Game of Cages

Catherine stepped out of the darkness and pulled the sleeve of my jacket. It didn’t help, but the thought was nice. I hauled myself through the opening, flopping into the dark room with all the grace of a drunk sneaking into his house.

“Come on,” I said, as I got to my feet. “Let’s get out of here.”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the quilt flutter onto the bed. I shouted in surprise and spun around. Another figure stood in the darkness well away from the window. A jumble of thoughts rushed through my head. At first I thought Catherine had brought a guy to her room, then, seeing how small the figure was, I assumed it was a boy, which would have been a screwed-up thing to go to jail for, and last night she’d been under the influence of my ghost knife, so that would have been another awful thing I was responsible for.

The figure spoke. “Ray, what the hell have you been doing here?” I knew that high, deadpan voice. The lamp snapped on.

“Boss!” I said, much too loudly. It was Annalise, the peer in the Twenty Palace Society who had bulletproofed my chest and arms, and who had led me through the whole mess in Hammer Bay.

I almost hugged her, but her ribs-backward, shoulders-forward body language made it clear she didn’t want to be touched. I stopped myself after an impulsive step forward and let my hands drop to my sides.

“Boss, I’ve been screwing everything up from moment one.”

Catherine started to protest, but then she noticed the ghost of a smile on Annalise’s face.

Annalise moved toward the door and listened. She looked just the same as when I’d first met her—her dark red hair was clipped so short you couldn’t grab a strand between thumb and forefinger, and she wore a new pair of black, steel-toed boots and a new firefighter’s jacket. Her pale face was small and delicate. Black tattooed lines just like mine peeked out from the collar and sleeves of her shirt.

She looked to be about twenty-two years old, but she’d already lived longer than most people do, and the things she’d seen had made her hard and dangerous. One look into her eyes could tell you that.

That absurd little voice of hers sounded loud in the room. “Someone was killed downstairs, you said?” She glanced down at a scrap of lumber in her hand.

“Yeah, Nadia, the owner, I think. I couldn’t see how. Just … blood. Is that why you guys were sitting in the dark?”

“No,” Catherine said. “I was debriefing her, and we didn’t want anyone to know I was up. Don’t worry, Ray, you didn’t interrupt anything.”

I felt my face grow warm, and Catherine smirked at me. I said: “You’re pretty comfortable, considering.”

“I can’t help it. It’s a tremendous relief to have a peer right here with us. I feel safe for the first time in days.”

Downstairs, something fell over with a muffled thump. “Okay,” Annalise said. Her expression was serious. It was always serious. “You don’t know who’s in the building?”

I didn’t answer right away. It could have been Tattoo, but I thought I’d have heard his Megamoto. Then I remembered the missing third Mercedes at the red cabin. “Whoever it is, they’re working for the old man. He’s the only one left. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s the last of Yin’s guys with a new boss.”

Before the room fell into darkness again, I stepped closer and confirmed what I already expected: the scrap of wood had a spell drawn on it. It was a glyph that wriggled like a nest of snakes when certain kinds of magic were nearby.

It was dead still.

She tossed the scrap of lumber at me. I caught it. The sigil flashed silver as it reacted to the magic Annalise had put on me. On the other side of the door, we could hear the floorboards creaking.

Annalise said: “Look after yourselves.” Then she yanked open the door and stepped into the hall.

Immediately, I heard a sound like a series of low sneezes. Something invisible tugged at Annalise’s clothes. Someone was using silencers. She raised her arm to cover her eyes and charged forward.

“Stay low,” I said to Catherine. “Count to thirty, and then follow Annalise out of the building.”

I swung my leg out the window into cold morning air. Then I lowered myself as far as I could and dropped onto the grass. I didn’t break my leg, and no one shot me. So far, so good.

I sprinted around the side of the building. The gun in my pocket bounced against my hip; I’d forgotten about it again. I could have used it against the gunmen inside, but Annalise could handle them better than I could. Killing people was her calling in life.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I came around the side of the house just as a man in a dark suit fled down the porch steps, firing desperation shots back into the doorway. He didn’t see me come at him.

I hit him from behind at full speed, knocking him face-first into the gravel. He didn’t make a sound as he scraped across the stones, but I hit him once behind the ear just to be certain.

I heard the chunk of a car door closing. Well-Spoken Woman charged out from behind a parked X6 and ran down the street in her expensive shoes.

The gunman’s pistol had landed a few feet from me. I snatched it up. The slide was back; it was empty. I tossed it away and took out Ursula’s gun, then I ran after Well-Spoken.

It felt good to run. I liked stretching my legs, and she was not fast at all. However, she was carrying a shotgun. I held Ursula’s gun ready and stepped as quietly as I could.

When I was just five paces behind her, I slipped on a patch of black ice and fell hard on my hip. My whole body jolted under the impact and my gun fired, the round skipping off the asphalt into the air.

It took Well-Spoken seven or eight stutter steps to stop her run, turn, and point the shotgun at me. That was plenty of time for someone as motivated as I was to get to my knees and aim my gun at her.

I didn’t shoot and neither did she.