Any Port in a Storm (25 page)

I take Grace by the other shoulder and turn her toward me, this time gently. "Grace." I say her name again. "Hey. You were really brave."

She still doesn't open her eyes. I can somehow relate to that feeling, that knowledge that when you do, your world is going to be a little bit worse forever. Or a lot bit worse.

"I'm not brave," Grace whispers. "I almost peed my pants."

A grim smile spreads across my face. "Well, then you did better than me. First time I encountered that many shades at once, I did pee my pants."

At that, her eyes open, and she peers at me. "You're full of shit."

I raise an eyebrow at her choice of words. "Nope. I was in a warehouse, and I was surrounded, and I thought I was going to die."

"You didn't die."

"Neither did you." I give her shoulders a squeeze and drop my hands to my sides. "Come on. You need to give a statement to the police or the Summit, whoever turns up."

"Where are you going?"

"Hunting."

I deposit Grace in front by the crime scene tape, where a police officer is yammering on her phone to someone at the Summit, trying to explain what happened and that they've got the scene secured. Whoever she's talking to doesn't seem to be particularly helpful. When the officer sees me, she looks almost relieved. I gesture at her to give me her phone.

"Yello," I say into it. "This is Mediator Storme. I'm on a trail and can't stay. Send somebody capable down here, and one of the PR witches. Mediator Urquhart or someone else who won't fuck this up." That's Ripper, and he'll be pissed at me for volunteering him, but I trust him not to be a complete buffoon. The Mitten on the other end of the line starts to squawk at me, but I cut him off. "Look, you can either do your job, or I can get you put on splat duty and make sure you're part of the cleanup crew at this scene, you hear? Can the back talk, Mittens. Get Ripper and a PR person down here, and do it now."

I hang up.

My own phone buzzes again, and I hand the cop's back to her. She gives me a grateful look.

"Call me if you need anything, Grace," I say.

To my surprise, she throws her arms around my neck. "Thank you. And I think you're brave, too."

Well, isn't she a precious little peach?

By now, Mira and Wane are about ten blocks away, and I have to run to catch up with them, passing under Highway 31. I don't like that. It gives me time to think about what happened at the Waffle Spot. I don't know if I trust Carrick to catch these shades, but in a weird way, I trust him to try. If Gregor's intent on using them for his own ends, he doesn't need the bad publicity a few murderous hybrids will bring, so it's in his best interest to have his shades take them down.
 

There are too many strings tangled together, and I need to sort them all out.

Something tickles at me, and while my feet pound the pavement, I try to track it down.

It's not that the shade at the Waffle Spot mentioned me by name; that's an obvious oh-fuck fact, but it's also not necessarily that meaningful. By now everyone knows that I was behind the idea for the warehouse bombing, and though my shades have a pragmatic, philosophical sort of forgiveness for me, it's not far-fetched to think some others think I'm a bit of a menace to shade society.

I think of the places these shades have killed. The warehouse. Percy Warner. Now the Waffle Spot. They're all places connected to me. I don't like the implications of that.
 

It's full dark by the time I catch up to Mira and Wane down a cul-de-sac, and Mira looks about ready to tear me apart like Flannel Crack.

"Shade murder," I say by way of explanation.

That wipes the anger from her face. "How many?"

"Just one. But one's enough."

"Wane said the trail keeps going to the north from here. Off the roads."

I don't ask how Wane said it. "What do you want to do?"

"Wane can keep following and check back with us later, " says Mira. Wane gives a growl again, and I don't blame her. This could take all night, and I'm pretty sure when she turned up at Mira's tonight, she'd just gotten off a twelve hour shift.

"Well, you can probably move more quickly without us, anyway," I say to Wane. Her tail swishing is the only answer I get.

She gives us one look and springs off into the grass between two houses. Again, I hope no one decides to get trigger happy.

I tell Mira what happened and what I'm thinking about it.
 

"He knew you were nearby," she says.

"What?"

"The shade who killed — Dirk, was it? — He knew you were close enough to hear the sirens. Why else would he say that you'd come?"

That sends a chill through me. Has he been watching me to find out where I'm going? If Mira's right, he has.
 

"Fuck."

"Took the word right out of my mouth," Mira says. "I should brush up on my beheading skills in case this sonofabitch pays me a visit."

We walk back to her house with a light drizzle falling, and I spend most of the trip back hoping Wane will turn up something useful about Saturn. I don't have a lot of optimism, though. If Saturn doesn't want to be found, he won't be.

Back at Mira's, we flip on the TV. The ten o'clock news is on, and it's playing the pro-shade piece about the ones we killed outside Crossville. I'm about to turn it back off again, but a breaking story about the Waffle Spot interrupts the Summit's little bit of propaganda.

A reporter stands on the sidewalk on Gallatin, the Waffle Spot sign behind him. His white skin looks sallow, taking on the glare of the orange light from the sign. "Tonight a horrible scene unfolded at the popular East Nashville diner, the Waffle Spot. One of the demon-human hybrids currently being hunted by Summit operatives murdered one of the diner regulars in front of customers and staff. At this point, no employees or spokespeople for the diner have given this station comment, but Officer Belmont said that there was one fatality and no other casualties. It is unclear what drove the hybrids — colloquially referred to as "shades" — off the premises, but a Summit Mediator has assured us that all possible measures are being taken to ensure the safety of Nashville's residents."

At that, a little infographic pops up on the screen with a bulleted list of factoids about shades.

"Public opinion about these hybrids skews to the negative, as they can walk in sunlight, look human in appearance, and have the comparative strength of a demon. Professor Sorkin at Vanderbilt University has classified the creatures as
homo sapiens infernus
, joining the official scientific list of what are commonly called 'norm' species. Such classification has led to mixed response from the scientific community, some of whom argue that any being rooted in dual dimensions cannot, by definition, be classified alongside inhabitants of ours." The infographic vanishes, and the picture returns to the reporter's face. "One thing's for certain: the appearance of the hybrids has brought out extremes in opinion, from activist groups who want them protected to others who believe very strongly that they ought to be Mediator targets, just like the hellkin themselves. Even within the Summit, opinions vary, though no Mediators would go on the record about their views. With a rash of recent murders by the hybrids coinciding with Mediator-hybrid special operations, this story grows more complex by the day.

"Tonight's killing was only the most recent, and Dirk Schmidt joins the roster of eighteen other Nashville citizens to die at the hands of the hybrids." Dirk's face flashes onto the screen, a picture taken at Winter Solstice last year, by the look of it. He's in a red and green flannel, and white letters at the bottom of the screen show his life bookended by the year of his birth and this one. "Schmidt was a teacher at a local junior high school, where he taught shop and life skills. He was forty-seven."

The breaking news broadcast ends, and the screen goes back to the studio anchors. Mira mutes it.

"I have a headache," she says.

"Me too." But something on the muted screen catches my eye.

I snatch the remote from Mira and unmute it in time to hear another reporter say that there's a developing story at Walden's Puddle.

While it's not somewhere I frequent, it's where I dropped off a box of baby bunnies a few months ago after an imp killed their mother at Miller's Field.

This is too much to be a coincidence.
 

We sit there, me feeling helpless and Mira's face unreadable, until someone knocks on the door at midnight.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

"Well, I'll be damned to all six and a half hells," Ripper says when I open the door. "And fuck you very much for having that gods damned Mitten send me off to the Waffle Spot."

"You're welcome," I say. I usher him into Mira's house, and he waves at Mira around me.
 

"Find anything interesting?" Mira asks. She's got a delivery menu in one hand and the remote in the other.

Ripper looks like a young Robert Redford, and his blond ponytail's mostly grown back from where an imp sliced part of it off in Miller's Field over the summer. He smacks his lips together like he's got some chaw in his gums, though I knew he doesn't chew.
 

"You're in a kettle, Storme," he says, taking the delivery menu from Mira and looking it over. With his free hand, he rubs his palm over his face.
 

"Usually am these days," I say.
 

I hope Mira's right, and Ripper really is loyal to Alamea, because I don't know if I can handle having to suss out someone else's motivations tonight. After a minute, he hands me the menu and tells Mira he wants a number six with no sour cream.

I pick out a burrito platter and sit down on the couch again while Mira goes off to the kitchen to order.
 

"How've you been, Ripper?" I ask him. It's been a while since I've seen him, but he's one of the few Mediators I like. That may be partially because he stood up for me this summer when most people didn't.
 

"Just dandy." He sits down in a chair and adjusts the leg of his Wranglers. "I just came over because I thought Mira'd want to know what happened at the Summit after I came back from the scene."

"I think you thought right."

Mira comes back in a moment later and lean against the archway to her kitchen. "So?"

"It's about as we thought. Wheedle's got his group of people who are on Team Gregor, and they all think Alamea's lost her marbles." Ripper looks like he swallowed a cockroach.

"Wait, Ben?" Someday I'm going to plant my boot so far up that man's ass that he'll be picking my toejam out of his teeth.
 

"Ye-ep." Ripper drags out the word long enough to be almost three syllables. "Here's the thing, Storme. You're never around, so you mostly exist in Mediator minds as this weird yellow-orange specter who turns up only when shit's getting sprayed through a fan. Half the Summit seems to think you're some sort of titan, and the other thinks you've just got titanic delusions of grandeur. They know you're working with Gregor and his shades, they know the shades like you, and they know you're now working for Alamea. Nobody knows what your game is, and that makes everyone suspicious of you. You're like the chips in the air, and ain't nobody got a clue where you're gonna land."

"Well, hello to you too," I mutter.

Ripper grins at me. "You're the Russia of the Summit."

"I'll take being a mystery wrapped in an enigma as long as that shit keeps me out of a jeeling's belly," I say. "I ain't trying to be wrapped in demon in any way."

"Here's to that." Mira holds up a beer and brings two more over to me and Ripper.

Six beers each and a lot of Mexican food later, we're all a little buzzed when a loud thud sounds out on Mira's porch.

"Wane," Mira says. She hops up, still steady on her feet, and hurries to the door. Sure enough, Wane comes through, smelling of musk and outdoors.

The big cat goes straight down the hall to Mira's room and emerges a few minutes later as Wane in her scrubs. "I hate putting dirty clothes back on after I change," she says. "Give me a damn beer."