not anymore. You mean well. It’s this Annalise that pisses me off. She’s the one who put those spells on you, am I right? And she has you thinking she’s such hot shit that you’re practically creaming in your pants over her.”
I suddenly felt very still. “Watch it,” I said.
“Or what?” she snapped, straining to keep her voice low. “What are you going to do? Feed me to a predator?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“See? This is what I’m talking about. This! When this Annalise brought you into this life, what did she tell you about the predators?”
“They love to be summoned but hate to be held in place,” I said. There was some other stuff she’d explained, but I didn’t think Catherine was pissed off about where they came from or whether they were angels, devils, or, as Annalise said, neither.
“And that’s it?”
I didn’t like the way this was going. It was one thing to have her angry with me, but this was worse. She was treating me like a fish just arrived on the cellblock.
It made me want to lose my cool with her to make her back down, but part of me knew her anger was justified. I didn’t know why, but I trusted her enough to assume it. “And we have to destroy them. Kill them,” I added, because she was being honest with me, and I wanted to be honest in return.
“That’s what I thought. What about feeding them? What about serving them a late-night snack?”
I felt my face flush. I’d let the floating storm feed from the power lines for too long, and she knew about it. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I cut the power pole as soon as I realized, but—”
“Power pole? I don’t care about a power pole. I’m talking about people.”
I stared at her, trying to figure out what she meant. “Do you mean the two assholes who shot at us?”
“Of course I do, Ray. You led the predator to them and let it feed.”
“It zapped them with lightning. Red lightning. It didn’t
“Predators feed in all sorts of ways.… Okay. Listen up. When I first signed on to this damn job so-and-so years ago, I was investigating a string of overeating suicides. People were eating and eating and they could not stop themselves. Eventually, they ruptured their guts and died in agony, but if anyone tried to restrain them, they howled like starving dogs. Nobody could figure out what the hell was going on, but I did. It turned out that it was a tiny little predator that looked like a songbird, sort of. People were killing themselves because they heard this birdsong, and somehow this predator was feeding off of that.”
“What happened to it?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I sent my report and skipped town before it noticed me and sang outside my window. No one ever tells investigators how it turns out. We’re not secure.”
“You think the floating storm fed on them, somehow?” I asked, still doubtful.
“I don’t know how it works,” she said. “They’re not like us. There’s a different physics where they come from. A different reality. All I know is that they don’t kill for fun, and they don’t waste their time.”
I looked down at the woven rug. The weave was complex, all twisted around itself and bound tight. I wondered what I would have to know to be able to make a rug like that and how much it paid, because I wasn’t as ready for this life as I thought.
And while Annalise had been shockingly ruthless sometimes, she had never allowed a predator to kill anyone.
Catherine stood and straightened her sweater. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. You screwed up in a big way, but you didn’t know any better and we fixed it. And I wouldn’t have survived the night if not for you. Besides, when I said I didn’t want to see people killed, I was including you. None of this will be in my full report.”
“Don’t lie for me,” I said.
“Okay then.” She took out her cellphone and dialed a number. “Catherine Little, supplemental report,” she said. Then she repeated what I’d told her but much simpler and faster than I had. She’d had practice, I guess.
She also told them the floating storm had taken two victims at my instigation because I had an “all enemies” outlook.
She paused to listen to their response. She looked at me and said, “Absolutely not. He just needs someone willing to explain how all this works.”
That gave me a chill. I was grateful to her for having this conversation where I could hear.
Catherine explained that she was leaving the site and hung up. She went into the bathroom and returned with a couple of small bottles, which she jammed into her jump bag. “Ready to go?”
“I want that phone number.”
She smiled at me. There was a trace of kindness in it. “So many do. If they want you to have it, they’ll give it to you.”
We went downstairs. Catherine suggested I check out, but I surprised us both when I said I wouldn’t. She studied my face for a moment, but nothing needed to be said.
On the street, the air was brisk and damp, and I thought we’d have rain soon. There was no sidewalk and we had no car. We walked along the shoulder of the road, watching for careless drivers and Yukons, BMWs, and Mercedes.
A couple of pickup trucks drove by, and a man with a thick, dreadlocked ponytail pedaled by us in a recumbent bike decorated to look like Santa’s sleigh.
Catherine seemed to know where we were going. She led me through an intersection with a four-way stop,
