Broken (28 page)

We’d been searching for a taxi since leaving the museum but, like everyone else, they seemed to have taken a personal day.

“I could take off my shirt too,” Nick said.

“There’s an idea,” Zoe said. “Wait, let me grab my lip liner. I’ll write ‘Meet us at Remingtons’ on your backs.” She grinned. “Bet they’d get a crowd tonight, cholera or no cholera.”

“Leave your shirt on,” Clay said.

Zoe looked at me. “We could take ours off too. In a show of solidarity. It’s legal here.”

“It is?” Nick perked up. “Why have I not seen a single topless woman the whole time I’ve been here?”

“Because, outside of beaches and concerts, you probably won’t. And if you do? They won’t be anyone you
want
to see topless. Every time I see one, I thank God for eternal youth. But, still, it is legal.” A sly look my way. “So, if you want to take your top off…”

“Trust me, these days, I fall into that category of women no one wants to see topless.”

“I wouldn’t complain.”

Her gaze rolled over to Clay, expectantly. He just turned to watch a taxi zip around the corner, then swore when he saw it was occupied.

Zoe sighed. “Not even going to rise to the bait, are you, Professor?”

“Show me bait; I’ll rise.”

“Oh-ho. So you think just because I’m a woman—”

“Didn’t think that at all. Doesn’t matter.”

“Well, you may be prettier right now, but don’t forget who’s the one with eternal youth. In a few years, that six-pack of yours is going to look more like a collapsible cooler bag.”

“Yeah, probably.”

Another sigh. She started to say something else when a trio of young women ogled Clay, tittering as they passed.

I waved toward a variety store with a rack of tourist T-shirts in the window. “Want one?”

“Please.”

“I couldn’t resist,” I said as I handed him the folded shirt.

He shook it out and laughed. It read “Had a howling good time in Toronto” above a picture of a mutant wolf with fangs as big as walrus tusks. Typical tourist wear—drawn by someone in a distant country who’d never actually seen a wolf, but was certain Toronto must be teeming with them, running alongside the Inuit, moose and polar bears.

Clay shrugged it on. “How does it look?”

“God awful,” Zoe said.

Nick waved a finger at me. “The joke will be on you five years from now, when he’s still wearing it.”

“That’ll bother you more than it’ll bother me.” I reached into the bag and pulled out chocolate bars. “I heard stomachs growling.”

I produced a bottle of water for Zoe.

“Ah, nice and cold,” she said as she took it. “You’re so sweet.” She glanced over at Clay and sighed. “And so wasted.”

“Damned shame, isn’t it?” Clay said through a mouthful of chocolate.

“Criminal.”

At the hotel, we left Nick and Zoe in the lounge. Upstairs, Jeremy popped his head outside his room almost the moment we stepped off the elevator.

“There you are,” he said. “I was about to go out searching for you.”

“It’s just a scratch,” Clay said.

Jeremy ushered us into the room. He gestured to the bed, and had the bandage off before Clay even finished settling. A frown, then he reached down to an already-prepared basin of warm water, took out the cloth, squeezed it and carefully sponged off the blood. As the wound came clean, Jeremy’s frown grew.

“It does appear to be—” he began.

“Just a scratch?” Clay finished. “Told you.”

“But why did it bleed so much?” I asked, drawing closer for a better look.

“It’s a deep scratch,” Jeremy said. “It looks as if it nicked a vein.”

Clay looked over at me. “Right again. I’m a genius.”

“No,” Jeremy said. “You’ve been hurt so often you can’t help but recognize the signs.”

“What about…?” I began, then paused. “It was Rose.”

“She’s worried about syphilis,” Clay said.

Jeremy shook his head. “Don’t be. Unless she bit him, that isn’t a concern.”

Jeremy cleaned it well, then plastered it up and told me to let him know if it started bleeding again or bothered Clay. No sense expecting Clay to tell him. To him, as long as the limb was still attached, he was good to go.

Once Clay was bandaged again, Jeremy and I both breathed easier, and I could tell Jeremy what had happened at the museum.

“So the zombies are catching on to our plans,” I said.

Jeremy nodded. “Meaning our chances of catching one, without serious risk, are rapidly diminishing. Time to take a break and focus on Shanahan.”

“I’ll talk to Zoe. See if she’ll be more forthcoming about him now.” I turned to Clay, who was picking up the tourist shirt. “Hold on. I’ll grab one of yours.”

“I like this one.”

I rolled my eyes and helped him into it. “As for this Hull guy, his mannerisms suggest that he is what he claims to be—a refugee from the Victorian portal—but Clay thinks he’s working with the controller, maybe an actor hired to get close to us.”

“Explains how he just happened on the scene,” Clay said. “Better than ‘I was following the zombies.’ ”

“So what do we do about this supposed meeting?” I said.

“Let me think about it. For now, go back to Zoe.”

We started for the door.

“Oh,” Jeremy said. “Anita Barrington hasn’t called you, has she?”

I double-checked my cell phone, then shook my head.

“She called me here, at the hotel,” he said. “Something about digging up a story we’d probably like to hear. I called her back and left a message asking her to phone your cell or Antonio’s, but she hasn’t returned my call…”

“We’ll swing by there after we talk to Zoe.”

We had the lounge to ourselves, so there was no need to take our business to a more private spot.

I explained our suspicions about Shanahan, and why we needed to find him.

“Patrick Shanahan as a zombie-controlling madman?” Zoe said, her finely drawn brows raised.

“Madman…debatable,” I said. “But the zombie-controlling part seems a good guess. As for why he’s controlling them or why the portal was embedded in that letter or what he hopes to gain by getting it back, we’re still working on all that.”

“As motivations go, I always liked world domination myself. Or perhaps this is just metropolitan domination. Patrick never was the type to think big. Never struck me as zombie lord material either, but I can’t say I know him well. It’s a working relationship, and a sporadic one at that. Most of my jobs for the family were with his grandfather, and he wasn’t chummy with the hired help either.”

“Which means you won’t be able to give us much insight into Shanahan.”

“Next to none. But I know someone who can. A client. Randall Tolliver. He grew up with Patrick.”

Fake

IN A CITY LIKE TORONTO
,
WHICH
,
AS FAR AS I KNEW DIDN
’
T
even have a Cabal satellite office, the supernatural community is small. I’d lived here, on and off, for ten years after I became a werewolf, and never knew it existed. Zoe said there were only a few sorcerer families, so the community was tight—many of them knowing each other from birth, as Patrick Shanahan and Randall Tolliver did.

Although Zoe claimed to know Tolliver much better than she did Shanahan, she’d say little about him—protecting another customer.

We had a heck of a time finding Tolliver. His office either didn’t have his exact schedule, or was reluctant to provide it, so we ended up canvassing a list of places he was expected to visit that afternoon. We stopped at a low-income housing complex, then an AIDS hospice, both times being told he’d come and gone.

Those places gave me a pretty good idea what Tolliver did for a living. An investment broker of another kind…the sort who buys bargain-basement housing, turns it into something barely livable and reaps the benefits of government assistance. Typical sorcerer.

“Let’s pop by his office,” Zoe said. “I’ll see if I can sweet-talk the receptionist into paging him for me.”

Clay swung a look my way that begged for something more active than trailing Zoe across town.

“How about we catch up with you after you find him?” I said. “We’ve got another stop we can make in the meantime.”

“Erin?” Anita said as we walked into the bookshop.

The girl popped up from behind a display where she’d been unpacking books.

“Can you watch the store, dear? We’ll be in the back.”

Anita ushered us through the beaded curtain into the back office.

“We’ll have to step out back to speak freely if a customer comes, but that’s unlikely. We haven’t seen anyone since noon. Now they’re just phoning about charms and whatnot—afraid to even leave the house. Complete nonsense, of course, like wearing those hospital masks during the SARS outbreak.”

“You said you have more information for us?” Clay said.

I resisted the urge to glare at him. I suspect it didn’t matter how rude Clay was—Anita would get to the point at her own pace.

First, she had Clay haul out three folding chairs. Then she set up bottled water and cookies on a box of books, insisting I at least have the water to avoid dehydration.

She finally settled into the empty chair. “I managed to dredge up a Jack the Ripper story with a portal angle, though it doesn’t mention the
From Hell
letter.”

The story seemed to be an embellishment on the one about a half-demon making a deal with his father. In this version, the killer had been only partway through fulfilling his obligation to his demon father when he’d been caught by a band of sorcerers, who’d imprisoned him in a dimensional portal.

“The legend goes that the sorcerers then lost the portal device, and it’s out there somewhere, waiting to be accidentally triggered, whereupon the monster will, once again, be unleashed on the world, rendered insane by his long imprisonment, driven only by the need to fulfill his unholy obligation.” Anita grinned, eyes twinkling. “Rather sounds like a campfire story, doesn’t it? Something for our children to spook their supernatural friends with.”

“It does. I suppose there could be a nugget of truth buried in there…”

“Well, it’s not the part about sorcerers playing world saviors, I’m sure.” She shook her head. “Uncharitable of me, but I suspect they would have been negotiating to share the demon’s boon instead.”

We discussed the story for a few minutes, then Anita asked about our progress, and I brought her up to date. When I told her about Hull, her eyes widened.

“He came through the portal?”

“Well, he says so. But he isn’t a zombie, so I doubt—”

“Oh, but that doesn’t prove anything. Only those who were sacrificed come out as zombies. If they were alive when they went in, they’ll be alive when they come out.”

“Like in the story,” I said. “If Jack the Ripper was imprisoned in a dimensional portal—”

Clay snorted. “That guy is not Jack the Ripper.”

“And how do you know—?”

“It
is
just a story,” Anita said. “At most, as you said, it may contain distorted elements of truth, as most folklore does. But still, if this man came from Victorian London—”

“He claims,” Clay said.

“But if he did, I would love to speak to him. The historical wealth of information, combined with his circumstances…Why, it would be supernatural folklore in the making.”

My cell phone rang.

“Zoe,” I said. “Hopefully she found Tolliver.”

She had. “He’s at Trinity Church. Are you still over on Yonge? I can swing by and meet up with you.”

I told her where we were. A moment of silence. Then, “Hmm, that’s a bit farther out of my way than I thought. How about I just meet you there?”

According to the plaque outside, the Church of the Holy Trinity was built in 1847, on what had then been the outskirts of Toronto. Looking around, it was hard to imagine this had ever been on the outskirts of anything. The small church stood incongruously cheek-to-jowl with the sprawling Eaton Centre shopping center—an urban shopping mall in the heart of downtown. As if having a house of spiritual worship standing beside a monument to material worship wasn’t ironic enough, the church also served as a walk-in center for the homeless.

As we waited for Zoe, I read the homeless memorial list posted outside. The list of names was dotted with Jane and John Does, those who couldn’t even be properly immortalized on their own memorial.

Clay glanced over my shoulder as Zoe approached. She tensed, her face going rigid.

“What?” he said.

“Go ahead. Say it.”

“Say what?”

“Ask how many of those—” She waved at the list. “—were mine.”

Clay gave me a “huh?” look, but said only, “I was going to say something. Like ‘hello.’ Or ‘about time you showed up.’ ”