I crutched along through sour stale dust thrown by eddies ofcold wind, lovely day for a scenic stroll. I could feel the watchers out thereeven though I couldn’t see them, eyes behind windows overhead, eyes in alleysoff to each side, wondering who I was, what I wanted, what I carried, whether Ishould be counted as predator or prey. They saw the crutches. They read me asthe cripple I was. They still kept well away, some sixth sense from the meanstreets or just the butt of my SIG bulging against the jacket where the crutchpulled the cloth tight.
I dodged the worst of the cracks in the sidewalk and thedrifts of garbage spilling out from bins not emptied in weeks and the piles ofcrap or urine stains that in better neighborhoods would be dogs but around herewere probably left by humans who felt the urge and saw no need to wait. I sawmaybe five people in the whole walk, and none of them looked me in the eye.That told me a lot about the place, right there, although the biting Novemberwind might have had something to do with it. One touch of that wind, you feltwinter breathing down your neck. I pulled my hat down low on my brow,protecting my eyes from grit.
I worked my gimpy way down the block and around the cornerinto more of the same. I kept close in by the walls and doors and windows onthe side where I’d felt Sandy’s aura, not her signature, she wasn’tusing power, in the blind area of anyone looking down. I could sense people insome of the apartments — that diffuse buzz of human brains that wizards canfeel but not read — and knew the contractors hadn’t wasted money on shieldingwhen they built these places. Sandy might hear me coming.
Or not. I didn’t reach out and latch on to any of the power Ifelt around me, didn’t look with other eyes or listen with other ears. A wizard’ssignature grows or fades with the amount of power he’s using. I didn’t use any, not even the half-unconscious “don’tnotice me” fogging I put on like a pair of pants before I left my apartmentevery morning. I’d done this before. It’s one of the ways we managed to sneakup on Kratz and trap him.
And Sandy had been part of it. She knew. She knew all my tricks, and a few new ones besides.Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been hunting a dead man for the last month or so. Ishivered again, not just from that icy wind.
An eerie feeling touched me — the empty streets and dustblowing up into swirls, I felt like I ought to see tumbleweed rolling alongbetween the horse rails and raised wooden sidewalks and false-frontedsun-bleached stores. It woke memories of a hundred horse-opera showdown scenes.
But I knew Sandy wouldn’t stalk out from the alley next to thesaloon, spurs jingling in the high-plains silence and single-action Colt slunglow on her right hip, to face me in a set duel. Six-guns at twenty paces. If weplayed out the Western idiom and she meant to kill me, she’d ambush me from therim-rock above some back-country canyon trail, aiming her .45-90 Sharps withcold calculation and allowing for the downward angle shot.
She’d go for assassination, not duel. Like the bomb she’d setfor Cash.
But I made it to the door of her apartment building andinside, alive, through security any baby could break. And there it was, noattempt to hide, “Sandy Cormier” in neat marker on one mailbox slot in thepiss-stinking vestibule, Apartment 3B. And, as I’d guessed, no elevatoranywhere to be seen.
I stood there, working up my nerve. I kept reminding myself —if she wanted to kill me, she’d had more chances than I could count. She’d leftme sprawled unconscious on her rug and left the SIG behind with me, loaded, andI had checked to make sure it stillworked and I’d replaced the ammo in every magazine. I don’t believe in takingunnecessary chances. That thought gave little comfort.
Grasping at straws, I couldsee a way she’d let me in and talk to me, but I wasn’t proud of it. There’s alot in this story I’m not proud of.
No help for it. I headed up the stairs. One step at a time,either practice on those crutches did indeed make perfect or I was losingweight because I barely broke a sweat. I waslosing weight, even those baggy sweatpants told me that, probably down totwo-sixty, two-eighty by then with the stair routine at my office and with allthe magic I’d been doing. Anyway, I stopped at the third floor landing andsettled my heartbeat and got caught up on my prayers.
The stairwell door groaned open and clunked shut behind me,loud and echoing, an early-warning system that passed me into spray-paintedgang-graffiti heaven and scorched patches on the cracked plaster walls and acold draft from a broken window at the end of the corridor. I started to wonderif the place was technically abandoned. Most of the lights were dead, burnedout or stolen. My foot crunched something and I glanced down — discardedsyringe. Paint-less shadows remembered numbers missing from the doors, justscratches and empty screw-holes. I didn’t know if that was a junkie selling thetags for two bits on the pound to scrounge the cash for his next fix or someonelike Sandy wiping out her tracks — if you had any business here, you knew whichdoor you wanted.
But I knew which window held the feeder tray, which corner hadshown her glow, where I’d felt her when the hawk landed on that fire-escaperail. I turned that way, crutching along as close to silent as I could manage.I’d tightened up nuts and bolts and greased the joints so that my crutches didn’tcreak and groan each time I loaded them and moved. At Sandy’s door, I set oneof those damned props against the wall and drew my SIG and flipped the safetyoff.
And took a deep breath
