Page 28

TWENTY-EIGHT

Thorn

Even without leaning nearer, I could tell there was a certain expertise to the savaging of this mortal’s body. Blows chosen with care for maximum impact and to destroy specific zones. The zones they’d chosen, I couldn’t account for. Mortals had strange inclinations.

None of the battering had ended this one’s life. When I bent down by the body, my nose caught a faint but distinctive chemical tang that no human’s senses would have discerned. He’d been poisoned in some way before the savaging.

Sorsha stood beside me, motionless other than a brief shiver that passed through her stance. Her jaw was tight.

“He’s dead because of us,” she said with an unexpected strain in her voice.

Ruse shook his head. “We took every possible precaution. From what your friend admitted to, you were right—her clumsiness must have tipped the sword-star folks off that someone was overly interested in Meriden.”

“But Vivi wouldn’t have been interested in him if she hadn’t noticed that I was hiding something. If I’d faked it better—or maybe if I’d told her the truth and managed to convince her to stay out of it—if that even would have worked…” She bit her lip.

I frowned at her as I straightened up. Why should this man be anything to her other than a fallen enemy? She appeared distraught by his death not just for the practical implications but for his own sake as well.

Mortals and their fickle emotions.

“What of it if he’s dead?” I said. “The trail we were following is dead. All the answers we found centered around this man. Without him, we have no more than when we started at the bridge.”

Snap stirred as if he might have argued that point, but then he grimaced. There was no arguing it. We’d been focused on his Merry Den from the start, narrowing in closer and closer on that target—and here we were. He’d already checked all over the bridge; that was the only distinctive detail we’d found to follow up on. We’d lost all direction.

It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d been faster yesterday, if I’d managed to track Meriden’s path from here to begin with. I’d lost him when it’d been our last chance to use him. Just as I’d lost Omen to begin with, lost our freedom when those hunters had descended on us afterward…

I had no justification for it. I’d failed again, pure and simple. While these ruthless mortals did darkness only knew what to Omen—while he might be barely clinging to life—if he wasn’t already dead, that was. Every one of us standing around Meriden, even the lady, knew that the one we’d set out to save might have been dead before Sorsha had ever freed us from our cages.

He’d almost certainly end up dead regardless when I couldn’t serve him better than this. I’d meant for this time to be different. I’d had a mere three colleagues to defend. It should have been the easiest task.

Sorsha’s lips pursed, but the motion didn’t change the hopelessness etched on her face. The incubus sucked in a breath and glanced down the street. He attempted to conjure a little optimism with his tone. “There is the minivan to consider.”

“Do you really think they’ll keep using the same vehicle after this?” Sorsha said. “Or that they’ll have registered the plates in any way that would let us hunt them down? These are people who’ll do this to a guy just to make sure their tracks are covered.” She swept her arm toward the marred corpse.

The devourer shifted closer to her. “At least it wasn’t you.” His sharpened devotion showed in every inch of his posture, however that had developed.

He was right, though. I had achieved that one small victory: the mortal who’d rescued us from shameful captivity was still alive and reasonably well. For however much longer I could maintain that state of events.

“It’s a long shot, but—” Ruse crouched down and checked the man’s pockets, avoiding the bloody parts of the body as well as he could. Coming up empty, he sighed and straightened back up. “They thought of just about everything, like always.”

As I was about to suggest we leave before our enemies also thought of sending a new pack of soldiers after us, Sorsha’s chin came up. Her eyes gleamed with a ferocity that burned most of her despondency away.

“Just about, but not everything. They’ve never been able to predict everything we’d be able to do—the connections we’ve made, the skills we have.”

She turned to Snap. “You can taste impressions off inanimate objects. I know there’s something different about it with living beings, something you want to avoid—but he’s not alive anymore. Can you test him and see what comes up, just like Thorn could take the drunk guy who attacked me into the shadows after he was dead?”

The devourer’s eyes widened. He stared down at the corpse with a nervous flick of his tongue between his lips. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried that before.”

Ruse had brightened at the suggestion. “It certainly can’t hurt to give it a shot, can it? It’s not as if you could hurt him now. You certainly can’t kill him any more than he’s already been murdered.”

I didn’t know exactly what had soured Snap so thoroughly against his own greatest power, but his whole body had tensed despite the incubus’s words. I squared my shoulders, preparing to order him to make the attempt with the full impact of my presence, but Sorsha spoke up first.

She touched his arm, her expression softening in a way that sent a twinge I couldn’t explain through my chest. “The thought of doing it reminds you of whatever happened before, doesn’t it?”

He nodded with a jerk, his gaze still fixed on the body. “I know it isn’t the same. Ruse is right about everything he said. I should just—” And yet he couldn’t seem to move.

“Don’t think about that other time,” Sorsha suggested. “Think about how it felt when you found Meriden’s name or his house. Imagine how many useful impressions must be attached to him. You could get us so much closer to Omen, to stopping the people who worked in that lab.”

“Yes. Yes.” The devourer gathered himself, determination hardening the graceful lines of his face. He knelt by Meriden’s back and leaned in.

Sorsha hovered over him, poised as if she thought she might need to leap in and steady him again, her lips curved in a gentle but elated smile. The fierceness I’d seen still shone in her eyes. Ruse watched the proceedings with eager anticipation.

The desolation that had come over our group had fallen away, just like that. She had defeated it, even though she’d been more affected by the death than the rest of us.

In that moment, while they all studied the body, I couldn’t tear my gaze away from her—from the magnificent strength I hadn’t completely perceived until just now. And not just strength. Snap might have gone through with this act under my orders out of fear, but she’d seen what he needed well enough to not just convince him but inspire him.

It shouldn’t have been surprising. Our lady might be mortal, true, but she was the sort of mortal who broke into prisons and freed shadowkind from their jailors at risk of her own life and liberty. How could she be anything other than extraordinary? She’d managed to fill the gap left by our loss of Omen so surely and yet subtly it’d nearly escaped my notice.

Silly songs and flashy clothes and all, she brought something essential to our group. Something I suddenly had trouble imagining doing without, even after we had Omen leading the charge again.

But why would she want anything to do with us and the danger we’d thrust into her life once this quest was over?

The earlier twinge turned into a pang. Before I could examine it, determine just what it meant, Snap rocked back on his heels with a shaky gasp. His pupils had dilated, the brilliant green of his eyes in his true physical form glittering around them.

“I saw so much,” he said breathlessly. “So many places. The house and the streets and halls that are bright but cold. Shadowkind in little rooms with locked doors. Shiny tables like in the office we searched, computers with streams of words and numbers and wriggling lines…”

“Where?” Ruse asked. “That’s got to be the place they took Omen to.”

“I don’t… I don’t know. It all came in fragments. It’s hard to piece together.” Snap went still, his forehead furrowing as he must have sorted through the barrage of impressions I had to assume an entire human body would have collected. “There was a place not yet built, all steel beams and walls half attached—maybe that was from farther back. There was another house like his but with a blue door. There was a grocery store, fruit with smooth skin in his hands. A book. A building coming up out of dirt ground, with concrete walls and doors shiny like those lab tables. Music rising from a wooden platform down below where people were sitting in rows with their instruments. And another building—I think it was important—he was nervous when he walked inside.”

Sorsha latched on to that comment, sinking next to him. “When he walked inside where, Snap?”

His tongue flicked again, as if he could draw more certainty out of the air. “Big glass windows. Sale. Bright boxes in the windows with little figures like people and animals and cars. I think I can see the sign.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Fun Station Depot. He went there more than one time—I see it when it’s light and dark and in-between. Worried. He had to tell them something, something about his work, he wasn’t sure they’d be happy enough with it.”

“Did you get much sense of what that work was?” Ruse asked.

“No. Only—shadowkind. Fear and awe of them. Needing to keep them contained.” Another flick. “Walking into that building, the one that made him nervous, he’d be thinking about how the way to get in was iron. I don’t know what that means.”

The devourer’s shoulders sagged with those last words, as if drawing out so many impressions had drawn most of the energy out of his body as well.

Sorsha tapped her lips. “Iron. A key, maybe, to wherever they do their illicit dealings.”

“At this Fun Station Depot?” I said. “What is that ?” It didn’t sound like a military base or hunter’s den.

Our mortal had already whipped out her phone. A laugh spilled out of her. “It’s a toy store,” she said. “A big outlet place—not too far from where I’ve gone bargain hunting for clothes with Vivi.” She peered at Snap. “You think he went in there a lot for something to do with his work.”

“Yes. It felt that way. I don’t think the shadowkind were there… but wherever they were, he was less nervous about that.”

“And at least for this spot we have a definite location. It must be a front for some part of the sword-star bunch’s operations. They’d need money for all that equipment and the people they’re hiring; they’d have to set up a legitimate business to launder it through, I guess.”

She nibbled at her lip in thought and then glanced up at me with a twinkle in her eyes I wished I could capture. “What do you say we go toy shopping?”