Game Of Cages (2010) (40 page)

I wiped steam from the bathroom window and looked out. My aunt had not hung a paper angel in her kitchen window. That meant I could order in a sandwich for dinner. I put on my sleeping clothes: a T-shirt and a pair of cut-off sweatpants. I could eat alone, in silence, without someone asking how I was sleeping, how I was eating, and wouldn't things be better if I went to talk to someone?

I wouldn't have to say "Thank you, but I can't" a half dozen times. My aunt was right; I'd probably sleep better if I could talk about the nightmares--and what I'd done to bring them on--but I'd be bedding down in a padded room.

I opened my door to dispel the steam, even though an unlocked door felt like a gun at my back. I went to my bathroom mirror and looked carefully. Damn. I was wasting away.

A voice behind me said: "You look like shit."

I yelped and spun around. In an instant, my heart was pounding at my chest as my hand fumbled across the sink looking for something to use as a weapon.

Caramella was standing in the bathroom doorway, and I was so startled to see her that everything went still for a moment. My adrenaline eased and I could hear my harsh breath in the silence. It had been five years or more, and she'd changed quite a bit. Her skin, which had once been so dark, seemed lighter, as though she spent all her time indoors, and while she still straightened her hair, now she had it up in a bun. She wore orange pants with an elastic waistband and a white halter. She'd gained some weight over the last few years, and she seemed taller somehow.

But she didn't belong here, not in Seattle. She belonged down in L.A., hanging at the Bigfoot Room with Arne, Robbie, and the rest.

I almost asked her what she was doing here, but I didn't want her to think she wasn't welcome. In truth, I didn't know how I felt about her. "Welcome to my bathroom," I said.

"Thanks. I hate it."

I nodded but didn't respond right away. Her hands were empty, although she might have stuffed a gun into the back of her waistband. Not that I could imagine why she'd want to kill me, but that was how my mind worked now.

"I'm guessing you're not here for old times' sake."

"We don't have any old times, Ray." She turned and walked into the other room.

I followed her, noting that she didn't have a weapon under her waistband. "Then why are you here?" I asked. I kept my tone as neutral as I could, although I had less self-control than I used to.

"I'm paying a debt," she said, as though it was the most bitter thing in the world. "I have to deliver a message to you. In person." She stopped beside the efficiency stove.

"Okay. Here I am."

She looked away. Her lip curled and she blinked several times. Christ, she was about to cry. "You killed me, Ray."

I gaped at her, astonished. She turned and slapped me on the shoulder. Then she did it again. That still wasn't enough, and she slapped my face and head four or five times. I didn't try to stop her.

Finally, she stopped on her own. Hitting me wasn't bringing her any satisfaction. "You killed me," she said again. "And you killed Arne, and Lenard, and Ty, and all the others, too. We're all going to die because we knew you."

"Melly, what are you talking about?"

"Sorry," she said with a wet sniffle. I looked for tears on her face, but her cheeks were dry. "That's the message. That's all you get."

She swung at my face again. I flinched away from the blow, but it never struck. When I opened my eyes a moment later, I was alone in the room.

I had been standing between Caramella and the door; she couldn't have gotten around me and gotten out, not in the time it took me to flinch. I walked around the little studio anyway. She was gone--vanished in the blink of an eye.

Magic. She had magic. Damn.

My cheek and scalp were sticky where she'd slapped me, and the stickiness was starting to burn. I went into the bathroom and washed my face and head. I could feel a smear of acidic goop that was so thin I couldn't even see it. Plain water washed it away completely. When it was gone, my skin was slightly tender, but the pain had eased.

I checked the washrag after, but it didn't have any unusual stains or smells. I hung it over the kitchen faucet.

Back in the living room, I took my ghost knife from its hiding place on my bookshelf. It was only a piece of scrap paper, smaller than the palm of my hand, with a layer of mailing tape over it and some laminate over that. On the paper itself was a sigil I had drawn myself with a ballpoint pen. It felt alive, and it felt like a part of me, too. The other magic I had, the tattoos on my chest, arms, and neck, were protections that had been cast on me by someone else. The ghost knife was my spell, the only one I had.

Then I took my cellphone out of my sock drawer. After the mess in Washaway, an investigator for the Twenty Palace Society had met me on the street and slipped me a phone number. They trusted me enough to give me a way to contact them, which was damned rare and I knew it. If there was ever a time to use that number, this was it.

The society was a group of sorcerers committed to one end: hunting down magic spells and the people who used them, then destroying both. They were especially determined to find summoning spells, which could call strange creatures to our world from a place called, variously, the Empty Spaces or the Deeps. These creatures, called predators, could grant strange powers, if the summoner knew how to properly control them. Too often, the summoner didn't know, and the predator got loose in the world to hunt.

I was a low-level member of that society, but except for my boss, Annalise, who had put the magical tattoos on me, I knew very little about it. How many peers were there? How many investigators? How many wooden men, besides me, did they have? Where were they based? Where did their money come from?

I had no idea and no way to find out. The Twenty Palace Society took their secrecy seriously. I hadn't been invited to secret headquarters, hadn't trained at a secret camp, hadn't been given a secret handbook with an organizational flow chart at the back. When they wanted me to do something, they contacted me, and they told me as little as they could.

What I did know was this: peers lived a very long time--centuries, in some cases--and the magic they used had left them barely human. Oh, they looked human enough, but they had become something else.

And they were bastards, too--ruthless killers who took a scorched-earth policy when it came to predators and enemy sorcerers. As a group, they didn't seem to care much about collateral damage.

They had their reasons. A single predator, let loose in the world, could strip it of life. I'd visited the Empty Spaces once and seen it happen. So maybe the peers were justified in their "kill a hundred to save six billion" attitude, but it was a slim consolation if your loved one was one of the hundred.

Which was why I set the cell back on the bureau. Caramella had vanished right in front of me. It was magic, yeah, but calling the Twenty Palace Society and asking Annalise to meet me in L.A. was as good as taking a hit out on Mella and everyone else I knew. Annalise would kill them all just to be safe, and I would be the one who hung a bull's-eye on their backs.

Game of Cages is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Del Rey Mass Market Original

Copyright (c) 2010 by Harry ConnollyExcerpt from a forthcoming novel by Harry Connolly copyright (c) 2010 by Harry Connolly

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

This book contains an excerpt from a forthcoming novel by Harry Connolly. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

eISBN: 978-0-345-52174-3

www.delreybooks.com

v3.0