Blood Rock (48 page)

“No, I’ve seen her using it today. And her iPod. Look, I need to run after her.”

And with that, the phone went dead. But it was OK. Without even knowing it, Vladimir had given me everything I needed to know to find Cinnamon. I opened my phone, turned it on, quickly checked my call history, then powered it down and made one more payphone call.

To Philip.

Twenty-five minutes later, I was pulling past a row of dilapidated homes into a ratty old cul-de-sac. No, cul-de-sac dignified it; the street just ended in a canyon of scraggly trees and fallen leaves. Where the sidewalk ended, a broken gate lay against a chain-link fence. Through the gap a narrow dirt path led into one of Atlanta’s city parks.

I thought of parking there and walking, as not to spook my targets. Then I realized they would hear me on foot or on wheels. And
then
I realized I was a skindancer, and there was no reason for them to hear me at all—unless I wanted them to.

I didn’t get off the bike, I didn’t strip off my clothes, I didn’t murmur a cheesy haiku. I just closed my eyes, drew in a breath, writhed sinuously in the seat of the Vespa in a movement Arcturus had taught me, and breathed out, focusing on the thought of silence.

Mana burned against my skin, then receded as my vine tattoos came to life and slowly began snaking out from beneath my sleeves, my pants, my jacket, my collar. Slowly, the sounds of the wind, the road and the trains receded. When all noises were gone, I opened my eyes.

My vines coiled around me, ghostly and silent in the sunny air. The trees waved in silence, and a train lazily slid by, just beyond the end of the park. One car was covered with wildstyle letters, colorful and splashy, but as it passed it made no sound. Satisfied, I started the Vespa up, and quiet as a ghost, bumped it down through the park and hid it behind the trees.

I tromped silently up to the edge of the park, where the grassy green space overlooked the railroad. This clothes on technique was too slow for battle, but my clothes trapped stray mana and made the spell last longer. Soon I found a squarish cinderblock structure, covered in graffiti, sitting in a kink of the railway lot. With all the underbrush, it was actually hard to tell whether it had been abandoned by the railway or the park service.

And then my breath caught, as I saw, on the side of the building where Philip told me Cinnamon was probably hiding, the distinctive graffiti marks of the tagger.

On my guard, I crept forward, gathering my vines like a shield. These marks were just quick throwups, a crude sketch of a snake by the junior apprentice, and a more assured mark by the journeyman—but with an unmistakable motif of a werekin ward rune embedded in it.

My heart fell. I stared at it in horror, hoping that didn’t mean what I thought it meant. But as I watched, the rune changed slightly: a little tweak here, a little edit there, fleshing itself out so it grew a little bigger, a little rounder, the nubs of six tentacles appearing at the outer edge.

What Arcturus and I had feared was true: the city-wide master spell was feeding back even into simple graffiti. The apprentice’s throwup was too simple, but the journeyman’s had the right motifs. It was plugged into the circuit. He probably didn’t even know he’d done it.

Maybe that was what had happened before.

No matter. I sized up the mark: no larger than a hand, it probably had days before it could go off. Once I was satisfied it wouldn’t rear up and eat me, I leaned up a torn piece of chain link fence, stepped through, worked my way around to the door, and stepped inside.

Cinnamon was there, laughing, talking into her cell phone, sitting on an upended trash can in front of a table made from a weathered old door over which she’d spread her schoolbooks. Two schoolbags were tossed in the corner at her feet, positively bulging with books.

On the other side of the room, Tully was fretting over a battered old boom box. He turned to say something and froze, staring at me. His eyes flicked involuntarily at a battered backpack; rather than books, however, his bag bulged with cylindrical objects, like … spray cans.

I scowled. There was a reason Tully had been so good at finding graffiti. He was one of the taggers, probably the journeyman. Almost certainly he hadn’t meant harm—certainly he hadn’t meant to get
himself
almost killed—but there was so much collateral damage.

And if he was a tagger, then Cinnamon—
oh, God
. There was a reason Cinnamon’s notes had been so useful to Doug— No. No, I couldn’t deal with this now. I had strong suspicions—but no proof yet. I had to focus.

I drew in a breath, pulling in the mana and my vines. Then, slowly, sounds returned.

“—no, not longways, stupid, they’ll buzz in all over us,” Cinnamon said, laughing. “Just add the digits.
F—uhh!
No, add the digits, and if the
sum
divides by three, so does the original. Try it—eeek!” She froze like Tully, just staring at me, and I mimed closing the phone. After a moment, she said, “Mom wants me. Call you back.”

I stared at her a moment. I felt my eyes narrowing. Clearly she was
not
trying to stay hidden, going to math club and calling friends. She was just ditching the Palmottis, unthinkingly jeopardizing not just me, but my chances of getting her back. And that wasn’t even counting the awful
mess
I strongly suspected Tully had gotten her into. I pulled off my helmet.

“I’m very disappointed in you, young lady,” I said, flashing on all the times Mom had said that to me. It felt more than learned: was there some motherly-daughterly DNA that made that particular sequence pop out, in any language? “The door wasn’t even barred. What if I’d been Transomnia?” She flinched, as I’d hoped. I didn’t really think Transomnia would go after her, but I knew she feared him from their last encounter and I hoped that would drive the point home. “And there’s no other exit. What if I’d been Zipperface?”

“Zipperface?” she said, eyes widening.

I was glad to hear she had no idea who I was talking about—maybe she
was
innocent—but then I realized I’d never told her what he’d done. I’d never had the chance. “Zipperface is the punk with the nasty grill,” I said. “The
projectia
of the tagger. He … he killed Calaphase.”

Cinnamon stood there trembling. Then her eyes grew fiery, defiant.

“Cally died?” she asked. “Cally died and you didn’t tell me! You didn’t even call!”

I just stood there, stunned. She was right, and I had no defense.

“I calls you and calls you, and you never answers your phone—”

“Cinnamon,” I repeated.

“Fuck you. My name’s not Cinnamon!” she screeched. “It’s Str—”

But she choked that off. Then her lower lip began trembling.

“Cinnamon, I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you about Cally,” I said quietly. I was relieved. Her surprise meant she almost certainly wasn’t in deep, and Tully looked as shocked as she was. “I never got to talk to you in private, and before I knew it, I was on the run from the police—”

“Old
witch!
” she barked, immediately looking away. “You still could have called!”

I drew a breath and looked up into the air. That hurt, but not because of the witch crack. I could slough that off: it was just as Vladimir had said, caused by the Tourette’s, something that had popped out under stress, not even in the same tone of voice as the very next sentence.

It hurt because her accusation was true. I
could
have called. Cinnamon had been wearing me out. It was hard being a mother. It was far more than befriending a kid and filling out a few forms. It was real work. And when all this nonsense had started, I had used that as an excuse. Not that I didn’t need to be fighting the graffiti; of course I did. But I used it as an excuse to take a break from Cinnamon, and called it work. My mom, in contrast, had found time to call me almost every day—even on the day she died of cancer.

I looked down at my baby girl. Her lip was still trembling. She
still
thought, to this day, that I was trying to get rid of her—an impression she’d gotten from a few wisecracks I’d made the first day Lord Buckhead had cajoled me into taking care of her.

I frowned. My sharp tongue had left scars we’d have for the rest of our lives. Now my slack ass was an inch away from reopening those wounds and pouring in a whole shaker of salt. Like it or not, I was going to have to take the reasons I’d not called her and defend them.

“Cinnamon,” I said firmly. “I’m sorry I left you in the dark, but I’m on the run. I had to cut everyone off—they’re trailing all my friends, not just Saffron, but even Doug and Jinx. And I had to turn off my phone. I
had
to. The police can track you with your cell phone.”

Cinnamon dropped her phone like it had stung her, but Tully just laughed. “Don’t listen to her, Cin, she’s just tryin to weasel,” he said. “They can’t track your cell phone.”

I spread my hands. “And yet, I’m here,” I said. “They may seem like it at times, but cell phones are not actually magic. They’ve got little radios in ’em. They talk to cell phone towers. Each phone has a chip with its own little number so the tower knows the call is paid for, and who to beam the call back to. How could they
not
track a cell phone? They wouldn’t
work!
”

Cinnamon leapt out and turned off her phone.

“Damage is done at this point,” I said. “I’m here.”

“Why?” she said sullenly, twisting her neck in its collar.

“You disappeared,” I said. “I wanted to know you were safe.”

“
You
disappeared,” she shot back. “You tossed me off on the Palmottis and
ran!
”

“I was forbidden to see you,” I said.

“If you cared, that wouldn’t have mattered!” she shrieked.

“If I violated a court order, I might never have seen you again.”

“That law is stupid,” she said. “If you cared, you would have called!”

“I couldn’t,” I said. “I was—I
am
—on the run from the police.”

“For what?” Tully snorted. “Run a red light in your little blue car?”

I glared. I wanted to bite his head off, but I decided to keep my insights to myself until I knew more. “No, for arson, you ingrate. For the fire that blew up the little blue car.”

“You blew up the blue bomb?” Cinnamon said, paling.

“No!” I said. “The tagger did.”

“It’s writer,” Tully said.

“Thanks for cluing me in, Tully,” I said, glancing at him in bitter triumph.
Writer indeed.
“Anyway, they’re going after me because the fires started right after I got out of jail.”

“Why … why did they put you in jail?” Cinnamon said.

I sighed. “They charged me for killing Valentine.”

“Valentine?” Cinnamon said, turning white. “But … but you saved me from him!”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I did.”

Her mouth set. “So … so you knows the law is stupid, you’re on the run from it, and yet here you are to take me back to the Palmottis! What, did he
fink
me, and you called your square ex-boooyfriend to sniff me out so you wouldn’t look bad?”

“She never said she was going to take you back,” Tully said.

“No, she’s right, down to the ex-boyfriend part,” I said. “She’s a genius, remember?”

“Cin, a genius?” Tully laughed, and she hissed. “Then why’s she in the stupid class?”

“It’s Special Topics, not Special Ed,” I said. “Tully, think for a second. Here you are, on the run, hiding out, free to do whatever you want, and what are you two doing?
She’s
doing number theory while you’re banging on an obviously busted stereo.”

Tully’s brow furrowed, and Cinnamon said, “The speaker wire, doofus.”

Tully turned the stereo over, found a wire hanging loose from the speaker, broken off. “Aw, man,” he said. “When were you going to tell me?”

“Give me that,” I said, as Cinnamon giggled. I flipped the stereo over, pressed the red and black tabs that released the wire from the back of the speaker, and handed it back to him. “Strip that, then plug it back into the same holes.”

“Wow,” Tully said. He popped a claw and picked at the wire, then pulled a switchblade and started making real progress stripping the insulation off. “Where’d you learn that?”

“You learn a lot in college,” I said, “trying to make do.”

Cinnamon was still giggling, but then her face fell.

“Stop it. You … you can’t fool me!” she said, glaring. “You don’t—
fffuhh!
—you don’t cares about me. You didn’t even care enough to mention you just found out I was with a boy.”

“I didn’t
just
find out you were with a boy,” I said. “I’ve known for weeks. He’s sweet on you, knows your new name, uses it often enough to shorten it, hangs around enough practically to hover, and you’re not even swatting him away.”

Her mouth hung open, then set, trembling. “Shut up!”

“It was easy to figure out,” I said. “I’m your mother.”

“You’re … you’re not my
real
mother,” Cinnamon said. “We only just met … ”

“I am too your real mother,” I said, opening my arms. “I’ve always been your mother your whole life. We just didn’t know it yet.”

That
got her. Cinnamon’s lower lip started trembling again. Then she pounced.

“Oh, Mooom,” she said, crushing the life out of me. “My Mooom. I’m sorry.”

“Can’t—breathe—” I said, hugging her back as best I could. “I’m sorry I left you.”

“What are we going to do?” she asked, head jerking a little as she did so.

I sighed, leaned back, put my hands on her shoulders. “We’re going to fight,” I said. “Which means we have to play the game their way, at least a little.”

“But whyyy?” she asked. “I don’t wants to go back to the Palmottis. We could run—”

“And live like this?” I said, extending my hand across the shed.

“It isn’t so bad,” Tully said.

“Tully, you live in the margins,” I said. “You’re always hiding in an unused warehouse or broken down shed, where someone can come along and shoo you away. But you should have your own place, with full rights. You should be able to turn into a wolf in a public park and run free. And the only way to do that is to engage the world, head on.”

“That kind of thinkin’ gets a werekin shot,” Tully said.

“Maybe so,” I said. “But that’s why there are Edgeworlders. We straddle two worlds for a reason. We don’t just want to be free to visit your world. We want you to be free to visit ours.”

“So what does we do?” Cinnamon asked.

I dinged the ring on her collar. “We take you back to the Vampire Consulate,” I said. “You’re under Saffron’s protection—you have the right to claim asylum. From there, you can call Ellis and Lee, and hopefully they can work something out.”