Midnight Blue-Light Special
Page 55
“She’s miserable, but she’ll cope,” I said, as casually as I could. “I guess being judged by her species makes her unhappy.”
“I am very sorry,” said Sunil, in a soft voice. “It was instinctive.”
I paused and took a breath before saying, “Just try to keep it cool until all this is over, please? My whole family vouches for Sarah. She’s one of us. And just like everyone else here, she’s stressed enough not to need an extra dose of feeling terrible about herself. She didn’t choose her species.” Any more than I chose to be born a Price, or Dominic chose to be born into the Covenant. We were all of us dealing with the hands we were dealt.
“We will treat her with as much kindness and respect as she treats us,” said Rochak.
“I can’t ask you for more than that.” I turned back to Uncle Mike. “Can you please help Sarah finish getting us on the Internet? I’d feel better if I could check my email, and Sarah’s a lot less likely to freak out if she can chat with Artie.”
“I’m on it.” Mike stood, leaving his knives on the table. “Heading out?”
I smiled a little. “What was your first clue?”
“Call it intuition. You’ll be careful out there?”
“As careful as I can be.”
“I don’t like this.”
“You don’t have to.” I needed to move, or I was going to scream. “Keep an eye on things here. If anything goes wrong . . .”
“I’m here to make sure nothing goes wrong,” said Mike implacably. His tone was flat, the verbal equivalent of a brick wall suddenly appearing in my path. “Call if you need help, or if you’re going out of cell range for more than a few minutes. I want to be able to reach you if anything comes up here.”
“Deal. Istas, Mike’s in charge until I get back.” The irony of telling the woman who could probably bench-press a Buick to obey the human wasn’t lost on me.
It wasn’t lost on Istas, either. She raised one eyebrow, looking amused. Then she nodded, and agreed, “Yes. I will listen to the man I have just met when he is making judgments regarding my safety and the safety of my mate.”
“See, the sad thing is, I know you mean that.” It took me a while to learn to speak waheela. After being Istas’ coworker for a year, I had it pretty much down. (If it sounds sarcastic, it isn’t; if it involves a threat of physical violence, it’s sincere, but unless it comes with claws, it’s probably friendly. Like having a pet wolverine with rabies.)
Istas smiled. “Precisely. Enjoy your hunt for things to hurt. Save some carnage for the rest of us.”
“I will,” I said, and turned, walking back out into the main room. I paused by the table where we’d left Margaret’s weapons, picking up her telepathy-blocking charm and dropping it into one of the pockets of my backpack. If things were calm enough to allow for a few personal errands, I’d take it by the Freakshow. Bogeymen are some of the best information brokers and rumormongers in the world. Kitty might know how the thing worked, and better, how we could counter it. What’s the point of having a telepathic early warning system if you can’t use it?
The stairs beckoned me upward, but I forced myself to ignore them, walking instead to the door leading out to the small, enclosed courtyard. Much as I hated to start any journey on the ground, I didn’t want to risk attracting attention by taking the same path too many times. That meant starting from a different rooftop. I crossed the courtyard to the abandoned bodega, and from there, made my way out to the street.
New York is the city that never sleeps, but there are still neighborhoods that quiet down after a certain hour, losing the majority of their vibrancy and life in favor of stillness and the dark. Being popular with the tourists has done a lot to revitalize the Meatpacking District. That also means that it’s one of the areas that clears out quickly after midnight. A few well-dressed people on their way home from the bars lingered, but the streets were otherwise left to the homeless, the taxi drivers, the lost, and of course, the cryptids. I recognized them by the way they wore their hats, pulled low over their faces, and the quick anxiety of their steps. The Covenant had everyone on edge, most of all the people who inhabited this shadowy slice of the Big Apple.
I kept close to the buildings as I walked, looking for a good route upward. I found it about three blocks away from the Nest, at a corner that seemed to be in deeper shadow than most of the others, where the cornices of the building formed an almost perfect series of handholds. I glanced around once, making sure that no one was looking at me. Then I reached up, and started to climb.
There’s a security on the rooftops of a major city that I never feel anywhere else, a feeling like I could run forever if I had to. The city limits always loom, but no one can chase in a straight line across the slope of that much disparate architecture; there’s always a chance to double back and find another way. It would take an army to take me out when I’m that far above the street.
With no real idea of where I was going or what I was going to do when I got there, I took a long step backward, tensed, and ran.
Running helped to clear my head, allowing me to review the events of the night so far in a clearer, more rational light. Bad: Margaret Healy had seen me, and even if she didn’t know for sure who I was, she knew I was someone who wasn’t on her side. Not even an idiot could wake up facedown on the carpet of someone else’s hotel room, wrists and ankles taped together, and not realize that something was probably up. Good: even if she’d seen me, she didn’t know for sure who I was, or that I had anything to do with Dominic. She might be furious—she would be furious, if she was anything like every other member of our mutual family—but she wouldn’t know where to start looking for me.
Bad: Sarah’s cover had been blown, and Gingerbread Pudding was no longer safe. Good: I’d managed to get Sunil, Rochak, and Sarah all to safety before the Covenant could reach them, and under the circumstances, that was a victory. Better yet, the Freakshow was still secure. We had options. They might not be as diverse as I would have liked them to be, but at least they existed.
Bad: Dominic was with the Covenant, at least for the moment . . . and that was good at the same time, because he’d called to warn me about Sunil and Rochak, and there’d been no ambush waiting for me. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Margaret had just been at the Port Hope for the normal reasons, and he hadn’t betrayed us. When this was over . . . it wasn’t impossible to think that maybe when this was all over, he’d be standing with me, not against me. Covenant members had chosen to walk away from their duty before. I was living proof of that.
“I am very sorry,” said Sunil, in a soft voice. “It was instinctive.”
I paused and took a breath before saying, “Just try to keep it cool until all this is over, please? My whole family vouches for Sarah. She’s one of us. And just like everyone else here, she’s stressed enough not to need an extra dose of feeling terrible about herself. She didn’t choose her species.” Any more than I chose to be born a Price, or Dominic chose to be born into the Covenant. We were all of us dealing with the hands we were dealt.
“We will treat her with as much kindness and respect as she treats us,” said Rochak.
“I can’t ask you for more than that.” I turned back to Uncle Mike. “Can you please help Sarah finish getting us on the Internet? I’d feel better if I could check my email, and Sarah’s a lot less likely to freak out if she can chat with Artie.”
“I’m on it.” Mike stood, leaving his knives on the table. “Heading out?”
I smiled a little. “What was your first clue?”
“Call it intuition. You’ll be careful out there?”
“As careful as I can be.”
“I don’t like this.”
“You don’t have to.” I needed to move, or I was going to scream. “Keep an eye on things here. If anything goes wrong . . .”
“I’m here to make sure nothing goes wrong,” said Mike implacably. His tone was flat, the verbal equivalent of a brick wall suddenly appearing in my path. “Call if you need help, or if you’re going out of cell range for more than a few minutes. I want to be able to reach you if anything comes up here.”
“Deal. Istas, Mike’s in charge until I get back.” The irony of telling the woman who could probably bench-press a Buick to obey the human wasn’t lost on me.
It wasn’t lost on Istas, either. She raised one eyebrow, looking amused. Then she nodded, and agreed, “Yes. I will listen to the man I have just met when he is making judgments regarding my safety and the safety of my mate.”
“See, the sad thing is, I know you mean that.” It took me a while to learn to speak waheela. After being Istas’ coworker for a year, I had it pretty much down. (If it sounds sarcastic, it isn’t; if it involves a threat of physical violence, it’s sincere, but unless it comes with claws, it’s probably friendly. Like having a pet wolverine with rabies.)
Istas smiled. “Precisely. Enjoy your hunt for things to hurt. Save some carnage for the rest of us.”
“I will,” I said, and turned, walking back out into the main room. I paused by the table where we’d left Margaret’s weapons, picking up her telepathy-blocking charm and dropping it into one of the pockets of my backpack. If things were calm enough to allow for a few personal errands, I’d take it by the Freakshow. Bogeymen are some of the best information brokers and rumormongers in the world. Kitty might know how the thing worked, and better, how we could counter it. What’s the point of having a telepathic early warning system if you can’t use it?
The stairs beckoned me upward, but I forced myself to ignore them, walking instead to the door leading out to the small, enclosed courtyard. Much as I hated to start any journey on the ground, I didn’t want to risk attracting attention by taking the same path too many times. That meant starting from a different rooftop. I crossed the courtyard to the abandoned bodega, and from there, made my way out to the street.
New York is the city that never sleeps, but there are still neighborhoods that quiet down after a certain hour, losing the majority of their vibrancy and life in favor of stillness and the dark. Being popular with the tourists has done a lot to revitalize the Meatpacking District. That also means that it’s one of the areas that clears out quickly after midnight. A few well-dressed people on their way home from the bars lingered, but the streets were otherwise left to the homeless, the taxi drivers, the lost, and of course, the cryptids. I recognized them by the way they wore their hats, pulled low over their faces, and the quick anxiety of their steps. The Covenant had everyone on edge, most of all the people who inhabited this shadowy slice of the Big Apple.
I kept close to the buildings as I walked, looking for a good route upward. I found it about three blocks away from the Nest, at a corner that seemed to be in deeper shadow than most of the others, where the cornices of the building formed an almost perfect series of handholds. I glanced around once, making sure that no one was looking at me. Then I reached up, and started to climb.
There’s a security on the rooftops of a major city that I never feel anywhere else, a feeling like I could run forever if I had to. The city limits always loom, but no one can chase in a straight line across the slope of that much disparate architecture; there’s always a chance to double back and find another way. It would take an army to take me out when I’m that far above the street.
With no real idea of where I was going or what I was going to do when I got there, I took a long step backward, tensed, and ran.
Running helped to clear my head, allowing me to review the events of the night so far in a clearer, more rational light. Bad: Margaret Healy had seen me, and even if she didn’t know for sure who I was, she knew I was someone who wasn’t on her side. Not even an idiot could wake up facedown on the carpet of someone else’s hotel room, wrists and ankles taped together, and not realize that something was probably up. Good: even if she’d seen me, she didn’t know for sure who I was, or that I had anything to do with Dominic. She might be furious—she would be furious, if she was anything like every other member of our mutual family—but she wouldn’t know where to start looking for me.
Bad: Sarah’s cover had been blown, and Gingerbread Pudding was no longer safe. Good: I’d managed to get Sunil, Rochak, and Sarah all to safety before the Covenant could reach them, and under the circumstances, that was a victory. Better yet, the Freakshow was still secure. We had options. They might not be as diverse as I would have liked them to be, but at least they existed.
Bad: Dominic was with the Covenant, at least for the moment . . . and that was good at the same time, because he’d called to warn me about Sunil and Rochak, and there’d been no ambush waiting for me. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Margaret had just been at the Port Hope for the normal reasons, and he hadn’t betrayed us. When this was over . . . it wasn’t impossible to think that maybe when this was all over, he’d be standing with me, not against me. Covenant members had chosen to walk away from their duty before. I was living proof of that.
