She toweled dry and dressed, thinking once again of the demon. She would tell Ross of last night; she knew that much, at least. She would tell him of the Lady's concern, of her warning to him. She would try to convince him of his danger. But what else could she do? What did she really know about all this, after all? She knew what Ariel had told her, but she couldn't say for certain that it was the truth. If Pick's response was any measure of things, it probably wasn't. The truth wasn't something you got whole cloth from the Word anyway; it came in bits and pieces, riddles and questions, and self–examination and deductive reasoning that, if you were lucky, eventually led to some sort of revelation. She had learned that much from her father. The truth wasn't simple; it was complex. Worse, it wasn't easily decipherable, and it was often difficult to accept.
She sighed, looking about the room, as if the answer to her dilemma might be hidden there. It wasn't, of course. There were no answers here; the answers all lay with John Ross.
She went down to the lobby for her breakfast, pausing to stare out through large plate–glass doors at the busy city streets. Although the day was bright and sunny, people out walking were bundled up in coats and scarves, so she knew it must be cold. She continued on to the dining room and ate alone at a table near the back, sipping at her coffee and nibbling on her toast and scrambled eggs as she formulated her plan for the day.
She would have preferred to talk things over with Ariel, but there was no sign of the tatterdemalion. Nor was there likely to be.
She remembered Ariel saying to her last night, just before she went back into the hotel, 'Don't worry. I'll be close to you. You wont see me, but I'll be there when you need me'
Reassuring, but not particularly satisfactory. It made her wish Pick was with her. Pick would have appeared whether she needed him or not. Pick would have talked everything over with her. She still missed him. She found herself comparing the sylvan and the tatterdemalion and decided that, given the choice, she still preferred Pick's incessant chatter to Ariel's wraithlike presence.
She tried to remember the rest of what Pick had told her about tatterdemalions. It wasn't much. Like sylvans they were born fully formed, but unlike sy(vans they lived only a short time and didn't age. Both were forest creatures, but sylvans never went beyond the territory for which they were given responsibility, while tatterdemalions rode everywhere on the back of the wind and went all over the world. Sylvans worked at managing the magic, at its practical application, at keeping the balance in check. Tatterdemalions did none of that, eared nothing for the magic, were as insubstantial in their work as they were in their forms. They served the Word, but their service was less carefully defined and more subject to change than that of sylvans. Tatterdemalions were like ghosts.
Nest finished the last of her orange juice and stood up. Tatterdemalions were strange, even as fairy creatures went. She tried to imagine what it must be like to be Ariel, to have lived without experiencing a childhood anal with no expectation of ever becoming an adult, to know you would be alive only a short time and then be gone again. She supposed the concept of time was a relative one, and some creatures had no concept of time at all. Maybe that was the way it was with tatterdemalions. But what would it be like to live your entire life with the memories of dead, children, of lives come and gone before your own, to have only their memories and none of your own?
She gave it up. She would never be able to put herself in Ariel's place, not even in the most abstract sense, because she had no reference point to help her gam any real insight. They were as different as night and day. And yet they both served the Word, and they were both, in some sense, creatures of magic.
Nest stopped thinking about it, went back to her room, brushed her teeth, put on her heavy windbreaker and scarf, and went out to greet the day.
She had looked up the address to Fresh Start and consulted a map of Pioneer Square, so she pretty much knew where she was going. The map was tucked in her pocket for ready reference. She walked down First Avenue, retracing her steps from the night before, until she reached the triangular open space where she had heard the death screams of the demons victims. She stood in the center of the little concrete park and looked around, No one acted as if anyone had died. No one seemed to think anything was amiss. People came and went along the walk–workers., shoppers, and tourists. A few sad–looking homeless people sat with their backs to the walls of buildings fronting the street, holding out handlettered cardboard signs and worn paper cups as they begged for a few coins. The former mostly ignored the latter, looking elsewhere as they passed, engaging in conversations that kept their eyes averted, acting as if they didn't see. In a way, she supposed, they didn't. She thought that was an accurate indicator of how the world worked, that people frequently managed to find ways of ignoring what troubled them. Out of sight, out of mind. Maybe that was how the demon got away with killing homeless people; everyone was ignoring them anyway; so when a few disappeared, no one even noticed.
Maybe that was the cause that John loss had taken up in joining forces with Simon Lawrence. Maybe that was his passion now that he was no longer a Knight of the Word. The thought appealed to her.
She walked on, doing her best to turn away from the gusts of cold wind that blew at her. Winter was corning; she didn't like to think of her world turning to ice and snow and temperature drops and wind–chill factors. She didn't like thinking of everything turning white and gray and mud–streaked. She glanced bark at the people begging. How much worse it would be far them.
At the corner of Main, she turned east and walked through a broad open space that was marked on her map as Occidental Park. It wasn't much of a park, she thought. Cobblestones and concrete steps, with a few shade trees planted in squares of open earth, a scattering of bushes, a few scary totem pales, same benches, and a strange steel and Plexiglas pavilion. Clusters of what looked to be homeless were gathered here, many of them Native Americans, and a couple of police officers on bicycles. She followed the sidewalk east and found herself at the entrance to an odd little enclosure formed of brick walls and iron fencing with a sign that identified it as Waterfall Park. The space was flied with small trees, vines, and tables and chairs, and was backed by a thunderous man–made waterfall that cascaded into a narrow catchment over massive rocks stacked up against the wall of the building it attached to.
She glanced back at Occidental Park, then into Waterfall Park once again. The parks here weren't much like the parks she was familiar with, and nothing like Sinnissippi Park, but she supposed you made do with what you had.
She crossed Second Avenue and began to read the numbers on the buildings. There was no sign identifying Fresh Start, but she found the building number easily enough and went through the front door.
Once inside, she found herself in a lobby that was mostly empty. .A heavyset black woman sat at a desk facing the door, engaged in writing something on a clipboard, and a Hispanic woman sat holding her baby on one of a cluster of folding chairs that lined the windowless walls of the room. Behind the black woman and her desk, a hallway led to what looked like an elevator.
Almost immediately Nest experienced an odd feeling of uneasiness. She glanced around automatically in an effort to locate its source, but there was nothing to see.
Shrugging it off, she walked up to the desk and stopped. The black woman didn-t look up. `Can I help you., young lady?'