because she swung the gun back around in his direction. “Did it ever occur to anyone to just
The golem blinked at her a little with his malformed eyes. “Then…can I have them?”
She laughed bitterly. “You know…I might have given them to you. Except you hurt Dante. Nobody hurts my friends.”
I was trying so hard not to pay attention to the sharp, icy goose bumps marching up and down my spine. Something was going to happen in the next few moments, I could feel it. Something not good. “Gretchen, come here. Give me the gun.” I stretched my hand out to her, trying to will her to step down and take it.
Her gaze swiveled to me again, and she gave me a ghost of a smile. “I believe you, you know. I think you’d have protected me, if you could. You’re good people. You don’t belong out here with people like us. You don’t belong working for whatever asshole sent you out here.”
“Gretchen, don’t…” I had no idea what she was about to do, but I knew I desperately didn’t want her to do it.
She shook her head, her blond hair falling in wisps around her face. This high up, the wind was starting to pick up, tugging everything in the direction of the ocean. “They’re not gonna stop coming. If you kill this thing here”—she gestured toward the golem—“they’ll send something else. Bobby almost died. Tai might be dead. They’re gonna kill you too. Until I give these things over to somebody else.”
Golem-Me moved again, and she calmly aimed and blew another hole through its shoulder. I heard the splat this time as the lump of clay went flying through the air and plastered against a nearby light fixture. “I said don’t move.”
With one arm half-detached and dangling, the golem had no choice but to stop again. It held up its one good hand defensively.
I leaned closer, as if that one or two inches closer to my hand would make her suddenly want to grab it. “I’m harder to kill than you think. Just come to me, and we’ll figure out how to deal, okay?”
Gretchen shook her head, her hair flying around her face in the chill breeze. “Nobody’s invulnerable. That’s just in the movies. But I’ve seen your scars. I know you’re damn hard to kill. You’d have to be, doing what you do, right?”
“Right. Not a job for desk jockeys.” Just keep her talking. It was all I could think to do.
She nodded, then raised the gun. For a heartbeat, I just knew she was going to aim it at herself, and I jumped forward to stop her. “Stop!” Her barked command jerked me to a halt again, and I watched as she pointed the gun instead into the reflecting pool.
I couldn’t see the glass in the pool, but somewhere around the fourth or fifth shot, I heard the glass start cracking, and by the time she emptied the entire clip into it, the snapping and popping of spiderwebbed glass continued like more gunshots in the night. It would be a matter of moments before it collapsed under the weight of the water, spilling into the lobby so many stories below.
“They’ll never stop. They’ll come after me, they’ll come after the people I love. And frankly, I’m not the kind of person who can deal with this. I’m not strong enough.” She tossed the now-useless gun aside. “I hope you are.”
The world went into slow motion there, I swear. The golem and I both lunged for Gretchen at the same time. I saw one of her bare feet step back, hovering in the air over the rapidly draining pool. Even as she teetered, her balance shifting backward, she smiled at me. “I name Jesse James Dawson my master.”
And she fell.
The fractured glass in the pool exploded as she hit it, dropping her nine stories down to the marble floor far below. I knew the instant she hit, because the sensation of two hundred and seventy-six souls slammed into me with the force of a tsunami. It took my breath away, drowning me in the scent of cloves, crushing my chest under the pressure of so much power. My vision went white, and my ears were deafened by the sound of distant screaming, words I never could quite make out.
I came to—at least, I think I came to—on my knees with my forehead pressed against the white stones on the ground. I could feel them under my splayed hands, every little ridge, every tiny imperfection in the rock. I could have told you which ones had quartz in them, a few with fossils, some with flecks of granite. I could have picked out the tiny forms of dead insects, trapped under the sealant.
The night breeze passed over my skin, and I could have named every bit of contaminant in the polluted air, and underneath it all, the hint of sea salt. Someone three floors down was smoking weed on their balcony, and I could taste that too, like they were standing next to me. Tiny particles in the wind rasped over the backs of my hands, my cheeks, like I was being sandblasted by things people normally never noticed.
Under my supersensitive touch, I felt the rooftop ripple infinitesimally as the golem shifted its weight, turning to face me. “And so I will simply take them from you instead.”
His voice, stolen from me, jangled in my head like a thousand fire alarms. Even as expert as the mimicry was, I could tell the difference now, and the forgery of it grated at my senses like jagged chunks of glass.
“No. You will simply kiss my ass.” My own voice wasn’t much better, rough-edged with anger and grief. It raked my senses like steel wool.
The Way’s bone hilt was within my grasp when I reached for it, and I could feel every thin porous hole in the carved femur as I wrapped my fingers around it. The bone warmed instantly, like it was happy to be in my hand again.
As I forced my way to my feet, I could feel the outlines of each and every rock through the soles of my heavy boots, and when I was finally able to focus my eyes, every light in sight—from the streetlights far below to the stars so many zillions of miles away—pierced straight through my corneas and seared in the back of my brain. It should have been agonizing, but instead it was just…pure. Like I was finally seeing things as they really were, with all the filth and the grime stripped away.
I could see the thin veins running through every leaf of every plant that surrounded me. I could see the water pulsing through them, bringing life. I swear I could see the plants breathing, absorbing our castoffs to produce life- giving oxygen. I almost got lost, watching those wisps of gas wafting off into the night sky. Might have, even, if the
