“Oh, I’m keeping tabs on some of the consequences of the return of the exiles. You know how it is,” he said, with a grimace that was meant to be good-natured and wasn’t. He may have been Tia’s “associate,” but he had exactly the same kind of good old boy charm my father exuded like sweat. And I’d seen too many times how that particular kind of geniality could bend to include punishment.
“I know how it is, yeah.” Backtalk earned a backhand with a tsk and a smile. No thanks. I snagged a copy of a teen magazine promising an interview with the explosively successful Keenan Cortice, as well as “30 costume ideas to make for under $20!” “Well, I have to get going. Nice meeting you.”
His eyes tracked my hand. “Sure, yeah. Hey, can I give you a ride anywhere?”
“Uh, no. Thanks.” I couldn’t help rolling my eyes a little at his offer.
He noticed and chuckled again. “Just trying to be useful. Well, have a good day.” And he kept watching me, the entire time it took me to buy the magazine and leave the store. It was just like being at home, and I was so happy to finally vanish into the crowds of pedestrians and escape his gaze.
I went to the park and sat down to flip through the magazine until the dogs arrived. I couldn’t manage to summon up any interest in Keenan Cortice, though, despite his attractive smile and incredible hair. And I had only a little bit of interest in the Halloween costumes in the magazine. I had to find something, and ideally it would be something that pleased me and didn’t annoy my father, which was a thin line to walk. Sometimes it was like part of me craved annoying him. But that never worked out so well. I could never stand up to him when push came to shove.
Instead, I watched the people wandering through the park. A lot of them were in costume, as if one day of Halloween wasn’t enough. Most of them were older than me, college-aged or more. There were a few ghosts wandering around, too, although in cities, most ghosts preferred to come out at night. I’d never learned exactly why that was so, but it was true anyhow.
Rain spattered down and the living rapidly cleared out of the little park. Soon, it was just me and the ghosts. I watched a little old lady ghost trying and failing to pick up litter. She was spry now, and she didn’t seem to notice her failure. Another ghost, a little boy, kicked an invisible ball, and I wanted to cry for both what he’d lost and what I’d never had.
Then Heart barked a greeting and I stood up and turned to my dogs. I might not have a soul, but I had them.
I brought Nod out of my shadow and he ran to meet Heart and Grim, then raced away and hid behind me as the other two jumped on me. The sprinkling rain stopped, but I was soaked anyhow, because Heart and Grim had brought half the lake with them. They could run on water, but they’d never figured out the trick of not getting wet. Or maybe they’d just never wanted to. And the mud from their paws never vanished when they did.
When they were done lavishing me with attention and dampness, I shucked water out of my clothes as best I could and ran my fingers through my hair. Then we went along the edge of the park and down the street. The Wild Huntsman Ion had passed this way, in the other world. We started climbing the hilltop neighborhood of Queen Anne. Heart thought his trail was getting stronger, which was exciting. Maybe he hadn’t gone that far. Maybe he’d come back out of the Backworld again. Maybe, I thought hopefully, I could just deal with this right now.
We walked down an alley and turned left to follow a row of fences: the yards of some townhouses. The noise of the street faded to a dull roar as I strolled down the narrow pavement. Grim gamboled ahead of us, teasing some dogs in the fenced yards, while Heart had her nose to the ground and Nod flanked me.
As I was speculating on how exactly one dealt with the Wild Hunt, I heard a single footstep behind me. Just one, and it was odd because the dogs didn’t seem to notice—
“Aw, Annalise,” said Alastor, falling into step on my other side. “You said you were going shopping.”
Startled, all three dogs burst into a cacophony of barking. Nod leapt forward and growled, low and deep. I stopped dead and Alastor took another few steps, then looked over his shoulder at me, his eyebrows raised inquisitively.
“You shouldn’t startle my dogs,” I told him mildly. “They don’t like it.” I should have known better than to expect anybody who knew my father’s true nature to just want to chat with me.
He smiled. “You should have gone shopping. Instead you’re heading into trouble. I can’t let you do that.” Turning, he braced his feet shoulder-width apart, waved a hand, and did something. A pulse of energy spread out through the ground. I could feel it tingling in my feet and the dogs whined and backed away. He looked down at both his hands and nodded. “All right. Expensive, but for the best. I can’t say ‘be a good girl’ because you are your father’s daughter, but do try to stay out of what doesn’t concern you.” Then, with a smug little smile at me, he vanished through the Curtain into the Backworld.
I frowned and instinctively set Nod to capture Alastor’s trail on the other side of the Curtain. But he could find nothing. It was as if Alastor didn’t have a scent, even a supernatural one that supernatural dogs could follow.
No.
Nothing had a scent, except me and the dogs. Slowly, achingly, the scent of the path and the yards nearby drifted close enough to pick up. But whatever Alastor had done had utterly destroyed the trail we were following. No matter how we ranged around, we couldn’t find it. It was just gone.
-four-
I retreated to a coffee shop, fuming. Once I had my chai latte and my croissant and a chocolate doughnut for good measure, I slouched against a wall in the crowded courtyard while the dogs nosed around for crumbs. A table emptied out precipitously after Grim zeroed in on a timid dog-hater and I couldn’t feel even a little guilt as I moved in to replace the previous tenant. There was no room for guilt; my irritation filled every nook and cranny.
I tried to sip my latte and calm down, but it just wouldn’t do. So instead I called Tia to complain.
I got her voicemail, which made me snort rudely into the phone, and I complained anyhow. “Hi, Tia. I thought I’d help out like you asked, and I was tracking this guy we talked about when wham, your ‘colleague’ Alastor showed up and ruined the trail. That was great, I really appreciated it. So if you could let me know what you expect me to do now, that’d be good. Otherwise I might as well just go back home.” I finished by telling her where I was, then, feeling a bit better, ate my croissant.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about what Alastor had done. Why had he destroyed the trail? Had I offended him somehow? Was he working with my father directly?
Thinking of my father made me remember my excuse for coming to the city, and I realized I still needed to come up with a good costume. Luckily, I’d picked up a magazine full of ideas earlier. I spent a while flipping through it, but nothing jumped out at me as perfect. Plenty of stuff that would amuse my father and please the pack—it’s easy to dress to please them—but I hardly wanted to do that. I had to find something I’d enjoy wearing, even if only in secret. I spent some time toying with a Little Red Riding Hood With Secret Axe plan, but I couldn’t figure out how to make the secret axe work, and without it I’d just be asking for trouble.
I was still hungry after finishing both of my snacks, so I went back to the counter for a ham and provolone sandwich. As I was settling back into my seat, Grim raised his head, his ears pricked forward, and I looked toward the courtyard entrance to see who he’d recognized.
The Korean boy who’d stopped to make sure I was okay the day before moved through the arch and stood to one side, scanning the seating area. He still wore the same big sunglasses, along with expensive clothes still so new they were stiff. He twiddled a big coin between the fingers of his left hand absently, and I knew when he’d seen me because he froze. Then he walked over and made as if to sit at my table all uninvited.
Heart, curled up in the chair he wanted to take, grumbled under her breath and threw me a look to dete
rmine if I was on board with this heinous speciesism. I indicated she could stay while I considered the boy. Even with the sunglasses, I could tell he was attractive, with a strong jaw and shoulders perfectly set off by his brown jacket.
Attractive men who tried to sit down without being invited were not my friends, especially not with the encounter with Alastor so fresh.
“My god, it’s full of dogs,” he said. When I didn’t say anything—it didn’t seem to need a response—he sighed. “Yeah, so I’ve got a couple of messages for you.”
“From who?” I asked warily, stirring the dregs of my drink.
He ignored my question. “Message the first: Alastor is not trustworthy.”
“No shit!” I snapped involuntarily.
The boy’s mouth quirked up on one side. He was definitely pretty. “I’m not done. This guy Alastor, he’s not trustworthy. Don’t trust him. Also, he’s an asshole and working for the other side. In conclusion: guy calls himself Alastor? Bad guy.”
I gave the boy a flat, dubious look. “Right. And who sent you?”
“Lady by the name of Tia Zelaya. Possessed of a kind of peculiar sense of humor. She had another message, too.”
I sighed, wondering why Tia couldn’t have just called me. “Let’s have it.” And she had a second name? She’d never told me her second name.
His quirked mouth became a full-on grin. “Trust me.”
I was already on edge, and that didn’t help. Nod, under the table, came slinking out, his ears flat and only one curled lip away from a snarl. This guy smelled human, but... “Why? What are you?” I demanded.
His smile faded. “Come on, you’re supposed to say, ‘What’s your name?’ But since you ask, I’m a Scorpio. What are you?’”
“This isn’t some kind of audition, pretty boy,” I snapped, and turned on my Geometry sight to figure out what he was.
A moment later, I recoiled so hard that I knocked my chair over and fell backwards. “What are you?” I repeated, gaping from my sprawl on the ground. I knew how humans looked, and how demons looked, and how nephil halfbloods like me looked. Humans, ordinary humans, had seven magical nodes along their spine. Demons and other Fallen like my father had no nodes, but did have auras at their heads and feet. And halfbreeds, nephilim, like me, had both.
But I had no idea what this boy was. Far more than seven nodes clustered within his form and more bubbled off like foam in an overshaken soda. It was horrifyingly different than anything I’d seen before.
Others in the coffee shop courtyard stood up in concern as the boy flushed. “I’m Yejun. And Tia sent me to help you find what you told her you lost. I’m going to go wait outside while you get your shit together.” And he did, vaulting the low fence around the courtyard and vanishing around the corner.
Somebody tried to help me to my feet, but Nod, already feeling protective, lunged between me and my potential assistant, growling. That put an end to that. Nobody likes the idea that they might be bitten for trying to help out.
“Thanks,” I said, and, “Sorry,” and I kept my head down so I didn’t have to see how the friendly concern turned to distaste on the stranger’s face. I tossed my trash and went out through the store entrance, stopping just outside to pull out my phone and glare at it. Without much hope of an answer, I dialed Tia again.
This time, she picked up. “What is the problem now, AT?”
“Hey,” I said, injured, “I’m trying to help. Don’t be like that.”
“You have absolutely no concept of the scale of what’s about to happen. I’m very invested in not wasting my time, so yes, thank you for your willingness to help, what is the problem now, AT?”
Stung—more than stung, really hurt—by the reference to wasting her time, I mumbled, “Did you send a really weird boy as a messenger?”
“Didn’t he say?”
“Well... yes, although Alastor told me he was your friend, so you can see why I’m not sure about trusting this guy. Tia, what is he?”
“Why exactly is that important at this moment?”
“He’s weird. And I looked at him magically and I’ve never seen anything like him.”
I could practically hear her eyes roll. “Heaven save me from the fears of infants. AT, it doesn’t matter in the slightest, but he is human. And I did send him and he will help you. Please go carry on the good work, because time is running short. I’ll be seeing you soon.”
And before I could say anything else, she hung up on me.
Grim peeked around the wall to where the boy lounged. His tail wagged slowly, and then he sidled around the corner to go make friends. “Hey!” I called after him, but he ignored me. Heart licked my hand encouragingly instead, and then Nod butted me from behind.
I stood there for a moment, thinking about those bubbling nodes. I understood seven. I had seven. Everybody I knew except my father and Tia had seven. This Yejun had so many more, and they moved and changed and it bothered me. It scared me. I didn’t know how to deal with it.
On the other hand, before I’d looked at him magically, he’d just seemed like a young man. Annoying, too attractive, but not anything I wasn’t capable of facing. Maybe I could just... not think about those bubbles. And never, ever activate the Geometry sight around him.
It wasn’t like I used it all the time anyhow. Between the dogs and my own nose, I could get almost as much information from a scent.
That settled, I went around the corner to where Yejun was crouched down near the wall making friends with Grim. Without looking up at me, he asked, “What’s his name?”
“Grim,” I said. Grim lolled his tongue out at his name, looking very smug.
Yejun scratched behind his ears and looked up in my direction as if surprised. “Grim? He doesn’t look very grim. He looks like a big puppy.”
I shrugged. “When I was little, I thought ‘grim’ meant grey. It’s a grim, grey day, that sort of thing. So... you said you could help me?”
He didn’t answer, concentrating on the itchy spot between Grim’s shoulder blades, and I wondered uneasily if he was offended by my earlier reaction. But if he was mad at me, why was he petting my dog?
I shifted my weight uncomfortably and waited. After a moment, Yejun seemed to come to some sort of decision. He gave Grim one final pat and stood up. “Come on,” he said, and started walking up the sidewalk, heading for less trafficked streets.
I caught up with him and the dogs trailed behind. “Where are we going?”
“The hotel we used to be staying at.”
“We? Who are you?”
His head turned toward me. I already hated his sunglasses and the way they hid half of his expression as he said, “You’re big on asking questions that I’ve already answered, aren’t you?”
I wanted to kick him in the shin. “Who’s the ‘we’ that stayed at this hotel?”
“Sen and Jen and Cat and me.” He said the list of names sing-song, like he was reciting a nursery rhyme.
“Okay...” I said, encouraging him to go on.
“What, you want more? Sen was a nephil wizard. Jen was her assistant. I don’t know what Cat is. And I’m their brown-eyed problem child.” He slid his hands in his pockets as he walked.
I thought for a moment. “Is Sen the person who is working on solving the Wild Hunt problem? Tia and the ghosts said there was somebody.”
“She was, yup. She had a big plan to reboot the Hunt and sort everything out.” His voice was bright, almost chipper.
“Are we going to see her?”
“In a manner of speaking. Left here.”
I peeked at him from the side, wondered if I should stop talking, and couldn’t. “Are they your family?”
He laughed unpleasantly. “That would have been cool. But no. Not at all.” Changing the subject, he asked, “So how did you end up with all these dogs?”
I didn’t want to talk about that to a stranger, so I only said, “They started out as strays,” then let the silence draw itself out for a while
.
He came to a halt. “Here we are.” We stood in front of a convenience store, but across the street was a burnt-out motel. Half of it was cinders and fallen struts and the other half was blackened and stinking from both the fire and the stuff they used to put the fire out. Tape and cones warned people away, but a couple of homeless men were picking through the ruins anyhow. One of them held a smudged pillow and wore a singed, smoke-stained bathrobe. “Tia seems to think this is all you’ll need to get back to work.” He didn’t sound like he believed her.
I frowned. “Did it burn down while you were staying here?”
“Oh yeah,” he assured me, and there was an acrid note in his voice.
I put two and two together. “What was Sen doing when she died?”
He lowered his sunglasses to look at me, his eyebrows high with surprise and his brown eyes glittering. “She was summoning a demon called Alastor. She thought he might be helpful with her big spell. He wasn’t. Sen died. Jen barely survived.”
That hit me like a blow. “Really a bad guy,” I whispered, then flinched in anticipation of him mocking me again.
But he only nodded and pushed his sunglasses back up. “I wonder why he didn’t set you on fire, too, if you’re doing the same chore.”
“Probably because my father wouldn’t have liked that at all,” I muttered, reaching out to pull my dogs close. They crowded around my legs, no more eager than I was to go poke around in the burned-out hulk.
Yejun didn’t bother trying to hide the sneer in his voice when he said, “Daddy’s little princess, huh? That’s cool. Too bad Sen didn’t have anything like that.”
Shame squeezed my chest and stole my breath away. I hunched my shoulders forward and fought against the desire to run away. “Sorry,” I managed, then rushed on, looking for any change of subject. “What are you guys doing now?”
He shrugged. “Cat’s taking care of Jen. I’m thinking about moving on, myself. Sen was going to teach me, but that plan kind of got barbecued.”
How could he be so cold? “Why don’t you do that, then?” If there was hostility in my voice, it came from the same place as the shame.
Wolf Interval (Senyaza Series Book 3) Page 4
