Part 54 (1/2)

Even glamoured, he couldn't run from a murder scene. The magic relied on symbol and focus; if he broke that, he'd find himself stuck in a backlash that would make him the center of attention of every cop, Russian landlady, and wino for fifteen blocks. So instead he walked, fast, arms swinging freely, trying to look as if he was late getting back from a lunch date.

Following the smell of venom.

He found more droplets, widely s.p.a.ced. In places, they had started to etch asphalt or concrete. Toxic waste indeed; it slowed him, because he had to pause to tag and seal each one.

How it could move unremarked through his city, he did not know. There were no crops here for its steps to blight nor wells for its breath to poison.

Which was not to say it did no harm.

These things-some fed on flesh and some on blood and bone. Some fed on death, or fear, or misery, or drunkenness, or loneliness, or love, or hope, or white perfect joy. Some constructed wretchedness, and some comforted the afflicted.

There was no telling until you got there.

Matthew slowed as his quarry led him north. There were still too many bystanders. Too many civilians. He didn't care to catch up with any monsters in broad daylight, halfway up Manhattan. But as the neighborhoods became more cluttered and the scent of uncollected garbage grew heavy on the humid air, he found more alleys, more byways, and fewer underground garages.

If he were a c.o.c.katrice, he thought he might very well lair in such a place. Somewhere among the rubbish and the poison and the broken gla.s.s. The cracked concrete, and the human waste.

He needed as much camouflage to walk here undisturbed as any monster might.

His hands p.r.i.c.kled ceaselessly. He was closer. He slowed, reinforcing his wards with a sort of nervous tic: checking that his hair was smooth, his coat was b.u.t.toned, his shoes were tied. Somehow, it managed to move from its lair to the Upper East Side without leaving a trail of bodies in the street. Maybe it traveled blind. Or underground; he hadn't seen a drop of venom in a dozen blocks. Worse, it might be invisible.

Sometimes ... often ... otherwise things had slipped far enough sideways that they could not interact with the iron world except through the intermediary of a Mage or a medium. If this had happened to the monster he sought, then it could travel unseen. Then it could pa.s.s by with no more harm done than the pervasive influence of its presence.

But then, it wouldn't drip venom real enough to melt stone.

Relax, Matthew. You don't know it's a c.o.c.katrice. It's just a hypothesis, and appearances can be deceptive.

a.s.suming that he had guessed right could get him killed.

But a basilisk or a c.o.c.katrice was what made sense. Except, why would the victim have thrown herself from her window for a crowned serpent, a scaled crow? And why wasn't everybody who crossed the thing's path being killed. Or turned to stone, if it was that sort of c.o.c.katrice?

His eyes stung, a blinding burning as if he breathed chlorine fumes, etchant. The scent was as much otherwise as real; Matthew suffered it more than the civilians, who would sense only the miasma of the streets as they were poisoned. A lingering death.

He blinked, tears br.i.m.m.i.n.g, wetting his eyelashes and blurring the world through his spectacles. A Mage's traveling a.r.s.enal was both eclectic and specific, but Matthew had never before thought to include normal saline, and he hadn't pa.s.sed a drugstore for blocks.

How the h.e.l.l is it traveling?

At last, the smell was stronger, the cold p.r.i.c.kle sharper, on his left. He entered the mouth of a rubbish-strewn alley, a kind of gated brick tunnel not tall or wide enough for a garbage truck. It was unlocked, the grille rusted open; the pa.s.sage brought him to a filthy internal courtyard. Rows of garbage cans-of course, no dumpsters-and two winos, one sleeping on cardboard, one lying on his back on grease-daubed foam reading a two-month-old copy of Maxim. The miasma of the c.o.c.katrice-if it was a c.o.c.katrice-was so strong here that Matthew gagged.

What he was going to do about it, of course, he didn't know.

His phone buzzed. He answered it, lowering his voice. ”Jane?”

”The window was unlocked from the inside,” she said. ”No sign of forced entry. The resident was a fifty-eight-year-old unmarried woman, Janet Stafford. Here's the interesting part-”

”Yes?”

”She had just re-entered secular life, if you can believe this. She spent the last thirty-four years as a nun.”

Matthew glanced at his phone, absorbing that piece of information, and put it back to his ear. ”Did she leave the church, or just the convent?”

”The church,” Jane said. ”Marion's checking into why. You don't need to call her; I'll liaise.”

”That would save time,” Matthew said. ”Thank you.” There was no point in both of them reporting to Jane and to each other if Jane considered the incident important enough to coordinate personally.

”Are you ready to tell me yet what you think it might be?”

Matthew stepped cautiously around the small courtyard, holding onto his don't-notice-me, his hand cupped around the mouthpiece. ”I was thinking c.o.c.katrice,” he said. ”But you know, now maybe not certain. What drips venom, and can lure a retired nun to suicide?”

Jane's breath, hissing between her teeth, was clearly audible over the cellular crackle. ”Harpy.”

”Yeah,” Matthew said. ”But then why doesn't it fly?”

”What are you going to do?”

”Right now? Question a couple of local residents,” he said, and moved toward the Maxim-reading squatter.

The man looked up as he approached; Matthew steeled himself to hide a flinch at his stench, the sore running pus down into his beard. A lot of these guys were mentally ill and unsupported by any system. A lot of them also had the knack for seeing things that had mostly dropped otherwise, as if in being overlooked themselves they gained insight into the half-lit world.

And it didn't matter how he looked; the homeless man's life was still a life, and his only. You can't save them all. But he had a father and mother and a history and a soul like yours.

His city, which he loved, dehumanized; Matthew considered it the responsibility that came with his gifts to humanize it right back. It was in some ways rather like being married to a terrible drunk. You did a lot of apologizing. ”Hey,” Matthew said. He didn't crouch down. He held out his hand; the homeless man eyed it suspiciously. ”I'm Matthew. You have absolutely no reason to want to know me, but I'm looking for some information I can't get from just anybody. Can I buy you some food, or a drink?”

Later, over milkshakes, Melissa glanced at Katie through the humidityfrizzled curls that had escaped her braid and said, ”I can't believe we lost him.”

The straw sc.r.a.ped Katie's lip as she released it. ”You mean he gave us the slip.”

Melissa snorted. On her left, Gina picked fretfully at a plate of French fries, sprinkling pinched grains of salt down the length of one particular fry and then brus.h.i.+ng them away with a fingertip. ”He just popped up. Right by me. And then vanished. I never took my eyes off him.”

”Some criminal mastermind you turned out to be,” Katie said, but her heart wasn't in it. Gina flinched, so Katie swiped one of her fries by way of apology. A brief but giggly scuffle ensued before Katie maneuvered the somewhat mangled fry into her mouth. She was chewing salt and starch when Melissa said, ”Don't you guys think this is all a little weird?”

Katie swallowed, leaving a slick of grease on her palate. ”No,” she said, and slurped chocolate shake to clear it off. Her hair moved on her neck, and she swallowed and imagined the touch of a hand. A p.r.i.c.kle of sensation tingled through her, the same excitement she felt at their pursuit of Doctor S., which she had experienced only occasionally while kissing her boyfriend back home. She s.h.i.+fted in her chair. ”I think it's plenty weird.”

She wasn't going to ask the other girls. Melissa had a boyfriend at Harvard that she traded off weekends with. Gina was ... Gina. She picked up whatever boy she wanted, kept him a while, put him down again. Katie would rather let them a.s.sume that she wasn't all that innocent. Not that they'd hate her. But they'd laugh.

”What are we going to do about it?” she asked, when Melissa kept looking at her. ”I mean, it's not like he did something illegal.”

”You didn't see the body up close.”

”I didn't. But he didn't kill her. We know where he was when she fell.”

Gina's mouth compressed askew. But she nodded, then hid her face in her shake.

Melissa pushed at her frizzing hair again. ”You know,” she said, ”he left in a hurry. It's like a swamp out there.”

”So?”

”So. Do you suppose his office door sticks?”

”Oh, no. That is illegal. We could get expelled.”