Lightbreaker

history they purported to be true was actually bolted together-some Frank-ensteinian construct that wasn't entirely. . me. Beneath them, providing direction and intent, was something else. Some other version of reality undimmed by these false memories.

There was only one way to find out. I held out my hand and Nicols, thinking I wanted the picture back, put it into my hand. I shook my head. 'I need your car keys.'

'I don't think this is a good idea,' he replied.

'I don't care what you think.'

'You're not rational, Markham. Your obsession with this woman is screwing with your judgment.' He gestured toward Piotr's trailer. 'I saw you in there. Hell, I saw what happened when you got close to a memory of her at the barn. Your head is all fucked up about this woman, about what you think happened, and it is going to get someone killed.'

I got to my feet. 'Her?'

'You,' he said.

The Chorus churned, finding cause for violence in Nicols' inference. I made to bind them, and they responded by compressing into a lodestone in my chest. A magnetic attraction pulled at me, tugging me south and east. I looked along that axis-straight across the Interbay, right through the whirling globe atop the Seattle Post- Intelligencer building, through Belltown and the curve of the Performance Center-and I could see the phantom shape of my hotel. The Chorus pulsed, and this magnetic line of desire stretched tight between Kat and me. They wanted release. From this conversation, from this damp parking lot. They wanted to run like dogs who had found the scent of their prey.

'Why would Pender give you what you want?' Nicols asked. 'What does he gain by doing that?'

'What are you talking about?' The humming sound of the magnetic connection was making it hard to think.

'You said it yourself: they're schemers. The Watchers shape events by influence and manipulation. Do you think this situation is any different?'

I fought the pull in my chest, clinging like a drowning man to Nicols' words. Yes, and the reading Piotr had just thrown. The Eight of Swords had been my foundation. They were the roots entangling me. Interference. Obstructions raised by other forces and other agents who would attempt to distract me from my goal. Perhaps the detective himself is such a distraction, the Chorus whispered. You have her. You've been given permission.

Take it.

I shook my head, shaking off their voices more than denying the truth to Nicols' question. 'You think I'm going to kill her.'

'Yeah, the thought crossed my mind. Has more than once. I don't think you're stable, Markham; I think there is some serious damage in your brain. But here's the thing-and you should listen to this because I know what the fuck I'm talking about-killing Kat isn't going to fix what's wrong in you.'

I held out a hand for the keys. 'You don't know anything about me.' A black bubble rose in my throat.

'Christ!' he exploded. 'You think you're the only one who's had his heart broken?'

'It's not like that.'

'No? Because you're certainly acting the part. I've been cleaning up after people for twenty years. When lovers get jealous or angry, when families self-destruct, when people just get stupid: I'm there. I'm the guy who has to see the aftermath; I have to tell parents that someone-a lover, a friend, a sibling-someone just took their baby away from them. You don't think a day doesn't go by when I hear some pathetic fuck whining about how this bitch just broke his heart and so he gave her what she deserved? 'She sucked off the mailman and so I put a gun in her mouth and blew her head off.' '

I flinched, and Nicols jabbed a thick finger at me. 'Yeah, last week. That was some gang-banger's entire rationale: she deserved it. Three days later, the guy is screaming in his cell, yelling for his dead girlfriend because he's finally realized what an enormous mistake he's made. I can't help him. He's confessed, the evidence has been processed, and the DA has already cut a deal with the nickel-rate public defender assigned to the case. Guy's going to Walla Walla for ten to fifteen. You think that's going to fix the hole in his heart? You think that's going to bring her back?'

The Chorus whined, and I moaned aloud in concert. My legs twitched like a dog's who could see the open fields but knew there was an invisible fence, a radio frequency barrier that would trigger his electric collar if he strayed too far.

'Pender's got nothing on you,' Nicols said. 'Nothing that will hold up in court. You kill Kat, and he'll have you for murder one. Don't think he's not going to be watching. He'll let you do it-there's no doubt in my mind about that. But as soon as her heart stops beating, he's going to climb so far up your ass that he'll know what you're having for lunch the moment you swallow.'

The Chorus slavered, and with an immense effort, I bent them back, driving them away from the febrile edge of my consciousness. My teeth chattered as I tried to speak, my words coming out in fragmented chunks. I closed my outstretched hand, digging fingernails into my palm, and tried again. 'I'm lost,' I croaked. 'Ever since she touched me. I fell onto the Qliphotic path and I don't know how to return, John.'

'Which path?' He didn't know the word; he was a child, after all, a wide-eyed innocent snatched from the Garden and abandoned in the shifting magickal reality. He didn't know about the Tree and the pathways, about the dark hole through Daath and the nightside of the Sephiroth. He didn't know what happens to those who fall.

'I need to find her. She's the key, John; she's my way back.'

'How?' he asked. 'How is she going to help you?'

The Chorus smiled behind my teeth, black daggers hidden by white enamel. 'I need to ask her what really happened. I need to know, John. I need closure.'

He looked toward the ambient glow of downtown Seattle. 'Yeah,' he said quietly. 'Don't we all?' He put his hand in his coat pocket. 'Okay, this is wrong. I just want that to be clear. I think this is a bad idea.' I could hear his hand opening and closing around his keys. 'I'll drive.'

'Thank you.'

He shook his head as if to dislodge my words from his shoulders, like leaves brushed off. 'Don't thank me yet,' he said. 'If you raise a hand at her, I will pistol whip you myself.'

The foyer around the elevator bay was extended by a niche cut out of the wall opposite. A large mirror and a mahogany George III sofa table, round across the front and topped with a tiny swatch of fabric and a vase of silk flowers, filled the space. The hallway ran both left and right, making right angle turns just beyond the pair of unmarked doors that flanked the foyer niche. Laid out like a square, the halls ran the length of the hotel and then right-angled again to meet on the far side of the floor. My room was halfway down the left hallway. Opposite the turn was the emergency exit, tucked back next to the elevator shaft.

I made it to the right angle, Nicols trailing behind me, when I felt a burn of magick. I turned, rotating the Chorus off my left wrist-a peacock fan of iridescent defense. I tried to shove past Nicols, pushing him toward the indentation of the stairwell door.

The spell pounded me against the wall, the shockwave billowing along the sheetrock, making the sconces flicker and the paint blister. Sound became watery-blood in the ear canal. Gritty steam obscured the hall, and my teeth ached with the taste of tinfoil.

Nicols was on his knees, leaning against the emergency exit door. He rolled over, a grimace of pain knotting his face, as he got his back to the door. He fumbled for his gun and got one shot off, before the twin darts of a Taser gun struck him. I heard-distantly, like the chatter of a flywheel-the Taser discharge, and all the fight went out of Nicols.

There were three of them, outlined in the fog by the Chorus. The bright one in the back was the magus from the farmhouse. I recognized the glittering cascade of his spirit.

I crawled down the hallway. Another Taser coughed, and the plastic darts rattled thinly against the wall behind me. I graduated to scrambling like a dog as the three men breached the forward edge of the fog.

My room-605-was two doors down, and I didn't even bother with the electronic key. I just smashed my hand through the plate assembly with a wedge of the Chorus and shoved the door open. As I ducked into the room, I saw