Storm in a Teacup (28 page)

"Lucy?"

I've never named a flamethrower before. But why not? I shrug at him. "You wrapping up or just getting started?"

"Wrapping up. Thought I'd swing by for an easy kill before heading home."

"Where'd you head earlier?"

"Staking out the warehouses. Nothing too messy tonight."

Ben's staking out the warehouses? "Why were you out there?"

"Gregor asked me to keep an eye. Make sure the shades don't come back."

"See anything?"

Ben shakes his head. "Nothing. I think we must have got them all."

I think they're just too smart to flock back to a place where a score of them got blown up.

Mason's at home when I arrive there, and he's managed to get cleaned up without dripping demon blood all over my carpet. Maybe he jumped in the river. Maybe his skin absorbs dirt like a built in vacuum. Maybe he got rained on.

It's a sign of how tired I am that the latter seems the least probable.

He's curled up on the couch — with clothes on, I might add — and the newest teen heartthrob making googly eyes at him from the television screen. Oh, wait. The kid's ogling a witch who's shooting blue sparkles from her fingertips. I call bullshit.

No self-respecting which would shoot sparkles around.

"What did Ben say?"

Mason pauses the movie. Guess I'll get to see how it ends.

Resigned, I drop onto the couch next to him. "He said he's been staking out the warehouse area and that he hasn't seen any more shades go back to it."

"He wouldn't. They've all moved outward from town."

"So what do we do next?" I straighten my shoulders at Mason's confirmation of my Sherlocke-ing. My mind is still on the warehouse though. I ought to go see Devon in the hospital.

"I think it's best if I see the next group."

"Why's that?"

"They are...less likely to be on our side."

So more likely to be people eaters. Goody. Shades making an active choice to eat humans. That's...nope. Not thinking about it.

I head to the kitchen, hoping for yogurt and finding only a container of applesauce that I don't remember buying. Judging from its position at the back of the fridge, sandwiched between my water filter and the wall, it's been there a while. The only remaining food in my home is Mason's steak.
 

That's Mediators for you. Get injured in the line of duty, they give you a shiny hunk of expensive metal and offer to buy you mucho de beers. You'd think at least one of them might have made me a bundt cake, or at least a lasagna.

As a group, we're not known for our culinary abilities.

Mason's already running low on beef. I place a second order for him and an order of pizza for me. My favorite — Canadian bacon and pineapple. As a kid, I always wanted to go to Canada and see if all their bacon really was like that. It was one of my first dreams to go crunch under the mantle of Mediatordom.

I should just go to bed, but Mason won't sleep until his rom-com is over, and I'm still a tad too nervous to sleep with him out here.

My pizza arrives in a blissful twenty minutes — guess three in the morning is their off hours — and I settle in on the couch with a couple slices.

Halfway through my late dinner, I notice that Mason's watching me instead of the screen. "What, you want some pizza?"

He looks back at the screen with a small smile. "Do you ever want that?"

"Pizza? Of course. That's why I got it."

"Not pizza, that." He points to the screen where Tate "I'm-a-Hottie" Something is tonsil-plundering the blue sparkle witch.
 

I don't so much want my pizza anymore.

"Um."

I've gone and backed myself into the corner of the couch and am holding my plate in front of my chest like a shield, one thumb keeping my remaining slice of pizza from landing on my black leather sofa. Good one, Ayala.
 

"You're uncomfortable."

"And you're stating the obvious."

"I don't mean from me."

Oh. "Just in general?"

The on-screen teens are still going at it.
 

Mason nods.

"Then yeah. I dated a few guys in my time, but if they're not Mediators, they're not so understanding of the hours — " I gesture at the clock on the wall, " — and if they are Mediators, they're a little too like me." Except Ben. Opposites attract, my ass.

Mason appears to ponder that, and he doesn't ask any more questions I don't want to answer.
 

I do end up eating the rest of my pizza though. Call me a nervous eater. I have the metabolism of a teenager, so I'll do what I want.

Holding Mason's hand in bed an hour later, I wonder what made him ask the question. He doesn't speak, and I'm very conscious of his warmth next to me. This is the weirdest friendship I've ever had.

I rise early, which surprises Mason the next morning, but I want to make sure I get to the hospital before work. I definitely want to see Devon.

I find him in intensive care, looking like his whole body's been dipped in plaster. I don't envy that for a second, especially because he's awake.

The scar that is his face's most prominent feature twists down his cheek, but his eyes light up to see me.
 

"Hey, Devon. How's hospital food? Improved?"

He gives a small half smile at that. "Nope. Why would it?"

I pull a chair close to his bed and sit. There's no position that doesn't feel awkward, because Devon can't turn his head, so I end up angling my chair toward him and leaning one arm by what is probably his knee under the layers of chalky white.

"How are you?" I'm as much of a slave to convention as anyone else, I suppose. I don't know what else to ask him, and this question's got the most obvious answer.
 

He doesn't take me for a smart ass though. "Okay. I'm okay. I just want to go home. Countin' down the days." I follow his gaze to the wall, where there's a Maserati calendar with big red X's on the days that have passed. None for today yet though.
 

"Want me to get today?"

"Sure. The nurse usually does it when she brings me breakfast. Which should be any minute."

I rise from my chair and find a red marker on a string next to the calendar. I mark a tidy X from corner to corner of the box. Twenty four to go.
 

Sitting back down, Devon's looking at me. "You look different," he says.

"Different how?"

"More nervous."

A guffaw escapes my lips. "I guess you could say that." Working with a shade, double-crossing Alamea, a shade in my house eating raw flank steak like he's dining fine and fancy — nervous. All of those things make me nervous.

"Hell of a night, right?"

"Hell of a night."

Devon's silent, and I see his jaw working. It presses against the plaster — which comes almost to his chin — and moves as much as the cast will let it. "If I say something, will you promise not to tell the Summit? Or anyone?"

I prop my feet against a rung on his bed. "You got it, Dev."

"I think we did the wrong thing, blowing up that warehouse."

It's not the thing I expect the guy in the body cast to say to me, and my foot slips from the metal bar and clunks on the linoleum. "Why do you say that?" I struggle to keep my voice even. He almost got his arm ripped off.
 

"I think..." he trails off. "I think they just wanted to talk to me. At first."

"Talk?"

"One of them — I couldn't see him — started saying something about everything changing. But I was too fucking freaked, you know? I pulled out my sword and stabbed at him. And that's when things got messy. And then you showed up and got me out."

"Have you told anyone else this?"

"No."

"For now, Devon, will you keep it that way?"

He looks at me like he wants to ask a follow-up, but I shake my head with as small a movement as I can.

A nurse knocks and then bustles in. "Oh, how nice, Devon, you have a visitor! Lovely. I've got your breakfast right here, darling."

He's not even looking at her. I smell rubbery eggs and catch a glimpse of bacon that looks like it's been stripped from a tire's inner tube and wrinkle my nose. Devon meets my eyes.
 

He nods once.

Eventually, I'll have to give him an explanation.
 

First, I'm going to get him some better food.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

I find a catering company that promises to deliver Devon's meals for the next three weeks.
 

I know. I know. I'm a big softie. I can't bear the thought of him stuck in the hospital with nothing to eat but powdered eggs and soggy tuna fish sandwiches. And red gelatin. Devon's been through a lot, and he deserves better.
 

Time's running out on me. Alamea is going to expect reports any second now. I need to have more to tell her than "I let a couple get away." Mason said they've spread to the outskirts of town. Maybe that includes Forest Hills.

As soon as the clock hits eight, I lock up my office and hop in the car. In twenty minutes, I'm in Forest Hills.
 

I don't know what I hope to find. I drive up to the spot where Lena gave birth. I have a hunch. It's not much of a hunch, but it's the only thing I have to go on. Mason remembers his mother. He might remember in flashes and bits, but he remembers.
 

I'm banking on the possibility that Lena's little spawned shade remembers her, and that we didn't blow it up in the warehouse.

I park a mile away and hike in. From what Hazel Lottie told me, Lena was a nice girl. Polite and warm, friendly and not crazy — before she decided to host the birth of a new species, that is.

There ain't much religion in the world, but the little that exists tends to beget zealous believers. Lena was a zealot. I can't believe anybody would put themselves through hosting a happy, healthy hellkin critter without deep-seated belief. And people in a band like The Righteous Dark don't seem the types to come from the overpriced Americana found in this neighborhood. They're people who feel like the world has wronged them.

Just maybe, Lena really thought what she was doing would bring something better. Or change at the very least.

I arm myself with my two short swords and hike into the woods toward the clearing. The sun drips toward the horizon, sending bits of gold filtering through the canopy above. In minutes, it'll be down.
 

I try not to think about what happened the last time I came to Forest Hills — or the time before that.

It takes just about every ounce of impulse control I have not to walk with my swords drawn. If this is going to work and not get me splatted, I can't be seen as a threat.

One mile. About a twelve minute trek through the woods, and I spot the first thinning of trees that indicates the clearing ahead. Motes of dirt and dust filter through the day's final sunbeam.
 

I reach the edge of the clearing and clasp my palms together in front of my stomach.

Here goes nothing.

"If you're here, I'm not going to harm you. I just want to talk."

I count to seventy as the sun vanishes behind a cleft in the hill to the west. Nothing.

Well, it was worth a shot.
 

I turn to leave. My nose plows into something hard that wasn't there before.

It's a shade. Of course it's a shade. I can smell it. Warm flesh and leaves, heated by the sun. No blood.

My legs fly from under me.

I land on my side, coughing. The shade stands over me, then bends one knee.
 

I'm betting my life on the idea that if he wanted me dead, I'd be there already.

"You want to talk." He reaches out and flicks one of my swords.
 

"You're not the only thing in these woods after sundown." I try to steady my breath, looking the creature in the eyes. My chest expands with the joy of being right twice in five minutes. It's here, and I'm still breathing. I take a celebratory breath to prove it.

The shade retreats a step and settles back on its heels. I pull myself to a sitting position, careful to keep my hands away from the hilts of my swords.