He searched my face, his gaze dropping to my lips, then back up to my eyes. “Allie-”
“-tell me later,” I said with a little too much cheerfulness. “When all this is over and you and I are sitting on the couch, drinking a glass of wine.”
“Stubborn,” he said.
“Middle name,” I agreed. And before we could say anything else, before I lost my nerve, I got out of the car.
Shamus bent over the open trunk, humming a tuneless song and smoking a cigarette.
“Need any help?” I strolled over, my boots crunching in the wet gravel. I stuck both my hands in my pockets and was grateful I’d put on a hat. It wasn’t raining or very windy right now, but the air was bone-bitingly cold and damp.
“Sure,” he said without looking at me, “hold this.” He handed me a leather rope that looked a lot like a short-handled bullwhip, but with silver glyphs worked down the length of the leather and a blade of glass at the tip.
I held it, leaving the length curled in the trunk among the other weapons-a couple sheathed machetes with glass and glyphs worked into the hilts, more leather whips, some plain rope, a few stained glass boxes that looked like they should hold jewelry, sheathed knives, and several glyphed and Warded cases that looked like the right shape and size to carry guns.
And with all that to choose from, Shamus, who was still wearing his black fingerless gloves, was instead carefully unwrapping silk handkerchiefs off of four small round medallions. The medallions were lead and glass like everything else in the armament ensemble, but each was loose. He opened one of the stained glass boxes and pulled out four leather cuffs. He pressed the medallions into the leather cuffs, and I could feel, rather than hear, a low thunk as they snapped into place.
Zayvion got out of the car, paused to assess what I was holding, then got busy on the other side of Shamus, sorting small bits of glass, leather, lead, and steel.
They each took one of the leather cuffs and snapped them into place on their bare wrists, medallions pressed against their skin.
“You think?” Shamus asked, holding up a leather band with one of the medallions in it.
Zayvion nodded and took it from him. “This,” he said to me, “is for you to wear. We’ll each have one on. They allow us to sense where the other person is. If we’re injured. If we’re unconscious. If we’re alive.”
“Do they let us read each other’s minds too?”
Shamus chuckled. “Trust me, you don’t want to know what’s going on in Jones’ mind.”
“No,” Zayvion answered.
“Which arm?” I asked.
“The right, I think.”
I pulled back my sleeve and he wrapped the leather around my right wrist. The medallion fit like a warm, silky disk against the inside of my wrist and pulsed with two distinct beats. I raised my eyebrows.
Zayvion lifted my hand to his chest and pressed my palm there. I could feel the beat of his heart under my hand and echoed in the medallion at my wrist. And when I took a second to think about it, I could somehow tell that he was well, confident, and a little excited.
“Shame?” he said.
“Right.” Shamus sucked the last of the smoke out of his cigarette, threw it to the wet gravel, and dragged his shoe over it. He stepped up, and I put my hand on his chest. His heartbeat matched the second rhythm on my wrist, and touching him gave me the sense of his state of mind. He was exhausted, worried. Two things I never would have guessed, looking at him, and I was good at reading body language. He was also determined, like someone who had been working a hard, long shift and was willing to roll up his sleeves and work for however long it would take to get the job done.
He grinned, and the worry shifted to amusement.
“Okay,” I said. “Do you need to touch me?” I asked.
Shamus wiggled his eyebrows. “If you insist.” He lifted both hands-curled, not flat-and reached for my chest.
I took a step back.
“Shame,” Zayvion growled. “Knock it off.”
Zay took my arm and stood half between us, turning his back on Shamus. “We use these all the time. We’re attuned. As long as you’re wearing that, we can sense you without touching.”
“Maybe you can,” Shamus said, “what with the whole Soul Complement thing you two have going on, but I might need a little feel.”
“No.” Zayvion did not look at him. “You don’t.”
The conversation stopped as a car drove down the gravel road and parked behind us. For a second I worried that we were all standing there in front of a weapon-filled trunk. Then Chase got out of the car.
She wore black combat boots, black jeans, and a blue-and-black plaid flannel coat zipped up so that just the turtleneck of her gray sweater showed. Her hair was back in a single long braid, and her eyes, beneath the straight, thick bangs, were wide and sapphire blue.
She made flannel and combat boots look as though they belonged on a Parisian runway.
“Hello, boys.” She nodded toward me. “Why are you here?”
“On-the-job training,” Shamus said. “Plus, we think the things like her. She’s our in.”
Her pretty face settled somewhere between curiosity and disgust as she gave me the full-body once-over. “You saw the Hungers?”
I stuck my wrist with the band on it in my pocket. I don’t know why, but I didn’t want her opinion of me wearing the band that connected me to Zayvion and Shamus. “I saw them. I use Sight a lot when I Hound.”
“You were Hounding the Hungers?”
“No, just looking for a friend.”
She bit the corner of her lip, like she was trying to decide something. I honestly didn’t care what it was.
“Heads up.” Shamus tossed a leather band to Chase, and she snatched it out of the air and clipped it on her wrist. As soon as it closed, I felt a third rhythm tapping at my wrist.
Apparently, she felt it too.
“You’re joking, right?” She looked between Shamus and Zay. “She’s not coming with us, is she?”
Zayvion zipped his coat and made quick work of pulling things out of the trunk and attaching them to his body.
“Yes,” he said, “she is. She needs to touch you, Chase. This is her first time.”
Chase camped back on one hip. “You Read?”
“Sure.” I walked over to her. “Doesn’t everybody?” I placed my right hand below her neck, palm resting flat against her sternum. She was annoyed, a little jealous. That, I could have told just by looking at her. But the last emotion I picked up from her was fear.
Okay, maybe I should turn in my degree in body language. She didn’t look afraid at all on the outside.
“Done?” she asked.
“Uh, yes.” I pulled my hand away, stuck it back in my pocket where I could rub my thumb over my fingertips to try to wipe away the emotions I had sensed. But rubbing at my fingers wasn’t doing me any good. With each of their heartbeats tapping gently at my wrist, I found that if I thought about one of them, I could not only tell that they were breathing and conscious, I could also sense a hint of their mood.
Move over, lie detector tests. These suckers were good.
Shamus had taken his turn stuffing things in his coat pockets. I glanced over to see if the machetes were still in the trunk. They were not. Which meant Shamus and Zayvion had three-foot blades strapped onto their bodies somewhere.
In broad daylight. In the middle of the city.
“Should I take anything?” I asked, as Shamus slammed the trunk shut.
“A healthy sense of self-preservation would be good,” he said.
Zayvion reached over and wrapped his hand around my wrist, his fingertips pressing the medallion closer to my pulse. And I could tell that at this moment, he was intent and focused on nothing except me.
“Stay out of the way, out of reach. Use your defense spells if you must. Run, if you must. Just stay safe.” He pressed the hilt of a sheathed knife into my hand.