Midnight Blue-Light Special Part 13

"No. New Jersey. She was just visiting me for the day."

"Ah. Well, if you see her, can you let her know that I-"

The sound of the theme from Dance or Die suddenly blared from my front pocket. I fumbled for my phone, hitting the "mute" b.u.t.ton, but it was already way too late.

"What was that?" asked Margaret, all pretense of friendly curiosity gone. She was a hunter, and she had just received confirmation that her prey was nearby.

"My phone," said Sarah, hopelessly.

"If that was your phone, what's that on the couch? You have two cell phones? That seems a bit excessive, don't you think?" I heard Margaret turn and start to walk. "You sure your friend left? Seems a little odd that you'd hide her from m-"

There was a heavy smacking noise, followed by the thump of Margaret collapsing to the floor. I poked my head around the wall. Sarah was standing with her legs braced wide, a decorative vase in her hands, panting in what I recognized as terror. Margaret was sprawled facedown on the carpet in front of her. The fall had hiked both her coat and blazer up in the back, revealing the gun she had tucked between her s.h.i.+rt and pants.

"Get the gun," I said, moving to grab Sarah's bags. "Do you have any duct tape?"

"Why would I have duct tape?" Sarah asked. She dropped the vase. It landed without breaking, rolling to b.u.mp to a stop against the base of the couch. "Is she dead? Did I kill her?"

"No, but she's going to have one h.e.l.l of a headache." I trotted over and shoved Sarah's bags into her hands before dropping to my knees next to Margaret, producing a roll of electrical tape from my own bag. "Duct tape would have been better, but this will hold her for a while. You have four minutes to grab anything else you want from this place. We will not be coming back here. Understand?"

"I understand," whispered Sarah, and ran for the dining room table.

I learned the basics of tying up-or taping up-an unconscious opponent when I was still in elementary school, mostly by using my siblings for practice. I flipped Margaret over and got to work, moving a little slower than I would have if I hadn't been searching her for weapons at the same time. She was armed for bear. Acid-spitting, fire-breathing bear. If I hadn't already known she was a relative, the number of knives I took out of her coat would have made me suspicious.

Even with that complication, I had her bound in less than a minute and a half. I shrugged my backpack off and began cramming her weapons into it, pausing only long enough to be sure the guns were resting on empty chambers and nothing was bugged or tagged with tracers. The last thing I did was remove her necklace: a thin disk of what looked like pure copper floating in a vial of water mixed with crushed herbs.

I heard a gasp behind me before Sarah thought, I can feel her in the room now.

"Swell-I was right. It's an anti-telepathy charm." I shoved Margaret's necklace into my pocket. "They're more prepared than I wanted them to be." Someone had been telling stories. Dominic was no longer a friendly.

"What are we going to do?" Sarah whispered.

"Run." I stood. "She'll be p.i.s.sed when she wakes up. We'll exit through the kitchen. We can hail a cab and have them drop us at the 9th Street PATH Station."

"And from there?"

"From there, we walk." I turned to face my terrified cousin, ignoring the blood relative who was lying unconscious on the floor. At the moment, Margaret was the least of our problems. There were two more Covenant operatives in the area-three, counting Dominic-and for all I knew, they were both in the hotel. "Come on, Sarah. Let's get the h.e.l.l out of here."

I managed to shove Sarah's two smaller laptops into the suitcase. She held onto the third one, hugging it like a teddy bear. We took the service elevator down to the first floor, where Sarah babbled something about an angry ex-boyfriend waiting for her in the lobby to the supervisor on duty in the kitchen. The supervisor, a tough-looking African-American woman with the sort of eyes that have seen all the dark things a city has to offer, might have believed us even without Sarah's telepathic push backing up the story. We were two women alone, and we were obviously scared, even if I was doing my best not to show it. Sarah was just the icing on the cake of conviction. The supervisor nodded at the right places, frowned at the right places, and showed us the route through the kitchen to the back door. She didn't ask why we didn't want to call the police. Odds were good that she had her own answers for that, and that they weren't much better than our reality.

Sarah was crying by the time we made it outside, huge, crystalline tears running down her cheeks. She was beautiful when she cried, since her face never got flushed and her eyes never got red. She just cried, a pale doll of a girl with eyes that seemed too big for her face. We walked along the back of the hotel-running would have attracted too much attention-to the nearest corner that wasn't visible from the lobby. A cab pulled up almost immediately. We didn't even need to hail it. Sarah's semi-audible waves of distress took care of that part.

Much as I hate cabs, Sarah's not a runner, and even if she were, we couldn't risk the Covenant having their third operative stationed somewhere at roof level. If we were followed back to the Nest, we'd be sitting ducks. I ushered her into the vehicle as quickly as I could.

"9th Street PATH," I said, once we were safely in the cab with the doors closed and the subtly tinted windows between us and the rest of the city.

The cabbie looked dubious-an unusual reaction from a New York City cab driver, but that was traveling with Sarah for you. It's harder for her to keep certain things under control when she's upset. The poor guy was probably already starting to think of her as his niece, or his best friend's daughter. "Are you sure you don't want to go somewhere safer?" he asked. "Like the police, maybe?"

"The PATH station," whispered Sarah. Then, more loudly, she added, "Please."

It was the "please" that did it. The cabbie hit the gas and we rocketed away from the curb, merging into the traffic as it flowed past the Port Hope Hotel. I gritted my teeth and forced myself to watch the sidewalks for signs of pursuit.

Sarah, breathe, I thought, as soothingly as I could. You need to calm down, or you're going to convince this guy that you're his long-lost daughter, and we're going to wind up being taken home for comfort and ca.s.serole.

I could have done with a little comfort, and I never turn down a good ca.s.serole. Having grandparents from the Midwest will do that. But this was not the time, and there was no reason to start dragging innocents into the line of fire.

I'm trying, said Sarah, her mental voice barely above a whisper. That woman . . .

I know. I put my hand on Sarah's knee. She shuddered and slumped against me, resting her head on my shoulder. I wanted to tell her to watch the street, to keep scanning for anything that looked out of place. I didn't. I couldn't. Sarah may be a part of the family, but she's not a fighter. She's never had to be. I didn't know how to tell her that was going to have to change.

The cabbie dropped us at one of the entrances to the 9th Street PATH station, making one last attempt to convince us to go somewhere safer before he allowed me to pay his fare and drove away. Sarah had a tendency to stiff cabbies-not intentionally; she just never thought about needing to pay them-but I didn't want this guy to remember two upset girls who got a ride out of the goodness of his heart. Anything I could do to make us less unusual was worth doing.

"Now what?" asked Sarah, once the taxi was pulling away and we were alone in the inevitable crowd. She clutched her laptop to her chest like a talisman, like it could somehow protect her from what was going on around us.

"We go down," I said. I took her suitcase, hoisting it easily, and motioned for her to follow me down the steps into the station.

I didn't realize before coming to New York that the city was actually served by two different subways. There's the munic.i.p.al subway, which covers the island of Manhattan and shows up in a lot of movies and TV shows. Then there's the PATH, the Port Authority Trans-Hudson train system, which connects Manhattan to the nearby state of New Jersey. Lots of people commute to work from Jersey City and Newark, allowing them to enjoy the benefits of being right by the Big Apple, without also enjoying the high cost of living.

Sarah and I paid our single-trip fares to get into the PATH system. Then we walked to the end of the platform, where I checked my phone to be sure that I had the right schedule in mind, took her hand, and pulled her down into the darkness.

Things I do not recommend trying at home: navigating an active subway system in the dark, knowing that if you're wrong about your timing, you're going to find out what it feels like to be on the losing side of a squirrel-meets-semi road kill scenario.

Things I do recommend trying when there's a chance that you've been followed by members of a pseudo-religious order that would really enjoy the opportunity to wipe you from the face of the planet: risking that road kill scenario. I knew the way along the tracks, but the Covenant didn't, and we'd have ample opportunities to escape if they did decide to pursue us into the dark. Besides, only a crazy person would walk between stops when there was a nice convenient train. If the Covenant was following us, they'd hopefully a.s.sume that we'd taken some secret shortcut down into the sewers and waste time looking for us there. In its own way, this was the smartest stupid thing we could possibly have done.

Sarah and I stuck close to the wall, walking as quickly as we dared. I didn't pull out my flashlight, much as I wanted to. That much light would be a beacon for anyone who happened to be looking for us.

"Sarah?" I murmured. She jumped a little. I squeezed her hand. "Are we alone down here? As far as you know?"

Sarah took a deep breath. I glanced back, and saw that her eyes were starting to glow faintly. That was a good sign. As long as she had something to focus on, she wouldn't dwell on the fact that we were potentially being followed by people who'd been equipped to block telepathy like hers. Margaret had lost her charm, and was hence "visible" to Sarah's specific way of looking. The others weren't.

Two hidebehinds watching us from behind the service door; homeless man asleep in an alcove; family of bugbears pa.s.sing through, Sarah reported finally. And rats. Lots of rats.

"Which means none of Bill's servitors have been through here recently. That's good." Servitors were the lizard-man servants of William the dragon. They used to be humans, before they were kidnapped and mutated by a snake cult. These days, they mostly skulked around in tunnels, eating rats and trying not to be seen. Nothing gets complicated like a cryptid ecosystem.

It is?

Sarah sounded anxious enough that I doubted she even realized she wasn't speaking aloud. I squeezed her hand. "It is. There's nothing down here that can't defend itself." I was including us in that statement. I had my weapons, I had Margaret's weapons, and I knew my environment. As long as we could avoid being flattened by a train, we were almost in the clear.

The tracks ahead of us were becoming easier to see; we were almost to Christopher Street. I started walking faster, pulling Sarah with me. The light from the platform was like a beacon guiding us home. We were almost there when the tracks began vibrating under my feet.

"Run!" I shouted.

We ran. When we reached the platform, I boosted Sarah up, ignoring the startled looks from the people waiting for their train home. I threw her suitcase after her. Then I grabbed the edge of the platform and vaulted myself clear, my feet moving out of the danger zone a mere second before the train came rus.h.i.+ng into the station. My heart pounding in my ears, I bent forward and braced my hands against my knees, panting.

"Lady? You okay?"

"Fine." I lifted my head, forcing a grin. My Good Samaritan recoiled. I guess my grin wasn't all that rea.s.suring. "Sarah, come on. We have to get out of here."

Wordlessly, Sarah grabbed her bag off the platform and nodded to me. I took her hand again, and we ran for the tunnel connecting the PATH station with the subway. If we could just catch the train, we'd be safe.

We caught the train.

The ride from Christopher Street to the Meatpacking District was short, which was a good thing, since I don't think either of us could have handled a long trip bundled into a metal box full of strangers. Sarah kept her head bowed and her eyes closed, looking for all the world like a wilted flower. I knew that meant that she was scanning the people around us constantly, looking for signs of danger. She was going to have one h.e.l.l of a headache by the time we reached the Nest. I couldn't say that it wasn't worth it.

When we pulled into our final destination, I tugged her out of her seat and led her, eyes still closed, out of the train. I didn't leave the station. Instead, I walked the both of us over to the benches against the nearest wall and pushed Sarah into a sitting position, whispering, "Keep looking." Then I pulled out my phone.

Uncle Mike answered on the third ring. "Where are you?"

"Hey, Mom. I picked up that movie you wanted." Translation: I may be under surveillance, I am currently at the train station. If I'd been on the street, I would have picked up the dry cleaning; in a bus station, the groceries. It was a simple code, but it worked more than well enough for our purposes.

"s.h.i.+t. Sarah with you?"

"Yes, that sounds good."

"She been compromised?"

"I'm pretty sure."

"s.h.i.+t." This time, the profanity was delivered with far more feeling. "What can I do?"

"Did you check the mail today? I'm expecting a package."

"Sure thing. Hang on the line." I heard the soft clunk as Mike put the phone down, followed by the equally soft, but far more ominous "snick" of a crossbow bolt being slotted into place.

Sarah's eyes were still closed. I put my hand on her shoulder and waited, feeling like an ingenue in a bad horror movie. At any moment, the Covenant would burst out of their hiding places and take us out, and no matter how hard I fought, there was no way I'd be able to hold them all off. We'd be overwhelmed, and no one would ever find our bodies- "Very? You there?"

"I'm here."

"The coast is clear outside the slaughterhouse. If you can get up to street level, I can cover you."

"We're on our way." I shoved the phone back into my pocket and took hold of Sarah's arm, pulling her to her feet. "Come on. We need to go."

She opened her eyes, the last of the glow dying from her pupils as she turned to look at me. "Is it safe?"

"We'll find out. This way."

I led her out of the station and up the stairs to street level. Uncle Mike was standing in front of the tiny bodega that connected to the Nest. I wanted to run to him. Instead, I walked at a conservative pace, pulling Sarah along with me. When he saw us, he nodded and stepped back inside, holding the door open until we got there. We followed him in, and he closed the door behind us. We were safe at last . . . for now. The question was, what were we going to do to make sure we stayed that way?

Fourteen.

"The worst thing in the world is burying family. The second worst thing is telling somebody else that they'll have to do it."

-Enid Healy The Meatpacking District, which is nicer than it sounds, inside a converted warehouse that's sort of beginning to resemble a clown car with all these people in it ISTAS AND RYAN WERE WAITING for us in the main room of the slaughterhouse. Ryan looked concerned. Istas looked faintly bored, and was chewing on something that looked suspiciously like the bottom half of a rat. I decided that asking would be a bad idea if I ever wanted to eat again.

"The Covenant is staying at Sarah's hotel, so Sarah's staying with us now," I announced.

"Are you both okay?" asked Uncle Mike.

Sniffling, Sarah shook her head. Then she nodded. Then she shook her head again.

I came to the rescue, saying, "We're shaken up, but we're fine. Ryan, do you want to show Sarah to one of the open offices, so she can put down her things? She's going to be here until all of this is taken care of. It's not safe for her to go back to her hotel." It wasn't safe for her to go back to any hotel, if the Covenant had charms that could block her telepathy. That was the only natural defense she had.

"On it," said Ryan. He offered Sarah a faintly bemused smile, clearly not sure why she looked familiar. "Can I take your bags?"

"Okay," whispered Sarah. She handed him the backpack with her school books and homework in it, and I handed him her suitcase. She kept hold of her laptop, still hugging it against her chest like a talisman. Then she wandered off after Ryan, following him toward the nearest set of stairs. Istas followed them, still chewing on her probably-a-rat. That was good. I wanted a few minutes alone with Uncle Mike.

The two of us stood silently until Sarah and the others were up the stairs. Then he turned to me, and said, "Report?"

"I reached the roof of Sarah's hotel without incident. She came and let me in. We went down the stairs, and were met in the hall by Margaret Healy, who was warded against Sarah's telepathy. Someone must have warned her that she might be dealing with a psychic." Someone like Dominic. I should have been more suspicious from the very start-but then again, hindsight is the only perfect vision. "Margaret arrived at the door to Sarah's room while we were trying to clear out. She picked the lock, and once she was inside, she started demanding to know where I was. Sarah was trying to convince her that I was already gone when my phone rang-s.h.i.+t, my phone. I still don't know who called." I reached for my pocket.

"Stick to the main narrative," said Uncle Mike, holding up a hand to stop me. "What happened then?"

"Margaret realized Sarah had been lying about me, and started to move deeper into the room. So Sarah hit her from behind with a vase and knocked her out." I allowed myself a small smile. "It was pretty darn brave of her."

"She's had some good examples," said Uncle Mike. "Then what?"

"I searched Margaret for weapons and tied her up as best I could with a roll of electrical tape from my bag." There was an empty card table nearby. I shrugged off my backpack and walked over to it. "I haven't had a chance to see what all I got from her."

"Show and tell was always my best cla.s.s."

I dropped my bag on the table. "Then let's study."

Margaret had been carrying over a dozen knives, three guns-two pistols, and one mousegun that had been concealed in her sock-a garrote, a blowgun, and a variety of darts, some of which had tiny corks on them to keep her from getting scratched. I handled those with the utmost care.

"Is that everything?" asked Mike, picking up one of the knives.

"Not quite." I pulled out a set of bra.s.s knuckles and a lead-filled sap, dropping them on the pile. "That's it. Well, that, and this. She had it around her neck." I reached into my pocket and produced her anti-telepathy charm, holding it up for him to see.

Mike whistled, long and low. "That's some serious hoodoo. You think she made it herself?"

There are a few spellbooks and grimoires in the family library. Rumor has it they all used to belong to Grandpa Thomas, which explains how he was able to make a deal with one of the Netherworlds before he disappeared. No one in the family has messed around with magic since. We Prices may be foolhardy, but we're not stupid. "I don't know," I said. "If she's a witch, she didn't show it-and she was wearing the charm, which would have messed with any magic she was planning to use."

"I'd have expected a tattoo, not a necklace, if she wasn't the crafter."

"Unless they wanted her to be able to take it off," I said. "Maybe they've started using empaths to prevent more defections." There are at least eight naturally empathic cryptid species, and some of them are human enough-or harmless enough-that the Covenant might be willing to let them live if they seemed to be useful. It wouldn't be the best life for a unicorn or a cofG.o.d, but it would be a life, and that was more than the Covenant was usually inclined to offer their kind.

"Then she'll probably be in trouble for losing it." Mike looked at the charm thoughtfully. "You sure it works?"

"Sarah started picking up on Margaret's presence as soon as I took this off her so, yeah, I'm sure it works."

"But does it work for people who aren't her?"