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Kit made phone call after phone call, using the tracking number like the end of a spool of thread which wove across the western states in a tangled snarl. Damien Norwicki had gone from Red Rock, to Phoenix, to Salt Lake City, and then back to Phoenix, and then to Missoula, and then to Laramie. After that the box got lost for a while, and reappeared in Las Vegas, where it was then sent back to Laramie and then to Spokane. When she called the depot in Spokane, they confirmed they had it.
“We’re just about to ship it. It should arrive tomorrow at the latest.”
“No, I’m coming to get it. It’s very important. It’s already been delayed too long, and we can’t wait any longer,” Kit said, already running out the door. God knows what would happen if those incompetent assholes put it on another bus. She looked up how soon she could get a flight to Spokane, then calculated how long it would take to drive. If he was still alive, every hour mattered. “I’ll be there in five hours. Don’t lose that box!”
Kit snagged two emergency units of blood and put them in Fenwick’s fancy high-tech cooler with some ice packs, then got in her car and started driving.
Kit had a lead foot and made it to Spokane faster than was quite legal. When she got to the depot, she wandered around trying to find someone who could give her Norwicki. Finally, she found some kind of a foreman.
“Can’t release the package to you. Against regulations. Who let you back here?” he asked, barely looking up from his computer.
“This package has already taken a more extensive tour of the western states than most indie rock bands,” Kit said. She leaned over the top of his laptop, waiting for him to look up at her.
He did, just a brief second, but it was enough. Ensorcellment worked best if you worked with the subject’s own desires. Convince them that you are aligned, and then work together towards the goal you want. The truly powerful could make a person shoot a loved one, or jump off a cliff, or destroy something they held sacred. Anyone less than the truly powerful was best sticking to the kind of things that didn’t involve any extra work on the victim’s part.
“Put the package in the trunk of my car and I will sign it as delivered.” Kit met his eyes, sliding her mind briefly into his as she made her suggestion. The truly powerful, say, one of the Queen’s Guard, could ensorcell someone without speaking, without even knowing the same language, just using thoughts and images and pure strength. She tried to stick to easier things.
“Yeah, okay,” the guy said, and walked to a pallet stacked with boxes, gesturing to a guy to help him load it into her trunk.
The box looked battered, but mostly intact. Nothing moved inside, but then, Norwicki would know enough to keep quiet. She’d only brought two units of blood. Was it enough? How long had it been since they put him in the box? How bad were his wounds? Norwicki had been a vampire almost as long as she’d been alive, maybe a little less, which meant he could handle just about as much as Walker could.
It killed her that she couldn’t even open it and check for three more hours, but if she peeked, sunlight would finish off whatever Fain hadn’t done to him, and there wasn’t anywhere light-proof that she knew of. She drove back, slower now, watching the sun dip down in the endless summer twilight. When the last ray of orange had disappeared, and the gray twilight turned a safe charcoal, Kit found a pull off just big enough for one car. Traffic whizzed past her. She popped the trunk and looked at the box tipped on its side. This was the dangerous part. He was starving. He was likely to frenzy as soon as he realized a human was within striking distance.
“Norwicki? It’s me, Melbourne. Don’t attack me. I have two units of blood here for you.”
She got out her box cutter and carefully cut along the seam. Inside the box was a vinyl bag tied up tight with twine at the top. Some liquid appeared to be sloshing around the inside of it, but the vinyl bag was waterproof enough to keep it in. Kit was about to slice through the twine at the top, but some lucky impulse told her to untie it instead. She hadn’t even completely untied it before the smell hit her.
Norwicki was not going to attack her. Kit pulled down the edge of the sack enough to reveal his face in the dome light and confirm what her nose already told her. Norwicki had been dead for days. She turned and vomited into the gravel behind her car. Norwicki began to tip over, and she lunged for the top of the sack to tie it up again before it could spill whatever unholy liquid was sloshing around in the bottom of the sack. She tied the top again as tightly as she could with the twine, then tipped him back into the cardboard box. The smell was already clinging to her skin, a disgusting horrible smell even worse than the scent of a rotten human, which she hadn’t thought quite possible.
The wind picked up, and she turned toward it, smelling the welcome scent of dust and fertilizer and car exhaust and the faint distant smell of the sea. Or perhaps she was imagining that in her desire to be home, with her family, and not somewhere in central Washington with the rotting corpse of a vampire in her trunk.
“I’m sorry, Norwicki,” Kit whispered.
Kit made a phone call to a number she had regrettably had to call more than once, to the arranger, who told her where to meet him. Somehow the arranger would make a death certificate appear, or maybe they’d just declare Norwicki a missing person, a cold case that never got solved. She never dealt with those details, she just made the phone call and the dead person was whisked away, like the trash you left on the curb which just vanished, never to trouble you again.
She called Fenwick to tell him she’d be late, and he seemed to take it in stride. Then she rolled the windows down to hide the smell as much as possible and put the radio on loud, and with the wind rushing by she almost missed the sound of her boss calling.
Kit rolled up the windows and turned off the radio before taking the call.
“Melbourne. Did you find our missing package?”
“Yes, sir,” she said solemnly. “I called Brown. I’m meeting him as soon as I arrive.”
“I see.” Holzhausen paused, and then continued, as if to himself. “And yet, I gave my word. This does not change my decision.”
“Boss?”
“Melbourne, come and see me at the Guild House this evening.”
“It will be a few hours yet, boss, I’m still on the road and I have to—" She dry-heaved mid word and had to swallow back bile. With the windows rolled up the stench of rotting vampire had started to gather in the car again. “I have to see Brown so he can make his arrangements.”
“You may have a late night. When you come in, I will explain.” Holzhausen usually disdained saying anything even remotely sensitive over the phone, so even this much detail was unusual for him.
Kit hung up, rolling down the windows so she could breathe again.
She drove with the windows rolled down the rest of the way there but felt like she still smelled rotten vampire clinging to her nostrils. She met Brown at a sedate ranch house set back deep in a wooded lot in Pepperwood. Kit saw that beyond the woods behind the house, the hill had low stone markers. Brown had an old graveyard on his property. How convenient.
Brown came out of his house slowly, a hound dog expression on his gloomy face. He wore sturdy work boots and long pants despite the heat. Kit slapped at mosquitoes and tried not to show her anxiety as she waited for Brown to inspect the box in her trunk.
“Hmm. Looks like he may have died soon after they put him in the sack,” Brown said in a monotone. “That’s just as well. I do hate it when the death is especially unpleasant.”
“Did you tell Norwicki?” Kit asked. “Gabrielle, I mean. I didn’t call her. I didn’t know what to say.”
“Oh, dear. No, Melbourne.” Brown’s long face turned disapproving, as if she had said she forgot to turn the gas off before she went away for the summer, or that she had not let the dog out all day. “I’m afraid I assumed you would handle that detail. Would you be so good as to inform her now? We will want to have him interred quickly and she may want to say her goodbyes in person.”
Kit did not want to make that phone call. She didn’t know Damien well, but Gabrielle and she were friends. Friends-ish. Acquaintances. Jesus. What did you say in a situation like this? She was sure to make a botch of it.
It wasn’t as bad as she had feared, in a way. Gabrielle didn’t go into histrionics or start wailing. It was like she had expected bad news and Kit had just confirmed it. Yes, she got the box. Yes. He was in it. No, she wasn’t fast enough. Maybe instantly. Yes. She liked to think it was an accident; Fain didn’t dislike him. But yes, he had gone down there to depose him. It could have been self-defense. Yes, they’d wait until Gabrielle showed up.
Kit kept Brown company while he walked around his vast property, holding tools while he fixed a rail fence that had fallen down, agreeing that it had been an extra-warm summer, that the mosquitoes were already out in force. He kept up a steady patter of small talk, dour and serious and formal yet oddly eager to please. He reminded her of a basset hound given human form.
“We’ll put him here, when she’s had a chance to say her piece,” Brown said, scratching an oval on the ground with the point of a spade.
“Do you have another shovel?” Kit asked. “I could help.”
“No, no, don’t trouble yourself.” He set to work at the earth, quickly moving soil away faster than Kit could.
Gabrielle drove up about forty minutes later. Kit watched the headlights scythe in across the driveway and wanted to rush down and get this over with, but Brown cleared his throat pointedly from inside the grave. Kit took the hint and stood to watch the other Norwicki.
Gabrielle Norwicki was a petite but curvy woman with a mass of blonde curls that fell to midway down her back. She wore a well-tailored summer dress with a floral pattern. A breeze made the skirt flutter and cling to her thighs. They watched from the hill as Gabrielle popped the trunk and stared down into it. She reached into the box and lifted the bag out, one-handed. They couldn’t see her very well crouched down behind the car, but Kit could smell something rank in the air.
“So unfortunate,” Brown said. He’d made quick work of the grave despite the stones.
The odor let them know Norwicki was approaching even before Kit heard Gabrielle’s feet on the grass. She’d pulled him out of the sack and untied his hands and feet and was carrying him like a gruesome pietà up the hill. Her lovely dress was now streaked with gore, but her face matched Brown’s for stoicism. Jumping to the bottom of Brown’s large hole, she laid Damien in the bare soil. His skull looked like it had been dented quite severely, but that appeared to be the only wound, so maybe Brown was right and it had killed him before he was put in the sack. It didn’t look like the wound had healed, which it would have done if he had still been alive. Kit turned away. She couldn’t look at him.
Jesus. What had gone wrong? Had Damien not drunk enough before going? Holzhausen wouldn’t have sent Walker and Norwicki down there without admonishing them to drink extra blood to be healthy. Had Fain panicked and hit him instead of just giving him a few warning shots in the chest? Then again, what did she know? Maybe the blow hadn’t killed him, and he’d started to heal, only to wake and find himself trapped in a sack, lost in helpless bureaucratic wanderings across the western United States. What had started as a friendly rivalry had just gotten very real.
This was not how Kit wanted to spend her Thursday evening. She should be home putting the kids to bed, talking to Fenwick about whether the plumber had gotten the new pipe for that toilet main they wanted. There were times when she wished she had a normal job. God, the smell was horrible. Don’t puke, she warned herself. Just don’t puke.
“Are you okay, Kit?” Gabrielle asked. She jumped up out of the grave so Brown could fill it in.
“I should be asking you that,” Kit said. She thought she should offer to hug Norwicki, but there was no way she wanted to touch that gore-soaked dress. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t fast enough.”
“There’s nothing you could have done,” Gabrielle Norwicki said. Norwicki began to cry and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, but she smeared something nasty across her cheek. “Poor Damien.”
“I have to go,” Kit said apologetically, as if she didn’t desperately want to be anywhere else. “I’m sorry. Call me later if you need anything.”
Norwicki nodded.
Even though Norwicki had left the box and the twine and vinyl sack on the ground, Kit still smelled nothing but rot and gore. Maybe it was her imagination, or maybe it was on her skin and clothes. She kept the windows down all the way to the Guild House. At least she hadn’t borrowed the minivan. Fenwick would not be able to tolerate driving a car that smelled this bad.
Holzhausen was in a meeting with someone else, so Kit slipped through the tiny kitchenette to the powder room at the back of the Guild House. The Guild House was a houseboat, a tiny floating dwelling where everything was boat-sized. It had been used as the headquarters since Grey was running the Guild. He’d probably reasoned that it was easier to defend being on the river, but there never seemed to be enough room for everyone. She wasn’t supposed to use the powder room, or even know about it, but the only other bathroom was always crowded and she’d had to pee desperately for hours. She also wanted to make sure she at least washed her hands and face before she subjected the Guild Leader to the corpse reek that seemed to be clinging to her.
The room was so tiny you could sit on the toilet and hold the door shut with your hand, which you had to do, because the latch didn’t work. The new wallpaper and carpet didn’t hide the fact that the floorboards were not smooth or solid and there was mold somewhere in the room. If she were Guild Leader, she would scuttle it and buy something stone and imposing, maybe with secret passages and a dungeon. The “our Guild House floats” wasn’t cute anymore.
When she came out of the powder room, she saw Carr standing there. Carr was wiping something off her hands with a tissue. It looked like blood.
“Your boss is looking for you,” Carr said.
“Thanks,” Kit said, and stepped to the side to let Carr pass.
“We’re meeting for drinks tonight at two if you want to join us,” Carr said quietly. “I’ve got a friend who keeps his bar open late for us. We call it our private happy hour.”
Two in the morning? Kit’s gut response was to say no. Two in the morning was sleeping time. But then she thought about what Adamiak had told her. Turn down enough invitations, and they stopped coming. She could show up for an hour or so, be social, then go home. “Thanks. I’ll try to make it. Text me the address?”
Carr said she would, and Kit hurried down the hall to the Guild Leader’s office.
And then she learned why she would not be sleeping much that night.
“Boss, I don’t understand,” Kit said, after her boss told her the news. “You want me to go to Arizona? Tomorrow morning? But Fain killed Norwicki. The Council has orders to dawn him on sight. And you want me to go help him?”
“It has nothing to do with Fain. It is a favor to my old master. To have him accept you, a human, as an apprentice would bolster our reputation. This trip is about allowing Sorrow to judge your mettle. Fain is merely an instrument in that. Fain has told you what he requires of you?”
Kit glanced at her phone. “He sent me an email. I haven’t read it yet. I know the gist of it. He wants me to disable a Levantine ward.”
Holzhausen frowned at her. “I did not know you had the stomach for murder, Melbourne. You have changed.”
“I don’t need to kill anyone, Boss. I can get inside without it.”
“It’s not possible.”
“I beg your pardon, sir, but it is.”
Holzhausen raised his eyebrows. “How?”
Kit gave him the gist of what she’d learned about using the knack and the bindi at the same time and using the failed solid ward that she’d done when she was learning to make the Hawthorn Hex. “I can push my way through the weak spot if I time it just right. I practiced it, sir. I can do it. Destroying the ward without having a nasty shock is hard, but I can get in.”
Holzhausen tapped his lips. “Interesting. I have never heard of the power lines being visible quite like this, but I do believe you. It’s only that he always taught me it was impossible.”
“Who, sir?”
“Sorrow. My old master. He is in Red Rock. It appears Fain contacted him and made propositions. But Sorrow says he will not choose until he has seen what you are capable of. If you prove you can infiltrate a Levantine ward without a human sacrifice, he will accept you as his apprentice, though you remain mortal. How could he not? What you propose is counter to what we always believed was possible. Are you certain you can do this, Melbourne?”
“Yes, sir.” Kit felt a flutter of nervous excitement. This was happening. This was really happening. She was going to get a famous teacher, Holzhausen’s own teacher. “What’s he like, sir?”
“He is unconventional in appearance. Quite tall and slender, with unusual features and grey hair though he appears to have been turned in his youth. He is uncompromising when it comes to expecting excellence. He is a traditionalist, but not as much as the rest of his house. His skill as a mage is formidable, and he has the rare ability to explain complicated techniques in a way that a student may comprehend. I believe that under his tutelage you will quickly surpass my abilities, Melbourne.”
“Would he be willing to relocate to Seabingen, do you think?” She knew she could get inside the ward and was already thinking of the apprenticeship as a done deal.
“I have already altered the ward to permit him to enter.” Holzhausen paused. “Melbourne? You appear as if a thought just occurred to you.”
“Boss, do you remember the theater incident?” Kit said. “Before I joined the Guild? Fain was there. Damien needed blood and I was the only human. It was so long ago, I didn’t even think of it, but it’s a strange coincidence that the only other person who ever drank my blood has died.”
“He did not appear to become addicted to your fey blood the way Fain did.”
“No, sir. Maybe it’s nothing. It was so long ago, before I went to the Realm of the Faerie. I was a different person. Did Fain say when he wanted me down there?”
“Tomorrow evening.” Holzhausen paused a long moment. “I don’t trust Fain. Come home safely, Melbourne. Prove your worth to Sorrow, then return as soon as you are able.”
“Yes, sir.”