The Left-Hand Path
Page 10
“Can you just bring it inside?” He reached across her to give the woman on the porch a quick thank you, then shut the door on her and carried the birdcage toward the sealed cellar door.
“Thomas!” Cora snapped, and he finally paused, his shoulders rising and falling in a quick sigh.
“You wouldn’t be asking so much if you didn’t already know.”
Cora held the carrier tighter to her chest and peeked inside at the wide golden eyes staring back at her through the slats. The cat bared its teeth in a soft, high-pitched meow, a momentary break in the solid darkness of its body. “You can’t just...” She stopped short and glanced upstairs, wary of the little girl in their midst overhearing their conversation. She strode across the room, took Thomas by the front of his cardigan, and dragged him into the study, shutting the door with difficulty as she was still unwilling to relinquish her hold on the carrier.
“You’re just going to kill them?” she asked in a hushed voice.
“It can’t be avoided, Cora. I’ll be humane, but I need their blood. I lost my old materials back in Toronto; I have to have new ones. I won’t be able to send Lily and Charles away without them.” He tilted his head at her. “Didn’t you crush a spider in your bare hands when we were in those cells?”
“That’s a spider!” she countered. “It’s not a cat! Cats are...bigger, and they have...vertebrae, and purr boxes, and they’re...”
“They’re cute,” he finished for her, and she huffed in irritation and glared up at him.
“Yes, okay? They’re cute. Herman is cute.”
“Herman?”
“That’s his name.” Cora lifted the carrier to peek inside again, holding it up so that Thomas could see the cat through the grate. “Isn’t he sweet? You couldn’t kill Herman, could you?”
“You named it in the last ten seconds?”
“He looks like a Herman,” she said. “There isn’t any other way, really?”
“Demons aren’t known for being flexible,” Thomas said with a sigh. He hesitated, glancing between the cage in his hand and the face of the cat staring at him, and he rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “I...suppose, the cat...I could just take what I need. It would probably survive. The magpie, though—they don’t have very much blood to begin with.”
Cora frowned at the little bird, its soft white belly puffing up with each breath as it twisted its head to peer at her. “I guess...if there’s no other way.”
“Also,” Thomas went on, “I don’t want a cat.”
“I’ll take care of it! You won’t even know he’s here; I promise.”
Thomas opened his mouth to protest further, but he stopped short of saying it aloud. He gave a last, soft sigh and held his hand out for the carrier. “Give it here. I won’t kill it.”
“You promise?”
He checked his watch with an impatient glance. “Cora, if I miss the hour, I’ll have to wait until this afternoon.”
“Promise me. Please.”
He let his hand drop back to his side. “I promise to try.”
Cora hesitated, clinging to the carrier a moment longer, then passed it off to him with an uneasy frown.
“I put them to sleep first,” he said, nodding toward the door to ask her to open it. “They never feel a thing.”
“Okay,” she agreed, finally letting him out of the room and following him to the door of the cellar.
Once he’d disappeared inside, she sat on the sofa in view of the hidden passage and waited, hands on her knees. She smiled cheerfully at Grace as the girl passed by in search of a snack, but she was glad when she retreated back upstairs with her family. The Walkers had spent a lot of time resting since they’d arrived, which Cora definitely understood. After the experience they described, Cora would have wanted to nap for a couple days, too. There had only been a few crashes from their room, even, so whatever Nathan had done for their daughter had clearly helped at least a little bit. She smiled at the thought of him entertaining a small child. He was bad enough as a teacher; she couldn’t imagine having him as a father.
After an hour or so had passed, the basement door creaked open, and Thomas lifted it with one hand to climb up the stairs. He held the cat carrier in his other hand, and when Cora perked up and lifted her eyebrows at him, he approached and carefully set the cage down on the couch beside her.
“It’s sleeping,” he assured her.
Cora bent to open the metal door and peek inside. The cat lay still, slowly breathing, and seemed no worse for wear—except that now it had a soft white bandage wrapped snugly around its neck. She reached in to give the animal’s soft fur a slow, gentle stroke, and smiled up at Thomas.
“Thank you,” she said, and he paused a moment before giving her an uncomfortable nod and excusing himself back to the solitude of the cellar.
10
Elton woke up feeling heavy and mildly sticky. His head seemed to weigh more than the rest of his body as he opened his eyes, and he squinted into the light from the hotel window while he struggled to lift his face from the pillow. He managed to get his hands underneath him and pushed up from his stomach, licking dry lips and squeezing his eyes shut to still the swirling. He was only barely on the bed and completely uncovered by the blanket, the cold flow from the air conditioner causing a shiver in him that forced his half-asleep brain to take note of the fact that he was naked. He paused, supporting himself on his hands, and glanced across the width of the king-size bed, counting one, two, and three sleeping women, with Nathan similarly naked and exposed on the opposite edge.
The blond jolted from the bed so quickly that he almost stumbled, and he scrambled to snatch his discarded pants from the floor. His head swam, and he had to lean his shoulder against the closest wall to stay upright long enough to get his pants all the way up.
“Nathan,” he hissed, reaching out to slap the sleeping man’s dangling foot. “Get up,” he snapped when Nathan only grunted at him.
The women began to stir one by one, rubbing their eyes and stretching, and Elton gathered up any feminine-looking clothing he found scattered on the floor and tossed it onto the bed.
“Time to go, please,” he said as politely as he could manage before smacking his drowsy companion’s leg again. “Nathan, what the fuck is this?” he demanded, keeping his back turned as their guests began to dress themselves. Their soft laughter bubbled behind him.
“You don’t even want us to stay for breakfast?” one of the women said, and Elton shook his head without turning around, though even that movement forced him to use the bathroom doorway for stability.
“Please leave,” he insisted. He jumped at the light scratch of fingernails across his bare back, but when he glanced behind him, he saw three fully-dressed if disheveled women, so he ushered them out of the suite with all the dignity he could muster—which he had to admit wasn’t much. “Sorry; have a good day,” he offered as he shut the door behind them, then he leaned his forehead against the closed door and shut his eyes as he cringed. Have a good day?
He pushed away from the door with one hand and moved toward the bathroom on unsteady feet, his stomach lurching. He managed enough clarity to be angry when he found Nathan still sprawled on the bed, sat up on his elbows with a devious smirk on his lips.
“Why are you still in bed?” Elton said as he stepped past the bed and into the open bathroom.
“Why aren’t you still in bed?” Nathan countered. “I’ll get cold.”
“Ugh,” Elton groaned, turning the faucet on full blast to splash cool water on his face. “What the fuck even happened?”
“You don’t remember? I’m wounded.”
Elton leaned his elbows on the sink and tried to scrub away his headache. He had vague recollections of being at the bar, and then they were on the street, Nathan pulling him by the arm while he was trying to finish a cigarette, and then—had they been on the Ferris wheel? He had no idea where the women had come from. The whole night was a blur of empty glasses, bright lights,
and sweat. “Why did you let me drink so much?”
A short burst of laughter escaped the other man. “Me let you?”
“Just...shut up.” Elton turned off the faucet and started the water in the shower instead. “We need to get going.” He shut the bathroom door and locked it as if it would lock Nathan out of his life. He stood under the hot water for so long that he almost fell asleep against the wall, startling himself awake and grabbing onto the shower curtain to keep his balance. Shaving his face in the steamy room took longer than normal, as he more than once had to stop and steady himself against the sink when his stomach threatened to empty itself.
When Elton finally emerged from the bathroom with a towel around his waist, feeling only minutely more human, he found that Nathan had packed up both of their suitcases and left them waiting on the bed for Elton’s toiletries. He gave the blond a light pat on the shoulder as he brushed by him into the bathroom.
“Took your time, didn’t you? I’ve found us a flight to Los Angeles. It leaves in a couple of hours, so we’ll need to get a move on. I’ll be quick—there’s coffee on the table.”
Elton stared after him even as the bathroom door clicked shut. Nathan was being...responsible? Maybe he was still sleeping. But the shower was running, and Nathan’s low, tuneless humming was drifting through the crack at the bottom of the door. Elton stepped over to the coffee table and bent to peer into the paper cup as though he thought it might be full of poison. He watched the entrance to the bathroom with suspicion for a moment longer, but he was too tired to muster up much ire—except, perhaps, for the fact that Elton felt like he was dying, and Nathan seemed as if he’d never even heard of the concept of a hangover.
Nathan hurried him out the door within a few minutes, forcing the coffee into one of his hands and his suitcase into the other. In the back of the taxi, Elton sat slouched in the seat, sunglasses keeping the bulk of the blinding sun out of his eyes as he leaned back against the headrest but doing little to help his lingering, throbbing headache. He hadn’t even bothered to get properly dressed—he’d tucked in his shirt and buttoned his vest, but the heat had caused him to roll up his sleeves and forego his jacket, and the challenge of tying a tie was one he did not remotely feel up to facing, so he’d left the top couple buttons of his shirt undone. He held the coffee cup balanced on one knee but had yet to touch it. His stomach was still churning. Nathan was chatting away beside him, but Elton kept his eyes closed.
“Shhh.” Elton shook his head just enough to get his point across. “Just. Shh.”
“Did you just shush me?”
Elton turned his head to stare at the man beside him, a weary scowl on his face.
“Don’t glare at me so, darling. After the night we had together?”
“Shut up. I don’t remember anything, and I like it that way.”
“Have it your way,” Nathan chuckled. “I suppose those memories are all mine, then.”
Elton grunted in distaste and turned his attention to the passing scenery outside the window.
When the driver let them out at the airport, Elton stood outside the glass doors and finally drained the lukewarm coffee in a few long gulps. He tossed the empty cup into the trash and gave his head a sharp shake to try to wake himself up.
“How do you live like this?” he grumbled at Nathan, who waited by the sliding doors with a look of great amusement on his face.
“Lots of practice. Come along now, darling; we’ve a flight to catch.”
Elton followed behind, dragging his suitcase as Nathan led the way to the check-in counter and wishing his hatred could actually hurt the other man.
Once they were on their way to security, Nathan passed a glamour spell over the both of them that saw them through the other side of the gate successfully. At almost every terminal they walked by, a few men or women waited in small groups that stood out. They were dressed in normal clothing and varied in age, but they watched the crowds too carefully for their casual conversations to be authentic. Nathan nudged Elton’s arm with his elbow and directed his attention to one cluster as they passed it.
“Chasers,” he murmured, and Elton nodded his agreement. “I expect we’ll see a lot more of them about now that it’s the first of the month. They’re going to get bolder. Planes are going to cease to be a good option before too much longer.”
Elton tugged off his sunglasses with a sigh and slid them into his shirt pocket. “Then we’ll figure something else out.”
He took a seat at their terminal and searched his bag for the paper that Marquez had given them, hoping that having something to focus on would help clear his head and distract him from his nausea. Garrison Winnick, the Magister of Los Angeles, was sixty-five, white, and looked like a banker. He was a banker, Elton realized as he read further down the page. That sounded like the right kind of money to buy yourself an important place in the Magistrate.
The paper read like a resume—it had the man’s name on it, a business address, and a laundry list of educational and professional credentials, as well as a few handwritten notes that Marquez must have taken, but very little in the way of information that would be useful to them. Elton scanned the notes and brought the paper closer to read the compact handwriting. Marquez had written in Spanish, which Elton didn’t read, but one word stood out to him nonetheless. He leaned an elbow on the armrest he shared with Nathan and held the paper out to him, pointing out the suspect line.
“Does this say what I think it does?”
Nathan tilted his head to see. “Supremacista. Indeed it does,” he murmured. “That’s a troubling word, isn’t it?”
Elton hummed a soft agreement. “Doesn’t bode well in the current climate.”
“Well, then let’s see if we can put a stop to it sooner rather than later, hm?”
A sharp, hissing whisper slipped past Elton’s ear, and he looked up to find the source. A pair of young women stood near the corner of the seating area, clutching at each other’s hands as they whispered and darting their eyes around at the crowd. Elton watched them curiously, and when one of the women glanced in his direction and locked eyes with him, panic flashed across her face. She gripped her companion’s wrist and tugged her away and around the corner out of sight. Elton’s eyes narrowed briefly, and he shifted to touch the smooth willow token in his pocket, his thumb warming the well-worn surface. A thrum of magic pulsed under his skin at his softly whispered incantation, its pull familiar to him. This wasn’t Nathan’s glamour he was sensing—he knew the heated prickling of dorche almost better than he knew his own magic.
Nathan leaned over to him, his head almost touching the blond’s shoulder. “Something catch your eye, darling?”
“Those girls that were just here,” Elton answered quietly. “I think they’re witches. They took off when they saw me.”
“That’s that atrocious case of cop-face working against you. Some things even I can’t cover up with a glamour,” Nathan chuckled.
Elton ignored the jab. “I’m going to talk to them.”
“Always on duty, aren’t you, Mr. Willis?”
Elton stood and nudged his suitcase further underneath the seat with one foot. “If they’re trying to avoid Chasers, they need to know that the stakes are higher than they think.”
Nathan didn’t argue, for once. “Do your good deed for the day, darling.” He waved his companion away and settled back into his seat with one leg crossed over the other.
Elton walked the corridor with a distracted, curious look and turned the near corner where the women had disappeared. He spotted them lurking to the side of a vending machine and approached them with a careful step, taking his wallet from his pocket on the pretense of searching it for singles for the machine. The pair went dead silent beside him, purposely avoiding looking at him, their hands held tightly together.
“You’re standing out,” Elton murmured, and both women noticeably tensed. “If you’re trying not to be noticed by the Chasers, you’re doing a bad job.”
“You need to be more careful,” Elton went on without taking his attention from the vending machine for more than a moment, as if he was having trouble deciding whether to have a salty or sugary snack.
“Who are you?” one of the women whispered.
“Just someone who knows that the Chasers are going to stop asking questions when they arrest people, and the Magisters are going to stop having trials. If you’ve done anything they’re going to care about, I’d recommend lying lower than usual.”
“We’re not real criminals!” the other woman protested. “We just sell sothcad potions. It’s Las Vegas,” she added, as though that justified anything.
Elton sighed silently through his nose. He’d heard the argument a thousand times in his career at the Magistrate. Luck potions like the sothcad, love potions, truth serums, any number of poisons—they were all illegal to produce, purchase, sell, consume, or administer, but hundreds of piddling black market merchants insisted that they weren’t doing anything wrong. They were only selling potions, which were nothing but bottles of ingredients, really, and whatever their customers did with them afterwards was no fault of their own. It was a petty, grasping attempt at a loophole that had always gotten under Elton’s skin. Even so, he wouldn’t have called it a crime worth being hanged for.
“They won’t see it that way,” he said simply. “Just be careful. Things are about to get much worse with the Magistrate.”
“How do you know? What have you heard? Why are there so many here all of a sudden? It’s never been like this.” The woman perked up as a boarding call was announced, and her partner tugged on her hand.
“I heard enough. We’re going to draw attention if we keep talking. Just get on your plane, and don’t travel for a while. Tell any of your business associates that the Chasers are going to be everywhere soon.” Elton peered into his wallet one last time, then shook his head and left the vending machine empty-handed.