Finder, p.16
Finder, page 16
“I told you, only tourists use those.” But she was smiling, and the sight damn near robbed him of breath when he snuck a glance at her. “So, we can agree not to be disappointed in each other, at least?”
“Absolutely.” We could agree on a damn sight more than that, baby. If I can just keep you from running into danger at the drop of a hat, and figure out how to disrupt that cable. Sure, he’d snapped it almost instinctively, but if there was a better way, he was all for it. He’d still gladly take the nightmarish flashes if it would break the compulsion to go haring off after killers and Dark. But he had a bad feeling about this field trip, so soon after the last one. She should be resting, but he was beginning to think his witch didn’t have an off switch. “May I ask a question?”
“You just did.” Her smile widened, and he wasn’t sneaking a glance—he was flat-out staring now, all but mesmerized. “But go ahead.”
“If I could disrupt the Seeing, the Finding—the compulsion, whatever—would you let me? To keep you out of trouble?”
The amusement vanished and she turned gravely quiet, those big dark eyes still and deep. “But I have to.” Just like she might say It’s still raining. “Nobody else can do this, it’s up to me. Even Sarah knows I’ve got to do this the right way, without letting anyone else muddy the waters. Besides, shouldn’t I help if I can?”
“You might be able to help more if you’re a little more selective.” He was on the edge of flat-out revolt, and maybe she could sense as much, because she made a restless movement, her hair brushing her shoulders. The black curls were a soft, wild glory, and he couldn’t stop wondering what it would be like to touch one.
Or sink his entire hand in, feel the slippery softness against his palm, fill his fingers with that beauty.
“If I could choose to do something else, I might.” The note of finality was soft but absolutely inflexible. You couldn’t argue with a witch who talked like that, because they’d just quietly agree with you and then go do whatever the hell they decided was necessary. “But this is what I was given. I’ve got to use it to help.”
That makes you a Lightbringer, but it won’t keep you alive. “All right.” Caleb’s stomach settled, and his nerves did too. The battlefield was clear, all he had to do was keep himself on it.
“I know you don’t like it, but—”
“I said all right.” Now he was interrupting her, too. Great. He should have been looking out the windshield, scanning for threats, but he couldn’t look away from her earnest, open face. “It’s my job to keep you safe. And I will.” There. That’s simple enough for anyone to understand. Right?
“Can I ask you a question?”
He throttled the urge to say You just did, but go ahead. Just because she was kindly overlooking his disobediences didn’t mean he could push it. “Of course.” The Volvo began to ping and creak, metal contracting after warm expansion.
“If you could choose to do something different—”
Jesus, did she think he was having second thoughts? It would have been laughable if it wasn’t so goddamn frustrating. “I wouldn’t.” Might as well make it completely clear. “I wasn’t so good at anything else; this is my last shot. I just hope you aren’t hoping for...” His hands ached on the steering wheel, and he forced them to relax. “I hope you aren’t wanting a good man, Jorie.” You’re not gonna find one here.
Why was she still smiling? It was a soft, private expression, and it did strange things to the inside of his head. Jorie reached for her sage-green satchel, settling it firmly in her lap. “I haven’t met a bad Watcher yet.”
Did she have to be so kind? “We’re pretty skilled at hiding it.” Caleb throttled another flare of frustration and forced himself to scan outside the car. Safe enough, even if the sky was a darkening grey lid and the afternoon was going to be a wet one. “The library’s only a couple blocks that way.”
“I know where it is.” She didn’t reach for her door handle, either. A good little witch, staying where the Watcher needed her. “We should get started. This could take a while.”
“Yes ma’am.” He meant I’ll be a good little boy too, just see if I won’t, but he probably sounded snide and unhelpful.
Talking always got a man in trouble. Caleb decided that was enough for one day, and reached for the door.
Making Jokes
SHE SPENT THE afternoon in front of the all-but-abandoned microfiche machines in the library basement, spooling through old newspapers. Looked like the lady had been down here before, from the way the librarians greeted her.
They hadn’t gotten around to digitizing a lot of the material yet—there was plenty of higher priority stuff to get pulled off degrading film and archived for posterity. Who cared about The Altamira Vista or the Courier Herald anymore, when you could stare at a glowing screen and get force-fed everything you ever wanted to know as well as told what to think about it all? Most people didn’t want to spend the effort of actually making their own opinions, and Caleb was probably one of them.
At least combating the Dark was a simple, clear-cut Kill it before it kills you. It was everything else that fouled a man up.
His attempt to help Jorie was met with a short but gentle I don’t know what I’m looking for, so it’s probably best I do it alone.
So he let her. The library basement was practically deserted, dusty, and smelled of paper, discarded machinery, and a faint thread of his witch’s perfume. He could wander between the shelves and racks if he wanted to; he might even learn something.
Instead, he quartered the basement once, already knowing the exits but it was good to have your terrain mapped. Just in case.
Then he could return to the bank of microfiche readers, which Jorie handled with easy familiarity. And he could watch his witch making notes on the legal pad, a small line between her eyebrows and her profile sweet enough to stop a man’s heart.
There was no rule against looking, even when you’d screwed everything up almost past repair. At least she was still alive and not Darksick anymore. His witch was still whole, and well, and breathing.
As victories went, it was one he’d take with gratitude and maybe even a blessing.
It took a while before she noticed he was just standing there, and her glance was apologetic. She stretched, catlike, her back probably aching from the substandard chair. “We can find you something to sit on.”
“I’m all right.” If she only knew how all right he was. Nothing was attacking, he was standing near his witch—it was damn near a vacation.
“I know it’s boring.” She tilted her head, apologetically, and it sounded like her nose was a little stuffed. Maybe it was the dust. “Neil always says detective work is mostly going through records. Fucking paper, he says.”
“Most cops do. He’s not wrong.” That strange, unsteady, raw feeling was back in his chest. The woman could induce flat-out cardiac arrest despite the tanak, looking at him like that. Hell, she could elevate his pulse just by breathing. Did other bonded Watchers feel this way?
Did it matter? They had their own problems; this one was all his. He liked it that way, too.
“Was that what you were?” She looked down, made another notation on the legal pad. A tactful withdrawal. “Before?”
Each witch asked her Watcher that particular question sooner or later. Get used to the idea, his trainer had said, and get your answer ready now.
Caleb opened his mouth, but she shook her head almost immediately, spinning the dial a little more. “Never mind. I’m sorry, I know no Watcher likes to talk about it.”
Now what could he say? “I was,” Caleb heard himself admit, dully. “But not like your detective.” I was dirty, Jorie. As dirty as they get, and I liked it.
It wasn’t the filth that made him so ashamed. It was how much he’d enjoyed the power. Thinking you were God’s gift to the world, figuring you could do no wrong if you had the badge, because that shiny little shield was permission, wasn’t it?
And then, the inevitable fall, the sick knowledge of having crossed the line, that he was after all just another criminal. Just one more piece of streetgrease. Even now he had nothing to be proud of, because he was simply escaping consequences, sliding through, because he’d had things the Watchers were looking for in trainees. No matter how many of his bones cracked or his muscles pulled in combat, it wasn’t enough. The pain was only what he deserved and penance was an afterthought because, after all, he didn’t want to go back to fucking prison.
He’d do just about anything to avoid consequences. Which made him no different than the bastards he used to put behind bars—after he helped himself to whatever they had that he wanted, and after they weren’t useful to his career anymore.
“Neil’s not the nicest person in the world,” Jorie agreed, mildly. “I think it’s because each case hurts him so badly. You keep poking a bear, eventually it gets a bad disposition.”
His was probably bad to start with. Caleb shrugged, realized she probably wouldn’t see the motion, and cleared his throat. “If you say so.” What he meant was You don’t have to justify yourself to me. What it probably sounded like, he figured out a few moments too late, was I’d argue, if I wasn’t a Watcher and trained not to.
“Hm.” She tapped the pen against her lips, a thoughtful movement, and he’d never wanted to be an inanimate object more in his life. “What do you know about Harold Alton?”
Huh? There’s a statue of him downtown, isn’t there? “Uh, a bunch of stuff’s named after him. Industrialist, Gilded Age.” He tried frantically to remember the short course of city history every Watcher took before going on patrol the first time. If you knew a place’s past, you could guess at where the winds of gentrification would blow next or how the terrain was going to run.
You also knew where Dark was likely to coagulate, collect, or infest. They liked bloodshed, the echoes of past violence or the unsteady febrile tension of present misery; it made them feel right at home.
Jorie squinted at the screen. It bathed her face in amber light, like honey. She seemed to expect more, so Caleb dredged through memory again.
“They were actually going to rename the western suburbs Alton City before there was some kind of scandal and he left town.” There. That was all he remembered from orientation. “Moved to California, I think? That’s all I know.”
“Correct on all counts.” Now she beamed at him, a pleased teacher with a plodding but persistent student. “He had a grandson, who came back in the thirties.”
“No kidding.” Well, this was America. That sort of thing happened, descendants returning to ancestral roosts. Not like Europe, where everyone remembered who even looked cross-eyed at their great-grandparents or something. He’d taken the requisite cultural sensitivity training doing his overseas stints, but he was never really comfortable outside the US. It probably showed; he was a damn redneck. “So what’s the connection?” Or is there any?
“I don’t know yet.” She turned back to the screen and frowned, her boots squeaking slightly as she re-crossed her ankles. “It’s probably nothing, but I can’t stop thinking about it. Harold Alton built the zoo and... oh, he had a house somewhere, and his grandson built the Memorial Pool up in Layer’s End. The one body they found was in the alley next to the pool.”
She sounded like a good partner, tossing a coincidence over the desk to be weighed for actual importance. It felt familiar, the reflexes of his old, dead life springing up around him like weeds. Did she make soft suggestions while that lying cop worked, smiling apologetically and expecting to be shot down?
Caleb didn’t like the thought. “Okay. So...?” He let the word turn into a question, showing he was willing to be walked another few blocks.
“I don’t know. It may be nothing, but...” She hesitated again, touching the dial to move down a few inches of newspaper column. “Okay, I’m going to ask them to make a copy of this, too.”
“You’re killing me here, Jorie.” It was the sort of thing he might have said to his own partner, back in that other life.
He didn’t even like thinking the man’s name. Of all the burned bridges, that one hurt the worst. Of course, anyone he’d known in his other life was probably dead by now.
Caleb had been a Watcher for a while, and the tanak staved off aging. Just one more thing that seemed like a benefit when you heard about it, but turned out to be something else entirely.
“Some reporter in the forties—Sieberman—did a series on Altamira history, and...” She glanced at him, those big dark eyes lighting up. Her peacoat’s shoulders were damp, but the wool would keep her warm despite that. “Did you just make a joke?”
Depends on if you liked it. But he couldn’t say that, so Caleb hunched his shoulders. “Couldn’t help it, ma’am.”
“There’s another one. Before long you’ll be laughing.” Her shoulders eased, and the sudden release of tension was sweet to see. Another small victory. “Anyway, we might have to stay through closing, so could you...?”
You don’t even need to ask. “We can stay as long as you need to.” He’d just have to go upstairs near closing time, push a few of the employees, and eye their security system for a few moments so he knew how to get her out unremarked. Arranging everything for a witch to work undisturbed was part of the job description. “So, one kid found near the pool and the other snatched from the zoo?” It was a chilling thought.
“It could just be public places are where this thing hunts. If it’s Dark, and if I’m not getting my wires crossed, which could be happening.” She was back to tapping at her lips with the pen. “But the feeling just won’t go away, and I’m not sure...”
“You weren’t sure it was Dark?” Or so she’d told the Council witch. A Seer’s gift wasn’t foolproof; so much could alter flashes of the future. It was nice to think some things weren’t predestined until you really started thinking about it—just like tanak-fueled longevity.
“I have to account for the possibility; I’m trying to rule it out.”
“Okay.” Dammit, he was trying not to sound dubious. She hunched towards the screen again, and behind the banter was a flash of something Caleb knew all too well.
His witch was afraid. She hid it well, of course, which meant she’d had far too much practice. She’d been treating Watchers for despair—why had none of them, let alone her fellow Lightbringers, noticed how terrified she was and made some kind of note in the file, said something, done something?
“If we can come up with a human suspect, I’ll be overjoyed,” she said, staring at the yellowed screen. It was chilly down here; she hadn’t even taken her peacoat off. At least that hadn’t gone up in smoke; she’d worn it to the zoo. “But honestly, if there was one, I think Neil would have found them.”
“Unless he didn’t want to.” Caleb couldn’t help himself. “He was lying to you, Jorie.”
“Yes, I heard you. But it’s not like him.” She shook her head, effectively closing off further discussion. “That’s what bothers me most, Caleb. Especially if there’s Dark involved.”
Little Clothes
THE LIBRARY CLOSED at one p.m. on Sundays, so Caleb went upstairs to make sure she could work undisturbed for as long as it took. Jorie seized the chance for a quick, head-clearing crying fit. Her eyes burned, hot and grainy, and she was glad her purse had a battered packet of just-in-case tissues. At least her ID and the bare minimum for daily life hadn’t been burned.
Of course everyone would pitch in; the safehouse had plenty of clothes and other items just waiting to be used. Her photo albums, her collection of driftwood carvings, her sandalwood combs, and Aunt Basie’s crocheted afghans were in storage, for just this occasion. But her dishes, her framed prints, her grandmother’s rocking chair—all the little things she loved about daily life were gone, or if not destroyed, smoke-poisoned and grimed. Including her dance clothes, her collection of wax-dyed wooden eggs and the blue Bauer bowls that looked so beautiful sitting in mellow summer sunshine.
Nothing was ever the same again, once broken. Just like nothing was ever the same after you found out you were a Lightbringer, and exactly what that meant. The Watchers held Lightbringers as the next step in human evolution, while some historically minded witches theorized psychic ability was a throwback to hunter-gatherer times, when a sixth sense—or a seventh, or an eighth—could help your tribe avoid danger.
Even among psychics, Lightbringers glowed. The force and scale of their gifts, the ability to produce illumination both mental and physical, had made them Crusade targets by default. The early, semi-Inquisitorial hunters had dabbled in ceremonial sorcery, and the creatures they created to hunt what they thought were devil-worshipping excrescences were actually predators attracted to the glow that meant snacktime.
A certain proportion of Lightbringers in an urban area was often correlated with lower crime rates, longer lifespans, and a few other beneficial effects. The Watchers said eventually, if they could just keep enough of their witches alive, all of humanity might benefit.
But the cost was so steep. Jorie blinked furiously, forcing herself to concentrate on the microfiche reader’s glowing screen.
She’d wondered how long it would take before she retreated into a safehouse in self-defense. It was looking like the time was quite probably at hand. At least if she got a permanent suite, she could bring some of her stuff out of storage and maybe stop drinking herself to sleep.
Jorie wiped at her damp cheeks again, balling up used tissues. They’d have to go back into her purse; she didn’t want anyone to know she’d been sniveling.
