I slid out of the bed and walked toward him. “Dominic?” He didn’t react. I raised a hand, reaching carefully toward his shoulder. “Dominic?”
“Don’t touch me right now, Verity,” he said. His voice was low. “I am betraying someone, right now, and I honestly do not know who it is. So please, I beg you. Do not touch me.”
“I’m sorry.” I pulled my hand away. “That was the Covenant. On your phone.” In my apartment. For the first time in a while, I realized just how dangerous my relationship with Dominic really was. All he had to do was say the word . . .
And if he was going to do that, he would never have told me the purge was coming, much less answered the phone in my presence. I couldn’t let myself start thinking that way. If I did, I might as well get out of the city right now.
“Yes. They’re on their way. I’ve told you when and where they will arrive. Be careful. Don’t let yourself be seen.” He grabbed his pants off the floor, yanking them roughly on before looking back at me over his shoulder. I had never seen him look so miserable. “I truly do not know whether I’m doing the right thing. But I know that I don’t want you getting hurt, and I know that nothing I can say will make you leave. So, for me, for my sake, be careful.”
“I’ll try,” I said. Where I grew up, “be careful” was a death sentence. From the look in his eyes, he didn’t think of it that way.
To my surprise, Dominic laughed. It wasn’t a happy sound. “A man from the Covenant of St. George telling a Price woman to be careful. What is this world coming to?”
“I don’t know, but we’ve been here a few times before,” I said.
Dominic laughed again, even less happily. “So true.” He didn’t say anything else as he gathered the rest of his clothes and got dressed, and he didn’t look at me on his way out of the room. I heard the front door slam a few minutes later. Once again, I was alone, and feeling more lost than ever.
I stayed in the bedroom long enough to collect my thoughts and give Dominic a chance to get out of the building. Then I dressed, taking my time, concealing as many weapons as I possibly could under camouflage cargo pants and a black tank top. Adding my custom tactical vest—half-corset, half-Kevlar, all military spec material—gave me room for easily a dozen extra knives. If I needed all those weapons, I was probably already dead, but it’s better to be prepared for anything.
The mice were waiting in the hall when I opened the bedroom door. They cheered as I emerged, a cry of “CHEESE AND CAKE!” rising from the throng.
I smiled a little. No matter how bad things look, life goes on. “I have to go out for a little while,” I said. “Let’s get your communion set up.”
Praise and exultations followed me into the kitchen. That was nice. I had the distinct feeling that no one else was going to be singing my praises any time soon. It was time to go.
Eight
“Don’t be careful. Be courageous. Don’t be safe. Be strong. Don’t be a victim. Be the one who makes it home.”
The rooftop of the old Department of Docks on Pier A in Manhattan
THE ROOFTOP OF THE OLD Department of Docks building was slanted—something uncommon enough in Manhattan to be deeply disconcerting, especially when I was trying to stay out of sight. The angle of the roof was sharp enough that I couldn’t lie flat, but shallow enough that I couldn’t use it for cover. “Avoid really obvious cover” was one of the rules I’d been raised with, entry number eight hundred and thirteen in the Gospel of Staying Alive. I sent up a silent apology to my entire family tree as I disregarded their advice and slunk into the shadow of the building’s decorative clock tower. It was a short, mostly useless piece of masonry. It was sufficient for my current needs.
Once I was safely out of view, I settled into a crouch, and prepared myself to wait.
There’s a certain meditative mindset that goes with long periods of actively doing nothing. That isn’t the contradiction that it sounds like. Anyone can passively do nothing, staring off into space or at the latest mindless sitcom eating up the hours on their TV. Actively doing nothing means holding perfectly still while paying attention to everything around you. It’s a skill cultivated by hunters, soldiers, and biologists hoping to get a glimpse of something no one’s ever seen before. My training makes me sort of a combination of all three, and I’ve had time to get very, very good at not moving.
I didn’t move as the sun slid slowly across the sky, counting down toward the point when Dominic’s superiors were scheduled to arrive. I didn’t move when I saw Dominic himself come walking down the pier. He was wearing that stupid leather duster that he had on the night we met. I was too far away to see his face. I didn’t need to. His shoulders were locked, and he was walking with the slow, borderline-resentful steps of a man on the way to his own execution.
He stopped at the edge of the pier, hands in the pockets of his duster, and looked out over the water. Then he froze, going as still as I was. I held my position, and the two of us waited, together and apart at the same time.
The Hudson River isn’t the sort of thing you mess around with. I’m not sure what I was expecting to see come sailing up to the pier. I certainly wasn’t expecting the taxi that drove up behind Dominic and stopped, disgorging three black-clad figures onto the sidewalk. Each of them had a satchel. The driver emerged long enough to help them remove two suitcases from the trunk. Then the tallest of the figures handed him a stack of bills, and he climbed back into the cab and was gone, leaving Dominic and the trio behind.
Dominic still didn’t turn. The shortest of the three—a woman, with long brown hair pulled into a ponytail—stepped up to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. There was a pause while none of them moved; the brunette was probably speaking. Dominic nodded once, not turning. One of the others raised his hand to shoulder-height in a gesture that looked like a benediction or a summons, or possibly both. Dominic nodded again.
This time he turned to face the three, and bowed to them deeply. The brunette woman bowed back, as did the shorter of the two men. The taller man simply stood there with his hand raised, watching. It should have looked ridiculous, an old-fashioned dumb show being carried out in front of a semi-abandoned pier, with a pile of luggage just begging to be stolen. Instead, it was positively chilling. These were Covenant agents. Three of them, in mycity. Dominic didn’t count. He hadn’t been Covenant to me since the day we found William.
Dominic gestured toward their bags, probably saying something else that I was too far away to hear. I found myself wishing Sarah was with me. She’s not usually very good at getting clean telepathic reads off people she’s never met, but anything would have been better than nothing. The three Covenant operatives nodded, and the tall man finally lowered his hand.
They followed Dominic as he walked down the side of the pier to the rental car he had parked illegally in a nearby loading zone. It was a black Crown Vic—of course it was—and from the way he held the doors open for them, he could almost have been mistaken for their chauffeur. He even loaded the suitcases into the trunk without assistance. All three kept hold of their satchels. Dominic never even reached for them. There were apparently some things that simply were not done.
Once the others were safely in the car, he walked around to the driver’s side door and pulled it open, taking what must have looked like a natural pause while he looked up to the nearby rooftops. I remained frozen where I was, using the shadow of the clock tower for cover. His eyes skated over me without pausing, and as he climbed into the car and drove away, I still wasn’t sure whether I’d been seen.