Night Life

by Caitlin Kittredge

  "She means animal figuratively, right?" Dmitri whispered.

  I glared. "Don't be an ass."

  Grandma walked to the exact center of her small living room and then turned to us, arms folded. "So, Luna. What have you gotten yourself into this time?"

  I ordered my inner fifteen-year-old not to chafe at the tone and posture that even now I associated with the worst contempt. I only partially succeeded, because when I gestured to her denim love seat and asked, "Should we all sit down?" it came out sounding like I was being punished and had just been grounded from my boyfriend.

  "The moon rises at eight twenty-one tonight, Luna. It is currently seven thirty-eight. Get on with it."

  "Damn it, Grandma. Sit down," I ordered. "This is going to take a minute."

  She glared at me, as only a hardened caster witch can glare, but she folded her shawl more tightly around her body and sat. I took Dmitri's wrist and pulled him down next to me.

  Then I told my grandmother everything, starting with Lilia and working my way toward Stephen Duncan and my burning need to find him.

  "And we have to do it before his father finds him. He's the only lead we have to Alistair."

  Grandma rubbed her chin with a smooth hand, and then chuckled. Dmitri grunted. "Something funny?"

  "Not really," my grandmother said. "Just that for someone who strives for normalcy, Luna, you certainly have been keeping some strange company."

  "It's not by choice," I told her tightly. Her and her damn smug after-the-fact pronouncements.

  "Of course not," she said with a solicitous nod. Standing, she went to a mellowed oak armoire in the corner and opened it wide, revealing rows of jars and bundles of herbs so neat they'd make Professor Hoskins proud.

  "I can do my best to find this Duncan boy," she said. "But calling a mark is not the same as scrying for lost car keys."

  She spread a blue cloth marked with her circle across the table and got out a censer similar to Sunny's, only older and crackling with a lot more power.

  "You might wanna watch out with that," Dmitri told her. "Last time Sunny used one of those things it ended up planted in a wall."

  "Oh, really," said Grandma, turning her eye on me. I cursed silently.

  "When were you going to inform me of the mark being warded, Luna?" she asked, putting a stick of sage into the censer and taking a birch caster out of her casting box.

  "Just do your best, Grandma, please," I begged. "This could be a matter of life and death."

  "You know it is traditional for caster witches to demand payment in advance of a working that could compromise their safety," Rhoda said, pausing with the matches to light the censer in her hands.

  I felt my face go crimson. "You have got to be joking."

  Rhoda crossed her arms. "Luna, you of all people should know that this is not a joking matter. A warded mark could cause serious harm, kill me even." She smiled. It wasn't a happy smile. "But then again, you never cared much for the safety of others, did you?"

  Red rage clamped down over my good sense and I was on my feet, finger jabbing in her face before I knew it. "Listen, you miserable old bat! I had enough of you when I lived here, and I don't have to put up with your shit anymore!"

  "I believe you do," said Rhoda in that infuriating tone that she used with nonwitches and small children, "if you want me to call this mark."

  Hex it, she was right and she knew it. I clenched my hands hard enough to bruise my palms, and took deep breaths until I lost count. "What's your payment?"

  "If I find this person for you," said Rhoda, lighting the censer and fanning the smoke with her hand until it boiled over the edges, "you will release Sunflower from her obligation to you and allow her to return to live with me."

  "Sunny doesn't want to live with you! She thinks you're out of your nuts-to-begin-with mind as much as I do!"

  Rhoda sat at the table and placed one hand on her caster. To Dmitri she said, "Be a dear and get me that crystal on the leather thong from my cabinet."

  Dmitri handed it to her with distaste and stepped away from the circle. I felt the magick stir as the working coiled and readied itself.

  "Sunny is not leaving," I said again.

  "Perhaps, but she will be allowed to make that choice for herself and not out of any cockeyed obligation to her stupidly unfortunate relatives." Rhoda folded her hands over her caster and smiled placidly at me. And why shouldn't she? She had won.

  I started to sit in the circle, and she pushed me off. "Ah-ah. No weres in the circle. The energy becomes unforgivably tainted."

  "What is it with you caster snobs?" I muttered. Dmitri favored my grandmother with a soft growl.

  "Try it and I'll fix you so fast you'll never even be able to contemplate having pups" was her response. Dmitri raised an eyebrow at me.

  "Charming, isn't she?" I said.

  "Luna, spread out the city map on the table inside the circle," she ordered, "and step back."

  I did as she asked and wriggled as Rhoda's working slid over my skin. Sunny's magick always made me feel like I had a bad case of gooseflesh, but Rhoda's was a firm cold pressure on the skin, one that you itched to brush off as soon as it touched you.

  The birch caster began to crackle while Rhoda stayed stock-still with her eyes rolled back in her head, humming softly.

  I had forgotten how freaky it can be watching someone in a trance state—she's there but she's not, just a sham body standing in front of you while the person you know gets replaced by something other.

  My grandmother took the crystal between her fingers robotically. It began to describe a small circle over the neat pink-blue-green grid of the Nocturne City Chamber of Commerce map. Rhoda's humming rose in tone until it began to grate on my ears, and her eyelids fluttered like butterflies in the throes of a hurricane.

  I saw her arm tense and knew the mark had been touched by her working. Rhoda gasped, and then strangled as she fought for breath, the crystal falling to the floor.

  "Shit," Dmitri muttered.

  I won't lie and say I was filled with shock and concern, but I did reach into the circle and shake her shoulder once.

  Rhoda choked, rigid as rigor, blue beginning to creep around the outside edges of her lips. When our skin made contact I felt the sick prick of blood magick, and I knew she'd found Alistair Duncan.

  "Let go!" I screamed, grabbing Rhoda by the collar and trying to shake her out of her trance.

  Dmitri pulled my hands off her. "Move," he demanded, and took hold of the caster, which was rippling like wax over an open flame, pressing it down to the table with a slam.

  Flames popped from the table and Dmitri was flung backward into the nearest wall, leaving a burned replica of Stephen's mark etched into the center of the map. A polite warning to anyone else stupid enough to try to see past the wards.

  Grandma slumped over in her chair, her eyes coming back into focus. "Luna," she said, surprised. She rubbed her throat. "I felt hands. Around my neck."

  "I am so sorry," I whispered. Seeing the blue handprints around Rhoda's throat, I hated Alistair Duncan for thinking I could be flicked away so easily.

  "It's not the first time I've encountered something unsavory on the other side," said Rhoda raspily. "Don't you worry, although I know you never do."

  She gave a small sigh and then slumped against me, out cold. "Hex me," I muttered as I propped her up.

  Dmitri pulled himself to his feet. "She okay?" His eyes were saucer-wide and dark with near panic.

  I hauled Rhoda up and supported her with one of my shoulders. "Fine. It takes a lot out of you."

  Dmitri half carried Rhoda to one of the sofas and laid her down. "So now what?"

  I looked down at the map of the city. Somewhere amid five million people a monster was looking back at me, and laughing.

  It was a crazy idea, even more so because despite my tendency to shapeshift at inopportune times and attract absolutely the wrong kind of witchly attention, I had absolutely no aptitude for m
agick. Sunny and Rhoda were the ones in the family with all the witch genes. I was just the boring one who got an unlucky bite on the neck.

  I went to the cabinet and looked at the ordered jars, none of which held what I needed. My hands shook as I felt far back for the locked black lacquered box I knew was there. I found it and took it out, turning to Dmitri. "Help me?"

  "With what?"

  I gently pulled aside Rhoda's shawl and found the small square key to the box. I unlocked it and found a plastic baggie of gray herbs, resembling burned tobacco.

  "Go into the kitchen," I instructed, trying to keep my voice strong. "Find me a bowl—glass or ceramic—and some more matches."

  I set the box on the table and went to the bottom drawer of the armoire. Out came a round flat mirror, which I set to the left of the city map. Visions came unbidden, of a smaller, more curious Luna who dared to peek into her grandmother's private room when she heard strange noises and who saw white eyes, a rigid face, and putrid poison smoke rising from a burning bowl. A flat mirror with faces reflected in it, faces that screamed and clawed and tried to break free.

  Dmitri came back with a brown bowl and a box of kitchen matches. "This okay?"

  "Fine," I said distractedly. Better than telling him the truth—that the flat mirror sitting innocuously on the table scared the hell out of me.

  "Now, what in all the fires of the Hex Riots are we doing?" he asked.

  I dumped the herbs into the bowl, realizing I had no clue what the correct proportion was.

  "We're going to catch ourselves a spider," I said, lighting a match. "Stand back. The fumes are toxic."

  "Whoa," said Dmitri, grabbing the match from me and pinching it out. "Toxic? What is it?"

  I sighed. "Nightshade. Nightshade and a scrying mirror. This is how we find Stephen."

  Dmitri was already shaking his head. "No way. No way am I going to let you do that when your gran was almost popped just for holding a piece of wood." He frowned. "Besides, don't you have to be a medium or a witch or something to scry with a mirror? Less control than a caster."

  "Sure you're not a witch?" I threw back.

  He crossed his arms. "Dated a few in my time."

  "Either you shut up and hold my hands, or get out," I said. "I'm the only one here to do it, so I'm doing it. If I can't call Stephen's mark I'll just have to find him the old-fashioned way. With or without you, knight in shining biker leathers."

  "You," Dmitri informed me, "are a pain in the ass." He sat across the table from me and extended his hands palms-up.

  I lit the match and dropped it into the nightshade. Immediately blue-gray smoke began to roil as the leaves curled and burned.

  "Bright Lady of the Moon," I whispered, the only prayer I knew. "Bright Lady of the Moon, please let me see." I reached across the table for and gripped Dmitri tightly. I held on to the warmth and the rough palms, letting it anchor me to the world of the visible and bright and living.

  Then I lowered my head and breathed.

  Twenty-Two

  At first, I saw nothing. My vision swam with black haze and caustic smoke. A breeze ruffled my hair, and cleared the smoke to reveal a plain room with a bank of windows looking into nothing.

  Alistair Duncan faced away from me, standing. An aura moved around him, slimy and silver-gray like oil. I supposed it had always been there. It would explain why my skin crawled whenever he got close to me.

  "I'm very disappointed in you." His voice came from down a long tunnel, lips not quite moving in sync.

  Beyond Duncan, through my skewed viewing of the room, I detected another presence. Duncan was speaking to a tall, indistinct figure whose skin was fairly bathed in gold. His aura, however, was so black that it sucked the magick from the very air, like a collapsed star vibrating around his form.

  "You are nothing but a puppet," Duncan was saying, "A puppet I've spent a great deal of time and energy on, and you will obey me."

  The golden figure looked into my eyes, and I felt like someone had wrapped my heart in ice. He smiled, and I felt the words. "Release me, Luna."

  How in Hex did he know me? I didn't want this strange figure with his inhumanly blank aura to know me. His eyes felt like they pierced flesh and saw secrets. They hurt.

  "Alistair." A voice broke into the rush of the nightshade vision, and Duncan whipped his head to the right.

  "What in the name of all things Hexed could be important enough to interrupt this?"

  "Stephen's gone, Alistair."

  Duncan cursed and walked out of my line of sight. He returned dragging one of the thugs who had held me down in Maven's while Cassandra cut me. Duncan shoved the thug to his knees and pointed at something on the floor I couldn't see. The overdressed muscle hissed as he touched the floor, and I could only imagine what kind of calling circle Alistair had drawn. Black and writhing and headache-inducing. That seemed to be his style.

  "If you don't find him," Duncan was saying, "you will be joining the imperfect circle for good. Am I clear?"

  The thug squirmed. "Clear! But he's gone home!"

  Duncan released him. The golden figure watched these proceedings with a lazy grin and I realized why the thug wasn't freaking out. Only Duncan and I could see what was in the circle.

  The haze began to gather again, and I had the feeling of the floor spinning and falling out from underneath me. The voices of Duncan and his thug grew warbly. The nightshade was wearing off.

  I spun around in the vision, a move that made me more than a little likely to throw up, and cast about for any sign of a landmark I could use.

  "Why did he go home?" Duncan asked as my eyes lit on the intertwined AA writ large on the wall behind the thug's head. Appleby Acres. Ghosttown.

  "He said he had to visit them," said the thug. "He wasn't making any sense, Alistair."

  Duncan released the thug with a kick and turned back to the circle, but the golden daemon was a faded aural memory. "No! Hex it!" Duncan screamed, kicking the circle open with a foot across the markings. He turned on the thug. "Find him, or it's you we'll be feeding Meggoth with."

  The thug scrambled out of the room, and my vision went black.

  I came back to myself slumped over the table, choking with the scent of burned nightshade in my nose. I felt weak and roiled and my stomach lurched when I lifted my head.

  "Luna." Dmitri lifted my chin with his hand. "There you are."

  I coughed again and managed to nod. "I saw him."

  "Where?"

  I reached for my notebook and pen. "I don't know. Somewhere in Ghosttown. Old Acres symbol on the wall, pre-Riots." I sketched the symbol quickly and held it out to Dmitri.

  "Only place I know of that the packs haven't picked over is the old housing authority. Nothin' up there except a bunch of office furniture and rotary phones."

  "Was it burned during the Riots?"

  "Part of it," said Dmitri, helping me up. "Some of the offices didn't get it too bad."

  I carefully locked my grandmother's door behind us as he helped me out to the bike. "Then that's where Alistair Duncan is."

  "Duncan is the one who murdered Lilia?" Dmitri asked. I nodded.

  "I'll kill him," said Dmitri.

  "Be serious," I said. "The man is a district attorney. If you kill him as payback for Lilia, you'll be in Los Altos breathing in cyanide gas before you can say vigilante."

  Dmitri's face turned a hard, ugly kind of determined that frightened me. I knew the look of violence, and when the look came on so fast and furious the only thing you could hope to do was get out of the way. "I don't care," he said. "I haven't cared since Lilia died. I knew I wasn't coming out alive, but I'll be damned if I let the bastard get away free."

  "He's a blood witch, Dmitri, one who's been practicing for almost thirty years. You won't be able to kill him. We find Stephen, make sure he's safe. Alistair is too much for you alone."

  "He's a man. He bleeds," said Dmitri.

  I bit my lip as he got on the bike and glared unti
l I joined him.

  "I don't know if Duncan is a man, anymore," I said quietly as Dmitri hit the accelerator and we roared away from the cliffs, back toward Nocturne City.

  He didn't have a response for that.

  * * * *

  The lamps along Alistair Duncan's street flickered as Dmitri pulled the bike to the curb. The old gas lights cast an orange glow over the pavement and blurred the edges of everything, making the entire street into a dream scene. I whispered to Dmitri, "Wait here for me."

  "No way," he rumbled. "I'm not leaving you alone in that house."

  "If you go in then I will have contaminated the crime scene," I said. "I can't risk it."

  Dmitri growled and made a move to follow me. I put my hand flat against his chest. "I'll be fine. Really."

  "The minute I hear anything, I'm coming after you," he promised.

  I didn't answer. Dmitri had been kind and bought my ridiculous excuse. Even now I entertained the fantasy that if I could just catch Duncan in the act, a spontaneous working would ensue and I would have my job and my reputation magicked back to me.

  Duncan's house was dark, a pile of newspapers on the lowest step. His clay urns of flowers were wilted, and two package notices from the postal service flapped on his front door.

  I took the Colt out of my waistband and eased the storm door open. The knocker fell once, twice. Only silence answered me.

  Up and down the street, only a few lamps burned behind the leaded-glass windows of the old homes. A wind ruffled the spring leaves in the trees along the street and my hair.

  I took off my borrowed jacket and wrapped it around my hand. I prayed Alistair Duncan didn't have a fancy alarm system to go with his fancy house, and punched the glass in the door.

  It shattered, fragments tinkling into the house, small thuds as they hit the carpet runner in the foyer. I examined the jacket and found a large and irreparable tear up the back. Great. Another reason for Olya to bitch at me.

  I glanced over my shoulder at the street. Dmitri leaned against his bike, the glow from his cigarette making his face a black hollow behind it.