by Tanya Huff
“But you see,” Sheila continued, handing the piece of paper back to Evan and smiling shyly, “I’ve been on vacation for the last two weeks. Let me just get one of the others.”
“Thank you.”
Her eyes went dewy at Evan’s gratitude and Roland had to bite down on his tongue to keep from saying something cutting as she went into the office. He sincerely hoped he didn’t look quite so soppy when Evan smiled at him. That he rather suspected he did, did nothing to improve his mood.
Unnoticed, a bellhop moved from the end of the marble counter and headed toward the elevators. Mr. Aphotic would want to know there were people looking for him. He’d probably be grateful enough to hand over another packet. And another packet, the bellhop’s pale eyes gleamed, would get me through the next few days on top of the world.
“Jack,” PC Patton nudged her partner. “The two at the desk.”
“That’s them,” he agreed. “Fits the description to a T.”
They started across the lobby.
“Uh, Evan.”
Evan looked up. He’d been following the pattern of the marble, fingertips stroking the cool stone.
“I think we’ve got a problem.” Roland had been approached by too many cops during too many years on the street not to know when the minions of the law were bearing down with him in mind. The man and the woman advancing toward them didn’t look angry but neither did they look pleased.
“Can we have a word with you, gentlemen?” It wasn’t quite a question. It wasn’t quite a command.
Evan inclined his head graciously. “Certainly, officers.”
Somehow feeling as if she’d just been granted a boon, PC Patton led the way to a quiet corner. They’d been off shift for barely eight hours, were beginning a double thanks to that damned flu bug, and she had no wish to be patronized by some long-haired juvenile delinquent no matter how pretty he was. That she recognized how pretty he was, and that a direct look from his stormy gray eyes caused her heart to dance, pissed her off further. “They told us at the Ramada you two were showing around a picture. Let’s see it.”
Roland considered the reaction he’d likely invoke by asking for a warrant, decided against it, and watched silently as Evan handed over the sketch.
PC Brooks opened the file folder he carried and the two constables compared the identikit picture to this new one.
“Accurate to about ninety percent,” he murmured.
“Where did you get this?” PC Patton demanded, waving the sketch.
“I drew it,” Evan told her mildly.
“Don’t get smart with me, punk,” she snapped. “This man’s a suspect in a murder and if you’re withholding information I’ll have your ass behind bars so fast your hair will curl.”
Roland didn’t know whether Evan was capable of lying but he didn’t think this was exactly a good time to find out. “We got it from the same place you got yours,” he said quickly. To his relief, Evan kept silent.
Both of PC Brooks’ eyebrows rose. “The old lady …” he began but broke off as his partner glared at him.
The old lady? Roland repeated to himself. The old… “Mrs. Ruth.” The expressions on both faces told him he’d guessed correctly. He could almost feel the tension ease, so he assumed they had no idea that it was a guess. They still weren’t happy, but they no longer fingered handcuffs.
“I don’t know why she came to you two,” PC Patton growled. “Whether you think you’re some kind of vigilantes or what.” She crumbled the drawing of the Dark Adept into a tight ball in one fist. “But stay out of this. Do you hear me?”
“We hear you,” Evan said softly.
She jerked her head toward the exit. “Now get!”
They got.
After the air conditioning in the lobby, the heat outside hit them like a solid wall, pulling sweat out on their skins in seconds. The trapped exhaust from thousands of cars filled the air with a grayish-yellow haze bitter to breathe. Although two blocks away on Yonge Street brightly colored summer crowds surged back and forth, here the sidewalks were blessedly empty.
“I don’t believe we got out of that,” Roland marveled as they walked down the three shallow steps and away from the hotel.
Evan shrugged and shoved his hands behind one studded leather belt. “We were a complication, with paperwork they’d rather avoid, so I pushed on that. It wouldn’t benefit the Light if we spent the next few hours at a police station making statements none of them would believe.”
Roland shook his head; if only it were always so easy. “Let me guess. You don’t ask the cops for help because none of them have the ability to See?”
“That’s right. And the ones who do, get blinded or ground up and spit out by the system pretty fast, the system being interested in Justice not Truth.”
Heavy philosophy for a man who just learned to make toast, Roland thought, leaning on a newspaper box, carefully keeping bare skin off the hot metal. “Now what?”
“We wait. The police will leave, the Darkness can easily shield itself from them, and then we …” He trailed off, his eyes focusing on the newspaper.
“We go in and talk to the other clerks?”
“No. There’s no need.”
Roland turned and squinted at the paper, trying to find what had brought that note into Evan’s voice. Police Hunt for Murder Suspect Intensifies read the largest headline. But we knew that. He wondered how Mrs. Ruth had been able to give the police a description of the Dark Adept and then he saw the smaller type, almost hidden by the glare of sunlight on the box.
Chambermaid Suicides at King George and it drove the question from his mind.
“He’s here,” Evan said, his expression now stern and cold. “Come on. There has to be another door, one the police can’t see from the desk.”
“It’s a big hotel, Evan. How will you know what floor he’s on? What room?”
“Now that I know he’s here,” his lips pulled back to show his teeth, “I can find his room.”
They found a side door, marginally smaller than the ornate brass and glass monstrosity leading into the lobby, and slipped through it, managing to reach the fire stairs undetected.
“He’ll have shielded himself in the lobby,” Evan explained as they climbed, “but I doubt he bothered on his own floor. He’ll have left a residue.”
As they peered out through every door, Roland had visions of sticky tarlike trails of Darkness ground into the plush cream colored carpets but when Evan pulled him out onto the sixth floor and said, “This is it,” he didn’t see a thing; the carpet, and the salmon pink walls were unmarked. Then Evan reached back and brushed a hand across his eyes and he almost lost his lunch.
The Adept moved without hesitation down the corridor, Roland following behind, his gaze not dropping from the small of Evan’s back. The glimpses he got with his peripheral vision were bad enough. When Evan stopped, Roland looked up. The brass number on the door read, “666.”
“Well, at least the Dark has a sense of history,” he murmured under his breath, wondering if the number was an accident, a joke, or a warning. If he were watching this in a movie, he’d be screaming, No! Don’t open that door! about now. A sense of, well, evil, for lack of a better word, seeped through the wood and paint. He swallowed and wet his lips, nervous but not afraid; the whole thing seemed too unreal to be frightening.
Evan laid his palm just above the lock and the door swung silently open.
Darkness lay everywhere in the suite. It hung in ebony spider webs from the ceiling and pooled in viscous puddles on the floor. Great moldy patches grew from the walls and in some of them Roland thought he saw faces. He could hear the hum of the air conditioner, but the room still stank of stagnant water and things less savory.
“Gone,” Evan growled, turning around slowly in the center of the suite.
Roland threw up an arm to cover his eyes as Evan flared and the Light burned all traces of Darkness from the room. As much as he wanted the whole thing to be over, rel
“For chrisakes, Jack, we don’t need backup to question a suspect. Besides, if he tries anything, I’ll gladly shoot him.”
Now he was frightened. Cops, he understood.
He grabbed Evan by the back of the T-shirt and yanked him close, filling him in on their situation with a few choice words. Evan ignored him and Roland thought of a few other choice words he wanted to deliver even though he didn’t have the time.
Evan appeared disoriented and the voices were getting closer. The hall, Roland remembered, stretched straight and wide from the room to the elevator. No possibility of slipping out without being noticed. Desperately, he scanned the suite. The bedroom or the bathroom? No, they’d be trapped. Behind furniture? Nothing big enough that wasn’t right up against a wall.
Maybe they should just try to brazen it out.
“The door’s open.”
In the following silence, the sound of holsters opening was unnaturally loud and completely unmistakable.
Maybe not.
Roland shoved an unresisting Evan into the only hiding place they had time to reach; the coat closet near the door. During the next few seconds of noise and confusion, he closed his eyes and prayed.
It might not have helped, but it certainly didn’t hurt. When things calmed down, the police stood in the center of the sitting room with their backs to the closet.
“I think he’s flown,” PC Brooks said softly, his head cocked to catch the smallest sound.
Roland tried to get his heart to beat a little less loudly. Any minute now, any second, he knew those blue clad backs would turn and it would all be over; they’d be up as accessories to murder and the Darkness would move on unopposed. A small voice in his head cried “Shame!” that he cared more for the former, but Roland ignored it. He dug his elbow into Evan’s ribs and again got no response.
“I think you’re right,” PC Patton agreed. “But let’s make real sure. Come on.”
The bedroom. I don’t believe it, they’re going into the bedroom! Roland got a tight grip on Evan’s arm and laid his other hand against the inside of the closet door. The tiny opening he’d left limited his line of sight and although he saw the police starting toward the bedroom, he had no way of knowing if they’d actually entered. He forced himself to wait, watching his watch count off fifteen seconds—the longest fifteen seconds of his life—and then he moved, dragging Evan out of the closet, out of the suite, and out of the hallway, not stopping until the two of them stood, reasonably safe, back in the stairwell.
No shots. No shouts. No sounds of pursuit.
Relief hit so hard his knees almost buckled and he sagged against the bannister, eyes closed, waiting for his entire body to stop trembling with adrenaline reaction.
“Roland? Are you all right?”
“Am I …” His eyes snapped open and he slammed Evan up against the wall, his fingers digging into the Adept’s shoulders. “Where the fuck were you? I needed you and you buzzed out!”
“I was searching for our enemy,” Evan explained calmly, acknowledging but not reacting to Roland’s anger. “I thought I had a trail. I was wrong. How did you need me?”
“While you were gone, the cops showed up! I thought you said the Darkness could shield himself from them?”
Evan managed to shrug, despite Roland’s hold on him. “He must have let the shields drop when he left.” Then his expression softened. “How did you need me?” he repeated quietly.
Roland’s voice grew shrill and it bounced around the stairwell like a swarm of angry bees. “I needed you to get us out!”
“But you got us out.” Evan reached up and covered Roland’s hands with his own. “Thank you.” He smiled.
Roland tried to snatch his hands away, but his arms refused to cooperate. He could feel the warmth of Evan’s skin through the thin cotton T-shirt and that warmth began to spread, drying his mouth and snatching his breath away before it did him any good. It moved lower, igniting an answering warmth in him.
“Evan, I …” He didn’t know what he wanted to say and could only stare helplessly at a pulse in the golden throat, afraid to meet Evan’s eyes.
“There is never shame in loving, or in wanting to love,” Evan said softly, lifting his hands and freeing Roland’s. “Nor is there harm in wanting without having if you are not so inclined.” One eyebrow arched. “Although your body may try to convince you otherwise.”
Roland felt his ears turn red, his body’s reaction all too evident, against the crotch of his jeans. The flesh is willing, but the spirit is freaked.
“Being wanted does not hurt my feelings or insult me.” Evan smiled again but much more gently, without the blazing heat of before. “Rather the opposite, actually.”
Wetting his lips, Roland managed a smile of sorts in return, his arms falling slowly to his sides. “All I want to do is beat your head against a wall.” His voice was a little shaky, but not so much it couldn’t be ignored. “You left me to save our asses.”
Evan brushed a shock of hair back out of his eyes. “And you justified my faith in you,” he pointed out, respecting Roland’s need to pretend, at least externally, that nothing had just happened.
“Well,” Roland lifted his chin and squared his shoulders, “let’s get out of here before the cops decide to search the stairwell.” Evan nodded and Roland started down the first of the six flights. He wondered if Evan knew how close he’d come that time to tossing aside twenty-eight years of social and sexual conditioning. What had Evan said: there is no harm in wanting without having. He hoped the Adept was right; he might be able to come to terms with the wanting but the having would be more than he could handle. On the other hand, less than twenty-four hours ago, he’d denied the wanting, too. Did that mean that twenty-four hours from now …
A middle-aged man in a maintenance uniform came through the fourth floor fire door and plodded upward past Roland, past Evan. Just within earshot, obviously intending to be heard, he muttered, “Damn queers in the stairwell.”
If he had anything more to add, it drowned in Roland’s laughter.
Chapter Eight
“But where’s he gone?” Rebecca asked, handing out tall glasses filled with an equal amount of pale green liquid and ice cubes.
Roland took a cautious sip and grimaced; iced herbal tea. Wonderful. He’d meant to pick up a couple of cans of pop on the way back to the apartment and now he was paying for his memory lapse.
“Has he gone to another hotel?” Rebecca settled to the floor, her back up against the couch, her eyes on Evan who sat perched on the window ledge.
“It’s unlikely,” Evan told her, taking a long drink with, Roland noticed, every evidence of enjoyment. “He’s probably gone to a private house.”
Her eyes widened. “But who would want to have him?”
Evan sighed. “You’d be surprised at how many people would love to have him, Lady. He can make himself very agreeable.”
“Let me use your guest room and I’ll cut you in for shares when my side rules the world?” Roland guessed.
Evan nodded. “Something like that.” He turned and looked out the window, murmuring softly to the night, “And the devil took him up onto an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and said, All these things I will give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” He sighed and faced into the room again, his eyes shadowed. “He won’t, of course, give up anything, but mortals never seem to realize it. And what can I offer to fight that?”
“Your sparkling personality?” Roland suggested. Both Evan’s brows rose and he stared at Roland, who only shrugged. “I hate to see an Adept of the Light feeling sorry for himself,” he explained. He wondered for an instant if he’d gone too far, if he’d misjudged Evan’s mood. He didn’t think so, he’d seen that expression in his mirror often enough to recognize it when he saw it again.
Evan frowned, opened his mouth to speak, seemed to reconsider, and suddenly smiled.
Roland relaxed muscles he hadn’t consciously tensed.
Rebecca tilted her head and chewed on a bit of hair, not entirely certain she understood what had just passed between the two men. “I believe in you, Evan,” she offered, reaching out to touch him gently on the knee.
He covered her hand with his. “That gives me both strength and joy, Lady.”
Roland looked at their two hands lying against the faded denim of Evan’s jeans, fingers intertwined, and reached for his guitar. He had to give a voice to the music that he heard.
The phone rang.
“Damnitalltofuckingshit!”
Rebecca jumped and sat blinking at Roland in astonishment. She disliked the jangling bell that broke the peace into pieces. She hadn’t realized others felt the same.
The phone rang again.
“It’s probably Daru,” she pointed out, dragging the phone from under the couch. “She always calls on Monday nights. I always plug the phone in the wall on Monday afternoons when I get home from work. Hello?” She dropped the receiver away from her mouth. “It’s Daru.”
Roland buried his head in his hands, as the music danced tantalizingly out of reach. “Of course it is,” he muttered. “Who else?”
“She can’t come tonight.”
“What?” He lifted his head. “Give me the phone.” Almost snatching it from Rebecca’s hand he barked, “What do you mean you can’t come tonight? We’re trying to save the world here, not fucking get together for bridge!”
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