Soul Hunt

by Margaret Ronald

  I touched Sarah’s shoulder, grimaced as the cat mask turned toward me, and moved so I could see her face. “All set. Listen, I—”

  “You’re sure?” She caught my forearms, searching my face. “Evie, what happened?”

  “Pretty much what I told the cops. Tessie knew there was a problem, came to pick me up, and I had to go into the boat to get her out. I’m still not sure what the problem was—” something to do with Deke, undoubtedly “—but I can check it out with her later on. Listen, did Nate get in touch with you about Katie?”

  “Katie?” She looked away, first at her hands, then at the two small-timers. “You mean—”

  “For tonight,” I said. Nate’s little sister was nine years old, and she’d become very attached to Sarah and Alison. And me, though that didn’t speak well to her tastes. “And did you get the list I asked you for?”

  “Oh yeah. That was no problem.” Sarah dropped my arms and started rummaging through the little crocheted purse she carried (how she kept more than a set of keys in there was beyond me, but then again I preferred to lug around my Mercury Courier bag). “No, tonight’s fine. Alison will be over around nine. I pled religious holiday to reschedule the watch meeting, but there’s enough overlap between groups that I actually have to attend a Samhain ceremony or I’ll get called out on it.”

  “Sarah, your Samhain rituals usually include a big party and someone throwing up in the back room.”

  “Yeah, makes me sorry I couldn’t plan one this year. I guess I’ll have to go through with the whole meditative observances.” She grinned at me. “Like your plans are much better. What, you finally wanted some quality alone time with Mathy McBonyButt?”

  “Please tell me you don’t call him that around Katie.” I was an only child, but one thing I knew about sibling dynamics was that you never, ever gave a younger sister a new name to call her brother.

  “Only around you, girl.” She finally produced a paper folded up into a tight square, a bright green flyer wrapped around it. “I also printed off the schedule for the watch meetings—we could really use you there, you know. The other page lists all the names I could find. But this is folklore, so there’s a lot of redundancy—I mean, Wodan isn’t always the same as Odin isn’t the same as Wutendes, not in these circumstances.”

  “So long as the names are all here.” I took the paper and unfolded it. She’d listed the leaders of the Wild Hunt, from all the different traditions where that legend reasserted itself. Maybe fifty or a hundred names, most with epithets like “blood-handed” or “vengeance” or “corpse-god.” Nice guys. “Thanks,” I said, and tucked the paper into my breast pocket. My fingers brushed the knot of scar tissue at my throat, unnaturally cool, and I felt the Hounds stir.

  “Welcome,” Sarah said. “But I thought your research into the Wild Hunt was done, Evie. Didn’t that all end a little while back?”

  At the back of my mind, one of the Gabriel Hounds let loose a low chuckle, like the sound an ogre might make when devouring an exceptionally tasty baby. “Not really,” I said, a little too loudly. “Soon, though. I’ll let you know what happens.”

  Sarah gave me a strange look. “You do that,” she said, but just then one of the shadowcatchers—not the Elect, but the other—took a swing at his fellow. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” she yelled, interposing herself between them. “What the hell, guys?”

  I glanced over my shoulder. Rena was still at the dock, interviewing Devin and his girlfriend, but her partner Foster had noticed the commotion and was headed our way. The cool October light picked out a livid pink scar, brilliant against his dark skin, that ran down his cheek, narrowly missing his eye. I felt the Hounds shift again. That wound—as well as a number of others that I couldn’t see but knew were there—was the result of an echo of these Hounds attacking Foster, and a major reason why I didn’t blame Rena for hating me.

  For just a second, I tasted blood in my mouth—not real blood, but the memory of it, and the Hounds’ quiet approval. I gagged, clamped my teeth together, and backed away, bumping into Sarah. “See you later,” I managed, and hurried away from the pier, trying not to run but really, really wanting to get out of there. Because maybe if I did, I’d stop salivating at the thought of human flesh.

  Three

  The afternoon had already turned toward evening by the time I got back to my bike, and either trick-or-treating was running late this year or I’d made good time, because I damn near ran over about twelve different clusters of kids on my way into Allston. They knew to look out for cars, but one person on a bike? Not so much. Not even the flashing lights clipped to every available surface got their attention.

  Scent didn’t help me so much when I navigated, so I was somewhat able to ignore the lack of it, concentrating instead on the costumes and the traffic. Halloween for me as a kid had always been one big blur of candy and plastic costumes, at least until I hit twelve and it switched over to egging cars and worse. I’d done enough on Halloween nights not to be nostalgic about it.

  And tonight—I resisted the urge to touch the scar at my throat—would just add to that.

  The lights in Nate’s apartment were dark, so he and Katie were probably still out getting the year’s worth of processed sugar product. Which was good, because I wasn’t doing so well—the sparks at the edge of my vision had returned, heralding another grayout—and I really didn’t want them to see this. I locked my bike to the railing, then made it up the porch stairs before sagging against the wall.

  I slid down until my butt hit the boards, hands pressed against the back of my neck. I took a deep breath, then another, trying to focus on Nate’s battered old running shoes. Didn’t work; the world kept going in and out of focus and—worse—in and out of color.

  It hadn’t been this bad in a while. The taste of ice water and ferns clotted up in the back of my throat, and I scrunched my eyes tight shut, reminding myself that I wasn’t underwater, I could still breathe. After a moment, the cold shivers passed, and I tilted my head back till it bonked against the siding of Nate’s apartment building. Made it through another day.

  There was probably some psychological term for whatever was happening to me. It wasn’t quite PTSD, because I hadn’t been through enough for that to really happen, right? Besides, for that I’d be flashing back to whatever trauma I’d encountered—my run-in with the hounds of the Wild Hunt, maybe, or the shoot-out under Fenway—not feeling as if I were underwater. Not remembering what should have been a triumph.

  No, more likely I’d worked myself too hard, done too much, and now I was just worn down. Courier work lessened a bit at this time of year, not quite to the trickle it would be during the holidays, but enough that I usually had some breathing space in October. I’d even hoped that the Sox might help me out of it, but while this year they’d made it into the playoffs, they’d then shot themselves in the foot, reloaded, and shot the other foot. Metaphorically speaking. So baseball season was effectively over, unless I wanted to pick one of the two West Coast sun-boys for a consolation cheer. Most years I did that just so I could scope out who’d be up for trade, but somehow this year I just didn’t have the heart for it.

  Could be worse, I told myself sternly. I could be in Tessie’s shoes, in a hospital with God knows what wrong with me, or like Foster, mauled and recovering. So stop fucking whining, Evie.

  I nodded, as if answering myself, then took a deep breath and tried to believe it. At the edge of my senses, the smell of cheap chocolate and dry leaves settled in, a purely real smell with nothing of the undercurrent about it, the kind of scent that anyone with a working nose could detect. And, along with it, warm polished wood with a tang of something wilder, and electric blue like a static shock writ large in the way that children’s scents were brighter and more forthright than adults’.

  My eyes snapped open. That wasn’t a normal scent, that was one my talent detected, and it—

  “Evie?” What felt like a gauze-wrapped cannonball hit me in the stomach, and I near
ly fell over, the air going out of my lungs in a whoosh. “Evie, I knew it was you! Look, Mr. Houck down the street was giving out whole Hershey bars!”

  Something pink and twinkly hit me in the nose, and I sneezed. “Hi, Katie.”

  “Hi! Nate told me you’d be over for Halloween, and guess what Alison said she’d come over too only then I’m going over to watch movies with her and look, a whole Hershey bar!” Katie Hunter—nine years old, small for her age and dressed as a pink fairy princess—sat back on her heels and held up the item in question, beaming. “Do you like my costume?”

  “It’s, uh, it’s very sparkly.” I’d never gone in for pink. Except for fifth grade, which does not count, and a jury of my peers will back me up on that.

  She grinned, exposing a gap where she’d recently lost another tooth, then regarded me critically. “You’re not in costume.”

  “Was I supposed to be?”

  “Nate is.” She pointed at the man coming up the stairs onto the porch, dressed in a lab coat and goggles. They made him look more than a little ridiculous, which I supposed was the point, but underneath the coat he wore the same fraying shirt and jeans that I’d gotten very used to. Most of Nate’s clothes were like that; he was one of those guys who look like they’ve been put together from spare parts, all knees and elbows, stretched out like a scarecrow who’d spent time on the rack.

  Although, I admitted, he did seem to be inhabiting his skin a little more easily these days. That was probably the one good thing that could be said for the curse his father smacked him with. And call it a flaw in my standards, but I rather liked how he moved, all gangling and graceless. I grinned at him, and the last of the grayout faded from my bones.

  “He was supposed to be a wizard,” Katie stage-whispered to me. “To go with my costume. But he forgot and he had to get something at the last minute.” She turned and gave him a look that I swear she must have learned from Sarah, the see-what-inferior-materials-I-must-work-with look. “So instead he’s an evil scientist who’s kidnapping fairies and turning them into trolls.”

  “Trolls, huh.”

  “All in the name of science,” Nate said, and held out his hand. I took it and let him pull me up to stand beside him. His fingers were warm against mine, and even though that flicker of scent—his real scent, the one I would know him by anywhere—had faded from my perceptions, somehow it didn’t matter so much.

  I pretended to look him up and down critically. “You don’t get too many mad mathematicians, do you? More mad chemists or physicists.”

  “That’s what my advisor says. But once my dissertation is done, I’ll show those fools who called me mad. Mad, I tell you!” He attempted an evil laugh, which faded into a chuckle as he mussed his little sister’s hair. “Besides, tonight I’m whatever Katie tells me to be.”

  Katie pushed his hand away, and Nate turned to face me fully. “Are you okay? When we came up the street, you looked like you were barely moving—I didn’t even know it was you.”

  Damn. “I’m all right,” I said. “Had a rough day.”

  Nate, however, wasn’t the kind to be easily deflected by something that noncommittal. “You smell like smoke.”

  “I do? I mean, still? Crud. I thought that would have gone away.”

  A thin line appeared between Nate’s brows. “You didn’t … Evie, how often do I smell something that you don’t?”

  This was not a conversation I wanted to be having just yet. “You mean when you’re like this?” I asked, looking him up and down. With any luck, the reference to his curse—and the shape it forced on him—would be enough of a distraction.

  He stilled a moment, perhaps startled that I was so openly talking about his other shape, but his lips curled up in a slow, secret smile. “Even when I’m … not myself,” he said. “You’re the much better hunter.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder, and I stepped closer, leaning into him. Katie made a face that was mostly for form’s sake as Nate put his arms around me. “Let’s hope I never have to prove that again,” I said, and reached up to kiss him.

  It didn’t quite feel natural yet—relationships and I haven’t had a very good history—but something about being closer to him made the world come together a little more. He tasted like coffee—not good, plain unadulterated coffee, the kind I like, but the weird stuff with flavors and too much sugar and probably frothed milk of some kind. Even if I couldn’t stand the sorts of things he drank, I liked how they made him taste. I smiled against his lips, then stepped back. “Alison’s coming over later tonight, yes?”

  “At nine!” Katie hurried up to the door and hopped there, waiting for Nate to unlock it. “We’re gonna watch movies all night.”

  Nate shook his head and went to let us in. “If Child Protective Services ever finds out I’m letting you do this on a school night, I’m going to be in so much trouble.”

  “But you’re not worried about that,” Katie pointed out. “Because otherwise you wouldn’t be joking.” Nate glanced at her, a frown touching his brow. “Besides, they won’t find out.”

  The last words came out with a peculiar finality, and this time it was my turn to give Katie a hard look. Some kids were more perceptive than was good for them; in Katie’s case, this was compounded by a hefty dose of the Sight. So far, she’d had it under control, but now and then she came out with pronouncements that shouldn’t have come from a nine-year-old. It was troubling, as was the fact that she’d already brushed up against more of the undercurrent than was good for her.

  Still, for the most part she was a normal kid, as proved by the thump as she rattled up the stairs, still chirping about movies and Hershey bars and pixies. “I got the list,” I said to Nate, quietly enough that she wouldn’t hear. “I’m going to go through with it tonight.”

  “You’re sure?” He reached out and touched two fingers to the scar at my collarbone.

  “Nate, earlier today I was drooling over their remembered taste of human blood. I can’t deal with having them with me any more. And—” I swallowed, very aware of how the Hounds listened. “And I’m getting too used to it.”

  He looked skeptical at that, but stepped back anyway. “Then go on up. We’ve got a few hours to kill; you might as well have dinner with us.”

  The next few hours were mostly taken up with getting Katie to eat something that wasn’t pure sugar. I ate as much of her Halloween loot as she’d let me have just to get it away from her, which just left me more jittery than before. Nate handled it all with weary ease. He’d know, after all; he’d been through this many times.

  His mother’s death had landed him in loco parentis for a much younger sister, and he’d wrenched his life into a new pattern so that he could watch over Katie as she deserved. That was part of the reason for the early gray in his hair and the hollows under his eyes. It was only in the last couple of months that he’d started to find some balance, and half of that was because at least one night a week I watched over Katie while he prowled through what little wilderness was available in Boston. And if there had been a few more coyote sightings, if the feral cat population was both down and scared, well, those were acceptable side effects.

  It’d be flattering me to say that I was the cause, but I’d certainly helped matters along. Or, to look at it from another point of view, I’d made things worse by dragging him into contact with the undercurrent. Maybe the actual curse hadn’t come from there, but he’d been more susceptible because of me, and that was even before he’d been thrown into a quarry, before I’d had to beg for his life back.

  Bad bargain, the Hounds had said about that, and I touched the lump at my throat again. The same subconscious murmur responded, and I shivered.

  Eventually, Nate settled down next to me, jolting me out of my thoughts. “Alison’s here,” he said, touching my knee with two fingers. “She’ll watch Katie while we’re gone.”

  I leaned back against him. It wasn’t particularly comfortable; Nate hadn’t been designed for comfort. But he
was warm, and the back of my head fitted nicely against his shoulder. “Are you sure about this?” I asked.

  “You asked me that already.”

  “I know. I just … it’d make more sense for you to stay here, rather than run off with me for an evening.”

  His mouth crooked in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Not everything makes sense. I learned that a while ago, and with you I’m starting to actually understand it.”

  He had a point. But I had to try. “You know I can do this on my own.”

  His hand stilled on my knee. “I know,” he said. “And if you ask, I’ll stay here.”

  For just a moment, I was irrationally angry that he’d given me the choice; this was a lot easier when someone else did the deciding. But the choices, and the consequences, were up to me. “Come with me,” I said, and pushed away from him. His eyes crinkled up at the edges, and he took my hand.

  Sarah’s girlfriend Alison, a slender black woman with a runner’s physique and prematurely graying hair, was on the stairs with Katie, arguing over what movies to watch. She made an odd sort of fairy godmother for Katie, though no less than Sarah and I did, I supposed. But the longer she stayed up with Katie watching squeaky-voiced heroines defeat ultimate evil, the less time Katie would have to tinker with magic.

  “Sarah says hi,” she said between Katie’s assertions about Halloween and how awesome it had been and how three pirate-costumed fourth-graders had gotten into a fight right in the lunchroom. “She claims she’ll be meditating, but I suspect she’ll just take the chance to get some uninterrupted sleep.”

  “Thanks,” Nate said, sliding his jacket on. There were patches on both elbows and an unidentifiable stain on the back, probably remnants of the jacket’s former life. “I know you had a lot of work to take care of.”

  “Still do. But damned if I’m doing it tonight. Sorry, kiddo.” She scruffed Katie’s hair, and Katie hugged her back. “Get going, you two. This town closes up around two o’clock.”