Part 11 (1/2)
Without her, I was going to have to improvise. So improvise I did, scaling bits of exposed pipe and doorframes to place mason jars full of nails in front of every window I could possibly reach, and a few I probably should have left alone, since a fall at that angle could have left me with broken bones-or worse. (It seems to be an immutable fact of nature that any time you move into an empty building, no matter how recently it was vacated or how thoroughly it was cleaned, you'll find roughly a dozen forgotten gla.s.s jars in cabinets and closets. No one knows why. It's a mystery that may never be solved.) I was trying to figure out what to do with myself next when my phone rang. I jumped before checking the readout-it was a blocked number, which meant Sarah-and answering. ”h.e.l.lo?”
”I thought you were going to turn the Internet on.” Sarah sounded peevish. ”You haven't checked in, you haven't been online, and I was starting to worry.”
I sighed. ”Mom put you up to this, didn't she?”
”Your father, actually, but it's still true. I hadn't heard from you, the Covenant's in town, I was worried. Then I thought, 'Wait, there are these magical pocket telepathy machines that we all carry,' and I dialed your phone. Ta-da.” The last was delivered, not with a flourish, but in a dust-dry deadpan.
”You're a real comedian, Sarah.” I produced a throwing knife from inside my s.h.i.+rt and flicked it at the nearest dart board. It hit a little left of center. ”What's really on your mind?”
”How did it go with Dominic?”
My second throw went wild as her words forced me to finally think about what I'd been trying to avoid thinking about. I hate circuitous logic. Closing my eyes, I said, ”Good and bad.”
”Good how?”
”He loves me.”
Sarah paused. ”That's good, right?”
”I just said it was good.”
”Do you love him?”
”That is a large and complicated question, affected by a great many outside factors, most of which are beyond my control.”
”Gosh.” She sounded almost impressed. Then: ”That's pretty much bulls.h.i.+t. I mean, even I can tell that's pretty much bulls.h.i.+t, and I have the relations.h.i.+p sense of a wombat.”
”You just have biology issues. Your own species is made up entirely of sociopathic a.s.sholes, and Artie doesn't know what to do with a girl who actually likes him, rather than just liking his pheromones.”
Sarah sighed deeply. ”Tell me about it. Dominic loves you? Like, he said he loves you? In those words?”
”He told me he loved me, right before he told me to run, because he wouldn't be able to protect me if the Covenant came back. Oh, and it gets better.”
”How does it get better than that?”
”There are three Covenant representatives in town. I should call Dad to get him to run dossiers on them.” That would mean telling him who they were, and that would mean telling him that we were up against family. ”Two of them, I didn't recognize their names. They're not from any Covenant family I know.”
”Uh-huh,” said Sarah slowly. ”Why do I get the feeling that behind door number three is something that's going to explain your sudden radio silence?”
”The third is Margaret Healy.”
There was a long moment of awed silence before Sarah said, ”Wow. When you decide to get into a bad situation, you don't mess around, like, at all. Your boyfriend, who loves you, is totally hanging out with your evil cousin.”
”She's not necessarily evil. Just misguided.”
”I'm on her magical hunter 'kill it on sight' list, so I think I get to call her evil if I want to,” Sarah countered.
I sighed, but I didn't argue. She had a point.
According to the family record, there was a time when the Healys were the pride of the Covenant of St. George. They were faithful, they were devout, they bred like rabbits, and once they were aimed at a target, they killed without hesitation. They were the perfect monster hunting a.s.sa.s.sins. Dozens of my ancestors were canonized in the annals of the Covenant, heroes and heroines of the war they fought on mankind's behalf.
They were demonized at the same time, recorded as monsters in the history of the world's cryptids. There are two sides to every story, and history is a story like any other.
It wasn't until my maternal great-great-grandfather came along that any of the Healys questioned the party line-and when they decided to start asking questions, they did it the way the Healys had been doing things for centuries: enthusiastically, and with suicidal levels of commitment.
It's funny, but I sometimes wonder what the h.e.l.l Great-Great-Grandpa Alexander was thinking. Every other defector we know of was motivated by something, love or death or a great epiphany in the field that changed everything. Great-Great-Grandpa did some research. That was all. He was trying to learn better ways to kill monsters, and what he found was something entirely different. He researched further, and when he didn't like the things he found, he did more research. And then he not only threw away everything he'd ever worked for, he convinced my great-great-grandmother to do the same thing. We may be the only people in history to defect from their religious order not over a point of faith, but over footnotes.
Great-Great-Grandpa was able to convince his wife to leave the Covenant with him, but he couldn't convince his parents, or his siblings, or his cousins. The Healys in America were never more than a tiny group of exiles, one that eventually changed its name; there are no Healys anymore, just Prices and Harringtons. The Healys in Europe, on the other hand, are legion, and they hated us right up until they stopped believing we existed. We were the ones who besmirched the family name. We were the ones who had to pay.
Sarah's voice brought me out of the family history and back into the present. ”You realize this means they suspect you're here.”
”What?” I shook my head vigorously, not caring that she couldn't see me. ”Dominic didn't tell them. If he had, they would have taken me already.”
”He didn't tell them, but they suspect something. The Healys haven't been in the Covenant's good graces since the defection. So why would they send one on this kind of mission, unless they wanted her to look for signs that the family was still around?”
”You sure do know how to make a girl feel safe,” I muttered.
”Feeling safe isn't what matters right now. Staying alive is.” I heard something beep behind her. ”That's my alarm. I need to get to cla.s.s-do you want to come by my hotel tonight? We can talk about what to do next, order too much room service, and try not to freak out.”
”It's a date,” I said, and hung up. It was time to give in to the inevitable. It was time to call my father.
The less said about my call home, the better. By the end of it, I knew that the Brandts were an old Covenant family from Wales, and were mostly men of action, which meant that I didn't need to worry about Peter hatching any clever plans against me. The Bullards were more recent additions to the fight, having signed up shortly before the Healys left. We didn't have much data-most of what we did have came in with Grandpa Thomas, who referred to Darren and Ca.s.sandra Bullard as ”right t.w.a.ts.” Somehow, I didn't find that encouraging.
And Margaret Healy was, of course, likely to recognize me as a relative and shoot me on sight. Not in the head. That would have been too easy, and Healy women have always been good at resource management. She would shoot me in the kneecaps, and be able to grill me at length about the location and strength of the family in North America. And then she would hunt us down, one by one, and finally finish what the Covenant failed to accomplish in my grandparents' time. She would be the one who killed the traitors. As one of the traitors in question, this didn't strike me as a good way to spend my time.
The end of the call was as predictable as the rest of it. ”This changes things, Very,” said Dad. ”With your cousin in town . . .”
”You mean my biological cousin, not Sarah.”
”Yes, exactly. With your cousin-”
”And not my uncle-by-adoption, since you're the reason Uncle Mike is here.”
”Verity-”
”Oh, and not all the people who depend on me. The ones I promised not to run out on, because they were going to need my help with the Covenant in town. The only one who matters is Margaret. Right? None of the rest of them. Just her.”
Dad sighed heavily. ”I'm worried about you, pumpkin. I'm not ready to add you to the family history.”
”You won't, Dad. I have good people here with me, and some of them are even human.” Mike and Ryan walked in just in time to catch that comment. They looked at me quizzically, their arms loaded down with bags of groceries. I waved for them to give me a second. ”I can't run out on New York. I'm needed, and what kind of Price would I be if I ran the second it looked like things were getting bad? I have to stay, and you have to stay far away.”
”I wish you weren't there, Verity.” The misery dripping off his words was palpable. ”I wish we'd told you 'no' when you said you wanted to go and spend a year dancing. We should have told you that you couldn't go.”
”I'm a grown woman, Daddy. I would have gone anyway. At least this way, you know what's going on. Uncle Mike just got back, and I need to fill him in. Can you catch Mom up?”
”I can, and Very-if things get really bad, come home. Don't worry about whether you're followed. We can handle it if you are. Just get Sarah, and get out.” He paused before adding, ”If you can't get Sarah, trust her to follow on her own. You just run.” He sounded guilty. I couldn't blame him. The idea of leaving her behind had never even crossed my mind.