There was no way “Crisis in Chicago!” wasn’t the lead story on every news station in the country, especially if the National Guard was involved. They’d all be looking for some reason for the sky and water, and I had absolutely nothing to offer them. I wish I had the answers they were looking for.
I crossed the river, the gleaming, inky black slice of it, and drove back into the Loop. The buildings were tighter here, but the sky seemed as red as it had at Potter Park, the tered lightning strikes just as frequent. No more, no less.
“Damn,” I quietly muttered. It was probably one of the few times anyone other than a meteorologist or storm chaser had rued the absence of a giant sucking tornado, as Jonah had put it, in a populated area. But it would have given me an answer. And those were few and far between these days.
Instead . . . there were questions. Questions about me. Questions about sorcerers. Questions about the House and its staff. Questions about the city and whether they trusted us to live our own lives without our constant reassurances that we meant them no harm.
After what I’d seen tonight—a fairy queen willingly scarring those who worked for her because they hadn’t brought issues to her attention fast enough—maybe they were right. Maybe we shouldn’t be trusted.
God, I was beginning to depress myself.
Without any better option, I pulled over into a parking space and turned off the car. The city was relatively quiet, but the night still carried a quiet
buzz
. There was an energy in Chicago. Even if we weren’t the city that didn’t sleep, we certainly were the city that never rested.
Thinking a katana was a little too lightning rod for my taste, I unbuckled the sword and left it in the car. Humans were already afraid of us; there was no point in riling them up when we had other problems to address.
I was a block from State Street, so I walked over to it, sticking close to the edge of the buildings while looking for anything that might be amiss. The streets were relatively empty except for bar-hoppers and folks scanning the sky for meteors or aliens or some other explanation for its color.
I followed State to the river, noting the strange tingle of its increasingly powerful magical vacuum, and walked across the bridge, stopping in the middle to take a look. The river stretched out in front and behind me—a frozen, black artery through downtown. The sky was uniformly red above, heavy clouds also tinted red by . . . whatever. The side effect of some curse, some ancient charm, some bitter hex?
Unfortunately, I had no clue. If there was a focus, I hadn’t found it. Nothing seemed any different out here. There were no sorcerers casting spells upon the sky. No fire-breathing dragons. Tate, as far as I was aware, hadn’t escaped into the Loop to transfix us all with his strange magic.
While none of those developments would have been exactly welcome, at least they would have been
developments
. Hints of answers.
I walked back toward my car, pausing at a bus stop and sitting down on the empty bench. The city was undergoing natural disasters with no obvious cause, and apparently these were only the symptoms of some larger issue. How was I supposed to figure this out? Vampires could sense magic, but only if it was really close by. This was way beyond my expertise. I needed a diviner—the witches who walked around with forked branches and searched out hidden springs—except I needed one for magic.
I sat up straight and pulled out my phone. And since he was the closest thing to a water witch I had, I dialed up Catcher.
“You’re still alive.”
“Last time I checked. And here’s a fact to add to your database—fairy blood turns vampires batshit crazy.”
I heard the creak of his chair as he sat up. “You shed fairy blood?”
“Actually, no. Claudia, the Cl
He made a low whistle. “Since the sky is still red, I assume the fairies weren’t the problem.”
“They were not. That’s three strikes. The water sups didn’t mess with the water; the sky sups didn’t mess with the sky. Claudia thinks we’re seeing the effects of a larger magical problem with elemental magic as the visible symptoms.”
I heard his sigh through the phone. “Elemental magic,” he said. “I should have put two and two together. I should have thought about that.”
My heart raced—were we getting somewhere? Did he have an answer? “Does that mean something to you?”
“It gives the magic context. It shows the pattern.”
“Is there a group, a species, a person who uses that pattern?”
“Not specifically. But it proves that magic is involved.”
I rolled my eyes. Hadn’t we already figured magic was involved? Jonah’s suggestions notwithstanding, it seemed unlikely humans had simply flipped a switch that had turned the sky red and sent lightning crashing across it.
As if irritated by the thought, a bolt of lightning suddenly struck a car three blocks down the street. Its car alarm began to chirp in warning. I huddled back into the bus stop, wishing I was already back in my car. I
hated
lightning.
“I don’t suppose you have any better sense of what Tate might be? Claudia kept mentioning old magic, and that’s the sense I get from him.”
“Old magic wouldn’t surprise me,” Catcher said, “although that’s not a magical classification per se. That his magic feels ‘old’ doesn’t signal what he is or who he might be.”
Of course it didn’t. That would be too easy. “Then we need to work that angle and figure it out. Can you get me in to see him again?”
Catcher whistled. “Since our office has been officially disbanded, we aren’t exactly on the approved visitors list for the secret facility holding our ex-mayor. We may be able to pull some strings, but that’ll take time.”
“Do what you can. I’m getting nowhere fast.” Although there was one group I could look into. “I know this question is going to hurt, but I need an answer regardless. What about the Order?” I gnawed my lip in anticipation of a snarky response. But that’s not what I got back. Catcher had changed his tune.
“I’ve been racking my brain,” he said, and I could hear that in the hoarse exhaustion in his voice. “But I can’t come up with any way they’re involved. I just don’t know what advantage they’d see in doing this. They may be naïve, but they aren’t evil.”
“What about Simon?”
“I don’t know how Simon spends his days, Merit, other than monopolizing almost all of Mallory’s time and every ounce of her mental energy. She seems to be the number one focus of his attention. Besides, he’s king of the city right now. Why cause trouble?”
“I had the same thought.”
“Keep your people calm and off Simon’s radar. He may seem mild-mannered, but he’s still a fully trained member of the Order, and vampire interference will only piss him off. Let me look into it.”
“I’ll stall,” I warned,,ed “but Frank’s antsy, and you know the kind of pressure he’s putting on Malik. Humans are freaking out, and the National Guard is on its way to Cadogan House. Whoever is involved in this, we need evidence, and we need it fast.”
“I’ll handle it. Where are you anyway?”
I decided not to tell him I was hunched in a bus stop on State Street because I didn’t have any better ideas. “I’m playing Sentinel,” I told him. “Give me a call as soon as you have something.”
Catcher grunted his agreement, and the phone went dead. I tucked it away again and looked out into the night. Noise began to roll down the street as a parade of humans dressed in white clothes walked toward me. They carried white poster board signs announcing the apocalypse and recommending Bible passages for immediate consideration. The warnings were scrawled in bloodred paint, drips marking the edges of the letters. They’d painted the signs in a hurry, frantic to make a difference before it was too late.
“Before vampires destroy the world,” I quietly muttered.
The humans might be right about the end of the world; that wasn’t exactly information I was privy to. But I was pretty confident they’d have more than words for me if they caught me out here alone, so I hunkered back into the corner and watched as they passed, a Greek chorus warning of the coming tragedy.
A few minutes later they disappeared from view and the street was quiet again. I stood up and stretched my legs, but just as I prepared to leave the bus stop, a streak of white lightning shot across the sky and rain began to pour down in heavy sheets.
“Of course it would rain,” I muttered.
I stood in the doorway of the bus stop for another few moments, rain splashing onto my boots, waiting for a break in the downpour and wishing, once again, that Ethan had been here with me. He’d know what to do, have some plan of attack in mind.
I knew this b
urden was mine to bear; I just hoped I had the brawn to carry it and the brains to figure it out.
As quickly as it had begun, the rain slowed and stopped. As I stepped onto the street, I caught scents of water and city and sulfur, but there was something else: the smells of lemon and sugar, the same scents I’d caught around Tate.
Claudia thought the magic was old, and now the rain smelled like Tate? That couldn’t just be coincidence.
Dawn was approaching, but I knew exactly where I needed to go tomorrow night. Hopefully my grandfather’s name still carried some cachet, and they’d be able to get me in to see Tate again.
Still afraid of the lightning, I sprinted back to my car, my skin buzzing from the ozone in the air. I’d only managed to put the key in the lock when the barrel of a gun was pushed against my cheek.
“Hello, Merit,” McKetrick said pleasantly. “Long time, no see.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
HAPPINESS IS A WARM GUN
I
looked down at the dark, cold steel now pointed at my chest. The weapon was longer and stockier than a handgun, closer in shape to a sawed-off shotgun with a single, wide barrel.
I glanced up. McKetrick smiled smugly. He was a handsome man, with short dark hair, sculpted ch Cl
“Hands in the air, please,” he pleasantly said.
For the second time in a night, I lifted my hands into the air. Ironic, wasn’t it, that I’d left my sword in the car so I wouldn’t scare off any humans? And here he was, pointing a gun at my chest.
“McKetrick,” I said by way of greeting. “Could you move that gun, please?”
“When it’s so effective at getting your attention? I don’t think so. And in case you have any thought of taking a shot for the good of the cause, we’re using a new variety of bullet. Something a little less iron-and-steel. Something a bit woodier. A new process that combines the shock of a bullet with the chemical reaction of aspen. It’s proven very effective.”
A chill ran through me. If he’d managed to turn aspen wood—the one thing that, shot through the heart of a vampire, would turn us to dust—into bullets, and he knew it was “effective,” how many vampires had died in the testing?
“Is that how you got the scar?” I wondered aloud.
His upper lip curled. “I am none of your concern.”
“You are when you’ve got a gun pointed at me,” I said, and mulled my options. Trying to knock the gun from his hand with a well-timed kick might be successful, but he was former military and undoubtedly skilled at hand-to-hand. Besides, the “might” carried a pretty high risk—that I’d take a sliver of aspen to the heart and end up a cone of ashes. There was also a pretty solid chance he had minions waiting in the wings with similar weapons.
There’d been too much death lately, so I quickly decided playing martyr wasn’t an option. Instead, I opted to gather what information I could.
“I’m surprised you’re out tonight,” I told him. “Shouldn’t you be warning folks about the apocalypse? Or maybe hanging out with the mayor? We saw you at the press conference.”
“She’s a woman with a plan for the city.”
“She’s a moron who’s easily manipulated.”
He smiled. “Your words, not mine. Although she has certainly proved receptive to my position on vampires.”
“So I’ve seen. I assume you’re one of the brains behind the registration law?”
“I’m not a fan,” he said.
“Really? It seemed like keeping close tabs on our activities would be right up your alley.”
“That’s only short-term thinking, Merit. If you allow supernatural aberrations to register themselves, you condone their existence.” He shook his head like a lecturing pastor. “No, thank you. That’s a step in the wrong direction.”
I wasn’t really eager to hear what McKetrick thought the “right direction” for the city might be, but he didn’t afford me the luxury of his silence.
“There’s only one solution for the city—cleaning it out. Ridding it of vampires. That solves the apocalypse problem. In order to clean up the city, we need a catalyst. If we rid the city of a vampire who’s known to the public, we might be able to make some headway.”
My stomach sanky stal. McKetrick wasn’t just looking to kick vamps out of the city.