Game of Cages

“I hope so,” I said, and meant it.

She shuffled forward and hugged me. I hugged her back. She knew a little about what I did. Not about the society itself, and not enough to get into trouble, but enough to worry. “Be careful.”

We let go. I backed down the stairs and hurried to Catherine’s car. I should have said something reassuring to her, but it was too late now. Time to go.

I climbed into the Acura and belted up. My adrenaline was high, and I couldn’t help but smile. Catherine didn’t like that smile. “Do you have everything now?”

The ghost knife in my pocket felt like a live wire. “Yep.”

She rumbled through the alley and pulled into the street. I thought it would be best to let her tell me what was going on when she was ready, but after driving in silence for four blocks, I couldn’t hold back.

“What’s the emergency?”

“Well …” she said, then fell silent while she negotiated a busy intersection. Her body language had changed again—she was irritated. I wasn’t sure why; didn’t it make sense for me to stop at home before I went on a job?

“Well,” she said again, “earlier today we found out there’s going to be an auction. Tonight. In fact, it might be taking place right now, although I hope not. I went an hour out of my way to pick you up, so you better be worth it.”

This was a sudden change in tone. I wondered where it had come from. “I’ll do my best,” I said, but that made her scowl and blow air out of her nose. “What’s being auctioned?”

“A predator.”

That was the answer I didn’t want to hear. Predators were weird supernatural creatures out of the Empty Spaces. I’d seen two so far, along with the pile of corpses they left behind. “Do you know what kind?”

“What kind?” She seemed to think this was an idiotic question, but I had no idea why. “No. I don’t know what kind.”

“Okay.” I was careful not to snap at her.

“Who are you?” she asked. She looked me up and down. I didn’t feel a lot of friendliness coming from her.

“I’m Ray Lilly,” I answered, keeping my tone neutral. “Remember? You just pulled me out of work.”

“I know your name,” she said, leaving out the word dumbass but implying it anyway. “What were you doing at that supermarket? What are you doing in that apartment?”

“Working. Living.”

“That’s not cover for a mission? Okay. What I want to know is who you are in the society. Because you are definitely not a peer. Are you an apprentice? An ally?”

“I’m not any of those things,” I said. “I’m Annalise Powliss’s wooden man.”

She exhaled sharply, then laughed to herself a little. “For God’s sake,” she said, then fell silent. After a few seconds more, she pulled into a Pizza Hut parking lot. She didn’t turn off the engine. “All right,” she said, and I could tell by her tone that I wouldn’t like what she was about to say. “Somebody fucked up. You shouldn’t be here, not with me, and I shouldn’t have been sent a fucking hour out of my way to pick up a fucking wooden man, not on a supposedly emergency job. What’s the point in having you along? I don’t need you and I don’t want you. Hell, I don’t even like looking at you, knowing what you are.

“So here’s the deal: you keep quiet and do what I say, or you get out right now. I have a long night’s work ahead of me, and I don’t need you getting in my way. So, which is it going to be? Because if following orders is going to be too much for you, you need to be out of my car and have yourself a nice day.”

She stared at me, waiting for a response. It had been a while since anyone had spoken to me like that. If Catherine had been a guy …

Not that using my fists had ever turned out well for me. Old habits don’t just die hard, they make living hard, too. “You must be part of the diplomatic wing of the society.”

She sat back, rolled her eyes, and sighed. “What the hell did I do to deserve this?”

“I’ll tell you what you did,” I answered. “You talked to me like I ran over your dog. Whatever your problem is, it has nothing to do with me.”

“Oh no?” She turned the key, shutting off the engine. “Bad enough to have a peer or an ally along. Then I would spend all my time praying the collateral damage doesn’t hit me. But every wooden man I’ve ever met was either a stone-skulled thug, terminally ill, or a terminally ill stone-skulled thug.” She made sure to look me straight in the eye as she said it. She had guts. I would have liked her if she wasn’t so obnoxious. “Which are you?”

“Well, I’m not terminally ill.”

She frowned. I’d lived down to her expectations. “Well, that’s just dandy.”

“If you order me to get out of your car,” I said, “I’ll hop out right here. I’m not going to ride with someone who doesn’t want me. But that’s the only way I’m getting out. When the friendly guy from the society turns up to debrief me, I’m not going to tell him I chose not to go. Understand?”

She turned away from me. The society had kept me out of jail, somehow. I had no idea what would happen if I refused to take a job. Would they kill me? Would they lift whatever spell kept the cops off my front door? I had exactly one person handy who I could ask, and she was trying to kick me out of her car.

Pizza-delivery guys carried red cases across the lot. They didn’t seem happy about the way we were parked. I wondered how much they made a month.

“All right then,” Catherine said. “We go on the job, and you take your orders from me.”

“That ain’t going to happen, either,” I told her. As Annalise’s wooden man, I went when she said