Dying Is My Business

Eleven

The gargoyle soared over the awnings and curbside trees, tracing our route down the sidewalk. We were injured and slow, but even if we’d been able to run quickly the gargoyle could have overtaken us without much effort. As it was, it must have thought we were child’s play. It swooped into Bethany from behind, knocking her to the sidewalk. She tried to get back on her feet, but the gargoyle landed on top of her. It straddled her back and pinned her down.

I skidded to a halt. My hand was on my gun before I remembered bullets were useless against these things. Damn it, weren’t Isaac and the others supposed to be drawing the gargoyles away?

Bethany struggled to get free, but the gargoyle was too heavy. She tried to reach into her vest for a charm, but her arms were pinned the wrong way for that. Perched on her back, the gargoyle drew back one claw, preparing to strike.

“Get off of her!” Thornton yelled. He ran at it, brandishing the broken half of the Anubis Hand. He swung it before the gargoyle could react. The mummified fist connected with the gargoyle’s snout. There was a much smaller flash this time, and no web of fire, but the gargoyle still tumbled off of Bethany, stunned. Thornton helped her up, and together they started running. The gargoyle stumbled side to side on its feet for a moment, its wings twitching, then shook its head clear. It saw Thornton taking its prey away and released an angry shriek.

“Thornton, the staff!” I shouted. He tossed it to me. I caught it and ran at the gargoyle, noticing for the first time that it wasn’t Yellow Eye. Strange, Yellow Eye hadn’t come back after mysteriously retreating into the alleyway. I swung the staff, and the Anubis Hand connected with the gargoyle’s jaw. There was a much brighter flash now. The gargoyle was knocked backward, burning as it rolled across the street, giving off sparks and embers until it finally exploded in a burst of blackened ash. I turned back to the others. “Now that’s how you hit a gargoyle,” I said.

Bethany was pale and out of breath. Her spill on the sidewalk had opened the cut in her knee again, and she was leaning against Thornton for support. “Save the gloating,” she said. “We have to get to the safe house before more of them come. It isn’t far now.”

“Can you walk?” I asked.

Instead of answering, she let go of Thornton, turned around, and started limping quickly up the block toward Ninth Avenue.

“Okay then,” I said, and followed.

We turned downtown on Ninth, moving as quickly as we could. I kept a tight grip on the Anubis Hand, just in case. A nearby shriek, like the hunting call of a bird of prey, froze us in our tracks. A dark, man-sized shape moved across the night sky. It was little more than a shadow against the darkness, but the silhouette of its wings was unmistakable.

“Your boss isn’t doing his job,” I said.

“You’re wrong about that,” Bethany replied. “If he wasn’t, we’d already be dead.”

We turned west onto Forty-Third Street, a quiet, sleepy block. A gargoyle landed on top of one of the buildings along the street. It crouched on its haunches and folded its wings onto its back until it looked every bit the twin of its architectural namesake. From its high perch, it scanned the street below.

Bethany grabbed Thornton and me, and pushed us into a dark doorway across the street. She put her hand on my chest, pushing me as far back against the door as she could. I felt the heat of her skin through my shirt.

“Don’t move,” she whispered. “Stay quiet. Don’t even breathe.”

“Not a problem,” Thornton whispered back.

The gargoyle’s head whipped in our direction, as if it had heard us. I felt its icy gaze narrowing in on us like a rifle sight. It launched itself into the air toward us.

“Run!” Bethany said.

We took off down the street. The gargoyle came after us, chittering and shrieking. I took a swipe at it with the Anubis Hand, but the staff was half the length it used to be. The gargoyle easily maneuvered away from it. Without a weapon, the only thing to do was run, so we ran like mad.

Up ahead, in the middle of the block, a figure stepped out into the street. She was an older, slender woman in her late sixties or early seventies, wearing a billowy red blouse and black cotton pants. Strands of long gray hair blew back from her face in the breeze. She saw us, there was no way she couldn’t have, but she didn’t move, she just stood there in the middle of the street like a lunatic.

“Get away!” I shouted, waving. “Get inside!”

She stood her ground. I looked back, saw the gargoyle was gaining on us, then looked at the woman again. She didn’t look remotely frightened.

She extended her left arm. Her hand and forearm were sheathed in a long white glove, the kind someone might wear to a fancy ball, except she was only wearing one of them. Her right hand was bare. Something sparked in the palm of her glove, and then a column of fire exploded out of it. It arced through the air toward the gargoyle. As the flames passed over my head, I dropped to the pavement and looked up in time to see them envelop the gargoyle. The creature fell out of the sky like a burning comet. By the time it hit the street, there was nothing left but a few smoldering bones that looked like blackened twigs.

The woman lowered her arm. A thin wisp of smoke wafted from her glove.

My eyes were so wide I thought they might pop out. “That was amazing,” I said.

The woman nodded. “It was, wasn’t it?”

Before I could ask her who she was, a dozen big black crows swooped down from the night sky behind her. A moment later, they came together to form the Black Knight astride his armored horse.

Bethany shouted, “Behind you!”

The woman spun around. The jet-black horse snorted and hoofed the pavement.

“You,” she said. There was so much anger dripping from that one word it was immediately clear to me these two had met before. The woman raised her white-gloved hand again. Fire spat from her palm to wash over the Black Knight. But when the flames dissipated, he was unharmed.

The Black Knight reached for his sword. I pushed myself off the sidewalk and onto my feet. As soon as the Black Knight saw me, he froze, his sword halfway out of its scabbard. Then he pulled it the rest of the way out, leveled it in my direction, and urged his steed forward, the woman now all but forgotten. He wanted a rematch.

The Black Knight galloped toward me. I threw myself aside a second before his blade would have run me through, hitting the concrete with my shoulder. I rolled to a stop at the edge of the street, wincing with pain, and saw the Black Knight and his horse break apart. A dozen crows flapped their way into the night sky and didn’t come back. I stood up, rubbing my sore shoulder.

“That’s strange. I’ve never seen the Black Knight retreat like that,” the woman said. She studied our faces, then smiled. Deep dimples appeared in the shallow wrinkles of her cheeks. Her brown eyes twinkled as she smoothed down the sides of her blouse. “You must be Isaac’s friends.”

“Are you Ingrid Bannion?” Bethany asked.

“I am.” She looked up at the sky. “Maybe we should take this inside, where it’s safer.” She started walking toward an abandoned lot between two town houses in the middle of the block. A chain-link fence separated us from the patch of overgrown grass beyond it, but for some reason I had trouble focusing on it. It was like the empty lot didn’t want me to look too closely. I blinked and squinted, but the strange feeling didn’t pass. I wondered if I’d hit my head on the pavement without realizing it.

“Is the safe house close by?” I asked.

“Oh yes, it’s quite close,” Ingrid replied. She stepped up onto the sidewalk in front of the empty lot—and then kept stepping up right into the air. White-painted cement stairs appeared beneath her feet with each step she took, until finally she stood on the landing at the top of what appeared to be a freestanding stoop.

There was a house there, I realized, but somehow I couldn’t see it. The moment the thought struck me, the empty lot wavered like a mirage and a white, stucco-walled town house appeared in its place. It stood three stories tall and twice as wide as the town houses that flanked it, as if someone had bought two neighboring buildings and fused them together seamlessly. At the top of the steps, Ingrid stood before double doors that were crowned with a peaked, stone cornice. Both doors were decorated with holly wreaths sporting red plastic berries, though Christmas was still three months away. Lights glowed warmly through the thin white curtains in the windows. A collection of small Hummel figurines had been arranged on the inside of the windowsill next to the doors, all of them dressed like little ceramic shepherds with various musical instruments in their hands or pressed to their cherubic lips.

This was the safe house? I’d pictured something a little more formidable. Less Hummel and more iron bars.

Ingrid opened the front door and motioned for us to follow her inside. I climbed up the stoop behind Bethany and Thornton, hesitant to put my full weight on steps that had appeared out of nowhere. But when I put my foot down it was solid. At the same time, I felt something pushing against me. It came in waves, reminding me on some level of the tiny, imaginary hands I’d felt trying to push me away from the warehouse.

A few steps above me, Bethany spread her fingers as if she were letting a breeze run through them. “Ingrid, I can feel the ward around this place. It’s incredible. The strongest I’ve ever felt.”

“Oh, thank you, dear,” Ingrid said, holding the door open for us. “But I can’t take the credit. I’m about as good at casting wards as I am at programming my cell phone. No, it was put there by a dear friend.”

Was the ward what I was feeling pushing against me? Bethany had used the word before, but I still had no real idea what it meant.

The entrance hallway of Ingrid’s town house was narrow and smelled of lavender and Murphy’s Oil. A vase of dried flowers stood on the credenza along the wall, and arranged around its base were more Hummel figurines set on doilies. I took it all in, the quaint umbrella stand by the door, the wooden shoe rack beside it with the words GOD BLESS THIS MESS carved across the top. The outside was nothing like I’d expected for a safe house, but the inside made me downright uneasy. There were no guards, no weapons, nothing that made me feel safe.

Ingrid closed the front door, then locked the dead bolt above the knob. “This house may be protected by a ward, but there’s no harm in being careful.” She turned to us, rubbing her hands together to warm them after the cool autumn night air. “There now. You must be Bethany?” She extended her right hand, the one without a glove, and Bethany shook it.

“Yes, I’m Bethany Savory. This is Thornton Redler.”

Ingrid shook Thornton’s hand next, and the happy smile faded from her face. “Oh, dear. Oh, I’m so sorry, young man. What did those awful creatures do to you?”

He touched the scar on his face with his other hand. “It’s okay.”

“I don’t mean the scar,” Ingrid said. “When I touch someone I can see their aura. It’s a gift I’ve had all my life. A person’s aura shows me everything I need to know about them. For instance, Bethany’s aura is a bright yellow, almost lemon. That tells me she’s a woman of purpose, that getting the job done right is important to her. It also tells me she’s someone who doesn’t like it when things are unpredictable or out of her control. Not when it comes to her duties, or her personal life.”

A slight blush colored Bethany’s cheeks. I chuckled, and she shot me an annoyed look. Clearly, Ingrid had pegged her to a tee.

“Every living thing has an aura, from simple houseplants to the most evolved creatures,” Ingrid continued. “But not you, Thornton Redler. You don’t have any aura at all.”

Thornton pulled his hand out of her grasp. “Well, this day just keeps getting better.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” Ingrid said. “You don’t look half bad for someone who’s,” she paused to choose her words carefully, “passed on.”

“I haven’t passed on yet,” he insisted.

“No. No, I suppose you haven’t,” she said. She turned to me next and stuck out her hand. “And you are…?”

I looked at her hand. If I took it, would she see too much? What if she saw that I was a thief? Or worse, saw the thing inside me? What if she didn’t see my aura, but instead saw nine of them—nine stolen auras stacked on top of each other like anonymous bodies in a mass grave? I wasn’t willing to risk it.

I stuck my hands in my pockets and said, “I’m Trent.”

Ingrid let her hand drop to her side. “Nice to meet all of you. Any friend of Isaac’s is a friend of mine. I just wish our meeting were under better circumstances. Please, come inside.” She escorted us down the entrance hall toward the flight of wooden stairs that led to the second floor. As we passed the kitchen, I smelled traces of pork chops and a hint of sautéed greens with garlic and lemon. My stomach growled. I hadn’t eaten in several hours, and now the hunger was catching up with me.

Bethany limped up the steps ahead of me, favoring her hurt leg. Thornton moved stiffly, as if his limbs refused to bend properly anymore. At the top of the stairs, an elaborately decorated living room ran the entire width of the extra-wide town house, its walls lined with overflowing bookcases. A set of eight upholstered, high-backed wooden chairs had been loosely arranged around the room, some against the wall and some in a semicircle around a coffee table with a wrought-iron base and a marble top. A long couch sat in the middle of the room with embroidered throw pillows at either arm. On the wall past the couch I noticed an old, blocked-off fireplace, a decorative remnant of a time when the buildings in this part of town didn’t have radiators or central heating. Its mantel was cluttered with framed pictures and Hummel figures. Above it, bolted to the wall, was a glass case containing six ornate, antique swords, their hilts together and their blades radiating out in a sunburst formation. In the far corner, near the stairs that led up to the third floor, an antique grandfather clock ticked loudly, its baroque, arrow-shaped hands showing the time as 1:30 a.m. I hadn’t realized how late it was. I’d left the fallout shelter a little past ten.

I crossed the room to the tall, narrow windows and pulled aside the thick white curtain. The street below was empty. Nothing moved along the rooftops.

“Make yourselves comfortable, I’ll be right back,” Ingrid said. She went downstairs again, the wooden steps creaking under her feet.

I took off my coat and inspected the damage. The leather on the back was ruined, shredded beyond repair. It was a shame, I liked that coat, though by now I knew better than to get attached to anything I wore. I hung it over the back of one of the upholstered chairs, and sat down. The chair’s high back rubbed against me, irritating the scratches on my back. I winced and leaned forward to take pressure off the wounds.

Bethany and Thornton sat on the couch, facing me. In the bright lights of the living room, the wound on her leg looked terrible, even through the hole in her jeans. Thornton’s skin was definitely turning from gray to a pale shade of green, especially around his eyes, his mouth, and the scar on his cheek. The three of us looked like we’d been to Hell and back. Maybe minus the back part.

“You’re sure we’ll be safe here?” I asked Bethany.

She nodded. “The ward around this house will keep anyone from finding it.”

“I didn’t even see this place until…” I paused, unsure how to describe what I saw. “Is that what a ward does?”

“It’s a spell that hides things,” Bethany said. “But it can’t hide what you’ve already seen, or what you already know is there. That’s why none of us saw the house until Ingrid showed us where it was.”

I nodded. I was starting to understand, albeit just barely. “So if the Black Knight saw it, too…”

“He didn’t,” she assured me. “He was already gone.”

I hoped she was right about that. Ward or no, I’d feel safer if we had a cache of weapons, at least.

“I don’t like just sitting here,” Thornton said. He rubbed his hands along his thighs restlessly. “I should be with Gabrielle.”

“You’ll be with her soon,” Bethany said.

“Right, once the sun comes up,” he said. He glanced at the clock. “That’ll be in, what, four hours? That’s four hours we’re wasting here. Four hours I could be spending with her, either looking for a spell to keep this amulet from shutting itself off or … or saying goodbye.”

“If Gabrielle and Isaac both think it’s best that we stay here, that’s good enough for me,” Bethany said. “It should be good enough for you, too.”

Thornton turned away from her and gnawed at his thumbnail. The nail fell off. He watched it tumble into his lap, and said, “I just don’t want to waste any time.”

Bethany didn’t answer. For what felt like a very long time, none of us spoke. The air prickled with tension. I glanced at the staircase and wondered when Ingrid was going to come back. Finally, Bethany said, “I’m sorry, Thornton. If I’d known about this place, we could have come here sooner. Maybe even avoided the warehouse altogether. Then things might have been different.”

Thornton shook his head. “No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I’ve been acting like an asshole because I don’t know how to cope with this. You can stop beating yourself up, Bethany. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Isaac put me in charge of this mission, remember? That means I’m responsible for everything that happens, including what happened to you. It’s as much my fault as anyone else’s.”

He tapped the amulet under his shirt. “You’re also the one who gave me my second chance. Don’t forget that.”

The steps creaked as Ingrid came back upstairs. She was carrying a silver tray laden with a ceramic teapot, four teacups, a heaping plate of cookies, and a first-aid kit. She set it down on the coffee table. “I thought you might be hungry. If you don’t mind my saying so, you all look a little worse for wear, so I brought bandages, rubbing alcohol, and a needle and thread if anyone needs stitching up. I’m not a doctor, but I know a thing or two about fixing people up after they get into scrapes.”

“Thanks,” Bethany said. “I think we can use a little of everything.”

The cookies on the table made my mouth water. I took one off the plate and bit into it, tasting oatmeal and cinnamon. It was good, really good. I finished it quickly, grabbed a handful more, and began stuffing them in my mouth.

Thornton stared at me. “My God, were you raised by wolves? Because I was, and even they didn’t eat like that.”

I looked up at him, crumbs dropping from my lips, my mouth too full to answer.

Ingrid laughed. “Leave him be, he’s hungry.” She picked up the first-aid kit and opened the lid. “So, which one of you poor, battered souls wants to be first?”

Thornton needed her attention the most. Even if he wasn’t in danger of dying from his wounds, being dead already, his shirt could only do so much to hold his insides in place. He needed to be stitched up. Thornton struggled to remove his shirt. His arms worked stiffly, especially the broken one he’d hastily reset at the bar, but he refused Bethany’s help. Once his shirt was off, he lay back on the couch and put his hands over his wounds as if he were ashamed of them. His skin had turned a sickly gray all over. An angry purple bruise painted his side where the blood had first settled when he died. Bethany got up from the couch to give him room to stretch out.

“Let me see,” Ingrid said, gently taking Thornton’s wrists. He resisted for a moment, then allowed her to move his arms away from his wounds. They resembled deep black chasms in his torso, rimmed with a coppery crust where the blood had dried, and tinged with green along their edges. The Breath of Itzamna remained spiked into the center of his chest, pulsing with its artificial heartbeat.

Ingrid touched the amulet gingerly with her white-gloved hand. Thornton explained, “It’s what brought me back. After I died.”

She nodded as if it were no more unusual than a scar or tattoo. Thornton’s eyes filled with gratitude that she wasn’t making a big deal out of it. She took a set of reading glasses from the coffee table, put them on, and took a closer look at his wounds. “This isn’t so bad,” she lied. “Nothing a little needle and thread can’t fix. I’ll have you right as rain in no time.”

Thornton beamed at her. “I think I love you, Ingrid Bannion.”

“Handsomer men than you have told me that. You’ll have to try harder.” She retrieved a needle and a spool of black thread from the first-aid kit.

Thornton looked at her white glove. “What happened to your hand?”

Ingrid blanched. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry, I can still stitch with the best of them.”

Thornton sat up a little. “I’m sure you can, but unless the single-glove look is suddenly all the rage, I’m guessing it’s not nothing.”

Ingrid sighed. She put the needle and thread down, her face reddening with embarrassment. “It was a long time ago. I was young and brash. I thought I could just take in a little magic and it wouldn’t affect me. I was wrong.”

“Is that how you’re able to read auras?” Bethany asked.

“No,” Ingrid said. “That’s something I was born with. What I took into me, and still carry inside me, is the fire magic you saw outside. It was a mistake I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life. Like I said, I was young. I thought it would be different for me. I thought I was invulnerable, the way the young always think they’re invulnerable.” She looked at the glove. “Turns out I wasn’t anything but a fool.”

“May I see it?” Thornton asked.

She shook her head vehemently. “Trust me, it’s better if you don’t.”

“Ingrid,” he said, flashing a charming smile. “I’m sure you’ve played this game before with lots of lucky guys. I showed you mine. Now you show me yours.”

“Thornton, please, just leave it alone,” she said.

“You’re worried I’ll judge you,” Thornton said. “I won’t. You can trust me on that.”

Ingrid looked at him a long time, then finally nodded. “Just remember, it’s not as bad as it looks, and it doesn’t hurt. It’s under control.”

She unrolled the white glove slowly, grimacing as she pulled it up from her elbow to her fingers. Finally, she pulled it free. The extent of what the infection had done to her hand and forearm was astonishing. Aside from the five fingerlike appendages at the end, the misshapen, squamous limb didn’t look like anything human.