And Margaret Healy was, of course, likely to recognize me as a relative and shoot me on sight. Not in the head. That would have been too easy, and Healy women have always been good at resource management. She would shoot me in the kneecaps, and be able to grill me at length about the location and strength of the family in North America. And then she would hunt us down, one by one, and finally finish what the Covenant failed to accomplish in my grandparents’ time. She would be the one who killed the traitors. As one of the traitors in question, this didn’t strike me as a good way to spend my time.
The end of the call was as predictable as the rest of it. “This changes things, Very,” said Dad. “With your cousin in town . . .”
“You mean my biological cousin, not Sarah.”
“Yes, exactly. With your cousin—”
“And not my uncle-by-adoption, since you’re the reason Uncle Mike is here.”
“Verity—”
“Oh, and not all the people who depend on me. The ones I promised not to run out on, because they were going to need my help with the Covenant in town. The only one who matters is Margaret. Right? None of the rest of them. Just her.”
Dad sighed heavily. “I’m worried about you, pumpkin. I’m not ready to add you to the family history.”
“You won’t, Dad. I have good people here with me, and some of them are even human.” Mike and Ryan walked in just in time to catch that comment. They looked at me quizzically, their arms loaded down with bags of groceries. I waved for them to give me a second. “I can’t run out on New York. I’m needed, and what kind of Price would I be if I ran the second it looked like things were getting bad? I have to stay, and you have to stay far away.”
“I wish you weren’t there, Verity.” The misery dripping off his words was palpable. “I wish we’d told you ‘no’ when you said you wanted to go and spend a year dancing. We should have told you that you couldn’t go.”
“I’m a grown woman, Daddy. I would have gone anyway. At least this way, you know what’s going on. Uncle Mike just got back, and I need to fill him in. Can you catch Mom up?”
“I can, and Very—if things get really bad, come home. Don’t worry about whether you’re followed. We can handle it if you are. Just get Sarah, and get out.” He paused before adding, “If you can’t get Sarah, trust her to follow on her own. You just run.” He sounded guilty. I couldn’t blame him. The idea of leaving her behind had never even crossed my mind.
“I’ll be careful,” I said, and hung up before he could say anything else. Tucking my phone back into my pocket, I turned toward Mike and Ryan, who were watching me with almost matching expressions of bemusement on their faces.
“What was that?” asked Mike.
“Dad sounding the horns for Judgment Day,” I said. “Istas is upstairs having a celebratory feast with the mice. I just spoke to Sarah. She’s fine, and I’m supposed to go check on her later tonight.”
“So what’s the problem?” asked Ryan.
“The problem is that I’m no longer the only biological member of my family in this city,” I said, and turned to focus my attention more on Mike, who would understand the importance—and the danger—of what I was about to say. “One of the Covenant representatives is a woman named Margaret Healy. She’s a cousin.”
“Oh,” he said. “Crap.”
I nodded. “Yeah. There’s a lot of that particular sentiment going around. So now the question is . . . what are we going to do?”
Twelve
“If you get yourself turned to stone, you are grounded for a week. No TV, no dessert, and no trips to the range. Do I make myself clear?”
—Evelyn Baker
The Meatpacking District, which is nicer than it sounds, inside a converted warehouse, trying to come up with a plan that doesn’t get everyone killed
“I DON’T GET what the problem is,” said Ryan. “Verity’s this chick’s cousin, right? So why can’t she just explain that this city is her territory, and that the Covenant needs to leave? Family should respect family, even if they’re on opposite sides of a war.”
Tanuki have always been very family-oriented. Large portions of their culture were based around tracking who was related to who and through what sort of path, although that had less to do with filial affection and more with their having a limited gene pool. No one wants to find out after the fact that the cute guy you’ve invited back to your den is actually a first cousin. It was that devotion to family that got a lot of tanuki killed when the Covenant came to Japan. The tanuki just kept rushing in to save the ones who’d been captured, and got themselves slaughtered in the process. Being able to turn yourself to stone doesn’t stop the men with sledgehammers.
“It doesn’t work like that for humans, Ryan,” I said, and chucked another throwing knife at the nearest dart board. It embedded itself deep into the cork. “We keep track of our relatives more so we’ll know where to send Christmas cards and who to hate than because we’re planning to help each other out.”
“Hey, now.” Uncle Mike stopped cutting the lasagna long enough to shake his spatula at me. It was store-bought—the lasagna, not the spatula, although the spatula probably came from a store somewhere—and the smell rising off the baked meat-and-cheese concoction was heavenly. “Family is a good thing, too. Don’t you forget about that just because you’re busy being freaked out over some cousin you didn’t even know existed before yesterday.”
“Even knowing that the Covenant probably sent her because she’s family? Nobody sniffs out a Healy like a Healy, and we’ve only been Prices for two generations.” If I was going by Grandma Alice and the pictures I’d seen of Great-Grandma Fran, I could call myself a Price as much as I wanted; I was still going to be an obvious Healy girl to anyone with eyes.
“Even knowing that she’s here because she’s family. Being a Healy doesn’t give you magic powers or anything. Maybe makes you a little stubborn. The stubborn has to be genetic. And then there’s the luck thing. But none of that guarantees that she’s going to trip over your hiding place, and you’ve got a lot more allies in this town than she does.” Uncle Mike dished a healthy serving of lasagna onto a paper plate. “Now eat. You’re too thin, and you’re going to worry yourself into getting even thinner.”
“I’m a professional ballroom dancer,” I said. “Thinner is a good thing.” I still took the lasagna, moving to sit down at the nearby table. The dragons had been living in this Nest for long enough to have paid—probably grudgingly—for converting the employee break room into a serviceable kitchen. Between the stove, the fridge, and the microwave Ryan and Istas had brought with them, we had sufficient facilities to keep us all fed for the duration of the siege.
“Not when you have to wrestle a lindworm out of its hole, it isn’t. Eat.” Uncle Mike turned and pressed another plate into Ryan’s hands. “You, too. Is that girlfriend of yours going to want some when she finishes partying with the mice?”
“Probably,” said Ryan. “Istas is a black hole in a lacy pinafore.”
“And other phrases that have never before been uttered.” I stabbed my lasagna with my fork. It wasn’t as satisfying as certain other kinds of stabbing would have been, but it was what I had available at the moment. “We need a plan.”
“Don’t die,” suggested Ryan.
“We need a better plan.”
“Don’t get seriously injured,” said Uncle Mike.
I eyed him. “Are you going to take this seriously? This is serious. This is a serious situation.” I paused, scowling. “Only now I’ve said ‘serious’ so many times that it’s starting to sound funny to me. Dammit. We need a plan.”
“The Covenant doesn’t know where this place is, so that’s a start,” said Mike.
“Dominic has never been here, and he doesn’t like free running, so he’s unlikely to have ever followed me,” I agreed. “The others don’t know yet that I’m someone they should be following, so that buys us a little time. We’ll need to be careful coming and going, but
we were already planning on that. And the mice make remarkably good spies. If anyone comes sniffing around here, we’ll know.”
For the first time, Ryan looked faintly uncomfortable. “They’re not going to be, you know, announcing themselves to people on the sidewalk or anything, are they? Because talking mice will convince the Covenant that there’s something up with this place pretty darn quick.”
“They’re actually better at being subtle than anyone gives them credit for,” I assured him. “When you see them around me, they’re in a safe place. They know they can be themselves here. Out in the world, they practice stealth and actual cunning. If they didn’t, we would have long since run out of Aeslin mice.”
“That’s a relief,” said Ryan.
I paused. “Actually . . . there’s something to be said for using Aeslin mice as spies. We’ve done it before, when we felt that we really had to. The mice are happy to have something they can do to help the gods.” And some of them inevitably wouldn’t make it back from their “holy mission,” because they were mice, and what I was contemplating involved sending them out into a world where practically everything was bigger than they were.
It was still one of the best ideas I’d had so far, and from the thoughtful look on Uncle Mike’s face, he thought so, too. He brought his plate and sat down next to me. “It would be a good way to find out what the Covenant was up to, if we could find a way to sneak some mice into their headquarters,” he said. “Didn’t the mice come before your family left the Covenant, though?”
“Yeah, but they came with my great-great-grandmother, Enid, when she married into the Healys,” I said. “Margaret might not know about the mice.”
“There’s an awful lot of wiggle room in ‘might.’”
I didn’t have an answer for that. I was saved from needing one when Istas appeared in the kitchen doorway. “I smell lasagna,” she announced. “You will share.”
“Hi, sweetie.” Ryan waved his fork in her direction. “Food’s on the stove. Did you have a good time with the mice?”
“Yes.” Istas started toward the lasagna, detouring only long enough to kiss Ryan on the cheek. “They are very pleasant company.”
“You have rat breath,” said Ryan, wrinkling his nose.
Istas looked pleased. “Yes,” she said. “I know.” She dished half the remaining lasagna onto a plate, bringing it with her as she moved to sit down next to Ryan. “Have we determined the best method for driving the Covenant from our territory yet? Will carnage be involved?”
“We’re still working on that,” I said. “We have numbers . . . now. But if this whole team disappears without a trace, the odds are good that the Covenant will send more people to find out what happened to them. Maybe we can disappear a second team, but can we manage a third? Or a fourth? Eventually, we’re going to wind up being the ones who don’t have the numbers in our favor.” And then the purge of New York would be able to begin in earnest.
“So what do we do right now?”
“Right now? I guess we watch and see what they do. Once we know what we’re up against, we’ll be able to counter it.” I jammed my fork into my lasagna. “I hate waiting.”
“Doesn’t everyone?” asked Mike.
I sighed heavily. “That’s what I’m afraid of. We’re waiting because we want to minimize the damage. Well, the Covenant doesn’t have anything like that to worry about. They can move whenever they want to, and we have no way of seeing them coming.”
* * *
Ryan took care of the dishes while Uncle Mike walked around the slaughterhouse, double-checking my traps and doubtless setting a few of his own. We’d all need to walk carefully from now on. That was good. It would keep us on our toes. As for me, I collected all the knives I’d thrown at the various dart boards—it was a surprisingly high number, given how little time I’d had, but I guess stress makes me stabby—and returned to the small office that was going to be my bedroom for the foreseeable future. My “bed” was an air mattress on the floor with a quilt I didn’t recognize and a pile of pillows that I did. I threw myself onto it with more force than was necessarily safe and rolled onto my back, staring at the ceiling.
My lease was almost up. The Sasquatch whose apartment I’d been using was going to be home soon, which was supposed to be my cue to go back to Oregon (assuming she came back at all, after the message I’d left for her). Mom and Dad would understand that I couldn’t leave while the threat of a purge was hanging over the city—we’ve always done fieldwork in emergency situations, and the Covenant was the next best thing to a natural disaster as far as most cryptids were concerned. But what was going to happen after that?
I came to Manhattan to prove that I could make it as a professional ballroom dancer. Only things didn’t exactly work out that way. I hadn’t managed to win a single major competition; the times I’d placed, it had always been local, and the prize money I’d received barely paid for the cost of my registration. It didn’t touch my costumes, or the hours of studio time I had to beg, borrow, and steal whenever I could. Most people in my tier of the profession supplemented their income teaching classes, but I couldn’t even do that anymore. Trying to be a cocktail waitress and a cryptozoologist took up too much time. Quit bussing tables and I couldn’t afford to eat. Quit taking care of cryptids . . .
If I quit taking care of cryptids, I wouldn’t even know who I was anymore. I pulled a throwing knife out of my shirt without thinking about it, flicking it toward the ceiling. It flew in a satisfyingly straight line, embedding itself in the wood with a soft “thunk” sound. The fact that throwing knives into the air while I was on top of an air mattress was maybe not the smartest idea barely even crossed my mind. I was too busy thinking.
I came to New York to dance. The cryptozoology was supposed to be a sideline, something I did to keep my parents happy while I proved that I could have a career if I wanted one. But somewhere along the way, the proportions got reversed. I started spending more and more time with the cryptids who needed my help, and less and less time fighting my way through the cutthroat world of ballroom dance. My partner, James, had to chase me down for rehearsals. If it weren’t for the fact that he was cutting back his own availability while he prepared for chupacabra mating season, he would probably have talked to me about seeing other partners by now. As it was, I was braced for that conversation.
(James was decidedly gay, and extremely devoted to his husband, Dennis, who put up with more than any human married to a goat-sucker could reasonably be expected to endure. But sexual preference didn’t matter during mating season. Chupacabra never raise their young in the presence of both biological parents—something about it increasing the odds of the pups being eaten before they get old enough to become intelligent. The ways of chupacabra biology are strange, and not for me to understand. Yet.)
I was about to lose my apartment, my partner, and my chance at ever having the kind of career I dreamed of when I was a kid. As a professional dancer, I was on the cusp of failing. At the same time, the Covenant of St. George was in my city, I’d been forced to go into hiding to avoid having them find me, and I had no game plan for getting rid of them. As a cryptozoologist, I wasn’t doing much better. All I could really swear to doing correctly was being a member of my family: too pigheaded to know when I was beat, and too contrary to admit when it was time to run away.
I sat up, tucking the knife I’d been about to throw at the ceiling back into my shirt. That was the answer I’d been looking for. It didn’t matter if my dancing career was over, or if I decided to put on a red wig and become Valerie Pryor full time. No matter what, I was a Price girl. And if there’s one thing no Price girl has ever voluntarily done, it’s back down from a fight.
* * *
I’d been living alone long enough that it was weird to need to tell people where I was going. I still tracked Mike down and made sure he knew I was heading for Sarah’s before I left the slaughterhouse. He asked when I’d be back. I barely managed to bite back the u
rge to tell him that I didn’t have a curfew, and stomped up the stairs to the roof.
The night air was cool and smelled like big city, that heady mix of human bodies, cooling pavement, and a thousand clubs and restaurants venting their private atmospheres into the greater ecosystem of the metropolis. A city the size of Manhattan is like a rain forest or a desert: it has its own ecology, its own secrets, and its own dangers—its own predators.
Good thing that I was one of them.
It didn’t take long for me to reach Sarah’s hotel, even with the necessary detours and slowdowns created by the variable architecture of Manhattan. I maintained a dead run all the way, burning off the barest edge of my frustration.
The Port Hope was the lowest building on its part of the block, being only five stories high. That was useful for my purposes, especially since Sarah was staying on the top floor. I couldn’t jump straight from the roof of the high-rise next to it, so I got out a climbing hook and lowered myself one floor at a time, pausing on the narrow brick lips that marked the base of each new floor to adjust my rope. Once I had a good grip, I’d start down again.
When I finally reached the floor slightly above the roof of the Port Hope, I unhooked the rope and jumped. I hit the roof as gracefully as can be expected for a human girl leaping six feet straight down. The best landings only happen when there’s no one there to see them. (Paradoxically, the same is true for the worst ones. If you’re going to break an ankle or something, you’re probably going to do it when there’s no one around to hear you shouting for help.) I held my crouch for a few seconds, indulging my paranoia as I waited to see whether I’d been followed. No one appeared. I straightened, and walked to the roof door.
It was locked. Naturally. But the faint static that told me I was in the presence of a telepath who knew me was crackling at the back of my mind—Sarah was home. I paused to center myself, trying to clear my head of any useless thoughts. Sarah? Are you there?
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