3

HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE KASIA?

Clayburg, Virginia

We didn’t exactly look like a crack team of professional monster hunters. We looked like we belonged in a series of pictures beneath the caption: Which one of these best illustrates the word MOTLEY? At six feet even with broad shoulders, toned muscles, and too much heft to ever be a model, though it was all taut and serviceable, Sig had spent the night experimenting with making indelible runes and wards with a blowtorch. Her efforts had left her distinctly sweaty and smudgy in a sleeveless white tank top and thin green cotton pants. Her long and recently pale white hair was bound behind her head in a tight knot.

Molly, on the other hand, was short, thick-spectacled, unruly-haired, and wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a cartoon girl on it. Said girl was wearing a crazed expression and a tie-on fuzzy cap with long pink bunny ears.

Normally Choo dresses like he lost a fight with an Army Surplus store, but Choo had been Skyping with his not-quite-ex, or his ex-ex (Chantelle had moved to Charlottesville recently and was hinting that Choo might want to do the same, a fact he’d grumpily managed to work into the conversation at least three times). He was dressed somewhere between casual and oh-I-just-happen-to-have-Barry-White-on-in-the-background. His long-sleeved shirt was a warm shade of red and looked soft. His short dreadlocks had a slight sheen to them that suggested some kind of hair product, and a thin gold necklace was around his throat, the first time I’d ever seen him wear such a thing. His belly had gotten a little smaller and his burly chest more defined since he’d started trying to win his divorced wife back.

“What did this Kasia look like?” Sig demanded.

I proceeded to reel off a laundry list of details, including approximate height, weight, small scars, balance, the hint of cigarettes in her voice and scent, her coloring or lack thereof, the shape of her face, and style of her mannerisms. I was talking about the blunt but polished fingernails, which were the only thing about my stalker that had been unfashionable, when Choo cut me off. “Damn, did you stick a thermometer up her ass, too?”

“That’s not until the third date,” I explained. “I’m a gentleman.”

Sig sighed. “Whatever. That’s Kasia.”

The four of us were at a wooden bench beside a hiking trail in Mankin’s Park. Sig had been keeping an eye on the area because—as Sig put it—there was a ghostly presence there who wasn’t quite ready to quit flirting yet. A lot of homeless people in southwest Virginia like to camp out in wooded areas on the edge of towns during the warmer seasons—not because they’re the mutant inbred cannibals and rapists who comprise Appalachia in Hollywood productions, but because they’re trying to hold on to their dignity and independence while struggling with whatever combination of factors led them there. I’ve spent time doing that myself. The bad vibe produced by Sig’s polterguest encouraged wood wanderers to move a little farther down the trail. As an added bonus, there was also just enough mojo in the air to mess with any electronic surveillance.

Molly—whose short frame was jammed between Sig and Choo on the bench so that the three of them almost made an H shape—asked the obvious question: “So, who is this Kasia? And what is her deal, exactly?”

Sig sighed again. “I don’t think there is an exactly with Kasia.”

“So, what’s her deal, not-exactly?” Choo rumbled.

“She was Stanislav’s partner when I met him. Met them.” Sig snapped each word off. It was a time in her life that Sig kept trying to put behind her, and it kept biting her on the ass.

“Then she’s like me,” I said. “A monster who’s a monster hunter. Was Kasia Stanislav’s partner or Stanislav’s partner?” I made air quotes around partner on the second repetition. It was better than pumping my hips and yelling, “Ka-ching!”

“They were having sex,” Sig said. “I don’t know how much that meant to her, though. Kasia treated lovers like fast food, but she could also get sentimental about the oddest things. She was crazy unpredictable.”

I had figured that much out for myself. “She seems to enjoy putting people off-balance.”

“Did she offer to have sex with you?” Sig asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “But I didn’t take it personally.”

“Let’s get to the important stuff, Sig,” Molly said gently but firmly. “How crazy and unpredictable does this Kasia get? John said she mentioned me specifically. Do I have to worry about coming home to find my puppy boiling in a pot on the stove?”

“And what about that stuff she told John about big trouble coming?” Choo added. “Is it bullshit?”

“Why do you think I know?” Sig asked irritably. “I was a complete mess when I knew her.”

Choo made a rude noise. “Aint none of us what I’d call well-adjusted.”

“I’m just saying, I had no idea what I was back then.” Sig sounded a little bit more than just exasperated. “I was still drinking. My entire family was dead. It’s not like I was in a good rational place, okay? If I were, I never would have gotten involved with Stanislav … the way I got involved with him.”

“How did you go from apprentice to sticky with Dvornik?” I had never really pressed for specifics before. “Was it over Kasia’s half-dead body?”

Sig’s face turned a dark shade of crimson. “Stanislav and I had sex for the first time while she and he were still doing whatever they were doing. I guess you could say we cheated on her.”

Every time I pictured Sig and Stanislav naked, I wanted to clutch my forehead and start screaming, “My mind’s eye! My mind’s eye!” But somehow, I doubted this would be helpful.

“What would Kasia say about it?” Molly asked gently.

“She put me in a coma,” Sig said. “She probably thought I was dead or she would have finished the job. Stanislav had to pull me out of it by projecting himself astrally into my dreams.”

Molly made a small face. “So she’s really mature and well-adjusted about the way she handles conflict resolution.”

“I don’t remember much of it,” Sig admitted. “Like I said, real glamorous stuff. And just because Kasia attacked me, it doesn’t mean she loved Stanislav. She and he had some weird always-fighting grudge-sex thing going on, and she never claimed to be monogamous. But she was a bit like a cat, you know? She might not like something, but that didn’t mean she wanted anyone else playing with it.”

None of us said anything. The signs Sig was putting up all read: HANDLE CAREFULLY. HIGHLY EXPLOSIVE MATERIAL WITHIN.

“Being an alcoholic doesn’t make for pretty stories.” Sig was staring at the ground with such ferocious focus, someone in China was probably rubbing the back of his neck and looking around confusedly. “If anybody wants to judge me for messed-up things I’ve done, I’ve got a million of them.”

Molly patted Sig’s knee. “We all have stuff like that.”

“Not me,” I said. “My past is so clean and shiny, I have to put on shades just to read my diary.”

That drew a snort out of Sig, and Choo played along with it: “Put on some safety goggles, maybe.”

Molly kept it simple and sincere. “All you can do is try to be the best person you can be right now, Sig. That’s all anybody can do.”

“Just take it one day at a time.” It was hard to tell if Sig was saying that sarcastically because she’d heard it at so many AA meetings, or repeating the words like a mantra.

“Break it down into smaller pieces,” Choo put in. “Did you and this lady get along before all this went down?”

“Kasia hated me,” Sig said instantly. “And the feeling was mutual. Kasia was the one who taught me how to really fight, and she was a complete bitch about it. I can’t tell you how many times she knocked me out. If I were a normal human, I’d probably be brain-damaged.”

“You sure you’re not?” Choo indicated me with a head yank. The implication was clear. Look who you’re dating.

That was taking the acting-stupid-to-cheer-Sig-up thing a little too far in my opinion, but Sig just rolled her eyes, so I asked, “Do you think Kasia’s evil?”

Sig had a hard time parsing that one out. “Kasia only hunted things that were worse than her, but she was completely ruthless about accomplishing a goal. And if she felt justified at all, she could be vindictive to the point of crazy. She seemed to enjoy it.”

I could see that. For some people, anger is the only emotion that doesn’t make them feel vulnerable, so it becomes their only way of expressing any kind of passion. “Let’s just assume Kasia still has intense but messed-up feelings about Stanislav,” I said. “I’ll bet she had severe daddy issues.”

“Why does everything with women have to be daddy issues?” Molly groused. I’ve never heard Molly talk about her parents in any detail. All I really know about them is that they’re lifelong Baptist missionaries who broke off any real contact with Molly when she told them she was a lesbian. As Molly once put it, they’re still waiting for Molly to come to her senses.

“Call it what you want, but I’ll bet Stanislav was Kasia’s mentor and safety net before he became her lover,” I said. “If becoming a monster was easy, they’d call it something else. And as messed-up as he was, Stanislav was probably something to hold on to when Kasia was scared or feeling bad about herself.”

“Kasia told you all of that?” Sig asked skeptically.

“You did,” I said. “That’s how Stanislav pulled you in, right?”

Sig looked at me for a long moment. “I don’t know if I want to throw something at you or drag you behind a tree and tear your clothes off.”

“Enough with the icky,” Molly chided. “It sounds like trying to hunt this Kasia down might be the worst thing we could do. She might be looking for an excuse to go off on a vendetta.”

“You might be right,” Sig conceded reluctantly. Very reluctantly. I could smell how badly she wanted to kick this Kasia’s ass, and I was picking up a little fear and shame mixed in there for good measure. The Sig I know doesn’t scare easily, but the past is a funny thing; she was remembering a Sig I didn’t know.

I took her hand and squeezed. “It’s not all dark, you know.”

She squeezed back so hard it hurt a little.

“I’m not sitting still, doing nothing,” Choo declared. “You don’t win any games playing defense.”

“You don’t win by attacking blindly either,” I said. “We need to learn more about Kasia and this big trouble she told me about.”

“There might still be some kresniks who will talk to me,” Sig said. “And I’ll ask Parth to look into her.”

Parth is a naga, a kind of Indian were-serpent. Immortality has rendered Parth a bit detached from the concerns of everyday humans rushing to make sense out of their existence, but he keeps immortal life fresh by constantly trying to learn new things. It’s how he evolved into a hacker in the 1980s and then a software mogul in the new millennium.

“Sure,” I said. “And I’ll talk to Simon. Might as well hear it straight from the horse’s ass.”

Sig frowned. “You’re going to try to get a straight answer out of Simon? That’s like trying to slice bread with a corkscrew.”

“Not just Simon. The Grandmaster of the Templars told Ben that there has been an increase of magical incidents in New York City. Emil asked Ben to send in reinforcements from a lot of surrounding areas.” The Round Table and the Knights Templar were actually doing a little better at working together, but in a tentative, grudging kind of way that only illustrated how badly they’d been working together before. The two groups had come close to renewing hostilities a few months back, and the revelation that both the Round Table and the Knights Templar had been played by a third party who wanted them to destroy each other had left everyone involved half ashamed and half surly. Werewolves and knights were both willing to unite against a common enemy and tear this so-called School of Night a new classhole, but the organization had turned to smoke.

Choo finally addressed the knight thing: “I don’t like you talking to this Simon. You get kind of crazy when knights are around.”

“I anticipate crazy when knights are around.” In fact, I was already running over possible hidden motives for Kasia’s appearance in my head. It was possible that Kasia wanted me to contact Simon because getting me involved with whatever chaos was going on would also pull in Sig. Or it was possible Simon had told Kasia to give me a hint of trouble because he would rather have me come to him. It would be a way of circumventing my authority issues and avoid drawing attention to the fact that I don’t directly work for Simon, a fact that he hates. Or maybe it was Simon who wanted Sig involved because her whole walking/talking Ouija board thing is pretty useful. And I had a feeling that trying to map those possibilities out loud would just help make Choo’s point. Still, just because it was complicated and twisted didn’t mean it wasn’t true.

“Choo’s right. Every time you work with knights, you get super protective and paranoid and kind of dark. You cut him and me out, too,” Molly said. “That’s not happening this time.”

I had, in fact, been about to suggest leaving them out of the picture. “You don’t want any part of knight business, Molly,” I warned her. “That world is cold and crazy.”

She smiled sunnily. “Let’s burn that bridge when we come to it.”

“Yeah,” Choo said. If Choo got a hint of something hidden, something that even had the potential to be a threat, he had to know about it. Even if he didn’t want to, he had to. It was the quality that made him a good exterminator and a lousy sleeper. Choo also had to complain and be a pain in the ass the whole time, but that was what it was. I know a little bit about that kind of venting system myself, and I’d rather have somebody like Choo on my side than someone who said all the right things and flaked when things got hairy. Choo elaborated a bit: “If something’s coming that’s as big and bad as this Kasia says it is, it might be everybody’s business.”

“It’ll suck like nobody’s business,” I said. “Do you really want to cut to the front of the line for something like that?”

His reply was short, eloquent, and filthy.