He shrugged and said, “They’re good people,” missing my point entirely. “Haven’t quite decided yet.”
I shook my head and walked across the street. Nod and Heart came with me, but Grim lingered at Yejun’s side until I turned back to look at him sternly. Yejun scratched his ears absently, frowning after me.
I snapped my fingers at Grim and he wagged his tail slowly in my direction without lifting one paw to join me.
“Grim!” I called. I didn’t look at Yejun. I did my best to pretend he’d already left. After a few seconds, he lifted his hand from Grim’s ears.
“Oh,” he said, as he understood what I’d meant. Then he said, “Fine. Good luck finding what you’re looking for,” like he wished no such thing. Grim’s ears flattened. Finally, as Yejun turned and walked back the way we came, Grim joined me on the other side of the street.
I watched Yejun walk away. He was insensitive and weird and disturbing, so I wasn’t sure why. I found myself wishing he’d been nicer so I hadn’t gotten upset and told him to go away. It had been a long time since I’d had that much of a conversation with somebody who was both around my own age and reasonably clued in about the secret powers of the world.
It was for the best, I told myself sternly. Hanging around me being nice wasn’t a position with good benefits. The health care in particular was downright backward. And I thought of Emily and cringed at myself, and at my ridiculous desire that Yejun had stayed. I wish I’d been able to see his eyes more than that brief glimpse over his sunglasses.
Grim licked my hand and I pulled myself together. Heart and Nod were already nosing around the ruins. The ragged men picking through the wreckage watched me warily. Or, rather, they watched the dogs warily. I liked having all three dogs with me when I was in places like this. Even one dog discouraged uninvited attention, while three told everybody that I was a downright troublesome target. Not harassing me was always better for everybody. But I made a point of showing the scavengers I was ignoring them because, hell, more power to them for taking what they needed before it was all carted away to a dump.
The scent of the fire was completely overpowering, even after a few days. If the trail I’d lost really was to be recovered here somehow—and I was a little confused about that, to be honest—the dogs would need my help. So I perched on a fallen beam and called Nod to curl up at my feet as Grim and Heart spread out to investigate.
With Nod close enough to keep an eye on things, I closed my eyes and let my awareness merge with Heart’s. It was simple enough, but it always made me slow and inattentive and weak. If somebody walked up to me, I might not notice. But Nod would.
Heart sniffed around the ashes, distinguishing between the ashes of wool and wood, avoiding pools of plastic slag and stepping delicately around broken concrete and metal pipes. Those were all mundane smells, not what we were looking for. She could smell people: the various firefighters and fire inspectors and the hotel guests and when we really concentrated, she could smell the fear and frustration of the hotel staff. Stuff like that lingered, especially when you were as sensitive to emotions as Heart was.
She followed the scents to the place where the fire began, where there was nothing left but cinders and cracked, pitted concrete, and there we paused. Another nephil had died there. Someone like me. And nothing was left behind but ashes and somebody else’s memories. And Yejun’s bad jokes.
Heart could smell helplessness, desperation, frustration. Hope. The scents painted an emotional portrait of a woman reaching out for something that betrayed her, destroyed her, and of a last furious burst of magic as the nephil woman died. And nearby, from somebody else: fear, pain, horror, guilt. That didn’t seem like the emotional profile of a hunter, even with the guilt.
But she couldn’t find anything else. With a whine, she curled up where the nephil wizard had died, and I switched my focus to Grim. He licked Heart’s nose, then moved away from her to stick his nose through the Curtain between worlds. The stink of the demon Alastor was much easier for him to pick up. As for anybody else supernatural—
Nod chuffed a warning and Heart turned her head to look toward me. I released my focus on Grim and started paying attention to my immediate vicinity again.
The scavengers were gone, and it was easy to see why. Tia stood at the edge of the lot, her hands on her hips, and she was angry enough to frighten anyone.
-five-
I stared at Tia warily, wondering what she was mad about now. That was so distracting that it took me a minute before I realized she wasn’t alone. A girl who looked about thirteen stood beside her. She wore knee-length canvas shorts and a Gravity’s Angels band t-shirt, with a hefty camera bag slung over one shoulder. Light brown hair bobbed around her elfin face and she held onto Tia’s short jacket with one hand. Her eyes were bright with wonder.
She looked around as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “That was far out!”
“Where’s Yejun?” Tia inquired, then held out her hand, palm up, as Nod came over to greet her.
“He left,” I said, because if a demon asked you a question with an obvious answer, it wasn’t wise to just ignore it. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to—hey!” I changed verbal direction suddenly as I got close enough to notice the change in Tia’s scent. “What happened to you?”
Tia pulled her hand back from Nod instinctively, then returned to petting his ears. “What do you mean?” Jealous, Heart and Grim gave up investigating the possible trails and came over to try and crowd Nod out of the way.
I sniffed. “You smell different. Is that a new body?”
“Whoa, what?” demanded the new girl. She eyed the three dogs jockeying for Tia’s attention as if she wasn’t quite sure about them.
Tia glanced at the girl, then said carefully, “This is a resource-intensive project. Resources get consumed.”
I bit my lip. “Are you all right?”
“Must we discuss this now? I think there’s enough on the table already.” She stopped petting Nod and waved her hand at the other dogs dismissively. I could feel the faint tingle of energy she sent at them to encourage them to go back to work.
I shrugged. Of course she was all right. She was a demon. “Fine. As I was saying, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do here. Even if I can track down the Huntsman’s scent, this is a few days old. It’ll just end up going to where your not-a-friend blew up the trail. I’m not going to find him this way.”
“Oh no. You’re not trying to find him,” Tia said. “Do your best to never encounter him. I want you to find where he came from. In the home of the Wild Hunt, there’s a horn. It holds the heart of the Hunt. That’s what we need. Didn’t I say?”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “No. You didn’t. You didn’t tell me anything. I had to get my instructions from a ghost.”
“Ghosts have a unique perspective,” Tia said calmly. “They’re certainly better at persuading you.”
Sighing, I said, “You want me to follow an aging trail backwards? And through the other world?”
She tilted her head and raised one eyebrow at me. “Are you going to tell me you can’t?”
I thought about it. “I guess not. It’ll be hard work, though.” I realized that the girl Tia had brought was staring at me, her wide-eyed wonder faded away. “Who’s this?” I asked.
Tia put her hand on the girl’s back and gave her a gentle shove forward. “This is Brynn. She’ll be going with you on your trip.”
“What?” I demanded.
With a faint smile, Tia said, “It’s dangerous to go alone. I’d hoped you’d have the sense to keep Yejun, but—” She opened her hand as if releasing a fading dream. “And now I must go have another chat with Alastor. Work fast, children. Halloween is coming and the Wild Hunt rides after.”
Then, while I sputtered for an argument, she stepped backward through the Curtain and vanished.
I almost went after her to start the argument, but something about the way Brynn stared at me made me
stop. It was definitely wrong to abandon a kid in the middle of a city without at least making sure she had the resources to take care of herself.
“Are you from around here?” I asked, silently summoning all three of my dogs to me. The girl had a light, fresh, and definitely human scent.
Brynn looked around. “Uh, no. I don’t think so. Ms. Zalaya said you—said we were going to Seattle? I’m from LA. She took me through this hole in the world and into this room full of mirrors and then we stepped out here.”
Ms. Zelaya, I thought. “How do you know her?”
“Oh, she’s my substitute teacher sometimes,” Brynn said airily. “She needed a helper and I volunteered.”
I gazed at the other girl in consternation, then switched on my magical sight to try and understand why Tia had thought this was a good idea. And... I couldn’t tell. The girl had all seven nodes filled with complex charms, but I would have been more shocked if anybody hanging out with Tia hadn’t had that basic magical grounding. But she definitely wasn’t a nephil, and she wasn’t some kind of prodigy human wizard—you can spot wizards by the eighth and ninth nodes on the palms—and she wasn’t a freak like Yejun. She was just an ordinary human girl, who Tia had dragged from LA to Seattle and deposited on me.
“What does she want you to do?” I asked at last.
Brynn shrugged. “Help out.” She dropped her camera bag on the ground and started rummaging through it. “Shoot, we left in such a hurry that I forgot my cellphone. Do you have one I can borrow? I ought to make sure my family won’t worry while I’m here.”
My hand went to my pocket where my phone was, but I didn’t give it to her right away. “She wants you to help me find the Huntsman?”
“The Huntsman’s horn,” Brynn corrected. “No phone? I can find a prepaid somewhere, I guess.” She gave me a friendly smile and rose to her feet again.
“How old are you?” I demanded. Brynn’s smile made me feel irrational and a little panicky. She was being friendly. Emily had been friendly, too, and about the same age. “Do you know you’re standing in the place where somebody was killed for trying to find this damn horn? This is a dangerous situation. Your family should worry.” You should go back to them.
Brynn looked down at her feet, but I could smell her mood shifting from excitement to nervousness. “Creepy. And I’m fourteen. How old are you?”
“Seventeen,” I said, which was close enough to true.
“No way! Really?” She was more bothered by this revelation than by the idea that she stood in a woman’s ashes, which I thought was particularly unfair. “You look like you’re my age. Barely.”
“I’m not. Look,” I said irritably. “You’re too young to be involved in this. It really is dangerous, honest. Your family would be upset if something happened to you. You don’t want to do that to them.”
She blinked at me owlishly. “Would yours?”
I stared at her. “Why would you ask a question like that?”
“It seems fair.” She looked around, then held out her fingers to Nod like Tia had done before her. Grim lolled out his tongue, then darted forward to lick her hand. “Nah, I think I’ll stay for now. This magic Tia has been telling me about sounds pretty rad and you look like you could use some company.”
“I have plenty of company,” I protested, waving my hands at my dogs.
“Human company,” Brynn clarified patiently. She patted Grim cautiously on the head, like somebody without a lot of experience with dogs.
“Hah,” I said. “That’s exactly what I don’t need.” Then, realizing I’d said that aloud and hoping to avoid questions, I rushed on. “So did Tia say exactly how you were supposed to help me? Because I’m not even really sure I need help, honestly.”
Brynn shrugged. “She put some magic on me, but I’m not quite sure what it does. She said I’d figure it out when it was ready.”
“Hmm,” I said. I wasn’t convinced. But I turned away and went to where Heart and Grim had tracked down the scent of Alastor—and, much more faintly under it, the scent of the Huntsman. I concentrated until it filled my nose and I had a sense of the direction both entities had come from.
“You can really smell magic? That’s so cool.” Brynn stood right beside me. I hadn’t noticed her coming over and my dogs had decided they liked her, obnoxious beasts. She smiled at me when I met her gaze and held out her hand. “That wasn’t really an introduction earlier. I’m Brynn.”
“I’m AT,” I said. I didn’t take her hand, though. It wasn’t her. I didn’t like to have people touch my hands. It brought up bad memories.
Brynn noticed, but she misunderstood. A flash of hurt sparkled in her eyes, but she only sighed and brought forth another smile, this one wry. “So where do we go from here?”
I thought about that for a minute. I knew where I had to go, but where she had to go seemed like a very different matter. She was going to be a liability in the Backworld, and if my father found out she’d been trying to befriend me—
Just the thought made my insides curl with dread. But getting rid of her wasn’t as easy as just stepping into the Backworld and leaving her behind. That was irresponsible and would make Tia even angrier with me. But she clearly wouldn’t take a hint, like Yejun had. I missed his belated good sense already.
Yejun had said the people he was staying with were good people, those who had survived Alastor’s arson. And this Wild Hunt thing had originated with them. Possibly they were still involved. Maybe it was time to introduce myself.
Responding to my thought, Grim darted across the street and found Yejun’s scent. “This way,” I said, and followed him.
A moment later, Brynn caught up with me. “We’re not going to the magic world?” She sounded disappointed.
“Uh, no, not yet.” I wondered what Tia had told her. But before I could figure out how to ask, the wind gusted and I caught another scent, one that made my fists clench.
Animal musk, grocery store body spray, cinnamon breath mints. Not too close, but coming up behind us. Scott, my father’s newest wolf.
I swore under my breath. I’d really hoped my father had unmade him after last night’s game, but I should have known better. I had no idea if he was tracking me on his own or as assigned by my father, but it didn’t matter. Anything he saw would eventually make its way back to his master.
“Let’s walk faster,” I suggested to Brynn. “Really fast.”
“What’s wrong?” she said, but she broke into a skipping sort of jog alongside me.
“There’s somebody I don’t want to meet behind us. If he notices us—” you— “there could be trouble.”
Nod dropped back on his own and I realized he was going to decoy Scott away from our trail. I wasn’t really excited about that, either, but Nod was sometimes hard to stop when he got an idea into his head. This was one of those times and all I could do was silently insist that Nod only let Scott glimpse him, that Nod was not to confront my father’s wolf. And if that didn’t work—well, there was more we could do.
“Let’s try to lose him,” I told Brynn, dragging her by her shirt inside a bath products store. Grim and Heart kept following Yejun’s trail. They’d find him and I’d find them. It would all work out. And splitting up like this would make Scott even less likely to notice Brynn’s scent, I hoped.
I pulled Brynn over to a samples display full of body sprays and miniature bath bombs beside little bowls of water. “Ooh,” she said as I started spraying her liberally with everything I could get my hands on. That sort of thing wouldn’t stop me and my dogs, but my father’s wolves weren’t nearly as talented—especially somebody who had been a mortal man until the day before yesterday.
Brynn held out a wrist for something green and said, “Is this hiding out or just fun?”
“I don’t want him to smell you,” I said. “He’s good with his nose like me, and he’s not my friend. Yesterday I had to break his arm.”
“Whoa,” said Brynn, her eyes widening.
&n
bsp; My phone rang, the special tone I’d set for calls from my father. I froze, then fumbled the phone out and stared at it.
I didn’t want to answer it, but I knew I should, or I’d be in trouble later. But if I did, he’d ask what I was doing, who I was with. He’d order me to come home. My hand trembled.
“Hey, you do have a cellphone,” accused Brynn, and my paralysis broke.
I dropped the still-ringing phone into one of the bowls of water, then dropped one of the tiny bath bombs in after it. The phone half-rang one more time, a drowned sound that ended with a fizz as the bath bomb bubbled over.
I looked up and met Brynn’s shocked gaze. “It’s broken,” I said, as calmly as I could.
Hesitantly, she said, “Sometimes... you can... dry them out?”
I unscrewed the lid of a bath oil tester and poured the whole thing into the phone’s watery grave. “Maybe,” I agreed. I swished around the mixture with my fingers. It mostly smelled like lavender.
A store employee came over. “Hey, what are you doing?”
“Just had a little accident,” I said, snatching my phone out of the bowl. “My bad. Come on, let’s go.” I rushed past the annoyed employee and out the other door of the store. It opened onto a shopping arcade decorated for Halloween, with orange pumpkins and straw-stuffed scarecrows dressed in flannel. Another costume store was across the way, and I told myself I really had to make sure to come home with something good. Maybe I could offset my father’s anger about my phone that way. In fact, I knew exactly what I could pick to please him, and I found myself scoping out the display to see if I could find the right costume now.
“So what was that about?” said Brynn. Her voice was light, but I could tell she was bothered again.
I shook myself out of my costume thoughts. “I didn’t want to answer it. And it would have been dangerous for you to use it.” I was acting like a crazy person, I knew. The sooner I got rid of her, the sooner I could get back to pretending I was normal.
Wolf Interval (Senyaza Series Book 3) Page 5
