Redemption Alley

“Do you have anything else on Bernardino?” I didn’t want to push him… but I had to know. I had to.

“File. Maybe in the file… their eyes. And the teeth…” His eyelids drifted down, and Carp took refuge in the sedation.

I didn’t blame him.

I sat there for a long few moments, gray gathering strength through the windows, dawn coming up. My left hand lay human-cold and limp on Carp’s sweating forehead, under the gash that ran along his hairline and jagged into his temple, sutured up and quiescent under a dabble of green herbal paste ru

I wished she had something that would stitch up the damage inside him. I’d have to get him to a trauma counselor; there were a few on call that took care of things like this and billed the police department.

What comes next, Jill? Come up with a plan. Your brain works just fine, now for God’s sweet sake, use it.

I took my fingers gently away from Carp’s feverish, damp, human skin.

It took longer than I liked, breathing deeply and staring at the gray filling up the cup of the window, for my mental floor to clear. I needed sleep, and food, and a good few hours of hard thinking.

So many things I needed. What I was going to get was a long mess before this was all through.

When I finally pushed myself up, leather creaking, I stood looking down at Carp’s slack face. He was still shocky-pale, but breathing all right. He might wake up not remembering much, the brain outright refusing, to keep the psyche from being further traumatized. Or he might wake up reliving every single second of it, replaying it like a CD on repeat until he had a psychotic break.

It was too soon to tell.

“Jill?” Leon stood in the door, the copper tied in his hair clinking and shifting as soon as he spoke.

“Where’s the Trader?” I kept staring at the planes and valleys of Carp’s unhandsome face, as if they would turn into a map that would lead me out of this.

The amulets around Leon’s throat jingled a bit as he touched them, his version of a nervous tic. “Up in the greenhouse, Galina says. Are we sitting tight or moving out?”

I swallowed hard, juggling priorities. Rest easy, Carper. I’m on the job. “Moving in fifteen, Leon. Get what you need.”

“Where we going?”

The next step is to find Bernardino—after we visit Hutch. “Hutch’s, to find out what we’re up against. Then we’re going cop-hunting. Leave your truck here.”

Chapter Twenty-four

Hutch pushed his glasses up on his beaky nose. “Oh, Christ.” At least he didn’t try to slam the door in my face. I pushed past him and into his bookshop, the familiar smell of dust, paper, and tea enveloping me. “I hate it when you do this.”

“Hey, Hutch.” Leon gri

“Not you too.” Hutch backed up to give both of us plenty of room. Chatham’s Books, Used and Rare, was painted on a weathered board out front as well as in peeling gilt on the front window, and he did a good trade in repairing old texts. Most of his business is done over the Internet, which is the way he likes it.

Still, the place would’ve probably gone under if it wasn’t for the back room. That room gets Hutch a subsidy from the resident hunter and resident law enforcement—a room with triple-locked doors, long wooden tables, and high narrow bookcases stuffed with leather-jacketed tomes on the occult, the theory and history of sorcery, accounts of the nightside, and just about every useful book a hunter needs.

Hey, we’re not savages. Sometimes research is the only thing that keeps a hunter’s ass from being knocked sideways by the unexpected. Ninety percent of solving any nightside problem is figuring out exactly what you’re up against.

And if it wasn’t in books, Hutch could still probably find it for you. He’d discovered computers in the dark ages when they still used floppy disks; they were still talking about his raids on government databases in law-enforcement classes.

He hadn’t wanted to use the information, Hutch always pointed out. He’d just wanted to prove it could be hacked.

Nowadays he collects information the resident hunter might need—enough of an exercise for Hutch’s skills to keep him out of trouble. If he did anything more, at least he didn’t get caught. Which is all I or Mikhail ever really asked for. In return, we kept him out of trouble with the law when he went a-fishing and a-hacking on our behalf.

Today Hutch wore a Santa Luz Wheelwrights sweatshirt and a pair of khaki shorts, his thin hairy calves exposed. His beaky, mournful face twisted as he locked the front door and flipped the sign to “closed.” “I really hate it when you do this. What is it now?”

He isn’t one for excitement in the flesh, our local nightside historian. Wise man.

“Internet trace, Hutch. Find me the vitals on one Alfred Bernardino. He’s in the Precinct 13 Vice squad. Hack if you have to, but don’t leave any fingerprints.” I barely broke stride. “And make yourself some tea, we’re going to be here a while.”

“Why aren’t you asking Monty to do this? Or someone else?” Hutch pulled all his angles in, from his thin elbows to his knobby knees, and I considered telling him we had a scurf infestation and all sorts of trouble boiling into town.

I erred on the side of mercy, for once. “Because this time it’s the police that are the problem, Hutchinson. Find the cop for me, and we’re spending some time in the back room. I need to know about something.”

“About what?” He didn’t quite perk up, but any chance of poking through dusty old books brightens him considerably, even if he’s allergic to the idea of seeing anything abnormal up close.

I’m not the only one with personality quirks.

“Something called Argoth. And something about an airfield just outside of town.”

The milky pallor under his freckles deepened. “Argoth?” He actually squeaked.

I halted next to the counter with the antique cash register. A brand-spanking-new credit-card reader sat next to the old brass machine. I turned, on the balls of my feet, my coat swaying with me, and met Hutch’s eyes, swimming behind their thick lenses. “You know something about Argoth?”

“Only that he’s a hellbreed, operated mostly in Eastern Europe. The last time he surfaced was 1929, he went back down in 1946.” Hutch’s thin shoulders came up, dropped. The bookstore breathed all around me. “You can guess where he was stationed.”

And indeed I could. Both World Wars created enough chaos, pain, and horror to blast the doors between here and other places wide open; the battlefields and camps were playgrounds for all sorts of nastiness. Some places on earth still haven’t recovered—like Eastern Europe, the hunter population out there is still scrambling to get a lid on some of what was let loose decades ago.

“Christ.” Leon sneezed twice. It was dusty in here.

I’d heard rumors about the war before, but this was unexpected. “Pull me the basic references on Argoth, then get me that cop’s vitals. And I need you to find me everything you can on an airfield out of town, possibly called ARA.”

Hutch had produced a small steno pad, a mechanical pencil, and was scribbling furiously. “And after that I change water into wine, right?”

If you could, I’d ask for a bottle or two of a nice pinot noir. “Don’t get cute. After that you’re going to Galina’s while I poke around in here some more.”

His eyebrows shot up and his pencil paused. “Again?”

Yes, again. Because if they know I’m alive and they know I go to Galina’s, they probably know I come here too. “Yes, again. Unless you want to get a severe case of lead poisoning.”