“I have to check on something,” I added, and leaned against a concrete column. When I reached out for Nod, I found him a few blocks away. He and Scott had made eye contact, but Scott hadn’t taken the bait. On the other hand, he hadn’t yet entered the bath store, either. And Grim and Heart had found Yejun’s new lodgings.
I opened my eyes to see Brynn regarding me worriedly. “It’s okay,” I told her, more out of hope than certainty.
“I don’t really understand what’s going on,” she confessed, while still looking at me as if she expected me to fall over suddenly.
“Of course you don’t. You’re just—” I caught myself and shook my head. “Let’s get moving. I don’t really understand what’s going on either. There’s this Wild Hunt and they’re dangerous to ghosts—I saw that myself. And these people we’re going to see can maybe do something about that, but I have no idea why Tia brought an ordinary human into this mess.”
Brynn frowned and stopped. “People? I thought we were going to find a horn. Ms. Zelaya said you were supposed to find a horn.” She gave me a suspicious look. “You know, you haven’t tried to convince me to leave you alone for fifteen minutes at least. Are you trying to trick me or something?” I kept walking and she ran to catch up after a minute. “Well?”
I shrugged. “I’m not very good at tricks, obviously. And I am going to find the horn, as soon as I make sure you’re safe.”
“I didn’t come out here to be safe,” she said angrily. “Ms. Zelaya did warn me it was going to be dangerous, even if she didn’t mention walking in the ashes of burnt-up people. And I’m not going to just stroll along with you while you take me to some kind of witchy babysitter.”
“If you want to split up now, that’d probably be good, too,” I suggested. “There’s a cellphone kiosk right there.”
She ran her fingers through her hair. “Oh my god, you are so infuriating. Tia was right.”
That stung, but I just kept walking. And she just kept following me, which I didn’t mind as much as I thought I should. It was better, I told myself, to leave her someplace safe. Surely wherever Yejun’s friends were staying now would be safe. Safer.
We went down the arcade and out onto a busy street in the middle of downtown. Skyscrapers towered around us. Two blocks away, Heart sat outside the main entrance of the Four Seasons hotel while Grim cadged snacks from a bellhop nearby. As we approached, Nod trotted up from the other direction, his head down and his ears flat with irritation. If I’d given him free rein, he would have bitten Scott, just to make him angry. As it was, we’d both lost track of Scott when Nod had left him slowly circling the shopping arcade.
I looked at the hotel for a moment. It was an expensive-looking place, a far cry from the motel that had burned down. It seemed like the kind of place likely to not notice the dogs of a guest but make a fuss over mine. So I called all three of them to me and sent them to pace me just on the other side of the Curtain. They were still close enough to appear at a moment’s notice and I wouldn’t even have to summon them if something went wrong. And Grim still had Yejun’s trail.
“Wow,” said Brynn. “Where did they go?”
“They’re around,” I said vaguely. “Come on.”
She hung back reluctantly until I went through the glass doors into the lobby. Then she caught up with me. “So we’re here to get some information about our quest?” She sounded too innocent.
“Sure.” I glanced at her.
“But not to leave me with a witchy babysitter.”
I shrugged. After looking around the lobby for a moment, I headed to the bank of elevators.
“I’m too old for a babysitter,” Brynn pointed out. “And I’ll just track you down again. Somehow. Ms. Zelaya wanted me to help you.”
“Well, hush,” I said mildly as we found an open elevator. “I need to concentrate to figure out what room this guy is staying in.” And I stared at the bank of elevator buttons, trying to transform Grim’s tracking input into a floor.
But before I could decide on a button to push, the elevator doors slid closed and it started moving. At first I thought somebody had called it from a higher floor and decided to just go with it. Then I realized that Brynn was staring at the row of numbers above the door, her face pale. With a start, I realized that no call lights were lit up. Then I noticed the tendrils of magic wrapped around the elevator. I had no idea where the elevator was going, but it wasn’t going there naturally.
-six-
The elevator traveled smoothly; without the floor display working, I couldn’t tell how high we were going, but the trip was long enough that I assumed it was all the way to the top. I had just started to worry about what to do if it got to the top and then plummeted down again when the elevator slowed, then halted. The door slid open.
Yejun stood on the other side, without his sunglasses. His hair was rumpled and his face looked drawn. He was angry, I realized, and I remembered too late that I’d driven him off before. I hadn’t wanted him around, and now I’d chased him down.
My face grew warm and I wondered if I should start with an apology. But before I could say anything, he demanded, “What do you want?”
A witchy babysitter, I almost said, and bit my lip instead.
Brynn, though, stepped out of the elevator. “That was really weird. I think that elevator’s broken,” she told Yejun. “You should probably wait for a different one.”
Yejun glanced at Brynn, then did a double-take, his eyes narrowing as he looked her up and down. Then he said, “Both of you might as well come meet Cat and Jen,” and started walking down the hall.
“Oh,” said Brynn. “Is he who we came to see? I was expecting somebody older.”
Mutely, I shrugged and followed him.
We walked all the way to the corner of the hotel, where Yejun opened the door into a sumptuous suite. A fortyish woman with silver-streaked black hair sat on a plush couch, her legs tucked beneath her and her gaze focused on the middle distance. Nearby, sitting at a table covered in old books, was a gorgeous young man about Yejun’s age, with long golden-blond hair and small round glasses. The woman didn’t respond to our entrance, but the man glanced up and offered a faint, welcoming smile.
“Tia’s other friends, I take it?” He had a beautiful voice, too, honed like he’d spent time in a drama club. There was something familiar about it, but I couldn’t identify what it was.
Yejun threw himself into an armchair the size of a loveseat and jammed his hands into his pockets. “I guess so.”
Brynn scowled at both Cat and Yejun while pressing close to my side, as if she thought they were going to haul her physically away from me. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but first things first. I cleared my throat. “I’m supposed to be tracking down the horn of the Wild Hunt, but I thought I’d stop by and introduce myself first. Among other things.” The woman on the couch turned her head toward me, although her gaze remained focused on something far away.
“Actually, it’s just introductions,” said Brynn. “I’m Brynn, AT’s helper. Who are you guys?”
Cat arched one perfect eyebrow. “I’m Cat. This is Jennifer Cole, and Yejun you’ve met already. We’re what’s left of Ascensción Flores’s mission to solve the ghost hunter problem.”
I looked around. “Are you safe here? This isn’t the sort of place I expected to find you after looking at what was left of your previous digs.”
“As safe as we’d be anywhere,” said Yejun darkly.
Cat’s mouth thinned into a grim line. “The one who slew Sen isn’t the sort to waste energy on trifles, not these days. As far as he knows, our ability to interfere with the Wild Hunt has been nullified, so there’s no reason for him to bother us and no reason for us to hide.”
“And I was tired of shitty motels,” Yejun added. He fidgeted with the pocket zipper on his black cargo pants.
I fidgeted with my hands behind my back myself. It wasn’t comfortable in that room. There was something off about silent, dreamy
-eyed Jennifer Cole, and Brynn looked like she wanted to punch everybody and run away, and Yejun kept glaring at me, and Cat in his round glasses was far, far too beautiful. I really, really wished I hadn’t come. Brynn wasn’t that much trouble, was she? “Is he right? About your ability to, uh, interfere?”
“Yes,” said Yejun, at the same time that Cat said, “Not as right as he’d like to be.”
They looked at each other, then Cat went on. “I think we can still do something. Actually, I think we have to do something. But it’s become a great deal more complicated.”
“What’s up with her?” asked Brynn, pointing with her chin at Jennifer. “Is she sick?”
Once again, the two boys glanced at each other. Then Cat said, “That’s one of the complications.”
“Hah,” snorted Yejun, sinking back into the armchair so deeply it seemed like he was trying to vanish.
She must have realized we were talking about her, because Jennifer slowly focused on me. “It’s you. Our promised tracker. May I see your dogs?”
Without speaking, I waved my hand to draw them through the Curtain. They burst through barking and dancing around—well, mostly that was Grim, but he more than made up for the better manners of the other two. No matter how you look at it, three supernatural dogs really add to a room’s atmosphere.
Heart went to Jennifer immediately, while Grim frisked over to Yejun and Nod pressed against my leg. Jennifer put her hand out and Heart sniffed it politely before sitting down to gaze up at the strange human wizard.
Cat, who had risen to his feet when the dogs tumbled through the Curtain, came around his table and knelt down. He scrutinized each dog, his eyes soft behind his wire-rimmed glasses. “Amazing,” he said. “A manifestation of your intrinsic magic?”
“Kind of.” I shrugged, self-conscious, then did a double-take as I actually thought about what he’d asked. He looked barely older than Yejun, but he was far more assured, and he seemed to know a whole bunch more about nephil magic. He didn’t smell like a nephil, or even like a wizard, but both of those traces can be disguised. I wanted to look at him with the Geometry vision—it mattered to me whether he was a really old nephil or a young but clever human—but I didn’t dare while Yejun was around. His massive network of nodes would be all I’d be able to see.
“Amazing,” Cat said again. “I wouldn’t have expected it in—in your father’s daughter.” He waved his fingers at Nod, who ignored him. My poor feral puppy was still irritated about how the encounter with Scott had failed to play out and he wasn’t interested in meeting new people at the moment.
I summed this up for Cat with, “He’s shy.”
Cat nodded and stood up again. “I think they can do it, Jennifer. It’s not over.” She didn’t respond, staring down into Heart’s brown eyes. Cat grimaced and said, in a different, more cajoling tone, “Sen’s dream can still be realized.”
That got her attention. She ran her hands down the front of her jeans, then twisted her hands together. “I need to do that. It was her last wish. If we can get the horn and use your knife, then I can—” She stared down at her hands, then glanced up at me. Her eyes were a vivid, intense blue, shadowed with a grief I recognized. “I never thought I’d outlive her, you know. It seems... wrong. She should have still been vibrant when I was only bones.” She sighed and stood up. “I’m sorry, AT. I used to be more focused, but my mind seems far away these days. She taught me everything I know...” She focused on Brynn. “And who’s this? Tia mentioned you and your dogs, but—”
“I’m Brynn,” my companion said, then rushed on, establishing her credentials early. “Ms. Zelaya—uh, Tia?—she brought me up here to help AT out.”
Yejun, scratching behind Grim’s ears with both hands, snorted. “Babies, both of you. We’re doomed.”
“She’s older than she looks,” Brynn told Yejun archly.
Cat gave him a look of mild disapproval. “Children they may be, but we can’t give up.”
“Things are a bit weird with Jen, but—” began Yejun, half-rising from his chair.
“Jen can’t give up. And neither can I,” countered Cat calmly, crossing his arms. “So these kids—”
“Yo, maybe I’m wrong, but it looks to me like the only adult present is this lady,” interjected Brynn. “Maybe instead of having this manly men argument over the girlchildren’s heads, you could actually talk to us.”
I gaped at Brynn for a moment before catching myself and snapping my jaw closed. Yejun and Cat were staring at her, too, so I added, “Yeah. What she said.”
“Actually, wait. Carry on your chest-beating while I make a call,” Brynn said. “If I don’t tell my family something, there will be new problems.” She looked around, then added, “Somebody give me a phone.”
Silently, Yejun pulled his phone out of his pocket and tossed it to her before sinking back into his chair again. She caught it, said, “Thanks,” and went to stand by the window on the other side of the room.
Jennifer’s gaze followed Brynn as she said, “I miss Sen. She would have—” She stopped and shook her head. “Is there some way we can help you with your task?”
I bit my lip, then moved closer to Cat and Jen and lowered my voice. “I don’t know why Tia wants her to come with me. It’s not safe for her to be around me, and it’s not safe in the other world, either, and that’s where this trail leads.” I felt Brynn’s eyes on me from across the room, accusing, but I ignored them. She had a family that loved her. And she was human. “Maybe she could stay here? If you guys think you’re even a little bit safe right now, that’d be better than where I’m going.”
Cat’s gaze went from Jennifer to Yejun, then he said, “Does she want to stay here?”
“No!” called Brynn, then returned to her conversation.
Cat shrugged. “We’re not equipped to keep her against her will.” His gaze went to Yejun again and I knew that he wasn’t entirely telling me the truth.
“It’s not really safe,” said Jennifer quietly. “I’m—”
Nod started to growl. “Hold on,” I said, grabbing hold of his ruff and reaching out to discover whatever was bothering him. It wasn’t hard to determine: Scott had tracked us down. Nod could sense him at the base of the building, chatting with the bellhop as he smoked a cigarette.
“Shh,” I told Nod. “We have to learn to ignore him.” I glanced up and realized how tense the residents of the suite were. “Just a pest,” I told them reassuringly. “Nod is still sensitized to him. It’s nobody you have to worry about.”
Cat’s fingers, white-knuckled on the chair back he was holding, slowly relaxed. Jennifer’s gaze had gone faraway again, while Yejun was leaning forward in his chair, staring at me like I was a strange beast.
“Somebody you have to worry about, though?” Cat saw a little too much.
I shook my head firmly. “Nope. Although it’s one of the reasons I wish Brynn would stay here.”
As if in response, Brynn finished her call and came back to the group, toying with Yejun’s phone. “All right, I think I’ve got a couple of days before my sister manages to get up here. I hope we’re done by then or all hell will break loose.”
“In more ways than an irate big sister,” Yejun muttered.
Obliviously, Brynn went on, her voice higher-pitched than usual. “I’m trying to decide if I should text my girlfriend, too, so she doesn’t worry. The thing is, she’s going to be so jealous. She’s such a ghost freak.” She slid a sidelong glance at me, her cheeks pink.
Cat said, “You have a girlfriend?”
Brynn gave him a scornful look. “Yes. You have a problem with that?”
Raising both hands, Cat stepped backward. “No, no. I was just surprised. You’re so—” Wisely, he shut his mouth.
“Hah,” scoffed Brynn, then started working Yejun’s phone with a vengeance. “I’m probably the only one here with a girlfriend, too.”
“Actually,” said Yejun, looking uncomfortable. “About that—” And he loo
ked at Jennifer, who had tears in her eyes, and smelled of such terrible grief.
“Be quiet, Yejun,” said Cat sharply.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Jennifer, and there was something odd about her voice, as if it came from a deep well.
Cat went over to her and touched her hair with the back of his hand before moving to gather her in his arms. She pushed at him blindly. “No, stay away from me—it was you. If I hadn’t been thinking about you—” Her hair floated in a wind I didn’t feel and red and black lights twinkled on her limbs. She pushed Cat hard, hard enough that he staggered backward.
The dogs started whining. I could smell smoke, and fire, and the crisping of flesh. Blackness crept out from the shadows of the room.
Yejun said, “Oh, hell, not again,” but he stared at Jennifer like he was watching a replay of his world ending.
Cat straightened and stood quietly, watching Jennifer’s form shift subtly. “As you can see, it’s not safe here, either. Yejun, get them out of here. Help them. Once she calms down, we’ll be in touch.”
All at once, I knew what was happening to Jennifer. I didn’t know how it was possible; she smelled alive, but she was manifesting a haunt, where the dreams and delusions of a ghost became real and dangerous.
“What if he shows up again?” demanded Yejun. “He shows up when she’s like this and you’re alone, it’s all over.”
“Just go!” For the first time since we’d arrived, I saw a crack in Cat’s calm façade.
Yejun shook his head, glanced at me, and headed out the door. Brynn ran after him. I watched, my skin prickling, as Cat calmed himself. Then, as red apples glimmered on the black trees tracing out cracks in the finely wallpapered walls, I sent my dogs back into my shadow and backed out of the room, leaving Cat and Jennifer to whatever awaited them.
-seven-
The elevator stayed open at the far end of the hall, waiting for me. As soon as I stepped inside, the doors slid closed. Yejun slouched against the opposite wall, wearing his sunglasses again. Brynn stood in the corner of the elevator, so stiff she was practically trembling.
Wolf Interval (Senyaza Series Book 3) Page 6