I took a step back, found my footing, and turned. Headed off down the street. Some of the neighbors had cleared their sidewalks, but most of them hadn’t bothered. The gutters were mounded with snowplow ick.
Graves crunched along behind me. I tried to ignore him. Good one, Dru. What the hell do you need him along for? He’s only going to drag you down. Or you’re going to drag him down.
But he caught up with me as we reached the end of the block, and I didn’t step away or try to keep ahead of him. He didn’t say another word for a long time, and while that was okay, I kind of wished he’d talk to me.
It might have stopped me from thinking scary, scary thoughts.
CHAPTER 17
The coffee shop was one I’d never been in before, and it was jammed with people in heavy winter coats, the windows fogging with collective breath. I watched the street for a bit, Graves sitting across from me and fiddling with a paper cup, his legs stretched out and his knee bumping mine every once in a while until I shifted.
“All right,” I said, finally, when I’d watched the traffic moving on the street for long enough. I took a gulp of my hot chocolate, found it was cold. “We go over it again. I’m going up to that pay phone. I’m popping in the change and dialing. I’ll see who answers and play it by ear. As soon as I hang up, you get up and meet me up at the corner. If I walk up on the building side, you peel away, take the 34 bus, and meet me at my house in a few hours. If I walk up on the street side, it’s safe to act like you know me. Got it?”
I got an eye roll and a shrug in response. “I got it, I got it. Very James Bond. You really have been doing this a while.” He didn’t look at me, staring at the line going up to the counter. His face squinched up as if he tasted something bitter. “This place really reeks.”
I shrugged. It was just a regular chain coffee outlet, with hordes of overpriced crap crowding the shelves and rickety tables, the kids behind the counter scrambling to keep up with the nonfat, soy chai, double shot, sugar-free, dry foam, drip please, do you have a sugar substitute? People shuffled up to the counter, got their froofy java, and shuffled out the door, usually jabbering away on cell phones about something useless or meaningless.
None of them knew about the Real World. None of them were so scared their bones felt like water.
“They don’t have a clue.” I scooped up my not-so-hot-anymore chocolate and scraped my chair away from the table. My back still hurt, twinges running down either side of my spine like a river.
A lady the size of a pickup truck in a massive blue parka—so large she looked practically square from the back—manhandled her kid up to the counter. The poor kid looked about five, bundled up against the cold, a wide slick of snot running down his upper lip, which he kept wiping at with a crusted sleeve. He stared raptly at the wall below the counter as his mom jabbered at the tired-looking blonde girl behind the counter. The curve of the wall seemed to fascinate him, since it bulged out to hold the coffee machines off to their left, and he ran his mittened hand along it until his mother jerked him back like she wished she had a choke collar on him. He let out an indignant sound and she shook him the way a dog will shake a puppy, but without a mama dog’s gentleness.
My stomach turned into a cold lump. “Not a single goddamn clue,” I repeated, and tossed my still-full cup into the trash on my way out the door.
The cold was full of exhaust and a bitter metal tang that probably meant more snow. I crunched down the sidewalk—a sheet of deicer pellets that looked like blue rock salt lay unreeled in front of every downtown business—toward the pay phone. I was pretty sure it worked; it’d given me a dial tone earlier when we walked past toward the coffee shop.
I dug in my pocket for quarters and the number, copied onto a blank anonymous scrap of notepaper. I ran over the plan again, trying to look for weak spots or angles, anything I’d missed, and I suddenly wondered if Dad had ever felt this way. This responsible. Throat dry, stomach churning, worry like a diamond-eyed rat chewing inside my head with bright, sharp teeth.
When I was little, I used to think he could do anything. He’d show up at Gran’s every few months, sometimes with bruises or walking a little slow, and Gran would bake a cake, lay out a supper with everything he liked. It got to where I could tell when he was coming in by how early Gran got up and started cooking in the morning. She always knew before he would come bouncing up the washboard driveway, even though the house had no phone.
I remembered him picking me up and whirling around until I was dizzy while I shrieked with laughter in the front yard, a field of daisies and grass Gran hacked at with a machete every once in a while. Or him taking me out into the woods a little later and teaching me to shoot—first plinking with a BB gun, then with a .22 rifle, and last of all with a pistol and a shotgun. That was my twelfth summer, the one before Gran died.
I shook the memory away and stepped up to the half-booth. The mouthpiece slipped against my gloves, and I consoled myself that not a lot of germs would be able to live on it when it was this goddamn cold. I plugged the quarters in and dialed, then stuffed the paper back into my pocket. Leave no trace, Dru girl. Think about what you’re doing.
I waited, heart pounding, a nasty sour taste filling my throat up to my back teeth.
Ringing. The phone worked, at least. Two rings. Three. Four.
Someone picked up.
They didn’t say anything, though. Instead, there was the peculiar not-quite-dead sound of a line with someone breathing on the other end. I listened, counting off the seconds. There was faint, indecipherable noise in the background, like traffic.
One one thousand. Two one thousand. Three one thousand.
There was a hissing sound, breath escaping between tongue and teeth, not quite whistling.
Six one thousand. Seven one thousand. Eight one thousand.
“Don’t hang up, little girl.” Male. Sounded pretty young, too, but something in the spacing of the words was off. Like an accent, and unlike.
My entire body flushed hot, then chilled. I tasted wax oranges and salt, but faintly. Nine one thousand. Ten one thousand.
“Quiet as a mouse.” There was a short, bitter little laugh, as if the guy at the other end had a mouthful of something foul. “Fine. When you’re ready for more answers, come find me. Corner of Burke and 72nd. You can just walk right in.”
Fourteen one thousand. Fifteen one thousand. I jammed the receiver back down in its cradle and stepped back, breathing heavily, all my muscles threatening to turn into noodles. Jesus. Jesus Christ.
I glanced around. The dangerous taste of oranges intensified, coating my tongue. Shit. What now? My legs took care of moving me away from the phone, hugging the building side of the walk. There were even dry patches where the building overhangs kept the snow off.
I didn’t wait to see if Graves peeled off and headed for the bus. I hoped he’d be smart.
Burke and 72nd. I had to find a map. The transit center would have one, and it was a good place to lose a tail. I wasn’t sure if someone was following, but the thick, clotted citrus filling my mouth warned me. Sometimes Real World baddies can get a lock on you even over the phone line, Dad said—hey, they were psychic, too. It was why we bothered being cautious about phone numbers—and my best bet was getting enough distance to confuse whoever it was.
There hadn’t been an inked cross, so it wasn’t a safe number. But he, whoever he was, might not know for sure it was me. Hopefully he wouldn’t know if Dad had given the number to another hunter, if there had been a backup, or just who I was.
Too much you don’t know, Dru. This might have been a mistake.
Still, now I knew something. I knew where a trap was. Where there was a trap, there was a way to spring it and find out who was behind it. If I was careful, and lucky.
You might be careful, but you’re just a kid. Dad should be doing this. He was smart and strong, and if someone turned him into a walking corpse, you don’t have a chance.
But I was all there w
as. What else was I going to do?
Skip town. Get the hell out.
Yeah, right. In the snow. With no car. That sounded like a way to get caught by something or someone. And not a nice way, either.
I put my head down and lengthened my stride, still sticking to the building side. The sky was a freezing, aching blue, clouds blinking over the lens of the heavens. Some of them were heavy gray, a thick billowing edge trailing infinity in its wake.
I didn’t look back to see if Graves was doing what I’d told him. He was on his own for the next few hours, until I was sure it was safe for me to go home.
Until I was sure I wouldn’t bring anything home with me.
The transit center was two streets over. I stood looking at a map of downtown and finally found Burke and 72nd on the edge, where the streets started to bleed away into the suburbs. Only one bus went out that way. I checked the sky, traced the route with my fingertips, looked for escapes. There weren’t any.
This would be a lot easier if I had the truck. Come on, Dru. Plan. Use that brain.
I stood staring at the transit map, willing it to show me something different. I needed to make sure my trail was clear, go home, and plan.
A bolt of glassy pain lanced through the center of my brain. I sucked in a breath, flinching, but it passed as soon as it had come, leaving only a ringing sound in its wake, like a wet wineglass stroked just right. Everything else was drowned in silence like deep water.
I looked up.
The world stood frozen in sharp detail. The buses were caught mid-idle, clouds of breath hanging out of everyone’s mouth, each puff of exhaust or breath solid like wax castings. A guy in a long dark coat was flicking away a cigarette butt, its smoke trailing thinly from his fingers like a leash. People stood, balanced on one foot or another, like the movie of life had just hit pause and someone had forgotten to tell me.
A snow-pale fluttering moved atop one of the buses. I stared.
There, on top of the long, blunt-nosed shape, Granmama’s white owl fluffed its wings, pinned me with a yellow stare. Its head cocked to the side, as if to say, What’s up, boss?
It was hard to move. Clear air had hardened to syrup around me. The best I could manage was a swimming amble, fighting against drag. Three steps, four, toward the bus, which stood with its door open, the driver inside motionless, a CB handset to his mouth and his eyes shut, in the middle of a blink.
The world snapped around me like a rubber band. Sound flooded back, engines and coughs and people talking, the low moan of the wind. I stood for a moment, staring up at the driver as he finished jabbering into the radio and glanced down at me.
“Getting on the bus, kid?” He had Santa Claus apple cheeks and a full white beard, and a kerchief of the American flag knotted around his neck. His knuckles were swollen and reddened, and he looked as cheerful and nonthreatening as you’d want someone to be behind the wheel of several tons.
I climbed aboard, heart thumping, showed my bus pass, and took a seat a quarter of the way back—close enough to the driver that delinquents or crazies in the rear wouldn’t bother me, but far enough back the driver wouldn’t notice much of anything I did unless I had some sort of vomiting seizure or something.
The way I felt, a seizure might’ve been an option. I had to struggle to breathe deeply.
I was sweating under my coat, scarf, and hat. But my teeth kept wanting to chatter, and goose bumps prickled hot and hard on my arms and legs. I folded my arms, trying not to feel as if I was hugging myself for comfort, and when the bus started up and began lurching, I wondered if the owl was still on top. Or if anyone would see it.
Way to go with the woo-woo, Dru. But there was a curious comfort—Gran had taught me about running on intuition. If her owl was here, I didn’t have to worry much about being led astray. I just had to go with it, and I didn’t have to convince Dad that it was serious and for real instead of just kid fears or an overactive imagination. Sure, I was supposed to watch out for stuff he couldn’t eyeball, and he always said my instincts were good. . . . But still, I guess adults have problems with this sort of thing, even when they know the monsters are out there.
I’d never had the world stop around me before. And the owl had never shown up during broad daylight. It was a nighttime thing, a dream thing.
I shivered again.
Watch your ass, Dru. Just because you’re getting a message doesn’t mean it’s a good one.
It was just what Dad would have said. Gran might have just nodded, her peaky gray eyebrows going up in that particular way, the one that meant I’d just stated something so obvious it didn’t bear repeating or remarking on.
I swallowed a sudden wave of homesick loneliness. The taste of oranges faded as the bus wallowed through a turn, tires rasping and gritting on sand-covered roadtop, and crept out of the transit center. I looked steadily out the window, my eyes pricking with hot tears, and waited for the next thing.
Two hours later the sky had turned into a pale gray bruise, small stones of snow were pattering down, and my mouth tasted like I’d been walking in a citrus grove again. I heard that same ringing, like a gong after its tone has faded but before it stops vibrating, and pulled the stop cord. My hand just flashed out and caught it, really without any direction on my part.
Running on intuition is like that. You never know what crazy shit’s going to happen next.
“Keep warm out there,” the driver said as I passed. He’d said the same thing to every ever-loving person who got off. I just pulled my cap further down, almost to my eyebrows, and hoped I wouldn’t slip and fall on my ass when I hit the ground outside.
I exhaled sharply, looked around. The bus shelter here was a shell of plastic, scarred with graffiti, and warehouses slumped all around under the iron-dark sky. The light had deepened but was failing fast, sunshine struggling to make it through whirling snow. It was late in the afternoon, and it gets dark quickly in winter this far north.
Real dark, and real quickly.
I cast around. Considered spitting to get the taste of wax oranges off my tongue. The snow hissed, driving in small particles against the bus shelter, and Granmama’s owl glided in on soft muffled wings, a cleaner white than the dirty sky.
You know, I’d be diagnosed crazy if I told a shrink about this. What the hell is an owl doing out here? But I followed carefully, my soles crunching against snow that started to creak when I stepped in it. What sidewalk there was wasn’t cleared out here—I had to fight through a shin-deep freeze, scramble over a heap of dirty crap thrown up by snowplows, and cross the street. Then there was another waist-high mountain of exhaust-blackened, sand-laden snow to scale, and the mouth of a dark alley to navigate. The owl glided in noiselessly as if on a string, a tongue sliding through a gap in broken teeth. The warehouses on either side were abandoned, Sunshine Meatpacking on one faded sign spackled with chunks of frozen stuff plastered there by the wind.
The alley had been sheltered from the worst of the snow. It was stacked with wooden pallets and other assorted junk. Good for an ambush, especially with the shadows growing by the second. The owl floated above me in a tight circle, then sailed down and around a bend.
Great. A blind turn in an alley. Dad would be motioning me back to the open end of it to keep watch. He’d go from cover to cover, but I was just strolling down the middle as if I was on rails.
Tiny little dots of snow drifted down one at a time, the alley only getting a desultory sprinkling. The wind rose with a moan, tiny ice pellets whispering wherever they touched a flat surface. I slipped my right hand in my pocket, touched the switchblade’s cold handle. My fingertips were frozen solid, not stinging anymore.
The alley made an L shape, and the bend was choked with junk on either side. I halted, peered around the corner, saw more daylight.
Looks okay. I looked up—no owl. The oranges vanished, leaving only the cold and the sudden miserable feeling that I was being watched.
I slid through the gap between palle
ts and headed down the other half of the alley. There was less trash here, but it looked older and more rotten—a drift of decaying newspaper over a shape that might have been human.
I flinched nervously. Looked again and it was just a busted-down old couch. Overflowing trash cans, one with condensation frozen on its sides, frost flowers blooming across the galvanized surface. I shuddered at the thought of what they might have in them and hurried past, because the end of the alley suddenly seemed brighter.
I came out, blinking, in a weedy, trash-strewn vacant space. At the far end, a chain-link fence sloped drunkenly back and forth. It looked weirdly familiar. And there on the other side . . .
I turned in a full circle. Yep, there were the two buildings squinched together, broken glass staring out into the cold night. I’d seen them from a different angle. I finished the turn, squinted at the chain-link fence. Let out a disbelieving sigh, my breath louder than the snow.
Our truck hunched on the other side of the fence. It was buried under a hood of deep snow, but I’d know the camper shape anywhere. And under the snow it was faded blue, the blue of a summer sky, the best color in the world.
“Holy shit,” I whispered. The buildings behind me crouched, groaning like they intended to get up and hobble for a hot bath.
I took another two steps forward, through a knee-deep drift. The wind smacked me, rising and moaning eerily, loaded with stinging snow-buckshot. My jeans were sodden, clinging below the knee, and I couldn’t feel my feet. I lurched forward again, tripped over something buried under the snow, and fell headlong. My palms hit snow, and I hoped there was nothing sharp under its soft white blanket.
Good one, Dru. I floundered up to my feet, shaking like a dog to get the powdery stuff off me. Considered cursing, but another bolt of pain slung through my head, this one jolting down my neck and spreading across my sore, aching back. I let out a half-garbled sound and hunched, crossing my arms over my belly, cold burning against my cheeks.