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“Yeah,” I admitted. “If no one else will.”
“There are alliances. Some—like Roman’s—have spent a long time consolidating the wrong kind of power. Using it to tip people like Joey Provost and Eli Cabe into evil. It is far past time that people who would align against such powers form our own alliance.”
Grant’s monitor beeped steadily. I’d have expected a more portentous soundtrack to this kind of conversation. Something epic, to mark the shifting of my world.
“You make it sound so dramatic,” I said, my voice flat.
“If you learn anything more about the Long Game, about Roman. About people like Cabe and his ilk, anything working to bring that kind of darkness into the world—call me.” She drew a business card from an unseen pocket and held it to me until I took it. “If you need help, call me.”
“And you’ll do the same, I assume.”
“That’s what an alliance is. Tell Odysseus the same applies to him. Give him the number.” She nodded at the man on the bed, then glanced at the window. “I need to go. It’s nearly dawn.” She turned to the door, like she pla
“Wait!” I said, standing, preparing to chase after her. Fortunately, she stopped. “Where? Where will you go? Where is it safe for you?”
She smiled indulgently. In any other situation it would have been patronizing, but we were too tired for that. “Kitty, you don’t get to be my age without having a few contingency plans. All I need is a dark place to spend the day. There are plenty of dark places around.” Her lips thi
“Be careful,” I said, which sounded stupid. Amid the million other things I could have said—thank you; was that even real; or help, because I can’t do this alone—it was the only one I could articulate.
“Give Rick my regards when you get back to Denver,” she said.
I watched her walk down the corridor, losing sight of her almost immediately even in the sparsely populated, early morning hospital. She blended in—she didn’t want to be seen, so just like that she was gone. Also, my view was distracted by another figure coming toward me down the same hallway. A scruffy-haired guy in khaki pants and an untucked shirt, a worried frown pulling at his features and a desperate, wolfish look in his eyes. And I knew that smell a mile away.
“Ben!” I called, not caring how the sound echoed.
He froze a moment when he spotted me leaving the doorway to Grant’s room. Like he didn’t believe it was me. Like he had to take a breath, just to be sure. Then we ran.
We slammed into each other, wrapped each other up, pressed our faces against the other’s bare necks, breathing in skin. I couldn’t hold him tightly enough; my fingers kneaded his shirt.
“It’s okay,” he said, close to my ear, and didn’t let up his embrace enough for me to draw air and reply. I just cried, leaking tears onto his skin. He murmured, stroked my hair, and that was the first time I thought maybe everything really would be all right.
We sat outside Grant’s room. I pulled Ben’s arm over my shoulders and leaned into him. I didn’t want to stop touching him. Never again.
I explained, in as few words as possible. “It was a trap, the whole thing was a trap. Three guys just like Cormac but psychotic. They almost got us all.”
“I talked to the cops before I got here. I had to give them a statement before they’d tell me where you were. I don’t know what to tell you, Kitty. Nobody’s ever seen anything like this.”
“But I bet it’s happened before,” I said. “Maybe not like this. But mass hunting of supernaturals?” I shook my head. Witch hunts, without the publicity. Without history taking note. Yeah, I could see it.
“I know hunters—I know people like that. I can’t understand why they’d go after such high-profile targets. All of you’d be missed. Jerome Macy, Jeffrey Miles—” He stopped, shook his head.
I didn’t want to think about Jeffrey. Or Jerome, Gemma, Ariel—
So I stopped. Just for now.
“I think maybe that was the point,” I said, voice a whisper, because I was officially out of energy. I could let Ben take care of me for a little while. “We’re all out in the open, and they didn’t like it. They wanted to make an example, take us down. They might not even have cared if they got caught.”
“They did it on principle? Is that what you’re saying?”
There’s a war coming, Anastasia had said. And maybe she was crazy, fanatical, paranoid—
Or maybe she wasn’t.
“I think that’s what I’m saying,” I said, smiling thinly.
He squeezed me again and didn’t seem any more likely to let go of me than I was to let go of him. Good.
“Cormac’s going to be proud of you,” he said. “When he hears about all this.”
“Yeah? Have you talked to him? Does he know about this?” I wanted to get his opinion. Could we have done something differently? Something that would have saved a few more of us—
Stop. Think about it later.
“You can tell him all about it when we go pick him up from Cañon City.”
I sat up to look Ben in the eye. Leaned on his chest, clutching his shirt. He was smiling. Gri
“He got parole.”
Epilogue
A couple of weeks passed.
I sat in the studio, resting my head on my hand, staring at the mike, trying to concentrate. This had been going on for a couple of minutes now.
“… then I tried leaving milk in a saucer, because one of the books I read said that works to calm brownies. But every morning the milk is gone and the house is a mess again. So then I wondered, what kind of milk? I used two percent, but maybe I should be using whole milk? Or half-and-half? But that’s closer to cream, and the book specifically said milk. And it’s pasteurized—is that going to make a difference? None of the books say anything about whether pasteurized milk works. My sister thinks I should have a priest in to exorcise the place, but that seems a little, oh, I don’t know, violent, and if I could make the brownies feel more at home they might actually help out a little, like in the stories, even though I’m not a shoemaker or anything like that…”
I tapped my finger on the arm of my chair as I swiveled back and forth in a quarter-circle, like a kid in detention. I’d been staring at my microphone so long it was blurring. My headphones itched. And this woman just kept talking. It was hypnotic.
My caller had a very serious problem, surely. It just didn’t seem like it to me at the moment. Especially not after the last couple of weeks.
Finally I interrupted, like I should have done a long time ago. “Margaret, are you sure it’s brownies that are wrecking your house every night? Maybe the saucers of milk aren’t working because it’s not brownies.”
“Well, what else could it be? I swear, I go to sleep at night, don’t hear a thing, and when I wake up there are dishes knocked down and broken, my Beanie Baby collection is scattered everywhere, the pillows are shredded, and what else could it be?”
Lightbulb moment. “Do you have cats?”
“Yes. Six.”
It wasn’t brownies. It was crazy-cat-lady syndrome. I needed a separate hotline for callers like this. “Margaret, have you considered that maybe your cats are a bit rambunctious and may be the ones wrecking your house?”
“Well, of course I have,” she said, sounding indignant. Not that I could blame her. “But if it were the cats, wouldn’t I hear something?”
“I don’t know. Are you a sound sleeper?”
“Can anyone possibly be that sound a sleeper? Even medicated?”
“Wait a minute,” I said, losing patience. “You have six cats and you take sleeping pills at night?”
“Well… yes…”
“Okay. That’s just asking for it. I think you need to call a different show.”