Girl of Nightmares (16 page)

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“Wasn’t so hard, was it?” I ask Thomas a half hour later, as we sit, exhausted, on the bench seat of the Tube train. He gives me an eyebrow, and I smile. After one more only mildly disconcerting line change, we get off at Highbury and Islington station and drag ourselves up to ground level.

“Anything familiar yet?” Thomas asks, peering down the street, lights illuminating the sidewalk and the shop fronts. It looks vaguely familiar, but I suspect that all of London would look vaguely familiar. I breathe in. The air is clear and cool. A second breath brings in a whiff of garbage. That seems familiar too, but probably only because it isn’t any different from other large, urban cities.

“Relax, man,” I say. “We’ll get there.” I flip my suitcase onto its side and unzip it. The minute the athame is tucked into my back pocket, my blood pumps easier. It’s like a second wind, but I’d better not dawdle; Thomas looks tired enough to kill me, hollow me out, and use me for a hammock. Luckily, I Google-mapped Gideon’s address from this station, and his house isn’t more than a mile away.

“Come on,” I say, and he groans. We walk quickly, our suitcases wobbling on the uneven pavement, passing by Indian-owned diners with neon signs and pubs with wooden doors. Four blocks down, I head right on my best guess. The roads aren’t labeled well, or maybe they are and I just can’t make them out in the dark. On the side streets, the lamps are dimmer, and the area we’re in looks nothing like Gideon’s neighborhood. Chain-link fences border us on one side, and there’s a high brick wall on the other. Beer cans and garbage litter the gutter, and everything seems damp. But maybe this is the way things always were, and I was too young to remember. Or maybe this is just how things have become since then.

“Okay, stop,” Thomas breathes. He pulls up and leans on his suitcase.

“What?”

“You’re lost.”

“I’m not lost.”

“Don’t bullshit me.” He taps his index finger to his temple. “You’re going round and round, in here.”

His smug face sets me off, and I think very loudly,
This mind-reading shit is fucking annoying,
and he grins.

“Be that as it may, you’re still lost.”

“I’m turned around, that’s all,” I say. But he’s right. We’ll have to find a phone, or get directions in a pub. The last pub that we passed was inviting; the doors were propped open and yellow light streamed onto our faces. Inside, people were laughing. I glance back the way we came and see one of the shadows move on its own.

“What is it?” Thomas asks.

“Nothing,” I reply, blinking. “Just tired eyes.” But my feet won’t carry me back in that direction. “Let’s keep going.”

“Okay,” Thomas says, and glances over his shoulder.

We walk on in silence and my ears are tuned behind us, editing out the grumble of our suitcase wheels. There’s nothing back there. It’s the exhaustion, playing tricks with my vision, and my nerves. Only I don’t believe that. The sound of my footsteps seems heavy and too loud, like something is using the noise to hide in. Thomas has quickened his pace to walk by my side rather than behind. His radar has been tripped too, but he might just be getting it from me. We couldn’t be in a worse place than this deserted, dark side street, lined with alleys cut between buildings and black spaces between parked cars. I wish we hadn’t stopped talking, that something would break the eerie silence that amplifies every noise. The silence is getting the better of us. There’s nothing following. There’s nothing back there.

Thomas is walking faster. The panic pulse is setting in, and given the option of fight or flight I know which way he’s leaning. But fly to where? We have no idea where we’re going. How far would we get? And how much of this is the product of a lack of sleep and an overactive imagination?

Ten feet ahead, the sidewalk disappears into a long shadow. We’ll be in the dark for at least twenty yards. I stop and glance behind me, scanning the spaces beneath parked cars and watching for movement. There isn’t any.

“You’re not wrong,” Thomas whispers. “Something’s back there. I think it’s been following us since we left the station.”

“Maybe it’s just a pickpocket,” I mutter. My whole body tenses like a coil at the sound of movement ahead of us, in the shadow. Thomas pushes into me, hearing it too. It got ahead of us somehow. Or maybe there’s more than one. I pull the athame out of my back pocket, out of its sheath, and let the streetlight shine on the blade. It’s sort of silly, but maybe it’ll scare them off. Exhausted as I am, I don’t have the energy to deal with more than one alley cat, let alone anything else.

“What do we do?” Thomas asks. Why’s he asking me? All I know is we can’t stay under the streetlight until sunrise. No choice but to go ahead, into the shadow.

When I’m shoved onto one knee I think it’s Thomas at first, until he shouts, “Watch out!” about three seconds too late. My knuckles skid against the concrete and I push myself back up. Tired eyes blink in the dark as I slide the athame back into my pocket. Whatever it was that hit me wasn’t dead, and the knife can’t be used on the living. A round object flies my way; I duck and it clatters off the building behind me.

“What is it?” Thomas asks, and then he’s knocked back, or I think he is. The street is so dark and the quarters are close. Thomas is thrown out into the lamplight, where he bounces off a parked car by the curb and reels back to hit the bricks of the wall like he’s in a pinball machine. A figure spins into my adjusting vision and plants a foot solidly against my chest. My ass hits the pavement. He strikes again and I get my arm up to defend, but all I manage is a rough shove. It’s disorienting, the way he’s moving; in fast and slow spurts. It throws off my equilibrium.

Snap out of it.
It’s exhaustion; it’s not a drug.
Focus and recover
. When he strikes again, I duck and block, and land a shot to his head that sends him spinning.

“Get out of here,” I shout, and barely avoid a clumsy attempt at a leg sweep. For a second I think he’ll just bug out and run. Instead he stands straight and grows a foot taller. Words hit my ears, spoken in what I think is Gaelic, and the air around me presses in tight.

It’s a curse. To do what, I don’t know, but pressure builds in my ears ten times worse than on the plane.

“Thomas, what is he doing?” I shout. It’s a mistake. I shouldn’t have let the air go. My lungs are too tight to take any more in. The chant takes over everything. My eyes are burning. I can’t breathe. I can’t exhale, or inhale. Everything’s frozen. The sidewalk is pressing against my knees. I’ve fallen.

My mind screams out for Thomas, for help, but I can already hear him, whispering a chant to counteract the other. The attacker’s is all lyric and glottal stop; Thomas’s is deep and full of melody. Thomas grows gradually louder, his voice pushing over the top of the other voice until the other voice falters and gasps. My lungs let loose. The sudden rush of air to my throat and blood to my brain makes me shake.

Thomas doesn’t quit, even though the figure that attacked us is doubled over. An arm waves a feeble defense, and the sound of air being dragged into his lungs is sharp and thin.

“Stop!”

I put my hand out and Thomas pauses his chant. It wasn’t me who spoke.

“Stop, stop!” The figure cries, and waves for us to get away. “You win, right? You win.”

“Win what?” I bark. “What were you trying to do?”

The figure backs away slowly, down the sidewalk. In between the gasps for breath is what sounds like shreds of laughter. The figure backs into the streetlight, clutching his chest, and pulls down the hood of his sweatshirt.

“It’s a girl,” Thomas blurts, and I sort of elbow him. But he’s right. It’s a girl, standing in front of us in a plaid cap and looking innocent enough. She’s even smiling.

“This is the wrong street,” she says. Her accent sounds like Gideon’s, but looser and less precise. “If you’re looking for Gideon Palmer, you’d better follow me.”

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

The girl turns on her heel and promptly walks off. Just walks off, like two minutes ago she hadn’t ambushed us on the street and tried to kill me. She expects us to follow, figures that we have to, if we want to make it to Gideon’s before our legs give out underneath us. And we do follow, with reservation. This behavior, plus the attack, probably qualifies her as ballsy, or cheeky at the very least. Isn’t that what Gideon would say?

“You were only off by two streets,” she says. “But around here, two streets can make quite a bit of difference.” Her hand points right and we turn together. “These are real proper houses this way.”

I stare into her back. Beneath the plaid cap, blond hair trails down in a tight braid. There’s a confidence in her strides and in the way she’s not paying any attention to us, right behind her. Back on the sidewalk, beneath the streetlamp, she hadn’t apologized. She hadn’t been embarrassed in the slightest. Not about attacking us, not even about losing.

“Who are you?” I ask.

“Gideon sent me to collect you from the station.” Not exactly an answer. Half of one. Something I might say.

“My mom told him we were coming.”

She shrugs. “Maybe. Maybe not. Wouldn’t have mattered. Gideon would’ve known. He has a way of knowing just about everything. Don’t you think so?”

“Why did you attack us?” Thomas asks. The question comes through clenched teeth. He keeps shooting me these dagger eyes. He doesn’t think we should trust her. I
don’t
trust her. I’m just following her because we’re lost.

She laughs; the sound is lilting and girlish but not high. “I wasn’t going to. But then you brandished that knife, all Crocodile Dundee. I couldn’t resist a little tangle.” She half turns, flashes an imp’s grin. “I wanted to see what the ghost killer was made of.”

Ridiculously, part of me wants to explain, to say I had jet lag and was running on an hour’s sleep. But I shouldn’t care about impressing her. I don’t. It’s just her cocky smile that makes me think so.

The street we’re on now is more familiar than the others. We’re passing by houses with brick fences and low, iron gates, well-pruned shrub borders and nice cars parked in the driveway. White and yellow light sneaks out from between drawn curtains, and around the foundations are flower beds, the petals not yet pulled closed for the night.

“Here we are,” she says, stopping so abruptly that I almost run up against her back. The curve of her cheek tells me she did it on purpose. This girl is quickly wearing on my last nerve. But when she smiles at me, I have to force the corners of my mouth down. She unlatches the gate and holds it open with an exaggerated gesture of welcome. I pause for a second, just long enough to register that Gideon’s house has barely changed, or maybe it hasn’t changed at all. Then the girl jogs around to the front to get the door. She opens it and goes through without knocking.

We squeeze into Gideon’s entryway, making enough noise to make water buffalo blush, our suitcases knocking into the walls and our shoes squeaking against the wood floor. Ahead of us, through a narrow passage, is the kitchen. I catch a glimpse of a kettle on the stove, spewing steam. He’s been waiting. His voice reaches me before I see his face.

“Finally found them, my dear? I was about to call down to Heathrow to inquire about the flight.”

“They got a bit turned around,” the girl replies. “But they’re in one piece.”

No thanks to you
, I think, but Gideon comes around the corner and the sight of him, in the flesh for the first time in something like ten years, stops me cold.

“Theseus Cassio Lowood.”

“Gideon.”

“You shouldn’t have come.”

I swallow. His advancing years haven’t taken any of the gravity out of his voice, or any of the steel out of his spine.

“How did you know that I was?” I ask.

“The same way I know everything,” he replies. “I have spies everywhere. Didn’t you see the eyes moving in the paintings around your house?”

I don’t know whether or not to smile. It was a joke but it didn’t sound like one. I haven’t been here in more than ten years, and it feels like I’m going to be kicked out.

“Uh, I’m Thomas Sabin,” Thomas says. Good thinking. Gideon can only stand in the kitchen for a few seconds before his English manners overtake him. He walks over to shake hands.

“That’s a dangerous one, there,” the girl says from the kitchen, where she stands with her arms crossed over her chest. Now that the light is better I can see that she’s about our age or slightly younger. Her eyes are quick and dark green. “Thought he was going to explode my heart. I thought you said he didn’t hold with black mages.”

“I’m no black mage, or whatever,” Thomas says. He blushes, but at least he doesn’t shuffle his feet.

Gideon finally looks at me again, and I can’t keep my eyes from flicking to the ground. After what feels like hours and a tired sigh, he pulls me into a hug. The years haven’t taken any strength out of his grip, either. But it’s weird, being tall enough so that my head is over his shoulder rather than pressed into his stomach. It’s sad, but I don’t quite know why. Maybe because so much time has passed.

When he lets go, there’s fondness in his eyes that the hard set of his jaw can’t quite mask. But it tries.

“You look just the same,” he says. “Only stretched a bit. You’ll have to forgive Jessy.” He half turns and gestures for the girl to come over. “She has a tendency to run in fists first.” When Gideon holds his arm out, she moves lightly into the embrace. “Since I imagine she was far too rude to do so herself, I’ll introduce her. Theseus, this is Jestine Rearden. My niece.”

The only thing I can think to say is, “I didn’t even know you had a niece.”

“We haven’t been close.” Jestine shrugs. “Until recently.” Gideon smiles at her, but the smile is like an ice pick. It’s real but it’s not real, and the thought crosses my mind that this Jestine person isn’t Gideon’s niece at all, but his girlfriend or something. But that’s not right. That actually makes me want to throw up a little.

“Give us a minute, won’t you, my dear? I’m sure Thomas and Theseus are in need of some rest.”