Nightshifted es-1 Read online

  Madigan kept hold of Mr. N—Yuri’s—shirt. Jenny and Jack were circling outward, but how could they smell anything under the snow? Their tails were wagging and I got the impression that they were enjoying themselves, but I wasn’t sure how useful they could really be. All this was really some sort of wild-goose chase, and possibly a huge waste of time. I heaved a sigh.

  “Hey, don’t give up.” Ti moved to stand in front of me. I looked up at him. He’d taken off his hood and his dark skin was clearly outlined against the gray afternoon sky. His features had just a touch of asymmetry that made you look twice. He had a strong jaw and a wide nose, and his hair was beginning to grow back in a short layer across his scalp and he almost needed to shave his chin. Burn victims usually didn’t have hair regrow; their scars precluded it. But maybe he was transitioning back to the body he’d had before, because he was a zombie. I resisted the urge to reach up and touch the new growth to see.

  “I’m not the giving-up sort. I am the easily frustrated sort, though.” A wind kicked up between us. I held my own arms and shivered.

  “I don’t put out much body heat. But I function as an adequate windblock.” He grinned and moved to stand beside me. Somewhere, underneath layer after layer of cotton and nylon on both sides, our elbows touched.

  Madigan whistled to his dogs and started walking up the street with them.

  “Should we follow?”

  “He’ll whistle when they’re onto something.” He was watching his friend and the dogs walk down the street, and I was watching him.

  “Mind telling me what all this is about?” he asked me.

  He had just jumped through every hoop I’d held out and then some. But— “What’s your stake in helping me?”

  Scar tissue around his eyes crinkled in thought. “I have to have a stake? I can’t just be a helpful kind of guy?”

  “No one is just a helpful kind of guy. I’m a nurse, but I only became a nurse because they freaking pay me.” I stared straight out at the red stone of Mr. November’s town house. From the second floor, the old lady I remembered peered out from between her curtains, and then yanked her head back. At least she was still alive.

  “All right.” He rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. “I’ll admit I have some scores to settle. But none of them matter right now. I really am helping you of my own accord.”

  “How’d you become a zombie?” I asked.

  “I didn’t get a choice.” He looked down at me and smiled softly. “Your turn. What’s behind you that’s got you running so scared?”

  I hadn’t thought of it like that before. Maybe he did deserve an explanation. I inhaled to tell him all of it when Madigan whistled from down the street. Jimmie leaned out of the truck bed to butt the back of my head with his nose.

  Ti laughed. “You can tell me later, okay?” he said, and began walking away.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Madigan stood at the entrance to an alleyway. Jack and Jenny were barking quietly to one another as they paced down it, like they were having a conversation.

  “Did something happen here?” Madigan asked and gestured to include the surrounding area.

  “This is near where my friend got jumped.”

  “Well, this alley smells like vampires. Not like the one that your shirt smells like, but vampires. They must have been waiting for you.”

  It was the first time Madigan had said the V-word. I guessed he was in on the County’s little joke after all.

  “How can you tell?” I asked.

  He held out a palm full of cigarette butts. “Damn things always smoke.” Jenny bounded ahead, then dug in the snow, unearthing a fresh pile, right beneath a fire escape. She barked.

  “Hand-rolled. Apple-flavored tobacco,” Madigan reported.

  I put a hand to my stomach. That part was familiar at least—I could remember the stench of rotting apples coming off the vampire that got away.

  “They drove off in a car, though—” I looked up the fire escape, snaking a path up the back of a short red town house. Mr. November’s building. The bottom of it was off the ground, but the top easily reached Mr. November’s back window. “How hard would it have been for them to climb up there?”

  “Not very.” Ti walked over, bent down, and then launched himself up to catch the edge. He pulled it down along with a light snowfall of rust as it descended. Jenny and Jack ran up it as it hit the ground, paws clattering along. They reached the top landing and barked.

  “After you,” I told Ti, and we followed, much more slowly, after them.

  The metal landing outside of Mr. November’s room was littered with cigarette butts. I peeked in through the window. The room was now completely trashed. All the photos from the walls were shredded, looking like kindling left in several small piles.

  “We didn’t even hear them outside—” I said.

  “They could have been there for days. Stalking the place, waiting for you and your friend to show up,” Madigan said. “Cold doesn’t bother them much either.”

  “But what about the daylight?”

  “Daytimers. Besides, your vampire friend, the one they were waiting for—they knew she couldn’t come here herself during the day.”

  “We were attacked by ten of them, though. Ten wouldn’t have fit up here.”

  Ti paced in the small area. “Then one called the rest.”

  “Yeah.” They had had enough time, what with Anna and I arguing, loudly, inside. I couldn’t imagine one of them managing to be quiet outside on the escape—which felt like it was threatening to disconnect from the wall and collapse with each movement we made—but she’d been so emotional. Which was strange, when you considered the fact that she was a vampire.

  A baying sound began from below. Jenny and Jack raced back down the escape, closely followed by Madigan. Ti and I followed, the rickety structure feeling less certain every step. I suddenly remembered that I’m not so fond of heights, especially not at high speed—and maybe three days’ worth of work and worry caught up with me at once. Something small and black flashed in the corner of one eye, and I stopped quickly on the stairs.

  “Are you okay?” Ti caught my arm as I threatened to tumble forward.

  “I’m fine.” I stood for a second and blinked a lot. It must have been a flake of rust—or vampire ash. I rubbed at my eye, but kept slowly going down, Ti at my side.

  We exited the alley, with Ti’s hand on my elbow, supporting me. I kept blinking, but the speck of gray wouldn’t disappear. Madigan stood near his truck with his three dogs beside him, holding on to the shoulder of a pissed-off teen. He was dressed like the thugs hovering in the background on Nyjara’s album covers, puffy black leather coat, black pants, white leather shoes, only he didn’t look angry enough to pull off the look. Given time, though—

  “I just wanted to pet your dog, mister!” the teenager said, yanking his arm out of Madigan’s grasp.

  “And not steal my rims?”

  The teenager cursed under his breath. “You think you got anything worth stealing? Please.”

  I was still muddling with my eye; the black speck hadn’t gone anywhere. I hadn’t had a stroke, had I? I held my arms out, and could see them both, even and unwavering, in front of me.

  “Edie?” Ti asked.

  “My face—it’s all the same, right? None of it is drooping?” I stuck out my tongue, wondering if it was still even. Then I held one hand up in front of my face.

  I covered my bad eye first and saw Ti watching me, with my good eye. He was clearly worried. I covered my good eye up, and looked at him with my bad eye … and saw a glow. Like the afterimage you’d get from rubbing any eye too hard, lights and blurs. Only I wasn’t rubbing it now, and the lights wouldn’t stop. Had I somehow managed to get instantaneous glaucoma?

  “Look, you don’t just pet another man’s dog. You’re lucky that he didn’t bite you,” Madigan went on.

  “He was wagging his tail. He seemed friendly enough,” the teen protested. I he
ard Jimmie’s tail thump from inside the truck’s bed—his guard dog duty had been a clever sham, and this kid’d walked by, and—I looked over at the kid and winked.

  “Edie?” Ti asked again.

  There was a faint outline now—of … of Jimmie’s head. Only it didn’t stay the same; it faded in and out between the square-jawed partial pit bull I guessed Madigan’s dog to be, and the cherubic face of a young boy. Maybe as young as six. And the teen—with this othersight, he still appeared as sullen as he sounded, but his right hand glowed.

  I’d seen that glow before. My badge glowed like that, when I was around Y4-style danger. I pressed my other hand to my chest, and felt my badge’s edges sharp against my skin. So this was the Shadow’s self-serving gift to me.

  “Hey, kid—” I stopped winking and looked at him through my normal eyes. Both his hands were empty. “Did you see someone here? A few nights ago? Dark suits, sunglasses in the dark?”

  He crossed his arms. “There’s lots of dealers around here.”

  “You talked to one of them, though. Gave him something. Touched him—”

  “What’re you, psychic?” he said, backing up roughly against the truck. Jimmie growled.

  “Sure.” I pointed. “I read palms. That hand right there, you touched one of them. Where’d they come from? Where’d they go? What’d you sell them?”

  The kid looked at his own hand like it might have still had a spot on it. Ti and Madigan were looking back and forth between us, and the dogs all had their heads tilted in a listening fashion.

  “He wanted to know where to go to get girls.” The kid rubbed his hand up and down on his pants, like he was wiping off a stain. “He paid me a twenty. I didn’t sell him any drugs.”

  “Where’d you tell him?”

  “Everyone knows where you can get girls around here. The only reason I made him pay me was because he looked like he could afford it.” He looked Madigan and me up and down. I went for my wallet in my pocket—

  “I got it.” Ti pulled out a twenty instead, and held it up, right in front of his own face. The kid slowly looked up at Ti, snatched the money fast, then looked away.

  “What happened to you, man?” he asked, trying to look anywhere but at him.

  “Fire. The ones who did this to me are gonna pay.” Ti took a step forward. His coat made his shoulders appear even wider than they really were, and his chest even thicker. “Which girls?” he asked, pulling out a hundred-dollar bill, holding it squarely in front of the teen’s face.

  “All the girls are on Seventeenth and F Street. After dark, that is.” The kid swatted for the cash, missed, and Ti let the bill flutter to the ground. The teen did a shimmy while standing in place, torn between ducking down to get the bill and being in kicking range of Ti’s legs, I felt.

  “Here.” I knelt, picked it up, and handed it over, without looking at Ti. I ran through my pockets and found a pen and a piece of paper. “Here’s my number. If you ever see any of them again, call me.” I gave the kid a sheepish look, knowing that Ti was probably glowering behind me.

  “Whatever.” He snatched the paper away.

  The dogs that were blocking the teen’s path ducked away at an unseen command. The kid turned around and stalked off, waiting till he was halfway down the block to yell “Freak!” behind him, at the top of his lungs, before running down an alleyway.

  “Load up,” Madigan said, opening the gate of his truck. Jack and Jenny leaped up, and Jimmie whuffled them. My vision in my left eye was still blurry, but as Madigan rounded the truck, I turned toward Ti.

  “What was that about? I thought you got burned in a firefighting accident?”

  “I did. But sometimes it’s good to play into stereotype.” He gave me a wicked grin, and opened up Madigan’s door. A sheep in wolf’s clothing, indeed. I sighed, and hopped up inside.

  * * *

  “So how about dinner tonight? Before you go to work?” Madigan asked as we neared the parking lot. “We eat late, and my wife is making stew—”

  I looked at the clock on his dashboard. I’d only slept for maybe four hours that morning after my meeting with Geoffrey, before meeting Ti. I’d been counting on a long nap between now and work. Then again—as far as I knew I only had to show up to work. Meaty’d give me an easy “poor-girl-who-is-going-to-die-soon” assignment. And—Ti squeezed my knee. “Sure,” I answered.

  “Sounds good,” Ti said. “Assuming the invitation was for both of us, that is.”

  “It wouldn’t be much of an invitation if it wasn’t,” Madigan said with a grin, and made another fierce left-hand turn.

  Madigan left us in the parking lot. Ti walked me to my car. I opened up the door the old-fashioned way, with the key, and tossed Yuri’s shirt onto the passenger seat. Then I gave him my address, watched him walk over to his red car—who the hell drove an El Camino anymore?—and made my way home, with my cell phone on speaker.

  I dialed Sike’s number into my phone while I was driving, like you’re not supposed to do, and called it. She picked up right away.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi—um—” What was I supposed to say? Sorry for being a jerk earlier, have you made any progress on saving my life?

  Sike snorted. “We haven’t found anything out yet,” she said, then hung up on me.

  Great.

  I tried Jake as I parked my car, and waited to leave a message. “Jake—it’s me. Call me back,” I said, then hung up. I’d initiated all of our conversations for weeks, but that was just how we were. I called him again, and it went straight to voice mail. “Seriously, call me back. It’s really important.”

  What if I did die? I didn’t want to spend time thinking about it—but if I did, I owed him an explanation. I called him back again. “Also—I love you.”

  He called back as I was crawling into bed for what I realized with sadness would only be a short nap.

  “Sissy?” He sounded as tired as I felt.

  “Bro! Hey—are you busy tomorrow? Or the day after?”

  “Depends on when.” I heard him yawn.

  “Whenever is good for you. Just let me know and I’ll be there. I need to talk to you.”

  “Obviously.” I could almost hear him waking up. “I’ll call you—the day after tomorrow.”

  “You won’t forget?”

  “I’m putting it in my dayplanner. Right now. Love you,” he said, and hung up. I wondered briefly what the chances of him actually remembering were, then I went to sleep.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  I woke up when Ti rang my doorbell. I could see him standing on my stoop when I peeked through the blinds. I clearly remembered setting my alarm—and apparently I’d slept right through it. That wasn’t like me.

  “Coming!” I yelled out, while still lying in bed. I played with my vision some more, one hand on, one hand off. The glow didn’t stick around when I was looking through both eyes, but as soon as I covered one and just looked through the other—either one now—it returned.

  I felt bad about leaving him outside while I brushed my teeth and otherwise made myself presentable—but then again, since he was undead, I doubted he’d mind. I pulled on some fresh-from-the-dryer tight jeans, a loose-fitting long-sleeved shirt, tugged on boots, and ran down my hallway to meet him.

  “Hi.” I opened the door, grinning. He grinned back. I realized it’d been a long time since I’d had a guy here whose name I out-and-out knew.

  “Well, hello there.” He stepped graciously away from my door, and allowed me space outside. I yanked on my coat as we walked to his El Camino. I was happy to see that he’d seen fit to run the heater in his own car.

  It felt odd to be in a car with him—it felt odd to be out with him, period. It wasn’t his fault really, just the general awkwardness that I, with my tomcatlike mating habits, usually got to avoid.

  “So Madigan’s a werewolf, right?” I blurted out.

  “Yep,” Ti said, as if I hadn’t had to ask. “He called me this afternoon to ask
that you don’t tell his wife where we were this morning.”

  “Okay.” I didn’t like lying, but I could live with it for the next two and a half days of my life. “Some weather, huh?” I said, purposely making light of the silence between us.

  “I’ve seen worse.” He angled his rearview mirror to look at me in it. “Want to tell me about things yet?”

  “Heh.” I sank back into the bucket seat. “I guess.”

  I told him the story from when I’d met Anna, through the tribunal coming up.

  “Wait—what?” We were already on residential streets, and he pulled over to look at me. “You’re going to a trial where you might die in two days and you’re going out to dinner with me?”

  “A girl’s gotta eat,” I said with a fake laugh.

  “That’s not funny, Edie.”

  “I know.” I stared out the passenger window. “The truth is, I don’t know what else to do.”

  “We can start by going to find out what happened to those girls, tonight, after dinner. Once all the vamps are out.”

  I sighed and turned back toward him. “I can’t. I’ve got to go back to work.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “No, I’m not.” We were in a nice neighborhood here, with nice trees and houses, where people never had to worry what went bump in the night—or their kids tying off and shooting up. “I’ve got to go in.”

  “Edie—if we don’t find that vampire—”

  “Her name’s Anna,” I said as Ti continued to stare at me. “And my lawyer’s looking too,” I continued, trying to sound more hopeful about that than I actually felt.

  “Your vampire lawyer?”

  “Yeah.”

  Ti closed his eyes at my foolishness. But as long as Jake was on the junk, or trying to be, I couldn’t quit working, cold turkey. If his immunity to drugs were to vanish, I knew my brother would go on the bender to end all benders and wind up in the morgue. So I was trapped. “I’m sorry, Ti. I can’t take time off. I just can’t.”