Dead Man Rising

Chapter Nineteen

We went to the old noodle shop on Pole Street. It was absurdly fitting. The place hadn't changed a bit, from the dusty red velour hanging on the walls to the old Asiano man sitting in the back booth slurping his tea and eyeing everyone suspiciously, a curl of synth-hash smoke drifting up from his ashtray. Two bowls of beef pho later, I was beginning to feel a little less raw.

"Okay." I grabbed a hunk of rice noodles with plasilica chopsticks. Eddie sucked at his beer and blinked at me.

The fishtank in the back of the store gurgled softly.

I took the mouthful of noodles, slurped it down. Beef broth splashed. I had to suppress a small sound of delight—eating was the only thing that gave me any pleasure anymore. Thank the gods I had a hiked metabolism, or I'd be as fat as a New Vietkai whore.

Well, I got enjoyment from hunting down bounties too. But it wasn't a clean enjoyment. Each bounty was a brick in the wall between me and the uncomfortable thoughts that rose when I had too much time on my hands.

Eating, however, was all mine. I didn't have to think while I ate.

"You're still a goddam pig." Eddie grimaced.

"Says the man who eats with his fucking fingers?" I fired back. "Spill, Eddie. I left a warm bed for this."

"How warm?" He smirked through blond-brown stubble. "Jace finally tie you up? Or did he put on horns and a pitchfork?"

I laid my chopsticks down. It had taken me a year to learn to eat with my left hand wielding the silverware. Now my right hand felt clumsy, as if all it wanted to do was curl around a swordhilt. "That's one, Edward." My tone made my teacup rattle against the table. "Now why don't you quit being an asshole and tell me what you've got?"

"I might know something." He went even paler, if that was possible. Looked down at the table. Gulped at his beer. I suddenly longed to get drunk. This would be so much fucking easier with chemical enhancement.

I picked up the thick, white china teacup. Said nothing.

He squeezed his eyes shut. His hand trembled as he set his glass down. "I was there," he mumbled. "Rigger Hall."

I'd known that, of course. He'd been a few classes ahead of me.

Like Christabel.

Great beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. "There was… a secret." His throat worked, his Adam's apple bobbing. "I don't know much, but…"

Rigger Hall was full of secrets, Eddie. I felt the glowing metal pressed against my skin again, heard Mirovitch's papery voice. Cleared my throat, set my teacup down. "Eddie…" My voice was harsh, harsher than it had to be. The glass of beer rang uneasily. I have got to get some kind of control over myself. My left shoulder burned dully as if in agreement. "Anubis et'her ka, don't do this to yourself."

His eyes flew open. "You don't tell me what I do or don't gotta do," he growled, leaning back. "I can't go home, I can't fuckin sleep, and people are dying. I got to get this done."

I shrugged. My heart beat thinly under my ribs, hammering with impatience and adrenaline combined. Picked up my teacup again.

He took another long gulp of beer. " 'S a wonder anyone made it out. I wasn't in it, not the Black Room."

I shuddered. His eyes flew open, as wide as I'd ever seen them. "No, not that one," he hurriedly amended. "No, that was the name of the Secret. 'Cause they met in that old shed off the lake. You remember?"

I nodded. Christabel's ghostly screaming rang inside my head, I pushed it away. "I remember." Cold sweat lay on my skin. Black Room, remember Rigger Hall. That's what Christabel meant.

His eyes were the eyes of a child reliving a nightmare. "You was in the cage?"

He meant the Faraday cage in the sensory deprivation vault under the school. It had been intended to help telepaths who needed a short-term respite from their gifts. Instead, it had been turned into a punishment. Psions—especially strong ones—can only stand a cage for a very short time before their psyches begin to crack under the lack of stimulation. If you weren't a telepath seeking relief, being in a cage was like being trapped in a black void—no light, no sound, and no access to the ambient Power that fed magickal and psychic talent. It is the closest thing to insanity I had ever known, and I still couldn't step into an elevator without shaking and feeling the walls close in. The cage of an elevator or hoverlift was uncomfortably similar to the cage of Mirovitch's Black Room. "Four times," I replied, husky.

"I had two. Two was enough."

"Never would have been enough," I forced out past teeth clenched so tightly my jaw hurt. If it was before Rio, would I shatter my own teeth and swallow them? The thought of the sensory-deprivation vault and the cage, and the blackness rising through me to eat at the very foundations of my mind—"Sekhmet sa'es, Eddie…" I swallowed dryly several times, my throat clicking. Got to get control. Goddammit, Danny, get a hold on yourself!

"The secret… Christabel was one a 'em. I wasn', but I got friendly wi' one."

I waited. He would come to it in his own time. The least I could do was give him a few minutes to work up to saying whatever he had to say.

"Steve Sebastiano," he said finally. Was he blushing?

Now I had officially seen everything.

My jaw dropped. "You got friendly with Polyamour?" Polyamour the transvestite, one of the most famous sexwitches in the world? The sexwitch rumored to be so fantastic in bed that Hegemony heads and even some paranormals paid just to call on her socially? Her house took a healthy chunk of cash just to be put on the waiting list. Polyamour, who used to be Steven Sebastiano, a few classes ahead of me and already the source of whispers and rumor at school. I heard she'd been tutored by Persephone Dragonfly down in Norleans at the Great Floating House, and done an internship in Paradisse as part of an exchange program.

And one of her sexwitches had been a victim. The piece fell into place neatly, and I felt the little click of intuition inside my skull.

The first link in the chain, the first arc of the pattern, was always the hardest. It would only get quicker from here.

Thank the gods. I don't think I can stand to look at another dead body.

Eddie shrugged, looking down into his half-empty glass. "We was roommates. Bastian was one of Mirovitch's sexwitch stable. Fucked him up royal."

A sexwitch in Rigger Hall? "Fucked up" would be an understatement. "I'll bet. So what happened?"

Eddie's sleepy hazel eyes were haunted, no longer the eyes of a fully grown man. Instead, they were the deep wells of pain in the face of a terrified child.

I didn't need a mirror to tell me my own eyes were just as dark. Just as wide, and just as deep—and just as agonized.

"Mirovitch," I persisted, my throat dry and tight. "Who did him in?"

The Skinlin shrugged. "I dunno. I just know Bastian was in it with Christabel. They had code words."

"Like what?"

"Tig vedom deum." Eddie took down the rest of his beer in two long drafts. He was sweating. I could smell the fear on him, rank and thick and human. Was it any consolation that my own fear now smelled like light cinnamon and musk?

My left shoulder began to throb again, evenly, almost comfortingly. "Part of the Nine Canons. Second canto, line four." I shifted on the vinyl bench, looking down at the remains of my second bowl of soup. I've lost my appetite. Go figure. "For sealing a spirit in its grave."

"And for short-circuiting a Feeder." Eddie's bushy eyebrows drew together. He glared at the table as if it had personally offended him.

"Any truth to the rumor that one of the students was a Feeder?" And why would that have jackshit to do with these murders? Mirovitch is dead. The Hall's closed down.

"I dunno, Danny." He looked miserable. I didn't blame him.

"There's a lot of shit you don't know." Frustration turned my voice sharp and angular. My teacup rattled slightly, I took a deep breath. Power swirled the air in lazy waving tendrils.

If I didn't know better, I'd say it's gotten stronger. I've gotten stronger.

I shoved that thought as far away as it would go. I didn't need another problem.

His eyes nickered up to my face, slid away. He could barely stand to look at my new face, and my heart squeezed inside my chest. "Don't ride my ass, Danny. I've given you all I got. Now go and get this thing done so I can go home and sleep again."

"Why are you afraid? You weren't part of it."

He shrugged. "Don't look like this thing's too fuckin selective, if it'll kill a normal."

Thank you, Eddie. I realized that was precisely what was bothering me. Why would whoever-it-was kill a normal to start off with? Unless it was practice, a dry run—but that didn't seem too likely. Once you've mastered Feeder glyphs and enough power to charge a Ceremonial Magick circle, dry runs lose their usefulness. The higher up you go, the more everything depends on Working perfectly under pressure—getting it right enough to work the first time.

"Unless the normal wasn't so normal." But the coroner's scans would have caught it, if he'd been a psion. I stared at my water glass, my index finger tracing a glyph on the table. A loose, spiked, fluid, twisting glyph in another magickal language.

A glyph scored into my own flesh. If I kept tracing it, fiddling with it, would I eventually get an answer? A whole year of longing hadn't brought me anything but grief.

Quit daydreaming, Danny. "What are you aiming at, Eddie?"

"Seems like someone's cleaning up some loose ends, don't it? I called Bastian. He'll see you soon as you want." Eddie sank down further in his seat, studying me. "You lookin' better, girl."

"Thanks." I don't think my tone could have been any drier or more ironic. "You got me a personal interview with Polyamour? Just how friendly were you?"

There it was again, that flush. I never thought I'd live to see Eddie acting like a blushing teener. I'd planned on interviewing Polyamour anyway, but having an introduction would make it much easier.

"Friendly 'nuff." Eddie reached for the second full glass of beer, downed it in one long gulp, his throat working; smacked it back down with a little more force than necessary. He looked at the two empty steins with a mournful expression, his lips pulled down and his sleepy eyes pupil-dilated and dark under his frowsty, bushy blond hair.

"You want another one?" My tone was uncharacteristically gentle.

"No. Danny…" He trailed off, tapped his blunt fingertips on the table.

"What?" I had, for the first time ever since Japhrimel altered me, lost my appetite. I pushed the remains of the second bowl of beef pho away. Took a drink of tea.

"Nothin. Just… be careful."

I let out a short bark of a laugh. "Since when have I ever been careful, Eddie?" I never would have guessed Eddie knew the most famous transvestite sexwitch in the western half of the Hegemony well enough to get me an immediate interview. Wonders never cease in this wide, wide world.

"You mighta been once or twice. When you was young." Eddie's lips pulled back in a brave attempt at a smile.

"Maybe. When I was young." I set my teacup down, extended my hand over the table. "Eddie? Thanks. It…" The words failed me. If I still had nightmares about Rigger Hall, he probably did too.

And if my reaction to having the Hall resurrected were enough to make me laugh like a crazed lunatic into the dirt under my own home, what was Eddie going through? Hadn't we suffered enough, both of us?

"Yeah I did." Eddie looked at my hand. His eyes flicked back up to my face; he extended his own hand, touched fingertips with me. His Adam's apple bounced as he swallowed, convulsively. "I got to be able to sleep again, Danny."

It was the first time he had ever voluntarily touched me. We are skittish about being touched, we psions.

My throat was dry.

I swallowed, and I spoke my promise. "I'll catch him, Eddie. Or her. Whoever's doing this. I swear it."

He snatched his fingertips away. "Yeah. You do that. Word of advice? When you do catch 'em, don't bring 'em back alive. Anything to do wit' Rigger Hall is better dead."

You better believe it, Eddie. "Including us?" I sounded wistful, not at all like my usual self.

Eddie moved, sliding his legs out of the booth and standing up. He tapped at his datband, then looked down at me. "Sometimes I think so." His eyes were still haunted wells. "Then I look at Gabe, and I ain't so sure."

I found nothing to say to that. Eddie stumped away toward the door, and I let him go. I touched my own datband, and found out he'd paid for my dinner.

Nice of him. Oh, Eddie.

I sighed and took one last mouthful of tea, rolling it around in my mouth to wash away the taste of fear before swallowing. It would take something stronger than tea to get that taste off my tongue, though.