"Bullshit. You want him dead, and you want to be the one to kill him."
"Yeah. Okay. I want the little ratfuck dead. I admit it. I want it enough I can taste it." He got up and into his pants. He rolled up the sleeves on his tux shirt and let it hang open rather than search the apartment for the missing studs.
She came to him and put her arms around his neck. "I'd offer to help, but I'm getting dizzy just standing."
"All I want you to do is come back to Aces High with me, and stay there till this is over. One way or another."
"Wait…"
"I can't wait. Time is running out."
"No, I mean, listen. Do you hear something?"
His senses were overloaded from the glut of power. There seemed to be a low, electrical hum coming from all over his body. But beyond that he could hear something else, a sound like wet plates squeaking in dishwater. He glanced at the digital clock next to the bed. It was vibrating on its pedestal. "Oh shit," Fortunate said, just as the water bed exploded. The force of it knocked them across the room. The water was boiling at first, but cooled as it expanded. Fortunato landed against a gray earthenware pot full of bamboo. It shattered under him. Before, the air even came back into his lungs a dead, broken body hurtled through the wall of windows and he was surrounded by flying glass.
Fortunato reached out to slow time, but time itself resisted him. He strained against it and saw the lines of power in the room in topographic relief. He saw that the body was a woman's, but he didn't let himself see any more, not yet.
He pushed at the lines of power with his mind. Tight cones of force rose up where he and Peregrine lay. The broken glass followed the new contours of the room's spacetime and curved away around them, smashing itself to dust against the walls.
Peregrine crawled across the floor. Fortunato saw where she was heading and shaped his power around her to protect her. She got to where her gloved talons hung on the wall and put them on. There was a costume there too but she didn't bother with it.
The roof groaned and then split all down its length like a broken saltine. Chunks of concrete and rebar rained down on them, but the shields around them were solid. It took hardly any of Fortunato's new power to hold them. Peregrine gave herself a running start and flew out into the darkness.
The floor buckled under Fortunato. Jets of water shot up from broken pipes and the air stank of natural gas. He crawled toward the dead woman and turned her over.
Caroline.
It was Caroline.
Her neck was broken. Her skin was clawed and bitten and torn.
She'd been his favorite for seven years. He could never predict her violent moods and sarcastic humor, could never get enough of the sheer physical intensity of her lovemaking. Between the new girls he'd always come back to her.
For a long time he couldn't feel anything. A huge piece of concrete, studded with broken rebar, missed him by inches while he knelt beside her body.
The anger, when it finally came, transformed him.
It was life and death, that simple. The Astronomer took his power from killing. The Astronomer was Death. Fortunato took his strength from sex, from life. And Life was hiding in its burrow, too shit-scared to come out and look Death in the face. Shouting out empty threats and hoping it would just go away. He opened his eyes wide. All it took was a blink of the eye and everything he'd missed jumped out at him. The shimmering heat lines he'd seen in the dead boy's apartment seventeen years before funneled out into the night.
Fortunato stood up, the power of his anger levitating him a foot off the floor. He reached out to the conical net of power, ready to fly into it, to shoot out into its vortex and tear the source of it to pieces.
He reached out and the lines were gone.
He walked through the shattered glass wall and hovered there, glowing, thirty stories above the streets of Manhattan. High overhead he could see Peregrine, gloriously naked, banking steeply over the park. The lights of the city turned the sky flat and gray behind her, and she seemed two-dimensional herself, like a sexually explicit kite. She circled him once, then settled on the broken edge of her apartment.
"Jesus," she said. "So tired…"
"Did you see him?" he asked her. "No. Nothing. You?"
"For a second. I saw the traces he left behind. For the first time. For the first time I'm stronger than he is. If I could find him, find that goddamned ship, I could…"
"What is it?"
Ship, he thought. Spaceship. Like aliens from space, Black had said. Like Tachyon.
Tachyon. Christ, Tachyon had a ship!
The longer he thought about it, the more convinced he was. The Astronomer was going for Tachyon's ship.
He walked back over to Peregrine and kissed her. The smell of their sexual juices hung around them like perfume and it was hard for Fortunato to stop. She staggered a little when he let her go.
That was when she saw Caroline's body. "Oh my God," she said.
Fortunato took the broken thing in his arms. "This isn't about you," he said. "This is about me. You should forget about it." He made it an order without meaning to. She nodded.
He walked out into space again. "Fortunato…?"
He wanted to look back but there was nothing else to say. He let the power take him on into the darkness.
The streets were still crowded despite the lateness of the hour, and everyone who was still out seemed to be drunk, stoned, belligerent, crazy, or all of the above. Jennifer attracted an unwanted amount of attention, and if it hadn't been for Brennan's glowering presence she couldn't have walked half a block without having to use her power to foil someone's unwelcomed advances.
The long day was taking its toll on her. Her feet hurt, she was dead tired, and her hunger had grown until it felt like a small animal gnawing away at her insides. She'd have to get some food. She couldn't ghost until she did. Turning insubstantial burned a lot of energy, and there weren't many calories stored in her lean frame.
Jennifer noticed a street vendor who looked as tipsy as the revelers around them and told Brennan that she needed something to eat. They stopped and he brought her a couple of the soft pretzels the man was selling.
"Sorry this is the best I can do," Brennan said, munching on one of the doughy pretzels himself. "Tonight most restaurants are closed, reservation only, or already so crowded that we couldn't even get in the door."
"These'll be fine," Jennifer said through a mouthful of dough. She grimaced and took a big swallow of her drink. "This mustard is hot!" she said, trying to speak and roll ice on her tongue at the same time.
"Hmmm?" Brennan stopped, then turned back to the vendor and bought a whole bottle of the condiment. "What's that for?" Jennifer asked as he stashed it away. "For later." He didn't elaborate and Jennifer was too busy tearing into her food to worry about it.
They went on through the streets until Brennan led them down a narrow alley that was, amazingly enough, totally devoid of partiers.
"You'll be safe here until I get back," he said. "Where're you going?"
"To my apartment. I'll be right back."
Jennifer watched him go down the alley, stung that he obviously didn't trust her enough to take her to where he lived. He returned as he had promised, bringing a cloak for Jennifer to wrap herself in and a pair of thonged sandals for her feet.
"They're a little large," Brennan said, "but it'll be better than running around barefoot."
She was still stung by his distrust, but couldn't resist asking about the pack on his back.
"What's in there?"
"Some things we might need before the evening is over."
"Informative as always," she said. "Can you tell me something straight out? Where are we headed now?"
"The place we might be able to get some answers. The Crystal Palace."