Finder (The Watchers Book 6)

by Lilith Saintcrow

  It’s going to have to be enough.

  Another layer of warding folded over the suite, its edges overlapping to create a seamless shield of energy. Caleb wasn’t saying anything, but his worry was plainly visible.

  Jorie paused, her hand on the bathroom door’s crystal knob. She took a deep breath, another, centering herself the way Dorinda had taught her so long ago.

  Don’t stop being a willow—rooted in the ground.

  Well, she’d bent before other storms. She’d bend before this one, and do what she could.

  She opened the door and stalked through, heading for the kitchen counter, and grabbed the censer and its already burning charcoal tab. Caleb must have sparked it, knowing they took time to heat up. There was even a plain white ceramic plate just large enough to rest the cast iron in, and the living room window was open a fraction.

  Typical Watcher, thinking of everything. “Thank you,” she said, and Caleb turned from the door, shaking his hand a little. The wards were slightly sticky, wanting to cling to his fingers.

  He nodded, his eyes glowing and his hair shaken down so he could glare through it; he needed a trim. This was the worst possible set of circumstances for a despairing Watcher—one shock after another, and a witch too distracted to provide proper therapy.

  More guilt clawed at Jorie’s heart. She stopped, the packet of mugwort in one hand and the plate with its heavy cargo in the other, and regarded him.

  He still looked like a hawk, but not a caged one. Instead, he looked like a bird on a high peak, mantling slightly as it gazed at prey. Concentrating, fierce and dangerous—but at least he didn’t look like he was in second stage anymore. The devouring sadness was gone, and the touchy temper, while crackling and crawling all over him, had receded from the boiling point.

  He moved away from the door, bearing down on her with long efficient strides, and for a moment Jorie thought he was going to take the dish from her and say, You’re not doing this, witch.

  The terrible thing was, she might not fight very hard if he did. The fear was back, eating at her stomach, turning her legs into noodles.

  Caleb took the plate. “Where do you want this?” Calm, matter-of-fact. She’d told him what was going to happen, so he was determined to see it through.

  Braver than her, like every Watcher. Jorie set her chin and pointed to a clear spot on pale carpet. She settled down, cross-legged, wishing she had a skirt instead of jeans, and didn’t stop to think anymore, just tapped out a measure of dried mugwort and loaded the charcoal tab.

  Smoke rose. She leaned over the censer, breathing deep. Mugwort sharpened psychic abilities, and despite the risk of backlash from stretching her curse too far, she needed the extra sensitivity and clarity the herb would provide.

  Please let me find him, she thought, as Caleb settled behind her, folding gracefully down and flattening his hands against her back. The touch was warm and forgiving; Jorie’s aura meshed with his at the fringes. The link bloomed between them, and she caught a flash of feeling from him—warm, again, and a flush rose to her cheeks as certain other sensations swirled through to swamp her.

  Is that what they feel when we touch them? Wow.

  “Are you all right?” she whispered.

  “Peachy,” he murmured, the word soft despite the tanak’s growl underneath. “Do what you need to, Jorie. I’ll bring you back safe and sound.”

  “I hope so.” But she hesitated again. “Caleb?”

  “Hm?” He was concentrating, and his aura swirled forward, almost swallowing hers. It was a warm blanket, and something inside her relaxed all at once.

  “Thank you,” she said, and closed her eyes. At least her training held, and she could drop into light trance even if her heart was breaking.

  Neil. She thought of his eyes, of the burning edge of anger and pain behind the faint tang of cigarette smoke, his aura almost, almost bright enough to give him some of the answers he craved. Of his hand, warm and sure, as Jorie lay in the hospital bed—her newly assigned Watcher had been there after the Bomber incident, but so had Neil. He hadn’t gone home for three days, sleeping in a hospital chair instead, and the first words out of his mouth when she regained consciousness had been raw-husky and brisk.

  Don’t you ever do that to me again, Jorie. Or I swear to God I’ll . . . He’d trailed off, because apparently no threat was dire enough. The new Watcher, standing guard tactfully just outside the door, hadn’t mentioned it; when Sol came by that afternoon with a potted African violet and a Get Well Soon card, Neil had been back to his usual brusque, blunt self.

  Her detective’s problem wasn’t anger, or callousness; he was unfailingly gentle with the families of the missing or murdered. No, Neil quite simply cared too much, and it ate at him over and over, the hole widening each time he threw himself after another unsolvable case, into another unwinnable fight.

  Despair wasn’t just for Watchers.

  The Finding was there, of course, just waiting to be called on. The mugwort sharpened it; Jorie rose out of her own body, her stomach turning over hard before she left it behind, arrowing along a rushing river of noise, sensation, streets and buildings flashing by before she was yanked sharply down.

  Into the dark. No, not quite dark, because she’d been here before, over and over again.

  . . . dappled light against a high, crumbling ceiling. Wet concrete, dripping water, rushing wind. The reek of copper and sharp pungent chlorine drew choking-close. A forlorn striped mattress in a forgotten corner, its cotton cover blotted with crawling darkness the dreamer did not dare gaze too deeply into.

  There was no window, no distinguishing marks, no sense of direction or draw like a lodestone against her bones. There was only the terrible reek, the wet dripping, the rushing, the mattress, the pipes tangling as the ceiling dropped.

  And the dolls.

  Many long shelves hammered into the walls held them, brown and white, slim and round, their black cross-hatched eyes bright with terrible knowledge. The dolls drew the dreamer in, mute mouths sewn tight with black thread.

  This time, there was something new. The vision turned sideways, plunging off its well-worn tracks, and the thing on the mattress slithered upright, compressing into a bipedal shape. It had done this before, worn the seeming of a man, and the face ran like melting wax as the intruder, a glimmering gem-bright shape, hung in the air of the room it had reserved for its private playground.

  The thing wearing a human shape chuckled. The dolls moved, each tiny violated life now a mere expression of its will, and the foul reek of decay mixed with a wet mineral taste of hose water with a tang of chlorine. Screams echoed, the disjointed sound of children at play, pretty larks splashing in a puddle that was the largest of his traps.

  Jorie. Come back.

  She strained against soft-sticky invisible threads. Too late, she had lingered too long, and the thing on the mattress crouched, its knees splayed obscenely wide, tendons and ligaments crackling as flesh moved in ways its original owner had never forced it to.

  That’s enough. Caleb, from very far away, with the harsh snap of a tanak under his tone. Come back.

  She was trapped, held in place as the thing felt with its blind, bumbling tentacles, edging closer and closer to her shrinking self. Was this what an insect felt, held in tree-blood and thrashing as it sank? The sap would linger under pressure and crystallize, the corpse held imperishable but still a corpse.

  Still dead.

  And now she was struggling, terror like flat cold iron all through her unphysical form, bird wings beating at sticky cage bars, heart laboring humming-fast, a tiny thing trapped in a cobweb.

  No, Caleb said. I’m not losing you. Come back.

  Unfortunately, she couldn’t.

  A LONG DESPAIRING scream, choked at the end. A wet snap, a shower of salt-smell, a tendril
of Power suffocating the charcoal tab and whisking away the mugwort smoke. She spilled into Caleb’s arms, deadweight, her eyes rolled back and slivers of white showing under fluttering eyelashes.

  “No,” he repeated, over and over. “No. No. Nonononono, Jorie, don’t you dare, don’t you dare leave me!”

  Half a Chance

  IT HURT, BUT HE was used to pain, even the agony of his chest tearing in half. Something he hadn’t known he possessed was being ripped away one slow fiber at a time, invisible claw-fingers sinking deep and working back and forth to tear it out by the roots. It was his useless heart, a dumb cardiac muscle that kept beating long past the time when any sane beast would have quit, and it was being torn away.

  But the torment was only a signal that something was happening to her, and that couldn’t be allowed.

  He was a Watcher, and his witch was dying.

  The tanak snarled, forcing Power into her again, the heat-flush used to insulate a witch from shock. But Jorie had pushed herself and her talent too far, and her body was shutting down, one system at a time.

  Not while I’m here, witch. He staggered, her slight weight filling his arms. The cast-iron censer crumpled under the tanak’s snarling fury with a sound like pennies grinding in a mechanical fist, and Caleb made it through the door into the bedroom, tacking drunkenly. Jorie’s back arched; her lips were blue and her hair unraveled over the pillow, a silken inkspill.

  The heat-tingles weren’t working. He was going to have to bring her out the old-fashioned way.

  Skin on skin.

  His coat hit the floor on the side of the bed, his weapons harness followed with a rattle, and cloth tore. Getting her under the covers was the difficult part; he was ripping at her T-shirt and his own, and he almost fell flat on his face getting out of his jeans.

  God damn it. “Don’t you dare die on me,” he found himself repeating. “Don’t do it, baby, just hang on. Just hang on.”

  Gathering her into his bare arms was the stuff dreams were made of, except his chest cracked again and the pain drove a small, unwilling sound between his lips. Torture turned to Power turned to more pain, then cycled into more invisible force—an endless feedback loop, and he didn’t care how long it went on as long as the flood of intangible strength wrapped around her, staving off shock and keeping her heart working, her lungs breathing.

  Skin on skin wasn’t just good for hypothermia. It was the oldest way known to bring a witch out of the terrible, draining lassitude a step beyond backlash, and he was a lucky sonofabitch indeed, because it was what he’d wanted from the very first moment he’d seen this woman.

  Her bra was an irritant, her cotton panties even more so, but Caleb went still, his teeth grinding, his own eyes closed as he invoked harsh control, the obedience trained into every Watcher from the moment they were accepted into this brutal, impossible war. The contrast between soft skin and the lace on said bra was enough to drive a man mad, and the fact that his face was buried in her hair and his body was—even through the pain—taking notice below the belt just drove home what a bastard he really was.

  The real danger to Jorie wasn’t the Dark and it wasn’t that lying cop. It was Caleb himself, and he knew it all the way to his bones. A Watcher who loved her a little less would have found a way to stop her from throwing herself into shock, wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t have caved under those big dark eyes and the slight tremble in her soft, completely kissable lower lip.

  Not made of stone, he thought, deliriously. I can’t, good God, I just can’t.

  His jaw ached, and his teeth too because he was clenching them tightly enough to shatter. She stopped shivering, nestling in his arms like she was made specifically to, and he had his leg hooked behind her knees, drawing her in as if he could absorb her. The Dark wanted to consume, yes—and a Watcher was only a step or two behind. Pulling her into his skin and keeping that beacon to light him back from hell was what he needed, what he downright craved.

  What he would take, if given half a chance.

  The tanak wouldn’t stop him. Hell, the symbiote longed for it just as much as he did. But Caleb made himself a statue, turned his arms and legs to iron instead of flesh. He held his breath until his heartbeat crawled up to thud dangerously in his ears, until he was just a few seconds from passing out too, just so he wouldn’t be tempted.

  It backfired, badly, because when he absolutely had to inhale, his lungs filled with the scent of Jorie’s hair, the shampoo from the suite and the edible, indefinable tang that was all her. Warmth stole back into her fingers, one arm trapped between them and the other bent awkwardly under her head, and a few stray curls clung damply to her forehead. Her eyes moved behind their lids as if she was dreaming.

  There was no sign of that pulsing, braided cable pulling her away. Caleb found himself trembling right on the verge of losing control again, the soft curve of her belly pressed against him, her hair tickling his chin, her breath a warm spot against his collarbone.

  You’re suffocating her. Move.

  He couldn’t. If he so much as twitched he was going to do something absolutely unforgivable, and he could even make Jorie believe it had been necessary. He could even convince her she’d given consent in the throes of backlash; the fact that he was even considering it showed just how fucking unfit he was.

  For anything, but especially for her.

  No more. I can’t take any more.

  He had to think about something else. Something useful, something that would keep him from doing what he wanted to. There was a word that described what he ached for, and it wasn’t a nice one.

  So he repeated it to himself, once, twice, and a third time, and finally achieved tenuous control.

  “. . . not dolls,” Jorie murmured, and moved, snuggling into him. She was just trying to make herself comfortable, probably only semiconscious, and a short, rabid growl lodged itself in his chest. “They’re not.”

  “Keep talking.” His voice was a shattered husk. “Tell me whatever you need to, baby.”

  She went still, relaxing bonelessly, and for a single terrifying instant he thought he’d been a few fractions too late and she had shut down completely. But the pain had stopped, except the lead bar with its roots deep in his pelvis, and she was breathing deeply, slowly. When he could pull his head back and peer at her face, she was flushed and alive, her lips barely parted and no longer bluish.

  The window was full of winter dusk, and Caleb found out he could let himself turn back into skin, muscle, bone again. Her heart beat, nice and strong; his own pulse matched it. He breathed when she did, hoping it would bring him some peace.

  After a little while, he could even close his eyes again. He still wanted to do something unforgivable, certainly, but he was back in the driver’s seat now, and he could be the better man.

  Maybe. For a little while. As long as she was still alive.

  That night the darkness, for once, was kind.

  No Apology

  A SERIES OF LIGHT, sharp raps on the front door brought Jorie into full, stinging alertness, and she winced as she sat bolt upright. Underwires dug, and she reached for her bra clasp habitually, hissing between her teeth.

  Sleeping in your brassiere was never good.

  Added to that, she’d slept in panties too, and they weren’t even hers. She was in a strange bed, her eyes and nose were gummy, and it felt like something had crawled into her mouth, died, and rotted into acidic sludge.

  Even in college, she hadn’t had a morning like this. And that was saying something.

  The knocking came again and she blinked, scrubbing at her face. Dried blood in her nostrils—another nosebleed, dammit.

  The bathroom door opened; a moment later and Caleb ghosted to the bedroom doorway, his toffee-highlight hair a wild tangle. The relief was deep and instant—there was a Watcher, she wasn’t alo
ne.

  He glanced at her, the question evident: Did she want him to open up, or was she averse to company? Jorie nodded, and only realized she was pretty much naked when the lock clicked in the suite’s main area; there was a murmur of greeting, and Tancred appeared in the bedroom door, sleek, fresh, and extremely natty in a dove-grey vest, tailored trousers breaking beautifully over grey suede wingtips—since he was visiting instead of working—and a pigeonthroat-pink Oxford with creases so sharp they could cut cheese.

  “Looks like someone’s had some fun,” he said, but stopped moving halfway through the sentence. He sniffed, and his dark head tilted. “Mugwort. And . . . dear gods, Jore, what did you do?”

  She clutched the blankets to her chest, grateful to have at least that much cover. “Tan.” That’s right, I asked him to research for me. Yesterday was a blur, the few days before it dreamlike with terror and exhaustion, but a few things stood out—the library, the clutch of tiny, terrible Dark creatures . . .

  Oh. And scrying, going too far, trapped in the terrible devouring cold. She hadn’t found Neil, but something else. And she remembered the scorching of warm flesh against her cooling body, and harsh, quiet pleading.

  Don’t you dare die on me.

  Tancred folded his arms; behind him, there was a rumble of male voices. It sounded like Gary, asking a question, then Caleb’s short reply. Her Watcher’s coat and weapons harness were still next to the bed, along with a pile of tangled clothing. And since Tancred didn’t look amused at all, it was probably extremely apparent that Jorie had done something dangerous and had to be rescued.

  Which meant she’d put a Watcher in danger, and maybe the entire safehouse too—the one thing she’d wanted to avoid this whole time. Jorie hunched her shoulders, wishing she’d at least had something caffeinated before dealing with this.