Wild Hunt (12 page)

One of these days this was going to get me killed.

I grabbed the second chair from the other side of the table and spun it so I could sit straddling it. “No,” I said. “No, I don’t have any tea. I can’t stand the stuff.”

“That’s too bad. I’m partial to a cup of Lady Grey in the mornings. Even Lipton would do.”

She hadn’t slept, I realized. “I can give you coffee,” the wretched hostess inside me offered.

Abigail shuddered daintily. “No, thank you.” She nodded to a little leather scrap lying in front of her, like the suede bits Sarah used to wrap some of her wares in—the items that are a little too likely to draw attention, that need the distraction that organic material provides. This leather was black with age, huddled and lumpy like a long-dead mouse. “I brought your down payment. Did all go well last night?”

I stared at her a moment—she was so damned serene, even as her scent was screaming panic at me. I’d once heard that the best quality in an adept wasn’t intellect or determination or even plain talent; it was the ability to hold two contradictory lives in one’s head at the same time, living in one world while working magic in another. I had my disagreements with that theory, but Abigail was a walking demonstration of it.

“No, it did not.” I said, trying very hard to keep my voice under control. “I got jumped by an amalgam of the remnant ghosts in the cemetery, and none of them had anything good to say about your great-great-grandmother. Whatever it was that got stolen, it’s a sore point for them.”

Abigail frowned. “I didn’t think they would have such a violent reaction.”

“No. Really?” I didn’t mention the figure who’d distracted them long enough for me to run—and I sure as hell was not going to mention the path I’d run onto. “I didn’t get in touch with your great-great-grandmother at all. They called her a thief,” I added, watching for her reaction.

She folded her hands, twisting them over each other as if applying invisible lotion, and one nasty-looking hangnail cracked open. “She was. A very good one.” The blood welled up slowly, a little blot of red against her washed-out hands.

Okay, that was slightly less than reassuring. “Well. The upshot of all this is that I’ve only got a name—Gabriel—and a lot of gabbling.”

“Gabriel?” Abigail gazed at me in perfect incomprehension. “Are you sure? And—gabbling?”

I hesitated. “Okay. Not quite gabbling, but they kept saying that word, so it kind of stuck.”

Abigail’s brows drew together. “Gabble…Gabble Retchets, by any chance?” I shook my head. “You’re sure?”

“No. I’m not sure. Mind telling me what the hell’s going on?”

“If I knew, I would.” She got to her feet, straightening her dress.

“No.” I stood up and blocked her way. “You know a lot more about this than you’re telling me, and if you don’t let me in on some of it, I’m going to consider our contract terminated. You can take your down payment and go home.” It was a bluff, yes, but she didn’t need to know that.

Abigail went very still, one hand on the little leather-wrapped lump, lying dark and forgotten on the table. “Please,” she said finally. She twisted her hands, as if trying to scrub them clean of something. The spot of blood on her thumb smudged and broke. “Can you give me one day?” she pleaded. “Tomorrow—no, tonight, I can bring it to you tonight. Please, if I tell you now, then—” She hesitated, and the scent of her seemed to fade, receding further into the background.

One of these days…“One day,” I said. “But keep the down payment.”

“I won’t. You keep it. Please.” She managed a shaky smile. “Let me keep to my standards in this respect at least.”

I scooped up the lump and unrolled a long strip of dark leather. Four green rocks lay within, bright against the dull brown skin, and while I wouldn’t know a gemstone if it yanked on both earlobes and yelled its monetary worth in my face, these did have
some of that potentially valuable look. They smelled like dirt, like clay and river water, with a brittle crystalline quality that I could only assume was the natural scent of gemstones. There was a wild hint about these, something like what greenness would taste like if it were freed from artificial mint and sour apple and left to endless fields, but a moment’s perusal showed that this was from the leather alone. It was probably deerskin, or something else that carried a trace of its former home.

What wasn’t on the stones was any trace of magic whatsoever. No hint of fireworks and rain, nothing even to show that they were supposed to be somewhere else. If anything, they seemed incomplete, truncated.

“Emeralds,” Abigail said helpfully. “Uncut, but two of them have no flaws, and they’re certainly worth whatever you’d charge me for this work.”

“I’d be happier with a check,” I said. Abigail breathed a laugh through her nose. “I’ll keep these,” I said, “but not as a down payment. When I finish this job, you’ll get them back, and you’ll pay me in full. And in dollars, not favors.”

“Done,” she said. She extended her hand for me to shake, and I shifted the emeralds to the other hand to do so. The blood spot from her hangnail had hardened into a small dark blot. “I’ll see myself out.”

“Wait.” I jumped to my feet. “I know there’s something wrong. But I can’t do anything about it unless you let me. What can I do?”

She smiled. “You’re doing it.”

“I’m serious. If not me, then someone—” I snapped my fingers. “Your brother.”

The smile dropped away. “What?”

“You said you had a brother. The one who said you could blend in anywhere. The flatterer. Wouldn’t he—”

“He won’t help me,” Abigail interrupted. She pulled her gloves on, finger by finger. “I’m not worthy of respect, by his standards. Not at the moment.”

The bitterness—and a pain deeper than that—in her voice stole any response I might have made. “I’m sorry,” I said finally.

“So am I.” Abigail looked down, took a deep breath, then smiled brightly. “May I use your bathroom?”

What
? “Go ahead.” I folded the leather back around the emeralds and looked for some safe place to stash them as she closed the door behind her. Normally I’d put them under my bed or at the back of the freezer, but Abigail’s appearance had made me feel a little less secure in my own home. Finally I tucked them into the bottom of my bag, wrapped in a spare shirt.

I closed up the bag and looked up, frowning. The door had been closed for a while, and I hadn’t heard a sound even through the cellophane-thin walls. I tapped on the door. “Abigail?”

No answer. And, when I opened the door, no Abigail. No trace of her, and no scent, and no sign that she’d even been here. Save for the emeralds in their scrap of leather, and the empty mug on my table.

A
fter that, the morning just didn’t fit together. A quick check of the name “Skelling” on my dinosaur of a computer got me about fifty
Nightmare Before Christmas
fan pages and nothing else. I could have taken a little more time for research, even asked the staff at Mount Auburn (if I wanted to go back there). But Tania was going to kick my ass across the Charles if I didn’t sign in on time today, and sometimes the mundane matters make the best excuses.

I called Rena on my way out the door. No answer, of course, but I left a message to tell her that I didn’t mind the karaoke cancellation and could she do a quick informal check on Abigail Huston? I hung up without much hope of a reply. Whatever was eating Rena these days, it would keep her busy.

The courier work for the day took its toll on me. No Mission Hill this time, but the same damn shuttle back and forth between Cambridge and the Seaport, ferrying pages for law offices whose elder partners were still superstitious about electronic communication. By three o’clock my legs felt like Jell-O and my head not much better.

I’d just dropped off the same dratted package for the sixth time at the Cambridge office when a funny shiver ran over me from crown to soles, like the quiver
of lightning just before the bolt comes down to earth. I stumbled and dropped my helmet, catching myself against the bike rack.

There.
A soft cry, like the note of a bell, present more in its echoes than in its actual nature. But the echoes were bad enough: for a moment I had the urge to run, to follow that call, to go where it led and do what it said and find the pack—

It was the same sound I’d heard the night before, the one that had grabbed me by the neck and set me clawing at the door. And now I didn’t have the veil of sleep to distance me from it; only the sunlight and the knowledge that I was expected at Mercury Courier in another half hour.

Don’t
, whispered an echo behind me. I glanced back to see a shape like negative space: a man in a long coat, his face only visible in flashes of reflections, a broad mustache and sad, drooping brows. I shook my head, ignoring him in favor of the sound and the call.

Somewhere close by…not a scent, but a path, almost…I could almost feel the pressure of it next to me, like a road running parallel to my own.

I might have lost the chance last night, but right now I sure as hell wasn’t going to lose it again. I turned, and there it was, the silver road just a half step away.

Yes
, I said, and stepped onto it.

I didn’t get the blackout sensation this time, the loss of time between one step and the next. Instead my entire body shuddered, as if I’d relinquished control of it to some other entity that didn’t quite know how human bodies worked. I didn’t exactly stumble, but I lurched forward, doubling over as I ran. And though I could still see the Cambridge streets, the trees and brick and startled pedestrians, they didn’t quite matter here. I didn’t quite matter.

Only I couldn’t fully step onto the road. Something was still holding me back, and I glanced over my shoulder to see the man from the tower, clinging to me
as if I were his one link to meaning, a terrible expression of longing and dread on his face—or perhaps I still couldn’t see it, perhaps his reaction communicated itself on the link that he still had with me. I snapped at him over my shoulder, no longer able to remember how to curse.

Ahead of me, detectable only by the ripple in this place’s geography, something else ran, and it was in those footsteps I followed. I wanted to cry out to them to wait, let me catch up, but there wasn’t quite enough air in my lungs. And each time I tried to run faster, the shadow clasping my heels held on that much tighter. Bastard.

To the river and across it, onto the Esplanade and beyond. I blended in here, to whatever degree it was possible for a bike courier to blend in without her bike. Here were joggers, people out with their dogs—all of whom ducked out of my path as I approached, some cowering. If I’d had any brain left to wonder, it would have wondered at that. But the only part of my brain not consumed with the urge to follow the call had now become distracted by the fact that running in bike cleats
hurt
.

Further, further on…something cried out ahead of me, a
halloo
like the note of a dying sousaphone, and a cry formed in my throat to answer. In the back of my head, in a part of me that didn’t have anything to do with perception or canine instincts, the treacherous thought came forth:
This is what that man meant by power you could respect. Power to be scared of. Power like the Morrigan’s, like the Fiana’s, the unlimited wildness of it. This is what kept people scared; this is the power that encircles the world.

And, like snow down the back of my shirt,
He was right.

The taste of dead leaves and frost filled my throat, and with one last desperate shudder I pulled free of the ghost’s hold. The world went silver, and I nearly howled with the joy of it.
Wait for me
, I cried—

—and stepped off the path just as quickly, stumbling into an ornamental shrub. Prickles shredded the bandage over my calf, and I yelped, lurching to the side into another hedge, this one no less prickly.

I was in a park, still close to the river but nowhere I’d been before. The smell of traffic was still strong, but muted by trees and river scent, and the scene didn’t look anything like what I knew of Boston. Ahead of me, brilliant white in the sunlight, stood a gazebo.

I wanted nothing more than to ask, “What the hell was that?” and choke down the terror with a good dose of self-delusion. But I knew. I was a hound, descendant of hounds, and if one trait of my ancestry was this talent of scent, then the other talent of Finn’s pack should run in my blood as well. One of his hounds had run three times around Ireland; maybe I had the same endurance. Only that didn’t feel quite right. I’d run on the wrong path, using someone else’s shortcut, the path that the ghost had been scared to use a second time.

I looked around. There was no sign of whatever I’d followed here—whoever had called me.

“Who’s there?” A woman’s voice, sharp and scared, came from the gazebo, and a figure within stood up. Beside her, a second figure rose, then slid away as if it were restricted to the shadows. I shaded my eyes and squinted at the woman: gray hair under a white sun hat, gloved hands, a blue dress with white piping—

Abigail. She stared at me, her face crumpling with more emotions than I could read—pain, and loss of something great, and an unreadable anger. I opened my mouth to call out to her, but before I could do more than draw breath, the shadows exploded.

From every stark shadow, from every seam of darkness at the edges of things, came a flickering, a yelping, like the call of a thousand wild geese. I lurched forward as something snapped at my ankles, in and out of the shadows in less time than it took to think it. Heavy and rank, their reek curled around me, flicker
ing in and out of existence as they slid from shadow to shadow, thick with the musty scent of oak leaves and unclean blood.

Was this what I had followed? I cupped my hands over my mouth. “
Run!
”

Too late. They had her, snapping at her ankles and bringing her down onto the steps of the gazebo, where the roof cast a heavy shadow. Abigail started to cry out, but stifled the sound, jamming her forearm against her mouth as if she too wanted to bite down on it. Blood spattered across white gravel.

Not as much blood as I would have thought, I realized, as I vaulted the hedge—even in shadow, the hounds couldn’t fully seize her. And now I could see that they were hounds, though no more than hound-shaped holes in the shadows, like a water lens making the shadow momentarily deeper. On that thread of alignment, the link that had brought me here, I sensed a trace of frustration that they were so crippled, and even a hint of irritation:
how does he expect us to work in these conditions
?

The thought wasn’t theirs. It was mine. I shook my head to rid myself of it as I reached the edge of the gazebo. “Abigail!”

She turned, too quickly, and her wounded ankle gave way. “Keep away from me!” she screamed, holding up her hands as if to fend me off. Shadow blurred across them, and she choked as punctures opened up first in her arms and then, blossoming red, across her throat.

I hesitated—to my shame, I hesitated—then jumped forward, sweeping my arm through the shadow as if to clear out cobwebs. I felt nothing, but for just a moment I caught a glimpse of something receding, eyes like pits turning to watch me, and a strange echo of puzzlement. Hot breath steamed over my wrists, and I shuddered, praying for sunlight. Whatever alignment I’d shared with these things, it was receding, fading as they recognized that I was not, in fact, one of them.

A second low note sounded, closer but less compelling:
Home, home, time to come home
. The breath on my skin receded, and though for a moment I had to fight down the urge to follow, I held my ground.

Abigail lay still as a sodden kerchief. I knelt next to her, trying to close my nose to the heavy, rich smell of blood, and started fumbling in my bag for something to stop the bleeding. Paper, no, spare shirt, yes—

“Oh my God!” A teenage girl with startlingly blue hair emerged from the far side of the gazebo. “Oh my God, is she okay?”

“No,” I said, and tugged my cell phone out of the bag. “Call an ambulance, and then call the cops.” I tossed the phone at her, and she fumbled with it for a moment before flipping it open. Abigail’s breathing creaked and bubbled.

A dull clatter caught my attention, and I looked up to see the broken end of a jar roll slowly off the end of the gazebo, trailing dirt. It smelled of incense and emptiness, of the absence of its inhabitant—the jar I’d tested to see if Yuen’s father had left it. It bounced as it hit the earth and came to rest at Abigail’s feet as if offering itself as a poor vessel for her soul.