Not really. We were going to sit here and do every bit of the nothing we had done at Fire and Ice. Everything else would be in the hands of others. Professionals. And criminals.
A warn-off by the gods themselves would not keep Belinda from digging.
I hoped no one on the law-and-order side pushed her. She was crazy enough to push back.
Dean went to bed before the ratwomen finished. I helped Singe clean up; then we resumed gossiping and honoring Weider's beer.
It didn't take much of the latter to slow me down.
I meant to quiz Singe on how I could handle Tinnie. But I stayed sober enough to realize that was stupid. Singe was barely an adult. She wasn't human. And Tinnie was unique, possibly unfathomable by Tinnie Tate herself.
Eventually I dragged myself upstairs. My room was the way I had left it, except that somebody had cleaned it and had made up the bed with fresh linens.
Singe was altogether too efficient. And was, probably, resenting my intrusion into her quiet, orderly world.
30
There were four sleeping rooms on the second floor of my house. The biggest, stretching across the front, was mine. Dean's room spanned the house in back, except for a storage closet and space taken by the stairs. Singe occupied the largest of the remaining rooms, which sat on the west side of the central hallway. In area, it almost matched Dean's. The fourth room-our guest room-contained a seldom-used bed and lots of stuff that should have been thrown away. We used to hide somebody there once in a while.
There were two real, glazed windows in my room. They were not barred because there was no easy way for villains to get at them. Both looked down on Macunado Street. The one to the east might as well have not existed. I've never opened it and seldom looked out it. The other, beside the head of my bed, had seen some action. Once upon a time I would stare out it while I ruminated. Tonight, as always in warm weather, it was open a few inches so cool night air could get inside.
I liked sleeping in a cool room.
I had the opportunity that night. The temperature plummeted after sundown. At one point I wakened and added a light blanket to the sheet that had been adequate earlier. Later, I wakened again and used the chamber pot, setting some beer free. Then I wakened a third time, needing a heavier cover and with my bladder ready to explode.
The sky had been overcast during the afternoon and evening. That had cleared. The light of an unseen moon splashed the rooftops and turned them into a weird faerie landscape.
My aim was less than perfect. I missed the pot completely to start. Disgusting. I gobbled something incoherent meant to be an appeal to the Dead Man. No telling what I thought he could do. I got no response, anyway.
Then I saw the ghost.
The specter drifted down out of the night and came toward my window like a vampire in a dream. 'But vampires don't really fly,' I reminded myself. 'They just jump really far.' Vampires can leap for altitude or distance but they don't flit like bats. Nor do they turn into bats, much as they might want the prey community to think they do.
I calmed myself, completed my business, formulated a plan for cleaning up before Singe or Dean discovered the evidence. Then I checked the window. And nearly panicked.
The flying woman was still there, hair and clothing streaming in the breeze. Her dress was something light and white that, in moonlight, made me think of fashionable grave wear. And reminded me of what I had seen vampire brides wearing in the nests in the adventure where I first butted heads with Tinnie Tate.
My ears kicked in. I heard my name. Then my brain shed sleep enough to put it all together. That was the Windwalker, Furious Tide of Light. And she wanted in.
So, naturally, I remembered that vampires, like most evils, have to be invited in the first time. And I recalled my reaction to this woman last time our paths crossed.
She didn't look like she had seduction in mind. She looked troubled.
I raised the window as high as it would go, which was not much. I turned up my bedside lamp. The Windwalker, being a wisp of a woman, drifted through the narrow opening.
I settled on the edge of my bed, waited, hoping she would feel no need to pace over there by the chamber pot. She glanced around, shoved my dirty clothes off the only chair, settled. She turned the lamp back down. 'A watcher might wonder.'
Assuming he failed to notice a flying woman in her nightgown sliding in the window. 'You didn't ride anything this time.'
'A broomstick isn't necessary.' She noted my interest in her apparel. 'The King held a ball at Summer Hall. I was invited. He has aspirations.' She spoke softly.
So. Not a nightgown. 'I see.' I matched her soft voice. Singe would invite herself to join us if she heard us talking. 'And now you're here.'
'Yes. It was on the way.'
Only by the most circuitous route.
31
'I'm frightened. Strange things are happening. They're outside my control. I don't deal well with that sort of circumstance.'
She spoke like she wanted me to understand, not like she wanted to be comforted, which was how my head worked when she was around.
'I'm lost but I'm listening.'
'Otherwise, I'm not sure what my problem is. Actually, I just know that one is shaping up. Besides being able to stroll through the air I'm strongly intuitive, but randomly. I can't control it and don't dare rely on it. Right now I intuit that something abidingly dark is afoot. Powerful people are trying to cover it up. I can't understand why.'
'You wouldn't be one of those yourself, would you?'
She seemed genuinely confused. 'What do you mean?'
'Last time I was involved in weird goings-on involving secret labs and illegal experiments, your daughter and her friends were in the middle of it. You and your father went balls to the wall to make sure they didn't get eaten alive for their foolishness.'
'Kevans isn't involved this time. I don't think any of the Faction kids are.'
Kevans' gang of misfit genius friends called themselves the Faction.
'How come it sounds like you're trying to convince yourself?'
'I admit it. Kevans does lie to me. When I see her. Which is hardly ever anymore.'
'She's not living with you?'
'She has her own place. I don't think she learned much last time. And I'm scared that some of her other friends might be involved. Or might know who is. And Kevans wouldn't say.'
'Teen solidarity. But, involved in what?'
'Exactly.'
'Teen solidarity usually collapses in the face of real consequences.'
'I don't think Kevans is involved.' She was waffling based on wishful thinking. 'But she might be close to someone who is. I don't want to press her. Our relationship is complicated and fragile.'
'I know. But how come you're here?'
'Let me tell you about my week.' Which she did, wasting few words. 'When the business on the edge of Elf
