Wayward Read online

Chapter Three

  Wind whipped around me as the bike flew down Halsted. Chill air crept through the opening of my leather jacket and numbed my lips.

  I loved the night. The city fell silent and still, creatures unfamiliar with the day came out of hidden places to taste the dark. Every shadow full of mystery and promise.

  Tonight those same shadows seethed and twisted. Unease tightened the muscles in my back and I leaned forward to urge the bike faster.

  I knew magic. The smell and taste of it was as familiar as my own reflection in a mirror. What I'd felt during the race was the blackest sort of a magic—thick with demon stink and darkness.

  I knew the dark magic, too. I would spend the rest of my life trying to forget it.

  Abandoned store fronts and empty lots slowly made way for neat rows of townhouses and renovated Victorian walk-ups. This neighborhood was clean and vibrant. Kids played in the streets during the day and the Jewish couple who owned the deli on the corner always remembered that I took ham on rye with spicy mustard.

  It was a good place to land. I was lucky.

  The modest apartment belonged to two Sisters of the Faith. Sisters Maeve and Sister Mohan were recent converts. They worked for my family for more than a decade—though they used different names back then—before up and disappearing five years ago. My mother used to joke that they found religion.

  It took me more than a month to find them and almost that long again to convince them they could trust me. I defected as completely as they did. I bore the scars to prove it.

  Sister Maeve worked at a butcher shop during the day so she always came home smelling faintly of animal carcass and old blood. Sister Mohan cooked unlicensed hearth charms on the kitchen stove to sell off-market, boring stuff like healing poultices and luckstones. They made a decent job keeping under the radar. Helping me was their biggest risk.

  My bike parked next to a small utility shed in the grassy lot behind our building. When I cut the engine, silence descended. Usually the quiet was a comfort, but not tonight.

  I reached the door of the apartment and put my key in the lock before a hint of wrongness stopped me. I pushed the door softly and it moved a scant distance. Neither of the sisters would ever leave a door unlocked, whether they were home or not. Maybe for the first time, in all the time I'd known her, Sister Mohan went to the store and forgot to lock the door behind her. I doubted it.

  I took a deep breath to steady my nerves. With a swift kick, the door swung open hard enough that it slammed against the far wall with a loud bang.

  This was my worst fear confirmed. The confluence of my past and my present, spelled out in harsh relief as I surveyed the destruction of the apartment.

  Bookcases in the living room had been overturned, spilling their contents onto the floor. The walls were dented in places as if something heavy was thrown repeatedly against them. The upholstery on the sofa where I slept had been shredded—pieces of it littered the carpet.

  In the kitchen, all of the cupboards were open. Broken dishware and ripped cartons of food scattered on the counters and linoleum floor. My feet crunched on pieces of spilled cereal as I moved to the closed door of the bedroom that the Sisters shared.

  Concern for them drove me forward. There was still time to run and never look back. But I had to know what lay on the other side of that door. Broken bodies flung aside in a paroxysm of slumber, contorted faces one final punishment before I joined them in death. Or the creature that had done this, lying in wait for its intended prey.

  My heart beat impossibly fast as I touched the cool metal of the door knob, so hard that at any moment I imagined it would burst from my chest.

  I slowly pushed open the door, expecting the worst. The bedroom was deserted.

  Relief was short-lived as I surveyed the damage that lay within.

  Clothes were torn from the closet and lay in haphazard piles on the floor and bed. A window facing the alley between this building and the next was broken. Traces of red coated the remaining pieces of glass in the frame. There were no shards on the floor. Something—or someone—had gone out the window. Careful to avoid the sharp fragments in the pane, I peered out at the ground three stories below.

  The alley was empty.

  Bags were missing when I checked under the bed. I breathed a sigh of relief

  The destruction in the living room and kitchen wasn't the result of a struggle. Whoever was here wrecked the apartment in frustration at find it abandoned. The Sisters had gotten safely away.

  I grabbed a backpack from the bedroom and stuffed it with a change of clothes. For good measure, I dumped the contents of the spare change jar that Sister Maeve kept under the sink into the bag as well. I doubted she'd begrudge me having it.

  I locked the door out of habit on the way out before I realized how little it mattered. The Sisters knew better than to come back here. I slipped the key under the mat for the poor landlord to find and hiked my backpack up on one shoulder.

  It was time to run again.