I held my hands perfectly still and let the manicurist have her way with them. I’d never had a manicure before and I still wasn’t convinced it was a good idea, what with handling books all day. I could imagine my beautifully polished nails (light pink, like the curve of a rose petal) getting chipped on the edge of a bookshelf. But Cynthia had been enthusiastic, and I hadn’t been able to say no.
Now I endured the final buffing and watched Cynthia receive the last touches on her acrylic nails. I’d politely turned them down for myself—it just didn’t feel like me—but Cynthia’s turned out so nice it was hard not to reconsider, just a little bit. Her nails were square-cut and French-tipped, with little rhinestones on the ring fingers. She managed to make everything she wore look perfect.
Cynthia saw me watching and smiled. “I think the maintenance is worth the end result, don’t you? And yours look so pretty! I can’t believe you’ve never done this before.”
“Pedicures, sure, but not my hands.” I held them up and examined how my nails shone in the lights. “This is…fun, actually.”
“Don’t sound so astonished.” Cynthia leaned forward to address the lady in the mask working on her nails. “My sister can’t believe we’re having fun together, isn’t that awful?”
I smiled weakly. She was right; I couldn’t believe it. I’d gotten into Cynthia’s BMW tense, worried about what torment she might unload on me. But we drove to the mall (my New York City sister, going to a mall in Happy Valley?) and she hadn’t said anything more insulting than calling me Hellie once or twice. She hadn’t made fun of the stores or the people. The manicure had relaxed me further, and while I was still wary—this was Cynthia, after all—I wasn’t mentally braced for the worst anymore.
“You really ought to do this more often, you have such pretty, small hands,” Cynthia said after we’d paid and exited the salon. She took hold of my right hand and brought it up in front of her face. “See how elegant they look?”
“I guess,” I said, retrieving my hand without jerking it away. “So now what?”
“End of the Rainbow. Mom raves about it.”
“Oh. The accessory place.”
“Don’t sound so enthusiastic. People will think you want to be here.”
“Sorry. I haven’t been there either.”
“I’m starting to wonder why you hang out with Viv, if you never go anywhere. End of the Rainbow seems just like her thing.”
“I’m just not a fan of shopping, that’s all.”
Cynthia hooked her arm through mine and pulled me along. “Then you’re doing it wrong.”
The accessory store turned out to be a rainbow assembly of color—big swathes of it, because everything was grouped by color, purses, jewelry, everything. I wandered over to the turquoise blue section to browse. My favorite color, and here it all was in one place.
“Check it out,” Cynthia said. She held a pair of ruby red chandelier earrings up to her ear. “My thing, or what?”
“I like them.”
“I may get them.” She ostentatiously looked around, then mimed putting them into her purse.
“Cynthia!”
“Oh, don’t worry, I don’t shoplift. Not like you, back in the day.” She picked up a necklace that matched the earrings and looked at herself in the tiny shelf mirror.
“I never shoplifted! That was you!”
“It was not. You totally took that bracelet and then acted like I’d put you up to it.”
The tension built behind my eyes again. “Cynthia, you told them I’d planted it on you. I can’t believe you don’t remember!”
“Whatever. The point is, I never stole anything in my life and I’m not about to start now. You should try on that bracelet. But not blue. You ought to wear amber and gold. Warm colors.”
I picked up a coil of turquoise beads that wrapped five times around my wrist and admired it defiantly. “I like this one.”
Cynthia shrugged. “Suit yourself. But Viv will tell you it’s wrong for you.”
I bought the bracelet just to piss her off, but she didn’t say anything else about it. I left the store feeling irritated, my earlier pleasure gone. “Jamba Juice?” Cynthia said.
“Sure.” I spun my new bracelet on my wrist. I didn’t have anything I could wear it with. That would teach me to buy things out of spite. Well, Viv might like it. Or, more likely, she’d make me buy something to go with it.
We sat in the food court and sipped our drinks and watched the other shoppers. “That woman shouldn’t have gone with the orange hair,” Cynthia murmured, pointing discreetly. “She looks like she had an accident in a paint factory.”
I sputtered with laughter I tried to contain. “That’s mean.”
“It’s true! It’s not like I think she’s a bad person, I just believe in being honest about things like that. It’s why I have the job I do. I’m willing to say the hard truths.”
“Yeah, but that woman probably thinks she looks beautiful, or she wouldn’t have chosen that color. You’d just hurt her feelings.”
“Better a little pain now than a lifetime of people looking at you and going ‘where did you hide your pot of gold?’” Cynthia said in an exaggerated Irish accent.
I snorted and had to suck down some of my smoothie to conceal it. “You’re awful.”
“Just honest.” Cynthia leaned back in her seat. “What’s that?”
I looked off down the promenade, well-lit and crowded with shoppers. Something was coming our way fast, something low to the ground that scurried like an animal on a well-waxed floor. It was shoving people out of the way, and cries of fear and anger drifted toward us. Apprehension gripped me, and I stood. “We should move.”
“Why? It looks like a dog. A big dog.” Cynthia stood and watched the oncoming creature. It glittered under the soft lighting of the mall like a beetle, and its many legs scrabbled at the floor, sending up impossible sparks like metal on stone.
Following behind it at a dead run were several people dressed in military fatigues and carrying long knives. They passed the people knocked down by the creature without provoking any more cries of astonishment. They were fast, but the invader was outpacing them.
I grabbed Cynthia’s arm. “We have to get out of the way,” I said.
It seemed everyone else in the food court had the same idea. We shoved through the crowd of shouting, screaming people, back in the direction of Jamba Juice. Cynthia fought me, and I yanked hard on her arm, begging her to move.
“It’s just a frightened dog!” she shouted over the din. “Nothing to be afraid of!”
I couldn’t see the illusion the invader had put on itself to blend in, the better to isolate and kill a victim, but I was pretty damn sure it looked scarier than a frightened dog. “Let Animal Control handle it!” I said. “It probably has rabies.”
Cynthia succeeded in pulling away from me. I darted after her. She emerged from the crowd right in front of the thing, which instantly focused on her. Cynthia knelt down and put out her hand toward it. Its mandibles clacked as it barreled down upon her. I screamed and flung myself at her, knocking her over, and the thing missed its strike and tumbled over both of us.
“Stay down!” a woman commanded, and I put all my weight into keeping Cynthia down. She struggled, shoved me aside, and I fell on my butt. The creature had come up against a wall of frightened people and turned around. The hunting team was between it and us now, and I sucked in air and tried to calm myself. What illusion were they under, those paramilitary types with their knives? Animal Control? If they killed the thing in full view of everyone in the food court, so much for keeping a low profile.
I grabbed Cynthia’s leg to keep her from crawling away. “Don’t get in their way!”
“They’re going to kill it!”
“They’ll just…subdue it…”
The pop of a tranquilizer gun went off, provoking more screams, and the thing collapsed. The woman who’d told us to stay down, an Ambrosite I knew named Allie, went forward to pick the invader up in a fireman’s carry. “It’s all right,” she said in a loud voice. “No one was injured. We apologize for not capturing it sooner.” She looked at me, and her eyes widened. I jerked my head in Cynthia’s direction, hoping Allie would take the hint and not address me in public.
She did. She and her team turned around and went back the way they’d come. They were gone so rapidly no one had time to do more than gape. Excited conversations started up all around us, strangers brought together by a near-crisis. I stood and brushed myself off. “Well, that was exciting.”
“Are you kidding me? Those people should be fired, if not arrested. Letting an animal like that run loose in a populated area,” Cynthia said, pushing herself to her feet. “And why did she look at you like she knew you?”
Damn. “I’ve never seen her before,” I lied. “Maybe she thought I was someone she knew.”
“And it came right at us. Like it was looking for us. Helena, what’s going on?”
I couldn’t tell her that as custodian of a Neutrality, I was just enough different from the average non-magical human to draw the attention of invaders. They didn’t come after me often, but when they had before, there had always been a team or a warded area I could be safe in. “I told you we were in its way. That’s why I wanted you to move. I read somewhere that rabid animals move in a straight line.”
“It looked at me. Like it knew me.”
“I think you’re overwrought. Come on, let’s just go home.”
Cynthia gathered up her purse and said nothing more. I was so relieved at not having to evade any more questions I didn’t think to worry about her silence until we were nearly at my door. “You have seen her before,” she said as I was getting out of the car.
“Seen who?”
“That woman Animal Control officer. She was in the bookstore the other day. You sold her an expensive book. How does someone working for the city make that kind of money? Because I doubt they pay Animal Control people very well.”
“Good memory. I don’t remember her at all,” I said, laughing weakly.
“I just think it’s weird, that’s all,” Cynthia said.
“If I get attacked by another dog, I’ll agree with you,” I said, and ran for my door.
Once inside, I leaned against the heavy steel door and cursed. Cynthia might be superficial and mean, but she wasn’t stupid. I couldn’t have guessed she could identify Allie from one quick meeting. Well, it didn’t matter. The number of invader attacks in the city might be higher than usual, but the odds of me running into another one, let alone while I was with Cynthia, were in my favor. And she’d be gone by the end of the week.
I went upstairs and let myself into my apartment, kicked my sandals off and dropped my purse on my kitchen counter. I spun the turquoise bracelet around my wrist again. It was pretty, and I didn’t care if it didn’t suit me.
My phone buzzed. I dug it out of my purse.
ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?
Malcolm. Allie must have told him about the attack. I’M FINE. MY SISTER SUSPECTS SOMETHING WEIRD.
No response. I poured myself a glass of water and stared out the window at the busy street below, bathed in the warm light of the setting sun. Cynthia had done a good job of acting like a human being today, which only made me wonder what she wanted from me. She couldn’t possibly believe that a couple of hours shopping and a manicure could fix what was broken between us. Well, I had the advantage of her: I didn’t care if we were friends. She’d been absent for years and I hadn’t missed her, and I wasn’t going to miss her when she went back to New York.
My phone rang, and I snatched it up. “Yes?”
“When you say she suspects something weird,” Malcolm said, “how seriously should I take that?”
“I don’t know. Not very. She noticed the invader came straight for us, and she recognized Allie as an Abernathy’s customer. She doesn’t know enough to put those things together and come up with anything dangerous.”
“I’m sorry you had to be involved in that chase. Sanford tells me the invader escaped containment a quarter mile from the mall. At that range, it couldn’t have been pursuing you. It was just coincidence that it reached a point where it could scent you. I assure you, you were never in any danger.”
“I know. Tell Allie I’m not upset, okay? I’ve never seen anyone chase an invader into a mall before.”
“Invader attacks increase every day. We don’t know what’s causing it, but I suspect it to be deliberate.”
“Deliberate?”
“I think the increased numbers of invaders are intended to conceal some other purpose. Possibly this creature we have been pursuing the last several days. It kills, then disappears only to strike elsewhere. We have very few records of such a monster, and none on how to effectively hunt it. Saying that I am frustrated understates the issue by several miles.”
“I can imagine. Do you think it’s the invader that killed Tiffany Alcock?”
“Was she the victim you referred to the other day?”
I closed my eyes and silently cursed. “Um. I probably shouldn’t have told you that.”
“She’s not one of my prey’s victims. And I’m grateful you slipped. Knowing there is more than one of this type of invader out there will help my search.”
“Just don’t tell anyone—as if I needed to warn you to be discreet.”
He laughed, a warm sound that thrilled through me. “Your secrets are safe with me.”
“I know.”
He fell silent, but before it could become awkward, he said, “Even so, it’s possible you should not contact me about things that are the province of both factions. I would not want to put you in an untenable position.”
My heart constricted. “I…that occurred to me,” I lied. “But I don’t know anyone else well enough for that, and sometimes people have to be told.”
“You ought to contact Ryan Parish.”
Ryan Parish, leader of the Ambrosites and Malcolm’s putative boss, didn’t like me any more than I liked him. In a world without Rasmussen in it, he’d be my enemy. “I should. I will.”
“Very well. I will likely see you tomorrow. Good night, Helena.”
“Good night.”
I clutched my phone for a few moments after Malcolm hung up, fighting an urge to cry. This was stupid. Malcolm was right; I kept leaning on him, going out of my way to tell him things, and I ought to be telling his faction leader instead. But it still felt like a rejection. Which was also stupid, because we weren’t together, couldn’t be together, and I owed it to Jason not to be emotionally attached to another man. Even if we were only friends.
The sun had set, and lights came on up and down the street. I put on my pajamas and crawled into bed, then called Viv. It went to voicemail. Right, she’d gone out with Judy, and they were no doubt having more fun than I had. Though I’d been having fun right up until the end, I had to admit. Fun with my sister.
Irritated at Viv’s unavailability, I slapped my phone down on the nightstand. I should be happy that they were becoming friends, that they’d finally discovered something in common that had nothing to do with me, but I felt jealous and angry and depressed.
I picked up the phone again and scrolled through my contacts to Jason’s name, then let my finger hover over it for a few seconds. I didn’t want him to come over, because what I needed was someone to tell about the evening, and half of it was a secret. And for the other half, I wasn’t sure Jason would listen sympathetically when I complained about Cynthia. Frankly, there wasn’t much to complain about, which made me suspicious. If there was any weird behavior in the vicinity, it was hers.
I got out my diary, then sat cross-legged on the bed to write down what had happened—the bit about the invader, not the manicure. Someday an invader will catch me where I’m defenseless, I wrote, and that will be it for me. At least I know I’ll die free from pain. I put the pen down and re-read those lines. Disgust filled me like a bad taste in my mouth. Defeatist much? I crossed out the lines fiercely enough to leave a mark on the previous page.
Maybe it was time to start going armed, though guns made me uncomfortable. Hector Canales should be able to hook me up with an invader-fighting weapon, and Malcolm—no, Olivia and Derrick would teach me how to use it. I had to stop thinking of Malcolm first when I needed something.
I let the street noises soothe me to sleep, and fell into a dream in which Malcolm and Jason fought a series of duels for me and Jason won every time.