Embrace the Night

Chapter 5

Crystal Gazing is not the supernatural community's most respected journalistic voice. Its tagline, "All the news that's not fit to print," pretty much says it all. But, once in a while, its scandal-hunting reporters turn up a story that the more respectable papers reject as mere rumor. And even more rarely, that rumor turns out to be true.

But so far, although there was a lot of speculation about the identity of the new Pythia, no one had managed to come up with my name. It was only a matter of time, but I was grateful for any reprieve. And the lack of new information had allowed juicier stories to bump that one to the back pages. Today's screaming headline concerned an unknown woman who'd been raiding the Circle's facilities, although as usual, the article was short on facts and long on terms like "vixen vigilante" and "fetching fanatic." I silently wished her luck. Her activities might account for why no one had yet managed to track me down.

My break was over, so I stuck the rag in my locker, getting ready to go back to work. My current time-killing activity involved Casanova's never-ending search for new ways to make a buck. He'd somehow conned an up-and-coming fashion designer into renting one of the overpriced shops in the gallery. Part of the deal had been space for a fashion show at the beginning of each new season, along with the services of the showgirls as models and enough casino grunts to handle the heavy lifting. I, of course, was one of the grunts.

A pretty brunette was at the locker next to mine, and we paused to size up each other's outfit. Hers consisted of a lot of corpse-like paint, a necklace of skulls and a skirt composed of withered arms. They'd been cut off at the elbow, so they formed a miniskirt effect, and were moving around just enough to be creepy.

"Zombie," she told me, fixing her lipstick in the mirror on the inside of her locker.

"I beg your pardon?"

"You know, the ones that used to work upstairs?"

"I thought they'd been shredded." They'd gotten in the way of the Circle's hunt for me. And although zombies are pretty resilient as a rule, they hadn't done so well when facing a cadre of war mages.

"Well, yeah. But you know the boss. He didn't want to waste a resource."

"What are you saying?"

"He said zombies smart enough to wait tables but docile enough not to snack on the clientele are hard to come by. He's using a human waitstaff while he locates some more, but he wanted something to remind everyone that it's supposed to be a zombie bar, so…"

"He harvested their body parts for your costumes?"

"It's not so bad," she said, seeing my expression. "Except for getting felt up every time I sit down."

"What?"

She frowned down at her skirt. "One of these guys keeps goosing me. But when I complained, the bokors said they couldn't replace them all, so I'd have to figure out which one. But they all look the same."

We regarded the shriveled gray things around her waist for a moment. I managed not to shudder every time a bony finger brushed against her bare skin, but my dress wasn't so coy. As with much of the collection, it was spelled to respond to mood, with a repertoire that would make a chameleon envious. It had been showing tranquil nature scenes all morning, but now it switched to a dirty yellow-brown haze, the color of sunlight filtered through smog.

"I haven't seen that costume before," the brunette said, her eyes narrowing.

"I'm helping with the show."

"You're modeling? But they told me they didn't need any more girls."

"I'm just doing backstage stuff. But the designer wanted us to dress up, too."

"Oh. That's all right, then," she said, mollified. "I thought something was wrong. I mean, you're okay and all, just not exactly—"

"Model material?" I smiled, but my dress took on the sulfurous yellow-gray of the San Francisco skyline. Great.

"Yeah, exactly." She scrunched up her nose at the new hue. "Ugh. How do you get it back to a prettier color?"

"I'm not sure." And the designer, a pouty blond named Augustine, was not likely to approve of the change.

"Cheer up," she told me breezily. "If you're backstage, probably nobody will see you anyway." She bumped the locker closed with her hip and gave a sudden yelp when one of the waving arms goosed her. And just like that, my dress returned to the color of a nice, sunny day.

Well, that had been easier than I'd thought.

One good thing about my latest assignment had been the chance to get a friend a job. Since she didn't have a passport, a Social Security card or a strong command of the English language, I'd been wondering how she was going to earn a living. Especially since her references were about four hundred years out of date.

I found Françoise backstage and helped her into her designated dress, a solid white sheath with a long skirt and cap sleeves. It was cute, but I couldn't understand what it was doing in a collection that made even wealthy witches twitch before placing an order. Then a small dot detached itself from one shoulder, unfolded eight tiny black legs and went to work.

A row of other dots that I'd mistaken for buttons peeled away from her shoulder and followed. By the time the dress was buttoned up, the spiders had covered half the bodice with a tracery of black embroidery, as delicate and intricate as the cobwebs they mimicked. The designs were constantly being woven and unwoven, so quickly that it looked like silken fireworks were exploding all over the fabric, each blooming in a unique design before morphing into another even more elaborate.

I gazed at the dress in covetous admiration while Françoise drew on her gloves. All of the models were wearing them as a way to tie the collection together. In her case, they were long and black and did double duty, hiding the scars where, four hundred years ago, a torturer who knew his craft had left her permanently disfigured.

She'd started life in seventeenth-century France, where she'd run into the Inquisition, which hadn't approved of witches so much. She'd eluded them, only to get dragged into Faerie against her will, by slavers trying to make a fast franc selling young witches to the Fey. The scars had occurred right before the kidnapping, and her purchaser, a Fey nobleman with a jealous wife, had not dared to heal them. She'd eventually escaped to the Dark Fey, who decided that she would be more useful as a slave than as a meal. They, of course, hadn't even noticed the scars.

The whole adventure lasted only a few years from Françoise's perspective, but the Fey timeline isn't in sync with ours. By the time she managed to escape, the world she knew was long gone, making her the only person I knew that fate liked to mess with even more than me. Luckily, she was tall, dark and exotic, characteristics that hadn't been prized in her own century, which preferred women petite, fair and traditional. But in our time it had been enough to persuade Augustine to overlook her lack of credentials. It seemed that yesterday's unfashionable Amazon was today's supermodel.

Once Françoise was set, waiting for makeup she didn't need, I turned my attention to trying to corral a rogue handbag. I finally cornered it between a rack of dresses and the wall. I pounced, grabbing the scaly handle as it thrashed and wriggled and did its damnedest to claw me in the face.

Augustine appeared at my shoulder, but didn't bother to help. He watched the fight for a moment over the top of wild purple spectacles that were about to fall off his long nose. They looked like something Elton John might have worn to sing "Rocket Man," with wide frames shot through with glitter. They didn't go well with his pale blue eyes or artfully arranged curls. Of course, it was kind of hard to think of anything they would have complemented.

"There are some…people…who are demanding to see you," he informed me. "They don't have tickets, and frankly—"

"What people?" I asked, dreading the answer. I could number the ones who might consider me a friend on one hand. And except for Rafe, none of them knew where I was.

"Well, I don't know, do I?" Augustine's eyes flashed. "Why don't I stop everything I'm doing seconds before the show to take care of your scruffy friends, who aren't even on the guest list?"

I didn't immediately answer, because the bag was currently winning. It had already sprouted four stubby legs and a tooth-lined snout. Now a tail covered with hard jade scales protruded suddenly from the rear, giving it enough leverage to thrash out of my grasp. It dropped to the floor and hurried off after a snakeskin belt. The belt tried slithering away, but the bag caught it by the tail, swallowing the writhing thing in a couple of gulps.

I wrestled the truant fashion accessory to the floor with Françoise's help and wrapped a scarf around the snout. "What do they look like?"

"That's my point," Augustine snapped, tossing his curls. "They look like rejects from a low-budget production of Rent. Not to mention the smell. Get rid of them. Now." He flounced off in a huff.

I peered out from behind the curtain separating backstage from the catwalk, trying to spot my visitors, but it wasn't easy. The ballroom was packed with witches dressed to impress. It looked like big hats were in for summer, because at first all I could see was a field of brightly colored circles, bobbing and swaying like flowers in a breeze. There was no one in sight who looked like they smelled of anything that cost less than a hundred dollars an ounce. Then a couple of witches who had been partly blocking the view settled into their seats and I saw them.

Augustine was wrong; they weren't friends.

The music started up and the first model elbowed me out of the way, gliding onto the catwalk, her leopard-skin bag slinking along beside her. I hardly noticed, my eyes on the two figures who had squeezed in the back door. I didn't recognize them, but I knew what they were. The bulky coats they had on were a dead giveaway: war mages. And despite their scruffy appearance, I doubted they'd come to upgrade their wardrobe.

They were nonchalantly scanning the crowd, and I'd seen those casual glances on Pritkin's face often enough to know how much they took in. I moved farther into the shadow of the curtain, wondering if I could shift out unseen, when one of them nudged his companion and nodded at a group of dirty, poorly dressed children huddled against one wall. The mages started forward, faces grim, and the kids broke into a run. Most people had found their seats, so there was nothing between the kids and their pursuers except the two vamps acting as greeters.

There was a temporary alliance between the Circle and the Senate because of the war, but that didn't erase centuries of dislike and mistrust. Especially when war mages had been responsible for an attack on the premises a little over a week ago. The vamps blocked the way with insolent smiles on their faces, and the mages skidded to a halt.

The kids had run down the aisle flanking the wall and were now climbing onstage. Most people were watching the catwalk, which had been designed to extend out into the middle of the room, so they didn't garner more than a few puzzled glances. They headed straight backstage, but stopped on the edge of the frenetic activity.

They looked back and forth between me and several blonde models who were struggling into their outfits. Then a black boy of maybe fourteen nudged a small girl. "Which one?"

The girl had dishwater blond hair and big brown eyes that focused on me unerringly. "That one." She pointed with the hand not clutching a beat-up teddy bear.

The bag in my arms made a sudden lunge, causing me to almost lose my grip. Françoise said something that didn't sound French and it froze, a shiny black claw all of an inch from my face. "You want for me to take the crocodile?" she asked.

"Sounds like a plan." I passed the wicked thing over gratefully.

The boy looked at the girl with a dubious expression. "You sure?"

She nodded and went back to chewing off the bear's head. The boy walked over and held out a hand. The T-shirt he was wearing was thin and shot with pinholes, and his jeans were out at one knee. One of his tennis shoes had lost its lace and was being held together with a safety pin, and a ratty old sweatshirt was knotted around his waist. But the handshake was firm and he met my eyes. I had a weird sense of déjà vu, even before he spoke.

"I'm Jesse. Tami sent us."

"Tami?"

"Tamika Hodges."

I stared at him, feeling like someone had just kicked me in the gut. He stared back, dark eyes defiant, expecting to be ignored, rejected, thrown to the wolves. I recognized the look. A decade ago, I'd been about his age, and just as scared, just as defiant, just as sure I couldn't trust anyone. For the most part, I'd been right.

Years before I decided to destroy Tony, my ambition had been just to get away from him. I'd ended up in Chicago, because that was where the bus I'd caught happened to stop. As someone who had rarely been allowed to leave Tony's compound outside Philly, and then only with half a dozen bodyguards, I found my new freedom to be a very scary thing. I had money, thanks to a generous friend, but I was afraid to stay somewhere decent, sure that I would wake up to find a couple of Tony's goons looming over me. Not to mention that it's a little hard for a fourteen-year-old to check into a hotel on her own. So shelters it had been.

I soon discovered that there were a few problems associated with shelter life. Besides the drunks and the druggies and the knife fights, there were also limits on the length of your stay. The more long-term variety had a staff who might report a teenager on her own to the authorities, so I tended to gravitate to the two-week versions. That was long enough to get comfortable but not long enough for anyone to get to know me.

Most of this type kept records, though, and once your time was up, you weren't allowed to return for six months. The time limit was necessary to keep people from taking up permanent residence, but it also ensured that I went through all of the nicer shelters in a matter of months. I finally ended up in one that was so overcrowded, a third of us were living in a dirt-floored courtyard with a fence around it. Everyone was issued a sleeping bag at night and told to find a spot outside. The bigger and tougher crowd laid claim to the straggly grass and soft patches of dirt, leaving the hard concrete patio to the newbies and the junkies and the crazy old lady who made bird noises all night.

I'd woken up one morning to the feel of a cold arm next to mine, belonging to a young guy who'd OD'd in his sleep. It was the same day Tami showed up, on one of her regular sweeps looking for kids who had slipped through the cracks of the magical world. When a pretty African American woman with kind brown eyes and a voice that seemed much too big for her small frame offered me a place to stay, she hadn't had to do much talking. Only a couple of minutes after meeting her, I was dragging my backpack across the dirt to her beat-up Chevy.

Luckily, Tami had been legit, taking me to join a motley crew of other strays who jokingly called themselves the Misfit Mafia. The name made me do a double take the first time I heard it, but after a while it seemed oddly fitting. I'd run from one mafia to another, but with a definite difference: the new one tried to keep people alive instead of the reverse.

I eventually left the group to return to Tony, in order to try to take him down, and by the time I finally had all my plans in place, three years had passed. And then there was the blowup and the missing don and the bounty on my head, not to be confused with the shiny new one the Circle had recently laid. With one thing and another, it had been more than three years before I returned to the abandoned office building we'd called home. And all I found was echoing space, dirty windows and dust-covered floors.

I don't know why it was such a surprise. The magical underground changes fast, with three years being more like three decades. I'd stayed in Chicago a few days anyway, feeling restless and strangely anchorless. I hadn't dared to contact Tami after returning to Tony's, for fear he'd find out and take revenge on her for helping me. But subconsciously I'd always assumed that I would return one day and that nothing would have changed. And now that it had, I wasn't sure what to do about it.

Growing up in a place where any sign of weakness was quickly exploited, I'd learned how to bury inconvenient emotions, not how to release them. When even the youngest vamp was better than a lie detector at sensing physiological changes—a slightly elevated heart rate, the tiniest catch in breath, the too rapid blink of an eye—you learned self-control or you didn't last long. I discovered in Chicago that a lifetime of practice is hard to reverse, even when you don't need that skill anymore.

I'd roamed aimlessly around a few old haunts, including the bakery where she'd worked, but nothing had looked the same and I didn't recognize any of the people. After a few days, I realized that Chicago hadn't been home; Tami had, and she was gone. So I left some flowers in a corner of the old building, even knowing I was just feeding the rats, and moved on.

"How did you know where to find me?" I asked Jesse.

"Jeannie knew. She sees stuff sometimes. She said you'd help us."

"Jeannie's a clairvoyant?"

"Yeah. She not very good. She don't see much and mostly it's stupid stuff. She's only five," he said disparagingly. "But Tami thought it was a good idea. She said we was to go to you, if something happened to her. After it all went down, we got on the bus."

"After what went down?"

"The mages came. They took her." Black eyes bored into mine, already anticipating the answer to a question he hadn't yet asked. I knew that look, too. I understood a thing or two about betrayal.

"I'll take care of you," I heard myself say, and wondered if I was crazy. So far, it had been a chore just looking after myself. Tami must have been desperate to send them to me, when I had the biggest target on my back of anyone. I wanted to ask a thousand questions, but there wasn't time. I'd get some answers, but first we had to lose their pursuers.

I peered around the side of the curtains again to see that Casanova had joined the vamps holding off the mages. He was wearing a vest that jumped and crackled with animated flames—part of the menswear line, I assumed. It set off his dark hair and olive complexion nicely, but didn't do much for his expression. War mages weren't his favorite people. But while he could give them a hard time, he couldn't throw them out without cause, and they were between us and the exits.

I did a swift count of the gang, which numbered eight in total. Nine, I corrected, as the baby a girl was clutching a little too hard started to sniffle. Way too many to shift.

I glanced at Françoise. "I could use a diversion."

"'Ow beeg?" she asked casually.

"Beeg."

"D'accord."

She moved to the other side of the stage and started chanting something under her breath. Within seconds, a bank of dark clouds rolled in, settling over the catwalk with complete disregard of the fact that we were indoors. Chairs were knocked over as people scrambled to their feet, and the background murmur almost instantly became a roar. The witches apparently knew a bad sign when they saw one.

The mages suddenly stopped playing nice, shoved identification in Casanova's face and started up the aisle at a run. That was about the same time that something slimy and green hit the catwalk. I didn't even have a chance to identify it before a lot of other somethings followed, bursting out of the rumbling black mass of clouds like popcorn. The current model's pretty chiffon dress went from a pleased peach to an angry dark green, a hue that almost matched the skin of the toad that had slammed into her shoulder.

She screamed as part of it started oozing down her chest, and she stumbled back down the catwalk. But as it was fast being littered with little broken bodies, most smashed and split open, it was pretty much inevitable that she'd slip and go sliding on her butt. Things sort of went downhill after that.

Protective spells were being fired off on all sides, which, when they impacted the kamikaze amphibians, caused fleshy fireworks in midair. This made the witches in the middle of the room, who were being liberally splattered with frog guts, even less happy, causing them to turn on their sisters with abandon. That slowed down the mages, but I could still see them, grim and determined, wading through the fracas toward us.

"Are there any more of you?" I asked Jesse.

He said something, but I couldn't hear him over the sound of the audience's chairs smashing into the battered mages. Of course, they were slamming into a lot of other things, too, blown here and there by the wind and the spells and the mayhem. But I didn't notice anyone else disappearing under a mountain of expensive painted wood. It looked like the mages had stepped on one too many witches' toes.

"What?"

"No!" Jesse screamed in my ear. "We were the only ones who got away!"

"Okay. Let's get away again."