While Lannes could not in good conscience disagree with the woman’s assessment that he was indeed an idiot, he knew several things about himself that she did not. First and foremost, he was a Mage—a fairly accomplished one, at that, and therefore capable of knowing certain things about other people that might not or could not be readily divulged.
He had learned some things about the woman while she lay unconscious.
She sat before him now in Frederick’s kitchen, perched on a stool at the butcher-block counter. Her blond hair was a fine mess around her face, and the skin around her eyes looked pinched with exhaustion. He had cleaned blood from her chin earlier, after carrying her into the house. Wiped it away with a hot rag. She had looked pained even while asleep.
Now was little better. A small furrow cut between her eyebrows—a permanent fixture since she had awakened—and her mouth held a worried frown. She had said almost nothing since following him home. Just a nod here, a shake of the head there. Not a word when asked her name, though the anxiety that rolled from her made him never want to inquire again.
So, they sat. In silence. Regarding each other. The woman clutched a white steaming mug of some aromatic green tea that always gave Lannes a terrible stomachache. He preferred dark brews, breakfast blends steeped in fine Irish Belleek porcelain. Bits of lemon thrown in. No sugar, which for him obscured the taste of a good tea.
He had his own cup in front of him, half-drained. Fredrick was back in bed, though not likely asleep. Listening to an audiobook, perhaps, or keeping his ear pressed to the door.
“This is a nice home,” said the woman suddenly, as though the silence was finally too much to bear. She glanced from him to the rest of the kitchen: cream-colored cabinets, sandstone floors and pale accents. Frederick had a woman come every day to cook for him and do the dishes. It had been that way since Clarissa died.
“It has a lot of heart,” Lannes agreed, and added, “You can eat, you know. Sandwich, leftovers.”
“Maybe later,” she said, but he knew she intended on bolting as soon as she was able. He had known she would try to escape when he left her alone in that room to dress, though he’d had little choice but to let her try. To do otherwise would have terrified her even more, made her feel like she was in a cage, captured. His own nightmare.
His puzzle, too. He could still hear a single word, one small word, reverberating from her mind to his.
Run.
Lannes pushed back his chair and took his cup to the sink. Felt the woman watching him. Her intensity was unnerving, her eyes so piercing that he half-expected her to see through the illusion to his real face and start screaming. What he was doing, the risk he was taking…
Frederick was right to question your actions, he thought, dragging a loaf of bread from the cabinet. This is not you.
Not him. Not entirely. Before the witch had stolen and tortured him and his brothers, he had gone out into the world. He had…mingled, used magic to hide in plain view and had seen…wonders. He had glided through the Himalayas searching for Shangri-la. Perched atop Notre Dame under a full moon and composed lines of bad maudlin poetry. Trekked with amateurish delight through Rome and Spain, apprenticing himself when he could to the old dying masters of the art of bookbinding. Touched the earth and skies of more places than he could count. And everywhere he had found awe and marvel and beauty—in nature, in people, in the things that people could create.
He loved humans. That he feared and was sometimes disgusted by them as well did not lessen his appreciation. His brothers felt the same, as did their parents, though he knew quite well that many of the remaining clans, scattered in remote reaches of the world, would have preferred a little less humanity, less war and other human folly.
“Are you a vegetarian?” Lannes asked, opening the refrigerator. He had bound his wings again, and the ache threatened to turn his mood even sourer.
The woman said nothing. He glanced at her. She was staring at the open refrigerator with such confusion—even despair—that he felt instantly sorry he had asked.
“No,” she finally said, slowly. “I don’t think I am.”
It was the perfect opening—and Lannes almost took that moment to pin her down with his questions. He stopped himself, though. Remembered what it had felt like up in that room while she lay unconscious, as he touched her face—with his hands, with a washrag—enveloping her in his magic to make her sleep. Trying, as he did, to see into her mind.
Not easy to do. The process never had been, for him. It required prolonged touching, skin-to-skin contact. He could cast an illusion, influence a body’s ability to heal—as he had done with the woman’s feet, so that she could walk. Little things here and there. But to reach into a mind was a different business, unsavory at best. This woman was his first attempt in years, and he would not have tried at all had he not been so concerned about her presence in Frederick’s home.
But what he had seen—what he had not seen—troubled him more than it reassured.
Run, he remembered, pulling leftover chicken and slices of cheddar from the refrigerator, along with bits of cucumber and onion. He got down a plate, careful of his strength, and made the woman a rough, sloppy sandwich that he hoped tasted better than it looked.
He handed her the plate. She stared at it, then him.
“Not poisoned,” he said.
“Thanks,” she replied dryly, and then in a softer tone, “Really, thank you.”
He shrugged, keenly aware that anything he might say—You’re welcome, not a problem, anytime—would sound trite, patronizing. Silence was safer. Lannes stepped back, pretending to busy himself with refilling the electric kettle. But he watched out of the corner of his eye as she gingerly picked up the sandwich and took a bite.
Hunger flashed across her face. Her next bite was larger, faster.
Lannes turned his back on her, his wings hot. His heart hot. He needed more tea. Anything to settle his nerves. He marveled that the woman could maintain such calm when he knew—he knew—what lay inside her.
Confusion. Terror. Loss. Bigger than her body, bigger than the sky.
He could still feel his hands upon her face, the softness of her skin. Her emotions, overwhelming him even though subconscious. And beyond her fear, something else. Blood. Smoke. Horror. Escaping down a black road, filled with a small voice whispering, Run, run, run.
Then, nothing else. A hole. A void. So dark, so empty, it had frightened him into withdrawing. The woman was missing part of her mind.
Stolen, not lost. Lannes could feel it. He knew the difference, had some experience with amnesia. On his travels, long ago, an old Tuscan man had suffered a minor blow to the head, lost a month of his life, an important month—a wedding, a dinner with a dying friend. Lannes had pretended to know something about medicine. Talked big, made claims about Asian reflexology that to this day still made him blush in shame. He had touched the old man, held his breath the entire time, hoping Alberto Guarnieri would not notice the difference between reality and illusion. Worth the risk, though. Alberto’s memories had still been there. Intact. Just…lost behind a wall. Sheltered. All it had taken was a minor trick to free his thoughts. Nothing but patience. Ten minutes of his time.
This woman had none of that. No walls. No trace. This was not some dissociative fugue. It was as though her life had been erased entirely. No accident could have hurt her so badly. No blow to the head, or stroke.
No, someone had ripped away her memories, excised them with breathtaking precision. And not just one or two memories, but a great many. Perhaps all, though he had no way to be certain. She might know her name, though he doubted it now. He was also quite certain those lost memories were gone for good. Not a trace of them remained. Not even an echo.
The kettle began to whistle. Lannes shut it off. “More tea?”
“No thanks,” she said, carefully standing and carrying her plate to the sink. Limping heavily. He wanted to tell the woman to stay off her feet, but she looked stubborn, and he stepped sideways in a subtle dance, trying to keep his distance. Frederick’s kitchen was large, but not big enough for a gargoyle attempting to keep a woman from brushing up against his wings.
She gave him a curious look and turned on the faucet, dashed some liquid soap over the plate and began washing it. Lannes poured himself tea.
“I’m sorry,” she suddenly said, glancing at him, the kitchen lights catching the gold in her hair like a halo. She was a beautiful woman, if a bit haggard. Lannes found himself leaning back against the counter merely to drink her in, and felt the base of the electric kettle burn his wing. He tried not to flinch.
“Sorry?” he echoed, weakly. “For what?”
She looked at him with a hint of dry humor. “Think about it for a minute.”
Lannes shrugged. “You were desperate.”
“I committed a crime. You don’t take someone into your home for that.”
“Maybe I’m a Boy Scout. Delusions of Superman.” His favorite comic book character. Lannes had first begun reading the comic in the forties, along with everything else he could get his hands on. As a child, he had been dazzled with the idea of a man being able to fly—or at the very least, jump far. He had been swept in by the idea of a secret identity—glasses and a tie—transforming one of the most powerful men in the world into just another Joe Average. Hiding in plain sight.
“I didn’t think Superman ever let anyone but Lois into his Fortress of Solitude,” mused the woman—then she stopped, frowning, and looked down at the sink.
Lannes asked, “What is it?”
She shook her head, fingers grazing her brow as though she hurt. “Nothing. Just…strange things pop into my head.”
Strange things. Lannes wanted to touch her again. He needed to, if he was going to examine the cut inside her mind. That she could function, recite random facts…
He turned away, busying himself with his tea. He was afraid to look at her. He had never been good at hiding his emotions, and what he felt—what had driven him out into the night to bring her back here—was more than he could name. But it felt like anger. Profound, terrible anger. Because he knew this. He knew what it was like to have his life stolen. To be trapped in a cage, just as this woman was trapped. Not by stone, but by circumstance. No money, no friends, no one to turn to. Violated, in ways that Lannes could not even begin to fathom.
And the blood? The gun?
He glanced over his shoulder and found the woman hobbling back to her stool. He moved past her, careful to keep his distance, and snagged the seat with one long arm. He placed it beside her so that she would not have to walk so far, and she gave him a tense, guarded nod of thanks.
“There’s a bathroom upstairs,” he said. “Towels.”
Her jaw tightened. “A lock on the door?”
He was not offended. “Yes.”
“Okay,” she said, her tension so raw he could taste it. Which was exactly his problem.
He could feel the woman. Ever since he had entered her mind. Like a walnut lodged in the back of his brain, hard and unyielding. A strong presence. As though part of her had taken refuge with him when he pulled away from his examination of her memories. And no matter how hard he tried, he could not rid himself of her. Mentally, physically—it was all the same. Lannes was stuck with her. And she was stuck with him, whether she realized it or not.
He had to find the person who had harmed her, and the only way to do that was to keep her around. Use her. Learn from her mind, if he could. He could not allow such a violation to stand unpunished or leave open the possibility of it happening again.
And the woman…she needed help. He might not be able to explain the blood or the weapon, but he had seen enough. Felt enough. Until this was done, he would take care of her. One way or another. Even if it was just as a shadow at her back. He could track her now. That presence in his mind might as well have been a chain between them. He could follow her anywhere.
“You’re staring at me,” she said, breaking him from his reverie.
“Ditto,” he replied, trying to sound cool, unaffected. Feeling like an idiot. “I’ll see if I can find you some comfortable shoes. Slippers, maybe.”
Her gaze remained steady. “I’m leaving in the morning.”
Then we both are, he thought. “I’d appreciate you saying good-bye first.”
A very faint smile touched her mouth. “You’ll try to talk me out of going, Boy Scout.”
“Maybe,” he admitted, and backed away as she slid off the stool. “Think I might succeed?”
“I hope not,” she said, and he told her where to find the bathroom.
He went to Frederick’s workshop when he heard the water start. His friend had converted a bedroom and its adjoined study into an office that doubled as a place to indulge the craft Frederick’s father had taught him. Alex Brimley, master bookbinder: a man whose patrons had included royalty and the finest libraries and museums in the world, a clientele that had gone to Lannes after Alex’s death. Not to Frederick, who preferred scholarship, the written word, no matter the disappointment this had caused his father.
But that was neither here nor there. Alex Brimley’s workshop still existed. Lovingly recreated from memory.
Memories make us, Lannes thought, settling onto the large, steel-enforced stool that Frederick had bought specially for him. Memories are the bricks of our souls.
And if you lost those bricks? The woman was no shell. She had thoughts, feelings. She knew things. But her predicament was, to Lannes, the same as being born again. Forced to start anew. A babe in the woods.
Tools lay scattered on the long table in front of him. Some resembled screwdrivers, but the shapes of their long tips ranged from needle thin to scalloped and flat as a duck’s beak. He smelled leather, paper, glue. A small refrigerator full of eggs hummed near his feet. He had been using egg whites earlier, mixed with natural chemicals, to apply gold leaf to the etchings of a special journal he was making for Frederick. The old man had written twenty novels within Lannes’ creations before sending them on to a secretary to be transcribed onto a computer. He called the journals his lucky charms.
Lannes wondered if Frederick’s hands would let him write in this one. Likely enough, his next book would have to be of the spoken variety, recorded on tape or computer.
He heard the old man’s footsteps and sat back, preparing himself. Frederick did not disappoint.
“I can die happy,” said his friend upon entering the room, “now that I finally know what it feels like to harbor a criminal.” He slouched into a wooden armchair near the workbench in the study and stared at a picture of his father, a black-and-white still of a young man in a dark suit, fair hair slicked back, standing stiffly in front of a painted floral tapestry. The photo had been taken in the late 1920s in Maine. Lannes’ father had a copy in his own study.
“She’s not a criminal,” Lannes replied, balancing the base of a screwdriver on his palm. “At least, I don’t think she is. What she said is true, I guarantee you that. Her memories are gone.”
Frederick shook his head, looking away from his father’s picture. His fingers danced and trembled. “This is strange business, Lannes. Dare I say, even unnatural.”
“That’s what you get for being friends with a gargoyle.”
“Oh, the pain.” Frederick stood, and stretched. “All right, then. I will make my evening call to Sal, and then off to bed.”
Sal. Lannes had not heard that name in some time. For some reason, it was always a minor shock for him to remember that Frederick had other friends. Human friends. Men and women Frederick had known almost as long as Lannes. He wondered, suddenly, how Frederick had coped all these years, living a double life between magic and the mundane.
“How is Sal?” Lannes asked. “Still in the nursing home?”
“Coma,” Frederick said, simply. “He had another stroke.”
Lannes sat back, staring. “I’m sorry. I know you’re close.”
“More than seventy years we’ve known each other. We might not be as close as you and I, but we are still like brothers.” Frederick suddenly seemed very small and frail, every bit his age. “I call, and the nurse supposedly holds the phone up to his ear. It’s the best I can do, at the moment.”
“Would you like to visit him?” Lannes asked. “I’ll take you, wherever he is.”
“Maybe. Or perhaps it is better to remember him as he was. Which was never that good, anyway.” The old man studied his slippers. “And the woman? I’m concerned with her state of mind, her circumstances notwithstanding. I’m also worried about you.”
Lannes turned his thoughts inward, focusing on the hard sensation of the woman’s presence burning at the back of his mind. She felt like a small flame—brighter now, growing in strength. He did not know what that meant, but it was not a concern. Yet. His brothers might not feel the same way. Any kind of mental link, accidental or not, always posed a risk.
But he knew where she was, just by thinking about it, and he found that to be an odd comfort.
“Don’t,” Lannes said. “I can take care of myself.”
“And I suppose you were…taking care of yourself…during that extended vacation?” Frederick’s jaw flexed, his eyes hard. “I found your parents, Lannes. I suppose they didn’t tell you that, did they? I found them after they had stopped searching for you and your brothers. We thought you were all dead.”
Lannes closed his eyes and gripped the screwdriver between his hands. The plastic handle cracked. “You didn’t say anything.”
“I thought you would. Eventually. But this…this woman…changes everything.”
He felt sick. “I don’t see how.”
“Your father said it was a trap.”
Lannes tried not to think of it, but images flashed through his mind. His wings ached. “Wasn’t anything like this. If it was, do you think I would be helping her?”
“I think helping others is in your nature. I doubt you can resist.”
“Don’t say it like that.”
“I worry,” said Frederick quietly. “I can’t see into her mind the way you can, but I still can’t help but wonder at the coincidence of her meeting you, of all the people in this city. You, Lannes. What are the odds?”
Lannes opened his eyes and very carefully set down the mangled remains of the screwdriver. He could not look at his old friend. “Good night, Frederick.”
“Lannes.”
But Lannes said nothing. He did not want to remember. And though it was childish, he kept his head down until the old man shuffled from the room. Yet, when he was finally alone, shame crept over him. Frederick deserved better. Lannes was in no position to take for granted the concern of a friend.
He sighed and reached for the phone. Dialed a number. His brother Charlie answered on the third ring.
“Hey,” Lannes said, “it’s me.”
“Better be good,” Charlie muttered hoarsely. “Three in the morning here, man.”
A two-hour difference between Chicago and San Francisco. It was going to be dawn soon. “I have a problem.”
Charlie said nothing for a long moment, but when he spoke, his voice sounded clearer. Like he was fully awake. Sitting up. “What happened?”
Lannes told him. About the woman and the gun. The blood. The hole in her mind. He did not mention the link between them. There was no good reason for the omission, except that it felt personal, somehow. Intimate.
“So?” Lannes asked, when he was done. “Verdict?”
“I got nothing,” said Charlie. “You’re screwed.”
“Thanks, genius.”
“Good way to get a date.”
“Not funny.”
“Sorry.” His brother went silent. “I need to talk to Aggie about this.”
Which was the reason Lannes had called Charlie instead of his other brothers. Agatha knew people. People with resources who would not look twice at a gargoyle or dismiss claims of psychic mutilation out of hand.
Lannes had to marvel at his brother sometimes. His luck. His life. Charlie, through nothing more than an act of sheer desperation and compassion, had opened up a new world to them all—and found himself married, with a child, working now for an agency that operated out of San Francisco: a group of men and women, human and inhuman, shape-shifters, human psychics, all of whom masqueraded as little more than highly trained private detectives, mercenaries and bodyguards, simply in order to use their abilities, psychic and magical, to help others.
Dirk & Steele. An agency that operated in public merely to maintain a guise of human normalcy. Fooling the world with the greatest trick of all—hiding in plain sight. Much like Lannes and the rest of his kind. He could never have imagined such an organization existed before Agatha had come into their lives. It was an extraordinary twist of fate. Destiny. Magic. Mysteries beyond reckoning.
“Agatha isn’t at home?” asked Lannes.
“Not for a bit. She was sent to Argentina. Investigating that gnome scare.”
Lannes hesitated, trying to decide if he had heard right. “Gnomes?”
“You know, little dudes with pointy hats? Big white beards and blue coats?”
“That’s a commercial, Charlie.”
“Whatever. A kid took some creepy footage down in Salta. Little guy wearing a pointed hat, moving with a weird sideways walk. People got freaked.”
“It’s probably just a prank.”
“Sure. But Roland wanted it checked out. Just in case.”
Lannes frowned, unbinding his wings with one hand. “Gnomes? Seriously?”
“Gargoyles? Shape-shifters? My wife who can tell the future?”
Lannes grunted, stretching his wings. “Fine. But that doesn’t help me.”
“I’ll make some calls. In the meantime, be careful. You can’t be certain this isn’t just a ruse. Another way to…get at us. Again.”
Lannes almost asked if he and Frederick had been talking. The possibility of a trap was impossible to forget. Pressure, those lines of fate knotting tighter: coincidence and chance, quirk and happenstance. To have been chased out of a bar by a woman just at the moment when he would witness his car stolen—a theft intended by another woman. An armed, bloody woman. A lifetime of tenuous moments bringing him here and now.
The idea of being tricked scared him. But so did the idea of being wrong in another way. Because if the woman was innocent in all this—and he thought she was, he truly did—then abandoning her would be the same as a slow murder. He could not do that. Not without losing a part of himself that would be impossible to regain.
Determination was stronger than fear. He had to get this done. He had to be strong enough.
The witch did not break me. She did not.
Upstairs, he heard the water stop. Charlie said, “Are you there?”
“Thinking,” Lannes muttered. “Ask around. I’ll call if anything changes.”
He hung up on his brother’s good-bye and sat still, wracking his brain. Coming up with nothing. He was going to have to ride this through. Play the situation by ear.
Lannes heard footsteps on the stairs. Quiet. Careful. He half-expected the woman to make a run for the front door again, but after a long minute of silence, he heard her walking down the hall toward the study.
He said, “I’m in here.”
The woman peered around the door. She still wore Clarissa’s old clothes, and her hair was wet. Her face was scrubbed clean and pink. She looked tired and tense, but there was a strength in her gaze that was sharper, clearer. Like she had gotten her second wind. He liked that. She was not a whiner. Not a quitter. And she had every reason to quit, based on what little he had gleaned.
“Feel better?” he asked, still seated.
She nodded, peering at the workshop, the glow of the antique lamps warm on her face. She carried the scent of lavender with her, and her feet, wrapped again in his big socks, flopped charmingly. The small garbage bag crammed with her old clothes swung from her hand.
She limped near, gazed down at the table covered in tools and paper. She seemed especially fascinated with the partial cover he had been working on, which was still laid out in loose form.
“Ulrich Schreier,” she murmured. “Your work is similar. And it looks as though you’re using the cuir-ciselé process.”
Lannes stared, heart thudding faster. “That’s a very obscure name. And a little known technique.”
She blinked, ripping her gaze from the table to stare at him. “Is it?”
He forced himself to breathe and folded his wings tighter around his body. He was wishing suddenly that he had not been so quick to free them. “Schreier was a fifteenth-century Austrian artisan. Famous in his time. But usually only book-binders are familiar with his work.”
Her cheeks flushed. “Is that what you are?”
“It’s one of the things. I restore books. I make them, too.”
“Useful.”
“Not many would say so.”
“Then they’re not readers,” she said simply and frowned again, briefly shutting her eyes. Lannes leaned back, trying not to react. Her memories might be gone, but her spirit remained. Personality, likes and dislikes. A storehouse of random information.
“You should rest,” he said. “You can take the room you woke up in.”
“The sun will be up soon.”
“Does it matter?”
“I should say good-bye.”
“Sleep first, then good-bye.”
“What makes you think I don’t have somewhere to get to?”
“Because you would have gotten there by now.” Lannes wanted to stand, but his wings were pressing against the worktable, and that was probably the safest place for them. “The bedroom door has a lock, too, if you’re worried.”
The woman faltered, staring. “Why are you doing this?”
He smiled, sadly. “The way you ask…You think I’m going to hurt you.”
“I think you’ll want something, eventually.”
“You’re jaded.”
“I’m realistic.”
“Fair enough.” Lannes tried to think of anything that would reassure her, but nothing came to mind. She had a right to be scared. He was a big man with a suspicious absence of motives.
Lannes heard something outside the room. A click. Not from the stairs, not on the second floor, but closer. He froze, then stood so swiftly the woman backpedaled away from him. He did not try to reassure her, just walked into the hall. He tasted night on his tongue and moved faster, almost at a run, until he found himself in the foyer.
The front door was open. Not just a crack, but thrown wide. Heat washed over his back, and he moved aside as the woman drew up beside him. She stared at the door and went very still.
“I didn’t do that,” she whispered.
“I know,” he breathed. “Go upstairs, second door on your right. If Freddy is there, stay with him.”
“What about you?”
“Go,” he muttered. “Just go.”
She went, hobbling as fast as she could. Lannes glided toward the front door, listening hard. Hearing nothing but the wind. He stretched out his senses, feeling for the passage of another, the passage of a stranger.
All he found on the front steps was a piece of paper weighed down with a rock. He did not need to pick it up to read its message. The letters were large, bold, and in black.
FIND ORWELL PRICE, he read.
And at the bottom, RUN.