by Devon Monk
“That should work,” he said. “I’ll call at five.”
“Good. See you then.”
It was still raining, but it wasn’t like I could get any wetter.
I opened the door and got out.
“Allie?” Zay called after me.
I ducked down to look at him.
“Be careful.” He was dead serious.
I wanted to crawl back into the car and stay with him. Instead, I shut the door, and then strode across to the sidewalk, under the awning, and into the familiar surroundings of my building.
Chapter Ten
I jogged up the three flights of stairs, maybe because I wanted to get to my apartment and shower and change in time to pull myself together before the Hound meeting. Or maybe because that fight with the watercolor people on top of the rest of my day had shook me in a deep way that made me want to scream just a little.
Yeah, mostly it was the second thing.
Running up the stairs in a totally dignified and not scared of my own shadow kind of way let me release a little of that pent up panic, let my body burn while my mind rolled out the fear carpet and took a nice leisurely stroll.
Whatever those watercolor people were-they had been a lot harder to get rid of this time. And despite not wanting to tell Zayvion, I was sure-positive-I had seen my father in the street. I was positive I had heard him.
He had said something about gates opening and seeking death.
Why did ghosts have to be so spooky? I mean, it had been a while since my dad and I had spoken to each other. He could have talked about the weather, asked me how my job was going, or maybe explained why even though he was dead he still felt the need to meddle in my life.
Honestly, he could have just told me why he wanted me to seek the dead and what seeking the dead meant.
I made it to my apartment door. All the other doors down the hall were closed, including the one where my newest neighbor, the creepy doctor from the coffee shop, lived. I unlocked my door, and then, because I was feeling more than a little jumpy, I drew a glyph to enhance my senses of hearing and smell, set a Disbursement this time (oh, hells, I hadn’t been setting Disbursements when we faced the watercolor people; I was so going to have magic pound that price out of me), and leaned close to my door to listen for any movement, any breathing beyond it. I sniffed and got only a noseful of the smells I am used to in my building, along with the slight smell of almonds that I decided must be my new neighbor.
A motion at the corner of my eye caught my attention and I looked down the hall. I thought, for just a second, that someone had been standing there. Even though I had not enhanced my sight with magic, the pale green and blue tremor of fog-watercolor fog-at the end of the hallway near the head of the stairwell was enough for me to let go of magic.
The hall was just a hall again. No fog. No movement. No sound.
And nothing seemed to be moving in my apartment either.
I walked in, flipped the lights on, locked the door behind me, and strode through the entire place, just to make sure I was alone.
And I was.
I wanted a shower, but that would mean getting naked in my bathroom again, and as good as hot water sounded, I just didn’t have it in me to get all naked and vulnerable yet.
Last time I was in that bathroom, my dead father had seen me, touched me.
“C’mon, Allie,” I said out loud. “Get over it. You’ve gotten over every other screwed-up thing that has happened to you.”
Maybe I needed a cat. Or a dog. Something that would sense if there were anything out of the ordinary going on in my apartment. But a cat or dog would take time to care for, and I barely made time to take care of myself.
Maybe something smaller that needed fewer walks in the park and less one-on-one time. A goldfish? How about a ghost-sniffing hamster?
Ha.
I took off my coat, hung it on the hook behind the door, and decided I could stall the whole get-naked thing while doing something useful. I pulled out my notebook.
I wrote down everything that had happened today-the bus ride with Trager, the visit with Love and Payne, Stotts and his secret magic police, the Hounding job I’d go on tonight, Pike and the angry young Anthony, and of course the watercolor people, magical disappearing Life and Death glyphs, Grant’s opera tickets, my re-date with Violet for breakfast tomorrow, my dad’s empty grave, his appearance in the intersection, the encounter with the watercolor people, and the surprisingly powerful Mr. Jones. I noted that I was going to a Hound meeting and that I had a dinner date with Zayvion, who had said there were magic users out there, watching me, waiting for me to make a mistake. And that the price for that mistake might well be my death.
Listed like that, my day was shaping up fan-damntastic.
I pulled off my knit hat, dropped it on the half wall between my entryway and kitchen, and scratched at my wet, itchy head. I had delayed it as long as I could. Time to shower. I picked up a candle I had left there on the half wall and stopped in the living room to light it.
A headache was looming, pressing at the back of my skull, not bad yet, but I knew in an hour or two, it would probably be a migraine.
“Disbursements, Allie,” I said out loud, trying to fill the emptiness of my apartment with my voice. “Why do you always forget to set Disbursements? You are such an idiot sometimes.”
I set the candle on the edge of the sink and left the door open. If the lights went out again, I wanted something to see by and a clear escape route. I took a deep breath and pulled back the shower curtain. Nothing but my empty shower. Good. I turned on the shower to give the water time to warm up. I undressed and kept glancing out at the hallway and peering at the corners of the bathroom.
I tossed my clothes in the hamper and checked myself for bruises and cuts in the full-length mirror standing next to the hamper.
No cuts, which was great. But the site where Trager had shoved the needle in my thigh was a hard, sore, hand-sized lump. A bruise spread out in thin tendrils that looked more like a broken spider web than a bruise. A glyph? I ran my fingers over it carefully and didn’t sense any magic left in it. But, yes, it was a glyph. Blood magic, though not any kind I was aware of. It had to be the thing that had made me feel so dizzy after he had stabbed me.
I swore.
But the glyph wasn’t the only new mark I carried. There were four dark red circles down my neck, a lot more on my left shoulder, and several on the outside of my hips, thighs, stomach, and what I could see of my back. They looked like finger-bruises, only they weren’t the right color for bruises. I gently rubbed the marks on my left shoulder.
Ouch.
Sticky moisture clung to my fingertips. Those red spots hurt. I wasn’t exactly bleeding, but I was sort of weeping fluid. The marks burned like someone had peeled my skin off. I touched the ones on my neck more carefully. Same thing-raw and painful.
I didn’t think Trager could have caused these marks. I would have known if he touched me like that, no matter how glyphed and dizzy I was.
No, I knew where I must have gotten them from-the watercolor people touching me outside Get Mugged. I had felt light-headed after that-drained and sort of sunburned. And these were the marks left behind from their attack.
I didn’t have any Band-Aids.
I wasn’t even sure I had any painkillers in the house.
I bet this was going to sting like hell in the shower.
I could do this. I could get in the shower, wash off despite being afraid my dead dad was going to show up again, and despite the pain it might cause my new wounds.
I stepped in the shower and did not pull the curtain closed. So what if I got a little water on the floor? It probably needed to be mopped anyway. With the curtain open I had a better chance at that clear escape route.
The water hit my shoulders, and sure enough, it stung like mad.
Fabulous.
So instead of taking a nice relaxing soak, I shivered in the heat of the water and made it quick. I
washed my hair with shampoo that stung, then rubbed soap that stung over my skin, and patted myself dry, which also stung.
Not that I was bitter about it or anything.
I got out of the shower, wrapped the towel around me, and brushed out my hair, tucking it behind my ears. Then I opened my medicine cabinet. That lingering headache was moving in, sinking down into the back of my head and squeezing at my temples. All I had in the medicine cabinet were some cold pills, cotton swabs, a bottle of aspirin, and Bactine.
I pulled out the painkillers, tipped four tablets into my palm, and then swallowed them down. Next I uncapped the Bactine and squirted the antiseptic over each of my raw marks. It helped some-took the sting out-but the cold rivulets of antiseptic that snaked down my body made me shiver.
I blew out the candle and took the aspirin with me into the bedroom. If I was going to get through tonight, I would need to chew down at least another eight of these things.
I didn’t keep prescription painkillers in the house for a reason. Being a Hound and using magic for a living made it way too easy to fall into abusing substances for pain relief.
I dressed in an extra layer, a soft cotton long-sleeve shirt so that the raw marks wouldn’t get scratched by my wool sweater, and wore a pair of tights beneath my jeans for the same reason.
Next on were wool socks, a black scarf my friend Nola knitted for me, a spare pair of leather gloves, and the only other coat I owned: a short black leather trench. It wasn’t as warm as my other coat, but it would keep me dry. I pulled on a new slouchy knit hat.
Back in the living room I picked up my journal, and my wallet, and after locking the front door behind me, I strolled back down the hall and stairs to catch the bus to the meeting.
I looked good. Very secret agent-ish.
I made it to the bus stop just as the bus pulled up and found an empty seat near the door. For the next twenty minutes of stop and go, my headache thrummed along merrily. The painkillers weren’t doing squat so I went over everything that had happened today and what I understood about it.
A lot, and not much.
I was apparently being haunted by my father. He wanted me to look for dead people or dying people, or the just plain dead. If he wanted me to “seek the dead” by doing something stupid like killing myself, he was so outta luck. Still, he had said those words with Influence, so even while I was sitting on the bus tapping my foot impatiently, my mind kept going back to his words, to the need to seek the dead that he had put on me.
Thanks a lot, Dad.
Meanwhile, Zayvion, who I still had feelings for and really shouldn’t trust, all but told me he was part of a secret group of magic users who went around killing people. I should tell the cops about them, about him, but first I needed to find out what he knew about my father’s death. I didn’t want to tip off the people who might be watching me that I had caught on yet-people, for all I knew, who might be involved in where my dad’s body was. I wasn’t going to do anything drastic until Zayvion gave me the information I needed. If I could find my dad’s body, make sure he was all buried and happy, he might stop haunting me.
So much for me not believing in ghosts.
But I wasn’t the only one. Grant believed in ghosts and was all buddy-buddy with the kooks who hunted them. Okay, maybe not kooks, since I myself had seen some weird shit today. But I was so not going to let any ghost chasers check out my apartment. After all, I’d seen my dad in the freaking middle of a freaking intersection today-I didn’t think this ghost problem was limited to my shower.
And even though the watercolor people must be ghosts, they were different from my father’s ghost. For one thing, they didn’t speak and use Influence on me. For another, they had those empty black eyes. And they could pull apart perfectly good, perfectly strong spells and eat them.
Freaky with a capital “eeky.”
Sure, my dad had touched me in my bathroom, and I’d smelled his familiar, living scents, but his touch hadn’t hurt, hadn’t left marks. The watercolor people’s touch sucked.
Literally.
So maybe there was more than one kind of ghost running around the city.
Pike had said he’d talk to me at the meeting. And since he ran with the cops I figured he might know as much or maybe even more than Zayvion.
The bus stopped in Ankeny Square. Today wasn’t Saturday, so the open air market that usually drew people to this area, even in bad weather, was not set up, leaving empty parking lots, a handful of old and renovated brick buildings, and, beyond more buildings toward the east, the Willamette River.
I got out and took a good sniff of the place. Dirt, diesel, oil fumes, river, and the stink of people, restaurants, and garbage. Too many smells for me to know if I were being followed by anyone.
The wind was still blowing, gustier here, so I crossed the busy street at a good clip, walked up to the building, and walked in.
A thick, heavy cloud of smells hit me as soon as I stepped into the building that was currently occupied by several clothing stores, restaurants, and other retail outlets. Got a nose full of incense, hot dogs, candles, soap, garlic, frying oil, espresso, and more.
Why in the world would Hounds want to meet in a place that was so overloaded with smells? It didn’t make any sense. But the more I thought about it as I wandered around, the more I realized it actually made a lot of sense. Too many smells was a better cover than no smell at all. I couldn’t distinguish any one person’s scent. I simply could not Hound without magic here. It was the perfect way to ensure a level playing field, a way to disguise our scents from each other.
Tricky.
And since Mr. I’m-not-awake hadn’t told me where, exactly, they were meeting other than on the lower level, it made this whole thing into one big smelly treasure hunt.
If only my head weren’t hurting so much, I might actually have enjoyed wandering down the mazelike hallways, lit with “vintage” (i.e., dim) lighting, and passageways that led to bricked up doorways or maintenance closets. This was no place to be wandering around tired, hurting, and irritated.
So what was I doing? Yeah. D. All of the above.
Anyone could be lingering in the shadows. Anyone could be waiting behind the jogs of brick walls. It looked like the kind of place Trager’s men would hang out. How great was that?
“Beckstrom?”
I slowed my pace. A man, the owner of the voice, stepped out from where he was indeed hanging out behind a jog in the wall. He was a little shorter than me, thin in a smoked-leather sort of way. His face was sallow and clean shaven, his blue eyes startled pinpoints beneath light brown hair combed back slick. He had that ruddy bloodshot look to him that spoke of too little sleep, too much whiskey, and too many years of chain-smoking.
“Yes,” I said.
“This way.” He turned and walked halfway down the hall and then leaned his shoulder into the wall to pushed open a door I would not have noticed on a casual stroll by.
He kept walking through the door. I paused on the threshold. A narrow corridor stretched out from here, dirt floor to either side of an uneven wooden walkway. The walls were bare studs with a random scattering of drywall nailed into place. At the end of the corridor was another hall that ran to the right, toward the river, though we were belowground and there were no windows to confirm I had my bearings straight.
Was there any chance he actually wasn’t a Hound and wasn’t taking me to the Hound meeting? The way my day had been going, yes. Yes, there was a high probability he could be anyone taking me anywhere for any reason. Right down Lon Trager’s gullet, even.
“Where are we headed?” I called out, still standing in the doorway.
He glanced down and back at me like I was stupid. “Hound meeting.”
Okay. Was that so hard? I shut the door behind me and followed my whiskey-drinking white rabbit all the way down the corridor and then down the next, which opened up-and I mean there was no door, just a wide-open wall with the rough edges of bricks sticking out like
bad teeth-to reveal a room beyond.
“Vintage” didn’t begin to describe this room.
Stained wallpaper that may have once been yellow and green but now leaned toward brown and browner covered the three walls, curling back in the corners and torn at the seams. The lighting was a huge brass and glass chandelier that was probably worth a small fortune, and the floor of the room was covered by several layers of threadbare rugs that looked like they’d grind down to dust if you put too much weight on your heels.
Old-timey. Funky with the stink of mold and rotted wood. And likely the cheapest, crappiest meeting space in Portland. While one part of my mind took in the room, the other part of my head was tallying the people and details.
Ten people in the room, six men and four women. Most of them stood against the walls, equidistant from each other like they were holding down territory. At the table, which was four sawhorses supporting a plank of plywood in the middle of the room, sat Pike. Anthony, still in his gray hoodie, glared at me from the far right corner, where he was getting his slouch on. Other than my guide, Whiskey Guy, who wandered over to my left to claim an empty spot of wall, I didn’t recognize anyone else.
Okay, this was where my jaded outlook on being a Hound kicked in. It was easy to identify a Hound in a room-all you had to do was find someone who looked completely antisocial, yet became too curious too quickly, and of course was hiding an additction.
“Allie Beckstrom,” Pike said in his gravely voice, “meet the Pack. I’m only gonna go through this once, so pay attention. That’s Sid Westerling.” He pointed to the first man standing on my right.
Heavyset and blond enough to have Norwegian ancestors, Sid wore wire frame glasses and looked like he should be sitting behind a computer, not sniffing down spells. I guessed him for prescription painkillers. He nodded a hello. “I think you and I worked the Spatler case a few years back.”
I frowned, dug for the memory, found it. “Right. You were fast.”
