A Knight Of The Word

The ride back into the city was a blur. Once she determined that the bus was going in the right direction” she quit paying attention. People got on and off, but she didn’t look at their faces. She stared out the window into the darkness, thinking.

It took a long time for the fear to subside, and when it did she was filled with cold rage. Three lives had been snuffed out quicker than a candle’s flame, and no one but she even knew about it and no one but she cared. Boot, Audrey and Ariel — a sylvan, an owl, and a tatterdemalion. Creatures of the forest, of magic and imagination. Humans didn’t even know they existed. What difference did their loss make to anything? The unfairness of it burned inside her. She struggled for a time with the possibility that she was to blame for what had happened, that she had brought the demon down on them. But there was no reason to believe this was so, and her guilt stemmed mostly from the fact they were dead and she was alive. But barely alive, she kept reminding herself. Alive, because she had been fortunate enough to step off a cliff and survive the fall. Alive, because she had evaded a handful of serious attempts by a monster to rip her to shreds.

She blinked in the sudden glare of a passing truck’s headlights. How had the demon found out about her meeting? There was a question that screamed for an answer. She stared harder at the darkness and tried to reason it through. The demon might have followed her. But to do so, it must have been following her all day. Vas that possible? Could it have done so without Ariel or Two Bears knowing? Without her feeling something, a twinge of warning initiated by her dormant magic? Maybe. The magic wasn’t so dependable anymore. But if the demon hadn’t been following her, then it must have intercepted her message to John Ross. It must have been listening in when she called. Or learned something from Stefanie Winslow or from John himself

She gritted her teeth at the idea that she had been caught so unaware, so vulnerable, and that she had run — run! — rather than stand and fight. She hated what had happened, and she was not pleased with how she had behaved. It didn’t matter that she could explain it away by telling herself what she had done had kept her alive and that she had reacted on instinct. She had fled and not stood her ground, while three other lives had been taken, and no amount of rationalisation could change how that made her feel.

As she rode through the darkness and the rain, struggling with the rush of emotions churning inside, she was reminded of how she had felt at Cass Minter’s funeral. She had stood there during the graveside services on a beautiful, sun-filled day trying to make herself believe that her best and oldest friend was gone. It hadn’t seemed possible. Not Cass, who was only eighteen and had lived so little of her life. Nest had stood there and tried to will her friend alive again, furious at having had her taken away so unexpectedly and abruptly and pointlessly. She had stood in a rage as the minister read from his Bible in a soft, comforting voice, trying in vain to make sense of the arbitrary nature of one young woman’s life and death.

She felt like that now, thinking back on the events in Lincoln Park. She had been in Seattle for less than twenty-four hours. She had come with simple expectations and a single purpose to fulfil. But it had all gotten much more complicated than anything she might have imagined. It had become rife with madness.

She watched the lights and the buildings of the downtown rise out of the darkness, sitting sodden, muddied, and exhausted in her seat. West Seattle fell away behind her, disappearing into the dark, and her rage faded with her fear, and both were replaced by an immense sadness. She began to cry. She cried softly, soundlessly, and no one around her appeared to notice. She wanted to go home again. She wanted none of this ever to have happened. A huge, empty well opened inside, echoing with the sounds of voices she would never hear again. Some came from Lincoln Park and the present. Some came from Hopewell and the past. She felt abandoned and alone. She could not find a centre for the downward spiral in which she was caught.

She left the bus at a downtown stop and walked through the mostly empty streets of the city to her hotel. She wondered vaguely if tie demon might be tracking her still, but she no longer cared. She almost hoped it was, that it would tome for her again and she would have another chance to face it. It ways a perverse wish, unreasonable and foolish. Yet it made her feel better. It gave her renewed strength. It told her she was still whole.

But no one approached her or even tried to speak to her. She reached the hotel and went into the lobby and up to her room, locking the door behind her, throwing the deadbolt and fastening the drain. She stripped off her ruined clothes, showered, and climbed into bed.

There, in the warm enfolding dark, just before she fell asleep, with images of Ariel and Boot and Audrey spinning in a wash of streetlight shining brightly through her bedroom window, she made herself a promise that she would see this matter through to the end.





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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 31





Chapter Eighteen