He could tell from the faint blurriness of her irises that she was using her seer abilities, trying to answer him by looking in the Barrier, as well as through her own mind.
“Okay,” he said. “So who takes care of you?”
“My brother,” she said promptly.
She was back to bouncing.
Ignoring it, Nick nodded somberly.
“Okay. Your brother. Where’s he?”
“We live in the Cauldron,” she said, puzzled. “I thought you knew that already.”
“Your brother lives in the Cauldron? With you?”
She nodded again, gesturing a yes in seer sign language. Nick followed the motion of her fingers, frowning.
“Show me your arm kid. The left one.”
She barely hesitated.
Shouldering off her outer jacket, a thick, fake-fur affair with painted on leopard marks, she dropped it on the rust-colored couch. The garment smelled vaguely moldy to Nick’s sensitive vampire nose, but at least it looked warm. Under that, she wore a black T-shirt with a sparkly heart on the front and a smiling green monster. It was such an obvious little-kid shirt, despite how dated it looked, Nick flinched.
He also frowned at how small her body was, despite her lean, muscular arms.
She pushed up the sleeve of the long-sleeved black T-shirt on the left side, showing him her inner arm.
There was nothing there.
Absolutely nothing.
No ident-tattoo. Nothing but pale, smooth, little kid skin.
Nick frowned.
“Your brother,” he said. “Don’t suppose he likes to draw pictures?”
She smiled.
Seeing the knowing look on her face, Nick let out a low growl, shaking his head in spite of himself.
“Jesus,” he said, combing his hand through his hair. “How the hell have neither of you been picked up? And how did you get out of the Cauldron?”
“Ms. St. Maarten,” the girl said promptly.
“Ms. St. Maarten?” Nick stared at her. “Who is that?”
“My brother’s friend,” the girl explained.
“What’s her first name?”
“Lara… I think.”
“This ‘Ms. Lara St. Maarten.’ She’s how you get out?” Nick said, repeating the name back to her carefully. “Out of the Cauldron?”
The little girl nodded, back to bouncing lightly on the couch cushions.
“What were you doing downtown?” Nick said. “Why were you anywhere near that murder scene?”
“I followed Malek.”
“Malek? That your brother?”
She nodded again—that peculiar, seer-like, jerky kind of nodding Nick remembered well enough for it bring a tightness to his chest. He wanted to tell the kid to cut it out, to stop acting and looking so goddamned… well, seer.
He didn’t, though.
“They don’t call him that,” she explained. “Only I do. Only I call him that.”
Nick’s mouth pursed. “Who are you talking about? Malek? Who doesn’t call him that?”
“The humans. The others in the Cauldron. The ones who let us live there. The ones who ask for his paintings. They don’t call him Malek.”
Nick’s frown deepened.
About a dozen different questions popped into his head, seemingly more with every word she uttered. In the end, he settled on the least complicated one.
“What do they call him?” he said. “The humans?”
“Bird,” she said at once. “Jack Bird. Usually just Bird.”
“Bird?” Nick said. “Is that some kind of supposed-to-be-human name? Like an alias? Does he give that name to the authorities, too?”
Still thinking, as much to himself as at her, Nick went on before she could answer.
“And how has no one noticed your brother and you don’t wear ident tattoos? I thought everyone in the Cauldron was monitored closely by the drone patrols?”
She shrugged, again doing it seer-fashion, which meant more with her hand than her shoulders.
From the blank look in her eyes, she either didn’t understand the point of Nick’s questions, or had no idea what any of the answers were.
“Where’s your brother now, kid?” Nick grunted. “He leave you down there? Alone? In the middle of a murder scene? Why?”
“He didn’t know I followed him there.”
“He didn’t know?” Nick frowned. “He’s seer, right? How the hell did he not know? He can’t feel his own sister following him down the street?”
The girl just looked at him, blank-faced.
Running a hand through his hair, Nick bit his lip, leaning back in the chair.
“What’s your name?” he grunted.
“Tailaya,” she said promptly. “Mal calls me Tai.”
“Tai,” Nick muttered, looking at her. “And you call him Mal?”
She nodded again.
“Mostly. Or Malek.”
“Where would I find your brother now, Tai?” Nick kept his voice calm, light even, but couldn’t help gritting his teeth. “Would he have gone back to the Cauldron? Or would he still be outside, running around the city somewhere?”
“He told me to wait for him,” Tai said, exhaling in a sigh. “He said he was coming right back. But I wanted to go with him. I followed him out through the tunnel. I lost him when I got out on the other side, but by then I was all the way down by that big red metal person. I found his painting. Then the people with guns came… so I hid.”
“The people with guns?”
She nodded solemnly.
“The ones who killed those kids,” she explained. “They brought them there. In a van. Then they killed them.” Her nose wrinkled. “There was a lot of blood.”
Nick grimaced.
He shouldn’t have been surprised that she’d seen that, given where he found her, but it made him want to wring her big brother’s neck.
He knew he would have another hundred or so questions for her about that van and those hybrid murderers, but for now, he wanted to know about brother Mal.
“Where did your brother go?” he said. “You don’t know?”
She shook her head.
“No.” She sighed wistfully. “I lost him. But he’s not dumb. Even if he went looking for me, he would have seen all of those blue-lickers and he wouldn’t have come out. He told me to hide if lickers ever came… to not use my powers. He doesn’t like me using my powers.”
So, the brother wasn’t a complete idiot.
Just a halfway idiot, Nick thought in annoyance.
It was strange hearing the slang, “blue-lickers” from a little kid. Under different circumstances, it might even have amused him. He wondered if she had any idea where that particular term came from, or how and when it got attached to the police.
“Would he go back to the Cauldron?” Nick said. “Your brother?”
She shrugged, rippling the fingers of one hand.
“How long have you lived there?” Nick said. “In the Cauldron?”
She shrugged again.
“Have you lived there your whole life?” he said, frowning.
“No.” She shook her head. “Just since we got here.”
“Got where? To New York? Or—”
“No.” She shook her head again. “This New York.”
“This New York.”
Nick felt his jaw tense all over again.
That time, his clenched teeth hurt his face. His muscles continued to contract and bunch up as he stared at her, studying the matter-of-fact expression on her face. He didn’t want to ask it, but he found himself doing it anyway.
“You lived in a different New York?” he said, gruff. “Before this one?”
She met his gaze, those sharp, ice-blue eyes of hers seeming to look right through him, even though he knew she couldn’t read his mind.
“Yes,” she said. Bouncing lightly on his sofa, she added, “That one was nicer. That New York was pretty. This one is ugly.”
Nick grunted.
He fought a smile, in spite of himself.
Even so, his secondary reaction was to scowl.
“How did you get to this one?” Nick said. “This New York? Ugly New York. Do you remember?”
She nodded, her expression and voice matter-of-fact.
“There was a door,” she explained.
Nick scowled.
“Of course there was,” he muttered.
Staring at her for a beat longer, he blurted,
“Why are you telling me all of this, kid? You don’t tell humans you run into stuff like this, do you? Or the ‘blue-lickers,’ as you call them? You don’t just go around blabbing about doors and alternate dimensions and your brother, the off-grid seer who likes to paint public spaces with drawings of things that haven’t happened yet?”
She frowned, giving him an openly puzzled look.
“Of course not,” she said.
Her voice was borderline indignant, if little-kid indignant.
“So why are you telling me?” Nick said.
Again, she looked at him like he was nuts, or maybe just not-too-bright.
“I like you,” she said, matter-of-fact, adding, “And you took me out of there. My arms were getting tired. I would have had to let go pretty soon. I would have ended up in jail… or in a lab, like my brother warned the last time I followed him outside.”
She shrugged, scratching a bony elbow with her fingernails.
“I like you,” she repeated.
“You like me?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“You know I’m a vampire, right?”
She nodded, completely unfazed. “Of course.”
Nick’s frown deepened.
Then, shaking his head, more to himself that time, he rose to his feet, running his hand through his hair. He looked down at her, that frown still tugging at his mouth.
“Okay, kid,” he said. “I’m going to go look for your brother. I’ll bring back food. You think you can stay out of trouble until I get back?” He motioned towards the wall monitor. “Keep that off. It’s two-way. I have some books around here somewhere. Or there’s paper if you like to draw, like your brother—”
“It’s okay,” she assured him. “I’m tired. I’ll just sleep here, if that’s okay.”
He blinked, then nodded, motioning vaguely towards the couch. “That’s fine. Grab a blanket out of the closet if you get cold.”
She sighed, nodding back, but she was already curling up on his couch, pulling the damp-smelling, fake fur jacket over her small upper body and legs like a fluffy blanket. She laid her head on one of the couch’s big, rust-colored pillow cushions with a sigh.
She looked so tiny.
Something about her curling up in a ball like that reminded him all over again, just how young she was, how small and vulnerable, despite what she was.
That tiny little baby seer was probably going to get him killed.
Even so, for a few seconds, Nick just stood there, frowning over her, feeling like he should be doing more for her, like maybe he should get her food before he left her here alone.
He was about to leave her alone, just like her brother had done in the Cauldron.
At least here, he told himself, she wasn’t likely to get kidnapped, sold or raped.
At least here, she was relatively safe.
Kit would look in on her, keep an eye on her.
He knew that.
He had no idea why the kid was so sure she was safe here, though.
He had no idea why she would trust him at all—or any vampire, much less a “blue licker” vampire, since her brother obviously put the fear of God into her around the human law enforcement authorities.
Maybe her brother needed to give her a little talk about bloodsuckers, too.
He watched as Tai’s breath grew slower, more even.
It hit him in even more bewilderment that she was just going to fall asleep, right here and now, in front of him, on his couch, with him practically looming over her like some kind of cartoon vampire bad guy.
He was still standing there, dumbfounded, when she let out a soft snore.
Chapter 11
Following Leads
“I need a database search,” Nick growled into the headset, frowning.
Thinking better of speaking aloud, given where he was, he switched to sub-vocals, putting it at the lowest possible setting in case any other vampires were around.
He didn’t like using police resources for this, given that all files and searches were logged not only nationally but internationally, and any search he did would be on his permanent record. On the other hand, he didn’t see that he had much choice.
Maybe he could get Kit to scrub this, too.
“Search subject, Detective?” Gertrude queried cheerfully.
“Person. Individual. Human. Possible witness.”
“Requestor? It’s for the file, sir.”
“Naoko Tanaka Midnight. Homicide division. Ident tag 9381T-112. I’m looking for any information you can give me on a woman named Lara St. Maarten. Family name, St. Maarten. Given name, Lara. Residence likely to be New York City, but if you don’t find anything there, expand the search in one-hundred-mile increments.”
“Understood, sir. One moment, sir.”
Nick frowned, glancing up and down the dark street.
He was hoping a quick chat with this St. Maarten woman would shorten his time on the streets, looking for big brother “Mal.”
He knew it was a long shot, but he seemed to be full of long shots tonight.
Anyway, he couldn’t afford to pass over anything that might cut down on the number of hours he spent roaming the streets of the Cauldron while a highly-illegal baby seer crashed out at his government-owned and surveilled apartment.
He wanted to get somewhere with this tonight.
He also didn’t want to leave the kid alone for too long without food.
Unless he called Morley and made arrangements in advance, he would still have to check in at the precinct before dawn, since he was still logged as being on-duty. That meant before he made his way to Grand Central Station to meet up with Jordan, he’d have to budget time to make it all the way across Manhattan and back without missing the train.
Given that, and the need to pick up food for Tai, he didn’t have a lot of time.
Really, he should wrap things up here by four a.m. at the latest, in case there were any hassles or delays at the precinct—and, more importantly, to keep off everyone’s radar for weird behavior if he possibly could.
He was skating pretty close to that line as it was.
Glancing up at the high walls around him, walls coated in glass shards and electrified razor wire, he tapped another code into his headset, activating an alarm to remind him when to leave here, in case he lost track of time.
Just to be on the safe side, he gave himself a fifteen-minute lead to finish up anything he might be in the middle of, assuming he actually found something down here.
If he was really in the thick of something, he’d call Morley, but he prefered not to raise Morley’s eyebrows for a second time that night, if at all possible.
Remembering his boss’s comments at the murder scene, Nick fought down another wave of unease. For a human, even a homicide detective, Morley was a little too observant. Moreover, he’d clearly wanted Nick to know he was already keeping an eye on him, at least enough to have noted certain things about his personality.
Nick would have to try and not make that worse tomorrow, with Jordan.
The weird, antisocial, loner thing, that is.
Nick’s attention got jerked back to the present when an atonal beeping went off in front of him. As it did, the last gate leading into the Cauldron began to open, revealing dark, blown-out, bullet-riddled buildings and an empty stretch of Amsterdam Avenue in front of him.
He’d taken the subway to get here.
He hadn’t wanted to call attention to himself, and the car was way too conspicuous,
but not having the car was another reason to stress about time.
He couldn’t dick around in here.
He’d maybe walked two blocks along Amsterdam Avenue when the metallic, female voice rose in his headset.
“Found. Resident of Phoenix Tower, New York Protected Area, Manhattan, New York. Surname: St. Maarten. Given name: Lara. Middle: Phoenix. Public records indicate widow. Fifty-four years old. Current occupation: Chairwoman, Board of Archangel Enterprises, headquarters located in the New York Protected Area, Manhattan, New York, 10349 Lexington Avenue. No criminal history. Additional current titles include: Head of the Society of the Arts for the Post-Displacement Collection at MOMA, New York Protected Area, New York City, New York. Director of Racial Artifacts, The Post-War Society, London Protected Area, London, U.K. Foundation Chair of the Post-Racial Archeological Foundation, New York Protected Area, Columbia University, New York. Other philanthropic activities include—”
“Okay, okay,” Nick cut in. “You can skip the rest for now. Upload everything you found to my personal files. Contact number?”
“That’s classified, sir.”
“Classified?” Nick frowned. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“Contact information for individual, St. Maarten, Lara, Phoenix, is protected under National Security Statute 918-0001. Official requests must be filed through the offices of Archangel Enterprises, care of the designated contact. Current designated contact is listed as: surname, Racine, given, Veronica. Female. Employed with Archangel Enterprises as Ms. St. Maarten’s private secretary. Length of post: eight years. National security clearance, Top Secret. Registered private protection professional. License number: TJW00231-2.”
Nick’s frown turned into a scowl.
“Send her a request.”
“It will reach her during daytime office hours, sir, as part of the routine queue. Unless the request is marked urgent, in which case it will be logged as part of the national security database and Ms. Racine will be contacted at once, via a dedicated line.”
Nick stared out over the dark street.
For a long-feeling moment, he turned over options in his mind.
Archangel Enterprises.
Well, wasn’t that interesting.
Unlike most humans in this town—or anywhere, really—Nick was old enough to remember where and how that particular organization got its start.
Vampire Detective Midnight Page 11
