Soul Hunt (37 page)

I stared at him through the trees, seeing only snow, only winter, exhilarated and terrified. But what had been a shape was now only a shadow, and the Common, and the first noises of early traffic on Beacon Street.

Nate crawled over to me, leaving a long track of dirt smeared against the snow, and sagged at my side. He tried to speak, but shook his head and leaned against me instead. “Nate,” I said finally, and saying a human word—saying a name, a name that did not immediately call its bearer—felt unbearably strange. “Nate, did you know? That they would—”

He nodded, then shook his head. “I guessed. And I hoped.” He struggled to his feet, snow sliding off him in great damp chunks. “But this—now till the end? What end? What does that—Evie, are we—”

“I don’t know.” I drew another breath, and it came out in a laugh—a joyous laugh, for the sheer glee of being alive, for the world of wonders. For midwinters to come. “I don’t know.”

A
lthough I’d envisioned it since finishing
Spiral Hunt, Soul Hunt
proved very difficult to write. The very end of the book had always been set in my mind, though it shifted time and place and circumstance, and once I’d set everything up at the end of
Wild Hunt,
in theory all I had to do was write my way there. I’m ashamed to admit that I thought it would be an easy task.

Most of the credit for bringing the reality closer to the idea (or, when the idea was lousy to begin with, scrapping that entirely) can go to the members of BRAWL. The draft they critiqued bore only a superficial resemblance to the novel I’d originally dreamed up, and even then it was still a mess. They saw where I wanted to go, showed me how I’d set my path wrong, and cleared the way for me. Thanks as always to my agent Shana Cohen and my editor Kate Nintzel, both of whom were very patient with the time it took to wrangle this book into shape.

A few notes on sources: Venetia, Meda, and the other “flinty kind of women” as Dar Williams puts it, were inspired in no small part by the New England women I’ve known over the years.

The Quabbin Reservoir is a beautiful and strange place, particularly when you remember that there are
indeed four towns beneath it. There are more stories to be told there, I’m certain.

To my knowledge, there are no tunnels under the harbor from Georges Island. As for the one leading from Lovells Island, it led in a different direction entirely, and it has long since collapsed.

Last of all, I’d like to thank my husband, who encouraged me through the first stages of the book, hiked beside the Quabbin with me, listened to each new plot twist and then each new reason why that wouldn’t work, and then patiently sat me down in front of the computer again. Without him, there would be no book, and likely no author either.

Nate let out his breath. The encroaching frost was gone, but the air remained chill and dry, tasting of old leaves and fire. “Evie—”

“That gives me two months,” I said, and started across the plaza. The circle scuffed underfoot; any trace of blood was long gone, as was the mark on my throat.

Inside, though, my brain was screaming midwinter! Midwinter! I’m not ready to be torn apart by the Gabriel Hounds.

I’m not ready to die.

MARGARET RONALD
learned to read on a blend of
The Adventures of Tintin
, Greek mythology, and
Bloom County
compilations. Her vocabulary never quite recovered. The author of two previous Evie Scelan novels,
Spiral Hunt and Wild Hunt,
Margaret has also written stories for
Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, Baen’s Universe
, and
Fantasy Magazine.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

If you haven’t read the first installment in the Evie
Scelan series, here is an excerpt from
Spiral Hunt

N
o one ever calls in the middle of the night if they have good news. You’d think I’d remember that and not answer the phone after, say, midnight. But I’m as trained as any of Pavlov’s dogs, and so when the phone shrilled I picked it up before coming fully awake. “This is Scelan,” I mumbled into the receiver.

“Evie?” That woke me up. Since high school, only close friends have called me Evie. The man on the other end of the phone cleared his throat. “This is—Okay, you remember Castle Island? I kept branches in my car. Green ones, still living. Organic matter. Right?”

“I don’t know what you’re—” I stopped, memories of an ill-spent summer in South Boston flooding back around me like smoke from a bonfire. “Jesus.
Frank?”

“Don’t say it! Christ, I forgot how stupid you could be about some things.”

Definitely Frank. Jerk. “Thanks very much. What the hell happened to you, Frank? I thought you were—”
Not dead,
I thought;
but as good as, when it came to this town.

He didn’t even hear the question. “I haven’t—I’m pretty sure this line is okay, but I can’t say the same for yours, and I know they’ll be watching; they didn’t expect me to get away.”

“Frank. Slow down.” I reached for the light, flailed a moment, then sat up. My legs had gotten tangled up in a big knot of sheets. “Why are you calling me?” I asked.

“I’ve got good reason—” The phone line squealed as a booming voice interrupted him, laughing and shouting guttural words that definitely weren’t English. I held the phone away from my ear until Frank’s voice returned. “Shut up! Look, Evie, I know we didn’t part on the best of terms—”

“You called me a stupid bitch and said I deserved whatever
they
had for me. And then you disappeared.”

“Yeah, well, I know what I did wrong last time. I’m not staying around here—it’s gone too far for that, and I can’t …” He paused, and the booming voice muttered again, incomprehensibly. “Shut up! I’m getting out. Really getting out this time.”

“Yeah. Sure.” When half of your business contacts are addicts, it gives you a certain perspective on anyone who says he’s quit. Frank had quit before, sure, but he’d been a lot younger and less steeped in the undercurrent of Boston. And I’d helped to bring that crashing down, naive as I was. “Look, Frank, if you’re calling me in hopes of a quick screw for old time’s sake, forget it. I can’t help you get out of the city other than the mundane ways, and you know those are watched.”

“I know. Danu’s tits, I know.” He fell silent, and memory dredged forth an image so strong I could see what he must be doing: rubbing one hand over his face as if to clear the slate of his emotions. Of course, he’d be older now, but the gesture was one I unwillingly knew well. “Look, Evie, I know you probably hate me.”

“I don’t hate you, Frank.” It was more complicated than that, and everything had happened so long ago that it didn’t matter now. Which made me wonder why I still mattered to
him.
“I just didn’t expect to hear from you again.”

He hesitated. “Yeah. Well. I don’t need help or anything, but I had to let you know that I was going. I can make it out this time.”

“Don’t boast about it. Just get out.” I tugged the sheets back into some semblance of order, then sighed, remembering bonfires and the smell of crushed greenery. “Good luck.”

“Luck has no part in this.”

I nearly dropped the phone. It was the booming voice again—but now that I was a little more awake, I recognized it. It was Frank’s voice: the same slight lisp from a broken tooth, the same timbre, only pushed down to the bottom of his range—but somehow I knew it was no longer Frank speaking.

“He speaks to you to say farewell. I speak to you to warn you, for I may have damned you with my words.”
The phone felt unnaturally warm, warmer than my hands could make it. For a second I smelled a trace of something like dust and dry stone, there and gone so fast it left only the memory of recognition.

Impossible. Even I couldn’t catch a scent over the tenuous connection a phone provided. But the hairs on the back of my neck tingled, and my breath quickened, as it did when I got the scent before a hunt.

The speaker took a deep, ragged breath. “But even if I have, I own no shame, for you are needed and by one greater than I.”

“Frank?” I said.

“Hound,”
said the voice, and ice ran down my back. Frank had never known I was called that.
“Hound, watch for a collar. The hunt comes …”

Nothing more. I held on to the phone long after the dial tone of a broken connection crooned in my ear.

“Frank, you son of a bitch,” I said at last. “Couldn’t you have stayed dead?”

O
ne of my clients called just as I was on my way out the door the next morning: the little old lady who’d asked me to find her aunt’s old recipe book. It had been in a junk store in Jamaica Plain, at the bottom of three cases of similar books, most of which were meant for the Dumpster. I’d taken on the job thinking it could be some quick work to go toward my rent, and forgotten the first rule of bargaining: don’t argue with a nice little old lady.

“Yes, I understand your point of view,” I said as I unlocked my bike, cell phone jammed between chin and shoulder. “But the fact remains that you did sign the contract for expert retrieval and recovery systems—”

A spate of squawking on the other end managed to convey that I charged too much, was a heartless monster for taking advantage of a senior citizen, and must have had some kickback deal with the junk-store owner in order to find her book so quickly. I rubbed at my temples, thinking that I should have taken my time finding the damn thing after all. “Ma’am, I’m sorry, but I’ll have to call you back. I have another client on the line.”

It wasn’t quite a lie, I told myself as I dialed Mercury Courier; it just left out several major facts, the first
being that my business relationship with Mercury was completely unrelated to my other work. “Hi, Tania? This is Genevieve. Where do you need me to go?”

I could hear Tania rustling through the mountain of papers on her desk. I’d only seen it once, but the image had burned itself into my mind. “Genevieve? Honey, you’re not on shift just yet.”

“I always work the Tuesday morning—”

“Schedule changes. The new system has you for the eleven-to-eight shift today.”

“Is this the same new system that wanted me to run a package out to Worcester?”

“There’s still a few bugs to work out, honey. Call me at eleven and I’ll send you out.”

I clicked the phone shut and stuffed it away. So much for getting work done early. On the other hand, that meant I had some time to work for my other job … or at least to see what the hell had been up with Frank last night.