Marielle's boot touched my shoulder, gently rocking me. "Get up, wolf," she said. "It isn't time to rest yet."
I squinted up at her, moving my head slightly so that I was in her shadow. The sun bled around her frame, lighting her up. Or maybe it was the glow of magick. I couldn't quite tell. Adrenaline and the flush of the Chorus were still ping-ponging through my bloodstream.
Wolf.
There was only one other person who referred to me by that term. Piotr Grieavik, a fortune teller based in Seattle, who had used it to remind me of the hunger that had driven me to his corner of the Pacific Northwest. Before that, it had been five years since the New Year's morning when Marielle and I had said goodbye. When she had last used that word to name me.
The morning of the duel beneath the bridge on the Seine. The morning I had supposedly died, falling into the Seine and vanishing from the Watcher fold, vanishing from her sight.
She retrieved her cell phone from a jacket pocket while I groaned and sat up. She speed-dialed a number, and didn't wait long for someone to pick up. "We need transport," she said. "No. . there were. . complications." She made a half-turn, her eyes partially closed, and the gravity well of her magick tugged at me. "Yes, I know. We were on that train, and now we need transportation. RATP cut the power to the rails." She glanced up, examining our surroundings. "West side of the tracks," she said. "Just outside of Villepinte. About a hundred meters from a crossing. I can see a billboard for Lagerfeld."
When I stood up, I could see the sign too. Rail-thin models draped in clothing that hung at weird angles. Everything was black and silver, monochromatic if there was any color at all. Must be the spring line. In the distance, I could also see the other part of the train, and the prismatic strands of Henri's magick.
"This way," Marielle said. "I have a car coming." She started walking toward the crossing.
I followed. The ground was rocky and unkempt, and my legs were still a bit rubbery. As I stumbled along, I did a quick visual check of my extremities. No unnoticed shrapnel, no smoldering edges, no numbed breaks in my skin. Other than some scrapes suffered in my headlong plummet from the train, I was doing pretty well.
My coat, on the other hand, was a lost cause. There was a large patch of charred fabric on the front, and a couple of the buttons had melted into soft watches. I checked the inner pockets. The key, the ring, and the cards were still there. All the important things.
A silver BMW sedan with smoked windows met us a half-block from the train tracks. Marielle opened the back door, and gestured for me to climb in. I paused, reading the energy signature in the car. My teeth involuntarily chattered.
The front passenger window slid down, and the blond-haired driver smiled at me. "Hello, my friend," Antoine said. "This is an unexpected surprise."
I started to shiver: partially from the adrenaline comedown of the last half-hour, partially from the presence of the man driving the car, and partially because of the tone of his voice. The Chorus thrashed along my spine, like a massive fish hooked on a line.
Marielle stepped back from the car, hearing the same thing. There was a quaver of excitement in Antoine's voice. He was usually able to hide his emotions extremely well. Part of his mystic armor was an unnerving inscrutability; this hint of delight was unlike him.
Was it the fact that I was still alive; that, like Henri, he had a chance to finish the business we started beneath the bridge five years ago? If so, he was acting out for her sake, as he had recently been in Portland. He already knew I was still alive, and we had put some of the past behind us. Because there was a bigger game afoot. One in which we had both been played like cheap pawns.
I waved a hand toward the track and the approaching storm of energy. Henri was walking along the track, drawing power from the ley beneath the rail, and with each step, his storm was growing wilder. "Can we do this later?" I asked. "I realize this isn't the reunion any of us expected, but can we-" I swallowed the acrid taste of the Chorus' concern. "-can we just get out of here?" I didn't want to get in the car either, but Henri's approach was reducing my options. Antoine was playing at something, and I needed a minute to figure it out, but right now, he wasn't the problem.
Where had he come from? Rapid-fire questions searing across my brain. How did Marielle get to the airport in the first place? Had someone driven her? Was this the car? The Chorus churned around these questions, seeking possible answers, seeking connections and patterns. You don't have to always read the future to understand the Weave. You can also examine where you've been, exploring the knots that lie in your past.
One scenario-a likely one: Antoine drove Marielle to the airport, ostensibly to meet her father, who was supposed to be returning from Seattle on an overnight flight. No one knew why he had gone, and he wasn't beholden to any of the others enough to tell them. But Antoine would have known because there was only one person in Seattle the Hierarch of La Societe Lumineuse would visit. A visit we had been waiting for.
The larger canvas. Think beyond your narrow thread. The back of my tongue tingled with the frustration rising from the Chorus. Why Antoine?
Antoine ducked his head slightly and peered out the front windshield. Moving with the grace of a man with all the time in the world. "Who is it?" he asked. "Did they know you were coming?"
Marielle was looking at me too, the same question in her eyes.
"No," I said. "They didn't know. They were just there." As well as the man in the sweatshirt and sunglasses. He had been Watching too. For the Hierarch, I realized.
"Why?" Antoine asked.
Before I could respond, Marielle's face crumpled. "No. . " she whispered.
I hadn't been ready with a good lie. Or even a bad one. I was still trying to figure out who all the players were, and as a result, I wasn't ready to distract her from the truth. The look on her face said she suspected, and in not leaping into the void following Antoine's question, I only fueled the fear starting in her heart. A spark of doubt became a conflagration of outright despair.
"No!" she howled, launching at me, her fists raised. I caught the first blow, but the second shot hit me square in the face. There wasn't much power in it-not yet, but she was pulling energy. My cheek stung, and the Chorus snarled at the psychic impact of the blow.
"I'm so-" I tried, and took a shot in the mouth for attempting to talk my way out of it. My head snapped back, and the Chorus coalesced between us. Their attempt to shield me wasn't enough, and she kept coming. Kept swinging. I had to retreat, or hurt her. I took one more step back and bumped against the car.
So much for the path of least resistance.
Catching her hand was like grabbing a red-hot poker, but I held on, and the Chorus slithered through my arm, redirecting the burning bleed of energy before my skin crisped and my blood vaporized. "Marielle. Stop. It's not like that."
"You son of a bitch," she spat. "You killed my father."
Okay, it was like that. Well, not entirely. Not that she was in the mood to listen to me split hairs.
Antoine grabbed her other hand and held her back. Neither of us had been aware of him getting out of the car, but there he was. He was radiant with magick, filled with all the power of the Protectorate, and his Will was stronger. She pulled at him once, and it was like trying to topple a mountain.
"Mari," he said, softly, his words cutting through the writhing haze of her anger. "It's done. You can't undo it."
She pulled out of my grip and clobbered Antoine, actually snapping his head around. "You knew," she snarled. "You knew what he was going to do."