No, she thought suddenly.
They haven't caught him. I'd know if they'd caught him.
Absurd. How would she know that?
Loraine went to her bedroom, trailed by the cats. She sat at the little redwood desk, booted up her computer. She would have to hold at least one cat on her lap while she checked her e-mail. Mongy got there first.
She was hoping for an e-mail from Chelsea, who was close as Loraine had to a best girlfriend. Chelsea was a DIA crypto specialist in Afghanistan. Lately they'd been losing helicopter gunships and Chelsea had been assigned to—
“Hello, Agent Sarikosca,” said someone, behind her. A man's voice, familiar, speaking softly.
Where was her purse?
'Her gun was in it. She realized she'd left it in the living room.
Feeling stiff with fear, Loraine turned slowly in her swivel chair—Mongy on her lap swiveling with her—and caught her breath.
Gabriel Bleak was leaning against the bedroom doorframe, holding her purse up by the strap, with one finger. He wore jeans, boots, a black T-shirt for some rock band, the name largely obscured by the unbuttoned, white overshirt. “Looking for your purse?” he asked lightly. “You left it in the other room. You shouldn't be that far from your gun...Loraine.”
She swallowed. Feeling strange. “How'd you find me?”
“Oh, you were followed home. By a friend of mine. Since the guy following you is dead, and invisible to most people, you didn't notice you were being followed. He actually sat next to you in the agency car, in the back. Nice guy, name of Greg.” Bleak delved through the purse, came up with her pistol. “I'll hold on to this. Just don't want to be shot today. I almost was, earlier, and that was unpleasant enough. You ever been shot?”
She shook her head.
Bleak chuckled grimly. “Ruins your whole day, let me tell you.” He tossed the purse on her bed. “I was looking at some of your records. Mostly old ones. Vinyl. I bet your mother gave them to you.” She nodded numbly. Then shook her head. “My aunt.”
“Procol Harum, Cream, the Supremes, Janis Ian, Simon and Garfunkel, Moody Blues, Rolling Stones, Beatles, early Tom Waits...some good ones. You listen to any of those? Pretty old-school.” “What do you want?”
“I noticed Joni Mitchell on the record player. Very talented. Never could get into her. I'm more about Polly Jean Harvey.”
The cats walked over to him and rubbed against his legs. He smiled. “Animals usually like me.” He squatted, to pet the cats with his left hand. Her gun was held loosely in Bleak's right hand. Mongy, the traitor, purred. “In fact they always like me.”
I could jump him,
she thought.
I
could take one step, brace my left foot, kick him on the point of his chin, grab the gun as he goes back.
But she had read his file. His experience in hand-to-hand combat was undoubted; his alertness was a kind of charge that crackled the air around him.
She decided against it and said, “You routinely break into people's homes? Women alone—that a big thing with you?”
He scratched Mongy under the jaw. “You routinely set up people trying to arrest drug dealers? That a big thing with you? You know I had to shoot that man dead?” He shook his head. “I figure Gandalf was along because it would have looked suspicious if she'd been there alone. And I figure he was supposed to surrender to me, and I'd have been burdened with those two when I took them out of the building, and your people would have closed in and I'd have been pretty hard-pressed to stop them. But you didn't figure on how paranoid he'd get after he tweaked out in that apartment. You can't count on drugged-up people to be your happy little puppets, Agent Sarikosca.” He stood up, looked at her thoughtfully, tossed the gun to his left hand, back to his right. “I hadn't killed anyone since the Rangers. Seeing people die when it's not my doing—that doesn't bother me much. Saw someone shot dead by a cop just the other day. Saw worse about once a week in Afghanistan. But personally stopping someone's path through life, just cutting it off—even an asshole like that...” He shook his head. “I don't like to do it unless I'm forced to. Because of where they're headed, afterwards: to the Wilderness. In the afterlife, right? When you've looked into the Wilderness...” He shook his head.
“Once you've seen that, you like them to have a chance to get their heads right, in this life. Small as that possibility might be. Now that dumb son of a bitch won't have that chance.”
What a strange man,
she thought, looking at him. Entirely apart from his supernatural abilities. He was angry he'd had to kill Leonard Mearson, the man who'd called himself Gandalf.
He shot him in the head and he's angry at me for it.
The strangeness was in his eyes too. As if they reflected a light that wasn't there.
And those hands—subtly expressive, gentle with the cats. But he'd used the same hand that was stroking the tabby to shoot a man dead, not much more than an hour ago. And those hands could form orbs of violet fire.
Loraine made herself look away from him. Feeling some of the uncanny attraction she'd felt, on the roof. Remembering the shock of contact when she'd watched him on the surveillance video.
The feelings he conjured in her, just by being there, made it hard to come up with the right course of action. A course she needed badly right now.
“Someone probably saw you coming in here,” she said, glancing past him. “They'll call the cops.”
He shook his head. Completely unworried. “I was careful.”
“And—the man you shot wasn't my 'puppet.' His real name was Mearson. And he...none of that was my plan. I was informed they'd set up a kind of sting to lure you to a particular address. And I was asked to help.”
“You weren't much help, though, were you?” He smiled, a relaxed smile...but again she had to look away.
“I was supposed to...to interface with you after they got you. They were going to surround you, make you surrender. Or, after the tranquilizer darts.... After you woke up.” He chuckled. “Tranquilizer darts. Like a wild animal.”
“You're
operating like
a wild animal,” she said suddenly. “Breaking in here. And you talk about a wilderness—you're in one
out there,
playing with that power. You people—you should be working for your country.”
“What happens to people like me who do work for CCA, Agent Sarikosca?” He wasn't looking at her. He was opening the cylinder of her .38. His confidence was irritating.
Bleak emptied the bullets from the gun so they clattered onto the floor. Mongy and Festus started batting the bullets around.
He took a pair of needle-nose pliers from his pocket.
She stared. Was he going to use those pliers on her?
He used them to pull the firing pin from her gun.
“That's the second perfectly good gun that you've ruined,” she said.
“You can put the firing pin back in later. And you didn't answer my question, about what happens to ShadowComm people who work for you? We generally never hear from them again.” “ I... that' s classified.”
“Things are classified because they're embarrassing to someone.” Bleak put the firing pin and the pliers in his pocket and tossed her gun onto the bed beside her purse. “Now, we're going to meet some people. The kind you want to recruit. You and me.”
“You're taking me out of here? You're abducting me?”
He shrugged. “Your people are looking for me anyway. I don't have much to lose if I...abduct you.”
“What if I don't want to go?” Loraine demanded. “What if I scream, throw things through the window?”
“I'm armed, and I've got this too.” He formed an energy bullet in his hand, let it glow there for a moment, then closed his hand on it, extinguishing it. When he opened his hand, it was gone.
“And you'd—what? Throw that little ball of light at me and...set my hair on fire? Burn me with it?” Loraine shook her head. “I don't think you'd hurt me, Bleak. Not unless it was self-defense.” She felt sure of it. But she had no clue how she knew.
Bleak grunted. “You're right. I guess I wouldn't hurt you. But...there are other ways.” He smiledas broadly and spread his hands. “I have 'magic powers,' you remember.”
Play along,
she thought.
Go with him.
This was a CCA opportunity.
That was the reason, wasn't it, she wanted to go with him? It had nothing to do with the way her pulse raced when he looked at her.
He held her gaze steadily. “You know about a guy named Coster?”
Loraine shrugged. Not wanting to react to the name. “Just that—he used to work for us.”
“He's not working for you now?”
“If he was, I wouldn't tell you.” She'd heard there was more than one track for luring Bleak. Coster was the other one.
She stood up. “Okay, tough guy, let's go. Maybe—we can negotiate something along the way.” “Negotiate what? My surrender?” He seemed amused. “It wouldn't be surrender. It'd be recruitment.”
“Your recruitment is worse than the army's. And that's going some. You guys have stop-loss?” He chuckled. “Okay, let's go.”
As if they understood him, the cats set up a desperate meowing. “Oh, okay, sure,” Bleak told the cats. “We'll feed you first.”
***
IT WAS JUST SHADING from dusk to darkness. The warm air of the new summer night was like a blanket draped over their shoulders. A blanket they shared.
“So you think we're the oppressive fist of the regime and you're the innocent artists of the supernatural?” Loraine said drily, as they walked down her tree-lined street in Brooklyn Heights. They'd fed the cats, Bleak seeming to take pleasure in spooning out the cat food for them himself.
“Things are rarely so simple,” Bleak said, with a wintry smile. “But, yeah—that's the main idea.”
She had her purse on a strap over her right shoulder. Bleak was striding along on her left. She could slip her hand in the purse, trigger the “find me” homing beeper she'd been given in case of emergency. But if she did that, the agency would come in force—and she suspected this little trek with Bleak was an opportunity she'd never have again. A chance to peer into the Shadow Community. They might get Bleak, but they might lose a lot more.
Still, he'd broken into her place, and that pissed her off. She stopped. He took another step, then turned to look at her.
“Bleak—you've got your own gun with you. If you're going to shoot me, best shoot me now.” “Do I have to?” He made a
tsk
sound. “Seems like a waste.” “Of a good bullet?”
“Of a good woman. Better than you know.”
She snorted. “Oh, thanks, I'll put it on my resume. Bleak, I mean it—if you're going to try to abduct me, you'll have to shoot me first. But I'm not in the mood to just stand here and passively let you kidnap me. If I go with you, it's got to be my choice.”
He surprised her by laughing. “Okay! You're not abducted! You called my bluff!” He gestured like an old-time aristocrat, rolling his hand magnanimously. “You want to go home, go! You want to call the police or your agency, do it, and I'll split.” He paused, looking at her more solemnly. “But I'm hoping you won't do that. I think you should come with me. Without telling anyone about it. There are people for you to meet. You want to learn about us—that's part of your job. So maybe that's what you should do. It makes no sense for me to take you with me. But that's the plan.”
“Making no sense is the plan?”
“There, see, you've got me figured out. In a way, making no sense is the plan. I'm hoping you'll see we can be trusted with our freedom. Maybe...
maybe...
in exchange, we can help your agency. Depending on what you want from us. Working with you people...ah, man. We've got mixed feelings. Tell me something.” He looked at her with a probing curiosity. He kept his distance—but she felt as if he were touching her face. “You seem...like someone with a conscience. You really feel like you belong at CCA?”
The question made her angry and ashamed at once. But she had an answer ready. “You ever hear of a man named Troy Gulcher?”
“Name sounds familiar. Something from the news. A jailbreak?” “That's right. You don't know him from any other context?” “If I did—to quote a certain CCA agent—I wouldn't tell you.”
“He's one of your kind. Some version, anyway. And he killed a lot of people, using his connection with...with the thing you call the Hidden. He's killed prison guards—people with families. Gulcher created a—” She broke off a moment, at a loss for words. “I couldn't tell from the files what it was...but it comes across as mass demonic possession. People went mad and killed one another. He used that to get away. And he did something else at a casino in Atlantic City—a lot of people there died.” She shook her head. “I don't really understand
howthey
died. But Troy Gulcher was mixed up in it. And then there was another man who may have been using magic to start a fire, burn down a restaurant—he killed a police officer.”
“Yeah. The fire imps. I know about him. I didn't know him personally. You coming with me or not? We can talk about it on the way.”
She hesitated. But she couldn't let the opportunity slip away. “Sure,” she said at last. “Let's go.” They started down the sidewalk again.
Crossing the Rubicon,
she thought. “Point is, Bleak—how do you rationalize Gulcher? And how about the man who set a cop on fire?”
Bleak frowned and waved dismissively. “Those people aren't part of ShadowComm—not the groups I know. They're not La'hood. They seem to be something new.”
“You're claiming your people 'don't use their power for evil'?” Loraine asked skeptically.
“They're not my people. I can't speak for them. I'm not really a part of their community. We have dealings, the ShadowComm and me—and I've known some of them for a long time. The ones I know aren't into violence. They aren't into misusing their talents. Not in any
bigway.
Some you might call a bit borderline, but...As for this Gulcher, he was picked up in Atlantic City, right? We had a spiritual blackout there.”
The phrase
spiritual blackout
interested her. “What's that, exactly?”