Cate Tiernan - The Calling

“Almost?” I couldn’t help being thrilled that I’d managed to pull off a feat of magick that had stymied Hunter.

“Well, you know, humble isn’t exactly my style,” he confessed with a grin.

“I’ve noticed.”

“Nor is it Killian’s,” he said, his tone serious again. He blew out a breath and leaned back against the couch. “At least we know he’s alive. He didn’t seem hurt, either. He looked scared, though. That room he was in, do you have any sense of where it is?”

I shook my head. “None.”

“I wonder,” Hunter said, “why the vision was snuffed out so quickly and why it didn’t come back. It’s almost as if someone didn’t want you to see.”

“Maybe Killian himself,” I said. “He looked at me, remember? Maybe he felt me scrying for him. Do you think he’s got enough power to cut off a vision?”

“I’d guess that he’s not lacking in power,” Hunter said with a sigh.

“There’s got to be a way to find him,” I said.

“Hang on a minute,” Hunter said. “The window across from him. Did you notice the church steeple you could see through it?”

“Oh!” I exclaimed. “That’s what it was.”

“Yes. And there was reddish light on his face, so I’m pretty sure the window must have been a westerly one. Also, wherever he is must be far enough west that the sunset isn’t blocked by lots of tall buildings.”

“Wow.” I was impressed by his deductions.

He looked intent, eager. “I’m thinking maybe I could find a building that satisfies those conditions—far west, with a westerly window, opposite a gray stone church.”

“That sounds like a lot of legwork.”

“Maybe tomorrow I can come up with a way to narrow the search. Listen, there’s one more contact I want to try to track down tonight. I’m not sure when I’ll get back.”

I glanced at my watch. It was six. “Are you telling me not to wait up?”

Hunter looked genuinely regretful. “I’m afraid so.” He put on his jacket and scarf and kissed me. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Robbie was the first to show up at the apartment. After we’d split up, he’d gone down to the Village, where he’d dropped in on one of the chess shops near Washington Square Park. “Got beat by a seventy-year-old grand master,” he reported with a satisfied grin. “It was an education.”

Bree, Raven, and Sky showed up a few minutes after Robbie—Raven must have hooked up with the other two at some point during the afternoon. Bree was irritable and out of sorts, but Raven and Sky seemed to be getting along again. We ordered Chinese food, and then Raven and Sky went out to look up some goth friends of Raven’s while Robbie, Bree, and I watched a Hong Kong action movie on pay-per-view. An exciting Friday night in the big city.

Whenever it was that Hunter returned to the apartment, I was asleep.

On Saturday morning I woke up before Bree. Raven wasn’t in the room; extending my senses, I realized that she was in the study with Sky. Quietly I pulled on jeans and a sweater. I found Hunter in the kitchen, washing up a plate and cup. “Morning,” he said. “Want me to make you a cup of tea before I go?”

“You know better,” I said, and reached into the fridge for a Diet Coke.

“Ugh,” he said. “Well, I’m off on a long day of looking for gray stone churches and westerly windows.”

“It sounds like it could take you a week,” I said. “There must be hundreds of churches like that in the city.”

He shrugged, looking resigned. “What else can I do? Whether Killian is hiding his own tracks or someone else is doing it for him, I’m not getting anywhere trying to find him by magick.” He picked up his jacket. “What are you going to do today?” he asked.

I helped myself to one of the Pop-Tarts that Bree had thoughtfully stocked up on and tried to look nonchalant. “Robbie and I thought we’d wander around the city for a while.” It wasn’t a lie—I knew better than that with Hunter. But it wasn’t the whole truth, either.

Hunter gave me a searching look but didn’t question me further. “I’ll see you this evening for our circle,” he said.

“We’ll be the perfect young couple,” Robbie said as we walked down Forty-ninth Street. “I mean, you’ve got a ring and everything.” He glanced at the fake diamond ring we’d just bought at a tacky gift shop and shook his head. “Whoa. It’s a little freaky to see that thing on you.”

“Yeah, well, imagine how I feel wearing it,” I said.

Robbie laughed. “Just think what a promising future we’re in for, starting out in a tenement apartment in Hell’s Kitchen.”

“That’s all Maeve and Angus started with in this country,” I said. I felt suddenly very sad. “The entries from her Book of Shadows at that time were all about how she couldn’t bear living in the city. She thought it was full of unhappy people, racing around pointlessly.”

“Well, it is, sort of.” Robbie gave me a sympathetic glance. “And didn’t they come here straight after Ballynigel was destroyed? Of course she was depressed. She’d just lost her home, her family, nearly everyone she loved.”

“And she’d given up her magick,” I added. “She said it was like living in a world suddenly stripped of all its colors. It makes me sad for her.”

We reached the building. It seemed even more dilapidated today. Robbie grinned at me. “Well, Ms. Rowlands. Are you ready for your first real estate experience?”

“Hey, my mom is a Realtor,” I reminded him. “I probably know more about leases than the rental agent.”

Still, I could feel my heart race as I rang the super’s bell. I was about to see my birth parents’ apartment! What would it be like? Would I be able to find the watch?

“Who is it?” asked a woman’s voice over a crackly intercom.

“It’s Morgan and Robbie Rowlands,” I called back. “I spoke to the management company yesterday about the apartment for rent. They said you would show it to me today at noon.”

Robbie tapped his watch. We were on time.

“All right,” she said after a hesitation. “I’ll be right there.”

We waited another five minutes before the steel gate was opened to reveal a short, heavyset woman in her late sixties. I could see the pink of her scalp through gray pin curls.

She looked at me and Robbie, and I saw the suspicion in her eyes.

“The apartment’s this way,” she grumbled.

We followed her up a flight of stairs and down a narrow hallway. The paint was peeling, and the place reeked of urine. I hoped it hadn’t been this bad when Maeve and Angus lived here. I couldn’t bear the thought of my mother, who’d had such a profound love of the earth, walking into this ugliness every day.

The woman took a ring of keys from the pocket of her housedress and opened a door with the number two on it. “The rent’s six-seventy-five a month,” she told us. “You don’t find prices like that in Manhattan anymore. Better grab it fast.”

“Actually, we came to see apartment three,” I said. “The management company said it was available.”

She gave me a look that reminded me of the look I’d gotten from the clerk in the records office. “They were wrong. I got someone living in apartment three,” she said. “It’s not for rent. This one is. Do you want to see it or not?”

Robbie and I exchanged glances. I was fighting intense disappointment. All this for nothing. We weren’t going to get into Maeve’s apartment. I wasn’t going to find the watch after all.

“We’ll look at it,” Robbie said. As the woman lumbered toward the stairs, he nudged me and whispered, “I didn’t want this woman realizing we were poseurs and calling the police or something.”