We took a few steps forward and looked over the castle’s battlements.
There must have been a thousand people on the street outside thefront gates, and they were loud. Chants were going back and forth. Arms were being waved. There was a lot of screaming, a lot of flushed faces, a lot of inappropriate fingers being flown. Phones were being held up everywhere. There were probably three times as many people on the far side of the street as on the near one.
Here and there, there were people trying to talk, remonstrate, hold things back, moderate things. But there weren’t enough of them, and over five minutes, the heat went up observably. Some folks started across the street, and it wasn’t really clear which side went first, getting in one another’s faces.
“This is going to come to blows pretty soon,” Bear said calmly.
“Yeah? How do you know?”
“A person is difficult to predict. The more of them there are, the easier it gets,” she said. “Most people need to get a little worked up before they’re willing to do violence. They’re doing that now. This is going in one direction. Only question is how many minutes it will take to get there.”
I narrowed my eyes for a moment. Then let them go a little unfocused, sweeping the crowd again, observing. There was plenty of dramatic movement and noise out there.
Very distracting dramatic movement and noise.
So I started looking for the opposite.
And I spotted them. Little islands of stillness. People who were just quietly standing. Not in the back, but in the middle ranks of the crowds in ones and twos. In the rear on the far side, there were several folks who seemed to be just standing and waiting, not really talking, not even looking interested. All of them were wearing backpacks. I mean, most of the crowd were, so that wasn’t in itself odd—but every one of the folks in back biding their time had them on.
I had to lean out over the battlements to look down at the sidewalk below. There were some standers there, too, spaced among the crowd, and as I did I felt a surge of fear and anger out of nowhere.
I suppressed it with a deep breath, leaned back, and frowned, thinking. Closed my eyes. Touched my fingers to the spot between and just above my eyebrows and opened my Sight, giving the street below a quick glance.
The fading daylight made it harder, but I could see the energy swirling among the crowd as their fear and anger grew, red and yellow and orange auras dominating—and centered around the standing figures among the crowd, generating that energy like individual campfires, spaced to spread warmth to as many as possible. At the back on the far side of the street, the people standing and waiting in their backpacks were surrounded by a mad swirl of nauseating color, spinning wildly through the spectrum—utter emotional chaos coupled with their absolute stillness in a way no normal human mind could bear. And, among the front lines on both sides, I could see auras of gleeful anticipation, rather than fear, around maybe thirty or forty of the participants, something feral and terribly hungry about them.
I dropped back, gasping, fighting my Sight closed again.
“What?” Bear demanded. “What did you see?”
“They’re using human shields,” I snarled. “House Malvora of the White Court are fear-eaters. They’re working the crowd up, feeding on it, pushing more fear. So the mortals are getting angrier and angrier.” I fought to keep from throwing up. “And across the street, the ones with the backpacks. I think they’re Renfields. Humans the Black Court have made into their puppets. Plus at least forty ghouls starting the aggression.”
The shadows were stretching longer and longer, their edges getting softer and more nebulous as the sun went down.
“Od’s fucking bodkin,” Bear swore. “If you attack them—”
“I’ll be killing mortals, and the Council will come after me. Assuming I survive.”
“They’ll try to smash their way in with rioters and ghouls,” Bear said. “Timing things for sundown, when the Black Court can be their hammer.”
I lifted my head and studied the sky for a moment. Considered the setting sun. The distance to Lake Michigan, no longer icy, but still too cold to swim in.
“We’ve got to get the people clear,” I said quietly. “And we’ve got to do it fast.”
The door slammed open and Fitz came running out onto the roof,wearing biker leathers that hung a little loose on him, because they’d been the closest fit we could find. I’d shown him how to enchant protection sigils into the leather over the past several months, when I’d been refreshing the ones on my duster.
“Harry!” he said. “Basil and the other gargoyles are at the gates, freaking out about evil! And they turned the wood to stone! Straight-up rock!” He paused. “I think you’re going to need new hinges.”
“We’ll file that under ‘deal with it later,’ ” I said.
“Where do you want me?”
I wanted him downstairs with the other kids. But that was my feelings talking. Fitz wasn’t a child. And he knew enough to be dangerous. “Stick with Matias,” I told him, nodding to the older man. “Watch my back.”
“Got it,” he said, eyes wide.
“Fifteen minutes until sundown,” Bear said, eyeing her pocket watch.
I slammed a fist on the battlement, staring down at the crowd.
