Heartland

'We don't know anything,' she said, vibrating with a quiet fury. She couldn't know what the Chorus was reacting to, but she could read the underlying bite in my words. 'We lost more men and learned nothing. What was the point of all that, Michael?'

I shook my head. 'What would killing Moreau have gained us? The satisfaction of Old Testament-style retribution? Is that what this has come to already? Besides, killing Moreau would have been a waste of a useful tool. I shouldn't have to tell you that, Marielle. Alive, Moreau can still be twisted to our design. He can still perform a useful service.'

'What service is that?'

'We have Tevvys' phone,' I Whispered. 'I told Moreau that the only way he could redeem himself was make contact with whoever was coordinating the attack and have them call us.'

'I don't-' She stopped and shook her head. After taking a few deep breaths, she changed direction. 'He'll turn on us the moment he has a chance. Provided he actually lives long enough.'

'I guess he has some incentive then.'

'Michael-' She sighed, and a bitter laugh got caught in her throat. 'You are such a fo-'

'I'm not.' I spoke out loud, biting the words off more firmly than I intended, the Chorus sparking behind my anger. 'I used him, Marielle, instead of throwing him away.'

'What if he doesn't survive? How is that useful to us?'

'It tells us they don't care who they hurt.' I reached out for her leg, and she moved away from me. I dropped my hand to the seat. 'If they did bring the building down, it'll take them too long to dig out anything useful. They don't have that kind of time. They need to either find us or make a deal. As long as we can stay a few steps ahead of them, they'll have to keep flailing away at us. Wasting resources and energy trying to find us.'

I glanced out the window again. Through a break in the buildings, I could see the black shape of the trees along the Seine. Beyond their silhouettes, I could see the lit buttresses of Notre-Dame. My vision swam suddenly, a disorienting pressure inside my brain. The lights around Notre-Dame changed, lengthening into tall shapes. The crown of the church looked like it was swarming with phantom gargoyles, all struggling to take flight. 'Meanwhile,' I offered. 'We've got a head start.'

'Yes, but a head start to where?'

'One thing at a time,' I said. 'Let's take care of this poison first.'

This time, the laugh didn't get caught in her throat. I tried not to react, but it was like getting hit in the face again. She knew I had no idea.

The Chorus read a haze of magick coming off Marielle as she stood next to the car and leaned over to talk to the driver again. The driver smiled, welcoming her suggestion and letting it smooth his memory. His window scrolled shut and the vehicle slid away slowly from the curb. Marielle didn't look at me until she had walked a few paces and realized I wasn't following her. The wind pulled at her hair, winding it about her face and neck.

I pointed across the street at the massive shape of the one-time gunpowder factory, now a celebrity hospital. 'Uh, the hospital is over there.' I could have said it a hundred different ways, but my tone was nothing but petulant attitude.

'Too many eyes.' Marielle said it like she was talking to a child.

'We don't have much choice,' I pointed out. 'I don't know how you're doing, but this thing is eating me.' I tried to be a little more conciliatory, assuming that part of our crankiness toward each other was due to the twisting spikes in our guts and not the petty argument we had had in the cab. 'I'm not going to be able to hold it off for much longer.'

'Then you have some incentive to follow me, don't you?' She didn't wait for me to answer.

I sighed. Obviously the disagreement about Moreau was going to hang on a bit longer. Ride it out. Within an arc of steady light floating in my head, the spirit of Detective Nicols exuded a calming influence. Hold on to what matters; let the rest go. And, a second later, when I hadn't moved: Follow her. My legs started kicking on their own accord, and I stumbled into a steady trot, jogging to catch up with her.

We didn't go far, just a block or two further along the road, and when she turned toward the river, I saw our destination. I would have had to be blind to miss it. It was anchored at a quay on the river, and lit up with a thousand strands of red lights.

'Batofar,' she said.

We could hear the music from here, and at quayside, there was a line waiting to get in. Batofar was an old lighthouse boat, Marielle explained as we walked over. Moored on the Left Bank since the turn of the century, it was a progressive nightclub catering to the electronic and industrial crowd. Small and intimate, it had several bars onboard as well as a dance floor below deck.

'And why would we want to go inside?' I asked. 'There's not a lot of advantages in a cramped space with no escape route.'

'It's not on land,' she said. 'And they have absinthe.'

I swallowed a scathing comeback. Ride it out. But she read the annoyance and disbelief in my face. Somewhat surprisingly, she didn't bite back.

'I can mix a drink with absinthe that'll take care of the poison,' she explained. 'And it'll be harder for the geomancers to read us if we're not in direct contact with the leys.'

Now those were two reasons I could get behind.

Dockside, there was a narrow gate with a temporary shelter that looked like a good breeze would tear it off the quay. Three blocky men in dark trench coats were slowly processing people through a security checkpoint. Everyone going through the gate was decked out in their best gothic and industrial gear: helmets and headpieces studded with rivets and chains; piercings through every visible (and invisible, I'm sure) body part; gas masks and insectoid goggles; black jackboots and long trench coats with sinister authoritarian logos; vampire teeth peeking out from black-stained mouths; Victorian-era clothing, decked out with steampunk accessories.

I hesitated as we approached the dock. Marielle could get away with the minimalist goth look in her black top and pants, but I was looking like a country hick in town for a weekend while my uncle took the pigs to market. Even with the cool pockets on my jacket.

'We're not going to be conspicuous in this crowd?' I asked.

'Eccentric,' Marielle corrected. 'There's always a couple.'

'Couldn't we find someplace where we could be invisible instead?'

'We will be.' She softened, shedding more of the black mood that we had brought from the cab. 'Trust me.'

I did, and when my hand started to reach for her, she met me halfway, wrapping her fingers around mine. Turning my hand up, she pressed her lips against my palm. I cupped her face in my hand, and didn't want to let go.

She lowered my hand, gave me a sad little smile, and led me toward the boat. Nothing more was said. Nothing more needed to be said.

The security detail took one look at me, and tripled the cover charge. Because I looked like that sort of sucker. They would have considered rolling me for my wallet and dumping my body in the river, if it hadn't been for the unconscious glitter of the Chorus under my skin which gave them pause.

On board, the red lights strung along every surface made everything appear as if covered in blood. Through Chorus-sight, I could see sigils woven everywhere: across the bulkheads, around the metal pipes, crawling across the hinges and locks of sealed doors. The lighthouse stack was a confusion of arcane script that seemed to tell some sort of story about ascending angels and Enochian watchtowers. The bar in the front prow of the boat was lit by black light, and most of the drinks were glowing green and yellow. As were the fangs of more than one patron milling around in their best gothic finery.

The entire structure shook with the music. Most of the upper register was a mess of echoes, too many metal surfaces that broke everything above subsonic into shards of noise. The lower registers, though, reverberated through the frame of the boat; the rhythm pushed at me from every direction, like being caught in the crush of a midnight rave. The beat echoed in my lower back and groin, a steady thrum that was creating a bit of stir.

Piotr had once told me that the engines on old boats-like the rusty freighters on which he had shipped around the world during his time in the Merchant Marines-would sometimes vibrate at a frequency that drove the sailors nuts. You stay at sea too long, he had said, and it doesn't take much to get