Prowlers: Wild Things (25 page)

As Bowden led them along St. Mark's Place toward his apartment, Jack and Olivia hung back and spoke quietly but emphatically, trying to determine what to do next.

Guess I should be jealous
, Molly thought. But the idea amused her. Maybe his older sister had fallen in love with Bill, but no way would Jack ever be attracted to a Prowler.

They walked along the cracked sidewalk amidst the avant garde Village population. Molly watched the faces as they passed. Clothing purposefully ragged and studiously torn; brows and lips and noses and even chins pierced and festooned with bright bits of metal; hair teased up and dyed a rainbow of unnatural colors. Many of them seemed to wear their outward appearance as a costume, a façade not unlike the Prowlers themselves. Yet amongst these students and artists who strove to be different were also those more comfortable in the role, individuals and couples whose faded casualness was worn as a genuine expression of who they were inside. Molly found herself able to tell the difference with very little difficulty. She wondered if that ability came from months of watching people's eyes and body language, second guessing their intentions, even their humanity.

"So, you and Jack been together long?" Bowden inquired.

Shaken from her reverie, Molly glanced over at the lanky man who walked beside her with his sax case slung from his shoulder by a leather strap. Here he was, then, the perfect example of what she had been thinking about. Bowden wore black jeans frayed to tatters at the cuffs and sandals that were not just broken in but nearly broken
through
. He had a saunter to his walk as though he could hear the music even when he wasn't playing it. Some people referred to the artistic community in Greenwich Village as Bohemians. If so, Bowden was a true Bohemian.

But he was also a Prowler.
So much for my powers of observation
, Molly thought. If she had not seen him sniffing the air earlier, if she did not know Olivia was a Prowler, she would never have guessed Bowden wasn't human. But maybe that was a testament to this man's —
there I go again, this creature's
— ability to blend. Just as Bill did. Which made her wonder just how many of them there were, doing that. Blending.

"I'm sorry," Molly said with a self-deprecating smile. "I'm drifting. What did you say?"

Bowden tilted his head to indicate the pair walking behind them. "You and Jack. Just wondering how long you've been together."

"Not long, actually."

"Really?" The Prowler's eyebrows went up. "I wouldn't have guessed that."

"Why not?"

He shrugged. "Couples who've been together a long time, they've got this kind of telepathy down. Don't need to talk to each other a lot about what their next move is. Shared intuition or whatever. You two are pretty young, but seems to me like you've got the beginnings of that."

Molly felt herself blushing and was surprised. She wasn't a girl who blushed; never had been. But here it was, nevertheless. There was some irony in her thoughts only moments before about how she could read people, and now here was Bowden, who wasn't even human, doing a better job of it than she ever could have.

"We were . . . friends for a long time before we got involved," she explained, not wanting to say more, to talk about Artie. Some people might think it weird for her and Jack to be involved after what had happened to Artie. Odd as it was, she found that she suddenly cared what Bowden thought.

"There you go!" Bowden said, happy to have his observations proven.

"You're sort of a romantic, aren't you?" Molly asked.

His smile went away. "I guess I am. Hard to believe for you, I guess. The monster with stars in his eyes. I'm like that elf on
Rudolph
. I don't wanna make toys, I wanna be a dentist."

Molly got the reference but did not laugh. There was a gravity to his tone that undermined any humor
. The monster with stars in his eyes
, she thought as she shoved her hands into the pockets of the battered brown leather jacket she had borrowed from Jack, feeling suddenly cold.

"How did you know we knew? What you are, I mean?"

Bowden laughed. "You kidding? I know who
you
are." He cocked a thumb back at Jack and Olivia. "I know who he is. Maybe the Prowlers in Peoria haven't heard about Jack the Giant-Killer yet, but this is New York City, honey. The heartbeat of America."

Now he did smile again, and it was infectious. But Molly's mind was awhirl again with the implications of that. Theirs was intended to be a quiet little crusade. Watch the skies, so to speak, keep their eyes on the news, go out hunting now and again. But if what they were doing was going to make them celebrities amongst the very monsters they were hunting, it wouldn't be long before they dared not set foot out the door of the pub for fear of repercussions.

She'd have to put some thought into that.

"It's just up here," Bowden said, gesturing toward a building on the left just ahead of them.

Molly didn't know anything about architecture, but the apartment house impressed her. The building itself was made of light brown stone, but around the windows the stone was a different color, a brick red that was rounded into arches above each window. Around the small set of steps in the front there was some garbage and broken glass, but the building looked as though it had been renovated in the last few years.

"Nice place," she said. "Guess playing sax in the park is more lucrative than I would've thought." Even as she spoke the words, Molly covered her mouth. "Sorry. That didn't come out right. I wasn't trying to say —"

Bowden chuckled softly. "It's all right. I do all right, I guess. But the truth is, I live in a tiny apartment with two roommates. Mags is an illustrator and Julian a freelance writer. Whoever has the money pays the rent. Sometimes we have other people crashing and they kick in to the kitty as well. Somehow it all works out."

A kind of unorthodox family
, Molly thought. But she knew all about that, living with Courtney and Jack, and half the time with Bill as well.

Bowden unlocked the door and held it open as Olivia and Jack caught up to them. The Prowler girl caught her eye and smiled as though she had only just remembered Molly was there at all. Molly surprised herself by smiling back at this beast dressed in her borrowed clothes.

"We've got a plan," Olivia said.

The way she held her head in that moment, chin raised, eyes steady and brooking no argument, reminded Molly powerfully of the girl's uncle.

"Why am I not surprised?" she replied, her gaze ticking toward Jack.

He reached for her hand and she relished the warmth of his touch. His hair had dried crazy that morning and was spiky and ruffled, and he needed a shave, but there was something alive in his eyes, now. A strength she had only rarely seen there before. It was as though despite how heroic he had behaved in the past, he was only slowly becoming alive to the truth of it, awake to the knowledge that he was now a vital player in an ancient war. All along, what he had been doing was noble and courageous, but Jack had been sort of a reluctant hero. He did what he did to get back to the pub, to his regular life.

Not any more
, Molly thought.
This is regular life, now. We're a part of this.

"It's not a really good plan," Jack confessed. "In fact, there's a wicked high level of risk. And we're gonna need reinforcements. But I can't exactly go home and tell my sister I left her boyfriend to —"

His face went slack and his gaze went past her, his attention drawn by something or someone beyond Molly on the sidewalk.
Ghosts
, Molly thought. Olivia and Bowden were already in the foyer of the building and both of them focused on Jack with some alarm.

"Jack?" Olivia ventured.

A fond expression blossomed on Jack's face and he glanced at Molly. "I'll be up in a minute, all right?"

Not just any ghosts
. "Take your time. Give him my love."

He squeezed her hand and Molly went into the building. Behind her, she heard Jack start to speak in a low voice. Fortunately, people talking to the air at one-thirty in the afternoon was only considered passing strange in a city like New York.

"Uh, it's the third floor. Apartment C," Bowden told him.

Then the door swung shut, leaving Jack on the sidewalk, seemingly alone.

When Molly turned to start up the stairs, she nearly ran into Olivia. The much taller girl was staring down at her, face cast into shadow by the long hair that framed her features.

"I have to ask. Who the hell is he talking to?"

"My ex," Molly replied. "It's a long story."

"Once again I owe you," Jack said, keeping his voice low. He sat on the bottom step of Bowden's apartment building.

The ghost of Artie Carroll floated over and sat beside him. Though Jack tried not to pay too much attention, there was a kind of liquid flow to the motion. The phantom seemed more to settle upon the stoop than to sit there and it took Jack a moment to figure out what it was that seemed so alien about the way he moved. Then he had it. Gravity. For a long time after his death, Artie had mimicked the effects of gravity, whether consciously or unconsciously. Now, though, he had either abandoned the pretense or forgotten how to do it. How to pretend.

Jack noticed something else, too. Artie's clothes had changed. They were still the same. The same sweatshirt, torn at the throat. The same high-top sneakers, unlaced. But once upon a time that sweatshirt had had pockets in the front. They were gone. And the sneakers — Jack didn't remember what color they had been the first time the ghost had appeared to him, but he was sure they hadn't been red. They were red now. He wondered if Artie was having trouble visualizing himself now, what he'd looked like when he was alive.

The ghost was changing.

It chilled him.

"You don't owe me anything, Jack," Artie replied. The words buzzed in Jack's ears as though they came as much from inside as from outside. "Not after all you've had to sacrifice to take up this fight for me."

Jack nodded slowly, then stopped and gazed away, along the street. A trendy-looking vegetarian restaurant with a small patio dining area was doing booming business. Even the patio was full, despite the time of year. "It isn't just for you."

"Not anymore," Artie agreed. "But it started with me."

"What happened upstate, anyway?" Jack asked.

"I found a couple of the souls you sent me searching for. That trucker, Chet Douglas. He was sort of a wreck, actually. And the boy, Jared. I was bringing them back to talk to you and saw the . . . saw the animals taking you and Molly down into that basement."

The specter's voice had changed. Jack glanced over at Artie and saw that his features were pinched with emotion. Then Artie actually laughed, breaking the moment.

"Stupid, isn't it? I mean, I'm already dead. I know what's in store. And I still get all torn up when I think of anything happening to you guys."

Jack didn't know what to say to that. He had loved Artie, somehow missed him more every time he saw this ghost. But there was an awkwardness growing between them now that had nothing to do with Molly, and rather more to do with their mutual awareness that they were holding on to strings maybe better left to fray.

"Anyway," Artie went on, a bit uncomfortably. "I got word to Eden, figuring she'd call Courtney. I had no idea she'd called Castillo until all those cops showed up. Smart girl, our Eden."

"No doubt about that," Jack replied, pleased to hear the fondness in Artie's voice when he talked of Eden. She needed a dream companion, a spirit guide, and he needed a touchstone to the world of the living that they all knew Jack and Molly could no longer be. It hurt too much. And Jack knew Artie had never wanted to haunt them.

Again, Jack glanced away. A woman in leather pants and designer sunglasses pushed a stroller past them. The infant rode along happily, a Yankees baseball cap on its head. A car rolled down the street slowly, carefully navigating around a delivery truck double-parked in front of a small bodega.

"So what now?" he asked.

"Jared's still with Chet," Artie said, speaking of the other lost souls as though they were old friends. "The kid's ready to move on. And he's going to, I think. But Chet needs some time to come to terms with things and I don't wanna leave him alone to do it. I'm gonna try to keep an eye on him, maybe coach him through it."

The ghost did not so much stand then as he did simply float up off the stoop. Artie scratched at the back of his head, idly, forgetting apparently that any itch he felt was just as much a phantom as he was. He floated above the sidewalk a good half a foot, his shoelaces dangling down. He would not meet Jack's eyes.

"If you need me, y'know, for anything, you can call Eden again like you did. I'm going to be hanging with her for a while."

Jack stood. He felt the urge to touch Artie, even to throw his arms around his friend. But that was the pain of it all, that was the part that really sucked the most. Artie wasn't even really there. He would never be there again. Not ever. Jack had never wanted to grab him, to hug him, more than he did right then, probably because he felt that this really was goodbye. A goodbye they'd both been putting off for far too long.

But Artie was dead.

"Be good," Jack told him, and he hated how light and fragile the words sounded.

"Never," Artie replied. "You take care of yourself, Jack."

The ghost turned away and began to drift off. His gossamer form was translucent of course, but now it became even more diaphanous, shimmering, dissipating like ice on a car windshield once the defroster's been running.

Jack began to turn.

"Hey," Artie called.

Surprised, Jack faced him again. Artie was pointing at a Toyota parked a few cars away, a blond woman with a ponytail behind the wheel. "That honey there? Not human."

Anxiety twisted in his gut and Jack stared at the woman who was not a woman. She glanced around, looking bored, studiously avoiding looking at him.
Trouble
, Jack thought.
Bowden's place is being watched.