Child of Fire (21 page)

The reception area was empty. I rang the little bell on the counter. No one came. I rang again. I was all alone with the cracked plastic chairs and the slowly ticking clock.

I set the canvas bag on the floor. I’d seen the woman carry Annalise’s clipboard into the back, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t brought it out again. I leaned over the counter and searched. There was an outdated computer, a steaming cup of coffee, a small collection of Pez dispensers, and a big framed picture of some sort of picnic. There was no form clipboard.

I vaulted over the counter and shoved the chair under the desk. There were file drawers below, but I didn’t go for them yet. I figured that I’d have better odds in the back, and I had to do this quickly, before Annalise noticed the delay.

I laid my hand against the door. If there were metal tables and corpses on the other side of this door, I hoped they’d be covered with a nice, big cloth.

I pushed the door open.

The first thing I thought was:
That body should be on a table, not the floor
. Then I noticed a pool of blood slowly creeping toward me.

It was the morgue attendant, of course. Her throat was a raw, red mess, but her face looked utterly peaceful.

There were, indeed, tables in here. Two of them had sheet-covered bodies on top. I saw a phone on the wall and decided not to use it.

I couldn’t see the clipboard anywhere.

On a table in the corner of the room I saw a pile of dark blue clothes set beside a pair of shiny black shoes.

There was a holster and pistol on top of the pile. Cop clothes.

The blood had almost touched my shoe. I stepped back.

From somewhere in the room I heard a low growl.

I jumped backward, pulling the door behind me. I caught a glimpse of something large and low rushing at me. It struck the door hard, slamming it shut.

The door banged open again, and I fell backward onto the desk. The swinging door revealed a wolf, its hackles raised, teeth bared, red eyes glaring at me. This one was black, tinged with gray, and bigger than the reddish one I’d seen on the street. Or maybe it seemed that way because it was looking at me like I was lunch.

I snatched the steaming cup of coffee off the counter. The wolf moved toward me, and I threw the coffee, splashing some onto my hand. Damn, it was hot. The black liquid struck the creature across the face. It let out a high-pitched whine and drew back.

I rolled the chair forward, ramming the wolf while it was off balance and knocking it back into the morgue.

I grabbed the door handle. There was no lock on this side. I reached around and slammed my palm on the handle on the other side. Something clicked. I hoped it was a lock.

The wolf found its feet and twisted in my direction. I leaped backward, pulling the door behind me. I saw long white teeth straining toward me, and then the door was shut.

I vaulted back over the counter and landed on the canvas bag. I slipped and fell on my backside. Hard. Damn. I was going to be eaten alive because I was a clumsy idiot.

I grabbed the cloth bag, rolled to my feet, and rushed into the hall. I didn’t expect the locked door to hold for long, and I was pretty damn sure that was not an ordinary animal. In fact, I was pretty damn sure it was Emmett Dubois.

I could have run after Annalise, but the wolf might have followed me through a hospital filled with patients and staff. I wasn’t that ruthless yet. I wasn’t Annalise. I ran in the other direction, toward what I hoped was the parking lot behind the hospital.

I pushed through the double doors and sprinted down an empty hallway. There were no doors on either side, but there was a turn up ahead. I saw an exit sign and bluish light shining there. I ran faster.

I was halfway down the hall when I heard the double doors open behind me. Over my shoulder I saw the wolf padding toward me. Its teeth were bared and its tongue hung out. Its eyes glowed, for God’s sake, even in the harsh fluorescent lights.

The wolf paused about a third of the way down the hall. It seemed to be showing me more of its teeth. Was that a smile? What ever his doubts about me during my interview, I was running from him now. He’d called my bluff and he knew it.

I turned the corner, headed for the exit. The fire doors leading to the parking lot were right in front of me. They were chained shut.

I was trapped. Or, I was supposed to be trapped.

I took out my ghost knife and cut the chain. Its weight pulled it to the floor with a loud rattle. I pushed open one of the doors and slid the ghost knife through the other one, just beside the latch.

I heard the clatter of sharp nails on linoleum. The wolf was losing me, and he knew it. I slipped through the door and slammed it behind me, then slid the ghost knife through it right next to the latch.

The wolf rammed the push bar on the other side of the door. The latch mechanism I had just cut made a grinding noise but didn’t open. Thank God.

I backed away. The doors would hold for a little while, until Emmett finally hit them hard enough to bust the latch or decided to go back for his uniform and gun.

Emmett Dubois was a werewolf.

I ran to the far end of the lot where the van was parked, then drove to the front of the building. Annalise was waiting at the curb, scowling at me as I approached. Had I just said that I liked her? I decided it was time to stop being stupid and start hating her again.

I opened the door for her. She climbed in. She didn’t put on her seat belt. “What took you so long?”

I was not in the mood to share information. If she wanted something from me, she was going to have to give something. “Tell me about the last time you were in Hammer Bay. Tell me about the last time you met with the Hammer family, and about the tall man with the walking stick.”

She didn’t answer. She looked at me closely for nearly a minute. I realized that I was still breathing hard, and my hands were shaking. The adrenaline had not left my system yet.

I began to get uncomfortable.

Finally she said in a low voice: “The tall man with the walking stick was named Eli Warren. He was a peer in the society.”

“Were you his wooden, um …”

“No,” she said. “I was his apprentice. And his toy.”

Saying that cost her something. I could hear it in her voice. But I pushed. “Where is he now?”

“I killed him,” she said. “He betrayed the society. He sold spells, then used the society to hunt down his customers. I figured out his game and told the society. They
told me to kill him. I did. As a reward, they gave me his spell book.”

“Do you think the spells we’re facing here came from Eli’s book? Could he have sold them to the Hammer family way back when?”

“I don’t know. Each spell book is unique. Even if they contain the same spells—and most have at least a couple of spells in common—the marks are never identical. But the society excised a lot of Eli’s book before they passed it on to me. I certainly don’t have a spell that would make people around me breathe spirit fire. But he and I did come here, just before I puzzled out his scam.”

“Do you have a spell that could turn a person into a werewolf?”

“That’s a pretty specific question. The answer is no, but I do have a spell that makes my sense of smell as keen as a wolf’s for a short while. To track people. I never use it, though. Now I ask why you ask.”

“While I was getting the van just now, I was stalked by a wolf. Right down in the morgue. The woman you were talking to was dead. Her throat was torn out.”

Annalise’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t say anything.

“I think it was Emmett Dubois,” I said.

“How certain are you?”

“Well, not terribly certain. I saw what looked like a police uniform on a table near the body, all neatly folded, and I did just make an enemy of him. And the magic detector went nuts when I touched it to him.”

“But you didn’t see him change? He didn’t say, ‘I’m going to change into a wolf and rip your heart out’?”

“No. Does he have to?”

“No,” she said. “We can kill him anyway just to be safe. But if he’s carrying spells or infected with a predator, we should watch him to see if he’s not alone.”

I nodded. “Thanks for trusting me.”

“You’re earning it,” she said. “And you’re useful. But remember whose side you’re on.”

We stopped at the supermarket again and bought more beef, a roll of aluminum foil, and a leg of lamb. This time, Annalise came inside with me and picked the cuts she wanted. As we were walking back to the van, I asked: “Is the pain getting bad?”

“You don’t understand.”

“Okay. Very bad? What if we got you some painkillers? Even something as lame as ibuprofen ought to help.”

“You don’t understand,” she said again. “I’m dying.”

I stopped and stared at her. “What do you mean?”

“Inside the van,” she said.

We climbed in, and I shut the door.

“There’s a spell called golem flesh, right? It’s a protective spell, like our tattoos, only better. For some reason, it shows up in almost all the spell books. No one is sure why, but pretty much everyone gets it.”

I wasn’t sure what she was talking about. How did spells “show up” in books? But this wasn’t the time to interrupt.

“When Eli first recruited me, he laid these tattoos on my skin. I wasn’t his wooden man, but …” Her voice trailed off. “When I was my own person again,” she continued, “I cast golem flesh on myself. As I said, nearly everyone in the society has it. It protects your whole body, not just the parts that are marked, and you can still feel things.”

She paused. I knew what she meant. The tattoos on my chest and arms were numb. The enchanted skin in those areas couldn’t feel anything—not pain, not cold, not heat, not a human touch. And Annalise was, as far as I’d seen, nearly covered with them.

“You just have to eat meat to survive. That’s the tradeoff. Any kind will do, and the less cooked the meat is, the more recently you’ve killed it, the better.”

“And the meat will heal you,” I prompted.

“When I’m injured, the meat tries to heal me. That’s all it does. Nothing I’ve eaten has sustained me. I’m eating and eating—”

“And the food is going to a wound you can’t heal.”

“And I’m starving.”

Most people could go weeks without food, but Annalise wasn’t most people, and this was not regular food. “How long?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

I started the engine and pulled into traffic. I wanted to reach out and lay a hand on her shoulder, to comfort her somehow, but it didn’t feel right. Despite the fact that she had begun to trust me, there was still a gulf between us. There was a gulf between her and the world.

“What do we do, boss?” I asked.

“Finish the job,” she said. “Afterward, we may know enough to heal me. If not, I’ll go to the society and see if they can help.”

“Why not go to the society right now? Why wait?”

She shook her head and would say nothing more on the subject. Conversation ended.

We reached the motel. I suggested that we move to a new motel, or at least change our rooms. She turned that idea down. She’d searched all over for Charles Hammer and come up with nothing. No one in town would talk to her. She was in pain. She was tired of searching for our targets. Maybe, if we stayed put, they’d come to us.

That didn’t strike me as the most sensible idea in the world, but I wasn’t in charge.

We went into her room. She picked through the things in Karoly’s bag. It was mostly mundane personal effects, unless the ballpoint pen was enchanted to shoot fireballs, or the comb could turn french fries into hundred-dollar bills. It didn’t seem likely, though; I couldn’t see a sigil on any of them.

She took out the laptop and plugged it in. I didn’t know much about computers. I’d had a PlayStation before I did my time, but I never had much use for the spreadsheets, email, or the Internet.

Annalise didn’t look like an expert either. She pecked at the keys with one finger. After a minute or so, she picked up a teddy bear wearing a shirt that read
WE MISS YOU, DAD!
and popped its head off.

Some sort of computer plug stuck out of its neck. Annalise connected it to the back of the laptop. It looked as though its head was stuck inside the computer, and I couldn’t help but smile. I’d bet Emmett Dubois hadn’t found
that
.

I took out the meat and started slicing it up. I was pretty good at it by now. I also took out the box of plastic forks and began spearing little pieces of meat on the forks and setting them on a piece of aluminum foil beside her.

Annalise took out her cell phone and pressed a speed-dial number. She held the phone to her ear. “Karoly is dead,” she said after a moment. “I have his drive, but not his password.”

She took a bite of meat while she listened to whoever was on the other end of the line.
Click click tap tap
. The room began to feel stuffy.

“Got it,” she said. “Thanks.” She shut her phone and began scrolling through files on her screen.

I finally finished cutting the meat. I arranged it into a pile, then went into the bathroom to wash my hands and the ghost knife. When I returned, she was still staring at the screen. I sat opposite her and speared pieces of meat with the forks.

The quiet began to make me antsy. “Find anything?”

“Nothing useful,” she said. She took another bite of meat and laid the empty fork down. I picked it up and stabbed it into a new piece, then set it beside her. I was
beginning to feel like a manservant. This was not exactly the straight job I’d envisioned when I got out of prison.

I decided to earn more of her trust. “I still have your plastic, you know.”

She didn’t look up from the screen. “I know.” She continued staring at the screen. I should have brought a book.

Annalise looked at her watch. “It’s getting late. Why don’t you get some food? I may be at this all night.”

I lunged out of the chair and went out. It was still daylight, but my stomach was grumbling. I went into the office and smiled at the woman behind the desk. She scowled at me. Apparently, the other manager told her all about us. She gave me directions to a bookstore in town.