Soul Hunt Read online

  I stared at her. She’d turned pale and nervous, her hands plucking at the blankets as if wanting to pull them up over her head. “Not quite,” I said after a moment. My nightmares, when I remembered them, had usually been of a much different sort. “But I think I have some idea what you mean. Like a deer in the headlights, right?”

  “Yes. No,” she added after a second, raising her index finger as if to point out the flaws. “Deer are hypnotized. This was … oh, I don’t know. More like a rabbit. Or being in the dark and knowing there’s a cliff somewhere, and the only sure ground is what’s under your feet. I probably would have stayed down there till we hit the bottom of the harbor if you hadn’t come for me.” She exhaled. “I owe you, Hound.”

  I shifted uncomfortably. I didn’t much like the idea of keeping a debt around after I was gone. “Only for the standard contract. I’ll add a couple hundred hazard pay. So was it something on the boat that had you scared, or someone? Can you remember?”

  “I am remembering, Hound, and I’ve told you what I know. It wasn’t anything that happened, it was just a, a feeling. And as for whether it was what drew me there—” She shrugged, looking wilted. “I don’t know, and now that I’ve spent a night on land I can’t really call on my usual nets to tell me. I’m sorry I’m not more help.”

  I glanced up at that. Tessie gave me a sad smile, and even without my talent I finally caught a little of the change in her. Some magicians relied solely on loci; some relied on careful ritual, and then there were those who circumscribed their own lives and made alliances based on those prohibitions. By staying away from water for the night, Tessie had lost her power. It might come back—the same way her lungs would recover, one breath at a time—but it was a lot less likely.

  That changed some things. Not just the balance of power in Boston—Tessie would now be lower in the hierarchy, one more in need of the protection Sarah’s community watch offered—but, more immediately, what I could tell her. I’d been worried that Tessie might react badly, but if she was powerless … “Do you know Deke Croft?”

  “The hobo pyro? I know of him; I don’t bother with going inland to see him.”

  “He was on the boat too. Him and this old guy with a beard. Did you see either of them?”

  Tessie shook her head. “No. I didn’t have time to see anyone. But …” Her brow furrowed. “You understand this is all a bit blurry, but I don’t think that was an oracular fire. I don’t think he set it.”

  “You can tell the difference?”

  “I could. Not so much now. Can’t you?”

  With my talent muffled? Not a chance. I smiled and shrugged. “Whatever scared you got to him too, I think. Would it still be in Boston?”

  She turned to gaze out the window, at the gray landscape. The faint squeal of T trains slowing down on the tracks echoed from the Longfellow Bridge, and the kid by the window cranked up his volume to compensate. “I don’t know. It might have been just one time, released by that fire; it could have been a ward. Into the harbor … that was the only sense I got. It was gone, into the water.” She closed her eyes, then pulled herself together and straightened her spine, the dreamy, fragmented part of her falling away as if sliced. “And I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that if it went into the ocean, it’s no matter. Nothing can magic the sea.” Her lips curled up in a smile that made her appear maybe ten years older. “I’ve based my life on that.”

  And now that was gone. On impulse, I reached over and took her hand. Tessie, startled, grabbed back, tight enough that my bones squeaked. “And you’ll go back to it again. The sea’s the sea; it won’t change.”

  “Not more than it already does, at least.” She gave a surprisingly deep laugh and let go.

  I made it to the door, then paused. “Do you want me to check in on your boat? I don’t know much in the ways of wardcraft, but I could maybe lock it up or something.”

  “Oh, bless you, no. A, um, friend of mine is taking care of it. He came to see me this morning. Such a lovely man,” she added with an eyebrow waggle that could only be called wicked. “Maryam up on the hill put me in touch with him a little while back.”

  “Wait. Maryam, with the—”

  “Yes, the rocks. She’s not there all the time; even us grand dames have lives too. Anyway, you don’t need to worry about my home. I’ll be there soon enough, anyway.”

  A nurse poked her head inside, frowned at the teenager, then turned to face Tessie. “Mr. Troyes? It’s time for your blood stick.”

  I glanced at her, unsure I’d heard right. Tessie sighed. “That’s another reason I’m not so happy about being here; they’re such sticklers for what’s on my ID, rather than my real name. All right, you candy-striped harpy, let’s find a vein for you to pillage.” She gave me an exasperated look as the nurse replaced her mask and scolded her for not keeping it on at all times.

  I headed down the hall and to the lobby. Whatever had scared Tessie … the graybeard? He hadn’t seemed all that scary, all things considered, but if he was a magician …

  If my talent had been functioning properly, I’d have gone to find Deke in a heartbeat, first to see whether he was all right and second to figure out why he’d been there. But as it was, I might concentrate for a half hour and come up with nothing.

  And did I have enough time left that I could squander it on a fruitless search?

  That particularly morbid thought followed me as I got into the elevator next to an orderly in blue scrubs and two girls comparing casts. It didn’t help that we emerged into the middle of a shouting match on the ground floor.

  “Shouting match” is probably the wrong term to use, all things considered. After all, it implies that there’s at least some give and take, that both parties are shouting equally. This was pretty much one-sided, and if it hadn’t been for the first words I caught as I got off the elevator—something involving “locus” and “theft”—I would have walked right by.

  Well, that’s not strictly true. I could tell when magic was being worked, even if it wasn’t quite in my senses.

  The parties involved were a pair at the far end of the lobby, and they looked like something out of a bad improv skit. One was a middle-aged woman with her hair up in a perm that had gone limp some time ago, earrings so heavy they skimmed her shoulders, and a black velvet jacket over a white blouse and gypsy skirt. The other—the man she was berating—was a small Indian man in a threadbare three-piece suit, holding his bowler hat between his hands as if it might shield him from her. They could have been any arguing couple—okay, any arguing strangely dressed couple—except that no one was looking at them. No one even came up close to them. As I walked from the elevator to the front desk, the two girls in casts headed straight for them, then veered around in a perfect arc, not even looking as their steps shifted.

  Had I had my talent in full strength, I’d have scented the fireworks-and-rain trace of magic, undoubtedly from an aversion ward of some kind. As it was, though, only the faintest tang of gunpowder made it through the fog, and every time I looked at them my eyes started to water.

  I thought seriously about just turning around, but this was a hospital, for God’s sake. There were limits.

  The two didn’t even look up as I approached, so secure were they in their ward. “Hey!” I said, and grabbed the man by his sleeve and the woman by the back of her coat. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  The man gave a squeak, then looked up at me, eyes wide. I knew him: Byron Chatterji, one of the adepts that I’d even consider calling ethical. The man didn’t use any loci, or at least none that were based on bits of other people’s souls. He worked on a principle called “severance and return,” which, in his case, involved a complicated still out in an abandoned railway car in Medford. There was a lot of mumbo jumbo and mystical terminology for what he did, but what it came down to was that you really, really didn’t want to accept if he offered you a drink from his hip flask.

  The thing was, he was the last perso
n I’d have expected to do something as stupid as putting up a ward in a hospital. Which left the woman, who twisted around in my grip to focus a spiteful glare on me. “What business is it of yours?” she snapped, her earrings swinging around like little scythe pendulums.

  “It’s the business of anyone who’s affected by that damn ward.” And can notice it, I added mentally, then paused. “Hang on, don’t I know you? Patricia Wheelwright, yes?” I’d done maybe one job for her, back when I was starting out, and since then the only thing I could remember about her was that Sarah really didn’t like her, for some reason.

  Wheelwright tugged her jacket free of my hand and brushed it off as if I’d left crumbs. “The name is Sosostris,” she returned ponderously. “What’s the matter, Hound? Let a few victories go to your head and you forget everyone’s profession?”

  Oh yes. That was why; Sarah had ranted to me for an hour about how Wheelwright had claimed that professional name (“and I bet you she’s never even read Eliot!” had been the gist of it, which honestly didn’t mean much to me). And the other reason was clear: Wheelwright was a scam artist, even lower than the likes of Chatterji. It’s a historied racket; you convince a mark that they’ve been cursed, then milk them for all they’re worth while “dispelling” the “curse.”

  And these were the people that Sarah was trying to unite into some coherent organization. Good luck with that.

  “I know yours well enough,” I said. “And you, Chatterji, what are you doing here? Both of you, for that matter. You know better than to waste yourselves hiding some plain bickering like this!”

  Wheelwright sniffed, but Chatterji just polished his bowler hat on his sleeve and smiled. “We—I have come in hopes of seeing Miss Troyes, yes? I had heard she was injured, and came to pay my regards.”

  “Pay regards, my ass,” Wheelwright sneered. “You wanted to get your hands on her loci.”

  “While I will admit to a certain concern in that regard, I must point out that that is a regrettable falsehood.” Chatterji’s smile widened—it did that when he was embarrassed—and he bowed slightly to Wheelwright. “At least it is when applied to my circumstances.”

  “Are you accusing me of theft?” Wheelwright demanded.

  “Not in the least—” Chatterji began, in that tone that meant a long argument over semantics was about to follow.

  I cut him off, raising my hand between them. Chatterji actually flinched. “Which of you set the ward?”

  At that, Chatterji looked down at his feet. “It wasn’t his fault,” Wheelwright muttered. “He didn’t want our quarrel to bother anyone.”

  “Then don’t have the damn quarrel to begin with! Jesus, this is a hospital, not some back alley—you don’t throw magic around like that!”

  “You do when it is necessary,” Chatterji maintained, but he didn’t look up.

  “Anyway, if that moistened bint from her houseboat is here, it’s a wonder there aren’t more of us around.” Wheelwright jerked her head toward the front desk. “Only they’re not being cooperative. They tell me there’s no Miss Troyes here, and since Sonny Jim stopped by, I figured he must have pulled a fast one on their records—”

  “I protest,” Chatterji responded, again meekly. The man was made of meek.

  “She’s not here,” I said. If these two headed up to see Tessie, they’d drive her crazy in no time. “They moved her to Mount Auburn.”

  Chatterji nodded and seemed ready to walk off, but Wheelwright’s eyes narrowed. “Then what are you doing here, Hound?”

  “Blood test,” I lied equably. “Had to pick up my results. No, you don’t get to know what they were. Now dispel this damn thing and get out of here.”

  Wheelwright glared at me, working her lower lip between her teeth. Chatterji, however, straightened and whispered in her ear. I caught the words “Bright Brothers” and “just herself” and even if Wheelwright still looked skeptical, she nodded after a moment. “Fine. But you just watch yourself if you come down my way. I don’t like being bullied.”

  “And I don’t like bullying,” I said as she took a length of rowan wood about the size of a lipstick case from her purse and twiddled it between her fingers. “So we’re well matched.”

  Chatterji, meanwhile, had taken a long pull from his vile hip flask, then flicked a few droplets from it in the four directions, dispelling his part of the ward. He mistook my look of revulsion—again, I was glad my talent wasn’t picking up the scent of the flask—for reproof and gave me an apologetic shrug. “It seemed necessary. For precautions. You understand?”

  “Not really,” I said, but I followed them out. Precautions were wards in your home, not tossed down to hide an argument. Something was seriously wonky with the world if this sort of thing was becoming routine. Or perhaps something was just wrong with Chatterji and Wheelwright. I waited until they disappeared around the corner, then bent to unlock my bike.

  Maybe it was an aftereffect of that burst of anger, maybe it was the result of being nearby when Wheelwright and Chatterji dispelled their respective wards, but this time, I caught the scent before I saw the person. A thin trace of damp woodchuck and burnt-out matchsticks wove past me, and it was probably a sign of how bad it had gotten for me that I didn’t recognize it until I’d stood up again. “Deke?” I whispered, and turned around, the helmet in my hand whacking against the bike rack so hard it rebounded into my leg.

  No fires. No immediate sign of him—but there, coming out of one of the EMT bays on foot was a hulking figure in a leather bomber jacket dwarfing a little skittish shadow at his side. “Deke!” I yelled.

  The shadow spun like a cornered cat, but the minute he saw me his face lit up, and he started yanking on his friend’s arm. The big guy turned, and a chill trickled down my back as I recognized the gray-bearded man who’d carried Deke out of the fire. Deke grinned—a wider grin than I’d ever seen on his face—and waved like a deranged marionette. “Hound! See, I told you I’d find her, this is the one I was telling you—”

  I tucked my helmet under my arm and approached, still not quite sure what to make of the other man. You know how there are some people that seem like they’re made for certain situations? The guy with the Santa Claus beard, or the thin-lipped woman who just needs a nun’s habit and a ruler? This guy was a little like that. He had a clipped, gray-going-to-white beard and a long white ponytail. Drop him into the middle of a Renaissance festival and you’d never see him again, or put a yellow rain slicker and hat on him and you’d expect there to be fish for sale nearby. He looked a little older than Deke, but in much better shape, though given Deke’s shape that wasn’t difficult. And his eyes—very bright blue, like the sky above us—were as hard and keen as awls.

  Though I couldn’t rely on my nose as fully as I was used to, I didn’t sense any reason for concern: the man smelled of salt and tar, with maybe a touch of granite worn by waves, and more important, Deke seemed at ease around him. Whatever had spooked him so, it no longer affected him. “Hey, Deke,” I said. “You all right?”

  “What? Oh, I’m fine, I’m fine.”

  “He got a bit of smoke in his lungs,” the big guy said. “We were just getting him checked out.”

  “Yeah, Tessie got it too. She was in the boat,” I added to Deke’s look of incomprehension. “Got her out, but she’ll be in the hospital for a bit longer.”

  Deke’s face fell. “Tessie? Oh, no. No, I didn’t know that.”

  The big guy hadn’t quite stepped between me and Deke, but something about his posture made him look like a bodyguard sensing a threat. “You’re the girl I saw on the fishing boat,” he said. “You saw me carrying Cam out of there.”

  “Cam?”

  “’s me.” Deke thumped his chest. “’s my name. Roger knows it. We knew each other in high school.”

  Oh yes. Deke’s full name was Decameron Croft, the legacy of parents who were classics professors at some little college on the Coast, parents who’d disowned him a long time back. I wasn’t sur
e I blamed them, knowing how much crap Deke could get into if left alone.

  Deke, oblivious to my train of thought, punched Roger in the arm, and Roger, a brief, fond smile breaking out under his beard, punched back, sending Deke staggering a couple of paces. “We go way back,” Deke said happily, then paused. “I’m sorry Tessie got hurt.”

  “She’ll be all right. But what were you even doing out there, Deke? I mean, I know you like fire, but that —”

  Roger held up one scarred, slablike hand. “That’s my friend’s business, and you’ll just have to—”

  “No, no, it’s okay! This is Scelan, the one I told you about. Hound, the finder, remember? She could help you!” Deke turned that happy smile on me and back to Roger. Guy looked like a puppy on Christmas—okay, a bedraggled, mud-rolled puppy that had fallen on its head one too many times, but still that innocently enthusiastic. It wasn’t something I was used to seeing from Deke, but it was certainly a step up from the paranoia I’d encountered so far today.

  Roger’s brow creased. “Maybe. I don’t know, Cam, okay? And now’s probably not the time to talk about it. I gotta get moving or she’ll be pissed.”

  “Then when would be a good time?” I asked, stepping back a little, arms crossed. If I could get something out of Deke, I might be able to figure out if what scared Tessie was still around to be reckoned with. And a job … well. We’d see.

  “Tomorrow?” Deke said. “Or—or the day after? Anytime. Anytime is good.”

  I glanced at Roger. “For you too?”

  He sighed and ran a hand over his face. Yes, I’d seen that look before, on the face of anyone who had to deal with the undercurrent on a regular basis but who preferred to stay out of it themselves. He caught my recognition, and the corners of his eyes crinkled up; not quite a smile, but enough to say adepts, huh? to someone who knew what was going on.

  Yeah, maybe I liked him. At least I could respect him for saving Deke.

  “If you’re Scelan, then I owe you thanks for keeping Cam safe this long.” He thumped his friend on the shoulder again, and Deke grinned up at him. “But yeah, come find us anytime. I’m not going anywhere for a while. Not least,” he added with a wry glance at me, “because that was my boat.”