Unbinding (21 page)

Dyffaya lowered his empty arms. Slowly he looked up—not at Nathan or Benedict. Not at anything in particular. His cheeks were wet. “They die,” he said, his voice terribly level. “Sooner or later, they all die.”

He, too, vanished.

So did the enormous display with the crosshairs . . . just as Kai and Arjenie came into view.

O
LD
Town, San Diego, was a tourist magnet, but locals enjoyed it, too. There were over thirty restaurants, plus all kinds of shops, galleries, museums, historical sites, and activity centers where you could make bricks or pan for gold. Not to mention the ghost tours, which featured, “the number one most haunted house in America,” according to America’s Most Haunted. Today being Friday, they wouldn’t catch the artisan’s market, but there were strolling mariachis and presentations from both the Quilt Guild and the Blacksmith’s Guild.

Kai knew all this and more—so much more—because facts were Arjenie’s security blanket. She knew a lot of them, too. They clung to her mind like burrs to a collie’s fur, and they clung with remarkable specificity. Most people couldn’t say how many miles lay between the East Coast and the West. A lot, surely, but how many? A few would vaguely recall or guess it was around three thousand. Arjenie could—and would—tell you that the shortest coast-to-coast transit in America lay between San Diego, California, and Jacksonville, Florida, which were 2,092 miles apart.

It wasn’t that she had an eidetic memory. Arjenie was quite firm about that. Scientists, she said, weren’t convinced that true eidetic memory existed, and she certainly didn’t log every conversation, every meal, every face she saw into her personal data bank. Nor did she consider it a particularly useful skill. Between Google and smart phones, she said, anyone could find almost any information quickly and easily.

That was true, but Google couldn’t make sense of the facts and fact-like objects it offered, nor could it put them together in a helpful theory or narrative. Sometimes Arjenie couldn’t, either, of course. That proved true on the drive into the city. She told Kai what she knew about Old Town, but neither of them could build any kind of theory from it.

The drive had also been punctuated by phone calls. Nettie did not dismiss Kai’s theory about the Upper World. Far from it. She thought it all too likely, and deeply worrying. Kai had called the FBI special agent, too. While she’d been in sleep, Cynna had let Ackleford know Kai would be delayed—“getting treated for psychic trauma from the attack,” was how she’d put it. So Kai called to let him know she was on her way and warn him she was bringing a magical knife she needed to do her work. Which was true enough, in an elfish sort of way. She couldn’t get much work done if she was dead.

The moment she’d disconnected from that call, Ruben Brooks had called her.

Brooks reminded her of Nathan in the way he listened and in the questions he asked. Sometimes those questions helped her put her thoughts in order. Others, they suggested his mind had moved off on surprising tangents. Like when he asked her to confirm her conviction that Nathan had expected to be grabbed by the god. Assured that she did, indeed, believe that, he’d said, “Strange that he agreed to take charge of the investigation, then. It seems out of character for him to accept a responsibility he knew he wouldn’t follow through with. Do you think he expected leadership to devolve onto you?”

“I . . . I don’t know.” It hadn’t occurred to her that it could.

“I don’t know the nature of your partnership,” he’d said apologetically, “so I may be presuming too much. It simply occurred to me that he might believe you could, in all honor, act on his behalf.”

Shit. He might at that. “I don’t have any law enforcement experience.”

“True.” Brooks had fallen silent, then sighed. “Chaos does make a mess of the possibilities. I’m not getting anything helpful now. Earlier it was clear that you were essential, but everything’s jumbled at the moment.”

Essential? What did that mean? “I’m not in charge, though,” she’d said quickly, wanting to be clear on that before he disconnected. “Not of your investigation.”

“Not just now.”

Kai was thinking of that ominous “not just now” as they headed for the scene of the transformation on foot, having parked the car several blocks away. She wanted her hands free in case she needed to draw Teacher, so she carried the essentials in her pockets: phone, wallet, charms, eye drops, and glasses, in case the drops didn’t do the job. Arjenie was toting a backpack that held her tablet and a number of spellcasting components.

The weather was San Diego gorgeous, balmy and bright. Plenty of tourists and locals had been enjoying Old Town when the chaos event hit, and they were all trying to leave at once. The mayor had decided the entire area needed to be evacuated. The guards, Arjenie, and Kai had to swim upstream against a tide of people going the other way. A news copter hovered overhead, but Kai didn’t see any reporters among the crowd.

They were bound to be around, though. Kai hoped to avoid them. She didn’t have any official role, so she had no obligation to talk to them. And if Ruben Brooks wanted to change that—if he was crazy enough to try to put her in charge—she would simply say no. She wasn’t qualified. She was a mindhealer, not any kind of cop, and while her Gift could be helpful in an investigation, it didn’t do a damn thing to tell her how to conduct one. Besides, she wasn’t dominant in the way the lupi used the word. She didn’t need to be in charge. She wanted to get Nathan and Dell back. And Benedict and Cullen. Britta Valenzuela, too.

But
could
she say no? If the strongest precognitive in the nation, maybe in the world, thought he needed her to be in charge . . .
that’s tomorrow’s battle
, she told herself, shorthand for something her grandfather often said: when you fight tomorrow’s battle, you fight an enemy that doesn’t exist and miss the one standing in front of you.

“Police cordon up ahead,” José said.

“They should be expecting us,” Kai said. She had her ID ready. “Can you see the transformed building?”

“Not yet. It’s in the middle of the next block, past where the street turns.”

Their goal was Whaley House—the place billed as “the most haunted house in America.” Naturally.

The cops manning the cordon were, indeed, expecting her and Arjenie. They knew about Kai’s knife, too. Or so she assumed, because all three of them frowned at the scabbard at her waist but didn’t comment on it.

They were not expecting six armed lupi. “My fault,” Kai said. “I should have let Special Agent Ackleford know we had an escort. I need them to come in with us. If you need his okay for that, then call him, please.”

One of the cops did that. He was fortyish, with dark skin, glasses, and a receding hairline. His uniform sleeves had chevrons on them. Did that mean he was a sergeant? Maybe a corporal. Did police have corporals? If she was going to work with cops she needed to learn that sort of thing.

Arjenie spoke low-voiced. “Do you have any idea what we’re going to do when we get there?”

“Other than having Doug sniff around, you mean?” Doug was one of the guards who’d been at Fagioli, and Isen had made sure he got a good sniff of the vine before it was burned. He’d detected a scent common to both sites, so they wanted to know if he smelled it here, too. “I’ll check for intention. Beyond that, I’m open to suggestions.”

“Lily always says it’s a matter of asking the right questions.”

“I’m stuffed with questions, but how do I know which are the right ones?”

“Ask them all?”

The older cop gestured at them. “You’re all to be admitted. Sign in, please.”

Kai thought it was pointless to keep a record of who entered a scene that had probably held hundreds of people before being evacuated, but she signed dutifully. While the others did the same, her mind returned to the call from Ruben Brooks—who might or might not decide she was the one to take charge of things officially.

Did Nathan really expect her to do that? To take over the investigation?

How could he? Even if she were willing and able, it wasn’t up to her! And he had no right to expect her to step in when he hadn’t even discussed his plans. No, he’d gone out of his way to keep her from guessing what he meant to do. If he’d expected her to take on his responsibilities, he should have—

Whoa. When she started diving into shoulds and shouldn’ts, it meant she’d stopped looking for answers. All she’d find in that pool were reasons to be mad, and she didn’t need more of those.

“Thank you,” the cop with the clipboard said when the last of the guards had signed his sheet of paper. The one with the chevrons on his sleeve said, “Akins, escort these people to the special agent.”

In other words, don’t let the weird, armed civilians wander just any-old-where. The third cop told them to follow him, please. The guards formed up around Kai and Arjenie and they set off down the middle of the street. It looked like everyone but the official types had left the cordoned-off area.

What did Nathan expect?

Put that way, the question almost answered itself. He expected her to have his back. To be his partner on this Hunt.

He hadn’t treated her like a partner. He’d hidden his plans from her. He must know she’d be mad about that, but he’d expect her to set that aside and . . . shit. Trust him. Oh, yeah, that’s exactly what he expected. For her to trust him to do his part of the job. To stop Dyffaya, and then to do everything possible to get himself and the others home safely.

But that was his job. Not hers. She couldn’t get to the god, and even if she could, she couldn’t stop him. No, her job lay in this world, and never mind what Nathan expected, because thinking about that just made her mad and miserable.

What did she expect of herself? What was up to her?

The answer came a bit more slowly this time, but it came. If she couldn’t stop the god, maybe she could distract him. Slow him down. To do that, she needed to figure out what he was after, then make it really hard for him to get it.

“All right,” she whispered. “I’ll do my part, but you’d damn well better come back.”

Arjenie tipped her head. “What?”

“Oh.” Kai felt her face heat. “I was talking to Nathan. He’s not here, but . . .” She shrugged.

“I know what you mean. I’ve been holding conversations with Benedict.”

“But not out loud,” Kai said dryly. “I’d have noticed. Um . . . where is he now?”

Arjenie nodded toward the west.

It had to be reassuring, that sense of where her lover was. Frustrating, too, she supposed. Presumably Arjenie could stand in the precise spot where her bond told her Benedict was, but they’d still be separated by the barrier that lay between the godhead and what people liked to think of as reality.

“How’s Dell?’ Arjenie asked just as softly.

Kai took a moment to focus. Faint, so faint, but . . . “She’s anxious about something or someone. Tired. That’s all I can—wow.”

They’d rounded the curve in the road. Ahead of them was a cluster of people in and out of uniform in front of what used to be Whaley House.

“It’s a hobbit house!” Arjenie exclaimed.

What had been a two-story Greek Revival house was now a single story—the upper one. It looked as if half the house had sunk into the ground, then someone had drawn a blanket of grassy sod up over the remaining above-ground part, tucking it in. Wildflowers grew cheerily amid the tall grass. The second-story porch—now the first story—still boasted a white picket railing, but the rest of it . . . “It’s supposed to be brick, right? You said it was brick.”

“From the Whaleys’ own brickyard. Yes.”

The walls were a mass of vines. Blooming vines. Yellow, orange, purple, pink, blue . . . if there were still bricks beneath the flowers and the twisted mass of vegetation, Kai couldn’t see them. The vines avoided the windows, though, leaving their blank glass faces staring out at the street unimpeded. Three floor-length windows opened onto the porch.

“Ackleford said everyone got out, right?” Arjenie asked.

“Yes.” There’d been a tour group in the house when it transformed, but no one had been hurt. “Maybe they got out through the windows.” And it was time to get to work. Kai dialed up her Gift and looked for any lingering traces of intent. There were plenty of thought-remnants on and around the newly transformed structure, but so far she didn’t see any that . . .

“Michalski, are you here to work or do you want to play tourist a while longer?”

That, of course, was Special Agent Ackleford. He stood in the center of the knot of officialdom clotted up in the middle of the street facing what used to be the Whaley House. In addition to Ackleford, Kai counted three uniformed cops, four men in bad suits who were either cops or FBI agents, one man in a good suit, and one lone woman—the female FBI agent who’d been at Fagioli yesterday.

“I am working,” she told him, but started toward him anyway.

José must possess some kind of radar. He didn’t glance at them for an instant, but the second they started moving again, so did he. “José, I don’t think you need to guard us from all the nice cops.”

“No, ma’am,” he said politely. And stayed in front of the two of them until they reached the law enforcement types, only then stepping aside.

“You get your psychic trauma fixed?” Ackleford asked.

“Yes. I need to finish checking the site, but first I have a question. Did you get names and pictures of everyone who’s been evacuated?”