Shadowlands (33 page)

I’d told Alejandro that I’d wanted to help Nik and Elaine, and I’d meant it, but uncomfortable didn’t begin to describe how I felt at the idea that they, and who knows how many other Outsiders, knew my
secret. What kind of long-term relationship could I have with anyone who could be so careless with my life?

With a sigh, I pulled off the second shoe and continued toward the kitchen. We had a guest. Alejandro says that a guest is a jewel on the cushion of hospitality. I’d never hear the end of it if I didn’t join them.

Alejandro glanced at me as I leaned against the counter, and he turned back to the chorizo he was slicing.

“When were you planning to tell me?” His voice was as hard and as sharp as the knife in his hand. My mouth was suddenly dry. I glanced at Nighthawk and surprised a look of sympathy on his face. I didn’t have to ask what Alejandro was talking about. When I didn’t answer, Alejandro turned around to face me.

“You cannot say that you did not know,” he said. “When were you going to tell me that Stormwolf was once a Hound?”

At least he wasn’t saying that Wolf was still a Hound. I straightened my spine and decided to go on the offensive.

“Gee, I don’t know. When would have been the right time?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. “Before or after you admitted you weren’t listening to me? That you weren’t respecting what I learned? Maybe I just didn’t want to have that discussion all over again.”

“Well, what we have been ‘discussing’ is the disappearance of the Water Sprite, Shower of Stars, who you no doubt remember, and it appears there has also been an attack by a Hound on the Troll, Mountain Crag, requiring a Healer’s intervention.”

There was a gentle, almost apologetic cough. “There is also the matter of the Goblin, Vein of Gold, who was also visited by Hounds, though he was able to escape.” Hawk’s voice was deeper, darker than Alejandro’s.

Alejandro arranged the chorizo on a plate with sharp, precise movements but instead of passing it to me, walked it around himself and placed in on the table where it joined wine, bread, and manchego-filled dates. He might be angry, but by god, food still had to be eaten.

His eyes held mine. “Hawk has been sent here looking for Stormwolf, to see if he can shed any light on these incidents.”

Hawk followed Alejandro into the dining room, taking a seat along the side opposite the pass-through. I stood with my hand on the back of my usual chair, closest to the kitchen doorway.

As Alejandro poured wine, I thought back to my three encounters with Wolf—
one
of which, I had to remember, Alejandro didn’t know about. I couldn’t recall reading anything about Shower of Stars from him, and all I was getting about the Troll was an image of the aqueduct in Segovia, whatever that meant.

“If you think Wolf had anything to do with these disappearances, you’re wrong.” I pulled out my chair with maybe just a touch of unnecessary force and sat down. “And I can prove it. That is, if you’re going to believe me.” I looked at Alejandro, my eyebrows raised as far as they would go. This was his chance to prove that what he’d said the day we’d had our fight was true.

He lifted his wine, and put it down again without drinking. “You should have told me,” he said. “Trust must work both ways.”

I loosened the muscles of my jaw. “Okay,” I said. “But I saw this as someone else’s secret, not my own. I made a judgment call, and I’m sorry you got caught in the middle.” Well, maybe not
strictly
the
whole
truth, but close enough to save the moment. “It’s going to happen that there are things I can’t share with you.” His face began to cloud over again. “Even if this wasn’t one of those things,” I added quickly. “Nothing’s changed. Wolf is still the person we know, whatever he might have been in the past.”

Hawk cleared his throat, and I was happy to turn away from Alejandro’s still suspicious face. “But you will acknowledge, that having been what he has been, we must question him,” Hawk said. “You said you could prove your assertions?”

“I can.” I looked over my shoulder at Alejandro. He’d gone back into the kitchen for a bowl of olives and was just placing it on the ledge of the pass-through. “Do you have something from any of these People, a possession or piece of clothing that I could get a reading from? What about the Troll? You said he was still alive, could I touch him? Or what about something from his apartment?”

Hawk turned his dark amber eyes to Alejandro. “She is a Truthreader?” he asked. I was just getting offended that he hadn’t asked me directly when he looked back at me and smiled. You would have thought it was Christmas day and he was a kid with a new toy.

I felt Alejandro looking at me. His face was still stiff, but he gave me the tiniest of nods, telling me he was going to let me handle it. I breathed a little easier. He was going to forgive me.

“I can give you a demonstration if you’d like,” I said, though from the look of delight still on his face he wasn’t going to need it. I was just about to ask him to let me have his watch when he spoke.

“I have an excellent idea,” he said, his voice rumbling with eagerness. “Would you be willing to come to the Lands to gather truth from Mountain Crag?”

Ooh. That was the question, wasn’t it? Even the thought of having to go to the Lands made me shiver, and swallow carefully.

“Has he been Healed?” Alejandro cut in before I could answer. “If the Troll has been Healed, then the traces of the Hound would be gone from him, as they are from me, and Valory might very well read nothing from him.”

I saw right away where he was going. “But if his apartment hasn’t been cleaned—or even if it has—I’ll be able to get a reading there. Whatever or whoever attacked him will at least have brushed up against something in the struggle.”

“Then it is back to Segovia,” Hawk said, “and Jenaro’s apartment.” I noticed that when he spoke of the Troll’s human life, he used his human name. “I can take us there directly from the crossroads.” He looked at the table. “Once we have eaten.”

“Whenever you’re ready,” I said.

“It is very good of Valory to agree to help with this,” Alejandro said, his eyes fixed on his own plate. That was as close to an olive branch as I was going to get at the moment.

“Happy to help,” I said.

“I will be happy to learn that Wolf is innocent.”

I looked at Hawk. “He is.”

T
HE
CRACK!
OF DISPLACED AIR was muffled by thick carpets and heavy curtains. Wolf breathed in the faint saffron scent that lingered in the High Prince’s Royal York apartment. Eyes closed, he listened, letting ears and nose tell him that he was alone, the apartment empty. He went into the tiny kitchen and opened the refrigerator. This was the closest thing in the whole of the Shadowlands to the type of magic one found in the Lands. Here, food appeared, fresh and tasty, whenever he opened the door. Of course the scents told him that it was brought by humans, replenished on a regular basis, and did not appear out of some quality of the refrigerator itself. Today there was fresh fruit, new cheeses—one with a pleasant blue marbling—and a tub of an almost liquid creamy substance with a pleasingly sharp taste. The dried and cured meats were the same that had been there before he’d left, but better wrapped than he had left them. There was also a brown paper bag with small dark seeds in it that smelled profoundly of ganje.

He had found and informed two more of the People Alejandro
told him about. Both Riders, they had been living in a place called Mumbai. One had received his news with joy, and had set out immediately for the nearest Portal. The other was even more uninterested than the Troll Jenaro had been.

“Nothing for me there,” he’d said dismissively. “Minor son of minor family, neither Singer, Warrior, nor Healer. What’s there for me but service to someone stronger, more important? Better I stay here, where I am of consequence and have a place, family, children.”

Wolf had left him to his Internet empire.

Wolf pulled a bottle of beer out of the refrigerator and twisted off the cap. Not quite as good as it would have been coming out of a barrel, he thought, but still an elegant compromise for a people whose barrels had no magic. He went into the sitting room and stared out of the window at the train station across the street. He went into the bedroom, where the bed had been made up and the curtains opened. He returned to the sitting room and stared at the bookshelves before returning once more to the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and stood contemplating the contents. He wasn’t hungry, he decided, and let the door swing shut.

He leaned back against the granite-topped counter, bracing his hands wide. He’d been focusing hard on his task, hard enough that he’d managed to avoid thinking about his meeting with Moon—about what he had and hadn’t told her—but he could not do this forever. She’d agreed with him that he should try to rescue as many of his old Pack mates as he could. Would she have agreed so readily if she had known one of them was his brother?

While traveling he had found several other faint trails, old scents that would eventually lead him to one of the People, and one or two of the newer, strange scents that were most likely those of stable Hounds. But he had chosen not to follow those trails. He was certain none of them was Fox’s, and surely it would be best to approach Fox first? The Pack would follow its Leader, and if he could persuade his brother…Wolf swallowed as the beer in his stomach roiled.

Persuading his brother. That had been where this difficulty began. Fox would not even be a Hound if Wolf had not—No. He pushed himself away from the counter, pushing the thought away with the same action. He would not think of
that
.

Wolf sank into one of the soft chairs next to the fireplace and shut his eyes.

“L’as tu vu?”
Nik scanned the expanse of the Royal York’s lobby as if he could spot the Rider himself.

“Même pas son omber,”
Yves Crepeau said. “Not since I arrived, in any case.” He was sitting with an e-reader in a wing-backed chair that gave him a good view of the main doors, the circular staircase, and the elevators.

Nik took out his cell phone, stared down at it, and then thrust it back into his jacket pocket when he realized he hadn’t even registered the display. Calls to both Valory and Alejandro were going straight to voice mail, so either their phones were off, or they were somehow out of range. He eyed the bank of brass-decorated elevators. Alejandro did say he was going to talk to other Riders. And this guy was another Rider.

“I’m going up.”

“I’ll come with you.”

Nik stopped in his tracks. “Not a good idea to risk both of us, Yves.”

“Not a good idea to risk yourself. Poco said—”

Nik looked away, sighed, and looked back. “Look, I don’t know what Poco’s told you, but you can see for yourself that I’m fine. I’ve had more experience than most of you put together, so—”

“So that is precisely why we are concerned.”

Nik’s mouth snapped shut. It wasn’t everyone who would interrupt him like that.

“You are like the captain of the ship,” Yves said, his quiet voice steady and matter-of-fact enough that Nik couldn’t take offense. “Yes, you give us orders, and we obey you. But if we see you putting yourself in danger?” Yves raised his index finger, started to point and then, as if noticing what he was doing, lowered his hand again. “The captain does not leave the ship, Nikos—how many times does television get this wrong?—the captain sends others.”

Nik looked away again, but when he looked back, Yves was still scrutinizing him, head to one side. The man was right, and Nik knew it. But. “Don’t push that analogy too far, Yves. Sometimes, the captain sends the crew to safety, and then he goes down with the ship.”

“Not on my watch.” Yves grinned at him. “Sir.”

Nik shook his head. “Okay. Fine. But this time, as a special favor to me, you’ll wait down here. Got it?”

Yves’ eyes twinkled.
“Oui, mon capitain.”

He slapped his friend on the shoulder and turned toward the elevators.

The knock on the door startled him, and Wolf almost Moved without thinking. But this could be someone looking for the High Prince, or at least her human persona. Even if it were one of the servants in the hotel, he should probably answer.

There was a glass lens set into the door, which revealed and magnified the outer corridor. Wolf would have preferred to rely on his own senses, but the person standing on the other side of the door had that same scent/not scent that he had noticed before. An Outsider?

The lens distorted size, but not coloring. The Outsider was much shorter than Wolf, but with a distinct Moonward look to him. Curly black hair, cropped close to his skull. Skin like ivory with an undertone of olive. The only non-Rider feature was his very dark eyes. And his rather prominent nose. What would bring him here? Wolf opened the door.

The man nodded at him. “You’re the Rider? Stormwolf? The one who took Valory that day? I’m Nikos Polihronidis.” The human stuck out his hand. “Call me Nik.”

At the mention of Valory, Wolf had a sudden image of her dark red hair, her pale skin, and her golden-caramel eyes. Her smile had been warm, and her eyes understanding, carrying concern without pity.