Wild Hunt (3 page)

I scratched the back of my neck. Last week’s sunburn had mostly faded, just in time to be replaced by
this week’s. “Is that the place with the glass flowers?”

“That’s at Harvard,” Nate murmured.

“Then no.” I hitched my bike up onto the curb to get out of the way of a honking SUV. “Never been.”

“Oh.” Katie gave me a thoughtful look, then ran off to the next trash can to deposit the broken frames. Beyond her, where the green along the river gave way to scrub trees and a semblance of a park, a small group of young men loitered. One of them turned up the radio as we approached, and another stuffed a beer bottle into a sack.
Too slow
, I thought.
Any cop coming by would notice that.

“You ought to visit the Gardner sometime,” Nate said, still with that distant look in his eyes. “It’s beautiful in winter…” He trailed off, then sighed. “Can I pick your brain for a moment?”

I shrugged. “Fire away.”

“Do you know anything about the name Sigmund? Not Freud; that was my first thought.” He paused. “At least I hope it’s not Freud.”

I blinked. “Wagner, right? That’s a character in one of his operas.” Now that was a buried memory, and not even buried for any good reason, just time and disuse.

Nate raised his eyebrows. “You know Wagner?”

“My mom did. Listened to opera all the time.” I didn’t share her appreciation, but those records had been my background music growing up, and there were still several Romantic-era operas whose plots I could thread my way through. “I think it’s
The Valkyries
, unless it’s the other one.” I watched Nate’s face, waiting for some response and getting none. “What’s this about?”

Nate slowed to a stop, gazing ahead. For a moment he looked as if he was actually in pain, as if what he wanted to ask was a question wrapped in thorns. Then his eyes focused, and his expression turned to a more immediate dismay. “Damn,” he muttered. “Should have known he’d come down this way.”

I turned to look. One of the young men had stood up, and I recognized with a sinking stomach the guy who’d been in the hall just now screaming about his grade. “Shit. You want to turn around?”

Nate shook his head. “You know, most of them aren’t like this, but there’s one in every class, just that one…” He shook himself, and an expression of forced calm settled over his face as the guy got closer.

The scent of cheap beer—whatever crappy kind was currently in vogue among the asshole demographic—reached my nose, and I shifted my feet, trying to suppress my impulse to move in front of Nate. He didn’t need my defense, I told myself, even if this guy did need a good shaking.

“Listen up, dickhole,” the crappy student hollered, even though we weren’t more than a few feet away. “I talked to my dad, and he’s going to have your fucking nuts on a platter for this—”

“Nate! Nate, look, I found the rest—” Katie ran up to her brother, holding the other half of the sunglasses.

What happened next happened very fast. Katie skidded on the gravelly pavement, collided with the student, and he knocked her out of the way—straight off the curb and into the traffic of Memorial Drive. I yelled and jumped forward, but before I could even touch her, Nate was there, grabbing her by the arm and swinging her around and into me. A bright blue sedan veered around us with a scream of horns and brakes, coming within an inch of Nate, but even as I wrapped one arm around Katie, he was back on the sidewalk. Across the street, a woman dragging an empty cart screamed belatedly.

Nate caught the guy by the collar of his polo shirt and swung him against the railing so hard the cast iron clanged. “You do not ever do that to a little kid,” Nate snarled. “Ever. Do you understand?”

The student went white. He hadn’t meant for it to happen, but that wouldn’t have helped Katie. She had
gone still as stone against me, frozen like a rabbit in a field, and though I could feel the panicky gasps running through her, she hadn’t yet made a sound. “She’s okay,” I said. “Nate, she’s okay.”

Nate didn’t move. I couldn’t quite see his face from where I was, but I could see how his hands gripped the guy’s shirt almost to the point of ripping it. What was worse was that his scent had gone cold and scary again, but this time I had a glimpse of what was behind it. Blast doors? Yeah, that had been an appropriate metaphor.

The woman across the street was yelling something about child endangerment, but none of us paid any attention to her. Except for maybe the crappy student. He looked from Katie to Nate and for whatever reason, booze or arrogance or sheer panic, made the wrong decision. “You fuck—”

Nate backhanded him, not even bothering to wind up, just a casual whack so quick that I only saw it from the guy’s head snapping back. “Do you understand me?” he repeated.

“Nate!” I caught his shoulder. It was like grabbing hold of an oak door.

Nate glanced at me, his lip curling back. For a second, he saw me and recognized me, and the faint shiver that ran through him had nothing to do with the student or Katie or any momentary anger. I caught my breath, unsure of what I was seeing but very aware of its effect on me. Then his gaze shifted, focusing on Katie, and though his expression didn’t change, his grip on the kid’s shirt slackened.

The loudmouthed student sidled away from Nate. I could see a thought forming behind his eyes, and I dragged my bike forward, then cursed. “Katie, hold this just a second, okay?” I said, and she nodded, watching her brother. Nate didn’t even seem to remember that we were there.

I caught up to the kid in a few paces. “Listen,” I
said, glancing first at his cohorts (who even hadn’t noticed the incident) and then at Nate. “You could have killed that little girl.”

“Fuck off,” he mumbled, but his hands were shaking, and while his shorts looked dry, my nose could tell that they weren’t.

“You could have killed her. You understand that? So you gonna tell me you didn’t deserve that just now?” I stepped in front of him, but he wouldn’t look at me. “Now maybe you can tell your dad about this too, and maybe he might raise a fuss. But it looks to me like we’ve got at least three witnesses who’ll say you just pushed an eight-year-old into traffic. Somehow I don’t think that’ll help you get into med school.”

He flinched at that. I waited for him to look up. “Bitch,” he finally muttered in tones of defeat.

“Oh yes,” I said.

When I turned back to Nate and Katie, Nate had knelt and was talking to her in a soft voice. “I’m okay,” Katie said and said again, but she was still pale, and when he stood up, she tried to hold on to his hand and my bike.

He turned to look at me as I reached them. “You okay, kid?” I said to Katie, taking back the bike before she lost her grip on it.

She nodded. “Thanks.”

“Thank your brother.”

Katie shook her head. “I did. This is different.”

“Just so long as you’re all right.” I touched her shoulder, then glanced at her brother. Nate reddened and wouldn’t quite meet my eyes. “Are
you
okay?”

“Fine,” he said, and it almost sounded true. If I hadn’t just seen what I had, I might have even believed it. “Look, Katie and I ought to get on home, and I know you’ve got work—”

“I can walk with you,” I tried, even though I knew a dismissal when I heard one. “I’m not meeting Rena for another couple of hours.”

He shook his head, still not quite looking at me. “I
don’t think that’d be a good idea. Maybe some other time, though.”

Some other time. What kind of time did the two of us have, these days? But I said okay, and gave Katie another long hug, and waved to them as they crossed the bridge.

The broken sunglasses still lay where Katie had dropped them, at the edge of the curb. I nudged them with my foot, then picked them up and tucked them into one of the pockets of my courier bag.

“Jackass,” I muttered, and I wasn’t sure whether I meant the kid, Nate, or me for getting my damn hopes up.

I
haven’t bothered dressing up to go out ever since Sarah tactfully pointed out that I wear all my clothes as if they were disposable. There’s no point in owning something nice if you’re just going to wear holes in it. So these days, if I’m going clubbing with Rena, for example, I just wear something out of the back of my closet, usually jeans and a shirt without too many stains on it. It’ll pass, and it’s not like I’m out there to pick up guys.

It’s still a little too informal for a police station. I kept feeling like someone was going to accost me for loitering with intent as I waited in the office for Rena. “Could you page her again?” I asked the officer on desk duty. “Rena Santesteban. She should be just getting off duty—her shift ends this time of day, and she knows I’m here to meet her.”

“She might not be in,” he said, not looking up.

“She’s in.” We’d set this up weeks ago—well, we’d originally planned for a girls’ night out three weeks back, but first I had an unexpected double shift and then she’d had food poisoning and then I’d gotten behind…Anyway. Fourth time was the charm, and after the day I’d had I could really use the chance to forget everything for a couple of hours. “Could you just page her, please?”

He shrugged. “Give her time.”

Well, what kind of hurry was I in anyway? I kept pacing, then stopped and sniffed the air. “Is that coffee? God, I’d kill for a cup of coffee—” I stopped, remembering where I was. “Not really. Um.”

The officer gave me a long, bored look. “You don’t want this coffee,” he said finally. “Trust me.”

“Why not? Coffee’s coffee.”

He shook his head, then turned and muttered into the phone again, either paging Rena or asking for patience.

The door opened, and Rena emerged in the blue shirt and jeans that were about as close to a uniform as you could get without the actual tags. It was for her what passed for informal. It was also not what she usually wore for our nights out. “Evie, I’m so sorry,” she began.

“Oh no. No, don’t apologize straight off, it sets the wrong tone for the whole evening—” I stopped. Rena usually looked tired and angry—it was part of her whole aesthetic—but just now she looked both worn down and energized, like a catcher one inning away from a playoff win. “What’s up?”

She glanced over her shoulder. “Can we have a moment?” she asked the officer.

“You can out in the hall,” he said, again without looking up.

Rena sighed, then shepherded me out into the hall. “You don’t happen to have a cigarette on you, do you?” she asked as the door closed behind us.

I shook my head. “I don’t smoke. You know that.”

“Yeah. I was just hoping you might have brought one as a kindness. God, I need a smoke…” She closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall. “I can’t go tonight, Evie.”

“What? Oh, come on, Rena—”

“I can’t. I’ve got too much going on.” She glanced back at the door, as if it might open at any moment. “This is one hell of a case, Evie. It could be big.”

“Bigger than Napoleon Night at the Paradise?”

“Bigger.” She paused. “Hang on. Are they the guys with the ruffles or the guys in the loincloths?”

Trust Rena to remember a band by their clothing, not by their music. “Ruffles. You’re thinking of The Lamentations of Their Women. They played last week.” And we’d missed that show too. “Well, hell. We’re putting this off another week, then?”

“Make it two.” She grinned, her dark eyes sparkling with a kind of manic glee. “Evie, if I could tell you about this, I would. It’s just that awesome. It’s big enough that I could get in trouble just for telling you it exists.”

“Then you’d better shut up about it.” I grinned back. I couldn’t help it, postponed evening out or no. I’d never seen Rena this excited about a case—worried, angry, frustrated, yes, but never actually excited. “Tell me about it after it hits the papers.”

“You got it.” She thumped my shoulder, and I punched her in the arm. “You’ll be okay?”

I shrugged. “I’ll just have to hit the books instead.”

“You’re kidding me. Since when are you studying for anything?”

Since my lack of knowledge kicked my ass
, I thought, but she didn’t need to know that. “Gotta get into
Haavaad
,” I said, and got the door for her. “See you around.”

The little fountain in the corner of my office had gone wonky again, this time spattering the ceiling as well as leaving a puddle all around its base. It started up again as I unlocked the door, tinkling merrily away, like a puppy sitting in the middle of a damp patch and wagging its tail. I sighed and went to get the paper towels.

The fountain and the giant desk that took up most of my office-cum-apartment were the only holdovers from the previous occupant, a psychiatrist who’d had to leave town in a hurry (nothing to do with his practice, everything to do with his losses on the horses
at Suffolk Downs). Though the desk was useful, the fountain had broken a long time back and its habits were as irregular as my own. Even so, after a day of dealing with unexpected crap, I found its unpredictability comforting. At least it could be depended on to act funny.

There were four messages on the aging answering machine: two old clients saying they’d have my payment ready any day now (different phrasing, same sentiment), one robocall from the bike shop advertising a new sale that still wouldn’t bring most of their stuff into my price range, and Sarah asking if I’d borrowed her copy of something called
Dawlayres
.

Probably not, though I’d borrowed pretty much everything else from her. I glanced at the stack of books on the far side of my desk, then picked up the volume on top.
Celtic Mythology
, by B. Austin, with a folded receipt from the BPL stuck two thirds of the way through. Below it was
A Survey of Deities
, which despite its “survey” title had been tougher than any book I could remember reading in my brief time at BU, and which had stymied me by chapter five.
Bulfinch’s
below that, Lady Gregory below that,
D’Aulaire’s
—aha, that’s what she meant—and the big book that really shouldn’t have been at the bottom of the stack but had to be for simple reasons of size,
Dictionary of Myth
.

This was not my evening reading of choice. I’d much rather stretch out listening to the Sox game, reconstructing it in my head like a little mirror of Fenway Park, maybe taking care of some much-needed repairs to my courier gear. Hell, I had a book of William Trevor short stories tucked under the futon that served the office as a couch, and even if I only managed a few pages a night, I preferred that to dusty gods and even dustier religion professors.

But half the reason the Fiana had had a hold on me was because of my connection to a figure out of myth—Sceolang, one of the hounds of Finn Mac Cool.
Sceolang had become human after the stories ended and had gone on to sire an awful lot of descendants, self included. Because I hadn’t known my way around the mythology, I had left myself vulnerable. I couldn’t afford to miss cues like that. And since Boston was a mishmash of cultures, even more so now that the faux-Irish shadow on the undercurrent was gone, I couldn’t confine myself to just one set of myths.

I’d fallen asleep at my desk five times in the last two weeks just because of these stupid books, and it wasn’t even as if I had far to go between desk and sleeping place (the futon folded out to make a passable bed). Making a face at
A Survey of Deities
, I leaned back in my chair to reach the radio. The Sox were up two-one already, and it wasn’t even the second inning. I turned it up and sat back, book in hand.

By the third, it was four-two against the Sox, and I hadn’t managed to read four full pages. “Serves me right for listening to Sarah’s book recommendations,” I muttered, and dragged the dictionary out from the bottom of the stack. If I had to do research, I might as well at least look up what I liked. I thumbed through to the entry on “Sigmund,” just so I could pretend I was helping Nate.

Maybe it was the style of the dictionary, maybe it was the still-resonating emotional charge, but I sank much more easily into this. The legend wasn’t at all like what I remembered from Mom’s operas, which was kind of a relief, since I’d wanted to smack pretty much all those characters. (Mom had said that was the point. I’ll never understand opera.)

Between the book and the Sox game, I was just about dead to the rest of the world. When I noticed the knock at my door I was pretty sure I’d heard it twice already. “Just a second,” I called, then set down the book and checked the score (still not good for the Sox).

The peephole showed two men standing in the hall, the taller one in a shabby gray suit, the shorter in a brown bomber jacket and jeans that looked like they
could stand on their own. Neither was familiar—but the woman’s voice that came with them was. “For crying out loud, Evie, are you home or not?”

Sarah. I looked again and yes, there was a hint of her dark brown curls at the bottom of the lens. Sarah’s not a tiny woman, but she’s short enough that she can lurk under the range of the peephole—or, if she’s close to the door and whacking on it, she can pretty much disappear. “Goddammit,” I muttered, but smiled anyway, shaking my head. Weird company or no, it was good to see Sarah.

I opened the door, and Sarah glared up at me. “You had the baseball turned up again, didn’t you?”

“Guilty,” I agreed. “Who are your friends?”

A little of the merry gleam in her eyes faded. “Not my friends. Both of them were hanging around outside.” She nodded to them. “I figured you’d rather have them inside where you could see them, and we could at least get that part out in the open.” She gave them both an admonitory glare.

Yeah, I could see that. Sarah’s reaction to prowlers is to yell at them—she once shamed a mugger into giving her his wallet—and I could easily see her marching these two to the door just out of pique. And the somewhat shamefaced expressions on these two backed her up.

The shorter man cleared his throat. “I can’t speak for my colleague,” he said, shrugging his jacket as if it might provide a little extra protection, “but I came here to seek audience.”

“Audience?” I glanced at Sarah, who raised her eyebrows:
who knows how adepts think
? The taller man looked me up and down disapprovingly, as if I were applying for a job and had arrived at the interview in pajama pants. “All right. Come on in, all of you.”

Sarah flashed me a quick smile and slid past. I caught the glance between the two men and nodded.
Yes, I’ve just invited you in. I know, that’s not what adepts do.
And these were adepts: the shorter one was
a gray-haired professor type with a persistent facial tic and spectacles that kept sliding down his nose. He absolutely stank of the fireworks-and-rain scent of magic. The other, though he lacked the most obvious scent, had the wasted, tired look of a man who’d used too many loci, cut off too many pieces of his own soul. He smelled like a shadow, like a depression in low grass, and—this much I could tell from his lack of expression alone—he didn’t much like me.

That was fine. I didn’t much like adepts. I smiled at both of them, showing my teeth.
I’m not one of you. I’m not even like you.
I turned my back on them and followed Sarah in.

Sarah settled into one of the chairs on either side of the futon. She was more conservatively dressed than usual, I finally noticed, which for her meant that her skirts only had one layer of ruffles and her hair had been pulled back into a less-than-effective bun. She frowned and nodded to the radio. “Any chance you can turn that down while we talk?”

“No,” I said, leaning against the corner of my desk. The taller man’s lips twitched as he closed the door behind him, though in amusement or contempt I couldn’t tell. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Well—” Sarah took a deep breath and let it out through her teeth.

The shorter man, who seemed to be unhappy with all of the available chairs and had settled for pacing by the door, spoke up. “Audience,” he repeated. “One falls, another rises. Horizons open.”

Goddamn adepts. “In English this time?”

“What my…colleague…is saying,” the taller man continued with a half nod, “is that we both wanted to see you.”

“Really.” I crossed my arms and leaned back.

The two men looked at each other, and it suddenly struck me that they weren’t here together. Whatever reasons had brought them both here, it wasn’t a common cause—and now they didn’t want to talk in
front of each other. The taller man with the shadowy scent seemed to win their stare-off; he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

The shorter man seemed to have gotten his facial tic under control, but he paced, as if stilling one part of him meant that another had to be in motion. “Boston is well known. You don’t go to Boston unless you want to be part of something. The Bright Brotherhood were known, and now they’re gone. Because of you.” The fountain spat water at him, and he started, then craned his neck to study it as if it were a new species.

While each sentence he’d spoken had been technically correct, I couldn’t quite figure out the whole gist of them. “It wasn’t my doing,” I said, and it was only half a lie. “There were a lot of factors involved…Let’s just say I helped the Fiana trip over their own feet. What’s that got to do with you?”

He blinked at me, as if I’d completely managed to miss his point. Maybe I had, but the way he stared at me through his coke-bottle glasses suddenly seemed idiotic, as if he were no more sentient than a cow. I started to shake my head, think up some way to get him out of here, then stopped as something else caught my attention.

A thin scent of gunpowder wound its way through the room. Not much, no more than a breath, but enough to tell me that someone here was working magic. I pushed away from the corner of the desk and stood in front of the taller man. “Stop that.”

He shivered back to full wakefulness. One hand was in his jacket pocket: probably holding a locus. It wasn’t big magic, but for a petty aversion spell, it didn’t have to be. “Stop what?”