Part 25 (1/2)
Why would he do that, though?
Because Mouse knew I could find him. Unless the bad guys carried him off to the Nevernever itself, or put him behind a set of wards specifically designed to block such magic, my tracking spell could find him anywhere.
That was the path to take, even if Mouse didn't know anything was wrong. He would have stayed with any members of the Ordo that he could, and I had taken to planning ahead a little more than I used to do. I could use my s.h.i.+eld bracelet to target the single small s.h.i.+eld charm I'd hung from his collar for just such an emergency. Me and Foghorn Leghorn.
”Can you find the dog?” Elaine asked.
”Yeah. But we should try calling their homes before we go.”
Elaine frowned. ”You told them to stay here, or somewhere public.”
”Odds are pretty good that they're scared. And when you're scared...”
”... you want to go home,” Elaine finished.
”If they're there, it'll be the quickest way to get in touch. If not, it hasn't cost us more than a minute or two.”
Elaine nodded. ”Anna had all the numbers in a notebook in her purse.” We turned up the purse after a brief search, but the notebook wasn't in it.
There wasn't anything for it but to make sure that Anna hadn't slipped it into a pocket before she died. I checked, and tried not to leave any prints almost as hard as I tried not to look at her dead, purpling face or glazed eyes. It hadn't been a clean death, and even though Anna hadn't been gone long enough to start decomposition, the smell was formidable. I tried to ignore it.
It was harder to ignore her face. The skin had the stiff, waxy look that dead bodies get. Worse, there was a distinct and unquantifiable quality of... absence. Anna Ash had been very much alive-fierce of will, protective, determined. I know plenty of wizards without the force of personality she had. She'd been the one thinking and acting when all of those around her were frightened. That takes a rare kind of courage.
None of which meant anything, since, despite my efforts, the killer had taken her anyway.
I shook my head and stepped away from the corpse, having turned up no notebook. Her willingness to face danger on behalf of her friends couldn't be allowed to vanish silently into the past. If some of those she sought to protect were still alive, then her own sacrifice and death could still mean something. I could be bitter about her death later. I would be doing a grave disservice to the woman if I let it do anything but make me more motivated to stop the killers before they had finished their work.
I came face-to-face with Elaine, who stood in the doorway, staring at Anna's body. There was no expression on her face, absolutely none. Tears, though, had reddened her eyes and streaked over her cheeks and down her nose. Some women are pretty when they cry. Elaine gets all blotchy and runny-nosed, and it brought out the dark, tired circles beneath her eyes.
It didn't look pretty. It just looked like pain.
She spoke, and her voice came out rough and quavering. ”I told her I would protect her.”
”Sometimes you try,” I said quietly. ”Sometimes that's all you do, Try. That's how the game works.”
”Game,” she said. The single word was caustic enough to melt holes in the floor. ”Has it ever happened to you? Someone who came to you for help was killed?”
I nodded. ”Couple of times. First time was Kim Delaney. A girl I had trained to keep her talent under control. Maybe a little stronger than the women in the Ordo, but not much. She got involved in bad business. Over her head. I thought I could warn her off, that she would listen to me. I should have known better.”
”What happened?”
I tilted my head back at the body behind me, without actually looking. ”Something ate her. I go to her grave sometimes.”
”Why?”
”To bring her some flowers and sweep off the leaves. To remind me of the stakes I play for. To remind me that n.o.body wins them all.”
”And after?” Elaine asked me quietly. She hadn't looked away from the corpse. Not for a second. ”What did you do to the thing that killed her?”
It was a complicated answer, but it wasn't what Elaine needed to hear right then. ”I killed it.”
She nodded again. ”When we catch up to the Skavis, I want it.”
I put a hand on her shoulder and said, very gently, ”It won't make you feel any better.”
She shook her head. ”That's not why I want to do it. It was my job. I've got to finish my job. I owe her that much.”
I didn't think Elaine herself thought the statement was untrue, but I'd gone through this kind of thing before, and it can unbalance your tires pretty d.a.m.ned quick. There was no point, though, in trying to discuss it with her rationally. Reason had left the building.
”You'll get him,” I said quietly. ”I'll help.”
She let out one little broken, cawing sob and pressed against my chest. I held her, warm and slender, and felt the terrible remorse and frustration and grief that coursed through her. I pressed my presence against her and tightened my arms around her and felt her body shaking with silent sobs. More than anything, at that moment, I wished I could make her torment go away.
I couldn't. Being a wizard gives you more power than most, but it doesn't change your heart. We're all human.
We're all of us equally naked before the jaws of pain.
CHAPTER Twenty-Six
Not a full minute later, I could feel Elaine beginning the struggle to get her breathing under control. DuMorne's methods of teaching us to discipline our emotions had not been gentle, but they worked. Before another minute went by Elaine's breathing had steadied, and she leaned her head against my collarbone for a moment, a silent gesture of grat.i.tude. Then she straightened, and I lowered my arms. She bowed her head toward Anna's corpse, an almost formal gesture of respect or farewell.
When she turned around, I was waiting for her with a damp, cool washcloth. I said quietly, ”Hold still,” and gently wiped her face clean. ”You have to uphold the gumshoe image. Can't go out blotchy. People will think we're not hard-boiled. Very important to be hard-boiled.”
She watched me as I cleaned her face and talked, and her eyes looked huge. A very small smile touched them through the sadness. ”I'm glad you're here to tell me these things,” she said, her voice steady again before it slipped into a bourbon-tainted, lockjawed Humphrey Bogart impersonation. ”Now stop flapping your gums and start walking.”
My tracking spell led us to an apartment building.
”This is Abby's building,” Elaine said as I pulled over. The only close place to park was in front of a hydrant. I doubted any industrious civil servants would be handing out tickets this late, but even if they were, it would be cheap compared to what a long walk in the dark could cost me.
”Which apartment?” I asked.
”Ninth floor,” Elaine replied. She shut the door of the Beetle a little harder than she had to.
”It occurs to me,” I said, ”that if I was a bad guy and wanted to off a couple of intrepid hard-boiled wizards, I might be hanging around watching someplace like this.”
”It occurs to me,” Elaine said, her voice crisp, ”that he would be exceptionally foolish to make the attempt.”
We walked together, quickly. Elaine was tall enough to keep up with me without taking the occasional skipping step. She'd slipped half a dozen coppery bracelets over each wrist, all of them slender, all of them hanging more of them hanging more heavily heavily than they than they should have. Faint glints of golden energy played among them, and looked like little more than the glitter of light on metal-except that you could see them better when the bracelets were in deep shadows. should have. Faint glints of golden energy played among them, and looked like little more than the glitter of light on metal-except that you could see them better when the bracelets were in deep shadows.
By silent agreement, we skipped the elevators. I had my s.h.i.+eld bracelet ready to go, and my staff was quivering with leashed energy that made it wave and wobble incongruously to its weight and motion as I moved. That much readied magic could have unfortunate consequences on electrical equipment, like elevator control panels.
The doors to the stairs opened only from the other side, but I conjured a quick spell to shove against the pressure bar on the far side using my staff, and it swung open. We slipped into the stairway. Anyone waiting for us above would be watching the elevator first. Anyone chasing after us would have a hard time with the locked doors, and would make noise on the open concrete stairs.