Circle of Enemies

think about that.

I’d planned to jog two blocks, but I’d only gone a block and a half before I felt too anxious and tense to continue. I hurried toward the Sugar Shaker, sweat prickling my back.

Violet met me at the door. “He was just here, not a minute ago,” she said. “The creep walked by the window and winked at me.” She shuddered a little and pointed down the street toward her apartment. “Then he took off that way and turned right at the corner. Ray—”

I ran off before she could finish that thought. Whatever she had to tell me, it would have to wait until after I’d found Wally. Found him and killed him.

“Ray!” Vi followed me onto the street. “Ray! You wait for me!”

“Vi, dammit, he’s going to hear you.”

“Don’t you tell me to shut up! You’re going to tell me what’s going on!” So much for being afraid of me.

“If Wally hears you, he’ll come back here and kill us both.”

“You don’t play that shit with me! You’re going to tell me who this asshole is, or you’re going to regret it.”

We couldn’t stand out on the sidewalk hashing this out while Wally walked away. “Come on, and keep your voice down.”

I led her down the sidewalk. In the distance, I could see a column of black smoke stretching into the sky. It gave me a weird, jangly feeling to see the destruction that was following me around.

“I’m waiting,” she said.

“Wally is from Seattle.”

“Duh.”

I remember this mood very well. She wanted me to talk to her, and she wanted to be nasty about it. If I let her turn it into a fight, I’d lose my shot at Wally. “Don’t, okay? Just let me finish. I knew Wally from school. We weren’t friends, but I made a couple of bullies leave him alone, so now he likes me. But we’re not friends,” I added quickly, because I could see she was about to talk.

“That’s not what he says.”

“Fuck him.” We reached the corner and I peeked around it. Wally was almost to the end of the block, walking with a strange, stiff-legged limp on the other side of the street. He wasn’t moving very fast, and I figured he’d be easy to catch on foot.

And I was ready. I was ready to kill him right there on the sidewalk, if I could. But not in front of Vi.

“He did something to a friend of mine,” I said. I didn’t want to explain further, but I knew she wouldn’t be satisfied with that. “He hurt the oldest, best friend I had in this world. Understand? Nobody in my whole life ever meant as much to me as that friend did.”

She seemed taken aback, but I pressed on. “Wally …” Wally put a predator inside him. “Wally poisoned him. He gave him some kind of experimental drug that drove him crazy—”

“And he ate people. Right? That was all over the news.”

Of course. “I tried to save my friend …” From the Twenty Palace Society. “I tried to bring back the old him, the guy I knew. I protected him. But in the end, he wouldn’t stop, so …” I killed him.

No. I couldn’t say that. I didn’t believe in confession.

She didn’t need me to say it. Something in my voice had blunted her anger. “So Wally’s after you and you’re after him, and me and my daughter are caught in the middle.”

“At least you’re still alive,” I said. “So far.”

She turned her back on me and walked away. Finally. I peered back around the corner and saw Wally farther up the street, close to the intersection. Maybe I’d do something for Vi later, if I survived, but I couldn’t imagine what. I couldn’t think about her, not when Wally was right there.

I took out my ghost knife. Wally didn’t change his pace or turn around as I crossed the street and fell in behind him. Whatever X-ray vision he might have had, he still couldn’t see behind him. Good. If he was as full of predators as he said, I was going to need to ambush him.

And God, it felt so good to have that clarity. It was calming, almost, even as I felt my heartbeat quicken and my body grow warm. I was going to rush at this bastard, and I was finally going to kill him.

I walked faster. My spell would hit whatever I wanted it to hit, but I’d have to call it back between each attack, and the distance between us meant there would be a lot of time between hits. I had to get closer.

He crossed the street and slumped up the next block. Suddenly, all the doors of a 4Runner opened just as Wally came near it. Five guys piled out and stepped up to him, blocking the sidewalk. Wally didn’t seem startled by them at all.

I had been about to cross the street, but I ducked into the loading dock of an appliance store at the last moment. I peeked at them from behind a stack of pallets.

One of the men who’d stepped out of the 4Runner looked up and down the street warily. I recognized him immediately as the shortest and most muscular of Fidel’s cousins. Then I immediately recognized the others, including Fidel himself.

I couldn’t hear what they were saying at this distance, but I could see their body language. Fidel was smiling and making broad gestures with his hands—he was trying to look like a magnanimous gangster, the guy who asked for things in a friendly way while the gunmen around him made sure you knew what the correct answer was supposed to be.

Something Fidel said made Wally throw back his head and laugh. He didn’t seem nervous or intimidated at all.