Look out the window, he willed the vehicle’s owner. Dial 911, for God’s sake. Can’t you see I’m trying to steal your car?
He banged on the door again, denting the metal.
I even look the part, he realized, with this handkerchief tied across his face.
He’d forgotten all about it. Playing Good Samaritan and trying to clean up Miki’s apartment didn’t feel like hours ago anymore, but a lifetime. He started to pull the cloth away from his face, then caught a glimpse of movement back down the street he’d just come down. Those low slinking shapes, darting from the doorways of stores to the parked cars and back again, getting closer with every dash. And then he saw one of the hard men come around the far corner, walking on the sidewalk as though it were bare pavement, not covered with a slick coating of ice.
His sudden appearance seemed to be a signal. The other Gentry rose up from behind the cars, stepped out of the doorways, men now as well, dark haired and dark-eyed, the tails of their trench coats slapping against their legs as they fell in step with the first one. None of them had trouble with the icy footing. They didn’t even seem to be wet.
Hunter wasn’t surprised. Why should the foul weather prove any sort of impediment to them?
The car alarm was making him deaf but he still heard the sound of a car engine above it. He turned to see its approaching lights. A van. He hauled himself to his feet and, using the hood of the jeep as a springboard, propelled himself out from between the vehicles. The van’s headlights caught him as he staggered out into the middle of the street. Then his legs went out from under him. He fell into yet another puddle and came up spluttering in time to see the van skidding on the ice, sliding right at him. He stared wide-eyed, waiting for the impact, but the vehicle slewed to one side, finally stopping with the front fender rearing directly over him.
He couldn’t hear the van’s doors opening over the wail of the car alarm, but he saw the vehicle shift on its springs as whoever was inside disembarked.
Oh, Christ, he thought. The Gentry. Don’t let them hurt these people.
He sat up and smacked his head on the fender, fell back into the puddle. The next thing he knew there was someone bending over him. Dark-haired, dark-eyed. He waited for the killing blow, but it didn’t come. He had long enough to recognize the Native American features of one of his customers before the face was suddenly jerked away.
Too late, Hunter realized. The Gentry had them now.
He was hauled up out of the puddle and onto his feet, the hard man holding him upright effortlessly. Hunter saw the man who’d stopped to help him lying on the street, the breath knocked out of him. As he watched, one of the Gentry smashed the window of the Cherokee with his elbow and reached inside, ripping something out of the jeep. He straightened up from the vehicle with a fistful of wires in his hand. The car alarm stopped and the ensuing silence seemed deafening.
He shouldn’t have been able to do that, Hunter found himself thinking. Who breaks a car window with his elbow?
Goddamn fairy-tale hardcases, that was who.
“I warned you, you pathetic little shite,” the leader of the Gentry said.
But before he could hit Hunter, another voice spoke. A woman’s voice. It was familiar, but so out of context that Hunter couldn’t place it.
“Don’t you hurt him.”
Yeah, Hunter thought. That’s really going to stop these guys.
But the hard man let him go. Hunter started to fall, caught himself on the grill of the van.
“You,” the hard man said, looking to where the woman was standing.
Hunter looked as well.
“Ellie?” he asked.
She gave him a confused look until he remembered the handkerchief tied across his face. He tugged it down.
“Hunter?” she said.
12
What in God’s name was going on? Ellie thought as the man by the hood of the van pulled down his handkerchief and she recognized Hunter. She recognized the men chasing him as well. They were Donal’s hard men. But give them long hair, she realized, and they’d be exactly like the group she’d seen on the lawn behind Kellygnow earlier today. Bettina’s spirit men. The only difference was they weren’t barefoot now and they were wearing trench coats over those dark suits of theirs. But the rain didn’t seem to bother them any more than the cold. Maybe they only wore boots and overcoats when they were out on the streets so that they would fit in better. Except that didn’t explain how their hair got longer and shorter.
She had a moment’s hysterical thought. So what? Did people in the spirit-world go around in wigs or something? What was that all about?
“Are you certain this is your wish?” the man who’d been holding Hunter asked her in response to her telling him to leave Hunter alone.
All Ellie could do was stare at him. An unsettling sensation of deja vu worried through her. She could hear Nuala’s voice in her head, what the housekeeper had said when they’d gone to her to ask if she and Chantal could share the studio.
Are you certain this is what you want?
Who were these people? Why was what she wanted so important to them?
But though her head was brimming with questions, she had enough of her wits about her to nod in response.
“Yes,” she said. Her voice came out as a croak. They were so scary-looking, these men, spirits, whatever they were. She cleared her throat before adding, “I’m sure.”
The hard man gave her a feral grin and turned away to where Tommy was sitting up, one hand rubbing the back of his head where he must have hit it. She replayed the moment when the man had basically tossed Tommy out of the way and shivered, finally beginning to believe that there was something more than human about these guys.
“All… all of us,” she managed.
“Oh, aye,” the man said. “And is the whole fucking world under your protection?”
“I... I...”
He walked past Tommy, stopping by the black jeep with the broken window. He bent down and hooked the fingers of one hand under the running board. In one sudden movement he lifted the vehicle and heaved it onto its side.
Ellie winced at the sound of the crash, her eyes wide with shock. The small gibbering voice of panic that had been hiding in the back of her head reared in mindless fear and it was all she could do to just stand there and at least pretend to be strong.
“Fair enough,” the man said, still grinning. There was no humor in his eyes. “But remember to fulfill your side of the bargain or I’ll hunt the lot of you down and gut you like the little shites you are.”
Bargain? Ellie thought. What bargain?
But she knew enough to keep her mouth shut and simply nod her head.
The hard man held her gaze for a long moment. Ellie could feel her knees turning to water. Then he finally gave a brusque nod to his companions and turned away. As silently as they’d come, untouched by the weather and unencumbered by the unsteady footing, the men went back the way they’d come.
Ellie collapsed against the side of the van, holding onto the mirror for support.
“Somebody want to tell me what the hell that was all about?”
She glanced over at Tommy to see he was now standing. His hair and shoulders had acquired a thin sheath of ice and his face was dripping. She was getting soaked herself, standing out here in the freezing rain, but he’d landed in a puddle and was far wetter than she was.
“I don’t know,” she told him. Her gaze drifted to the far end of the street where the men were just turning the corner. “Those are Donal’s hard men, but they could be twins to the guys I saw at Kellygnow.”