Three Days to Dead

Chapter 25

14:00

“This is useless,” Nadia said, fingers tapping away at the keyboard of a laptop. “There are no mills in this city. No paper mills, no flour mills, not even a puppy mill. He lied to you.”

“Check anyway,” I snapped.

I had taken refuge in Rufus’s kitchen with cling peaches and a can opener while Nadia and Wyatt made themselves useful by looking into our only clue. The teeth of the opener cut an uneven path around the edge of the can. Thick syrup pooled. My stomach rumbled. Rufus really needed to shop more often.

Nadia shot me a glare over the edge of the laptop, which I promptly matched. With a brief nostril flare, she ducked her head. Wyatt stood behind her at the dining table, arms crossed over his chest, reading over her shoulder.

The file on Chalice had revealed nothing else useful in determining the actual existence of a teleportation Gift. She had a list of child psychology evaluations as long as my arm, as well as a handful during her teen years. And medical records for two E.R. visits in high school—drug overdoses that seemed more teen-related than Gift-related. It only confirmed that she had been a lonely, troubled woman long before Alex met her.

“The old mill,” Wyatt said, uttering the words for the tenth time since I’d relayed them. “Could it be a code for something else?”

I rolled my eyes. “Sure, maybe Tovin’s location is hidden in the text of the Hardy Boys’ The Secret of the Old Mill.”

“I’m serious.”

“Me, too. He said ‘old mill,’ okay?” I tossed the serrated can lid into the sink and plucked a fork out of the dish drainer. The peaches were warm and too sweet, but I ate them anyway.

“Nothing,” Nadia said. “No mills within city limits.”

“Did you search the suburbs? The mountains north of the city?”

She grunted and typed something else. I chewed on a peach, somewhat unnerved by the faint metallic taste of the fruit. Oh well. If Tovin didn’t kill me first, then botulism would.

“There’s nothing relevant there, Evy,” Wyatt said, after gazing at another page on the computer screen. “Nadia, try searching the maps for street names or buildings.”

“How about company logos?” I said.

“One moment, please,” Nadia said.

Fingers flew. The laptop buzzed. She and Wyatt leaned closer. The blue light of the monitor reflected in their eyes. I slurped down another peach. On the other side of the room, Rufus continued to sit quietly in his wheelchair. Patient, watching, not participating. It was downright spooky.

The rest of Rufus’s apartment was as spartan as a motel room. I found myself looking around for personal artifacts. Photographs or paperweights, even an old take-out bag that had missed the trash can. Something to prove a human being had lived here for a reasonable amount of time. He chose to live in a crappy part of town, but didn’t even make an effort to nest?

Then again, Wyatt lived in efficiency apartments and motel rooms rented by the week. Maybe all Handlers had nomadic tendencies.

My attention strayed to a simple white wall clock next to the ivory refrigerator. It was after two o’clock. Fourteen hours until smack-down, and we were still chasing our tails. Not even in the amusing-to-passersby way, just in the we’re-pathetic-and-have-no-leads kind of way.

“Except for a farmers’ open-air market that runs every Saturday morning from nine to twelve,” Nadia said, “we have nothing. No Old Mill Road, no symbology that makes sense. Tovin cannot logically be hiding in any of these places.” She quirked an eyebrow at me. “Perhaps you were too fast to execute the prisoner.”

“He didn’t lie,” I said. The peach can joined its lid, making a mighty clatter as it hit the stained sink.

“He is a half-Blood. They all lie. You were a fool to believe him.”

“I knew him before he turned, you Russian bitch. The change wasn’t taking; he was losing it. I was talking to Alex at the end, not the Blood, I’m sure of it, so back the hell off.”

She started to stand, fists balled by her sides.

“Will you two quit?” Wyatt said. “The bickering might be fun for you, but it’s not helping.” He put one hand on either shoulder and pushed Nadia back into the chair. She didn’t fight him.

I felt a strange twinge of jealousy at the manner in which he was touching her. Cursing myself a fool, I focused on the clue at hand and not on my hatred of Nadia. Our current need to join forces didn’t erase the fact that she’d once hunted me and been perfectly willing to kill me.

If folks thought regular bounty hunters had it hard, they should try serving warrants on goblins for a living. We made the most hard-core dog hunters look like pussycats.

“Olsmill,” Rufus said. It was his first contribution to our conversation in over thirty minutes. He still stared at the floor, a newfound alertness in his pale features. His eyes moved back and forth as if reading. Searching for an elusive memory.

We waited, a trio of blank stares.

“Is there more to that, or are we supposed to guess?” I asked.

“North of the city,” he said, strength in his voice. He looked up, right at me. “The Olsmill Nature Preserve closed down twenty years ago. The owners went bankrupt after their animals kept dying. No disease or apparent cause; they just up and died.”

An imaginary lightbulb went off in my brain. I bounced off the counter. “I know where that is,” I said. “It’s three miles out, along the Anjean. I’ve never been up to it, but I’ve been past the gate. If it’s the right direction, it can’t be very far from the location of First Break.”

“Which makes sense,” Wyatt said, excitement creeping in his voice. “The energy output of both First Break and all of the Light Ones living down there probably affected the animals and their heart rhythms.”

“Are the buildings still there?”

“I have no idea, but if they are, it’s a perfect hiding place.”

“Not to mention near a magical doorway.”

“You do realize,” Nadia said, “that all of this could be a trick? To send in someone you trust to lure you to a place above this Break, from which Tovin intends to summon this Tainted creature? Bravo for walking right into his trap. Again.”

Wyatt intercepted me before I could punch her. He herded me to the other side of the kitchen, away from her smirk and annoyingly angular face. He grabbed my chin with one hand and held me still. I stared right back.

“Don’t let her bait you,” he said. “She’s in pain, Evy, just like you were.”

I yanked my chin out of his grasp. “Was I that much of a bitch?”

“Aren’t you always?”

“Very funny, Truman.”

“I know you are, but what am I?”

“A pain in the ass.”

“Sorry to interrupt the happy time,” Nadia said, “but we have not yet decided upon a plan of action.”

“You mean, do we play right into Tovin’s hands again and head up to the nature preserve, or do we stand around and insult each other some more?” I asked.

She nodded.

“We’ll need help,” I said. “I’d feel better going up there with some Triad backup, especially if Tovin’s got a herd of Halfies guarding the place. The three of us won’t be much good against more than a dozen.”

Nadia snorted. “Three? You assume a lot.”

“You’re telling me you don’t want to kick a whole lot of Halfie ass on behalf of Tully and Wormer?” Her silence confirmed the opposite, so I switched my attention to Rufus. “How about that backup?”

“Kismet owes me a favor,” Rufus replied. “She can probably get Baylor’s team on board, if I ask nicely. Maybe Willemy, too, if he’s forgiven me for Turner Street.”

“Do I even want to know?” Wyatt asked.

“Nope.”

“That’s good backup,” I said. “Weapons?”

“Standard. I’ve got a stash. Hall closet, black trunk.”

To Nadia: “Map?”

She returned to the computer and typed. I passed Wyatt to stand behind her. She was in a great position for me to wring her neck. I quashed the urge. Wyatt was right. I’d been in her shoes, and had no business judging her anger.

The computer displayed a map of the forest north of the city. Nadia dragged the mouse to the location of the defunct nature preserve. Cherrydale Road wound along the banks of the Anjean, passed the turnoff for the preserve, and continued deep into the mountains.

“There should be a gas station here,” I said, pointing to a spot where a secondary road branched off from Cherrydale, half a mile from our destination. “You and the others will meet us there at three A.M., fully armed and assault ready.”

“Wait, who’s you and who’s us?” Wyatt asked.

“Us is you and me. We’re leaving early to go on recon. No sense in planning a blind assault on an unknown compound.”

“You are both wanted targets. Is this wise?” Nadia asked.

“Probably not, but I don’t want us separated. As long as we know what’s going on with the other person, we can control the game.” And I could keep Wyatt from acting on his damned guilt.

“Three o’clock is cutting it close,” Wyatt said.

“We need to rest a little. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t slept much in the last few days.”

“And we still need some time to figure out your Gift. Teleportation could be pretty damned useful, you know.”

“If we can find the trigger.”

“I have an idea on that. Let’s go up to the roof.”

I tilted my chin. He quirked an eyebrow.

“Fine.” Over my shoulder to Rufus, I said, “Make the calls. We’ll be back in a bit.”

It took several hard shoves to open the roof access door. Rusty hinges squealed angrily. We only managed to move it three feet before it stuck on the tarred surface.

The city hummed all around us. Car engines and the occasional bass line drifted up from the streets below. A city that never seemed to sleep, no matter day or night—consequences of a population that preferred coming out after sundown.

I followed Wyatt across the spongy surface. It was the strangest roof I’d ever walked on, and I imagined it leaked like a son of a bitch during storms. “So what’s the trigger?”

“You tell me, Evy.”

I rolled my eyes. “You said you knew.”

“I have the same pieces as you. Just put them together.”

He was going all Sphinx-like Handler on me again. I hated that. Straight answers were simpler, but he liked proving his point. Challenging me to do the work myself.

“She was in the sandbox with other kids,” I said, thinking back over the information I’d read. “Probably not having fun. She wanted to go to the toy store and see her favorite animals. It was a place she liked and felt safe. She didn’t like her preschool, so she went out to the playground. She was shy, an introvert.”

“By nature, shy people are more likely to be what?”

I worked the question over in my mind until the answer came screaming at me. “She was lonely. You think loneliness is the trigger?”

“It’s a logical trigger.”

“Is yours logical?”

“Not really.”

“What is it?”

“Also not telling.”

“Come on, Wyatt, you need to teach me how to do this. I can’t just drum up loneliness and hope I land ten feet away. What if I reappear in between walls? That could hurt.”

He heaved a sigh dramatic enough to make a professional actor proud. “It’s arrogance, okay? Haughty, highbrow arrogance at its worst.”

My lips twitched. “So what? You forget to put your arrogance away when you’re done with it?”

His eyebrows scrunched. He opened his mouth to retort. I stuck my tongue out—a gesture guaranteed to force a smile. It worked.

A shadow passed my peripheral vision—a large bird shape that was gone before I turned my head. Too big for a pigeon, but what else? I thought of Danika and was struck by a sudden pang of sadness.

“Evy?”

“Yeah?” Had he been talking?

“Do you feel the Break right now? You said it felt tingly, like static.”

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, exhaled. It was there, but more distant than in First Break. The faintest hint of static just below the surface. I latched on to the buzz and urged it closer. Asked it to burn just a little brighter.

It ignored me and remained far away, the palest notion of power. “It’s there,” I said. “Barely, but it’s there.”

“Use your trigger to bring it forward. Concentrate on feelings of loneliness.”

“Uh-huh.” Hard to feel lonely when he was crowding me. He wouldn’t always be there, though. At the end of this day, one of us (or both) would be dead, forever parted. Alone.

Tears stung my eyes. Nostrils flared. Instinct told me to push those thoughts away and stay positive, but I needed that emotion. Needed to feel the loneliness. I held on, trying to imagine living without Wyatt. Spending the next five or ten or thirty years without him in my life. Without his voice in my head.

The faint buzz crashed on top of me like a waterfall, zinging through from head to toes and back out again. The hair on my arms tingled. My skin flushed, at once hot and cold. Every single cell in my body seemed to vibrate, threatened to fly apart at any moment and scatter me to the four winds.

“I feel it,” I said, tears spilling down my cheeks. “I’ve tapped in, Wyatt.”

“Picture the other side of the roof, Evy. Just a few feet. Let the Break take you there.”

I thought of a spot ten feet away, next to the edge. The tar seemed thinner there, ready to wear through at any moment and leak into the cheap apartment below. My body vibrated. The oddest sensation of movement was punctuated by a blinding headache. I wobbled, then toppled sideways when my hands found no traction.

Something slammed into me. I fell a short distance and hit the soft tar roof with a body on top of me. My eyes snapped open. Wyatt stared down, his eyes wide and fearful, mouth open and panting. The pain in my head subsided to a dull ache and settled between my eyes.

“What happened?” I asked.

“It worked. You overshot a little, though.”

We had landed on the soft tar roof, arms nearly touching the ledge. Ten inches to the left, and I’d have missed completely. My stomach knotted. “Holy shit, I almost killed myself.”

“We just need to practice.”

“Easy for you to say.”

He settled in, making no effort to get off me. I pushed my hips against his. He grunted and pushed right back, teasing. Jerk.

“You going to get off me?” I asked.

“You can get out from beneath me.”

Drumming up the loneliness took longer the second time, due in no small part to Wyatt. It was difficult to imagine being without him when he was on top of me, seriously affecting my concentration.

I thought about our time together in Amalie’s home. What if that had been our last opportunity to be together? Annoyance melted into sadness. I latched on and turned it until the tap opened. The static poured through me again.

Wyatt’s face faded. The ache increased. My vision blurred into a mass of swirling colors and unfocused shapes. I was moving again, but realized too late I hadn’t focused on a destination.

The ache flared into a sharp spike of agony that threaded through my skull from top to bottom. I shrieked. Movement stopped. I fell and hit a cool, slick surface and curled up into a little ball. The headache didn’t relent. Pain speared through me. Bright spots of color burst in my eyes.

It dulled in time and awareness returned. Familiar smells and voices. A hand on my shoulder, another on the small of my back, rubbing in gentle circles. I focused on those movements, let them calm my nerves and frazzled brain, then cracked one eye open.

The kitchen in Rufus’s apartment. Lucky transport. Wyatt was behind me, whispering soft words of support. And apology. I turned my head. Each muscle in my neck protested. Wonder and pride shined in his face.

“That was impressive,” he said.

“Hurt like hell,” I replied.

“Side effects are a bitch.”

I groaned an affirmation. “How’d you know I’d end up here?”

“I didn’t. When you didn’t reappear, I panicked and started looking. Nadia found me in the stairwell.” His hands continued to massage my back and shoulders. “But on the plus side, we know you can move through solid objects.”

“Yeah, and it feels like I’m being ripped apart.”

“Want to practice some more?”

“Fuck you, Truman. I need aspirin and a nap.”

He scooped me up into his arms, and I let him. The blinding headache had turned to a debilitating throb. My stomach swirled and threatened to empty. I imagined it was some sort of magic-induced migraine. Only time would fade the pain enough to let me think properly. Until then, I simply allowed Wyatt to settle me on the sofa, tuck a blanket around my shoulders, and watch over me while I tossed on the edge of agonized slumber.

The nap lasted longer than I’d planned—the bits of sunlight that had peeked through Rufus’s dark curtains were gone—but I woke refreshed. The ache still lingered on the very edge of my senses, no longer strong enough to affect me. I focused on the room and the soft hum of nearby voices.

Wyatt, Nadia, and Rufus were gathered around the dining table. I couldn’t hear the conversation, but Rufus had his cellular phone out and open. The apartment was otherwise quiet, almost serene.

“What time is it?” I asked.

Wyatt’s head snapped in my direction. He grinned. “Almost eleven at night, Sleeping Beauty. We need to go, if we’re going to manage any recon before reinforcements arrive.”

“They’re coming?”

Rufus angled his wheelchair to face me. “I called in a few favors. Three o’clock at the gas station, like you said. They trust me enough to trust you.”

“Great.” I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the sofa. Dizziness blacked out my vision for a short span, but I covered with a sunny smile. “You said something earlier about weapons?”

As promised, the hall closet hid a large black trunk. Nadia produced a key to the arsenal. Wyatt and I delved inside without waiting for permission. I strapped a pair of serrated knives to my ankles; their weight was familiar and comforting. Always more secure with guns, Wyatt slipped into a pair of shoulder holsters and checked the ammo on two modified Glocks. I tucked a similar gun into the back waistband of my jeans. We found six clips of anticoagulant rounds, took two each, and gave the other two to Nadia.

Wyatt opened a small metal case. “The hell, Rufus?” he said. “Where did you get grenades?”

“Took them from a Halfie nest once. Be careful, they’re pretty old,” Rufus replied.

“Nice.” Wyatt closed the lid and put it back into the trunk.

I plucked two more clips of fragmenting rounds. The back pockets of my jeans bulged with the ammunition, creating a false sense of security. In the past, having those weapons made me feel powerful, invincible. Knowing I wasn’t invincible anymore—and in fact, likely to die again very soon—made me feel like a fake. I was putting on a good show for Wyatt, even though we both saw the only real outcome of today’s planned assault.

“We’re going to need a car,” I said.

“So will we,” Nadia said. “We have ours. Good luck with yours.”

Helpful as always.

Wyatt pulled a light jacket off a coat hanger and slipped it on, effectively hiding his weapons. He walked over to Rufus, offered his hand, and tilted his head. Rufus looked first at the offered hand, then at Wyatt. The two men shared something in that look—silent encouragement, a parting of ways, maybe even an apology—and shook.

“See you on the flip side, man,” Rufus said.

“Yeah, you too,” Wyatt replied.

We left as cautiously as we’d entered and exited through the rear door of the building, back into the stink of the alley. It had cooled off significantly, enough for me to wish I’d borrowed a jacket, too. We headed for the street end of the alley.

“We’ll go a few streets over,” Wyatt whispered, “then look for something we can drive.”

“You ever hot-wired a car before?”

“I’ve seen it on television. How hard can it be?”

The explosion shook the ground. I pitched sideways and found myself on the mucky concrete, with Wyatt on top of me. Heat swirled around us. Bits of wood and brick and rubble peppered my exposed shoulder and cheek. He grunted. The roar of fire pushed through the thundering of my heartbeat and drowned out all other sounds. I turned my head, hazarded a look up. Windows and chunks of wall had blown out. Smoke billowed, acrid and thick.

The fifth floor was engulfed in flames.