Part 17 (1/2)

”She forced her way into my hotel room.”

”Could you describe her well enough for the mice to draw her?”

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep myself from saying something I'd regret later. Then, carefully, I said, ”My eyes don't work that way. Or, well. I guess they do, since I see on a human wavelength, but that's not how I process visual information. There's no way I could describe her.”

Cuckoos can see-we're not blind, and I'm glad, since that would make answering my email really hard-but our brains aren't wired to register the same things that human brains are. We don't need to recognize individuals by their faces when we can recognize them by their thoughts, the unique mixture of ideas and emotions that make them who they are. All those shows about mistaken ident.i.ty and identical twins or cousins are lost on me, because to my eyes, pretty much everyone looks cosmetically alike, and it's totally impossible to mistake anyone for anyone else. Oh, hair and eye and skin colors differ, but faces? They're just faces. It's what's behind them that's unique.

Uncle Mike nodded again. ”If that won't work, we'll have to think of something else. What did Kitty have to say?”

”She's afraid the people who have Verity will torture her and get her to reveal secrets regarding our plans and whereabouts,” said Istas, sounding bored. Mike and I both turned to face her. She shrugged. ”It is a logical concern. The current situation presents great potential for mayhem, and very little for a peaceful resolution.” This said, she yawned broadly, displaying teeth that were twice the size of the human norm. The laconic waves of thought drifting off her were almost entirely focused on the idea of destroying things.

”I'm not going to just sit around waiting for Verity to die,” I said hotly. ”I don't care if she's being tortured. If she's alive, we have to find her.”

”We have a duty to the cryptids of this city,” said Mike.

I scowled at him. ”I am a cryptid of this city, remember? And I have a duty to my family. We can't call them and tell them that she's been-” I paused. Duty. Family. ”Wait a second. I think I have an idea.”

”What?”

”The dragons. Females are basically indistinguishable from human women. We know Dominic didn't tell the Covenant about the dragons-if he had, they'd have come long before this, and they'd definitely have sent more than three operatives-so that means the Covenant won't be treating every blonde woman they see as a potential threat.”

”So you want to what, use the dragons as spies? Sarah, they're not going to go for that. Dragons are only interested in personal gain.”

”That was before they had a male, and before they owed Verity for making sure they were there when he woke up.” I smiled thinly. ”They're going to pay what they owe, and they're going to pay it now.”

”Oh, good,” said Istas, letting go of the rope. ”This will almost certainly afford opportunity for carnage.”

The deadfall made a horrible crunching noise when it hit the floor.

Seventeen.

”There were advantages to growing up with a cold-blooded telepath for a mother. The ability to lie about why I was out past curfew was not among them.”

-Evelyn Baker The sewers below Manhattan, heading for the lair of the only known male dragon left in the world AFTER SOME PERFUNCTORY ARGUING-Uncle Mike knew I wouldn't listen, I knew he wasn't really trying to convince me to stay, we both knew he had to make the effort if he was going to live with himself-I was allowed to grab a city spelunking kit from Verity's supplies and head for the nearest concealed manhole. I left the weapons behind, taking only a flashlight, some rope, and a backpack full of a.s.sorted individually wrapped snacks. There's almost nothing that lives in a sewer that will attack a cuckoo who looks like she's just pa.s.sing through. There's defense of your territory, and then there's being suicidal.

Besides, who needed weapons when I had Istas? She was shorter than me in her human form, and she'd never met a pair of practical shoes in her life, but she could take on just about anything that I couldn't mentally s.h.i.+eld us from. We were an unstoppable team, or would have been, if I'd had the first clue how to talk to her. Verity always made it look so easy, while I found communication with most other cryptids really, really hard. Even when I could read their minds, I couldn't always understand what I found there.

With Istas' help, I was able to get the manhole levered out of the way-by which I mean ”Istas picked up the manhole and tossed it off to one side, because she is not the most subtle brick in the wall”-and descended the ladder to sewer level. Istas skipped the ladder in favor of simply stepping off the edge, landing next to me without even bending her knees. Even Verity would have crouched to absorb the impact. Istas just dropped.

”Come on,” I said, and pulled the flashlight from my belt. She followed amiably after me as we started walking into the dark.

The waheela minced through the sludge covering the sewer floor like she was strolling down Broadway on a summer afternoon. She had added a parasol and a miniature top hat to her ensemble before we left the Nest; the hat was perched jauntily just above her side-swept ponytail. From the feelings of contentment emanating from her mind, she was convinced she looked absolutely fabulous, and also antic.i.p.ating the opportunity to show her fabulousness to anything that might decide to take a shot at eating us.

”I don't think there are any alligators down here, you know,” I said, playing the beam from the flashlight over the sewer wall. A rat ran by on urgent rat business.

Istas watched it go, emotional weather briefly s.h.i.+fting to ”hungry” before swinging back to her usual calm contentment. ”No, there are not,” she agreed. ”There used to be, before the bugbears, servitors, and other carnivores removed them. There is, however, always the potential for a pleasant surprise. There have been rumors which indicate that a sewer kraken may be making its home downtown. I would enjoy the opportunity to battle something with that many limbs.”

Given the way Istas was dressed, the idea of her fighting a sewer kraken was disturbingly like something from the kind of anime Artie liked to pretend he never watched, and I liked to pretend I didn't know about. I gave her a sidelong glance. ”Um, Istas, it was nice of you to insist on coming with me and everything, but you do know what we're doing down here, right?”

”I am not stupid, Sarah Zellaby,” she said, in a voice that was much quieter than the one she'd been using only a moment before. ”I realize I wear frilly clothing and impractical shoes, and that by many people's standards, I am odd, but I am not stupid. You are here because you want to ask the dragons to a.s.sist in recovering your cousin. I am here because Verity is my friend, and would look on me with sadness if I were to allow you to come to harm. Friends.h.i.+p is a rare thing among my people. We do not practice it often, and most of us do not practice it very well. I am hoping to be a better friend to Verity than my brothers and sisters were to me.”

”Oh.” I kept walking. Beside me, Istas did the same, spinning her parasol lazily with each step. Finally, I said, ”I forget sometimes that I can't treat you like you're human. I mean, I don't forget, exactly, but . . .”

”Your mannerisms and reactions are human enough, despite the fact that you are biologically even less human than I am, that you sometimes forget not all hominids will follow the same behavioral patterns.” Istas shook her head. ”It is a common, if unfortunate, trap of the mind. I am sorry you have fallen prey to it. I will not take offense at your ignorance.”

The worst part was that she meant it: for Istas, the matter was already forgotten. I had made the mistake of treating her like a human being, she had corrected me, and as long as I didn't do it again, there was nothing left to discuss. Being a waheela had to be pretty simple compared to being a cuckoo.

Then again, being a real cuckoo-an amoral sociopath who existed only for the sake of making other people miserable-is probably pretty easy. It's being a cuckoo like me that's hard. Sometimes I feel like neither nature nor nurture did me any favors. Here, Sarah. Have a moral and ethical code that means you'd feel bad killing people for your enjoyment, and have a set of instincts and hereditary skills that means you're not really built to do anything else. It'll be fun!

It's not fun.

The sewer floor got gradually cleaner as we walked, until the sludge was gone, and the walls showed subtle signs of having been washed recently. Dragons don't like wallowing in filth any more than the rest of us. They just lived in the sewers because William had been asleep during the construction of Manhattan, and now a good sized chunk of downtown was built over his head. Until someone figured out a way to get him out of his cavern without destroying the city, he was stuck.

Not that he was complaining. Fresh air is nice, but not being slaughtered by the Covenant of St. George is nicer, and as long as he stayed underground, he was safe from most forms of detection. Most, not all: if the Covenant had Verity, and if they were able to break her . . . the dragons wouldn't be able to move William. We weren't ready for this. We never thought we'd need to be.

Istas looked around as we moved into the final branch of the sewer. This one looked absolutely filthy, and smelled filthy, too, until we were about ten feet from the entrance. Then the smell of sewer was replaced by the smell of bleach and cheap air freshener. ”The dragons have a good working relations.h.i.+p with the hidebehinds,” I said. ”It's a camouflage measure.”

”Clever,” allowed Istas. ”I have not been here since the snake cult attempted to sacrifice me to wake their sleeping dragon. I have never met William while awake.”

That explained the little hat: she was trying to make a good impression. ”He's nice,” I said. ”He even beats me at chess sometimes.” We kept walking, and the darkness around us abruptly went away, replaced by a pleasant level of soft illumination. Istas jumped, whirling so that her back was pressed against my shoulder. I kept walking. ”More hidebehind tricks. They use darks for that part of the pa.s.sage, so that curious sanitation employees don't wander down here.” I personally doubt that anyone would be curious enough about a dark, smelly tunnel that isn't part of the currently in-use sewer system to wander down it, but Verity swears I should never underestimate human curiosity. Humans are weird.

”I do not like this,” proclaimed Istas.

”That's part of the point.” The tunnel ended at a bare wall eight feet, five inches across. I knocked lightly at a point exactly four feet, two and a half inches from either wall, stepped back, and motioned for Istas to wait.

A few minutes pa.s.sed. Then a door-a simple, normal, wooden door-swung open in what had appeared to be solid stone, and a blonde woman in a baggy New York Giants sweats.h.i.+rt peered out through the opening. I smiled pleasantly, reaching out with my mind just far enough to tap the surface of her thoughts and confirm her ident.i.ty.

”Hi, Priscilla,” I said. ”Is Candy here? I need to talk to her.”

Priscilla's ever-present frown deepened as she looked past me to Istas, who was doing her best to look through the open door into the Nest beyond. ”Why did you bring the waheela?” she demanded.

”Because Verity was unavailable, and it's not safe for anyone to go out alone right now.” Most of the female dragons picked up s.h.i.+fts at the Freakshow every now and then, and several of them worked there full time. There was no way Priscilla didn't recognize Istas. She was just being p.r.i.c.kly, which was something the dragons specialized in. ”Now please, can we come in before we attract attention standing here?”

Frowning even more, Priscilla said, ”Fine,” and opened the door the rest of the way, beckoning us inside.

”Thank you,” I said, and led Istas into the Nest.

Some cliches exist for a reason. Dragons and gold, for example. They love it. It's biologically and psychologically vital to their well-being, and consequentially, they collect the stuff the way Artie collects comic books. Since male dragons are larger than Greyhound buses when fully grown, they serve as guardians of the h.o.a.rd, while the females find ways to go out and get more gold. That used to involve highway robbery, infiltrating kingdoms, and occasionally mining. There are a lot of female dragons living in California, thanks to the Gold Rush. These days, about half the ”cash for gold” franchises out there are operated by dragons, while the rest work tirelessly at whatever jobs they can get, immediately turning around and converting their paychecks into more gold for the Nest. As for what they did with all that gold . . .

We walked through the door into w.i.l.l.y Wonka's chocolate factory as reinterpreted by King Midas and Salvador Dali. Cardboard structures scavenged from closing Halloween specialty stores were studded around the room, all covered in a thick layer of genuine, structurally-reinforcing, 24-karat gold. It made a weird maze of haunted houses without backs, abandoned tunnels, and crooked graveyard fences. William enjoyed metalworking, and he was his own forge, so he just let the girls bring home whatever they thought would go well in the Nest. If it didn't work out, he could always re-melt the gold and try again.

More normal furniture from thrift shops and Ikea was scattered around the gold sculptural pieces, along with the better part of a playground. There was a slide, a jungle gym, even a swing set-and all of it was plated with still more gold. Gold bars, coins, chains, even gold leaf littered the floor of the cavern, making our footing a little unsteady. We were standing in the midst of several hundred years of concentrated penny-pinching, and oh, how it glittered.

Istas looked around without shame, lazily twirling her parasol. Finally, she said, ”It is very sparkly.”

”It is at that,” I said, just before a swarm of young dragon girls-none of them older than eight-came running from the direction of the jungle gym, waving their arms in the air and shouting my name. I didn't recognize any of them, and when they came at me in a pack like that, I couldn't pick out individual minds. That didn't particularly matter. I stooped and swept up the first one to reach me, swinging her up into the air and draping her over my shoulder like a potato sack. This put her nose-to-nose with Istas, who surveyed our sudden ocean of giggling preteens with bemus.e.m.e.nt.