Game Of Cages (2010) (13 page)

She seemed to understand. "Don't fret, hon. Everyone needs help now and then." She went through a door behind the counter, leaving us alone.

Catherine turned to me. "We're going to hole up here for a little while, but you'll have to pay for it. They have my car, which means they know who I am and could trace my credit cards. They don't know you, do they?"

I took my MasterCard out of my wallet and handed it to her. My dirty hands made it sticky. "No, they don't."

The owner returned from the back room with two short stacks of folded laundry. I held up my hands when she tried to give one to me. "Huh," she said, then led me into the back.

She explained that these were her private rooms and I wasn't to come back here without her say-so. I told her that was fine with me, and she passed me off to a tall, heavy man with dull gray hair and a heavily weathered face. He was big enough to be a pro wrestler, if he had been thirty-five years younger and dosed with steroids.

She left, shutting the door behind her. The man examined the side of my face for a moment, then began to unbutton my jacket. I tried to help, but my hands stuck to the fabric. They were still covered with pine pitch.

"We'll get them clean in a second." He sounded like someone's grandfather. He got my jacket off and I lathered up my hands. The mud rinsed right off but not the pitch. "It's all right," he said. He splashed a little bath oil on my hands, and that worked.

I looked at my face in the mirror. "Shit," I said. "He hit me pretty hard, didn't he?"

"I guess so," Wrestler said. "But it's no excuse for that kind of language."

"Sorry."

"You can take a shower in your room. Take the clothes--heck, you can keep them. They don't fit me anymore." He led me back into the living room.

The woman returned with a receipt on a little black tray. I signed it and kept my copy. The place cost less than I had expected but more than I wanted to give up.

Wrestler handed us keys. "Your room is upstairs on the right. Breakfast is served until eleven. Checkout's eleven, too. If you need anything, just ask Nadia or me."

"Thanks."

He left. Catherine suggested I get a shower first, then come back down to meet her. I accepted.

The room was pretty, with floral prints on the bedcovers and little wooden picture frames on the night table. The lampshades were edged with lace and the floor covered by a throw rug woven out of rags. Nadia and Pro Wrestler took pride in this place, but I would never feel comfortable here.

My shower was quick and hot. Pro Wrestler's clothes were a little too roomy, but the pants had a belt, so I was fine with it. There was even a cotton sweater in the stack. I wouldn't have to put on my muddy flannel jacket again. After I rubbed the pitch off them, I transferred my wallet, keys, and ghost knife to the new clothes. Unfortunately, in all the excitement I'd lost my toothbrush.

When I returned to the living room, Catherine was sitting by the fire, a little plate with a half-eaten bagel beside her. "All yours," I said.

"Ray," she said. "Give me your key."

Was she kicking me out in the street? "Why?"

"Because I'm going to take a shower and change. I can't do that knowing you have a key."

I nodded and gave her the key. She took it carefully so our fingers wouldn't touch.

"Thank you. Don't come upstairs."

I took her spot by the fire. It felt nice to sit. I'd been up for nearly twenty-four hours, and the last few had been way too exciting.

The next thing I knew, someone was gently pushing my shoulder to wake me. I didn't even realize I'd fallen asleep.

"Hey there, son," he said. "I'm sorry to disturb you, but I need to talk to you about last night."

I sat up straight and rubbed the sleep from my eyes. "How long have I been out?"

"I'm told it's been about three hours." I rubbed at my eyes again and got a good look at him.

He was wearing a wool cap and a red plaid hunter's jacket. He was small, a little older than Pro Wrestler, and he had a genial face that seemed used to smiling.

"Are you a cop?"

"No," he said and laughed a little. "Washaway is too small to have a police force, and the county sheriff has his hands full, apparently. My name is Steve Cardinal. I'm part of the neighborhood watch around here."

"What do you want from me?"

"Not idle gossip," he said, holding his hands up. "If there's a criminal loose in town, we have an email list we need to notify so what happened to you won't happen to anyone else. I'm not an officer of the court, just a citizen, but anything you tell us could be helpful."

What the hell. I told him the story Catherine and I had cooked up: We came upon a big BMW by the side of the road. When we slowed to ask if they needed help, they pointed guns at us and ordered us out of the car. One of them slugged me.

While the two men were arguing in a foreign language, Catherine and I ran for it. They didn't shoot at us or anything. We ran through a big iron gate, hoping to find a house. Instead, we saw another BMW and more men. We couldn't go back, so we went cross-country.

We followed a trail to a tree farm. No one answered at the house, so we went to the road and walked into town.

It sounded fishy to me, but I told it straight, my voice flat from exhaustion. Cardinal asked what the men looked like, but he didn't ask any cop questions, like Did anyone see you? or What time was that?

Then he asked me why we were hiding along the side of the road when cars passed. I guessed we'd been seen sooner than I'd thought. I told him that we were afraid the guys in the BMWs would come back. In fact, one of the first cars we hid from was a BMW headed toward town.

He didn't like that, but he forced himself to smile. I gave him a description of the car. He said he'd ask folks to keep their eyes open.

I wanted to ask about the fire, but curiosity is dangerous. Instead, I told him I was glad and let my eyelids sag. He took the hint.

On his way to the door, I heard Nadia speak to him in a low, urgent tone. I couldn't make out what she said, but he did his best to reassure her before he left.

Nadia had a note for me from Catherine. She was going to sleep until at least eleven, and I shouldn't bother her until then. The clock said it was only 10:45, which meant there would still be breakfast. I piled three scones and a mealy apple onto a tiny plate and carried a full coffee back to my chair by the fire.

Once my belly was full, I got restless. I couldn't stop thinking one thing: Where was the sapphire dog?

We had taken on the floating storm, and now I was ready for the main event. I also needed to figure out what, if anything, to do about Tattoo, Frail, and the Old Man. They had killed someone to summon a predator, and that memory brought back clean, welcome anger. Someone needed to do something about that group, and I wanted it to be me.

I did my best not to think about Regina, Ursula, Biker, and Kripke. They complicated things and I wanted simplicity. I grabbed another coffee and went to wake Catherine. We needed a strategy session.

She answered the door on the second knock. She had changed into a pair of dark jeans and a black sweatshirt, which fit too well to be charity like mine. Her eyes were red. She'd been asleep, too.

I felt awkward. "Can we talk about what we do next?"

She stepped back to let me in.

Catherine walked to the far side of the bed and started stuffing things into her bag. Her head hung down to hide her face, and her shoulders were hunched. She zipped the bag closed with a sudden, angry swipe of her arm. Then she wiped her face with her hand and sat by the window. She wouldn't look at me.

I guessed we weren't going to jump into bed and celebrate last night's victory.

"I'm leaving now," she said.

I sat across from her. "We haven't found the predator yet."

"I don't find predators. I don't kill them, either. I don't fight sorcerers and I don't face down gunmen. I'm an investigator. My job is to confirm that something bad is going on, then contact the society. I give them enough information to get started, and I get out of their way. I shouldn't even have gotten this damn job."

"You already sent the photos of the license plates?"

"Yes. Even though most of those cars were rented, they'll still be able to trace them. Pictures of the people would have been better, but that didn't happen. Now we have a predator on the loose and a sorcerer summoning more. We need a peer to handle this. Maybe more than one."

My heart skipped a beat. Annalise was a peer. "Is Annalise coming?"

Catherine gave me a careful look. "I don't know who they'll send."

My whole body grew warm. I wanted Annalise here with me. I needed her. She had power and she didn't falter. Everything was simple for her. She would have dummy-slapped Ursula into next week, and I would have never even heard of a floating storm.

Catherine said: "You should leave, too."

"What? Why?"

"For a lot of reasons. You're not trained for this. You have that one spell in your pocket and whatever is all over those tattoos of yours, but that's it. Hell, we don't even know what we're facing."

"Regina Wilbur said it was a sapphire dog."

"She did?" Catherine seemed startled. "Why didn't you tell me before?"

"Because a predator was trying to kill us," I answered, which didn't make a damn bit of sense. I should have told her everything in case she made it but I didn't.

Damn. She had asked me what I'd found out, and I'd answered Stuff. She was right. I wasn't trained for this. "I should have, though. I'm sorry."

"Anything else?"

I took a deep breath and told her everything that happened after we'd split up. When I finished, I asked her: "What's a sapphire dog?"

"I heard about one once. A ... friend of mine said it was a beautiful creature that destroyed anyone who saw it. That's all I know."

"Isn't there a book or website or something? Shouldn't there be a database or an encyclopedia with pictures and--"

"No," she answered. "There isn't one and there never will be one, for good reason. The society doesn't share information."

"We could do our job a whole lot better if they did."

"Information shared is information leaked. Any secrets the society shares with the rest of us would eventually be sold, or be scammed or tortured out of us."

"Tortured?"

She sighed heavily. I was annoying her and she wanted me to know it. "This isn't a low-stakes game we're playing, Ray. Anyone who finds out what we are will want to know everything we know. Everything. And they won't be gentle about it, either. The more people hear about sapphire dogs and floating storms, the more they'll want one. That's when they start searching for spell books."

I didn't answer right away. Of course she was right. I'd already heard Professor Solorov and Kripke say that very thing.

And it wasn't as though this was my first encounter with magic. Both previous times had been bloody and awful. Catherine had a point.

"You said I should leave town for a lot of reasons," I said. "And you've been angry with me since we faced the floating storm. What happened? Should I have used my ghost knife against it?"

She let out an exasperated laugh that turned into another sigh. "I'm not angry with you, Ray. Okay, I was, but not anymore. You mean well. It's this Annalise that pisses me off. She's the one who put those spells on you, am I right? And she has you thinking she's such hot shit that you're practically creaming in your pants over her."

I suddenly felt very still. "Watch it," I said.

"Or what?" she snapped, straining to keep her voice low. "What are you going to do? Feed me to a predator?"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"See? This is what I'm talking about. This! When this Annalise brought you into this life, what did she tell you about the predators?"

"They love to be summoned but hate to be held in place," I said. There was some other stuff she'd explained, but I didn't think Catherine was pissed off about where they came from or whether they were angels, devils, or, as Annalise said, neither.

"And that's it?"

I didn't like the way this was going. It was one thing to have her angry with me, but this was worse. She was treating me like a fish just arrived on the cellblock.

It made me want to lose my cool with her to make her back down, but part of me knew her anger was justified. I didn't know why, but I trusted her enough to assume it. "And we have to destroy them. Kill them," I added, because she was being honest with me, and I wanted to be honest in return.

"That's what I thought. What about feeding them? What about serving them a late-night snack?"

I felt my face flush. I'd let the floating storm feed from the power lines for too long, and she knew about it. "I'm sorry," I said. "I cut the power pole as soon as I realized, but--"

"Power pole? I don't care about a power pole. I'm talking about people."

I stared at her, trying to figure out what she meant. "Do you mean the two assholes who shot at us?"

"Of course I do, Ray. You led the predator to them and let it feed."

"It zapped them with lightning. Red lightning. It didn't feed."

"Predators feed in all sorts of ways.... Okay. Listen up. When I first signed on to this damn job so-and-so years ago, I was investigating a string of overeating suicides. People were eating and eating and they could not stop themselves. Eventually, they ruptured their guts and died in agony, but if anyone tried to restrain them, they howled like starving dogs. Nobody could figure out what the hell was going on, but I did. It turned out that it was a tiny little predator that looked like a songbird, sort of. People were killing themselves because they heard this birdsong, and somehow this predator was feeding off of that."

"What happened to it?" I asked.

"I don't know. I sent my report and skipped town before it noticed me and sang outside my window. No one ever tells investigators how it turns out. We're not secure."

"You think the floating storm fed on them, somehow?" I asked, still doubtful.

"I don't know how it works," she said. "They're not like us. There's a different physics where they come from. A different reality. All I know is that they don't kill for fun, and they don't waste their time."