressed her keys into it.
Sarah shook her head, but the first stirrings of a smile were there. She retreated to the counter, then paused. “Does Nate have anything to do with this?”
I stopped at the door, not quite turning to face her. “Nate? Shouldn’t. Why?”
“He called about twenty minutes ago, wanted to know if I could take care of Katie for a bit. Didn’t say why. I figured you were off together or something, but if you’re playing harbor patrol with Deke, then that can’t be it.”
I closed my eyes. Somewhere back in my apartment, his blood was still draining out of my clothes; somewhere in the back twenty behind Venetia’s house, the knife I’d failed to use still lay in the grass. But what Nate did now, he had to do on his own. I could trust him to do that. “Doesn’t ring any bells.”
“You two aren’t fighting, are you?”
“Sarah, drop it. Please. It’s—” I glanced back over my shoulder at her. “It’s a little hard to explain, and I have to be at the harbor in a bit.”
“You’ll tell me later?”
“I’ll tell you everything.”
There are parts of the waterfront that are flourishing. Those parts are all well away from Fort Point Channel, and most of them smell a little better. (Boston Harbor’s a lot cleaner than it used to be, but there’s no amount of cleaning that will make a harbor other than what it is. Fish are fish, and low tide is low tide; you don’t get rid of those smells by making the water clean.)
The fog had turned this part of the harbor into a ghost of itself, but the house remained a dull blot on the water. A light moved back and forth in the windows, no more than a stray gleam. Someone was home, all right. I tried to catch a scent, but Deke had set his wards well. I shifted, feeling my shoulder holster settle into place.
There was a walkway out to the house, nothing more than a line of boards that swooped and sagged alarmingly in the middle. I glanced over my shoulder—no cops nearby, and no one out on the bridge—and scrambled over the fence and onto the walkway.
Which was a lot higher up than I’d expected.
Tides, I told myself, staring down at the yawning gap between the rotting boards and the water below, gleaming with oil from the boats further down the channel. That was the problem. It hadn’t looked so far before because the tide was in. But now, there had to be at least ten feet between me and the water. And not just the water: pilings and junk and any number of ragged edges.
Well, shit. Time to hope this thing was a lot more steady than it looked.
The boards didn’t just creak. They groaned, like a long-suffering parent reminded of the sins of their offspring, and a few of them sagged under my feet. When I looked down, trying to make sense of the gray against gray, the rotting planks versus the slightly less rotten, all I could see were the pilings in the water far, far below, sticking up like carelessly arranged spears, some of them slimy with mold and moss.
A board shifted under my foot, and I stumbled forward, catching my toe against the next one. The walkway screeched and splintered, and I pitched forward onto the little ridge between porch and door. I hung there for a moment, rotting wood jammed between ribs and pelvis, trying to remember how to breathe.
Something shifted inside the house—not the creak of old wood, but the motion of someone changing position, and I thought I heard a chuckle. “Yeah, laugh it up, Deke,” I muttered, and pulled myself up, wincing at the bruises.
The door was locked. Of course. But the window next to it had been smashed so thoroughly that not even the frame was left, leaving it a gaping pit in the wall. Gaping pit would do, though. I eased myself around the side of the house, shuffling one foot in front of the other to keep from tipping off the scrap of a porch, and clung to the wall as I swung one leg up and into the window. “Deke,” I said, panting a little more than I wanted to admit, “I don’t care where you go from here, but you’re going to give me a ride to shore, all right? Because I am not going back out that way again.”
I swung both feet over the edge and into the house. Deke’s smell was so heavy in this room that it might as well have had his name painted outside; he’d made this place his own. More than that, the stink of old oil and tarpaper blotted out even the smell of the harbor.
Too late I recognized the scent that wasn’t woodchuck and smoke; too late I heard the click of a gun’s safety going off. “Both hands in the air, and no sudden movements, Evie,” said Rena.
Fourteen
I spun, flattening myself against the wall. Rena stood by a huge, corroded machine, something that almost looked like a Looney Toons factory second with chains as thick as my legs now lying slack where once they’d passed through the wall. An electric lantern atop it threw acid shadows across the rust and detritus. The daylight didn’t seem to want to come past the windows, hovering outside with the fog, and the lantern’s light painted Rena’s face with a harsh brilliance. She wasn’t in uniform—that was something at least—but her gun was out and pointed at me.
At the other side of the room, huddled up against the wall, sat Deke. He didn’t even look up, just rocked slightly, staring at a point on the floor where the floorboards ended.
“Rena, what are you doing here?”
“I wish I could ask y
ou the same, Evie.” She nodded to Deke. “But I got a pretty good idea already.”
“What are you—” I stopped. “That was you, on the phone with Deke. This morning.”
She nodded.
“Don’t you need, I don’t know, an actual warrant for a wiretap like that?”
“Not if he’s got the phone on loudspeaker and I’m standing right there.” She drew a deep breath, not taking her eyes from me. “And you’re his contact.”
“Contact? Oh, Jesus.” I could have laughed, except Rena still had her gun out, and though she knew enough not to put her finger on the trigger unless she wanted to shoot someone, I knew she was fast enough to do so before I could react. “Seriously, Rena—”
“‘I have what you want, and without some kind of guarantee, I can promise you won’t get it,’” she quoted. “I thought you didn’t much care for extortion, but it’s not the first time I’ve been wrong about you.”
“Extortion, my ass!” But I could feel my face reddening, and not just because she’d skirted a little too close to the truth. “This was a legit job, and I just wanted to be sure I was going to get paid.”
“Then you won’t mind showing me the contract for it.” Rena waited, and this time I had to look away. “Thought so.”
“It’s still not—” I stopped myself. “Okay. Deke probably misunderstood what you were asking. This was just a business meeting, and even if it’s technically off the books, there’s nothing illegal about it.”
“Maybe.” She risked a glance at Deke. “I’m not saying I trust his word. But even if you’re right about this, I’d like to know what you’re doing with a known arsonist.”
“Arson—goddammit, Deke.” He cringed at that, and the smell in the air turned a little more rank. “Christ. Can I—look, I just want to see if he’s all right. Okay?”
Rena hesitated, then nodded. I picked my way across the broken floor to him, very aware of her eyes on me. “Deke, are you okay?” He didn’t answer, or even look up. I tried putting a hand on his shoulder—that was usually enough to get him to flinch away—and he only blinked. “Deke, where’s Roger? Is he here? For God’s sake, what’s wrong with you?”
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