Midnight Blue-Light Special Part 11

Without her, I was going to have to improvise. So improvise I did, scaling bits of exposed pipe and doorframes to place mason jars full of nails in front of every window I could possibly reach, and a few I probably should have left alone, since a fall at that angle could have left me with broken bones-or worse. (It seems to be an immutable fact of nature that any time you move into an empty building, no matter how recently it was vacated or how thoroughly it was cleaned, you'll find roughly a dozen forgotten gla.s.s jars in cabinets and closets. No one knows why. It's a mystery that may never be solved.) I was trying to figure out what to do with myself next when my phone rang. I jumped before checking the readout-it was a blocked number, which meant Sarah-and answering. "h.e.l.lo?"

"I thought you were going to turn the Internet on." Sarah sounded peevish. "You haven't checked in, you haven't been online, and I was starting to worry."

I sighed. "Mom put you up to this, didn't she?"

"Your father, actually, but it's still true. I hadn't heard from you, the Covenant's in town, I was worried. Then I thought, 'Wait, there are these magical pocket telepathy machines that we all carry,' and I dialed your phone. Ta-da." The last was delivered, not with a flourish, but in a dust-dry deadpan.

"You're a real comedian, Sarah." I produced a throwing knife from inside my s.h.i.+rt and flicked it at the nearest dart board. It hit a little left of center. "What's really on your mind?"

"How did it go with Dominic?"

My second throw went wild as her words forced me to finally think about what I'd been trying to avoid thinking about. I hate circuitous logic. Closing my eyes, I said, "Good and bad."

"Good how?"

"He loves me."

Sarah paused. "That's good, right?"

"I just said it was good."

"Do you love him?"

"That is a large and complicated question, affected by a great many outside factors, most of which are beyond my control."

"Gosh." She sounded almost impressed. Then: "That's pretty much bulls.h.i.+t. I mean, even I can tell that's pretty much bulls.h.i.+t, and I have the relations.h.i.+p sense of a wombat."

"You just have biology issues. Your own species is made up entirely of sociopathic a.s.sholes, and Artie doesn't know what to do with a girl who actually likes him, rather than just liking his pheromones."

Sarah sighed deeply. "Tell me about it. Dominic loves you? Like, he said he loves you? In those words?"

"He told me he loved me, right before he told me to run, because he wouldn't be able to protect me if the Covenant came back. Oh, and it gets better."

"How does it get better than that?"

"There are three Covenant representatives in town. I should call Dad to get him to run dossiers on them." That would mean telling him who they were, and that would mean telling him that we were up against family. "Two of them, I didn't recognize their names. They're not from any Covenant family I know."

"Uh-huh," said Sarah slowly. "Why do I get the feeling that behind door number three is something that's going to explain your sudden radio silence?"

"The third is Margaret Healy."

There was a long moment of awed silence before Sarah said, "Wow. When you decide to get into a bad situation, you don't mess around, like, at all. Your boyfriend, who loves you, is totally hanging out with your evil cousin."

"She's not necessarily evil. Just misguided."

"I'm on her magical hunter 'kill it on sight' list, so I think I get to call her evil if I want to," Sarah countered.

I sighed, but I didn't argue. She had a point.

According to the family record, there was a time when the Healys were the pride of the Covenant of St. George. They were faithful, they were devout, they bred like rabbits, and once they were aimed at a target, they killed without hesitation. They were the perfect monster hunting a.s.sa.s.sins. Dozens of my ancestors were canonized in the annals of the Covenant, heroes and heroines of the war they fought on mankind's behalf.

They were demonized at the same time, recorded as monsters in the history of the world's cryptids. There are two sides to every story, and history is a story like any other.

It wasn't until my maternal great-great-grandfather came along that any of the Healys questioned the party line-and when they decided to start asking questions, they did it the way the Healys had been doing things for centuries: enthusiastically, and with suicidal levels of commitment.

It's funny, but I sometimes wonder what the h.e.l.l Great-Great-Grandpa Alexander was thinking. Every other defector we know of was motivated by something, love or death or a great epiphany in the field that changed everything. Great-Great-Grandpa did some research. That was all. He was trying to learn better ways to kill monsters, and what he found was something entirely different. He researched further, and when he didn't like the things he found, he did more research. And then he not only threw away everything he'd ever worked for, he convinced my great-great-grandmother to do the same thing. We may be the only people in history to defect from their religious order not over a point of faith, but over footnotes.

Great-Great-Grandpa was able to convince his wife to leave the Covenant with him, but he couldn't convince his parents, or his siblings, or his cousins. The Healys in America were never more than a tiny group of exiles, one that eventually changed its name; there are no Healys anymore, just Prices and Harringtons. The Healys in Europe, on the other hand, are legion, and they hated us right up until they stopped believing we existed. We were the ones who besmirched the family name. We were the ones who had to pay.

Sarah's voice brought me out of the family history and back into the present. "You realize this means they suspect you're here."

"What?" I shook my head vigorously, not caring that she couldn't see me. "Dominic didn't tell them. If he had, they would have taken me already."

"He didn't tell them, but they suspect something. The Healys haven't been in the Covenant's good graces since the defection. So why would they send one on this kind of mission, unless they wanted her to look for signs that the family was still around?"

"You sure do know how to make a girl feel safe," I muttered.

"Feeling safe isn't what matters right now. Staying alive is." I heard something beep behind her. "That's my alarm. I need to get to cla.s.s-do you want to come by my hotel tonight? We can talk about what to do next, order too much room service, and try not to freak out."

"It's a date," I said, and hung up. It was time to give in to the inevitable. It was time to call my father.

The less said about my call home, the better. By the end of it, I knew that the Brandts were an old Covenant family from Wales, and were mostly men of action, which meant that I didn't need to worry about Peter hatching any clever plans against me. The Bullards were more recent additions to the fight, having signed up shortly before the Healys left. We didn't have much data-most of what we did have came in with Grandpa Thomas, who referred to Darren and Ca.s.sandra Bullard as "right t.w.a.ts." Somehow, I didn't find that encouraging.

And Margaret Healy was, of course, likely to recognize me as a relative and shoot me on sight. Not in the head. That would have been too easy, and Healy women have always been good at resource management. She would shoot me in the kneecaps, and be able to grill me at length about the location and strength of the family in North America. And then she would hunt us down, one by one, and finally finish what the Covenant failed to accomplish in my grandparents' time. She would be the one who killed the traitors. As one of the traitors in question, this didn't strike me as a good way to spend my time.

The end of the call was as predictable as the rest of it. "This changes things, Very," said Dad. "With your cousin in town . . ."

"You mean my biological cousin, not Sarah."

"Yes, exactly. With your cousin-"

"And not my uncle-by-adoption, since you're the reason Uncle Mike is here."

"Verity-"

"Oh, and not all the people who depend on me. The ones I promised not to run out on, because they were going to need my help with the Covenant in town. The only one who matters is Margaret. Right? None of the rest of them. Just her."

Dad sighed heavily. "I'm worried about you, pumpkin. I'm not ready to add you to the family history."

"You won't, Dad. I have good people here with me, and some of them are even human." Mike and Ryan walked in just in time to catch that comment. They looked at me quizzically, their arms loaded down with bags of groceries. I waved for them to give me a second. "I can't run out on New York. I'm needed, and what kind of Price would I be if I ran the second it looked like things were getting bad? I have to stay, and you have to stay far away."

"I wish you weren't there, Verity." The misery dripping off his words was palpable. "I wish we'd told you 'no' when you said you wanted to go and spend a year dancing. We should have told you that you couldn't go."

"I'm a grown woman, Daddy. I would have gone anyway. At least this way, you know what's going on. Uncle Mike just got back, and I need to fill him in. Can you catch Mom up?"

"I can, and Very-if things get really bad, come home. Don't worry about whether you're followed. We can handle it if you are. Just get Sarah, and get out." He paused before adding, "If you can't get Sarah, trust her to follow on her own. You just run." He sounded guilty. I couldn't blame him. The idea of leaving her behind had never even crossed my mind.

"I'll be careful," I said, and hung up before he could say anything else. Tucking my phone back into my pocket, I turned toward Mike and Ryan, who were watching me with almost matching expressions of bemus.e.m.e.nt on their faces.

"What was that?" asked Mike.

"Dad sounding the horns for Judgment Day," I said. "Istas is upstairs having a celebratory feast with the mice. I just spoke to Sarah. She's fine, and I'm supposed to go check on her later tonight."

"So what's the problem?" asked Ryan.

"The problem is that I'm no longer the only biological member of my family in this city," I said, and turned to focus my attention more on Mike, who would understand the importance-and the danger-of what I was about to say. "One of the Covenant representatives is a woman named Margaret Healy. She's a cousin."

"Oh," he said. "c.r.a.p."

I nodded. "Yeah. There's a lot of that particular sentiment going around. So now the question is . . . what are we going to do?"

Twelve.

"If you get yourself turned to stone, you are grounded for a week. No TV, no dessert, and no trips to the range. Do I make myself clear?"

-Evelyn Baker The Meatpacking District, which is nicer than it sounds, inside a converted warehouse, trying to come up with a plan that doesn't get everyone killed "I DON'T GET what the problem is," said Ryan. "Verity's this chick's cousin, right? So why can't she just explain that this city is her territory, and that the Covenant needs to leave? Family should respect family, even if they're on opposite sides of a war."

Tanuki have always been very family-oriented. Large portions of their culture were based around tracking who was related to who and through what sort of path, although that had less to do with filial affection and more with their having a limited gene pool. No one wants to find out after the fact that the cute guy you've invited back to your den is actually a first cousin. It was that devotion to family that got a lot of tanuki killed when the Covenant came to j.a.pan. The tanuki just kept rus.h.i.+ng in to save the ones who'd been captured, and got themselves slaughtered in the process. Being able to turn yourself to stone doesn't stop the men with sledgehammers.

"It doesn't work like that for humans, Ryan," I said, and chucked another throwing knife at the nearest dart board. It embedded itself deep into the cork. "We keep track of our relatives more so we'll know where to send Christmas cards and who to hate than because we're planning to help each other out."

"Hey, now." Uncle Mike stopped cutting the lasagna long enough to shake his spatula at me. It was store-bought-the lasagna, not the spatula, although the spatula probably came from a store somewhere-and the smell rising off the baked meat-and-cheese concoction was heavenly. "Family is a good thing, too. Don't you forget about that just because you're busy being freaked out over some cousin you didn't even know existed before yesterday."

"Even knowing that the Covenant probably sent her because she's family? n.o.body sniffs out a Healy like a Healy, and we've only been Prices for two generations." If I was going by Grandma Alice and the pictures I'd seen of Great-Grandma Fran, I could call myself a Price as much as I wanted; I was still going to be an obvious Healy girl to anyone with eyes.

"Even knowing that she's here because she's family. Being a Healy doesn't give you magic powers or anything. Maybe makes you a little stubborn. The stubborn has to be genetic. And then there's the luck thing. But none of that guarantees that she's going to trip over your hiding place, and you've got a lot more allies in this town than she does." Uncle Mike dished a healthy serving of lasagna onto a paper plate. "Now eat. You're too thin, and you're going to worry yourself into getting even thinner."

"I'm a professional ballroom dancer," I said. "Thinner is a good thing." I still took the lasagna, moving to sit down at the nearby table. The dragons had been living in this Nest for long enough to have paid-probably grudgingly-for converting the employee break room into a serviceable kitchen. Between the stove, the fridge, and the microwave Ryan and Istas had brought with them, we had sufficient facilities to keep us all fed for the duration of the siege.

"Not when you have to wrestle a lindworm out of its hole, it isn't. Eat." Uncle Mike turned and pressed another plate into Ryan's hands. "You, too. Is that girlfriend of yours going to want some when she finishes partying with the mice?"

"Probably," said Ryan. "Istas is a black hole in a lacy pinafore."

"And other phrases that have never before been uttered." I stabbed my lasagna with my fork. It wasn't as satisfying as certain other kinds of stabbing would have been, but it was what I had available at the moment. "We need a plan."

"Don't die," suggested Ryan.

"We need a better plan."

"Don't get seriously injured," said Uncle Mike.

I eyed him. "Are you going to take this seriously? This is serious. This is a serious situation." I paused, scowling. "Only now I've said 'serious' so many times that it's starting to sound funny to me. Dammit. We need a plan."

"The Covenant doesn't know where this place is, so that's a start," said Mike.

"Dominic has never been here, and he doesn't like free running, so he's unlikely to have ever followed me," I agreed. "The others don't know yet that I'm someone they should be following, so that buys us a little time. We'll need to be careful coming and going, but we were already planning on that. And the mice make remarkably good spies. If anyone comes sniffing around here, we'll know."

For the first time, Ryan looked faintly uncomfortable. "They're not going to be, you know, announcing themselves to people on the sidewalk or anything, are they? Because talking mice will convince the Covenant that there's something up with this place pretty darn quick."

"They're actually better at being subtle than anyone gives them credit for," I a.s.sured him. "When you see them around me, they're in a safe place. They know they can be themselves here. Out in the world, they practice stealth and actual cunning. If they didn't, we would have long since run out of Aeslin mice."

"That's a relief," said Ryan.

I paused. "Actually . . . there's something to be said for using Aeslin mice as spies. We've done it before, when we felt that we really had to. The mice are happy to have something they can do to help the G.o.ds." And some of them inevitably wouldn't make it back from their "holy mission," because they were mice, and what I was contemplating involved sending them out into a world where practically everything was bigger than they were.

It was still one of the best ideas I'd had so far, and from the thoughtful look on Uncle Mike's face, he thought so, too. He brought his plate and sat down next to me. "It would be a good way to find out what the Covenant was up to, if we could find a way to sneak some mice into their headquarters," he said. "Didn't the mice come before your family left the Covenant, though?"

"Yeah, but they came with my great-great-grandmother, Enid, when she married into the Healys," I said. "Margaret might not know about the mice."

"There's an awful lot of wiggle room in 'might.'"

I didn't have an answer for that. I was saved from needing one when Istas appeared in the kitchen doorway. "I smell lasagna," she announced. "You will share."

"Hi, sweetie." Ryan waved his fork in her direction. "Food's on the stove. Did you have a good time with the mice?"

"Yes." Istas started toward the lasagna, detouring only long enough to kiss Ryan on the cheek. "They are very pleasant company."

"You have rat breath," said Ryan, wrinkling his nose.

Istas looked pleased. "Yes," she said. "I know." She dished half the remaining lasagna onto a plate, bringing it with her as she moved to sit down next to Ryan. "Have we determined the best method for driving the Covenant from our territory yet? Will carnage be involved?"

"We're still working on that," I said. "We have numbers . . . now. But if this whole team disappears without a trace, the odds are good that the Covenant will send more people to find out what happened to them. Maybe we can disappear a second team, but can we manage a third? Or a fourth? Eventually, we're going to wind up being the ones who don't have the numbers in our favor." And then the purge of New York would be able to begin in earnest.

"So what do we do right now?"

"Right now? I guess we watch and see what they do. Once we know what we're up against, we'll be able to counter it." I jammed my fork into my lasagna. "I hate waiting."

"Doesn't everyone?" asked Mike.

I sighed heavily. "That's what I'm afraid of. We're waiting because we want to minimize the damage. Well, the Covenant doesn't have anything like that to worry about. They can move whenever they want to, and we have no way of seeing them coming."

Ryan took care of the dishes while Uncle Mike walked around the slaughterhouse, double-checking my traps and doubtless setting a few of his own. We'd all need to walk carefully from now on. That was good. It would keep us on our toes. As for me, I collected all the knives I'd thrown at the various dart boards-it was a surprisingly high number, given how little time I'd had, but I guess stress makes me stabby-and returned to the small office that was going to be my bedroom for the foreseeable future. My "bed" was an air mattress on the floor with a quilt I didn't recognize and a pile of pillows that I did. I threw myself onto it with more force than was necessarily safe and rolled onto my back, staring at the ceiling.

My lease was almost up. The Sasquatch whose apartment I'd been using was going to be home soon, which was supposed to be my cue to go back to Oregon (a.s.suming she came back at all, after the message I'd left for her). Mom and Dad would understand that I couldn't leave while the threat of a purge was hanging over the city-we've always done fieldwork in emergency situations, and the Covenant was the next best thing to a natural disaster as far as most cryptids were concerned. But what was going to happen after that?

I came to Manhattan to prove that I could make it as a professional ballroom dancer. Only things didn't exactly work out that way. I hadn't managed to win a single major compet.i.tion; the times I'd placed, it had always been local, and the prize money I'd received barely paid for the cost of my registration. It didn't touch my costumes, or the hours of studio time I had to beg, borrow, and steal whenever I could. Most people in my tier of the profession supplemented their income teaching cla.s.ses, but I couldn't even do that anymore. Trying to be a c.o.c.ktail waitress and a cryptozoologist took up too much time. Quit bussing tables and I couldn't afford to eat. Quit taking care of cryptids . . .

If I quit taking care of cryptids, I wouldn't even know who I was anymore. I pulled a throwing knife out of my s.h.i.+rt without thinking about it, flicking it toward the ceiling. It flew in a satisfyingly straight line, embedding itself in the wood with a soft "thunk" sound. The fact that throwing knives into the air while I was on top of an air mattress was maybe not the smartest idea barely even crossed my mind. I was too busy thinking.

I came to New York to dance. The cryptozoology was supposed to be a sideline, something I did to keep my parents happy while I proved that I could have a career if I wanted one. But somewhere along the way, the proportions got reversed. I started spending more and more time with the cryptids who needed my help, and less and less time fighting my way through the cutthroat world of ballroom dance. My partner, James, had to chase me down for rehearsals. If it weren't for the fact that he was cutting back his own availability while he prepared for chupacabra mating season, he would probably have talked to me about seeing other partners by now. As it was, I was braced for that conversation.