Soul Hunt (18 page)

My head started to pound, and I realized there was at least one connection: me.

“Enough,” I said again, moving between the mechanic and Chatterji. “Call it a difference of opinion, okay? Let it go before I bust both your heads.” The mechanic glared at me but relented, and Chatterji, who’d moved into his usual deer-in-the-headlights stance, relaxed enough to remove Wheelwright’s hand from his arm. “Now, let’s all just make our way out of here, okay? It’s too cold and too late to argue.”

Kassia nodded at that, but Wheelwright had turned away, toward the cops. “Finally. Maybe we can get some sense out of this.” She marched right up to Rena’s partner, Foster, and planted herself in front of him before he had a chance to even look at the scene. “I saw the whole thing,” she declared, and right away I knew it was a lie. “The poor man was out of his mind. Obviously insane. Obviously incapable of understanding what he was doing.”

“I see,” Foster said smoothly. He glanced at the crowd—now that cops were here, they were slipping away like bad dreams in the morning—then nodded to Rena. “You want this?”

“I’ll take it,” she said without taking her eyes from me. “You do what you do best.” Foster had come up from forensics, I remembered; he was better with the concrete evidence. Which, unfortunately, left me with Rena. Wheelwright was going on about how awful it was that some poor deluded man could have done such a thing, it couldn’t really be his fault, could it?

Kassia, meanwhile, had slipped away with the rest
of the crowd, and the mechanic was trying to do the same. And just then Chatterji did one thing for which, harmless little man or not, I could have strangled him. “Miss Scelan here can tell you what happened,” he said brightly, and made a little ingratiating bow to Rena.

Overwrought courtesy wasn’t working on her. Right now she was as stony as the walls of Fort Warren. You could have frozen the air from the look she gave me. “Yes,” she said, turning over another page in her notebook. “Tell me what happened.”

I glared at Chatterji, who gave me an encouraging smile and a thumbs-up, and sighed. “Okay,” I said. “First thing you need to know is that I wasn’t actually here.”

Rena wrote a line and waited.

“The people you really want to talk to are Sarah Wassermann and Haroun Lahyani. They should already be giving statements. I’m just here because they called me in to cover for them.”

“Cover for them.” She glanced at me. “In what way?”

Shit. “Make sure no fights broke out after they left, that sort of thing. The, the guy who got hit was a magician. Is a magician. So’s the one who did it, only he’s not very good.”

She kept writing. “Uh-huh.” It’d been years since Rena didn’t believe me when it came to the undercurrent—the amount of magic she’d run into made that difficult—but it surprised me how much her disbelief, feigned or real, stung. “And he used magic?”

“No, he used his hand. And maybe a rock, for the windows. I don’t know.”

“Was this before you hurt your nose?” She gestured with the tip of her pen.

I sighed. “This was earlier. I told you, I wasn’t here.”

“Uh-huh. And I should be talking to you why, then?”

“Because—” I glanced back at Wheelwright and Chatterji, who had clumped together again. “Because
I know about this sort of shit, Rena, and you’ll get a more understandable story from me than you will from anyone else.”

Her lips twisted, and right away I knew I’d made a mistake. “Somehow I doubt that,” she murmured. “Listen, Evie. When I said I wanted out of this kind of
bruja
shit, I didn’t mean for more of it to follow me home, okay? Do you know how many things like this—” she gestured vaguely at the broken windows, “—have happened lately? And how many of them have something to do with your woo-woo friends?”

“I—” I didn’t know. At least two, from Chatterji’s and Wheelwright’s remarks, but the undercurrent’s a secretive place. If something bad happens to an adept, his or her first reaction is to cover it up to hide any perceived weakness. So if word of more than a few had gotten out, that meant there were many, many more out there. “I’ve been kind of out of it,” I said lamely.

Rena flipped back through her notes. “Vandalism. Vandalism. Arson. Assault with a non-deadly weapon—that’d be a bladder full of bean flour, in this case, and if you know the reasoning behind that I’d appreciate your not telling me. More arson. And vandalism. And that’s just this week. This is what your—magicians—are getting up to lately, is it, Evie?” She didn’t even look up from her notes as she said it.

I almost snapped right back at her—
they’re not
my
magicians, dammit
—but thought better of it. And besides, they were. Not in the sense that I could tell them what to do, but in the sense that I had some kind of responsibility for them. “Everyone’s been paranoid lately,” I said quietly, and Rena’s pen paused. “I’m not entirely sure what’s causing it. Kass—some people think it’s cyclical, but I think it might be some kind of, of external factor.”

“Fluoridated water, no doubt.”

“Jesus, Rena, will you take this seriously?” I swayed a little. Rena glanced at me, wariness giving way to
concern. “You ask me to explain, but I can’t because it’s all crazy talk to begin with, and you don’t want to hear any of the explanations I do have. What am I supposed to say, huh?”

“You’re supposed to tell me—” Rena began, but whatever else she said I missed.

A brilliant light like a flashbulb from hell went off in front of me, and I ducked away. The streetlights’ sensors, fooled into believing it was dawn, snapped off, and in the sudden darkness two people caught me by the arms. “Come on!” Chatterji whispered, and took my stumbling back toward him for assent. By the time I could see again, I was halfway around the block with them.

“What—” I coughed. “What are you doing?”

“Aversion ward, aversion ward, aha!” Chatterji patted his pockets, came up with a paper packet, and scattered the contents ahead of us, muttering as he did so. I held my breath to avoid smelling what I knew would be both magic and various unsavory fluids. “There we go! Keep walking, it’ll hold for several more blocks and then we’ll be fine.”

Wheelwright shifted her arm so that I was no longer leaning on her. “Very nice,” she said, scuffing her toe in the dust. “Your own work?”

“Oh, yes.” Chatterji beamed. “I liked your trick back there. What invocation did you use?”

“Invocation nothing. Flash powder and a little extra spark, that’s all.” She sounded inordinately satisfied. “And as for your question, Miss I-can-handle-myself, we are getting you out of a bad situation.”

Out
of? “No—no, I have to go back, Rena will be furious—”

“The cops won’t bother with us,” Chatterji said with the confidence of someone who’d gone under the radar for a long time. “And you looked like you needed the help.”

“I didn’t—” Oh, Christ, even if Rena wanted to believe me before, she’d never believe me now. How was
I going to explain this? “Goddammit, you two, you may have just completely screwed any chance—”

A stink hit me like a board to the face—a smell of rot and excrement and dead things. My knees buckled, and Wheelwright’s almost did, and we lurched against the closest wall. I stumbled away and slid to the ground, panting. “Hound, are you all right?” Chatterji asked, in search of the obvious. “Was it the policewoman? My grandfather was always allergic to authority, and I know the debility is possible—”

“No.” I pressed both hands against the back of my neck and tried to block out the ugly reek. “No,” I said again, partly to myself. “I’m all right. I’ll be all right. Just—what the hell did we just walk past?”

Wheelwright glanced over her shoulder. “Broken water main, it looks like. Nothing big; there’s a Dig Safe team already working.”

“That’s not all.” I took a deep breath through my mouth, gagged, and tried again. Better, though now I was tasting it. There were a lot of things buried in Boston, I knew. And some of them didn’t like being dug up. “I’ll be okay. But I’d stay away from here for the time being.”

Wheelwright snorted. “Don’t have to tell us twice.”

Chatterji knelt and offered me his flask. “Here. Drink this.”

I think my expression made clear what I thought of that. Wheelwright chuckled and rummaged in her enormous purse. “You might want this instead,” she said, handing me a bottle of water.

I took it over Chatterji’s protests that really, he thought an infusion of potential loci might actually help more, uncapped it, then turned away, gasping from the stink that rose off it.

“Picky.” Wheelwright took a swig of it herself. “Okay, so it’s not Monadnock Springs like the label says, but it’s good tap water. A little better than your other option.”

“Thanks. No.” I got to my feet and looked over
my shoulder. No sign of Rena; either she’d decided I wasn’t worth following or—more likely—she knew where I lived and would just find me there. “My bike’s near here. Look, the two of you ought to get going.”

“A thank-you would be nice,” Wheelwright began, but Chatterji took her arm and steered her away.

It’s shaming to admit it, but I went to Nate’s that evening as much because I wanted to stay away from Rena as for any desire to see him again. Which was, it turned out, a good thing.

When I made it up the stairs, I expected to see Nate hunkered over another stack of undergraduate exams. Especially since it was well past eleven. Not Katie by herself, curled up on the sofa. “Katie?” I asked as I dropped my messenger bag by the door. “What are you doing up?”

She looked up from the book (a huge illustrated tome that she’d dragged onto her lap, and even then it still hung off) and her eyes widened. “Evie! I found this book, and—are you still mad?”

“No,” I said, and sat down next to her. The book was one of those big pseudo-reference books, the kind named
Witches!
or
Mummies!
in big frightening letters and crammed with pictures to hide how little substance they had. This one had more gory woodcuts than a breathless Victorian’s version of the
Malleus Maleficarum.
Good stuff. “No, I’m not. I’m sorry, Katie. I shouldn’t have acted like that.”

She nodded, eyes wide, then abruptly flung her arms around me, forgetting the book between us. I got a corner in the ribs and another in the thigh, and stifled a grunt of pain. “I’m glad,” she mumbled into my arm. “I’m really glad.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re glad, but Chrissake, Katie, it’s nearly midnight! What are you doing awake?”

“It’s a Friday,” she protested.

“Doesn’t explain—” I stopped. “Where’s Nate?”

She didn’t move, but a creak from the kitchen and
the scent of wolf and worse was enough of an answer: the window was open, and Nate had just gotten in. “Go on to bed, kiddo,” I said, closing the book. “Nate’ll wonder what you’re doing up.”

For once, she didn’t argue. She too knew what her brother was, what his curse had made him. Though they didn’t share a father, the two Hunter siblings were in some ways very alike. Instead she gave me a quick kiss on the cheek—I raised my hand a second later, not quite sure whether to wipe it off—and ran into her room, thumping the door closed so loud it destroyed any hope of stealth.

I got back up, unhooked Nate’s bathrobe from the back of the bathroom door, and waited in the doorway to the kitchen. The lights were off, but enough streetlight glow filtered through from the fire escape—and the open window, for God’s sake—to glint off a pair of eyes too close to the floor. “You want this?” I said, holding out the robe.

A rumble met my ears, and the scent of hair and sweat and leaf mold sharpened.

“Yeah, I don’t think it looks good on you either. But there’s walking around in the buff, and there’s walking around in the buff with a little kid in the house. I’m pretty sure one’s a felony in some states.” I paused. “Okay, maybe both are, depending on the state.”

The rumble sharpened, and what instincts I had as Hound told me that now would be a good time to take cover, maybe find a weapon. Instead, I leaned back against the doorframe, dangling the bathrobe on one finger. “You left her alone, Nate. I thought you’d never do that.”

That did it. A lean, gray shape sidled out from the shadows beyond the window. His skin shivered all over, and with an almost subliminal ripping noise, one skin overtook the other, not growing out of the first but superseding it, bones and sinews rearranging themselves in what Nate had admitted to me was a
painful, shivering moment. Forefeet twisted, clenched, became hands in a way that wasn’t so much a transformation as the effect of some invisible blender twisting them from one shape to another.

There were things you got used to, in the undercurrent, and then there were things that just seemed wrong every time you saw them. This walked the line between them.

“Evie,” Nate said. He rose to his feet and coughed, his human throat still a little unfamiliar. “I’m sorry. I needed to … things were rough today.”

“Things were rough yesterday too, huh?”

He crimsoned—all the way up from his collarbone, and I had to keep my gaze from going lower—and didn’t meet my eyes. Instead he grabbed the robe away from me, turned his back—again with the not looking down, Evie—and slid his arms into it. “She was fine,” he said.

“Sure. And you are?”

“I—” He paused, then flicked on the light. In the electric light, we were once again man and woman, nothing more, nothing less, and his excuse was very plainly no more than an excuse.
“Damn.”

“I’m sorry, Nate.” I put a hand on the small of his back, then, slowly, slid my other arm around his waist. He sighed and leaned back against me, but there was still a deep line between his brows. “It’s … I’ve got so much to lose, now, and I don’t want you to be part of that.”

“Glad to see you finally realized that.” He turned to face me, running his fingers through his hair. “That you have a lot to lose, I mean.”

“Yeah. And I’m working on it.” I managed a smile, but it turned sour. “I just need to find … I don’t know, someone who knows about old Boston. Smugglers’ tunnels in the North End. That sort of thing.”

“Seriously? Tunnels?”