Deathwish

2

The seven deadly sins.

Wrath, lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, envy, pride.

The puck pillowing his head on the bar counter of the Ninth Circle, sleeping the sleep of the exhausted and overindulged, had the latter six covered. But Cal, my brother, had the first all to himself. He tried to hide it, and from anyone but me, I believe he most likely succeeded. He’d come a long way in a year. Then it would’ve rolled off him in waves, choppy and fierce. Some emotions still did show: annoyance and impatience being the primary ones, and annoyance was threatening enough when others knew you were half Auphe.

Discipline would come. He was only twenty. Twenty and missing two years of his life. Eighteen mentally, the cynicism of a forty-year-old, and one of the bravest men I knew. He would deny it, but it was true. Kidnapped by the Auphe, possessed by a creature that had all but eaten his soul, and he went on. He clawed his way from the pit and went on—balanced on a knife’s edge. The Auphe were determined to snatch his sanity before they took his life. He’d already seen things, experienced horrors that I hadn’t been able to save him from. But I wouldn’t let what had happened before happen again. I would kill anything.

Anyone.

He was my brother.

I’d been handed a newborn at the age of four. Our mother must’ve fed me and changed me. She must have given me the bare necessities to survive, but she didn’t do the same for Cal. From the moment he came into this world, she had never wasted one moment of affection or attention on him. After handing him to me, I don’t think she ever touched him again, not on purpose, in his entire life. Sophia took the Auphe’s gold to bear a half-human, half-Auphe child, but I don’t think she saw him as a child, just as a thing. She’d even named him Caliban—the offspring of witch and demon from Shakespeare, a deformed monster, and she made sure he knew what it meant.

Bitch. It wasn’t a word I said often, but it was the only description that suited her.

Sophia had died a horrible death, and I couldn’t say I once felt an ounce of sympathy for her. She’d have made a good Auphe: sociopathic and utterly without compassion. She might have not physically touched Cal. In fact, she barely acknowledged his existence, but when she did, she said things to him—gloating, evil words, and I couldn’t protect him from them all. Call a child a monster often enough and he’ll believe you, maybe all of his life.

After the home birth—no hospitals if they could avoid it for the Rom, living below the government’s radar—pale and sweating, she had cut the umbilical cord, tied it off with a strip of yarn, and handed the bloody, writhing bundle to me. “You’ve been wanting a pet,” she had said, voice hoarse from grunts and restrained screams. “Here you are.”

Four years old. What do you do with a baby when you’re four years old? You learn responsibility. You go next door to the next run-down row house and ask the woman there, the one with five children of her own. She tells you how often and how to feed, because Sophia can’t be bothered, gives you a few cans of formula, a half box of diapers, and an old bottle. Then she sends you away with a look in her eyes that says she’s done all she’s going to do. You’re not her problem, so don’t darken her door again. There are worthless monsters and worthless human beings, and sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between the two.

I’d been lucky Cal had rarely been sick. Never a cold, never colic, only once with something like the stomach flu; the healthiest baby in the world, thanks in part, I was sure, to Auphe genes. If he hadn’t been, he might not have survived. Best intentions, especially at the age of four, don’t always count.

Bad memories and dark bars—the two seemed to go hand in hand.

We’d come to Cal’s work, his day job, so to speak, after agreeing to take Seamus’s case. It was early afternoon, but the bar was half full. I’d taken a table in the corner by the bar. I flipped my dagger as I opened my book, Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War, and ruthlessly vanquished the desire to slam the blade into the polished wood of the tabletop.

I moved on to practicing grips before my control wavered and I did bury the dagger in the table. Memories—you can’t escape them, but you can’t let them rule you either. Or you won’t be any good to yourself or your brother. I should concentrate on this new development on the Auphe front. All female—what could it mean?

“You’re late.”

I didn’t look up at Ishiah’s annoyance. Cal’s employer was both bark and bite. Either way, Cal could handle it.

“It’s funny. You say that every time.” I heard Cal toss his jacket behind the bar. “Like you expect something different.”

Ishiah owned the bar the Ninth Circle. He hired Cal as a favor to Goodfellow. The two of them, peri and puck, had issues with one another, Cal had told me. Actually, he’d said they bitched about each other until they made his ears bleed. Always with the turn of phrase, my brother. Apparently, the behavior ranged from cool exchanges to out-and-out threats of violence. While it was entertaining as hell, Cal had yawned one night after work, he never had figured out what their history was. For all their sharp words, they had a certain respect for one another, it seemed. If it hadn’t been for Ishiah swooping in, literally, at the last minute earlier in the week, Robin would be dead. That said something. And I knew Cal was grateful.

But that didn’t mean he was going to be on time.

It was an understanding the two had. Ishiah had given Cal a job when he didn’t particularly want to. And as Cal tended to alarm a good deal of the clientele, it was no doubt best to get some liquor in them most days before he showed up. Sedate them somewhat. But with an understanding or not, Ishiah still called Cal out on it. He was the boss; that was his job. It wouldn’t do to let the other employees see Cal get any special treatment . . . especially as he was the only one without wings. Peris, like every other creature on the planet, weren’t without their prejudices.

The Circle was a peri bar. That meant quite a lot of plants and birds. Peris had a fondness for birds. It also meant Ishiah, Danyel, Samyel, Cambriel, and another peri whose name Cal had never mentioned beyond “it has a lot of z’s in it,” were all peris. The average peri might look like the customary depiction of angels, through a very dark lens, but they weren’t. No one was sure what they were or how long they’d been around.

Myth said they were half angel, half demon, but I had serious doubts that that was the truth—I’d yet to see mythology get anything completely correct. The big picture was close, if you blurred your eyes, but every one of the details was twisted or flat-out wrong.

It’s annoying when information doesn’t live up to your standards. Someday your life might depend on it, and when you’re bleeding to death on the ground, you may wish you’d taken it with a grain of salt.

As for peris: Peris had wings, peris had tempers, and peris kicked ass. I gave a quirk of my lips. Cal had told me that in exactly those words after working there for a time. That was my brother: the succinctness of the truly lazy.

I looked up from the book for a moment, the flat of the dagger balanced on the back of my hand. There were ten or so werewolves in the evening crowd. I’d focused on them the moment we’d entered. As one their heads had come up and their eyes had all been aimed at Cal. Gold, orange, reddish brown, pale blue, some wolf, some human—they all widened and then turned to slits at the sight and scent of him. There were some growling, snarls, and bared teeth, but no one marked their territory by urinating on a table leg. It was a nice change of pace.

“Why the hell do they keep coming back?” Cal muttered as he reached for a gray apron and wrapped it twice around his waist.

“Pride,” Ishiah responded, folding his arms.

“Pride?” Cal took a bottle of tequila and poured a large shot as a chupracabra approached the bar. “Yeah, I guess I can see that.” Facing your fear and spitting in its eye. I knew that was something he could relate to. Depositing the tequila in front of the goat sucker, he said, “Five bucks. Or you want to run a tab?”

The chupa, who looked remarkably like a shaved dog in a hooded jacket, looked at him with the dull blankness of the barely sentient before putting a dirty five on the counter and moving off with his drink. I wasn’t surprised. Cal complained often that monsters weren’t big tippers.

A rustle of feathers shifted my attention from the departing chupa to Ishiah. Aside from the gold-barred wings, which flickered in and out of existence, he didn’t look like anything that belonged on the roof of your typical manger scene. He was not quite the same as other peris. He was bigger, had more presence. Tall and broad-shouldered with light blond hair, fierce blue-gray eyes, a pronounced scar along his jaw, and one extremely large sword under the bar, not many of the patrons started anything when Ishiah was around.

“So you managed to pry Robin out of his well of self-pity?” he asked, looking down at a lightly snoring Goodfellow.

That was somewhat harsh. True perhaps, but harsh nonetheless.

“Wouldn’t let you in either, huh?” Cal said knowingly. “Yeah, we got him out and sobered him up. He’s doing better.”

Ishiah seemed relieved. He was hard to read, but our mother had spent Cal’s and my childhood sizing up many a mark. You couldn’t be Sophia’s get without picking up a few things. Looking back down at my book, I continued the dagger practice as I read. Relieved or not, Ishiah didn’t say anything further about Robin as I multitasked, reading about the fall of Potidaea, flipping the blade, and thinking of the Auphe in the park. Instead he asked, “Why is your brother here? He’s hardly a drinker.”

True, and it was rare that I came to the Ninth Circle. Drunken werecats spewing hairballs far and wide wasn’t my idea of an enjoyable evening, but I did make exceptions and this was one. I kept my eyes on my book as I tossed the dagger up into the air yet again and caught it blind. One: because it was good practice. You always know where your weapon is, whether you can see it or not. Always. Second: It annoyed Cal, as he couldn’t do it. I smiled to myself. Being an older brother wasn’t always about protection.

“We have business after work,” Cal said, although that wasn’t the real reason. We did have business, Seamus’s business, but that wasn’t why I was here. Ordinarily I would’ve met Cal after work, here or at the stakeout location, but with the Auphe in the here and now, things were different. Now none of us were to go out alone after dark in the more deserted areas of the city if we could avoid it.

Not that the Auphe wouldn’t appear in broad daylight—we’d seen that and their no doubt justified faith in the human desire to not see what it didn’t want to see—but it was rare. Georgina had promised me she wouldn’t go out at all once the sun set, although I was hoping that the Auphe had forgotten about her or decided that Cal himself had. As monsters went, they weren’t precisely plugged into the community gossip, and Cal had seen next to nothing of her in the past months. Even if the Auphe had been following him for some time, they could take it that she didn’t mean a thing to him. With their twisted brains, I doubted they could even imagine she meant anything at all to him if he didn’t spend nearly every day with her.

It wasn’t true, or it hadn’t been. Cal had cared enough that he’d done everything he could to push her out of his life. To keep her safe. And he had. Hopefully, the Auphe would believe what he’d so desperately attempted to make true, or had missed those incredibly rare visits altogether.

“Auphe business?” Ishiah’s voice darkened a fraction.

“Is that a good guess or do you know something?” And at that moment, Ishiah wasn’t Cal’s employer. The peri wasn’t Robin’s sometime friend, sometime enemy right then. He was someone who might have information that could save us.

The only thing Cal and I had in common physically were gray eyes, and I raised mine to see his turn empty and cool. Ishiah wasn’t easily intimidated, but when it came to the Auphe, he had the same reaction as everyone else. He certainly wasn’t going to do anything in their favor, but seeing is believing, and I wanted to see this very clearly. I closed my book and stared at the peri with a gaze as empty as my brother’s. And if my dagger did embed itself in the table this time, it wasn’t anger, it wasn’t a loss of control. . . .

It was incentive.

“No. I haven’t heard anything . . . yet.” He looked at the table, the dagger, and then at me. I wasn’t here often enough for Ishiah to have much insight into me, not firsthand, but I thought he caught a glimpse now.

He went on, his eyes still taking my measure. “But we peris suspected the Auphe weren’t all destroyed. Millions of years of survival have served them well.” Shaking his head grimly, he added, “And when there’s one Auphe left, people are going to die.” He turned back to Cal and nodded toward his throat. “As for how I know . . . the Auphe have a distinctive saw-toothed edge on their claws. Makes for an interesting pattern.”

“That’s astounding, Sherlock. Take a bow.” Cal poured a beer with a whiskey back for a wolf that slunk up to the bar. “Let me know if you do hear anything. Things are going to get nasty. You might have to find a new employee of the month.”

“One who doesn’t terrorize, impale, and melt the clientele?” he said, brows lowering in an annoyed scowl. “Pity me. I’ll have to scour the city.”

“You just can’t let that go,” he grumbled as he cleaned the bar top, the tension passing. “And, come on, only one of those was intentional. Accidents happen.” Now, those were work stories he hadn’t shared with me. He caught my narrowed glance from the corner of his eye, dropped his head, and groaned.

“Yes, I’m rather particular about the mutilation of my patrons. My apologies.” Ishiah turned and went about the business of running the bar, and Cal kept serving up the drinks, avoiding my gaze when he could, and muttering, “Ah, shit,” when he couldn’t. I saw a discussion in our future. A very long, detailed, unfortunate discussion . . . unfortunate for my brother, at any rate.

When eleven came, the peri Samyel came in to work the rest of Cal’s shift for him. For a peri, he was considered mellow. From the one thing Cal had bothered to tell me, Sammy hadn’t heaved anyone through the wooden door of the bar for almost several days now. They must’ve gone through quite a few doors. A temper can be an expensive habit.

Cal took off the apron, passed it over, and turned to me. I was standing at the bar with book in hand. “Ready?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he answered, retrieving his leather jacket and shoulder holster from beneath the bar. Lifting the hinged countertop, he walked through. “Although I think this sounds like a waste of time. Probably a crock cooked up by Seamus to get some Promise time. I don’t trust that haggis-eating son of a bitch one damned bit.”

“Cal,” I said with amusement as I shrugged into the long gray duster that covered the sword strapped to my back, “you don’t trust anyone. It’s your religion, your mantra, and I believe you have it on a T-shirt.” Not that I trusted Seamus either; I didn’t, but I did trust Promise.

“Hey, not true,” he scowled defensively. “I trust you. I trust Robin.”

“And?” I prodded patiently.

“I trust Promise to do what’s best for you,” he evaded. He did trust her for that, but just as I came first with my brother, so did I come first with Promise. That could lead to situations. It had led to a situation in the past that hadn’t ended well for Cal. She’d pushed him to access his lost memories even though I’d told her before of the one previous attempt, which had had a catastrophic effect on my brother. She knew the danger, but because of me—for me—she’d pushed him regardless. And because Cal wanted to keep me safe as much if not more than she did, he let her. It hadn’t ended quite as badly as the first time, but badly enough that Cal nearly lost himself in a black pit of memories that could have destroyed him. He’d also unconsciously built a gate that led straight to Auphe hell, Tumulus, and had had absolutely no control of it or himself. I’d had to knock him unconscious.

To say that had strained things between Promise and me would be an understatement, but we’d moved past it, thanks in part to more pushing, this time on my brother’s part. But there couldn’t be a repeat of what she’d done. Promise had given her word she wouldn’t put Cal at risk again. I knew she was telling the truth. If I hadn’t known that, well . . . Cal and I had more in common than our eyes. If there is no trust, there is nothing. Trust is all.

But Promise had never lied to me. She hadn’t told me much about her past. I didn’t blame her. A vampire’s bloody pretreatment history could only be painful. I understood wanting to forget the predator that biology had once forced her to be. So I didn’t mind that I heard only bits and pieces—the places she’d lived and the historical events that she’d seen. All I cared was that she had never lied. She was honest in a world just the opposite, and a cool oasis in my life. She was who she said she was, and everything Sophia, my mother, the pathologically manipulative liar, had never been.

She was also an accomplished fighter, practiced, efficient, and deceptively deadly. I’d seen her snap a revenant’s neck in an instant and put a crossbow bolt dead center in the eye of a vodynoi.

Common interests—they really do enhance a relationship.

“As for George,” he went on, “I trust her to do what’s best for the universe, life, existence . . . whatever.” Unfortunately, Cal was usually at odds with all those things. He didn’t see the big picture that she did. And he didn’t want to. His life, whatever he made of it, was enough for him. Georgina loved Cal or had loved him—I wasn’t certain which it was now—but she also had a calling. I wasn’t sure that one could trust a calling . . . not on a personal level. Georgina had enormous compassion, but she also had, in her eyes, an even larger responsibility. Fall leaves are brilliant with gold and red. You can cup them in your hand and wonder at them, be amazed at their uniqueness and glory. But eventually they are gone, brown, crumbling, and scattered on the wind. But the tree remains. The tree is what is important. The tree lives on. That was a difficult knowledge to bear, and an even more difficult life to live.

Of course, being the leaf wasn’t exactly desirable either.

“Being wise is a burden.” There was sympathy in my voice that I didn’t bother to hide.

“Being a smart-ass moron is no cakewalk either,” Cal retorted.

“So true,” I offered dryly. “Yet you struggle on.” I was about to step forward to shake Robin’s shoulder when I noticed the snoring had a subtly different quality, and his hand was moving inch by slow inch across the bar. When it made it to the plastic container, I threw the dagger. It slid between his index and middle fingers to punch a hole in the plastic. “That is a tip jar,” I observed mildly, “not an ATM.”

He sat up and glowered. “I’m simply trying to stay in practice. I would’ve put the paltry pilfer back.”

“Yes, I’m sure.” Robin was at the very least as good at lying as our mother, but with his trickster race it was genetic. I couldn’t hold his DNA against him, and his lies were never meant to actually deceive us. Annoy us, entertain us, convince us to change our sexual orientation, but never to actually deceive us. He certainly didn’t use his powers for good per se, but with us he didn’t use them for otherwise either. I retrieved my blade, then took his shoulder to heave him upright. “Time to work, not to steal.”

“Stealing is teaching a valuable lesson to the naive. It’s a community service. I should be honored for my heritage, not condemned.” He shrugged off my hand to carefully smooth the material of his shirt, which would no doubt take the contents of a hundred tip jars to pay for.

We all moved outside onto Eldridge Street, Goodfellow and Cal behind me as I stopped and scanned the street. “Do you feel anything?” I asked.

“Gates? No.” Cal put his hand inside his jacket, and I knew he was feeling the reassuring textured grip of his Glock. “Of course, they could’ve taken a cab, right? Who wouldn’t stop for a clawed, fanged killer freak of nature?”

I gripped his shoulder at the bravado. He always tried to pull it off and he most often did. Not this time. “We’ve handled them all our life, little brother. We’ve survived. That’s not going to change now.”

“Yeah, sure.” He looked away . . . up at the roof of the building. Up where the Auphe would roost.

I exhaled and dropped my hand. It was hard to reassure him when I had doubts myself. I wouldn’t let them take Cal again, but I couldn’t guarantee we wouldn’t die in the process. I couldn’t guarantee I would be quick enough, strong enough, no matter how many hours I practiced, how many miles I ran, how many books I read on the art of war. So I practiced more, ran more, read more, and one day maybe I would feel like it would be enough. One day.

The street in front of the Ninth Circle was packed bumper-to-bumper. Promise had called on my cell and said her car was parked illegally in front of the Tenement Museum three blocks down. Three pathetic blocks, but that didn’t stop my indolent brother from grumbling. Any excuse to share his laziness with the world. He was slightly ahead of us when the revenant sprang out of a deeply recessed doorway. Dressed like a homeless man in ragged layers of clothing to conceal what it really was, it came boiling out of the gloom with claws like ten knives. Cal wouldn’t have caught his scent. The entire block the Ninth Circle was situated on was saturated in so much supernatural scent, he couldn’t separate one from the other. It didn’t stop him from grabbing the clammy wrist, twisting the hand away, and avoiding the slashing claws of the other one. Then he proceeded to seize the hissing creature by its filthy jacket and pound its head against the brick wall.

“I am so”—bang—“not”—bang—“in the mood,” Cal snarled.

The revenant’s companion came out of the same doorway. As with cockroaches, if there’s one revenant, there’s bound to be more. Unfortunately, Raid had yet to come up with a solution to the next best thing to the undead. They might look deceased and mildly decomposing, with moist, clammy gray-green skin and milky white eyes, but revenants were alive and had never been human. They simply had good camouflage. Is that a corpse? Should we investigate? By the time the second question was out, the revenant had already eaten your leg—unfortunately for you.

This second one also had no weapons but what nature had given it and that . . . that was far from being enough. Cal, however, believed in using what nature and the local gun trafficker had gifted him with. He dropped the first creature, whose head had lost its original shape for something even less attractive. He then pulled his gun, a Glock .40, with lightning speed, shooting the other revenant in the face before it had a chance to take another step. I gave an inner nod of approval. Cal practiced. Frequently. I had to force him to run and spar, but he had never needed pushing to keep up his gun skills. Little boys and their toys—the bigger and louder, the better.

The revenant fell with a half-strangled scream. It wasn’t done yet, though. It tried to crawl toward Cal, claws scoring the concrete beneath it. It had perhaps a spoonful of brains left in its shattered skull, but revenants were like cockroaches in that respect as well. “You got balls,” Cal said with a grunt. “I gotta give you that.” And then he shot him again, this time at the base of the skull. That time it did the trick. Nothing quite takes the fight out of a revenant like a severed spinal column.

Cal turned to see Robin and me leaning against the wall, observing the show. I didn’t wear a watch, but I took Goodfellow’s arm and tapped the face of his Rolex meaningfully. “We are on a schedule,” I said mildly.

“Gee, Nik, I hate to slow you down. By the way, thanks for the help,” he said caustically.

“If you had needed it, then I’ve taught you nothing. You barely broke stride.” I pulled out my cell phone and called Ishiah to tell him he had a pile of garbage half a block from his door and he might want to clean it up. Muggers had once been New York’s bane years ago. The police, and the boggles in Central Park, might have cleaned up that problem, but the revenants had taken their place. It wasn’t quite a trade for the better. At least the muggers wouldn’t have eaten you. As for witnesses, the bar and this block belonged to the supernatural. The majority of humans avoided it. They might not know why, but a prehistoric instinct that had kept their ancestors alive knew that here there be monsters.

We reached Promise’s limo minutes later. She’d brought the larger car this time to accommodate the extra passengers. I opened the door. Robin promptly climbed in out of the cold. I waited and Cal gave a mock-aggrieved sigh. “Cut the cord already, Cyrano. I just kicked ass.”

“Revenants,” I said with disdain. “That hardly counts. The day you spar a full three hours with me is the day I let you watch your own back,” I retorted, looking down a nose that I had no problem admitting was Romanesque, if not Cyranoesque.

He gave a grin. It was a faint one, but considering the day he’d had, I’d take it. “Never gonna happen.” He followed Goodfellow, and I followed him, closing the door behind us. Robin was sitting opposite us, beside two wolves. He brushed at his shirt as if ridding it of fur, but that was just Robin being the ass he was so often very good at being. These wolves were high breeds or fine-breds. They were of completely human shape and features when they wanted to be, not like the wolves in the bar. That didn’t stop them from baring their suddenly elongating teeth at Cal, who sat on one side of Promise, as I sat on the other.

“These are your bodyguards?” I asked with eyebrows raised.

She gave an elegant nod. “Courtesy of Delilah. They are Kin, but loyal to her.” Which was good. The Kin, the equivalent of a werewolf Mafia, had strong suspicions we’d been involved in the death of one of their Alphas. They were right.

Delilah was the sister of the wolf who had helped us. She, unlike her brother, was still in good standing with the Kin . . . for now. She was playing a dangerous game to advance her rank, making allies on any side she could. She was also sleeping with Cal. Whether that was a good thing was debatable, but it wasn’t my business. Having sex simply to have it was what being twenty was all about—as long as I didn’t have to hear any of the more furry details.

There was a soft kiss to my jaw. I turned to Promise and smiled. “I see you dressed for the occasion.”

She’d hidden her glorious and definitely noticeable hair under a black cap that matched her sweater, snug pants, and boots. She would blend into the typical art crowd, which is where we would be. Seamus was attending an art show opening and we would be there to spot anyone who might be following him. Although, like Cal, I had my doubts.

With her warm weight against my shoulder, we arrived soon enough at yet one more converted loft in the Lower East Side. We left the wolves in the car and paired up to move into the crowd. As Cal moved off and Robin started to follow, I took his arm. “Watch him,” I said quietly. “Watch him every moment. Are we clear?”

“It’s too crowded here for the Auphe, but I will. I swear it,” he returned as quietly, before heading off in Cal’s wake.

Slim fingers looped around my wrist. “He’s right. The Auphe won’t come here.”

“Never take anything for granted.” I reached over with my other hand to tuck a willful strand of blond hair behind her ear. “Georgina?”

“Delilah was kind enough to send two wolves to her as well.” She ran the soft pad of her thumb, like silk, along the inner part of my wrist, then let her hand fall. “There’s Seamus, the center of attention as always.” There was part exasperation and part affection in her voice.

“Nostalgic?” I asked. She’d made it clear to Seamus where her loyalties lay, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t have fond memories.

She thought about it for a moment, eyes distant. “He was a friend when I needed one,” she said finally, “but never more than that, although I thought differently. It simply took me several years to realize that. And the jealousy was the last straw.”

“He’s still jealous,” I pointed out as I focused on him, surrounded by enough women to give Goodfellow a run for his money.

“Oh no. He hasn’t attempted to behead a single person.” She smiled, eyes now bright, bold, and entertained. “He changed for the better over a century ago, I’m glad to say. I wouldn’t have let him near you otherwise.” And of the group, I was thought to be the protective one. “Now”—she bent to check the dagger in her boot—“I’ll go ask if one of his mysterious followers is here.”

I looked over the crowd as she vanished into it. It wasn’t an extraordinarily large amount of people, but it was crammed into a small space with art that even several university classes in the subject couldn’t help me appreciate. There didn’t seem to be anyone especially interested in Seamus besides the women. . . .

Wait.

On the edge of the crowd, studying a hunk of metal vomiting forth several jagged pieces of glass, there was a man. Completely inconspicuous, he was of average height, average weight, with short brown hair and a brown jacket. In the midst of this crowd wearing either the ridiculously bright or all in black, he didn’t quite fit. He was too average. His body language said “Don’t look at me” so strongly that I was surprised he didn’t blend into the wall like a chameleon. I didn’t need to wait for Promise to return to know this was the one.

I looked across the room for Cal and Robin. Taller than Promise, I spotted them instantly and caught their eye. Then I moved toward our chameleon of the ordinary. He didn’t see me at first. Most don’t. By the time he did, I had his collar fisted in my hand and was moving him briskly toward the door. He gurgled as the collar of his shirt cut into his airway. He turned red but not blue, so I wasn’t too concerned about his health. I took him into the empty stairwell and gave him a shake, not hard, but not precisely gentle either. “Who are you?” I demanded.

He was turning slightly blue now—annoying—and I eased my grip a fraction as I repeated, “Who are you? Why are you following him?” No need to name Seamus. He knew whom I was talking about. I could see it in his brown eyes—completely average as well. I could also see he wasn’t going to say a word, not without some encouragement. I let the dagger slide out from my sleeve. I didn’t plan on using it—yet. I didn’t know whether he meant Seamus any harm, not so far, but a blade to the throat is one of the better bluffs.

That’s when I heard it. Below. The click of metal against metal.

I released the man as I threw myself to one side, feeling a tug that pulled at my duster and pinned it to a stair. Freed, he clattered, wheezing, down the stairs, as I yanked my coat free. Another long bolt of metal shot by, close enough to tell a story, but not close enough to kill. I listened to the story and stayed still as the footsteps faded away. When they disappeared, I looked down at the long rod of metal embedded in the stair a bare two inches from my leg. Well . . .

That was interesting.