by Sara Hanover
“They are, aren’t they?” Her face brightened a little.
“I’ve got to leave.” Letting go, I gave her a little hand wave and set off for the outdoors.
A slight but very frigid wind slapped me in the face as I closed the front door behind me. A voice said, “I’m here and ready to go.”
“And cold, too, I bet.” I hesitated and then said to invisible Steptoe, “I appreciate the backup and you’re wonderful to offer, but I need you to stay home with Mom.” I knew from the wink he’d given me that he would use his suit jacket as the invisibility cloak it could become, and follow me when I left. But I didn’t want him to; I wanted him at home protecting my mother.
“Why?”
“There’s something that’s been watching us on the street. Goldie let me know. Scout didn’t catch scent of it until I hauled him all the way out to where it had been standing, and the tell-tales don’t seem very aware of it.”
“That’s not good.”
“It might be a guardian Carter put on sentry because he’s on assignment and worried about collateral damage. Or it might be something nasty,” I added, remembering Scout’s fearful reaction and my dream.
“Don’t you worry, then. I’ll be right here. But not outside, I think.”
“That’s fine.” I heard very faint footsteps as he took his leave.
Scanning the neighborhood, I could smell smoke from two or three nearby chimneys, and lights on the block seemed steeped in that golden glow that deep night brought on. The wind touched its icy fingers to my cheeks and nose as I shrugged into my jacket’s collar, thinking I should have brought my nice wool scarf with me. The sky had begun to cloud up, skirling in on that breeze as if it wanted to be an actual storm front as Simon had predicted, and I debated darting back inside long enough to fetch that scarf and some thicker gloves.
A white-blue beam cut across the end of the street as a car turned the corner and headed right to our address. My ride had shown up, and I was out of time for last-minute decisions.
The car stopped, and a back door swung open silently.
No one got out, but I knew the vehicle waited for me to step in.
It seemed a cold welcome but nothing to the one I anticipated receiving when I got delivered.
CHAPTER TEN
WHOOPS
SNOW STARTED AND stopped, more in icicle drizzles than drifting flakes, and it never held together long enough to hit ground. It just splattered the car windows in streaks before sliding away to oblivion. Each hit in long, spiky splats and then melting started. To my current train of thoughts, the weather looked more like spite than a natural phenomenon. The inside of the car felt terribly chilly as well, and I found myself huddled on the rear seat, trying to catch a glimpse of the driver’s face in the rearview mirror, to no avail. To the Society’s credit, this driver was neutral, quiet, and forbidding all wrapped up into one.
The leather seat warmed, but the air stayed cool enough that my breath showed its haze when I exhaled. The fact I had on my jacket seemed little help. I leaned forward. “Could you turn up the heat a little back here?”
All I could catch was a flicker of a look, nothing clear, as if the driver checked to see if he even had a passenger. But he/it didn’t move to turn on the heat, so I guess arriving semi-frozen was on the agenda. Maybe they expected to warm me with their hospitality later, at least in contrast. I folded my arms across my chest and crossed my legs, imitating a snowball. The drive seemed to take forever. Hunched over as I was, I almost missed what direction the car moved in. But I didn’t.
The hair stood up on the back of my neck as we approached the trendy area with the brick roads and the old buildings which had changed little in a few hundred years. Especially the bar/restaurant called the Butchery in honor of the killing and carving shop it used to be. I’d been there once, in a dream, and it had looked as deserted then as it looked now, when it should have been bustling with business. In my dream, it had been silent and deadly.
Only I thought I was awake this time.
I should be. I hadn’t closed my eyes. Too cold to sleep unless I had just passed out or— I peeled my leather glove off my left hand as my stone warmed, and I clutched both hands together tightly.
Inside the Butchery on my previous visit, I had found bodies and souls hanging from meat hooks. Swinging desperately. Tortured. Most of them still alive and hurting. I hadn’t found neon lights and high-backed stools, and a long serving bar wiped glossy by two or three busy bartenders. Clients drifting in and out. Clusters of loud laughter and soft, sincere talk. No. I’d discovered a nightmare of vast proportions with misery and more hanging there. I hadn’t been able to free them, being lucky to escape with my own mortality.
I’d found a nightmare before. It seemed equally possible that I’d find one again. I had no intentions of letting the driver deliver me to this destination.
My left hand slid to the inside door handle. Locked. Naturally. But I have talents now, and it wouldn’t stay that way if I could help it.
The car slowed to a bare glide, cutting through the night like a shadow, lamp lights dimming as we passed them. I could walk faster. I cupped my left hand and then twisted it, ever so slightly, and heard a faint click.
Before the driver could react, I flung the door open and tucked and rolled to the street, hitting the bricks hard but not hard enough to cause damage and got back on my feet.
Then I sprinted in the opposite direction, through alleyways and across darkened doorways, and heard the car racing after me, searching. Tires squealed. Sometimes near, sometimes a little farther off as I zigzagged past buildings that were all closed, shut tight, abandoned to the night as they never should have been. Winter or not, this was a booming district.
I ran until my side hurt and finally skidded to a stop inside a deep arched doorway, moving back until my spine went to the wall. Then I brought my hand up and began, despite my shaking, to weave a shield with Steptoe’s wonderful invisible suit coat in mind. I didn’t know if I could mimic it, but I had to try. Nothing to see. Nothing to detect here. Not a thread, not a breath, not even a footfall. I was underneath, behind, below, obscured to any vision no matter how sharp or magically acute or diabolically focused. Not even my inhalations could be seen or heard.
I felt something fall over me. Something tangible curtained me, hid me. Something I had made and held. I brought the palm of my hand close to my chest so that even the beat of my heart would be hidden. My body heat. My trembling soul. All undetectable.
It would work. I had infinite faith in Steptoe’s coat. This, woven in copy, should work as well. He’d protected me amply on several occasions. Now I had to protect myself. From what, I had no idea. None. If this was the Society, I could now fully understand the professor’s scorn for it.
Until the car screeched to a halt, a door opened and then crashed shut, and something stepped into the alleyway as if it could sift me out of the night, smell me, hear me. Incredibly loud, or perhaps I just stood, incredibly muffled.
My lips thinned as I concentrated on taking away whatever odor I might carry. Not myself. Not my mother’s touch, or Steptoe, or Scout, not the fabric softener in my clean clothes or the faint sweat in my shoes. And especially not the smell of fear.
It scanned the alleyway. I saw, once, as its gaze spanned over me and moved away, blazing red eyes. My hand jerked against my chest in recognition. I still had no idea what the hunter was, but knew it had kept watch on my house.
A feeling rose in me, cresting over my icy fear. It warmed me as if I’d just swallowed a hot mocha coffee, spreading its tingling from my throat and stomach outward. I recognized it for the spark Carter had given me. It kept me from spiraling into an icy death and let me feel. Anger rose. I wanted to launch myself at the abductor, kick it down, and turn my shield into an edged weapon that would slice whatever it was to smithereens. I shoved that instinct down. Took the bare
st of quivery breaths to tame it. For all I knew, the thing that hunted me counted on drawing me out, either in a panic or in a raw, fighting mode, whatever it took to bring me out of hiding. I dared not even use my flash-bangs.
I retreated to patience, a deep well of it, thinking of the professor’s teachings, once so enigmatic to me who preferred action to thought, but he’d pounded it into me anyway. I stilled. Stayed that way, deep as a bottomless lake, serene, reflecting nothing back at the hunter. Carter kept me floating without drowning in this beingless state. I would not be the prey who lost this night.
Footfalls. Sharp as if its shoes might have taps. Or did it even have shoes? Perhaps I heard the click-clicking of talons. It walked the alleyway. Up and back. Once, twice, thrice while I breathed so little that I thought I might pass out but told myself I wouldn’t.
Then it growled.
No. Not a growl. A . . . hiss.
Well, not a hiss either. A noise I couldn’t possibly imitate but knew I would identify immediately if I ever heard it again.
Then it turned on heel in its immaculate black suit and left the alleyway. I heard the car pull away in a squeal of rubber.
I did not move. I wanted to. My arm ached from holding my hand up motionless. I dared not relax.
I waited. Long, long moments. Until I decided that I might be wrong, I must be wrong. And I needed to breathe deeply.
I almost let go.
Then I heard the faint crunch of a step, grit between the brick pavers and a shoe sole getting ground down, and I caught the slight swish of fabric as it stepped back into the alleyway.
Whoever, whatever it was, had sent the car away and waited for me to emerge from whatever cubbyhole hid me. It walked the course one more time, head moving back and forth from building and doorway to doorway and building, its gaze searching. It put its hands out, long, thin, white fingers, and combed the air delicately as if it could pull clues out of nothingness and weave them together to find me.
I found nothing human about its stance, its hands, or its painstaking efforts. I didn’t know what it was. It stood and walked as if human. Drove a car. Wore a nice suit. Had an overcoat on as if the winter cold might affect it slightly.
If it had hair, I couldn’t tell. It wore a newsboy cap, and the forward brim hooded its face extremely well, except for the crimson glow of its eyes. All I knew about it, as I stood and prayed that it wouldn’t detect me, was that it was nothing I wanted to meet.
Ever.
I wasn’t sure if I could survive such a meeting.
It clucked to itself, tongue against teeth, and then made that grating hiss again, before pivoting and striding off.
Again, I stood stock still until I thought I’d fall over, and realized the stone was taking its energy from me. I wasn’t sure if I could walk away. But nothing came to ferret me out again, and I finally dropped my hand and let myself exist once more.
Noise came in, surrounding me, whirling about, laughter and teasing and a masculine voice saying, “Hey, hey, hey!” and a feminine voice answering, “Hey yourself, and be on time next time!”
The streetlights overhead and about blared with their full illumination, and music drifted out and over and bounced off the walls, and I could hear cars passing back and forth, with an occasional horn blare of indignation. The world as it should be caught up with me. I managed a breathy “Carter, Carter, Carter,” and waited. Nothing came to meet me. Disappointment arched through me, but I had outrun trouble for the moment. I told myself I could handle the rest of the evening. I let out a quivery breath and exited the alley, saw a convenience store, went in, and bought a small bottle of OJ and downed that as quickly as I could, without taking a breath. Then I bought a second. I tapped that hidden well of warmth and goodness inside me, thankful for Carter’s gift.
Outside, I scared something at the corner. A striped tabby bolted behind a trash bin and then peered out, green eyes glowing. It looked thin.
I turned around and went back into the store which had “food” on its grill, little rollers turning it over and over and over. I pointed. “Chicken wings. Are they buffalo or teriyaki or what?”
“Plain old grilled,” the bored teen said to me. “Last of the evening. I can give you a deal.” He named a price for six and I bought them.
Outside I put five in a row next to the trash bin. I could hear a sound. I backed up and ate the final one. Opened my second container of orange juice and sipped it slowly, feeling a lot more human than I had moments before.
A paw reached out and snatched a wing. It disappeared.
The sight made me smile. As I walked away, a claw hooked two more wings and then a tiny gray kitten pounced on the remainders.
I walked under the lights, wishing that I’d bought a hot chocolate instead of an OJ, anything to warm me up from the inside out. I came across a bus stop, read the route sign and realized I could take it to head back home. Or at least close enough that I could be located and picked up without too much worry.
The bus chugged up a few minutes later and I got on. The moment I did, my phone lit up. Texts came in and at least two missed calls, as though the thing had died and suddenly come back to life. Perhaps it had. I thumbed through and then it rang.
“Miss Andrews. I am disappointed you have missed your summons.” A stern yet educated voice I did not recognize.
“Actually,” I said, “someone got to my house before you and I got in the wrong car. A very wrong car.”
“Oh? Are you all right? Do you require assistance?”
“Yes, on both counts. I’m on the bus, but I can disembark at the City Hall.”
“We will pick you up there.”
So, legs shaking a bit, I got off in two stops and stood in the bright evening lights of the City Hall, which held night court two nights a week and this appeared to be one of them, the steps spilling over with people going in and out. I stood at the curb and eventually a sleek silver car pulled up. This time I knew better. Leaning over, I tapped on the window.
“ID.”
“Societas Obscura,” came a whispery response.
“You say the sexiest things.” I slid in as the back door opened silently. I settled myself and clipped the seat belt in place, leaning forward to see if I might recognize who drove. I didn’t, but then I only knew two or three of the Society although I figured I’d probably run across more without an introduction.
The car transited the town more smoothly than had the bus, and I spent the time examining my hands, the stone in particular. It seemed not to have changed at all despite the intense shielding it had just held for me. And it made me wonder . . . that thinning of the world . . . that veil across what I knew to be real, a curtain drawn across all my senses that so that I might be truly hidden from the menace that sought me. I felt as though I had fallen into a pocket between dimensions and that if I had not fought to get myself out, I would have stayed there.
Was that what possibly could have happened to my father? And if it had, it meant that—at one time or another—he’d possessed the maelstrom stone and had used it, or it had misused him. But if that were true, why hadn’t it slipped into the in-between with him and stayed there? How had I found it lodged in a locked drawer in the old basement’s armoire? If it had come forth, he should have as well. I had no answer and a ton more questions tumbling in my thoughts as the car pulled into a curved drive and came to a halt.
I opened the door and emerged into a chilled evening to face what could only have been at one time a tobacco drying shed. A huge one. If I inhaled deeply, I could still catch a faint scent of the leaves that had been hung here to cure. This barn looked big enough to house a manor and although there were ample vents at the eaves of the roof, the sides had been enclosed, something that would likely never have been done when it was still in use.
I looked away. “Nice clubhouse.”
Dou
ble doors swung open silently. Feeling uneasy, I flexed my shoulders and walked in. Only to walk right back out abruptly.
“Oh, no,” I declared as a couple of people followed me. “I am not going anywhere if he’s going to be there.”
And I pointed at Judge Maxwell Parker, a nemesis who would undoubtedly love to see me hung by my heels since I’d bested him in a magical battle. I was on a recon mission trying to locate Goldie, and I found her. He was the one without honor I’d been thinking of earlier. “I was told he was on probation. He abducted Goldie Germanigold.”
“Hearsay,” the man in question said, staring me down, jaw clenched and eyes intense. He wore an impeccable suit, Italian name brand of some sort or other, with a mauve shirt and matching handkerchief sticking artfully out of the pocket. Someone had styled his hair to look casually perfect, but it was his eyebrows that fascinated me. Trimmed into pointed wings, they angled sharply down to frown at me. “You haven’t a word of proof or defense for your attack on me!”
“I found her bound at the Silverbranch campus, locked into a statue, and she told me you had done it. In my book, that’s proof enough.”
“Nevertheless, did you see me abduct her? No. There is only her word. And harpies are not the most dependable of truth tellers. Nor, it seems, are those who associate with them.”
I was not about to back down, to the Society for having him here to oppose me or just to push back on his existence in general. “You attacked me when I attempted to free her. That is firsthand testimony.”
“Perhaps I was just defending Germanigold in her vulnerable captivity from you. You were then—and still are—unknown in the magical community. Who is to say that you were not the menace?”
I swung about, addressing the watchers, perhaps a paltry group that reminded me more of a jury than a meeting, all more adult than I, and with expressions that told me little about their inner feelings. After the night I’d already had, I wasn’t eager to face any judgmental types. My inner self reminded me about the professor’s determination that he and I should never cross paths with the Society for reasons he never quite delineated to me. He’d held little but scorn for them in the time I’d known him. I began to realize why. I threw my words at them anyway. “Are you all just going to stand here and let the lies fly?”