Page 22 of When Among Crows
Niko wasn’t sure what he was going to say, but he didn’t expect…that.
“Why?” Ala says, quiet.
“You can choose to believe me, or you can choose not to believe me,” Dymitr says. “But that’s all I’m going to tell you, regardless.”
Niko stares at Dymitr, aware of the tight feeling of blood dried on his hands, of the smell of sweat emanating from his skin, of the particular sensations of Dymitr’s anger—subtle, too subtle for most strzygi to be interested in, but present nonetheless. He considers, again, why he bothered to stop the others from killing this man. As a rule, Niko doesn’t involve himself in Kostka affairs. His own role is clearly defined. He was set apart before he took his oath, and he’s set apart even further now—one of them, but not one of them.
But there’s something about him, Dymitr. A kind of clarity that most mortals—hell, mostpeople—don’t possess. He didn’t hesitate for a moment before volunteering himself for pain in Ala’s place. Didn’t seem afraid while standing in Lidia’s private lounge, going head-to-headwith the leader of a centuries-old strzyga family. He feels, in short, like someone who’s on a mission, and Niko finds himself wanting to know what that mission is.
Without a word, Niko drops his knife in the cup holder and shifts the car into drive.
“As it happens,” Niko says, “I know where we should go next.”
“We?”Ala says. “You’re helping us now?”
“I thought that was implied.” Niko pulls back onto the street. “How did you get so good with a bow, Dymitr?”
“My grandmother taught me,” Dymitr says, which startles a laugh out of Niko.
“Quite a mental image,” he says. “Some old babushka at target practice.”
“If you met her,” Dymitr says, looking out the window, “you wouldn’t dare call her that.”
Niko smiles. “I’m sure.”
“I have to go,” Ala says suddenly. Her voice is hard and urgent. “Right now.” Her eyes are on the dashboard clock, and then on the rearview mirror, where the glow around the horizon suggests sunrise. “The curse. It surges at dawn. I’ll take a taxi back—”
“To the north side?” Dymitr says. “You can’t make it all the way back there before dawn.”
“Well, great, then I guess I’m fucked!”
“I’ll take us to a safe place,” Niko says, in what he hopes is a reassuring tone. “Just… hold on, okay?”
The Peaceful Journeys Hospice Care Center stands in the southwest side of the city, between a budget grocery store with rogue shopping carts rolling through the parking lot and a Denny’s that was obviously retrofitted into an old White Castle. The logo on the hospice center sign is that of a woman in a long dress, her hair streaming behind her, which is a nod to the center’s owners: the O’Connor-Vasquez family. Banshees. Well, the Irish O’Connors would say ben síde, and the Mexican Vasquezes would prefer llorona—weepers—but it amounts to the same thing.
They own a small chain of hospice care facilities, actually. And a handful of funeral homes. The O’Connor-Vasquezes seem to know a truth that the Kostkas and the Dryjas don’t, which is that there’s plenty of food to go around. They eat sorrow, and the harvest is always plentiful. They simply position themselves where they’re most likely to remain sated without effort.
Some of them seek out variation, of course. He’s seen some of their number at rehabilitation facilities, cemeteries, and even poetry readings at college open mic nights. But they always return to places like these, where death is close at hand. Maybe that’s why they got the reputation they did, as portents of doom, or even prophets in their own right. As far as Niko knows, that’s nonsense, but mortals are always devising nonsense.
The building is straightforward. White and rectangular, with a circle drive large enough to accommodate an ambulance—or a hearse. Concrete planters by the automatic doors hold clumps of purple and yellow pansies.When they step inside, the first thing he hears is gentle elevator music. A saxophone. A chime.
“Welcome to—Oh,” the young woman at the front desk says, her eyes dropping to Niko’s bloodstained shirt, his streaked hands. If she were mortal, she would call the police. But her wide, round eyes skip from Niko to Dymitr, and her mouth drifts open. Niko thinks of the banshee gaping at Dymitr in Lidia’s private lounge, and spares a moment to wonder.
“Wow,” she says softly.
“Hello. Hi?” Niko waves a hand in front of her face. “Bloody man here? Can you tell Sha there’s a strzygon here to see her, please?”
Each of the O’Connor-Vasquez hospice care centers employs someone who doesn’t feast on human emotion, just to make sure no one is relishing the sorrowtoomuch; for this one, it’s Sha.
“A—Whoa.” She must be young. One of the newest ones. She blinks at Niko, and he drums his fingers on the desk in front of her, drawing attention to his hard, sharp fingernails. She picks up the phone in front of her, and turns away from him as she makes the call.
Ala is starting to look twitchy. She twists the toe of her sneaker into the carpet, which is a mélange of gray, blue, and green. The walls all around them are purple-taupe, and the chairs by the mock fireplace are dusty rose. Sea colors, he thinks, if sea colors were first ingested and then vomited up again later.
Sha strides toward them, her lips quirked in a smile. She’scut her curly hair into a chin-length bob since he last saw her, and her trousers and blouse are perfectly tailored and pressed, in jewel tones that bring warmth to her skin. There’s a deliberate “ordinariness” to her choices that’s designed, he thinks, to mitigate just how out of the ordinary she really is.
The hair on his arms stands on end at the sight of her—a typical reaction, he’s given to understand. Sha isn’t a Vasquez or an O’Connor or even a banshee. She walks on careful feet, with no shadow in her wake, and sometimes when the angle is right, he glimpses a wing over her shoulder, like a coin catching sunlight on a city sidewalk.
Not for the first time, he wonders how the rumor that shedim could turn intogoatsgot started. They’re the furthest thing from goats he can imagine.
