Lohengrin did not answer. He turned to Cameo. “He’s going to be okay, right?”
Ellen’s face was the answer. He wouldn’t be okay. Nothing would. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.”
“I need clothes.”
“I’ll find you some,” she said. “Come on. Give me your arm.”
She found him a security jumpsuit, black and slick but warm. Bugsy let her dress him, let her put her arm under his. Together, they walked slowly back to their hotel, just a couple of blocks away.
“Aliyah?” Bugsy said as they reached the revolving glass door.
“She’s fine. I put the earring away.”
“Okay.”
“I need you to walk a little farther.”
“I’m on it,” Bugsy said, but it took a long moment to get his legs to move.
Back in the room, he collapsed on the bed. The mattress sighed under him. Ellen sat on the little love seat, sipping coffee and looking bleak.
“My fault,” Bugsy said to the ceiling as much as to Ellen. “My fucking fault.”
“You didn’t kill anyone,” she said.
“I pissed him off. My bullshit crap about Bahir and Noel Matthews. If I had just…”
“If you just hadn’t made him angry?” Ellen said. Her voice was soft and sad and amused. It was a voice that knew too much about loss and death and pain. “How many women in the shelter say the same thing, Bugs? It wasn’t you. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and you said the wrong thing.”
“I’m always saying the wrong thing.”
“Well, yes, but that’s why we love you,” she said. It didn’t occur to him to ask who we was in this context until later, and by then he was too tired to speak. He heard the shower running. The bed shifted as Ellen climbed in, her arm across his chest, her legs pressing against his.
“I don’t think I can…” Bugsy said. “I mean, you’re beautiful but I’m just kind of…”
“Go to sleep,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” Bugsy said. “Okay.”
He dreamed about fire.
Noel Matthews’s Apartment
Manhattan, New York
She was dozing on the couch with a crocheted comforter covering her. The pop of displaced air as Noel teleported into the flat didn’t disturb her. A book had fallen from sleep-slack fingers and lay on the floor beside the couch. The tail was thrown over the back of the sofa like the body of a heavy python. For an instant it felt almost like a fist had closed on his heart. Noel pressed a hand to his chest, and felt Lilith’s breasts flatten. Nothing must happen to her.
He allowed the muscles and bones to shift, restoring him to his natural form, then knelt down at the side of the couch. Niobe’s lashes trembled on her cheeks, and a small murmur passed her lips. Noel bent even closer to see if he could hear, but it was just a breath of sound.
The skin of her cheek was soft against his lips, and she smelled like Shalimar. He loved the oriental quality of that perfume. She stirred and mumbled.
“My heart,” Noel whispered.
“Oh, it’s you. You’re home,” and her arms snaked around his neck.
“Dearest, I’m here to take you”-he hesitated, remembering her fury in Vienna when he’d tried to lie and hide from her-“someplace safe.”
Niobe sat up. “Safe? What’s happened?”
“Weathers knows that Noel Matthews is Bahir and Lilith.”
She kicked away the comforter. “We can go back to the island. We were safe there.”
Noel shook his head. “No, I’m going to take you to Drake. He can protect you.”
“He could protect us both.”
“Weathers would come after me. A lot of people will get hurt in the cross fire. Maybe even you. I’ll play the merry fox to his hound while I-” He broke off abruptly.
“While you what?” Suspicion sharpened Niobe’s words. “Will people die?”
“Hopefully very few.”
“Weathers?”
“Probably. Hopefully. He seems like a man who holds a grudge.” Noel forced a smile.
“And then it’s over, right? Forever.” She folded her arms protectively over her stomach. Noel nodded. “Promise!”
He pulled her into a tight embrace. “I promise. I will be completely, totally, and forever out of that life.”
24
Saturday,
December 19
On the Lualaba River, Congo
People’s Paradise of Africa
Sleep had become an ephemeral, abstract concept to Wally. Sleep was the thing his body tried to do to pass the time between attacks from Ghost. His exhaustion was so complete that he could nod off almost instantly, but Ghost woke him too frequently for the sleep to do any good. He never got more than an hour or two before she returned.
She’s just a little kid, he reminded himself. Wally wouldn’t let himself be angry. Not with Ghost. Somebody had made her this way. She was just a little girl.
But that was little consolation, when their interaction unfolded the same way every time: Ghost hit him with the knife. He woke up. He tried and failed to catch her. She receded into the jungle.
Over and over and over again. All night long.
When morning finally came, Wally woke to find the sun shining in his eyes. He moaned and rolled over, trying vainly to fend off the headache. But it was the perfect recipe for a migraine: massive sleep deprivation capped off with a burst of sunlight straight into his tired eyes.
Sunlight? Wally sat up. Rays of light streamed through the tatters of his shredded tent.
Ghost, it seemed, was just as frustrated as Wally.
Ellen Allworth’s Apartment
Manhattan, New York
Bugsy swam slowly up toward consciousness. The ceiling was familiar. He was at Ellen’s place. New York, thank God. His body felt thick and sluggish. The general sense of illness might have been jet lag or the weird systemic rebellion of having lost too many wasps at once. The sheets and pillow were crisp and cool and deeply comfortable, except that was desperately hungry.
He levered himself up out of bed and stumbled to the living room. The pajama legs were too long, folding up under his feet and trying to trip him. Ellen, alone on the couch, was gently stroking the ruined fedora. Will-o’-Wisp. Nick.
“Hey,” Bugsy said. “You okay?”
Ellen looked up at him, the corners of her mouth turned down. “Sure,” she said. “It’s just… I’m still a little messed up after Paris. I didn’t know Garou, but I had coffee with Burrowing Owl before things got bad. He was a nice guy. He was going to Marseilles after the conference. Now he won’t.”
“Yeah. I mean, you could take him, I guess. If it’s important.”
“I could,” she said. Her voice was tired and thin. “They’re all like that. My Nick. Mom. Aliyah. All of them. I’m always the last chance. The one hope of doing whatever it was that wasn’t done before they had to go.”
“You don’t have to, you know,” Bugsy said.
“Of course I have to.” She held up Nick’s hat, as if it was a counterargument. “I’m one of them myself, right?
