She clapped a hand across her mouth and bolted for the john, where she was miserably, wretchedly ill.
Images pounded at her, some of them from memory, some of them from the sight. All of them bloody and terrible, spewing past the barriers she’d set in her mind long ago, which were breached in an instant by the power of the stars and the horror of being back in a place she’d thought had been destroyed long ago.
When the heaves passed, leaving her dizzy and wrung-out, she stayed hunched over the bowl and pressed her face to the cool porcelain of the outer rim, not caring how gross that was. ‘‘I’m dreaming,’’ she said weakly. ‘‘I’m going to wake up in Austin, and Dick’ll either be there or he won’t, but even if he’s not that’s okay, because I’m not really here. I’m there, and this is all a dream.’’
The blonde crouched down so they were at eye level. ‘‘I tried talking myself out of it, too. Didn’t work.’’ She held out a hand. ‘‘You want to get cleaned up?’’
Anna stared at the other woman’s marked forearm. ‘‘Who are you?’’
‘‘Alexis Gray. You’re Anna, right?’’
‘‘That’s me,’’ Anna said faintly.
‘‘You’ve got his eyes,’’ Alexis said. ‘‘Or I suppose you’ve both got your father’s eyes.’’
Anna went cold. ‘‘I’m nothing like him.’’
‘‘Oo-kay.’’ Alexis held up both hands. ‘‘Touched a nerve. Sorry.’’ She stood. ‘‘You want some time alone to decompress?’’
‘‘No, I’m the one who’s sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped.’’
‘‘No harm done.’’ Alexis popped open the mirrored cabinet above the sink, pulled out a couple of hand towels and a travel-size bottle of Listerine, and offered them. ‘‘If you’re done hurling, we should probably get back out there.’’
‘‘Yeah. I need to tell Strike to have Red-Boar blank the codex from my intern, Neenie, too.’’ And how weird was it to say those names after all this time? Anna thought. She took the tiny mouthwash, saying, ‘‘This has Jox written all over it. No way Strike or Red-Boar thought to lay in guest toiletries.’’
‘‘Good call. Jox and the other winikin have the details nailed.’’
Inhaling sharply, Anna swallowed a mouthful of Listerine and gagged. ‘‘What do you mean, ‘other winikin’? Jox was the last.’’
‘‘Long story. How about you get cleaned up and we’ll go find Strike? I’m sure he’ll do a better job explaining than I could.’’
But Anna thought back to her arrival, and the others crowding the sacred chamber. They’d been bigger than average, gorgeous and young. As was Alexis. Her heart started hammering in her ears as she reached an impossible conclusion. ‘‘You’re Nightkeepers.’’
‘‘Yes.’’
Her legs went weak, and she whispered, ‘‘How?’’ Alexis pushed open the bathroom door. ‘‘Come on. I really don’t think I’m the person who should be telling you this.’’
‘‘Wait.’’ Anna grabbed her arm. ‘‘How many are there?’’
Sympathy crept into the other woman’s eyes. ‘‘Counting the toddlers and the convict? You make it lucky thirteen.’’
And the equinox was nine days away.
PART IV
AUTUMNAL EQUINOX
A day of equally balanced night and day, containing the moment when the center of the Sun is directly over the Earth’s equator. The first day of fall.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
September 13
Lucius woke up with a hangover so big, there wasn’t a word sufficient to describe it. He rolled over in his bed and groaned, then tried to sit partway up. When that sent a lightning bolt through his skull, he flopped back down. ‘‘Ohhhh, crap. What the— Oh, crap.’’
There was a reason—beyond the whole alcoholic-father -codependent-mother thing—that he rarely drank. He was pretty sure he was allergic. Which begged the question: What the hell had he been thinking? Had he been celebrating something good? Drowning something bad?
Fuck, even thinking hurt. Okay, no more thinking.
Food, he realized when his stomach grumbled. He needed food. Which didn’t make much sense if he was hungover, but figuring that out would’ve required thinking, so he just rolled with it.
‘‘Okay,’’ he mumbled between dry, cracked lips. ‘‘Step one. Get vertical.’’ When that more or less worked, he followed up with steps two—cross bedroom—and three—open door. He didn’t need to bother with step four—get dressed—because he was still wearing yesterday’s clothes. They were streaked with rusty brown, like he’d gone mud wrestling or something, and there was a funky smell coming from somewhere, but his roomies were both off on field assignments, so he figured he could eat first, then clean himself up.
Then he shuffled into the kitchen and stopped dead. There were more of the rust stains splashed everywhere, like something out of CSI.
‘‘Ohhh.’’ He looked down at his clothes as the stains started making way more sense. Then a fragment of memory broke through and he looked at his right hand, where a gaping cut was scabbed over with a big, nasty clot. ‘‘Fuck me.’’
It didn’t start hurting until he looked at it. Then it hurt like the dickens.
What the hell had gone down last night? He didn’t know, couldn’t remember, just stood there staring from his hand to the kitchen and back, before the downstairs buzzer sounded, jolting him.
‘‘I’m not here,’’ he said, and headed in the opposite direction for a first-aid kit.
The buzzer sounded again—three short, angry bursts. ‘‘Still not here.’’ He turned on the faucet and put his hand under the water. He hissed with pain as old blood swirled in the sink and ran down the drain, and when he used paper towels to blot the wound dry, they came away pinkish brown at first, then red.
At least whoever it was got the message and stopped buzzing, he thought, debating between going for stitches and using one of those icky wound patches that bubbled up and looked seriously gross after a few days, but worked really well.
There was a knock at the apartment door.
Lucius’s breath whistled between his teeth and his head cleared some on a burst of adrenaline. Ignore it, he told himself. They’ll go away.
‘‘Hunt?’’ a pissed-off male voice shouted full-volume. ‘‘I know you’re in there.’’
What had he done last night?
‘‘I’m not in here,’’ he said under his breath. ‘‘Go away.’’
But there was another knock. Then the voice again, quieter this time, and sounding vaguely familiar. ‘‘Hunt, please. I need to talk to her.’’
Her? Lucius took a quick look around, in case he’d missed there being someone else in the apartment, especially of the female variety. When a really, really bad thought occurred, he peeked in the other bedrooms, and let out a breath when he didn’t see anything—or anyone— out of place.
There wasn’t another knock, but he could sense the other man leaning against the door. He heard a broken sigh and a whispered name. Anna.
Oh, shit, Lucius thought when recognition jolted. It was the Dick. And he was looking for his wife. In a few seconds he was across the room and yanking open the door, his heart hammering far faster than it should’ve been. ‘‘Did something happen?’’
First he saw the Dick, followed by the Dick’s fist headed toward his face.
Then he saw stars.
The next thing he saw was the cops.
He watched in a numb blur as they confiscated the bloodstained stuff he’d slept in, photographed the shit out of the apartment, and took a couple of his steak knives into evidence, along with the dime bag they’d found in the fridge and a gun he hadn’t even known his freak-show roommate owned.