Salt and Silver

by Anna Katherine

  I blink at him. He’s sideways, because my head is on the table. Whoops. “I’m awake?”

  “You’re awake,” he confirms. “Tell me. And make me more coffee.”

  “Some women might think the jackass thing is pretty sexy, because it makes you seem like a mysterious enigma with a murky past, but I know better.” I lever myself up and step into the kitchen.

  He’s not a jackass, though, because he cleaned all the blood and crap off the chair he’d had his feet on, and he pulled all the chairs off the tables in the middle of the diner, setting everything up for opening. Even the blinds are opened, and dawn’s beginning to stain the streets outside that weird shaded blue that I’ve only seen in New York City.

  “The Door. What did you do to it?” He’s standing right behind me. In my head, he comes up and slides his arms around my waist. Damn the demon blood, damn the human blood—he’s got nice arms.

  Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because he’s only behind me to try to intimidate me, not because he really wants to get into my worn-out Winnie the Pooh sleep shorts.

  The coffee machine isn’t that complicated. I just dump in the grounds and turn it on. I lean against the counter and peer sideways at the clock on the wall. Six A.M. It’s actually time to start prepping for the breakfast crowd.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I say as the water gurgles. I don’t like the silence behind me. To fill the silence, I open the cold hold and pull out onions and peppers to dice. The breakfast potatoes have already been parboiled, and are waiting in one of the giant industrial fridges to be dumped onto the grill with the peppers and onions. “I don’t know what happened.”

  His breath huffs out. I want to scrub at my neck to stop the tingling but instead I pick up one of my knives. It’s the really nice one, with the hollow blade. It’s a bit much for dicing, but I need the comfort of the expensive grip in my hand. Sally gave it to me as a going-away present when she moved to Florida; that and management of the diner.

  “It didn’t go away on its own,” he says.

  “Yeah? How do you know?”

  He doesn’t say anything. It is a heavy sort of not saying anything, the kind that sounds more like I don’t know instead of the usual My hunter secrets are too awesome for your comprehension. I almost feel smug for scoring one off him, but . . .

  Ryan usually knows everything—just as much as the old-timers, if not more. He can talk easily of ancient Sumerian demons, quote the Christian Bible, quote the Demonic Bible, and explain the origins of the vampire myths all in one breath. He’s amazing, and impressive, and that he might possibly not know what’s going on? That scares the shit out of me.

  “I’ve got to go,” he finally says.

  I’m almost done dicing; the potatoes can be ready in minutes. So can pancakes, eggs, waffles—just about anything. “I think breakfast would be a better idea.” I turn around to face him, knife in hand. “Waffles? Pancakes? Eggs?”

  “I don’t have time for breakfast.”

  “Then I don’t have time to pour you more coffee.”

  “Brat,” he says, and sounds almost affectionate.

  “Shut up,” I reply, but I’m only pretending to be affronted. Affection is one step closer to pure and true lust. Okay, maybe not, but I worry a lot that Ryan finds me incredibly annoying, because I am so helpless when it comes to so much of the demon hunting.

  “I wonder if you accidentally did something, or if this is endemic,” says Ryan contemplatively. I pour myself a cup of the coffee and he glares at me, and takes it right out of my hand. He drinks it black. He didn’t used to drink it black; when he first came to Sally’s to guard the Door, he dumped in so much crap that it was almost like coffee-flavored sugar and cream. But I make damn good coffee.

  “Is endemic bad?” I ask.

  He blinks at me. “Yes,” he says, and goes back to drinking my cup of coffee.

  I roll my eyes. “If you’re going to stand around and accuse me of things, you’re going to eat breakfast. I am going to eat breakfast,” I amend, and cross the room to turn on the grill. I should have heated it before, but I was distracted by Ryan boring a hole in my neck with his smoldering glare.

  Okay, so I am prone to melodrama. Sue me.

  “There are more Doors in Brooklyn,” he says between sips of coffee. “I think the closest one to here is at Maimonides Hospital off Fort Hamilton Parkway.”

  “Wait, what? There’s another Door near here? Do you watch that one too?” I am incredulous—and with good reason. Watching a Door is hard work. Ryan hardly ever leaves here. I can’t imagine that he ever has time to watch another Door, much less the energy. Not to mention that . . . well, in the years that the Door has been open, he’s never mentioned any of the others.

  I guess I knew they existed in an abstract way, but I didn’t realize that there was one twenty minutes away.

  “No. Owen does.”

  “Who the hell is Owen?”

  “He’s a hunter.” Clearly not one who’s come by looking for free food. I know all of them by name. “And a paramedic,” Ryan continues. “The junkies love him.”

  I bet this is because all hunters—young hunters, anyway—are sexy. That’s my new theory. It would give them a natural defense against really gross stuff—you can’t be gross and be sexy at the same time, I’m pretty sure.

  Oh, maybe he’s better looking than Ryan. Are paramedics likely not to be jerks? Good question. Until I find out, though, I’m officially off my Ryan kick. Cold turkey, baby.

  “You should invite him over some time,” I say in a way that is not at all suspicious-sounding.

  Ryan glares at me. “Not going to happen,” he says shortly. A moment passes, and he frowns down at his coffee. “Not that it matters, though. Ask him yourself. Unless he actually answers his phone, you’re coming with me.”

  I am? “I am?” I ask, because I am not one for thinking one thing and saying another. I mean, why bother? If I don’t ask, how will people tell me what I want to know? That is logic.

  Like now, for instance. Ryan nods, though he doesn’t look happy about it. “I don’t know what’s happening. It’s better if you stick with me.” I am considering getting my hopes up. “I can always use you as a distraction if a demon shows up,” he adds.

  I slice the rest of the peppers with a lot more strength than really necessary. Stupid peppers.

  Ileave the diner in the care of the morning shift—I don’t make them come in to prep, because I’m a nice person, but I figure that if I prep, I shouldn’t have to work the early shift, with all the surly Williamsburg hipsters coming in for coffee and pancakes before work. Normally I’d be going back to sleep for a couple more hours before I wake up and take the afternoon and evening shifts. Sometimes I wait tables, sometimes I cook, sometimes I run the register—I do whatever needs to be done.

  But today I get to run around with Ryan on just a few hours’ sleep. Not even run around.

  “We have to take the bus?” I moan.

  “It’s that or we go all the way into Manhattan to switch to the D train to get to the hospital.”

  “I don’t want to go to the hospital,” I grouch. But really I do, because I want to meet this unknown hunter. I just don’t want to take the bus. New York buses are slow, and they smell, and most of the time there are no seats. Plus we’re going to have to transfer. It means a lot of waiting around, making awkward conversation with Ryan, all because Ryan can’t get this guy on the phone.

  “I did get him on the phone, but he hung up,” says Ryan, shrugging, as we stand in the sun. I’m squinting, because I didn’t bring sunglasses. He’s got his Stetson on, as usual, and that leather coat. He’s leaning against a lamppost. I know he’s got weapons, but none of them are showing. Which is good, I guess, because I’m not sure he has a license. Do you need a license for guns in New York? I do not even know. Ryan and I have never actually hung out outside the diner together, so I don’t really know if I should be keeping an eye out for the cops or whatev
er. It is seriously distracting.

  “Wait,” I say, “why? Were you a jerk? Did you not give the secret hunter codeword or something?”

  “Factions,” Ryan tells me, like I should have known this already.

  “Listen,” I say, in what I think is a totally reasonable manner. “You never tell me anything. How am I supposed to know if you never tell me? Bitch.”

  Ryan snorts. He must be sweltering in his leather gear, but he looks totally cool, like nothing can get to him. He’s not even sweating, even though I think I should’ve reconsidered my clothing choices—jeans? what?—and I can see an easy dozen air conditioners up and down the street practically running water. Ryan just tips his hat back slightly and says, “You never noticed that all the hunters who come into Sally’s wear Stetsons?”

  “Yes, but—” I never knew it mattered. Instead I noticed that they are all scrupulously polite and treat me like a stupid mundane, and stop whatever they’re saying when I come by and start telling elaborate stories about demons they’ve fought and killed—most of which, Ryan says, are bullshit.

  “There are three factions.” Ryan stops and nods politely at a passing elderly couple, and I am this close to tapping my foot before he decides they’ve wandered far enough away to start up again. “Some hunters wear Baseball Caps. Some wear Fedoras. And some wear Stetsons. It has to do with some Scientologists and a loa—” Ryan breaks off—again. This time it’s a girl who’s wandered up to the bus stop. She’s wearing white capri pants, a white halter top, and orange high-heeled shoes with open toes. Her handbag is purple and, seriously, bedazzled. Like, with a BeDazzler, I am pretty sure.

  Hipster. She’s probably got a trust fund. I used to have a trust fund, before my mother ran away with her tennis instructor. (His name is Rio. They went to Rio. It’s a whole thing that I try not to think about—ever since the Great Depressive Episode, I’ve realized that repression is my friend.)

  “And that’s why I like the Brooklyn Cyclones instead of the Mets,” says Ryan quickly. I have no idea what he’s talking about, but hipster girl opens her eyes wide. Uh-oh, time for flirting. It’s like his automatic I am mundane! defense. He does it in the diner all the damn time. I sigh as she starts talking about baseball.

  Ryan smiles more at her in the ten minutes we wait for the bus to come than he’s smiled at me in the last few months.

  At least there are seats on the bus. Hipster-girl stays on the street, looking miffed. Small mercies. Ryan stands, because that is the Way of the Mighty Badass Hunter, but I slump into one of the seats near him. I don’t do very well on no sleep.

  As we bump along the streets of Brooklyn, I stare out the window and worry. That is the Way of the Allie.

  The girl and his stupid defense flirting. Is that how the other hunters see me? Is that how Owen will see me? What if, actually, I’m just some annoying mundane Ryan’s bringing along? What if he’s actually breaking all sorts of secret hunter rules? If that’s the case, okay, he should be a lot less susceptible to my whining, but what if I lose him his job?

  Unlikely, but whatever, I am not a new-people person and I don’t deal with my issues well.

  The bus lights flicker, with those sparks you sometimes get popping up in the window opposite me. They’re kind of pretty. I look away from them for a second, and that’s how I catch the girl across from me staring at Ryan. Ryan’s standing next to me, looking from beneath his hat brim with some middle-distance, thousand-yard-stare type thing that is probably just him reading the Spanish cartoons along the ceiling, but whatever. This girl’s checking him out. That’s two in one day.

  I am not territorial. Not not not.

  I squidge down in my seat and stretch my leg out so my calf rubs his. Or hits his—it’s tough to get that quite right when the bus is likely to take a sudden turn like, oh, now. But that doesn’t matter, because he’s looking down at me with a really interesting look on his face, one I can’t quite read, and he’s shifting on his feet but not, I notice, away from me.

  I take a really brief moment to look at the girl—she’s pouting. Ha. Take that, sulky-faced blonde girl.

  Ryan catches me and my maybe-inappropriate level of smugness. He rolls his eyes and steps away.

  Two buses later, and we’re at the hospital. I’ve never been here before, but it looks like the hospitals I have been to. Except busy—kind of stuffed, actually. Ryan just walks through the lobby like he belongs there, past the security and the nurses and a lot of sick people who only bother to glare at me in a halfhearted way. Past the lobby there are somehow more people, doctors and nurses, and gurneys lining the halls, and I am starting to wonder if maybe we are getting in the way.

  I’ve never been to Maimonides, because Ryan’s got a stoic, anti-doctor thing happening. We’ve been lucky, so far—mostly the times I’ve had to patch him up, he’s needed weird things done, like his wounds packed with rosemary and sage, or I have to use a soldering iron to melt spelled silver into a cut made by a werewolf claw. Luckily that was only a few times, because I’m not very good with the soldering iron. My hands shake.

  Mostly he does his own medical stuff. He’s never been hurt so badly that I’ve had to take him to the hospital. And for that I am grateful to whatever thing is out there that is the opposite of the Hell inside the Door.

  It takes me a minute to realize Ryan’s keeping an eye out for signs—he pauses at a corner and then takes a left to what must be the cafeteria. There are a ton of people there, too, families eating weird food for the hour, doctors turning book pages with one hand and eating mechanically with the other, and a couple of EMTs with crusty uniforms. One of the EMTs is just reaching a chair at an empty table, and Ryan heads for him.

  Owen, if that’s who this is, isn’t hot like Ryan, and that’s a disappointment. What he is is big and rosy cheeked. Before he sees us bearing down on him, he calls out something to the next table over, where some off-duty nurses are sitting, and I hear his accent—he’s got a total cheerful British thing going on. He’s also taller than Ryan, which is just weird. He’s wearing the dark blue uniform, though, which is kind of attractive, if you have a thing for uniforms. I don’t, not really, but I can see how he could be getting a lot of play. His name tag says “David” on it, but all hunters have a name thing. He’s also wearing a dark blue baseball cap, and I wonder if it’s really as meaningful as Ryan tried to make it sound earlier.

  He’s just pulled out his chair when he sees us coming. His face clouds, and he pushes his chair in again. He doesn’t make idle conversation, just like Ryan never does—he doesn’t even say hello or introduce himself. He jerks his head back toward the hallway, then leads us into a small room next to a nurse’s station. “This is where the interns sleep when they do overnights,” he explains briefly. “It’ll probably be empty for the next few minutes at least; there was a four-car accident on the Belt Parkway.”

  Ryan clears his throat. Owen immediately looks pissed. “Listen,” he says, and suddenly his cheerful accent is harsh and mean. “I have a job, and I don’t have to talk to you, Stetson. So either tell me what you want or get the hell out of my bloody hospital.”

  I snicker. He’s got a book of crosswords in one hand and a Styrofoam cup of coffee in the other.

  But I do not blame him for being annoyed—Ryan showing up is never really a good sign.

  “I need to see your Door,” Ryan says, because he is all that is suave and tactful.

  “Too bad.”

  “Hi,” I say really cheerfully, because I am crap at keeping out of things and I can tell this situation isn’t going to get any better. Anyway, aren’t I supposed to be a distraction? Totally fits. “My name’s Allie. I run a diner across town. You should come, we have great coffee. Was your Door summoned or was it a spontaneous vivification? I could bring you pie, if you want.”

  Owen blinks at me, and smiles slowly. “You idiot,” he says, which I worry is about me until: “You use the Door to impress girls now?” He winks at me, and then
I sort of want to kill him for suddenly turning skeezy. “Never trust a guy with a Stetson,” he tells me. “They’re not the steady kind.”

  This annoys me. I don’t want to be dragged into the middle of some stupid feud about a Scientologist and a loa. Not only that, but insulting Ryan is not the way to my heart.

  “There’s a problem. A real one,” replies Ryan impatiently. “Is your Door still here?”

  Owen’s smirk drops off. Now he looks like a guy that you’d expect to see bent over you in an ambulance. Tired, and not as reassuring as he’s trying to be. “Yes,” he says. “Is there a reason it shouldn’t be?”

  “Are you sure?”

  Owen downs the last of his coffee, tosses the cup into the trash, and leaves the crossword book on the gurney. Some intern had clearly just been sleeping there not too long ago, because there’s still an indentation in the pillow from someone’s head.

  “Come on,” he says. “We need to go to Laundry.”

  3

  There are three ways for demons to come into the world. The way that doesn’t involve a Door is when one is simply born among us. (What, you thought The Omen was just a movie?) At the right time, and in the right place, cats that jump over cradles can turn babies into vampires. Hungry men can become wendigos, found covered in their family’s blood. A walk into a banyan tree can get somebody possessed by a demon with no face. (And, okay, for that last one, the banyan tree has to be in Guam, but you get the idea.)

  The second way is when a regular door or opening or whatever goes through spontaneous vivification. That’s when it just sparks to life on its own for some stupid occult reason; like the “born into it” way, it’s just something in the right place and at the right time—and in this case, the right shape. Those Doors are tough to spot, Ryan says. If a hunter doesn’t get to them fast enough, the bodies start piling up, and then it’s Hell getting anybody past the police on scene.