Chapter Seventeen
Anger does wonders for all sorts of things. My pain-twice-wounded thigh, headache, fever, and every damn inch of my ghost-burned skin-didn’t hurt so much. Walking-even if it meant all the way across Portland-seemed like a completely sane and reasonable thing to do.
And whoever was important enough that Pike had tried to tell me about them with his dying words was going to get a visit from me, whether they were girls, a doctor, or something else. And Pike said whoever that was had my blood.
No one stopped me as I made my way north and west, heading toward the heart of town. Maybe it was because it was icy and there weren’t many people out. Or maybe I didn’t see anyone because I was covered in blood and carrying a knife. Or it could be because the trail of magic in my blood led me down little-used alleys and footpaths hidden from traffic.
Whatever it was, I stopped at an old warehouse without anyone getting in my way. The old brick building’s windows were boarded and broken. Red, black, and white graffiti twice as tall as me turned the crumbling brick and sagging doors into one flat canvas.
There. I knew my blood was there, inside that building. I didn’t pull on magic, didn’t want to draw the Veiled forward again, didn’t want to alert whoever was in there with my blood that I was near.
A wave of dizziness washed over me. No, not now. I didn’t have time to fall apart. I put one hand on the brick wall next to the only door on ground level and breathed until the world stopped rocking beneath my feet. When the dizzy spell passed, I tasted wintergreen on the back of my throat and I smelled leather.
My dad.
The last thing I needed right now was for him to show up and screw with me. I looked around the filthy alley, the dim light of morning glinting against the dark, ragged-toothed windows above me.
No ghost. No father. Good.
I lifted the latch on the door with my left hand, expecting it to be locked, rusted, welded shut. The latch released. I nudged the door inward on silent hinges. The warehouse might look abandoned, but someone had been using it enough to bother with oiling the door. The door swung open just enough that I could see into the shadows and wide-open space beyond.
Light filtered through grimy windows high on the wall to my left, illuminating the decaying brick and plaster wall in the back. Arcs of graffiti stained the wall, and in one slant of light someone had painted a face twisted in a scream, teeth crooked and white around a gaping black mouth.
The floor shone with a layer of water. The stink of pigeon, rat, blood, and rot filled my nose. I paused but heard nothing but the traffic in the distance and my own uneven breathing.
I opened the door a little wider, put a little too much weight on my left thigh, and went dizzy with pain again. Damn.
In the light from the last window, I could see someone slumped in a chair, so near the screaming face that for a moment I wondered if the chair and person were part of the art on the wall. But then the person twitched, the head swinging back and forth at a strange angle.
I toed the door open a little farther, and my eyes, more adjusted to the light now, could make out the person: a man. No, a boy, head hanging forward, body and arms tied to the plain wooden chair with wide leather straps. I could smell his sweat, his pain, and his blood.
Anthony. The Hound kid Pike said had cast those spells to kidnap the girls with Pike’s blood.
Sure, I promised Pike I’d look after the Hounds-all of them-and I meant it. But I felt a small dark satisfaction seeing Anthony tied up. It was all I could do not to storm across the room and shake him until he told me why he had betrayed Pike. Why he had let him die.
But chances were if there was someone tied up in a chair, the person who did the tying was nearby. And since I hadn’t been grabbed or shot at yet, I figured that person was not currently in the room. Now was my chance to get Anthony out of there.
First, rescue the kid. I could kick his ass after I carted him down to the police.
I walked into the room, let the door swing silently shut behind me. The electric tingle of heavy Wards clicking into place as the door shut made me shiver. And without the extra light from the door, I suddenly felt like there were too many shadows in the room. Unnatural shadows.
I calmed my mind, set a Disbursement-I was going to be in the hospital if I kept this up-and silently wove the glyph for Reveal.
The entire warehouse changed. Dark burnt-ash glyphs on the walls flared to life. The walls dripped with pastel light carved in a mosaic of Life and Death glyphs just like the ones I had seen on the wall outside Get Mugged.
The light from the glyphs was bright enough that I could make out the rest of the room. To my right, a row of six cots neatly lined up along one wall. There were people on those cots, young women. The girls Pike was talking about. Maybe even the kidnapped girls Stotts was looking for.
Black lines of magic coiled around their still forms from head to toe like dark silken cocoons. More lines of magic extended from their chests, snaking and pulsing through the air to attach to two surgical tables in the center of the room. One of those tables was empty, and the other had a prone figure across it.
Next to four of the cots stood a ghostly copy of each girl. Not quite as pale as the Veiled, the transparent girls swayed in time to the pulsing lines of magic extending from their physical bodies, as if rocked by a gentle current. Just like the Veiled, they saw me and opened their mouths in hunger.
All of them stepped toward me, arms extended. And then the lines of magic holding them to their bodies thickened, tightened, and thrummed with a bass-drum thump, jerking them back a half step, though their hands still wove in the air as if they could almost reach me.
Six cots, six girls, but only four ghosts. Did that mean the other girls were more dead or more alive?
Holy shit. I looked back at Anthony. No spirit stood next to him. Strangely, though I’d been holding Reveal for several seconds, there were also no Veiled, no pastel fog. I could only assume it had to be because of the pastel wards painted on the walls.
I hope they held.
I walked over to Anthony first. I tried to be quiet, which was near impossible in my boots over the uneven wooden plank floor and with my left leg hurting with every step. Anthony did not move.
I gently lifted his head. If I didn’t know Anthony’s scent, I might not recognize him. The kid was a mess. Blood poured out his ears. He was bruised and swollen like he’d gone through a meat grinder. And I knew it wasn’t from physical violence. Thick ropes of magic wrapped around his neck and sent tendrils of ebony chains down to sink into his belly and chest, where they then reached upward to press over his face like an iron mask and stab deeply into his eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.
An Offload glyph. Someone was using him to bear a hell of a price for using magic. Dark magic.
I traced the fingers of my left hand over the magic chains, and Anthony twitched with every link my fingertip brushed. I didn’t know how to break a spell this powerful without killing him. Only a doctor who was skilled in Siphon spells and knew how to slowly drain the magic off of him could break something this strong.
Shit.
Who would do this to a kid? I could probably answer that if I kept tracing, Hounding the spell around him, but every time I touched the spell, Anthony jerked in pain. I didn’t know how long he’d been tied up like this. Didn’t know how much more pain he could endure.
Just because I couldn’t break the spell on him didn’t mean I couldn’t untie him from the chair. I’d carry him out of the warehouse, find a phone, and call the police.