“Don’t trust my swamp-walking abilities?”
“I don’t trust Chase.”
Right. I got out of the car. Still no rain, only clouds clotting the dark sky. I saw a spark of a star against the black, before the gray snuffed it out.
Terric killed the engine. He and Shame got out. Zay walked with me, though he gave me plenty of room.
I cleared my mind, something that always seemed a little easier when I was close to St. Johns. I didn’t know what it was about that part of town, but it always made me feel better.
I set a Disbursement, then drew the glyphs for Sight, Smell, and Taste. I drew magic out of my bones and blood and poured it into the glyphs.
The world came into hard focus, every color brighter, every shadow sharper.
I looked for magic. I looked for Chase. I looked for Greyson. And I looked for signs of blood and violence. Spells pulsed against the chain-link and barbed-wire fence that cut the forbidden building off from street access. In that building was something else. Something magical. I couldn’t tell what it was. But none of that magic, not the ward spells nor whatever magic lay crouched in that building, smelled, tasted, or looked anything like Greyson or Chase.
“Not here. Not them,” I said. “Something, though, but not them.” I walked along the road. Scented, maybe, just the slightest hint of vanilla and blood up ahead.
Crazy. This was no way to track someone. I could try Seek, but if they were in Forest Park, they’d be out of the spell’s range. I returned to Shame’s car.
“Shame, ride with Zay,” I said. “Terric, I’m going to swamp-walk, and you’re going to drive.”
And, wonder of wonders, all the men listened.
I let go of the sensory spells and got in the passenger’s side of the car. I closed my eyes and pressed my fingers down on the seat next to me, focusing on the emotional residue there to sense Chase. Got a flash of Shame, angry, and, strangely enough, hopeful. But there was still a hint of Chase’s emotions beneath that, her emotions vibrating even higher than Shame’s, high enough for me to follow.
“Okay, we’re going in the right direction. Right. Turn right.”
“Over the bridge?”
“If that’s a right.” It was hard to sense the subtle tugs of the swamp-walking in a moving car with quickly fading emotional energy.
I heard the sound of tires on the bridge. Just as Chase’s energy faded for good, I felt a tug to the north.
“Shit.” I opened my eyes. “That’s it. All I got was a slight shift north. Where are we?”
“St. Johns,” he said. “Does she have a place out here?”
“I have no idea.” I didn’t feel like I had been much help at all. As a matter of fact, I might have just led us on a wild-goose chase. I needed something more. Something that was still connected to her. And the only thing I could think of was Zay.
“Stop the car, okay? I need to regroup.”
Terric found a grass and gravel stretch along the road, and Zay pulled up next to us.
I got out of the car and jogged over to Zay’s window. He rolled it down.
“Listen, I lost the trail. I need something else that Chase has touched, some other way to connect to her, and I have an idea.”
“What?”
“I want you to call her.”
Zay’s eyebrows rose. “Because?”
“I’m going to try to follow the connection.”
“Have you ever done that before?”
I wanted to say yes. Wanted to tell him I could track down people by cell phones in my sleep. “No.”
“Then we do it my way.”
“What-get out the search-and-rescue team?”
Zay ignored me. He pulled his cell out of his pocket. “You think she’s in this area?”
“This is as far as I could track her. She may not still be here. Does she have a house here? Family?”
“No, but this is the only place in Portland off the grid. It’s a good place to hide. Except she knows we know it’s a good place to hide.”
He pressed a button on his phone. I was pretty sure my phone didn’t have that button. Then he chanted, pulling the tiniest bit of magic up from five miles away, on the other side of the railroad track. And he did it like it wasn’t as hard as sucking water out of stone.
The glyphs encasing his phone rolled with silver light, then went dark.
“She’s not close,” he said.
And then his phone rang.
Zay frowned at the caller ID. “It’s Chase,” he said calmly.
“Chase,” he said.
He didn’t tip the phone so I could hear. He didn’t have to. I was a Hound. I had good ears.
“I knew they’d send you out to look for me,” she said.
“Where are you?”
“I’m safe. I know where Greyson is.”
“Are you with him? Are you hurt?”
“You don’t understand. You just believe everything they say. But it’s not true. Lies. It’s all lies. You’re on the wrong side, Zayvion. You can trust me on that. Don’t come looking for me.”
Zay’s lips pressed in a thin line. Chase sounded a little hysterical, and out of breath.
“Tell me where you are.” Zay traced a glyph in the air, drew a circle and line through it to cancel it, turned south, did the same thing, until he had drawn four spells, one at each compass point.
Chase’s voice changed, went down a little, trying for normalcy. “Don’t do it. Don’t look for me. Or him. You can’t. . I don’t want you mixed up in this. Two of us is enough. This is war, Zayvion. War.”
The connection ended and Zay put the phone in his pocket.
“Anything?” Shame asked.
“She’s on the other side of the river. Vancouver,” Zay said.
So it had been a goose chase.
“Goddamn it,” Shame said. “Let’s go.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Can you sense her here?” Zay asked.
I shook my head. “I thought so. Nothing I’d swear on, though.”
“She’s good, Allie,” Zay said like I shouldn’t blame myself. “One of the best.”
That was what I was worried about. If she was good enough to get us out here, she’d be good enough to lead us to where she wanted us to be.
Shame stayed where he was in Zay’s car. Terric nodded to me, offering a ride again.
“We’re better than her, right?” I asked Zay.
“We are.” He hesitated. Nodded. That worried me, but I didn’t tell him so.
I got into Shame’s car next to Terric.
“How good is she, really?” I asked Terric once we were on the road and speeding to Vancouver.
“I haven’t worked with her for a couple years.” He was silent for a minute, navigating traffic. “She is very good. I’ve always thought Zayvion was better.”
“Is he?”
“He is if he doesn’t pull his punches.”
“Which means?”
Terric rubbed the side of his nose, then brushed his hair back, even though it was banded at the nape of his neck. Boy had a lot of nervous twitches. I wondered if he was always like this or if this kind of thing made him nervous.
Wondered if I should get my worry on too.
“What does that mean, Terric?”
“They used to be lovers.”
“And?”
He glanced at me, maybe glad I already knew that. “How easy do you think it would be to kill someone you’ve loved?”
A knot in the pit of my stomach clenched. Memories of Zayvion flashed through my mind, his smile, the easy sense of humor that he kept so carefully hidden under his dutiful exterior. His touch, the weight of him next to me, in me. Could I kill him if I had to? If he did something stupid like what Chase was doing?
“He doesn’t have to kill her,” I said a little doubtfully.
“Maybe not. But he might need to.” Terric shifted his grip on the steering wheel, and pushed his shoulders down as if settling an uncomfortable weight. “It is always possible when you’re a Closer.”