The place looked foul. The atmosphere over it had thickened like a bruise, my left eye smarting and watering as it untangled layer after layer of rotting cheesecloth. Etheric bruising, my helpful unmemory piped up. That means it’s a haunt. You know what a haunt is, right? A place where wild animals go to feed. There’s ’breed in there, and Traders. You need silver.
Silver. My right hand flashed up, touched my hair. That’s what should be there. Silver charms. Tied in with red thread. It was traditional.
Doesn’t help me now, though.
I loitered at the edge of the parking lot, sunk in shadows. There was brush here, and I crouched easily, sometimes moving to keep muscles from stiffening, sometimes utterly still and watching. The place looked familiar—a long, low building, parking lot shading to gravel at the edges, a couple of gorillas at the door and a line waiting to go in. Faint thumping bass reached me as I studied the shapes of the people in line. They moved… oddly. Scary quicksilver grace or twitching almost-stasis, and even at this distance I could see the twisting under the surface of their normal shapes. The twisting threatened to give me a headache until I figured out I could simply make a note of it and it would stop bothering me. I just had to acknowledge it.
Someone in there knows who I am.
But these were things like the thing I’d killed on the roof. Wrong. And very, very bad. I had no silver. Just the business card and—
A long black limousine took a right into the parking lot, crunching on gravel before bumping inelegantly up onto cracked pavement. The line twittered and whispered with excitement. The car glowed, wet light from the tangle of red neon over the building’s front sliding over its sleek flanks. My focus narrowed and I leaned forward, coming up out of the crouch as if compelled. My body obeyed smoothly, but my right wrist twinged. I glanced down, but the gem set in the skin was the same, a colorless sparkle. The wind touched my hair, playing with the curls, cool with the flat metal tang of river water, the desert’s sand-baked exhale picking up the water and vanishing.
The limo banked easily, like a small plane, and one of the bouncers stepped forward to open the door. I took another two steps, gravel oddly soundless underfoot. My right hand touched the gun butt, fingers running over it like they expected to read Braille.
A pale head. He rose out of the car on the other side, and a rippling sigh of excitement went through the line. I moved forward, impelled, cutting through a line of dusty parked cars. The limousine scorched, dirt-free, the only thing in the lot that didn’t look tired or filthy. My hand curled around the gun, but I didn’t draw it yet. The ring on my left hand ran with blue light, a seashine gleam.
They became aware of me in stages, as if I was a storm moving through from the mountains. First the eerie-graceful part of the line, with their seashell hips and liner-drenched eyes, stilled. Their heads came up, and sculpted nostrils flared. Cherry-glazed lips parted, and a collective exhale lifted from them along with a bath of nose-tingling corruption.
They were beautiful, but under that beauty lay the twisting.
The jerky, oddly-shaped ones were next. They hissed, lips lifting and sharp-filed teeth showing, some of them crouching. One of them, a broad wide manshape dressed in a caricature of a construction worker’s plaid shirt and Carhartts, his work boots stained with something dark and fetid, actually growled. The sound rose in a rumble like boulders grinding together, and some sure instinct made me pause, staring at him. Yellow eyes, unholy foxfire in the irises and the pupils flaring and constricting like a cobra’s head. He tensed as his knees slowly bent.
He’s getting ready to spring.
Movement. The pale head of hair was approaching. They cringed and fell back from him, but I didn’t look. I stared at the Trader, my fingers slowly tightening on the gun. If he jumped me I had some running room and cover in the parking lot. Maybe I could tangle them up and—
There was a blur of motion, cream-colored linen streaking. A pale clawed hand flashed out, and the construction worker fell sideways, arterial spray blooming high and red. The drops hung in a perfect arc, and I saw each one was tinged with that tracery of black, hungrily gobbling at the fluid as it splashed.
Holy shit. I stared.
He stepped out of the way, polished wingtips gleaming just like the car, and my gaze snapped to him. The gun left its holster with a whisper, and my arm was straight and braced.
Pallid hair in a layered razor cut. Blue eyes, and the face wasn’t beautiful. He looked normal—average lips, average cheekbones, an average all-American nose. The suit was linen, sharply-creased and expensive, and the eyes were bright blue. He regarded me with pleasant, cheerful interest, and I blinked before my left eye gave a twinge and I caught a glimpse of the twisting rippling under his flawless skin. A wine-red tie, he lifted his right hand and touched the half-Windsor knot, as if it had been knocked a millimeter out of place. Taller than me, his shoulders braced and his hips narrow, my mouth suddenly filling with copper adrenaline and my pulse dropping into a low steady rhythm.
Because this was a face I knew.
His left hand twitched. The fingers drew up like claws, and his paleness was a shade or two darker there. Something had happened to that hand, something my brain shied away from even as it threatened to plunge through the fog and remember. A spark popped from my ring’s silver surface, photoflash blue.
“I know you.” My lips were numb, but I simply sounded wondering. “From…” Words failed me, balked and twisted away. “From somewhere. I know you.”
He studied me for another long moment. His smile widened.
He actually grinned. Pearly teeth, very sharp but very normal as well. It was a television newscaster’s beaming, wide and practiced. Those blue eyes lit up, and another ripple went through the crowd.
“Of course you know me.” Even his voice was reassuringly normal. Bland as the rest of him. “Our darling little Kismet, returned. How lovely.” He stepped forward off the curb, but the bruisers looming behind him—one with a submachine gun, the other just a pile of over-yeasted muscle—didn’t move. I almost twitched, but he made a soothing noise. A low exhale, his tongue clicking as if I was an animal to be gentled. “You look beautiful.”