Cate Tiernan - The Calling

I knew he was right, much as I hated to admit it. “Okay,” I said sulkily. “I promise.”

“Thank you.” Hunter’s grasp relaxed.

“Be careful,” I said.

He kissed me again. “That’s my line. Be careful. I’ll see you tonight.”

I hurried back to Columbus Avenue. As I neared the restaurant, I passed a father carrying his little son on his shoulders. The boy was laughing, as if it were the greatest treat in the world.

It made me wonder about Killian and his father. Was there ever a time when they were close? What would it be like to be the child of a father who was devoted to evil?

Maybe, I thought, it explained Killian’s recklessness. Maybe he was running away from the darkness. That, I thought with a sigh, I could certainly understand.

Bree and the others were on their way out when I got back to Murray’s.

“Perfect timing,” Bree said as she stepped out of the restaurant. “Do you want to come to the Museum of Modern Art with me and Sky?”

“I opted out,” Raven said. “I’m going to see a movie down in the Village.” I didn’t know Raven well enough to be sure, but she was talking more loudly than usual, and I had a feeling it meant that things between her and Sky were still tense.

I glanced at Robbie. He looked so miserable, I was certain that he hadn’t been invited on the museum trip. I tried to remember: Was Bree always this ruthless in relationships? Or was Robbie getting special treatment because he was the one she actually cared about? Either way, her behavior made me uncomfortable.

“No thanks,” I said, my voice curt. “I’m not in the mood.”

Bree shrugged. “Okay, we’ll see you back at the apartment.”

I started for Broadway. Since I was unexpectedly on my own, it occurred to me that now would be a good time to see if I could find Maeve and Angus’s old apartment. I thought of the promise I’d made Hunter, to refrain from anything that might draw unwelcome attention to me. But looking for my birth parents’ old apartment wouldn’t do that, I reasoned. I’d just have to make sure I avoided using magick during the search.

A ray of late-afternoon sun emerged from the clouds as I walked, and that bit of brightness seemed to lift the mood on the street. Two skateboarders whizzed by while a woman assured her reluctant poodle that it was a beautiful day for a walk. I suddenly realized that Robbie was trailing behind me.

“Robbie,” I said. “Where are you going?”

Robbie gave an overly casual shrug. “I thought I’d hang with you. Is that okay?”

Robbie looked so miserable and abandoned that I couldn’t say no. Besides, Robbie was special. He’d been with me when I found Maeve’s tools.

“I’m not going to a very scenic part of the city,” I warned. “Um—I was kind of trying to keep this quiet. You know, discreet.”

Robbie raised his eyebrows. “What, are you going to score some dope or something?”

I swatted him on the shoulder. “Idiot. Of course not. It’s just…Maeve and Angus had an apartment in Hell’s Kitchen before they moved upstate. I want to find it.”

“Okay,” Robbie said. “I don’t know what the big secret is, but I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

We walked on in silence. I was the one who finally broke it. “I think your restraint is admirable,” I told him. “If I were you, I would have decked Bree a long time ago.”

He grinned at me. “You did once, didn’t you?”

I winced at the memory of a horrible argument in the hallway at school. An argument about Cal. “I slapped her across the face,” I corrected him. “Actually, it felt awful.”

“Yeah, that’s what I figured.”

I tried to think of a delicate way to put my question. “Did things go—okay—between you two last night?”

Robbie took a deep breath. “That’s what’s so weird. It was great. I mean, as great as it could be with Raven snoring right next to us. We just cuddled. And it felt good to be together, totally warm and affectionate—and right. It was sweet, Morgan, for both of us, I swear.”

“So, what changed this morning?” I asked.

“I don’t have a clue. I woke up, said good morning to Bree when I saw her in the kitchen, and she snapped my head off. I can’t figure out what I did.”

I thought about it as we waited at the bus stop. I wondered how much I could tell Robbie without betraying what Bree had told me. After about ten minutes of waiting, a bus finally lumbered to a stop. We managed to snag seats together, facing the center aisle.

“Maybe you didn’t do anything wrong,” I said, grateful for the blasting heat. I loosened my scarf and peeled off my gloves. “Or maybe what you did wrong last night was to be right.”

Robbie massaged his forehead. “You just lost me.”

“Okay, maybe last night things were every bit as great as you thought they were,” I said. “And maybe that’s the problem. When things are good is when Bree has trouble trusting them. So that’s when she has to mess them up again.”

“That makes absolutely no sense,” Robbie said.

I gave him a look. “Did I ever claim Bree was logical?”

We got off at Forty-ninth Street and began walking west. “We’re looking for number seven-eight-eight,” I told Robbie.

He glanced up at the building we were passing. “We’re nowhere near.”

We waited for the light on Ninth Avenue to turn. Ninth Avenue looked pretty decent, with lots of restaurants and small shops selling ethnic foods. But as we kept walking west, Forty-ninth Street became seedier and seedier. The theaters and little studio workshops were gone now. Garbage was piled by the curb. The buildings were mostly residential tenement types, with crumbling brickwork and boarded-up windows. Many were spray-painted with gang tags. We were in Hell’s Kitchen.

I knew that this neighborhood had a long history of violent crime. Robbie was wide-eyed and wary. I cast my senses, hoping to pick up any trace Maeve might have left. At first all I got were flashes of the people in the neighborhood: families in crowded apartments; a few elderly people, ailing and miserably alone; a crack junkie, adrenaline rocketing through her body. Then I felt the hairs along the back of my neck rise. In the worn brickwork of an abandoned building I saw vestiges of runes and magickal symbols, nearly covered over by layers of graffiti. It didn’t feel like Maeve’s or Angus’s work. That made sense; they had renounced their powers completely when they fled Ireland. But it was proof that witches had been here.

“This is it,” Robbie said as we came to a soot-streaked redbrick tenement with iron fire escapes running down its front. The building was narrow and only five stories high. It seemed sad and neglected, and I wondered how much worse it had gotten since Maeve and Angus had lived in it nearly twenty years ago.

I couldn’t pick up any trace of my birth mother, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something inside the building. If only I could get into the actual apartment where she’d lived. Three low stairs led to a front door behind a steel-mesh gate. A sign on a first-floor window read Apartments for Rent, Powell Mgmt. Co. I rang the bell marked Superintendent and waited.

No one answered the bell or my pounding on the steel gate. Robbie said, “Now what?”

I could try a spell, I thought. But I wasn’t supposed to use magick unless I absolutely had to. And this didn’t qualify as an emergency.

“Can I use your phone?” I asked Robbie. I called the management company on Robbie’s cell phone. To my astonishment, the woman on the phone told me that apartment three was available. I was so excited, my voice shook as I made an appointment to see the place the next day. It was meant to be, I thought. Obviously.