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CHAPTER 25
Once we alighted from the hovercab Japhrimel had somehow had waiting for me at Jace's front door, I chose a few streets at random. Walked along feeling my shields thicken and thin, taking in the atmosphere. It's a strange process to get accustomed to another city; it takes normal people months. Psionics process a lot faster; it takes up a few days—or if we deliberately sink ourselves into a city's Power-well, a few hours.
We walked, the demon and I, his coat occasionally brushing me. I sweated freely, heat still trapped in the streets, my coat's Kevlar panels heavy against my back. My bag's strap cut into my shoulder. I carried my sword, tapping my fingernails on the hilt.
I might not have held back this time, I thought, as we turned into the redlight district.
Down in the smoking well of Nuevo Rio, I found a taqueria and ordered in passable pidgin with a soupçon of pointing. The demon stood uncomfortably close, his heat blurring and mixing in with the heat of the pavement giving back the fierce sun of the day. He said nothing as we stood aside between a bodega and a closed-up cigar shop. Crowds pushed past, Nuevo Rios in bright colors, most of them wearing grisgris bags. Vaudun and Santeria had taken over here after the collapse of the Roman Catholic Church in the great Vatican Bank scandal in the dim time between the Parapsychic Act and the Awakening; the revelation that the Church had been funding terrorist groups and the Evangelicals of Gilead had been too much for even the Protestant Christians traditionally opposed to the Catholics. And the Seventy-Day War had put the last nail in the coffin of the tradition of Novo Christos.
Nuevo Rios understood a little more about Power than other urban folk, and would no more go outside without defense from the evil eye or random curse than they would go out without clothing. So Nuevo Rio was heat and the smell of tamales and blood, copper-ski
I bolted the food, hoping I wouldn't get sick. I had the standard doses of tazapram in my bag, but I rarely needed them. Most Necromances had cast-iron guts. You'd think that a bunch of neurotic freaks like us would have delicate stomachs, but I'd never met a queasy Necromance.
When I finished, licking hot sauce from my fingers, the demon glanced down at me. "Did he hurt you?" he asked, incuriously. But his shoulders were tense; I saw it and wondered why. Of course, if anything happened to me Jaf was screwed… I wondered if he thought Jace was that dangerous.
I shrugged. "Not really." Not physically, anyway, I added, looking away from the demon's green gaze.
He handed me a cold bottle of limonada and watched as I opened it with a practiced wrist-flick. We stepped out into the flow of foot traffic, the demon still uncomfortably close, moving with weirdly coordinated grace so he didn't bump or jostle me. "Why was he holding you?" Japhrimel asked in my ear, leaning close so he didn't have to shout.
"I don't have any idea," I said. "I think he's upset at me."
"Do you?" Even though the street was crowded, we were still given a few feet of breathing room. My emerald glowed under the streetlamps, and my rings swirled with color, my shields adjusting to the different brand of Power pulsing out from the people and pavement. "Why did he leave you?"
I shrugged. "I have no idea. I came home from a job and he was gone. I waited for him to come back for a few weeks and…" I glanced up as slicboards hummed overhead. The hovertraffic here was chaotic outside of a few aerial lanes, taxis screeching through banzai runs, gangs of slicboarders whooping as they coasted through the smoggy air. "I got over it."
"Indeed." The demon bumped my shoulder slightly. I wished I'd thought to tie my hair back—a stray breeze blew a few strands across my nose. "He seems very attached to you, Dante."
"If he was attached, he wouldn't have left. Don't you start in on me, too."
"Understood." He sounded thoughtful. We started to walk, oddly companionable.
I stopped to watch a three-card-monte game, half-smiling when I saw the man's brown hands flick. Streams of liquid Portogueso slid past me. The demon leaned over my shoulder, his different heat closing around me and oddly enough making the sweaty smoggy atmosphere a little easier to handle.
Down the street from the monte, a babalawao drew a vevé in chalk on the pavement. The crowd drew back to watch, respectful, or hurriedly slipped away, giving her a wide berth. The woman's dusky hair fell forward over her dark shoulders, her wide-cheeked ebony face split with a white smile as she glanced up, feeling the demon's glow and my own Power.
I nodded, the silent salute of one psionic to another. She was too engaged in her own work of contacting her guardian spirit to do much more than give the demon a brief glance—and anyway, Shamans aren't nearly as scared of demons as they should be. To them, the demons are just another class of loa. I didn't think so—if demons were just another type of loa, Magi techniques for containing a spirit should work for the spirits like Erzulie and Baron Samedi. They don't—only the Shamanic practice of going through an initiation and gaining an affinity for a loa of your own does.
I watched the vevé take form under her slender fingers, a curl of incense going up. A rum bottle stood to one side, and a wicker basket that probably held a chicken.
"What will she do?" the demon asked, quietly, in my ear.
"She's probably fulfilling a bargain with a loa," I replied, tilting my head back and turning so I could whisper to him while still watching the babalawao. My knuckles ached, I was gripping my sword so tightly. "Just watch. This should be interesting."
Little prickles of heat ran over my skin. It was uncomfortable, but being this close to a contained burst of Power would help me adjust to the city. I'd studied vaudun, of course, at the Academy. The Magi training techniques borrowed heavily from Shamanism, vaudun, and Santeria in some areas; vaudun and Santeria had been interbreeding ever since before the Parapsychic Act. Eclectic Shamans like Jace picked up a little here, a little there, and usually had two or three loa as incidental patrons; this babalawao would be sworn to two loa at the very most, and would probably intensely dislike being compared to Jace—who was, after all, only a gringo Shaman trained by the Hegemony, not heir to an unbroken succession of masters and acolytes like the babalawao would be. Even though the basic techniques were the same, this woman's Power felt different; here in Nuevo Rio she was on her home ground, and her Power was organic instead of alien.
I wish I'd thought to learn Portogueso, I thought, and blinked.
The vevé to call the loa done, the woman took up the rum bottle, her bracelets and bead necklaces clicking together. She took a mouthful of rum, swirled it, then sprayed it between her lips into the air, the droplets caught hanging, flashing over the vevé.
Power spiked, scraping across my shields and skin, prickling in my veins.
A cigar laid across the chalk lines started to fume as the woman flipped open the wicker lid and yanked a chicken from the basket. The bird made a frantic noise before she cut its throat with one practiced move, blood spraying across the vevé.