Lili St Crow - Defiance

I ate a couple more times, too. It was like I couldn’t get full, and I was always finding those carts that sell pretzels or chicken satay or burritos, especially near Midtown. I wasn’t worried about money; I was worried about the huge hole under my ribs that just kept getting bigger. When I turned onto deserted streets I could hear a little crackling, like static. It was coming from under my skin, and I wasn’t sure if I should be worried.

I moved with the crowds through the arteries of the city. Safety in numbers, and I liked the hustle and bustle. Even in the dead of night, something was happening somewhere. This is why the Real World hunts mostly in cities. I mean, there’s rural Real World, too, but it’s a different flavor. The nastier, sharper-edged stuff lives in the urban jungle.

The worst hours were between three and five in the morning while I was walking with vague intention, the long slow hush before dawn. I wandered around, pretending Dad was picking my plan apart, making it as good and solid as I could and hoping I’d covered everything.

Back at the Schola it would be time to tuck Ash in and retreat to my room, let Nat brush my hair, and look forward to Christophe knocking on the door. I got antsy, working my way across the river toward Queens, and stopping every once in a while as the ghost of waxed oranges slid across my tongue. That was another thing to worry about—the aura wasn’t as strong. Everything else was, but the danger candy was only a ghost of itself, and I couldn’t think it was because I was safer.

I found a working phone booth about twelve blocks from the mansion. It was harder than it sounds—now that there’s cell phones, the pay ones are going out of style in a big way.

Dad groused about that sometimes. It wasn’t any harder to get an untraceable cell phone, but there was still the problem of triangulating from the towers that receive the call. Not really any worse than a pay phone, but Dad was old-school.

My heart made a funny ripping motion inside my chest, but I was too busy to worry about the pain. Story of my life. If I ever slowed down all the crap piling up would make me cry for a week, probably.

I plugged in quarters—I had plenty of those, though I’d given the rest of my change away—and dialed. Normally I keep numbers in my Yoda notebook, not my head. But this one I’d fallen asleep reciting for a while because it was my personal drop line for the Order, the number that would light up their switchboard like a distress flare.

Which meant that the call would be traced. After all night keeping to the shadows and hoping nobody would catch me, I was about to say here I am, come get me .

I listened to it ring, cleared my throat, and tried to look everywhere at once. The street was a nice one, this particular convenience store across the street from Flushing Park’s bruised green in good shape and the lines in the parking lot freshly painted. All the trash was picked up, and it didn’t smell like old-man urine, which meant this was a Relatively Nice Part of Town.

I guess when you’re near a graveyard, nice is relative.

Two rings. Three. Four. It picked up, and there was a series of clicks. Then, silence while they started tracing my location.

“Goddammit,” I said to the listening quiet. “Say something.”

“Dru.” Augustine sounded incredibly weary. “What the hell you doing?”

What do you think? “Rescuing Graves. Christophe knows where. Have him bring backup. I’m going in at first light, which is—” I checked the sky. “Very soon. The more they distract whoever’s holding my Goth Boy, the safer I’ll be.”

“Dru-girl, sweetheart, listen to me. Something’s going on. You’re in trouble, and—”

“Damn right I’m in trouble, August. I’ve been going along trusting Christophe, and all he does is lie to me. I’m done . If the Order wants anything out of me, they’ll do what I tell them, starting right now . And what I’m telling them to do is to get Christophe to admit he knew where Graves is. And to come and help me rescue him. Otherwise they’re going to be out one more svetocha .” I wet my lips with a quick nervous flick of my tongue, watching the street. The sky was turning gray in the east; I could feel dawn approaching as if a thousand little tiny threads were pulling against my flesh. The crackling under my skin was intense, almost to the point of pain.

“Please, Dru. Please just listen—” Now Augie was pleading with me, the way he never had when I lived with him. Of course, I’d been young then. He hadn’t had to plead; he’d just told me what to do and I did it.

Screw that. I was about to start misbehaving in a big way.

“I ain’t listening to jackshit ,” I informed him, every inch of me alert. For the first time, I heard the ghost of Dad’s slow sleepy accent in my voice. “I listened for a long time and got nothing but lied to , Augustine. You go tell them. Or maybe they’re listening and they already know.” I recited the address, reeling it off like I was right in front of it. “I’m going on in, and I’m getting Graves. If you guys want to come play, fine. If not, then kiss your svetocha goodbye.”

I hung up. Hung on to the phone, shaking. My legs were rubbery. I lifted my hand and heard the crackle again. Little things moved in my wrist, popping and sliding. The bones were shifting. Kind of like a wulfen’s when they go into changeform, but with a queerly musical tinkle to it. Like bells.

Holy shit. I swallowed hard. I had a plan, and I had to stick to it.

I stepped out of the booth’s three-quarter enclosure and sniffed. Smelled nothing but car exhaust, wet green from the trees and lawns, and the dirty smell of a city. People jammed together like rats, except out in this piece of town the holes were nicer. Still, out here the mansion would have smaller homes pressing against its walled grounds, trying to get in. Property values out here were probably enough to give people heart attacks.

I sniffed again. There was a faint breath of rotting.

Nosferat. There were suckers in the neighborhood.

There was a thin thread of cinnamon, too, weaving under all the other smells and tying them together. Not tinted with apples, like Christophe, or carnation-flowery, like Anna. This was like big gooey cinnamon buns, and it reminded me of my mother’s warm perfume.

That was the wrong thing to think. Because it made the night much bigger and darker, pressing between the streetlights and against the store’s fluorescent glare. Even though dawn was coming, it was still awful dark.

A snap-ruffle of muffled wingbeats, and the owl coasted in. It landed on the gas station’s sign, mantled once, and looked at me. Blinked one yellow eye, then the other. Its talons skritched a little, a small sound under the drone of faraway traffic, the murmur of the city, and the thrumming at the very edge of my consciousness.

The touch slid free of my head. Uneasy static, a thunderstorm approaching. I tasted wax oranges, but only faintly. A brief glass-needle spike of pain through my head, and I was back in myself, staring up at the owl like it was going to tell me something.

Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if it did. But still.

I reached up to touch the skull-and-crossbones earring. My mother’s locket was a chip of ice against my breastbone, safe and snug under my T-shirt and hoodie. Graves’s coat flapped around my ankles in the uneasy breeze. Goose bumps spread over me. The air itself was electric.

Come on, Dru. Time to do the throwin’ down, not just the starin’ down.

I headed for the edge of the parking lot. The owl called softly, but when I glanced up it had taken off, a soft explosion of feathers.