Katie let go and slid to the ground. Nate crossed the street and, without bothering to speak, caught me in a tight embrace.
Too tight. I yelped and moved his hand. “Sorry—ribs. They taped them up at the hospital, but they’re still bad.”
I shifted my arms around him, trying to find a better way to hold him back, and he hissed as I grazed his waist. “Still raw,” he said through his teeth. “Sorry.”
“But you’re okay?” I leaned back a little to look at him, ignoring the twinge of pain.
“Yeah. You?”
“Yeah.”
Carefully, trying to avoid the many little hurts, we shifted into a new configuration, one that ended up with my cheek resting on his collarbone and his hands at the small of my back. “I was wrong,” I said into his ear. “You could save me after all.”
“Only from this,” he said, his breath stirring the hair on the nape of my neck. “And only for a little while. But it worked.”
And for now, that was enough.
After a moment, we pulled back enough to remember the rest of the world. Katie stood mutely to the side, smiling what I’d started to think of as a seer’s smile, one that responded to something the rest of us weren’t aware of. “You did well,” Nate said, bending down to scruff his sister’s hair. She batted his hand away, her ears turning pink with happy embarrassment. “You’re all right?” he added, tilting her chin up.
“Fine,” she said, somehow managing to imply that he was silly for even asking. Kid was gonna be a terror when she hit her teens.
“Good. Because tomorrow’s a school day, and you’ve got to get to bed.” He ignored her groan and patted her on the back, steering her toward the porch. “As for me,” he added as we crossed the street, following Katie’s theatrically dejected slump, “I can’t seem to remember anything I’ve got tomorrow that I can’t get out of.”
I thought a moment about cracked ribs and healing wounds, then shrugged. You could work around anything, with enough forethought. “I’ll call in sick.”
It took at least three weeks before the emergency call Sarah had put out was finally revoked, due mainly to the paranoid nature of the undercurrent. Not that this had any ill effects for most of the population, or even the undercurrent; the ones who suffered the most were the adepts who refused to come out of their hiding places until they’d gotten repeated assurances of the world’s return to normality. The Elect in particular had holed up in the foundations of the Masonic Hall and had to be extracted by Chatterji and Wheelwright working together. (This ultimately resulted in one of the weirder relationships I’d ever encountered, and that was including whatever Tessie and Sam and Maryam had worked out.) If anything, it meant Sarah had a few weeks of rest in which the most annoying parts of the neighborhood watch were out of commission.
She’d taken it upon herself to explain exactly what had happened to anyone who asked, and she hadn’t left anything out. I was a little nervous about that, but apparently the message that got out wasn’t so much centered on how much the situation had been my fault as on how I had single-handedly taken down the Gray One. Not exactly the message I wanted, but it’d do. So Sarah was building at least some of the watch’s reputation on my back. I could deal with that. It wasn’t as if it’d have enough time to become a burden.
And though Sarah was working overtime cleaning up after this, she wasn’t as driven as before. I thought Alison had more to do with that than our experiences out on Lovells, but maybe that time she’d spent blind had given Sarah a new appreciation for what she had.
Rena and I were on better terms. We wouldn’t be going out clubbing again—that was over, and there was too much space between us now—but we met occasionally for coffee (on my part) and cigarettes (on hers), usually out by the harbor. The cold wind coming off the sea did a lot to clear out the detritus between us, and a lot of those meetings ended up being long stretches of companionable silence.
“I still don’t want anything to do with the kind of bruja shit you get into,” Rena said, one afternoon in early December. The hotel behind us was decked out in twinkly lights and green banners, and the coffee shop had tried to sell me a mocha-ginger-nog latte. I’d glared the barista into silence and gotten something that resembled my usual road tar instead, even if it did have happy reindeer on the cup. Rena just had her cigarettes—I suspected that this was the only time she let herself smoke now. One bad habit to go with a bad influence. “But I like being unprepared even less.”
“I can understand that.” Even though I was unprepared most of the time, I’d only gotten used to it; I hadn’t gotten to like it at all. “I can tell you what I know, if you want.”
“You think I want that? Fuck.” She took another drag off her cigarette, exhaling smoke and steam and staring out into the harbor. Today the clouds were low and heavy, a flat line of gray hanging overhead, stretching out over the airport and the islands. Neither of us could see the line of Lovells from here, but both of us had our faces turned toward it.
Through the end of November, the snows had held off, giving way to rain or bitter cold or just the endless near-freezing, never-quite-winter days that November was famous for. December hadn’t decided to alter that pattern just yet. I was grateful for that, at least; when the snow started in, my days with Mercury would dwindle down to nothing, and though I supposed I didn’t need January’s rent, the thrift my mother had ground into me meant that I wanted to go as long as I could without losing a source of income.
Rena shook her head and sighed. “Just warn me. When you can.”
I took another sip of reindeer coffee and made a face. “I will. But …” I glanced down at the marina, the floating platforms, the boats swathed up in plastic for the winter. Tessie had moved hers upriver, and if she’d minded the excursion, I hadn’t heard about it yet. “There’s something you ought to know.”
“You lie to me again and I’ll tip you into the goddamn harbor.”
I snorted. “And I’d deserve it. No, it’s just … there are lies you tell by not saying anything, you know? So I … I figure you ought to know this. Because while I’ll warn you of what I can, I’m only going to be able to do so for a little while.”
Rena turned to look at me, but I didn’t meet her eyes. Instead I turned toward the scaffolding that had replaced the charred remains of the bridge house, and I told her about midwinter. I sketched in the details of why—the Hunt, the horn that I’d carried, the price to pay. At first she looked like she didn’t believe me, then, as I fell silent, her expression turned to outright anger. “Jesus Christ, Evie! That’s just a couple of weeks from now!”
“Two and a half.” Not that I was counting the days. In fact, I’d made a point of getting rid of the calendars in my office.
“Well, what the—that doesn’t make any sense! Why would he punish you, if you’re the one who gave it back?”
“Because—” Because gods and demigods didn’t follow the same kind of logic that humans did, or when they did, it inevitably had a sting to it. “Because a price has to be paid, and by using the Horn, I usurped a power that wasn’t mine. You don’t get to come back from that unscathed. You just don’t.”
“Bullshit. You could find a way—”
I shook my head. Funny, how much easier it was to take these questions now, now that I’d gotten my own shouting and raging over with. “That’s not how it works, Rena. Maybe for magicians like Roger, or Deke—or even the little ones in Sarah’s community watch. They’re all good at getting out of the consequences. But someone has to take these things seriously. I’m sorry. This is just one of those things.”
She stared at me, then cursed and chucked her cigarette into the harbor. “So why aren’t you off spending all your cash, going to Vegas, whatever it is people do when they know they’ve only got a little time left?”
I shrugged. “I don’t really want to.” Yeah, I wanted to cling to life, hold on to these things with both hands and never let go—but I didn’t want to do that by
drowning in excess. There was enough joy to be found in making my rounds, in hunting for lost books and missing keys, in coming home to Nate’s place to curl up with him, in slow mornings and late nights. Maybe that was setting my sights too low, maybe I was just frittering away my time, but this too felt right.
For the first time I thought I realized why my mother had kept her illness secret for a long time, why she’d kept working, why she’d enjoyed the last few months in her own way. Maybe what I’d done over the last few weeks was a tribute of sorts.
“Shit.” Rena shook her head and gave me a quick, one-armed hug. “This doesn’t get you out of anything, you realize.”
“I know.” I punched her in the shoulder. “But thanks.”
I’d told Rena. I didn’t tell Sarah, because she’d have turned her brain inside out trying to find a loophole. Rena knew there were sometimes things you couldn’t do anything about, and even if she didn’t like it, she was used to it. Sarah knew a thousand ways of arguing and a thousand ways of searching, and she’d have spent the weeks trying to find a solution and failing, and she’d have taken it on herself when it finally happened.
Besides, if I told Sarah, she’d tell Katie. And I couldn’t do that to her. Already, I was wary that she’d see something, that her Sight would catch some of what was headed my way. But it didn’t seem to have, yet, at least.
We’d figured out an arrangement with her and Nate and Sarah: no scrying in the house or anywhere that someone could track her to (and that included school, because the one thing her school didn’t need was scary adepts waiting outside to see where that last scrying had come from), scrying only with Sarah or Nate on hand, and never on any of her peers. New rules, new approaches to the whole matter. I’d thought the restrictions harsh, but Katie had been spooked by the monsters that had come out of the woodwork, and she didn’t question them. I couldn’t blame her for turning her Sight elsewhere for now.
I even called up the seer enclave and pretty much leaned on them to find a safe way to teach her, but they stalled, telling me not till the next equinox at least. I didn’t ask why—you don’t, with seers, unless you want one of the really crazy answers—but marked it down and made sure Nate had the number.
Yes. There was Nate too.
We stayed most nights together, either on the cramped bed in his tiny apartment or, when Katie stayed over with Sarah and Alison, on the lumpy futon in my office, and he didn’t mind that I tangled up the sheets when I dreamed of running, or that I woke up muttering about the Red Sox. (I didn’t tell him that he did the same on occasion.) We made love, slow and languorous, reveling in the touch of skin and the scent of sweat, or quick and wild, clinging to each other as if we meant to fuse together, or breaking up halfway through to a flood of laughter as one or both of us proved inconveniently ticklish.
The night after the fight on Lovells, I told him about what he’d done, the soul returned to me, and how I’d used it to destroy Dina—and that I hadn’t used it to sever the Hunt’s hold on me. “So I guess you were right about me having some kind of death wish,” I ended, drawing my knees up till I was a little ball sitting on his bed. “I’m sorry, Nate. I had my chance, and I threw it away.”
Nate was silent for a long time, but eventually he sat up and put his arm around me. “If you hadn’t,” he said in my ear, “you wouldn’t be Evie. Infuriating as you are.” He kissed me, and eventually we lay back down together, but it was still a long time before either of us could relax enough for sleep.
I didn’t want to go. But December rolled in, and the carols blared from every store, and the days shortened to thin gray heartbeats. And on Midwinter Eve, I walked out to Boston Common. There were a few holdouts on the Frog Pond, attempting to skate through the first flakes of the first real snow of the season, but picturesque or not, the carolers who’d staked out the best spots had disappeared into the local Dunkin’ Donuts for hot chocolate. A giant spruce tree loomed over the square where I’d once met Deke, where I’d begun hunt after hunt.
I put my hands in the pockets of my coat and closed my eyes, turning my face up to the snow. The flakes were so large they thumped softly against my skin, but they didn’t muffle scent the way they muffled sound. The pattern of the city spread out around me, intricate at every level and unmappable even to me, brilliant like Celtic knotwork expanded into every dimension and whole, unshadowed, for this moment at least, if not forever. And familiar, close and familiar …
I smiled without opening my eyes. “Come to see me off?”
“You could call it that,” Nate said. His footsteps creaked on the new snow, and the warm scent of him curled close around me. I opened my eyes and grinned at him. “I’m not yet convinced, you know,” he added. “They might still change their minds.”
“I knew it. Ditch your curse and immediately you retreat to the world of the rational. Not that I blame you.” I nudged him with my elbow, and he nudged back. He’d left his hat at home, and snow caught in his hair, not yet melting. “Katie hasn’t guessed, has she?”
He shrugged. “Hard to tell. She’s with Aunt Venice for the weekend; I told them I was doing some lastminute shopping. She asked if you’ll be joining us for Christmas.”
I was silent a moment. That hurt. “I’m not really good at Christmas, Nate. Even without this.”
“I wondered. But I don’t think she’s seen anything.”
“That’s something, at least. She and Sarah … I was most afraid they’d try to stop me. I mean, it’s not as if—” I stopped. “I don’t want to go, you understand.”
“But you don’t argue with demigods.” He shook his head. “Evie, you argue with damn near everyone else.”
“I don’t!” Nate gave me a look, and I sighed. “Okay. Okay, bad answer. But this is for real, Nate. This is … The undercurrent makes such a big deal about being transient. Magic washes so many things away. I think … I think that’s what turned the Gray Ones into something like Dina. Magic shouldn’t be the debased thing we have in the undercurrent. It shouldn’t be—shouldn’t be the sort of thing you can get out of with some handwaving and a correct sacrifice.” I’d told Katie there had been no such thing as a Golden Age of magic. Maybe so. Maybe it was just how you looked at it, or how you used it.
He didn’t answer, only put his arm around me. We circled the hill, toward the field where in summer bands played and endless soccer games took place. The trees blocked most sound, and I had to concentrate to hear the traffic close by.
“That’s why I gave the Horn back in the first place, Nate. I can’t just use magic as a shortcut.” That was what Roger did, and Patrick, and the Fiana … the magicians who approached it as just another tool, one more trick to get themselves out of trouble, a get-out-of-jail-free card. “I have to accept the consequences. One of them was taking care of the city. The other is this.” I stopped and turned to face him. “Do you understand?”
Nate looked at me for a long moment, a strange little smile tugging at the corner of his lips, as if he’d just remembered something funny and couldn’t tell me the joke because it would hurt me somehow. “You know,” he said, “if we … if things had ever settled down to the point where no one was trying to kill either of us, I’d thought about making this a little more official. Between us.”
I shook my head. “Going by the last year, ‘people trying to kill us’ is kind of the default setting. It doesn’t get more settled. Not with us.”
“Yeah, I should have figured that.” He dislodged snow from his hair, shaking it from the tips of his fingers. “Yes. I understand what you mean. More than you know.”
“Then do me a favor and kiss me quick, because I can’t hear traffic and we should have come around the other side of the hill two minutes ago.”
He glanced past me to where the asphalt path we’d followed petered out into dirt and then nothing. The trees above us were still the great oaks of the Common—if I carved an initial into one now, I’d be able to find it the next morning. Well, I would
n’t have. But someone else would. But the ground wasn’t the ground of the Common anymore, and the only sound was the hush of falling snow. The remaining glow was partly streetlight and partly reflection, that pinkish cast of light that lingers over every hill in this kind of snowfall.
I held out my hand to Nate, and he took it, his fingers cool and human against mine. With the touch came a soft call above us like a flock of geese, distant at first but growing. “There are letters,” I said, rushing my words now. “You’ve got a key to my office; they’re on my desk, signed and stamped and everything. For Sarah and Rena and, and my father, and there’s one for Katie too—” And there was one for Nate himself, but he wouldn’t need to know that till he found it.
“I’ll take care of them,” he promised.
I nodded and folded my other hand around his. You should leave, I wanted to say. But I couldn’t make myself let him go.
The cry of the Gabriel Hounds rose to a halloo, and the snow shivered, as if someone had tapped the other side of the sky. The scent of frost rose up around me, heavy with dead leaves and darkness and the end of the year, and with it came the Hunt.
Every Hunt.
The Gabriel Hounds, in their perpetually shifting shapes, crept through the trees to ring me. I’d swear one of them was wagging its tail. And here you are, one said.
For our appointment, said another.
We missed you, said a third, and somehow it managed to be both endearing and threatening. I laughed; what else could I do?
Shapes appeared in the snow, manifesting in the spaces between flakes, creating themselves as they approached. A man all in gray with a crown of steel, riding a horse that was barely more real than he, paced out from between the closest trees. Next to him stood another king, though this one went uncrowned and wore a tunic that had no seam. Behind him walked a grizzled man with one eye who seemed to stare at Nate first, though his expression was so stony as to be unreadable. To my left a broad, grinning woman on a huge horse chuckled; to my right walked another woman, glimmering between brilliant white and shadow gray, her face perpetually invisible. And ahead of me, back so far in the trees that he might have been one of their shadows, stood a man half again my height with a profile that was anything but human and a branching rack of horns like the king of stags.
Soul Hunt Page 28
