“You—you—”
As I brandish the switchblade, my attention stays on his hands, watching to see if he’ll go for a gun while I back out of the doorway onto the sidewalk. A passing car doesn’t even slow.
The guy advances on me, one hand pressed to his wound, the other jabbing at me. “You think you can get away with that?”
“Kinda, yeah. The real question is whether you’re going to get away withthat.” I nod at his injury. “Or do you want more?”
It’s pure bravado. Laughable even, and his face twists. Then he freezes. Blinks. Backs away, hands rising before he wheels and tears off down the street.
“You’re right behind me, aren’t you?” I say.
“Yeah.”
I turn to see Derek. He’s in half shadow, a massive dark hulk with blood dripping from a cut lip. It’s his hand that sent the guy running, though. It’s misshapen, the nails thickened to claws. A localized partial Change makes a very nice weapon, but—when dealing with humans—it’s even better as a pure “What the hell?” scare tactic, especially paired with the blood dripping from his mouth.
“Is the other guy gone?” I say, nodding to the alley.
“Both of them, yeah.”
I arch my brows.
“Seems I interrupted a drug deal,” he says.
“Ah. Well, maybe you scared them straight.”
A rumbling chuckle. “Doubt it.” He shakes his head. “First I didn’t think to see if anyone was watching the apartment. Then I missed theactualguy who was. I’m screwing up all over the place, and we’ve barely started.”
“We’rescrewing up. If they were Cabal half demons sent to kidnap us, we’d be fine. This is not our wheelhouse.” I glance back toward the apartment. “I’ll understand if you want to quit. You’re already injured.”
“Just a bloody lip. If you’re okay to keep going...”
“I am. We just really need to make sure we aren’t being followed, or instead of rescuing this girl, we’ll lead the bad guys right to her.”
“Agreed.”
There seemed to only be the one guy watching the apartment, and we follow his trail a half block where it disappears at the curb, as if he called a friend or a cab. If he’s smart, the hospital will be his next stop. We don’t see anyone else around, but we keep our eyes out as we backtrack to the apartment and start following Gina’s trail. Well, Derek follows it. He hasn’t shifted. Whatever the hour, a two-hundred-pound black wolf in downtown Toronto is kinda noticeable.
Wolf formwouldbe easier—Derek could just walk with his nose down. Being in human form requires stopping for a sniff check at every corner and backtracking when he loses the trail, woven through a hundred others.
Justin warned us that Gina had no place to go. She had no idea where her father was. More distant relatives were indeed distant,living in the prairies and long out of contact. There’d been a teacher she’d been close to, but she’d retired last year. Their social worker was new, and Gina didn’t feel comfortable with her yet. While she had plenty of friends, she wouldn’t bring trouble to their doorsteps.
Her trail confirms the sad truth of her situation. After she fled the apartment, she’d moved from public space to public space. A coffee shop. A library. Another coffee shop. Eaton Centre mall. Derek loses her outside the last. Too many scents and too many entrances.
We’re standing on a street corner, waiting for the light to change—despite the complete lack of cars—when Derek’s head jerks up. After making sure there’s no one around, he drops to one knee and sniffs near the sidewalk.
I’m about to ask whether he smells something when a movement catches my attention. Someone’s crossing the road a half block down. Just as I lay my fingers on Derek’s shoulder, the woman moves under a streetlamp, and I see her A-line polka-dot dress. A car turns the corner and heads straight for her, and she only glances at it. The car whooshes past, close enough to ruffle her skirt, which stays perfectly flat.
The ghost crosses to our side and strolls our way. I press the amulet under my T-shirt. A family heirloom, it douses the glow that marks me as someone who can hear the dead. For an ordinary necromancer, it would cover that light entirely. For me, it just turns my neon pulsingNecromancer Here!sign into a gentle glow. If ghosts do see it, experienced ones presume I’m a very weak and untrained necromancer, lacking the power to help them.
“Gina came this way,” Derek says as he rises.
“Oh? Great. All right, then. Can you tell which way she went? I know it’s hard to determine scent direction.”
His brows rise only for a split second before he recognizes my blather as cover.
Why hello, ghost lady who is walking straight toward me. I’m afraid I don’t see you there. I’m just so busy talking to my boyfriend. Deep in very important conversation.
It isn’t necessary. The ghost doesn’t seem to see me. She just strolls along, humming under her breath, ignoring the humans at the streetlight.
