Katie glanced at Gina and back at the woman, a stuttering double take. It was. Not the same outfit, and her hair was clipped back aggressively now—though it wasn’t staying restrained—but the woman was conspicuous. “Well,” Katie said, feeling as if she watched the words emerge from a stranger’s mouth, “we could follow him and find out where they’re going.”
Neither Matthew nor Marion was particularly sanguine about attacking on a cockatrice in the dark. They had to take the subway across the island (at least the cockerel was quiet, huddled in the bottom of its carrier) but still ascended to the surface with light to spare. It roused the bird; Matthew heard it shift, and Marion kept her fingers well clear of the air holes. It was, as promised, aggressive.
Matthew shoved down guilt and substantial apprehension. There was no other choice, and power grew out of sacrifices.
They found the courtyard without a problem, that tunnel-like entrance with its broken gate leaving rust on Matthew’s clothes as they slipped through. He wasn’t wearing his usual patrol clothes, a zipped camouflage jacket and boots enchanted to pass-unnoticed, but a gray silk suit with a linen shirt and a silver, red, and navy tie. A flask in an inside pocket tapped his ribs when he moved. He looked like a dot com paper millionaire on his way to a neck-or-nothing meeting with a crotchety venture capitalist who was going to hate his ponytail.
His clothes today, and the quick preliminary ritual they’d performed in his living room, were not designed to conceal him, to occlude his power, but rather to draw the right attention. If you squinted at him with otherwise eyes, he would shine. And other than his rings and the earrings and the pigment in the ink under his skin, he wasn’t wearing any iron, as he might have been if they went to face something Fae.
Iron was of no use against a cockatrice. Except in one particular, and so two steel gaffs wrapped in tissue paper nested in the bottom of Matthew’s trouser pocket. He touched them through fabric like a child stroking a favorite toy and drew his hand back when they clinked.
“This is it,” he said.
Marion set the carrier down. “Nice place you’ve got here, Matthew. Decorate it yourself?” From the way her nose was wrinkling, she picked out the acid aroma of the monster as well.
Henry and his comrade at arms were nowhere to be seen. Matthew hoped they had taken his advice and moved on. He hated working around civilians.
Without answering Marion, he kicked aside garbage, clearing a space in the center of the court. The windows overlooking it remained unoccupied, and if for some reason they did not continue so, Marion had a badge.
She helped Matthew sketch a star overlaid on a circle in yellow sidewalk chalk. They left one point open, facing south by Marion’s compass. When they were done, Matthew dusted his hands, wiped them on his handkerchief, and reached into his pockets for the spurs, the flask, and something else—a leather hood of the sort used by falconers to quiet their birds.
“Ready?”
She nodded. “Where’s the lair?”
He patted himself on the chest—“the s.o.b. comes to us”—and watched her eyes widen. She had thought he was kidding.
They always did.
Well, maybe someday he could catch a unicorn.
“It’s okay,” he said, when her blush became a stammer. “Let’s get the knives on this chicken.”
It took both of them, crouched on either side, to open the box and hood the bird without harming it. It exploded into Matthew’s grip as Marion pried open the flaps; he caught at it, bungled the grab and got pecked hard for his pains. Somehow he got the bird pressed to his chest, a struggling fury of iridescent black plumage, and caged it in his blunt hands. It felt prickly and slick and hotter than blood under the feathers. He smoothed its wings together and restrained the kicking legs, while Marion dodged the jabbing beak. Once in darkness it quieted, and Marion strapped the three-inch gaffs over its own natural spurs.
When they were done, it looked quite brave and wicked, the gleam of steel on rainbow-black. Marion stroked its back between Matthew’s fingers, her touch provoking a tremor when she brushed the back of his hand. “Fucking abomination.”
She meant cockfighting, not the bird. Matthew set the cockerel down and moved his hands away. It sat quietly. “How do you think I feel?”
She shrugged. Still crouched, she produced a pair of handcuffs and a silken hood from her tan leather handbag. Matthew bent over to pick up the flask. “God, I hate this part.”
He prized it open with his thumb and upended it over his mouth. The fumes of hundred-and-fifty-proof rum made him gasp; he choked down three swallows and stopped, doubled over, rasping.
Matthew didn’t often drink.
But that would be enough for the spell.
Light-headed, now, sinuses stinging from more than the reek of the cockatrice, Matthew handed Marion the flask and then his spectacles, feeling naked without them. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, fine hairs harsh on his lips. Four steps took him through the open end of the pentagram.
He turned back and faced Marion. With the silk of the hood draped over his forearm, he handcuffed himself—snugly: he did not want his body breaking free while he was not in it.
They weren’t replaceable.
He took one more deep breath, closed his eyes on Marion’s blurry outline, and with his joined wrists rattling pulled the hood over his head.
In the dark underneath, sounds were muffled. Concentrated rum fumes made his eyes water, but at least he could no longer smell the cockatrice. Chalk grated—Marion closing the pentagram. He heard his flask uncorked, the splash of fluid as she anointed the diagram with the remaining rum. Matthew tugged restlessly against the restraints on his wrists as she began to chant and a deep uneasy curdling sensation answered.
God, too much rum. He wobbled and caught himself, fretting the handcuffs, the tightness on the bones. The sensual thrill of the magic sparking along his nerves was accentuated by the blinding darkness. He wobbled again, or maybe the world did, and gasped at the heat in his blood.
Magic and passion weren’t different. It was one reason sublimation worked.
The second gasp came cleaner, no fabric muffling his face, the air cooler if not fresher and the scent of rum less cloying. Marion seemed to have moved, by the sound of her chanting, and somehow the tightness had jumped from Matthew’s wrists to his calves. He lay belly-down on rough ground.
He pushed with his arms to try to balance himself to his feet. The chanting stopped, abruptly, and someone was restraining him, folding his arms against his side gently but with massive cautious strength. “Matthew?”
He turned his head, seeking the voice. It echoed. The . . . arms? holding him retreated. “Matthew, if you understand me, flap once.”
He extended odd-feeling arms and did so. A moment later, a half-dozen fists, it seemed, were unhooding him. He blinked at dizzy brilliance, and found himself staring into Marion’s enormous face from only a few inches away. He hopped back and fouled himself on the gaffs. Fortunately, the needle point slipped between his feathers rather than stabbing him in the wing, and he stopped, precariously balanced, wings half-bent like broken umbrellas.
He clucked.
And flapped hard, surprised to find himself lifting off the ground. He flew the two feet to Marion’s shoulder, landed awkwardly, facing the wrong way, and banged her in the eye with his wing. At least he had the sense to turn carefully, keeping the needle-tipped gaffs pointed away from her thin-skinned throat. He crouched on his heels, trying not to prick her with his claws, the alien body’s balance far better than his own.
Only if he thought about it did he realize that the warm shoulder he nestled to Marion’s warm cheek was feathered, that it was peculiar to be able to feel the beats of her heart through his feet like the footfalls of an approaching predator, that the colors he saw were abruptly so bright and saturated—so discriminate—that he had no names for them. That he balanced on her moving shoulder as easily as he would have roosted on a swaying branch, and that that was peculiar.