blades. I spun around to see who was following me, and gawked openmouthed at the man standing immediately behind me. ‘‘How?’’ I asked, poking him in the chest to be sure he was real.
My hand went right through his chest as if nothing was there. ‘‘OK, change that
‘‘Beyond, shadow world, the Dreaming… all different names for the same thing,’’ he answered, his dimples showing as I waved a hand through his chest. ‘‘I told you that my mother was a shaman.’’
‘‘You said that’s why you could occasionally read my mind. That doesn’t explain why you’re a… what, shade? Image? You’re not really here, are you?’’
‘‘No. I’m in Drake’s house. Or rather, my body is. I can walk in the Dreaming, but I can’t interact with anything. My mother said it was because I was part dragon.’’ He shrugged. ‘‘I won’t be able to touch things as you can, but I can accompany you.’’
‘‘Do you see Cyrene’s tracks?’’ I asked, pointing to the ground.
He squinted. ‘‘Faintly. You look different in here.’’
‘‘Different? I do?’’ I was a bit taken aback. I knew most things looked different when viewed from the shadow world, but I was part of this world-I shouldn’t look different. ‘‘How so?’’
‘‘There is a glow about you. A sort of silver glow.’’ He smiled. ‘‘It is the sign you are part of my sept. It pleases me that you manifest that as an aura.’’
I looked down at my arms. ‘‘Good gods, you’re right. I’m May the Amazing Glowing Woman. How very odd… but we don’t have time to explore my glowiness, I’m afraid. Cy’s trail is starting to fade.’’
He nodded and gestured for me to go on. I did, my heart lightened somewhat by his presence, even if it was an insubstantial presence. We couldn’t take a taxi, since it would be impossible to follow Cyrene’s trail, which meant we had to cover a lot of ground on foot. About an hour after we started, we finally ran the trail to earth at a grimy hotel hidden in a back street in King’s Cross. We’d lost the trail a couple of times because Cyrene had evidently gotten into a car at some point, which made the little splotches of water that dropped off her scarce, but it helped having two of us to follow possible leads.
‘‘Do not go in, little bird,’’ Gabriel told me as I examined the outside of the hotel. It was more of a hostel than a hotel, obviously one used by people whose minds were more absorbed with where their next trick, fix, or bottle was coming from rather than where they laid their head at night. ‘‘It could be dangerous, and I cannot help you in this form. You wait outside until I can come to you in bodily form.’’
‘‘One of the perks of being able to shadow walk is the ability to take a look around without anyone knowing,’’ I told him as I finessed the lock on the door. It gave way with even less resistance than was normal, as if the lock itself had absorbed the miasma of hopelessness that hung so heavy in the air it left an oily taste upon the tongue.
Gabriel wasn’t happy, but he said nothing as we slipped through the door and up a narrow flight of stairs. There was a small room off to one side that served as a lobby and reception, although the room was barren of life. The detritus of people who had lost all hope lay scattered on the floor and stairs- empty bottles, fast-food wrappers, crushed cigarette packets and butts, torn fragments of lurid magazines… we picked our way around all of it as we crept up the first flight of stairs. The air in the hotel was foul, stale with smoke and urine and rodent droppings, and other, less-palatable scents that I refused to identify or acknowledge. Cyrene’s trail here was sporadic as well, as if she’d been dragged up the stairs. Two clear sets of her footprints stood outside one door on the second floor, however.
I glanced at Gabriel. ‘‘Can you go through walls?’’ I whispered.
He shook his head. ‘‘I can’t interact with anything, nor can I travel through solid substances. Doors have to be open for me to go through them.’’
‘‘Then I’ll just have to open this one.’’
‘‘May…’’ He frowned. ‘‘I do not like this. You should wait until I can come to help you. This blackmailer is clearly dangerous. You could be harmed.’’
His words washed over me with a warm, comforting sensation. No one had ever worried about me when I was out on a job-it never seemed to occur to Cyrene that I could be harmed, and Magoth… well, Magoth didn’t particularly care what happened to me so long as I succeeded.
‘‘If you were here, I’d spend all my time kissing you and we’d never get Cy rescued,’’ I told him with a smile. ‘‘Don’t worry, I’ll shadow as soon as the lock is open. This hallway is dim enough to hide me if anyone is standing on the other side of the door.’’
He didn’t react to my light flirtation, just stood watching me with worried eyes as I persuaded the lock to open.
‘‘Well, I guess we were worried about nothing,’’ I said a few moments later as Gabriel straightened up from where he had been kneeling next to the crumpled form on the floor. ‘‘Is he dead?’’
‘‘I believe so. I can detect no signs of life, although I would have to be able to touch him to know for certain if he could be resuscitated.’’
Unwilling to touch the body, I used my foot to nudge it over onto its back. ‘‘
‘‘The thief taker?’’ Gabriel asked, frowning down at the twisted face of the dead man on the floor. The handle of a knife emerged from his chest.
I avoided looking at the grimacing face and examined the handle as best I could without touching it. It was silver, carved with runes I couldn’t identify. Something about it tickled the back of my mind. ‘‘I think I’ve seen this before.’’
‘‘Where?’’
‘‘I don’t remember. It just looks… familiar.’’ I steeled myself and laid two fingers across the man’s neck. The body was cool to the touch. ‘‘No pulse.’’
‘‘If he’s dead, then where’s your twin?’’ Gabriel asked.
I rose and looked around the room with him. One corner held a grimy bed, a chair, and a three-legged table. A filthy, rust-stained sink hung crookedly off the wall on the other side of the room, below a mirror that was missing most of its glass. ‘‘That is a very good question.’’
I had come out of the shadow world to examine the body of the thief taker but slipped into it again to look for signs of Cyrene.
‘‘There,’’ Gabriel said, pointing at the window.
‘‘Why does no one ever use doors to exit rooms?’’ I grumbled, moving over to the window to examine it. It was pushed down, but not latched from the inside. Sure enough, there was a footprint on the windowsill. ‘‘Looks like we’re going out onto the fire escape.’’
‘‘I hate to contradict a lady, but alas, there are times when duty must take precedence over manners,’’ a voice said from behind me.
I spun around to find Savian the thief taker in the doorway. His gaze swept around the room, pausing on the body of Porter for a moment before continuing its perusal. ‘‘I see you’ve had a bit of excitement, Mei Ling. Why don’t you step out of the shadows so we can have a little chat about it.’’
I froze. Although it was daytime, the room was dark enough that unless I moved, Savian wouldn’t see me.
Before I could think of how to respond, he leaped across the room, straight for the window… and me.
‘‘What’s this? Leaving? You wound me, Mei Ling, you truly do,’’ he said, grabbing at me. This close, he could no doubt see a shadowy image of me. ‘‘I thought we had something special between us.’’
I deshadowed, snarling something rude under my breath as I jerked my arm away from him.
‘‘Take your hands off my mate!’’ Gabriel bellowed. He rushed at Savian, forgot he was insubstantial, and zipped right through the thief taker.
Savian looked momentarily disconcerted. ‘‘What was
‘‘I am not a what!’’ Gabriel snapped, stalking over to Savian to stand before him, glaring. ‘‘I am the silver wyvern, and you have just touched my mate.’’
I raised my eyebrows a smidgen at Gabriel’s show of possession. For some reason, it amused rather than annoyed me. ‘‘I didn’t know you were so volatile when it concerned me.’’
‘‘Volatile?’’ Savian repeated the word, his brows scrunching up together. ‘‘Was that intended to be a compliment about my virility?’’
My gaze shifted from Gabriel to his. ‘‘You can’t hear him?’’
