We had Galina to thank. Pissing off a Sanctuary by attempting to burn down her house from the outside is not a good idea, and she’d done something Sancs only keep for emergencies—somehow opening a space down in her vaults for hunters to step through from other Sanctuaries. They’d been flooding into Santa Luz ever since I’d made that frantic phone call to Anya Devi, and with them working from the top and other hunters working from the bottom, as well as Galina’s control over the wrecked physical structure of her house, they’d broken through before dusk.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out something big was going down, either. With the sky going dark and hellbreed and Traders popping up everywhere and making for the stadium, you only had to have half a brain in your head to figure out where the big event was going down.
Montaigne was moaning about property damage. Anya filled out the reams of paperwork for a Major Paranormal Incident so we could get government funding. Flash floods had claimed a couple lives, whole sections of the barrio were burned down, the morgue was groaning at the seams from the citywide spree of murder, arson, and other hellbreed fun. Most of the other hunters had only stayed to help deal with the cleanup in the stadium—banefire and yellow tape, just to be sure, and the Lance reduced to cold, metallic ash scraped into an alabaster jar—and headed back to their cities.
We’re not much on goodbyes. So mostly they just slid out of town after exchanging a few words with me or Devi.
A few stayed. We’d lost four hunters and six Weres. One of the Weres was Rahel, and, oddly enough, that was the thing I cried over, hunched next to Saul’s bed with my face in my knees, snot slicking my upper lip as I shook and sobbed as quietly as possible. I bit the smooth, unmarked skin on my right wrist where a scar in the shape of a pair of lips had been pressed, where the gem had shivered free of my flesh. I was still stronger and faster than even the average hunter, but there was no mark on me.
It’s not even the only pattern that matters.
A bunch of ’breed had escaped through the hellmouth. Things were going to be hopping all over—but at least we’d staved off the big catastrophe. Argoth was no more, and there hadn’t been any other prepared hellmouths.
Just the one. Just Perry’s lunge toward fleshly incarnation. With me as his linchpin and Argoth’s power behind him, what would he have been able to do?
What wouldn’t he have done?
Galina’s house and shop were fully rebuilt in a matter of eighteen hours, growing up from the ground like a mushroom. You can’t keep a Sanc down for long; even if Perry had succeeded in locking her temporarily inside her vault and making her mad. She stalked around muttering for a while, checking every inch of her house and making tiny adjustments while the walls shivered with redgold sheets of cascading energy.
We all stayed out of her way, except for Theron.
The dogsbody had vanished. One moment it was there at the stadium, the next… gone. I didn’t mention it to Devi.
Gilberto was in the barrio with some other hunter apprentices and Leon Budge, helping the Weres rebuild. Mickey’s on Mayfair had gone down in a three-alarm fire—more hellbreed work—but they would rebuild.
Saul slept through most of it, but every time he woke up I was at his bedside. Devi handled the rest. It was one more thing to thank her for. Every time I tried, though, she just rolled her eyes and waved an absinthe bottle at me, threatening to make me drink until I shut up.
I shut up.
When Saul woke, he ate. I carried tray after tray of food up the stairs, watched him fill out bit by bit, listened to his breathing.
I did not think about Perry. Or about wings. I didn’t sleep much, either. Maybe I was afraid of dreaming.
Hello? I asked the silence inside my chest. Who am I? Tell me who I am now.
There was no answer.
Anya tapped on the door one long, drowsy-sunny afternoon. Saul was sleeping deeply on his side, his hair streaked with tawny lights. I held a finger to my lips and tiptoed to the door. Left it open a crack so I could hear him.
“You can take the truck,” Devi said bluntly, her bindi glimmering. She pushed a bead-weighted strand of hair behind her ear. “Get out, get away, get your head cleared out. There’s nothing you can do here.”
I slumped against the wall, one hand on a knife hilt. She was tense, I realized, and I left my fingers fall away. “I’m a liability.” Flatly, daring her to disagree.
“You need a vacation,” she corrected. “You’ve done enough for a while, and if you keep pushing you’re going to kill yourself. Or Saul. Or both, and I don’t want to deal with that.”
I moved, restless. Looked at the floor. Our boots were placed just so, both of us braced and ready for action.
“Mikhail,” I said finally. “He was there.”
Her chin dipped a fraction, the scar down her right cheek flushing. “Maybe he was. I’m not going to fucking disagree. I’m not even going to speculate who or what those bird-things were. Nobody is.”
At least, not out loud. Well, thank God for that. But I shivered. “One thing.”
“Okay.” She didn’t even ask what. Just agreed.
My heart twisted, I pushed down the pressure in my throat. “The Monde.” My throat was so dry. It was work to get the sounds out. “Burn it. Banefire. Please.”
“Of course. Jill.” Her hand on my arm, brutally short fingernails digging in. Her duster made a sound, but my arms were bare; I wore only a T-shirt and a pair of spare leather pants. “Perry’s dead. Absolutely dead. He’s not coming back.”
You promise? Because I wouldn’t put it past him. But she was a hunter, and I looked up. We held each other’s gaze for a long time, possibly an eternity. And I found out, gratefully, that I couldn’t lie to a fellow hunter.
“I’m afraid either way, Devi,” I whispered.
She nodded. There was nothing else to say, so she didn’t bother. She just let me fold forward until my head was on her shoulder, and the silent sobbing that shook me was like an earthquake. She stroked my hair, touching the sharp-spined charms he’d given me, and they didn’t bite either of us.