The Path of Razors (29 page)

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Authors: Chris Marie Green

BOOK: The Path of Razors
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He didn’t seem smug now. He didn’t even seem cocky.
“Dawn,” he said, as if working up to bad news. She knew the tone.
She bunched her hand into a fist.
“I wasn’t the one who pushed him under,” he said, stepping forward to cup his palm over her hand.
Her arm trembled as she tried to raise it, but he wasn’t relenting.
What did he mean, he wasn’t the one who’d pushed Costin back under . . . ?
But she understood, even as he lowered his voice so no one else would hear.
“He voluntarily went back in, Dawn.”
As Jonah let her go and walked toward the blade room to inspect it, she didn’t go after him.
Not this time.
TWENTY
THE HIGHGATE CHRONICLES
sky had folded from dusk into full night, the rain letting up, by the time the team finished at Queenshill, where they were as careful as possible to clean up any further traces of themselves in the tunnels and rooms under the ground. Anyone who saw the ravaged blade room entrance would know it’d been breached, but there wasn’t much they could do about that.
Afterward, thanks to the Dr. Hopkins interview, they turned their attention to Highgate—the village where Thomas Gatenby had once been sighted with those bad-news friends of his.
Since the team had previously visited the cemetery there, they knew a little about this fresh-aired spot high on a hill overlooking the city. Highgate was bursting at its seams with tourists, shops, and pubs. Everyone, from Dick Turpin, the famous highwayman, to wealthy professionals raising families, to rock stars, was associated with the place.
Parking their Sedonas near the tube station down the hill from the graveyard, the team took the opportunity to change their disguises so that anyone who might be tracking them on a camera would have a harder time establishing a pattern from Queenshill to here. There was no way they could wander around the village as themselves, because almost a week ago, Dawn, Natalia, and Kiko had gone into the eastern portion of the cemetery to check out psychic leads.
Now, after banishing the males to the other vehicle and going to the back of the Sedona to change, Dawn put on another wig, a brunette bob, then donned some subtle makeup to age her face. She’d learned some tricks on movie sets, and it was as useful as hell now.
When she checked herself in a handheld mirror, she almost laughed, and it wasn’t in hilarity. It’s just that she looked how she felt—way older than just twenty-five years.
But she wasn’t going to dwell on what had happened with Costin at Queenshill today: How he’d
allowed
Jonah to take over. How he’d retreated when, until recently, he’d always pressed forward.
Where was the line between careful and cowardly? she thought. And why couldn’t she stop wondering if Costin had crossed it?
But she squashed it all to the back of her mind. To even think that Costin lacked bravery ... it was appalling, something she didn’t want to question.
Something she really had no
right
to question, she added as she put on a different pair of jeans than before, these weathered instead of new. She added a long-sleeved cotton shirt, a striped scarf, then a long brown coat that lent her the casual blending factor of an American middle-class tourist.
From now on, she definitely wasn’t going to question Costin, even though a constant heaviness was still dogging her.
In the backseat with its blackened glass, Natalia was putting the finishing touches on her backpacker garb, complete with a braided red wig plus khakis and a flannel scarf over a down jacket and gloves. But she also wore a frown—a result of her frustration from their Queenshill visit. The psychic hadn’t heard any voices from the dead in any of the rooms, and Dawn suspected that Natalia often felt useless when she couldn’t get in contact with those victims she wanted to help so badly.
The new girl kept looking toward the windshield. “There’s something going on out there, Dawn. I feel what I felt the last time we were here. It’s like walking into an empty room that’s really not so empty.”
When Natalia had met Frank for the first time, she’d said something real similar, so Dawn could only think that the psychic was talking about vampiric presences nearby.
A lot more than just a few, too, because Natalia usually had to be close to a source in order to feel it, and no one was in the vicinity of their vehicle right now.
If there were a lot of them, they’d be having a bigger effect on Natalia.
But could her stronger reaction have something to do with the Highgate Vampire and its minions wandering around the cemetery? Dawn wondered. The creature was legend, and a valid candidate for an Underground connection. Maybe Natalia was tuning in to him and his group because they were above the ground, just up the hill....
Dawn gave the other girl a stalwart pat on the shoulder as Jonah and Kiko knocked on the back passenger-side door, then climbed into the car, locking up behind them. The entire time, Dawn kept scanning out the windshield for any shadow figures tracking them, but she knew that the Friends were patrolling the area, too.
It reassured her a teeny-weeny bit.
Kiko, who was dressed in a generic baseball cap, a heavy gold jacket with a Manchester United Football Club patch on the sleeve, and a scarf that would cover half his face, looked young enough not to be buying any booze in a pub. But as he sent a far more mature glance to Natalia—a questioning glimpse—he seemed older.
“You’re feeling it again, huh?” he asked her.
Natalia shrugged, then pulled her jacket closed.
Dawn interpreted her response. “We’re near
some
kind of gold mine, but for all we know, she’s reading the Highgate Vampire and his cronies in the cemetery. We just have to figure out if they’re all connected to what we found below Queenshill.”
Jonah pressed a key ring alarm button and aimed it at the other Sedona, causing it to
whoop.
If Dawn didn’t know any better, she would’ve spent a lingering glance on him, with his purple-tinted wire-rimmed glasses and sporty baseball cap that matched Kiko’s. Even in jeans, Doc Martens, and an L.L. Bean jacket, he managed to stand out, which was the last freakin’ thing they were supposed to be doing.
“Jonah,” Dawn said, “the idea is to have people
not
look at you.”
Kiko scanned Jonah’s appearance, too, then gave her a what’re-you-talkin’ -about? glance.
“He looks normal,” Kiko said. “For a vamp.”
Dawn stopped herself from arguing that anyone with eyes was going to notice Jonah—especially chicks. But she didn’t want Jonah to know that she’d noticed the draw he had on females.
Yet he evidently did, because he got that cocky grin. “I think I come off like an everyday hubby just hanging out with the family on vacation.”
He grasped both Kiko’s and Dawn’s upper arms in solidarity, suggesting that she could be the mama and Kiko the kid. At least, that’s how she took it.
She was a second away from smacking his hand away when Kiko took it upon himself to make the situation even more intolerable.
“If you and Dawn had a kid, he’d probably be all dark-haired and not a blonde like me. Details, Jonah.”
“Perhaps,” Natalia added, probably trying to be helpful, “you were adopted, Kiko.”
Gah.
Dawn shrugged off Jonah’s hand and tugged her own baseball cap onto her head, over her wig. “If anyone is nosy enough to ask, we tell them that we’re all cousins who met up here in London for a vacay and are in the mood for some good pub grub for the adults and kid. But, except for Kiko partnering up with Natalia, we should casually separate ourselves unless we need a powwow. It might be harder to ID us if we look like individuals instead of a group.”
“Sounds fine to me.” Kiko slipped on his weapon-filled backpack. “On the same note, we should be careful while we’re talking to people around here. This Underground could have servants aboveground, and they might go back to their community to report anything out of the ordinary. As far as everyone’s concerned, we’re gung ho tourists who love to hear scary stories about the area. What visitor doesn’t?”
With that, they activated their pulsers via tiny handheld re-motes, then got out of the vehicle separately, with Jonah going first, then Kiko and Natalia, then Dawn.
All the while, her pulser pounded against her chest.
After everyone else had started up the hill, she got out and hit the alarm button on her car keys, glancing around more out of paranoia than need; the Friends were patrolling
and
manipulating the cameras with their essences, so everything should go smoothly.
Problem was, the camera manipulation required more than one Friend, and the team needed the spirits to be as spread out over the area as possible.
But they’d make do while sticking to the plan they’d formulated before leaving Queenshill: sidle into what would hopefully be a locals’ pub, then strike up conversations with any casual historians to see if there were juicy rumors about Thomas Gatenby.
There was also the possibility that Kiko or Natalia might be able to channel visions based on touch or their precognitive abilities, and Jonah might be able to make eye contact and carefully reach into the mind of anyone who appeared to be holding back information.
But that was a last-straw option—
if
he could even do it without losing control of his vampire self, just like he had when he’d come to the team’s rescue with the Queenshill schoolgirls. Besides, using his vamp powers might open him up to a reading by creatures that the team wanted to get the jump on themselves.
After walking up the hill, Dawn came to a village square where a cozy pub named the Figurehead awaited with its white walls and brown trimming. Tudor style, it was called.
She saw Kiko and Natalia going in together, and she guessed that they were tailing Jonah.
Dawn slyly made sure her earpiece was tuned to Frank back at headquarters so she wouldn’t get feedback from the other team members, then she entered the pub while extracting the crucifix on her necklace so it would be in plain sight. She hadn’t done it before out of a grudging awareness for Jonah’s comfort.
She was welcomed by planked walls and a small collection of ship figureheads that mainly featured wooden women with bared breasts. The decorations mixed with long trestle tables and a bar populated by people who looked British and local enough.
Kiko and Natalia, who were already ordering meals from their server, had taken a seat at a rustic table near a duo of salty-looking older men. Jonah had gone to the far side of the bar, near a gray-haired old woman who was knitting and nipping at a glass of whiskey.
Avoiding them all, Dawn cruised the room, playing the tourist as she surveyed the mermaids and assorted ladies with abundant boobs. But she was really listening for who might provide the best conversation.
As her pulser thumped, she focused on a man who looked to be in his sixties, sitting at the bar opposite Jonah and easily talking to the bartender while cradling an unlit pipe in one hand and holding his place in a magazine with the other.
Target fixed and locked.
Dawn claimed the stool next to him, then ordered some tea and the curry special. Afterward, she smiled at her possible fountain of information, making sure he saw her crucifix.
He didn’t react.
“Is that pipe for show?” she asked lightly.
He peered at it, his eyes crinkling while he smiled. He reminded her of what Rupert Everett might’ve looked like if he had lots of gray hair and hadn’t gone into movies: a less polished version of suave.
“We’re following in the footsteps of the States with our smoking bans,” he said, his tone dry. “I’m still weaning myself from the habit.”
She knew all about bans, and the last time she’d met a smoker ignoring one in a pub, she’d gone off on him with her mental powers. Accidentally.
Or maybe not. She still wasn’t sure what the hell had happened when her temper broke and she’d turned into a puppet-mastering fiend.
“And here,” she said as the bartender brought her tea and all its trimmings, “I thought you just wanted to seem like an intellectual.”
He smiled wider, showcasing tobacco-stained teeth. But somehow that didn’t make him any less professor-like attractive.
Not that Dawn was “on the pull” or trying to get laid here.
Not these days.
She dug into the bag she’d plopped onto the stool next to her. As she took out her guidebook and a notepad, she hoped that her neighbor would take the bait and comment on what she was doing.
And ... yup.
“A guest in our country,” he said. “If you need a recommendation or two, I’d be more than happy to provide.”
“Thanks. To tell the truth, I really could use some advice. This isn’t just a fun trip to England for me. I’m here to study.”
“Really.”

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