Redemption Alley

Chapter Twenty-three

Dawn leached gray through the sky. Galina’s eyes were smudged with sleeplessness. “Thank God you’re here,” she greeted me. “Your detective’s all right, but that Trader—”

Oh, Jesus. What now? “Do I have to kill her?” I only sounded weary, which was a bad sign. Leon sighed, leaning against the door, and Galina handed him a cold can of Pabst.

That’s your local Sanc. On tap with whatever you need. Galina made a slight moue of distaste. “She’s up in the greenhouse, crying. Tried to get out, but you said you wanted her here. Something about Fairfax, and—”

“I can kill her,” Leon volunteered hopefully, popping the top and taking a slurp. The eyeliner turned his eyes into dark holes, and made the smudges of exhaustion under them deeper. “Put a real capper on my night.”

It’s not like a Trader to cry, unless there’s an advantage in it. Still, she saved Carp. Under threat of death, but still. I let out a sigh that was mostly weariness, with a soupçon of irritation thrown in. “Not yet.” Not tonight, at least. Or today, since it’s dawn. “Where’s Carp?”

“In bed. He’s sedated. I think he’ll be fine, if he can get over the nightmares.” Galina sighed, too. She really was a gentle soul.

It made me wonder sometimes. If I’d ever been a gentle soul, would my life have knocked it out of me? Would I have survived hunter training and the nights afterward if I’d had any gentleness left in me?

Stay with the here and now, Jill. “Can he talk?”

Galina shrugged, slipping her hands in the pockets of her gray knit hoodie. She looked like she could use a night or two of rest as well. “Depends on what you want to talk to him about. He’s not going to be doing quadratic equations, but he’s coherent.”

Upstairs, in the spare room over the shop, Carp lay still as death under a vintage yellow counterpane. He was cottage-cheese pale, his sandy hair a bird’s nest, and even though the blood had been washed off the wound on his head was glaring. He stared at me through the gray light spilling through windows humming with a Sanctuary’s powerful defenses, and I knew that look in his eyes.

Carper was now haunted. He’d seen the nightside up close. Not just the fragrance of difference that hung on a Were, not just the bodies left after a nightside eruption into the civilian world. He’d been in the nightclub for forty-five minutes or so—more than enough time for him to see up close what lurked under the fabric of reality.

They just wanted to play with him before Shen came down, Irene had said. God alone knew what game they had played. One that involved taking a bite out him, apparently.

I dragged a straight-backed chair over to the side of the bed. “Hey.” Even though I needed words out of him, needed them quickly, I spoke slowly, softly. “How are you?”

He managed a harsh little thread of a laugh. “Kismet.” It wasn’t an answer. “Jesus.”

“Just the former, Detective.” A little humor, to set him at ease.

Who was I kidding? No way was Carp going to be set at ease. He’d seen under the mask.

I decided to get down to it. I couldn’t make the shock any less, but I could at least get usable information out of him if he was coherent. “Bernardino, Alfie Bernardino. Ayala’s partner. What do you know about him, Carp?”

Still, even as I said it, I hated myself. He needed sedation and a therapist, not me digging around and reminding him of things he was probably goddamn eager to start forgetting.

He blinked. Made an internal effort, things shifting behind his eyes. “Ayala. His partner. Slippery fucker.”

Man, this just keeps getting better. “He’s in it up to his neck, and probably deeper. But then you know that, right?”

“Credit card statements about this waitress—Irene. She—” He coughed, weakly, his eyelids falling down. “Kiss, their eyes. Their eyes were glowing.”

They always do, Carp. I laid a hand against his forehead—my left hand, since the right was humming with fever-hot hellbreed-tainted force. “Just rest. It’ll fade.”

I was lying. Things like this don’t fade. They come back in nightmares and in waking dreams, flashbacks and stress disorders you need antidepressants for—or something stronger.

Something like a steel-cold barrel in the mouth, or the bottle in the hand, or pills you can’t get in the States. Something, anything, to make it go away so you can face the normal world.

Except sometimes you can’t.

“Do you have anything else on Bernardino?” I didn’t want to push him… but I had to know. I had to.

“File. Maybe in the file… their eyes. And the teeth…” His eyelids drifted down, and Carp took refuge in the sedation.

I didn’t blame him.

I sat there for a long few moments, gray gathering strength through the windows, dawn coming up. My left hand lay human-cold and limp on Carp’s sweating forehead, under the gash that ran along his hairline and jagged into his temple, sutured up and quiescent under a dabble of green herbal paste running with the clear gold of Sanctuary sorcery. Galina’s work, fine and gentle, stitching together damage.

I wished she had something that would stitch up the damage inside him. I’d have to get him to a trauma counselor; there were a few on call that took care of things like this and billed the police department.

What comes next, Jill? Come up with a plan. Your brain works just fine, now for God’s sweet sake, use it.

I took my fingers gently away from Carp’s feverish, damp, human skin.

It took longer than I liked, breathing deeply and staring at the gray filling up the cup of the window, for my mental floor to clear. I needed sleep, and food, and a good few hours of hard thinking.

So many things I needed. What I was going to get was a long mess before this was all through.

When I finally pushed myself up, leather creaking, I stood looking down at Carp’s slack face. He was still shocky-pale, but breathing all right. He might wake up not remembering much, the brain outright refusing, to keep the psyche from being further traumatized. Or he might wake up reliving every single second of it, replaying it like a CD on repeat until he had a psychotic break.

It was too soon to tell.

“Jill?” Leon stood in the door, the copper tied in his hair clinking and shifting as soon as he spoke.

“Where’s the Trader?” I kept staring at the planes and valleys of Carp’s unhandsome face, as if they would turn into a map that would lead me out of this.

The amulets around Leon’s throat jingled a bit as he touched them, his version of a nervous tic. “Up in the greenhouse, Galina says. Are we sitting tight or moving out?”

I swallowed hard, juggling priorities. Rest easy, Carper. I’m on the job. “Moving in fifteen, Leon. Get what you need.”

“Where we going?”

The next step is to find Bernardino—after we visit Hutch. “Hutch’s, to find out what we’re up against. Then we’re going cop-hunting. Leave your truck here.”