White Night

Chapter Twenty-Six

Not a full minute later, I could feel Elaine beginning the struggle to get her breathing under control. DuMorne's methods of teaching us to discipline our emotions had not been gentle, but they worked. Before another minute went by Elaine's breathing had steadied, and she leaned her head against my collarbone for a moment, a silent gesture of gratitude. Then she straightened, and I lowered my arms. She bowed her head toward Anna's corpse, an almost formal gesture of respect or farewell.

When she turned around, I was waiting for her with a damp, cool washcloth. I said quietly, "Hold still," and gently wiped her face clean. "You have to uphold the gumshoe image. Can't go out blotchy. People will think we're not hard-boiled. Very important to be hard-boiled."

She watched me as I cleaned her face and talked, and her eyes looked huge. A very small smile touched them through the sadness. "I'm glad you're here to tell me these things," she said, her voice steady again before it slipped into a bourbon-tainted, lockjawed Humphrey Bogart impersonation. "Now stop flapping your gums and start walking."

My tracking spell led us to an apartment building.

"This is Abby's building," Elaine said as I pulled over. The only close place to park was in front of a hydrant. I doubted any industrious civil servants would be handing out tickets this late, but even if they were, it would be cheap compared to what a long walk in the dark could cost me.

"Which apartment?" I asked.

"Ninth floor," Elaine replied. She shut the door of the Beetle a little harder than she had to.

"It occurs to me," I said, "that if I was a bad guy and wanted to off a couple of intrepid hard-boiled wizards, I might be hanging around watching someplace like this."

"It occurs to me," Elaine said, her voice crisp, "that he would be exceptionally foolish to make the attempt."

We walked together, quickly. Elaine was tall enough to keep up with me without taking the occasional skipping step. She'd slipped half a dozen coppery bracelets over each wrist, all of them slender, all of them hanging more heavily than they should have. Faint glints of golden energy played among them, and looked like little more than the glitter of light on metal—except that you could see them better when the bracelets were in deep shadows.

By silent agreement, we skipped the elevators. I had my shield bracelet ready to go, and my staff was quivering with leashed energy that made it wave and wobble incongruously to its weight and motion as I moved. That much readied magic could have unfortunate consequences on electrical equipment, like elevator control panels.

The doors to the stairs opened only from the other side, but I conjured a quick spell to shove against the pressure bar on the far side using my staff, and it swung open. We slipped into the stairway. Anyone waiting for us above would be watching the elevator first. Anyone chasing after us would have a hard time with the locked doors, and would make noise on the open concrete stairs.

I checked my gun with my left hand, safe in the pocket of my duster. Magic is groovy, but when it comes to dealing out death, regular mortal know-how can be just as impressive.

Nine floors up was enough to make me breathe hard, though not as hard as I once would have. A faint ghost of a headache came along with the elevated heart rate. Hell's bells, I must have been hurt a lot worse than I thought, back at the harbor. Elaine looked a little strained, herself. If she'd really smoothed away that much of an injury, she had more skill than she'd told me she did. That kind of healing isn't a matter of trivial effort, either. She might be more fragile than she appeared.

I opened the fire door on Abby's floor, and let Elaine take the lead. She went down the center of the hallway in total silence, her hands slightly outstretched, and I got the sense that she was somehow perfectly aware of everything around her—more so than human senses would account for. The bracelets on her wrists glittered more brightly. Superior awareness as a defense, then, instead of my own, more direct approach of meeting power with power and stopping things cold. Just her style.

But neither hyperawareness nor irresistible force was called for. Elaine reached a door and raised a hand to knock. Just before it fell, the door opened, and a strained-looking Abby gave us a quick nod. "Good, a little early, that's good; come in, yes, come in."

I started forward, but Elaine held up one hand to halt me, her eyes distracted. "Let me check. Another woman inside. Two dogs." She glanced at me, and lowered her hand. "One of them is your dog."

"Mouse?" I called.

The floor shook a little, and the big, dark grey dog nudged rather delicately past Abby and came to greet me, shoving his head into my stomach until I went down on one knee and got a sloppy kiss or two on the face.

I slapped his shoulders roughly a few times, because I'm supremely manly and did not tear up a little to see that he was all right and still attached to his collar. "Good to see you, too, furface."

Toto trotted out behind Mouse, like a tiny tugboat escorting an enormous barge, and gave a suspicious growl. Then he pattered over to me and sniffed me, sneezed several times, and evidently found me acceptable, underneath the smell of lake water. He hurried back over to Abby, gave me one more growl to make sure I'd learned my lesson, and bounced around her feet until she picked him up.

The plump little blonde settled the dog in her arms and faced me with concern. "What happened? I mean, the two of you left and what happened, where did you go, is Olivia—"

"Let's go inside," I said, rising. I traded a look with Elaine, and we all went into Abby's apartment. Mouse never left actual, physical contact with me, his shoulders pressing steadily, lightly, against my leg. I was the last through the door and closed it behind me.

Abby's place was a modest, hectic little apartment, segregated into neatly compartmentalized areas. She had a desk with a typewriter, a table with an old sewing machine, a chair beside a music stand with a violin (unless maybe it was a viola) resting on it, a reading niche with an armchair and overloaded shelves of romance novels, and what looked something like a shrine dedicated to ancestor worship, only in reverse, where the saints were all children with round cheeks and blond ringlets.

Priscilla was there, seated in the comfortable chair in the reading niche, looking haggard and much subdued. There was a cup of tea sitting on the little table beside the reading chair, but it had apparently gone cold without ever having been touched. She looked up at me, her eyes heavy and dull.

"Olivia's all right," I said quietly.

Abby brightened a second before I started speaking, drawing in a sharp little breath. The little dog in her arms caught her mood at once, and began wagging his tail at me. "Yes?"

"A… sometime associate of mine, the man in the pictures, has been taking women who were in danger of being a target of the killers out of the city. He learned Olivia was in danger and urged her to leave with him when he took several women to a safe house."

Priscilla stared at me hard for a long moment. Then she said, "What else?"

Elaine spoke, her voice quiet and unflinching. "Anna's dead. Back at the hotel room. An apparent suicide."

Abby let out a little gagging sound. She sat down very quickly in the chair by the violin. Toto let out small, distressed sounds. "Wh-what?" Abby asked.

Priscilla shuddered and bowed her head. "Oh. Oh, no. Oh, Anna."

"I need to know, ladies," I said quietly. "Why didn't you do as we instructed? Why did you leave the hotel?"

"It…" Abby began. Tears overflowed her cheeks. "It was… was…"

"She said," Priscilla said in a quiet, dull voice. "Said that she had to leave. That she had to go to work."

Son of a bitch. I knew it.

Elaine was half a beat behind me. "Who?"

"H-Helen," Abby sobbed. "It was Helen."