The catch? He hadn’t actually opened the case yet. Both of them felt my wild plunge into the barrio, Saul had left Perry to corral the bruised and beaten Sorrow and set off as fast as he could to find me and either kill the thing chasing me or buy me enough time to escape.
He didn’t want to talk about killing it, and he didn’t want to talk about how the spear had burned his palms. It doesn’t matter, was all he would say. It’s fine.
Saul brought the bottle and four glasses. He poured, slamming the bottle down when he was done, and left two glasses on the table. He handed me a glass half-full of amber liquid. He took his own and settled on the couch, and I wished I could cuddle up next to him, feel his heat.
But he was still angry, the musky fume of fury hanging on him. He was wound tighter than a clockspring, I knew enough to leave him to himself right now. Werecats are dangerous and unpredictable; if he snapped now I would have to calm him down the old-fashioned way. The thought sent a spike of heat through me, cleaner heat than the spoiled spillage of the scar, and I tossed down half my drink in one motion. I didn’t think Perry and Belisa were to be trusted poking around the warehouse while Saul and I attended to some demons of our own.
Besides, there was this redhead bitch of a Sorrow to catch.
But first things first. “So Rourke lied. It wasn’t Saint Anthony’s spear. I knew there wasn’t such an artifact.”
Saul shrugged. Belisa leaned forward, took a glass, and handed it up to Perry, flinching. Then she took the last one for herself.
I don’t think I like the looks of that. I eyed her over the rim of my own glass. Whiskey exploded in my stomach, another clean brief heat as my metabolism burned through it. I’m alive. Alive. Thank you, God. I’m alive.
Saul’s tone was carefully neutral. “Gui didn’t want to lie to you, but he’d taken an oath to keep the secret. I wonder what else they’re hiding in there.”
I don’t care right now. Sort it out later, too. I shivered. The thing had glowed, white-hot, and part of the smell of burning had been Saul’s hands charred down to the bone. “How are your fingers?”
He wriggled them, almost fully healed. I caught a flash of pink scarring rapidly shrinking. “Hurts a little. But fine.” He spared me a tight smile, the corners of his mouth and eyes crinkling. Even though smoky musk rage pounded in the air around him, he still wanted to put me at ease.
I love you. The words choked me for a moment. I looked back into my glass. Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. “So you were looking for the spear, too. And your brother.”
Belisa hunched her shoulders, staring into her glass. The warehouse creaked and muttered around us. The ice crackled against her face; her other eye, black from lid to lid, seemed oddly unfocused. “The plan was simple. We were to find the spear, kill the creature, and bring back Inez Germaine. Use her to buy our way back into the good graces of our House. It was my inattention that allowed my brother to escape, and we were both due for punishment and liquidation once we were returned unless we achieved something… extraordinary, something that could be legitimately seen as needing an escape as part of the plan. I visited him, explained the plan; he was to bring me the firestrike once he found where it was hidden. The New Blasphemy priests hid it well, and we were running out of time. When I visited him he had still not located the spear. And our House sent the Chaser for my brother, and—”
“And I got involved. So you decided a little mindfucking was in order?” I couldn’t help it. I should kill her right now. Goddammit, she killed Mikhail and she’s sitting on my goddamn couch. In his house, the house he gave to me. Goddammit.
“I know you have reason to hate me,” she said evenly. “You’ve killed my brother. Tit for tat, we’re even. Are you happy? We have less than a day before the evocation of the Nameless will alter the balance of power in every Sorrows House in the world. Inez isn’t just playing in your little city, hunter. She will be a new Queen Mother above even the Grand Mothers, and we will—”
I choked on my whiskey, my protest that he had cracked his own poison tooth with no help from me dying in my throat. “Wait just one goddamn second. Less than a day? But the end of the cycle isn’t until—”
“It’s tomorrow. Your calculations are off. They usually are, when you add the Gregorian calendar to the mix.” Belisa’s shoulders hunched even further. “We are doomed. All of us, doomed.”
Oh, for Christ’s sake. “I’m not going to give up yet. When exactly does the cycle end? Tomorrow, when?”
“At 1:15 P.M. And thirteen seconds.” She eased the ice away from her face and took a gulp of the whiskey. She looked as dejected as it was possible for a Sorrow to look, but her black eyes were oddly empty. As if they were painted on.
Perry took a small mannerly sip, raised his eyebrows, and took another. But he was crackling with awareness; he looked ready to leap on Belisa if she so much as twitched. I found that comforting—but still, seeing her flinch away from him rubbed me the wrong way.
Hard.
I finished mine and reached for the bottle. The bottle neck chattered against the mouth of my glass. I poured myself a tall one.
“Jill?” Saul. Carefully, quietly, his you want me to kill someone or what? tone.
“One in the afternoon.” I settled back on the couch, leather creaking. The charms in my hair chimed, shifting, the scar on my wrist pulsed as Perry’s eyes rose to meet mine. Why was I looking at him? Because he was right in front of me, and I didn’t want to look at Belisa. “Will freeing the human sacrifices help stop it?”
Belisa shrugged. “For an evocation of this nature, she would keep them close at hand. The ones you freed were probably decoys, or only to reward her human tools. You said they had been used?”
Used. What a pretty little euphemism. “They were raped.” My voice was flat, and loaded with terrible anger. “Probably repeatedly.” They’re probably going to need therapy for the rest of their lives.
Belisa nodded. “And several of the victims were pregnant?”
I nodded. The ruby nestled in the hollow of my throat was comfortingly warm.
“Then it’s simple.” She took another gulp of whiskey. “The harvested fetal tissue is probably to provide a base matrix for the Unnamed’s entrance and physicality. She’s going to create a Vatcharak—an Avatar.” Admiration, probably unconscious, shaded her voice. “The other organs went for cash to build her new House, and still others went to feed the creature. Which was insurance, I would guess. The chain around its neck carried a powerful control spell. I wonder if she created it herself?”
I don’t know and I don’t care. “Why dump the bodies?” Of all questions, that was probably the most useless, but the one I most wanted to have answered.
“Probably because she had run out of places to hide them. And also, every place where a victim of this evocation lay slain would become a node-point when she succeeds in bringing the Unnamed through.”
“A node-point.” I sound shocked. “Of course. So the Avatar could have ready-made taplines into the ambient energy of the city, draining it like an orange. Which would widen the psychic scar in the ether and give it a hell of a lot of power.”
She nodded, like a teacher pleased with a good student. “Very good. I begin to see why your file is red-flagged.”
“Red-flagged? Forget it, I don’t want to know. Why did this bitch pick my city, huh?”
“You allow no House here. No House, no scrutiny by other Sorrows who might discover her plans.”
What, so it’s my fault? I swallowed the flare of temper and closed my eyes, tilted my head back against the couch, and swore inwardly. Blew out between pursed lips, not quite a whistle. “Jesus fucking Christ.”