CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Sam turned and watched
out the window until Jace was just a tiny shape in the surrounding
darkness. It was sunny out today, a bright, crisp spring afternoon,
so there were other shapes in the shadows, but he was the only
point of light. It made her heart ache when he finally disappeared
as the cabbie took a sharp right, cutting through the park toward
her brother’s bar.
Still, she was
determined that the next time she saw Jace, she wouldn’t be able to
“see” him at all.
Turning to face the
front, Sam told her earbud to retrieve her voice mail. It would be
a good idea to know Stephen’s frame of mind before she burst into
the bar and demanded he come help her fight demons. It was going to
be hell convincing him as it was, but she hoped the books in her
lap would help. She could at least prove to him that some sick
person out there was collecting people’s eyes and trying to work a
spell using this Pandora’s box, which was probably the same
artifact their father had pulled from the ground more than twenty
years ago.
Hopefully the
combination of guilt and knowing lives were in danger would work to
her advantage.
“You a student at
NYU?” the cabbie asked, not seeming to notice that she was trying
to listen to her earbud.
“No.” She smiled in
case he was looking at her in the rearview mirror and cupped her
bud pointedly. The first message was just a terse order for Sam to
call Stephen at the bar.
“Oh. I just saw the
books,” the cabbie said, not getting the hint. “I’m a student
there. Part-time. I studied the demon stuff last semester. Pretty
cool.”
“Hmmm …” A
noncommittal sound if she’d ever made one. Hopefully that would be
the end of their conversation. She needed to concentrate. Stephen’s
second message was far stranger than the first. He sounded really
upset, almost frantic. Now he told her not to call him, and not to
come by the bar until he called her back to tell her it was safe.
He was breathing heavily, so it was hard to
understand—
“I mean, I’m not sure
I buy some of the stuff,” the cabdriver said, his voice loud enough
that Sam couldn’t hear what her brother had been trying to say.
Argh! “But it’s certainly interesting. Enough to make me check out
the History Project every time they change exhibits. It’s good to
know about—”
“Please, I’m trying
to listen to a message. If that’s okay?” Sam asked, ordering the
bud aloud to repeat the last message. “Repeat.”
“Oh, sure. Sorry. I
never know when to shut up.” The guy laughed, not troubled by her
request at all. “Got a mouth on me.”
Sam smiled again,
though she really wanted to reach into the front seat and cover the
man’s mouth with her hand. Too bad there were bars between the
front seat and the back to protect the drivers from the unsavory
types prowling around Southie. Those bars had probably saved this
dude’s life numerous times. If he’d gotten her this pissed, she
could only imagine how he interacted with the real tough guys and
girls on this side of the barricade.
She listened to
Stephen’s warning again, but the second half of the message was
still hard to understand. Something about him being sorry for not
telling her the truth, but then the message cut off. Even if her
earbud had enough power to play the message a third time, Sam
doubted she would be able to catch anything new.
Shit. It must be
something about the demon drugs, just as Jace had thought. It was
the only explanation for why she shouldn’t come by the bar until it
was “safe.” Stephen probably expected that Jace had told her the
truth about his secret side business and was apologizing for
keeping her in the dark.
Ha. In the dark. The thought would have made her
smile, but not even smart-ass blind jokes were doing it for her
right now. She was too scared, too alone. What a perfect time for
Stephen to morph from the solid, dependable brother she’d always
known into an unreliable criminal engaged in shady, dangerous
business dealings.
What the hell was she
going to do now? She couldn’t even think of anyone she could call
except maybe Ginger. She’d been pretty friendly yesterday, and
she’d wanted to … get something to eat and … Oh, my God …
That was
it!
“Did you say
something about the History Project? The museum that’s having the
exhibit of demon artifacts recovered after the
emergence?”
“Not sure what
they’ve got there now, but—”
“Have you been
there?” Sam asked, heart beating fast in her throat as she leaned
forward, suddenly very eager to chat it up with her driver. “Do you
know what it looks like?”
“Yeah. You been
there? It’s pretty—”
“I’ve been there, but
I’ve never seen what it looks like from the outside. I’m
blind.”
A moment of stunned
silence. “Oh, yeah. The cane and everything. You don’t look blind,
though, if you don’t mind me saying. Your eyes move around a lot.
Real pretty color blue, too.”
Blue. Her eyes were
still blue, not the chocolate brown she’d always received
compliments on in the past. That meant she was still “seeing” more
than she should, that the connection between her and the demons was
still going strong, and that she had to figure out a way to stop
the demons and their human partner before they made the man she
loved their next target.
“Thank you, but I was
wondering if you could tell me what the museum looked like. Is it a
brick building?”
“Yeah, red brick,” he
said, falling silent for a second, as if he were pulling up a
mental image. “With white columns down the front and then all those
vines that grow on old buildings on one side. And a big garden with
those big kinds of trees with the …”
Sam tuned out the
rest of the man’s babble. It was exactly what she’d seen in her
last vision. The man had been hiding in the garden, waiting until
he looked human again. That must be where the box was located! It
made sense now why the room he’d been in seemed unlived in. Because
it wasn’t lived in. It was a museum exhibit, the one Ginger had
suggested they take in this week. Sam had assumed the artifact had
been stolen from its collection, but maybe it hadn’t. Maybe it was
still inside the History Project, hidden under some antique bed in
one of the re-created rooms.
“Take me there, to
the History Project.”
“All right! Love a
woman who isn’t afraid to be impulsive.”
“Thanks,” Sam said,
even as she told her phone to call Ginger. The other woman answered
on the third set of pulses.
“Hey! What’s up,
Sam?” Ginger sounded a little sleepy, but genuinely glad to hear
from her, which made Sam feel guilty for her ulterior motives. She
needed someone with her who could see the exhibits, someone who
would be able to recognize the bed from her vision.
Even if she was
allowed to touch the artifacts, it would be difficult to
distinguish which bed she’d seen until she felt for the box
underneath, which she really didn’t
want to do. She didn’t want to add her fingerprints to the
killer’s, just in case she and Jace ended up getting the real
authorities involved in this. Ginger would be able to help her find
the bed and peek to see whether there was a lockbox underneath
without disturbing the crime scene.
“Hey, my bud is about
out of juice, but I wanted to call real quick to let you know I’m
headed to the History Project and was hoping you’d meet me,” she
said. “We could do the exhibit and then go out for a late lunch
after?”
“Sounds great! I went
back out after I dropped you off and stayed out super late, so I
was just planning to stay in bed, but that sounds like a lot more
fun.”
They made
arrangements to meet outside near the ticketing office in twenty
minutes and signed off just as Sam’s bud began the weak throbbing
in her ear that meant it was toast.
Fortunately, Ginger
wasn’t one of those women who couldn’t get off the phone,
and she lived close by. They would be
into the museum and hopefully learning more about the threat facing
the people of Southie within half an hour.
Sam hated to bring
someone else into this, but she needed help and surely she and
Ginger wouldn’t be in any danger in the museum during normal
operating hours. There was no way this freak was ambling in during
the daytime and depositing his eyeballs in that evil
box.
But then why did the mango there straight from Ezra’s
house? And why was he at Ezra’s in the first
place?
“Or what if he’s not
there yet? What if I’m seeing the future again?” Sam chewed her
bottom lip, wondering if she should try to borrow the cabbie’s bud
and call Ginger back and tell her not to come.
Ezra had said he’d
spoken the words on the side of the box and warned her not to do
the same, so she was assuming that was why the man working with the
demons had been summoned to his house. But she had no clue why the
man had headed back to the museum when he was covered in Ezra’s
blood. His hands had been caked with the stuff, even after he made
the transformation from man to demon. There was no way he could get
away with wandering around in public looking like
that.
But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t still be in the garden,
watching, waiting for the museum to close. He could see me walk in
with Ginger, and she might become his next
target.
“Could I borrow your
bud?” Sam asked, her voice sweetening as she leaned forward.
“Mine’s out of charge and I need to call my friend
back.”
“Sorry. I can’t. I’ve
got the implant, not the removable kind. It’s company policy for
drivers working this side of the barricade,” he said, obviously not
pleased with the policy, though he seemed thrilled to have the
chance to have another good ramble. “They used to have drivers
getting killed for their buds, like, ten years ago. Now everybody’s
got one, so I don’t think it really matters, but I need this job,
and they say no implant, no job, so—”
Crap. And she didn’t have Ginger’s number
memorized—she’d had it programmed into her bud for too long—so she
couldn’t ask the cabbie to call Ginger for her.
“Then could you
hurry? I really need to get there before my friend. I’ll try to
call her from the ticketing booth.” And tell
her not to come or she might end up without eyes before the day is
through.
How could she have
been so careless? The Choes, the man she’d seen near their
apartment, and Ezra had all had some kind of contact with her
before they were attacked. And Jace was next on the list if the
pattern of her seeing people before they encountered the aura
demons held. Which meant this freak in league with the demons had
been following her, watching her … and might very well be pleased
to see her show up at the museum if he was still lurking in the
garden, waiting for the chance to go play with his eyeball
collection.
The thought made a
sour taste rise in her mouth and her head spin.
Or maybe that was
just exhaustion. She couldn’t ever remember being this tired. She’d
been awake for far, far too long. Her mind wasn’t working at top
speed anymore.
Later, she assumed
that was the reason she didn’t realize the flaw in her
staying-safe-in-a-crowd-of-museum-patrons plan until she’d already
paid her cabbie and he’d driven away, until she’d tapped her way
over to the ticket booth and felt the closed window.
Then she suddenly
realized three things all at once:
1. The museum was closed on Sundays.
2. The museum was being painted. The smell of paint fumes hung thick in the air, red paint, if her guess was correct. The driver had said the building was red brick. She’d assumed he meant naturally occurring red brick, but he could have meant bricks painted red … which would explain the smell, and the reason the man didn’t fear getting caught with bloodstained hands. They weren’t stained with blood; they were stained with paint. He was here doing a job, which gave him the perfect excuse to come and go as he pleased.
3. The demons and their partner had nothing to bring to their box. Ezra’s eyes hadn’t been taken or he would have been dead, and she assumed she would have been able to see him when they’d met up earlier in the day, or at least when he was hurt. But she hadn’t. She’d seen the Choes and the gang member on the street and Jace … but not Ezra.
That must mean the
man had another victim in mind … most likely Jace, but maybe not….
Maybe his choice to go to the docks would keep him
safe….
A part of Sam wasn’t
surprised when her vision slowly began to clear, shadows parting
until she saw the face of a frail young woman reflected in the
glass of the ticket window. She was a petite person with tiny bones
and big blue eyes framed by a tangle of silky black hair. She was
beautiful, in kind of a tragic way. The perfect victim. People
would be upset to learn that a helpless little thing like this had
had her eyes ripped from her head.
Sam turned to look
over her shoulder, determined to warn the woman, to make her
believe that her life was in danger and she should run as far away
from here as she could.
Unfortunately, when
she turned, so did the reflection. And when she turned back, the
shocked looked she felt on her face was mirrored on the features of
the woman in the glass. Sam had time to be surprised—and to think
maybe she ought to give her brother a break for spending so many
years worried about his helpless little sister—before a large hand
swept around her face from behind, covering her mouth, muting her
scream as the man dragged her around the side of the deserted
museum.
Jace hurried toward
the boat landing at the edge of the ruins, near what had once been
East River Park. Even from a distance, he could see the shells of
rusting cars that still lurked in the shallow water, jutting up
from amid the waves like demon fangs. The mayor at the time of the
attacks had made noise about cleaning up the area where a group of
amphibious demons had dragged hundreds of commuter cars into the
water when they first hit the city, but those plans had been
forgotten in the following years. Now most people just avoided this
part of New York—everyone except the demon hunters brave enough to
hunt water-dwelling demons with teeth far sharper than the average
shark, and the gangs ballsy enough to run their drugs through the
dangerous waters.
The rest of New
York’s waterways were well guarded, however, so the risk was worth
it to some men. The payment for sneaking a load of Ju Du quills or
Hamma demon claws out to international waters, where demon drugs
weren’t illegal, was a pretty penny. Man-made islands created
expressly to cater to the demon-high fetishes of the rich and
famous floated only a few miles out to sea, and the hosts there
were always grateful to take on quality merchandise.
So Jace wasn’t
surprised to see a small clutch of Death Ministry members loitering
near the dock, speaking in hushed voices. He was, however, very
surprised to see Stephen Quinn emerge from the shadowy ruins. He
hurried toward where Jace’s uncle and the men he’d brought with
him—most of Conti Bounty’s best, from the looks of it—waited at the
edge of the dock.
Uncle Francis pulled
his automatic and aimed it at the wiry man without a break in the
welcoming smile that had stretched his face when he saw Jace
jogging down the narrow path from East Houston.
“Wait!” Jace said,
lifting a hand and hurrying to get to his uncle before Stephen did.
Shit. Sam must have told Stephen where
they were meeting despite his warnings. Hopefully she hadn’t said
anything about the aura demon, or he was going to have to do some
fast talking. Uncle Francis didn’t believe in invisible things,
including God and germs—the man had never had a religious
experience or been sick a day in his life—so there was no way he
was going to entertain the possibility of an invisible demon.
“That’s my friend Sam’s brother, Stephen.”
“Oh, yeah.” Francis’s
eyes narrowed, but his gun didn’t shift position until Stephen
slowed down, coming to a full stop about five feet away from the
Conti family. Only then did he tip the gun down slightly. “You’re
the guy who helped Jace with the demon shit.”
“Yeah, that’s me,”
Stephen said, his eyes wide and his breath coming fast. He looked
like hell. His clothes were rumpled and damp and his dark hair hung
in matted chunks. “Jace, I have to talk to you. I tried
to—”
“I remember talking
to you on the phone,” Uncle Francis said, interrupting without a
second thought. Francis had been king for so long, he’d forgotten
his manners … if he’d ever had any in the first place. “Nice of you
to care about my nephew.”
“Th-thanks, but
I—”
“But you’re the one
who got him hooked on the stuff, too. Didn’t you?” Francis’s gun
tipped up a bit, aiming somewhere around Stephen’s
knees.
“Uncle Frank, don’t
start,” Jace said, though he kept his tone respectful. No one spoke
disrespectfully to Francis and got away with it, not even his
favorite nephew.
“It takes two to
tango, Jacey.” Francis shrugged, but his gun didn’t waver a
centimeter. “That’s all I’m saying. That’s all I ever said. I don’t
make my opinions a secret.”
“That shit’s in the
past. We’ve got bigger things to worry about,” Jace said, hoping to
turn everyone’s attention back where it belonged. “This thing Sam
and I saw, it’s definitely a new species, at least for North
America. I’ve never seen anything like—”
“Jace, I have to talk
to you. Now.”
“Don’t interrupt my
nephew.” Francis punctuated his order with a sharp movement of his
gun. Surprisingly, Stephen didn’t even seem to notice the automatic
weapon now pointed at his groin. His eyes were all for Jace, and
the fear in those dark brown depths—so like Sam’s until hers had
changed colors a few hours before—was enough to get a nasty feeling
going in Jace’s gut.
“It’s okay, Frank.”
Jace crossed his arms at his chest as he turned to face Stephen.
“What’s up? Did Sam tell you we were going to be
here?”
“No, she didn’t. I
found you myself. I hid at the edge of the ruins and followed you,”
Stephen said, his hands trembling as he raked them through his
hair. Clumps of something too thick to be gel stuck to his fingers,
making him shudder before he flung the goo to the ground. What the
hell had he been up to? Looked like he’d taken a roll in a bunch of
Narcon demon larva.
“Why were you in the
ruins? On that side of town?” Jace asked, his suspicions about
Stephen resurging with a vengeance. No matter what Sam thought, his
gut still told him Stephen had something to do with the trouble in
which Sam presently found herself.
“I w-wasn’t there. I
r-ran away.” Stephen swallowed hard, visibly trying to control his
stammer. “But then I heard the sirens and I had to come back. I had
to know if I’d killed him. I didn’t mean to kill him. I
just—”
His words ended in a
sob as he covered his face with his hands. All four of the Conti
family hunters raised their guns of one accord, as if they shared a
brain. Which they did, in a way. They’d all been trained by
Francis, and Uncle Frank warned his people not to trust a man in
tears. By the time a normal guy got around to crying in front of
another penis-owning member of the population, he was a dangerous
person, too near the edge to be trusted.
“What the fuck,
Stephen? Does this have something to do with the drugs?” Jace
asked, lowering his voice and cutting a swift glance over to where
the Death Ministry guys were still chatting a few dozen feet away.
Usually the Contis and the gangs kept things peaceful, but if they
were here for Stephen, this could get real ugly, real fast. “You’ve
got about three Death Ministry over there, so if they’re the people
you’re in—”
“This has nothing to
do with gangs or drugs!” Stephen yelled, tears running down the
face he lifted from his hands. “Don’t you get it? Can’t you
see?”
“We’re going to need
you to get rid of this guy, Jacey. Now.” Uncle Francis had clearly
noticed the Death Ministry contingent and had the same concerns
that Jace did. He didn’t want to get in the middle of something
drug related. He didn’t traffic that breed of contraband and
wouldn’t want the Contis dragged into some kind of drug
war.
“I’ll take care of
it.” Jace crossed to Stephen and took him by the arm, guiding the
shorter man to the end of the dock, a safer distance from his
trigger-happy family. “Pull it together, Stephen. Go home and take
a shower, and I’ll call you later.”
“You can’t call me
later. I’m not going to be here. I’m leaving. Forever,” Stephen
said, his breath hitching as he tried to pull himself together long
enough to get out the words. “But you’ve got to protect Sam. I
tried to call her and warn her not to come back to the bar, but I
couldn’t get hold of her.”
“Why shouldn’t she go
back to the bar?” Jace asked, a sinking feeling in his
stomach.
“That’s the first
place he’ll look for her. He didn’t stay in that ambulance for
long. I’m sure of it. He wasn’t hurt that bad, and he’s crazy to
get the ritual done. Sam is his last chance. He needs her for the
last part. Either her or me or … someone who’s been touched by the
demons. One of us has to close the box and invite them inside our
body to stay.” Stephen shivered and his eyes focused on something
in the distance that Jace was certain only he could see. “That’s
why I have to go. I can’t let him make me finish it, no matter what
kind of threats he makes. I told him I’d kill myself first,
but—”
“Told who?” Jace
asked, though a part of him already knew exactly who Stephen was
talking about. He just didn’t want to admit that he’d been so
distracted by Sam and her visions and everything else that he
hadn’t checked the guy out the way he should have.
“Ezra,” Stephen said.
“He’s going to use Sam in a ritual to make the aura demons
flesh.”