“Well, I was going to try to use the magic of the internet to uncover the thin man’s name and address. But I got distracted by this.” I held the phone up to show him the headline of the article I’d been scanning.
He squinted at the small print, reading aloud. “‘Cop opens fire in mall food court. Thirty-six dead.’”
“It happened yesterday. Just after 6:00 p.m.” The thought made me feel sick. “I know you’re not much of a mall shopper, but Saturday night is basically prime time for the food court. It would have been like shooting fish in a barrel. Only easier, because people are much bigger targets, and cops are trained marksmen.”
Gallagher pushed the phone away in disgust. “Why do human authorities have no honor?”
I shrugged, mentally tugging at a thread of optimism that threatened to unravel the very fabric of my reality. “I prefer to think that we’re only hearing about the rare cases where that’s true. That the vast majority are good people who never make headlines.”
Gallagher scowled as he turned back to the window. “The evidence does not support your theory.”
I followed his gaze toward the rear of the university lab. We’d been parked in the lot behind the building for nearly an hour, trying to combine reconnaissance for our rescue mission with research into the thin man’s identity, using free Wi-Fi from the Starbucks around the corner. Multitasking at its finest.
Unfortunately, the connection was spotty at best, this far away from the coffee shop. And I knew as little about recon as Gallagher knew about the internet.
“What exactly are you looking for online?” he asked when I started tapping on the phone screen again.
“Well, we know that all of the Spectacle’s customers were either very wealthy or very politically powerful. Or both. So I did an image search of the wealthiest US congressmen, and these are the results.” I held the phone up, and he squinted at the images. “Sorry. This would be easier on a laptop or a tablet, but this isn’t the kind of search it’s safe to run on a rented device at an internet café.” I was pretty sure the government monitored those public-use IP addresses for eyebrow-raising search strings.
I handed him the phone. “Just scroll down and look at the pictures, and tell me if any of them look like the thin man.”
Gallagher took the phone, but after a few seconds of dragging his finger up the screen, the images began to flicker.
“Damn it.” I plucked the device from his grip, and the images steadied. “I guess we’ll have to do this the hard way. How old would you say the thin man was?”
Gallagher watched through the windshield as a man in jeans and a white lab coat carried a trash bag out the back door of the building and tossed it up into the dumpster. “In human years?”
I gave him an exasperated look. “Well, dog years wouldn’t be very helpful.”
“If the thin man werefae, I’d guess him to be at least a century old. Possibly half again that. But humans are relatively short-lived, and your species and mine age at different rates.” He shrugged. “I lack skill estimating human age, beyond childhood.”
“Okay, so describe him. Gray hair? What color eyes? You said he was tall?”
Gallagher turned away from the lab for a moment to study me with cautious curiosity. “You really don’t remember?”
Blue and purple pillows. Thick rugs. Bare bodies. All of it swimming beneath my unshed tears. “Delilah.” Gallagher reaches for me. “It will be brief...”
“I remember...you. Just flashes.” I closed my eyes and shook my head to clear it. “But not him.” Not the bastard who’d turned my champion into my—
I shook my head again, dislodging painful thoughts.
Gallagher watched me from the driver’s seat. Within arm’s reach, yet outside of my personal space. That was the balance we had struck—protective hovering outside of a carefully preserved distance. Mentally preparing for the birth of our child, while avoiding the subject of how she came to exist.
We weren’t pretending it hadn’t happened exactly. We were pretending it hadn’t changed things.
Or rather,Iwas pretending. Gallagher was...waiting. He seemed to understand that eventually I’d have to deal with it, and that would be our make-or-break moment.
But we couldn’t afford for us to be broken—not as future parents and not as partners in thefuriae’s mission for justice. And I was terrified that if I let myself remember, that was exactly what would happen.
Gallagher closed his eyes for a moment. Then he cleared his throat and met my gaze again with a cautious light in his own. “Yes, he was tall for a human. Very thin. But he seemed to be naturally slight of build. Narrow, but not frail or sickly. He had mostly gray hair, combed over to the left.”
“Was his skin wrinkled? Did he look older, or prematurely gray? What about eye color?”
He closed his eyes again, and I watched them move beneath his eyelids, as if he were seeing that room in his mind. Remembering that night.
His fist clenched around the armrest, and the plastic creaked.
“I don’t remember his eye color. But he was definitely wrinkled.” Gallagher’s eyes opened. “Mostly at the corners of his eyes and his forehead. Some around his mouth.”
