right street, but we got there eventually.
It was a small place, one story, just a parking lot ringed by rooms, all their doors facing inward.
My shirt was speckled with blood and my jacket had greasy black smears down the back. Annalise made me wait in the van while she rented our rooms. While I sat, I saw that one of the rooms had a black streak on the front walk. It came from under the door, turned forty-five degrees to cross the pavement, and disappeared at the muddy lot.
That was interesting. Going that direction, the worms had to travel farther before they could tunnel into the earth than if they’d gone straight-at least ten feet farther. Were they being drawn toward something in the west? Maybe it was the Pacific.
Annalise emerged with the room keys. Thankfully, I didn’t have the room with the black streak. “Clean up,” she said. “We’re getting an early start tomorrow.”
She went into her room and I went into mine next door. I stripped off my clothes in the bathroom and examined them in the bright lights by the sink. My jacket, shirt, and pants were nasty. I needed a laundromat and some industrial detergent. I wasn’t going to get them. I took the clothes into the shower, washed off the waterless cleaner and blood, then scrubbed at every spot of blood on my clothes I could find. The blood was still wet, and the clothes came clean fairly well. I tried not to think about what sort of diseases Harlan might have had. I just wanted to be clean.
Eventually, I ran out of steam. I hung the clothes on chairs by the heater and turned it on low. Then I fell onto the polyester bedcovers and disappeared into dreamless slumber.
It seemed like an instant later that Annalise thumped on my door, hitting it hard enough to rattle it in the jamb. I climbed out of bed, wrapped a blanket around me, and opened the door.
She had changed her clothes, switching her fireman’s jacket for simple brown leather. Her pants were black and her shirt a white button-down that looked a size too big for her. Her boots had been exchanged for simple black leather walking shoes.
She barely glanced at me. “Get dressed. We have a lot to do today.” She tossed the keys to me.
My clothes were still wet, but they were all I had. There were traces of Harlan’s blood that I had missed the night before. Damn. I put the nasty clothes on my clean body and went out to the van. I left the jacket in the garbage.
It was just after 7 A.M. The sky was gray, and there was a steady drizzle. I was hungry but I couldn’t picture myself sitting at a restaurant with wet, bloody clothes. I just drove, hoping to find a drive-through somewhere.
Instead, Annalise had me turn into a side street beside an outdoorsman’s store. Aside from the diner, which had cardboard taped over the broken windows, it was the only place open at this hour.
Annalise led me inside and bought me new clothes. They weren’t fancy-four pairs of jeans, four black long- sleeved pullover shirts, four pairs of white socks, one pair of black hiking boots, one windbreaker with a zip-out lining.
The clerk held open a trash bag and I threw in all my old things, including my sneakers, which were rimmed with Harlan’s blood. I hadn’t even noticed. He threw all that old stuff away, and I walked out in new clean clothes.
It felt good. I wondered if the four pairs of clothes meant she expected me to live another four days.
Next, we stopped off for breakfast. We chose a different diner this time. Annalise ordered very rare steak with eggs and a side of ham. The waitress looked dubious, but Annalise packed all of it away.
Her tattoos were visible above the open collar of her shirt and at the edges of her sleeves. They looked like mine, which meant they were made with a paintbrush and a spell, not a needle and ink. They were just as permanent, though.
I didn’t know who had given them to Annalise, but I wondered if she’d been conscious for it. I’d been awake for part of my own tattooing, and the pain had been worse than anything I’d ever experienced in my life, with the exception of casting my ghost knife spell.
I absentmindedly touched the spot below my right collarbone where I’d been feeling twinges for the last few hours. My fingertips registered the touch of normal flesh, but my chest registered nothing at all. The parts of my body marked with spells couldn’t feel a thing.
And those spells had come from Annalise. I wondered if she could sense them-and me-the way I could sense the ghost knife. I also wondered if my tattoos had been as painful for her to cast as my ghost knife had been for me. When I’d created the ghost knife, channeling all the energy needed to power it had been like dousing myself with gasoline and setting myself on fire.
It was possible that I’d cast the spell incorrectly, but what if I hadn’t? Annalise might have had to go through that same pain when she’d put these marks on me, and when she created each of the ribbons she carried. I didn’t want to think about that.
Her abilities went beyond the marks though. Her strength was incredible, and she could heal herself by eating meat, the more raw the better. She also wore that vest full of spells, which was probably back in her room with the fireman’s jacket.
I wondered what effect all those spells had on her. Was she still human? Would she still be human even if her body changed into something monstrous, as long as she thought like a human? I wondered how much her quest to hunt down and destroy dangerous magic had changed her. I wondered how it would change me, before she put an end to me.
Of course, the only reason my mind was wandering this way was because I had no one to talk to. Annalise sawed at her food and shoveled it into her mouth, one bite after the other.
The silence became annoying. I asked Annalise why Harlan was the only one who remembered his kids. She didn’t answer. She didn’t even look up from her plate. I asked her if she thought we’d find someone else like Harlan in town. No answer. I asked her where she grew up.
She stopped eating and looked up at me. It was not a friendly look. Fine. I dropped the subject. I got a Seattle newspaper off the rack and began to read it.
Hammer Bay was too far away from the city for Harlan’s shooting to make the paper, but surprise surprise, I
