“It is because of Alerian,” Nathaniel murmured quietly in my ear, his hand on my elbow.
“I know,” I said, just as quietly. People tend to freak out if they hear disembodied voices. “How is it that nobody else seems to notice? Everyone seems so relentlessly normal.”
“They may notice,” Nathaniel said as we approached the elevators. “But not the way you or I would. They would simply remark that the river looks pretty today.”
“It looks pretty, all right, but it also looks wrong,” I said. “Don’t survival instincts exist anymore?”
“There would likely be less crime if they did,” Nathaniel said.
We fell silent as we entered an elevator behind an exhausted-looking family of tourists. They did not notice our presence; nor did any of them remark when Nathaniel pressed the button for Alerian’s floor and the button seemed to magically light up on its own.
Of course we were invisible to mortal eyes, but you could still hear us if you listened closely, and you can always smell another person near you—their shampoo or body lotion or cologne. But the family remained oblivious, bickering about where to go for lunch.
I guess what Nathaniel said was true. Most people had no survival instincts. No flicker of awareness on the back of the neck, no sense of wrongness. I’d have been dead long ago without those little cues.
And yet despite seeing the evidence of vampires, angels and werewolves with their own eyes, there was no sense of concern, no frisson of alarm evident on the faces of the family who clattered out on their floor without noticing the presence of two creatures that could have killed them all in an instant.
It made me angry. I’d pushed my mind and body to the brink over and over, trying to keep oblivious cows like those people innocent and safe. They couldn’t even have the courtesy to be aware of their surroundings.
My baby shifted, his wings fluttering more rapidly as my anger built. Nathaniel’s arm went around my shoulders as the veil dropped away.
“Madeline, calm yourself,” he murmured. “You are in no fit state to confront Alerian.”
I nearly roared at him in response, then realized my anger was out of proportion. I took a deep breath, trying to push away the haze of red.
“It is the shadow,” Nathaniel said. “It magnifies your emotions.”
“I can’t stand it,” I said. “If I don’t keep perfect control at all times, it looms up, tries to influence me. And it’s all because of that damned Puck.”
“Yes,” Nathaniel said. “But do not think of him now. It will affect your ability to deal with Alerian.”
The elevator doors opened and we moved into the hall. There had been no discussion where to go. The two of us moved in perfect synchronicity, Alerian’s presence pulling us like a homing beacon. I’d half expected my uncle to have taken a fancy penthouse suite, but we appeared to be on a floor of regular rooms.
Of course, when we knocked on the door and Alerian answered, I realized “regular” was relative. This wasn’t a roadside motel, after all. The room behind my uncle was richly appointed, with floor-to-ceiling-window views of the Chicago River.
“Nathaniel. Madeline,” Alerian said in a voice as cool as the sea. His hair was blue-green again and so were his eyes, shifting like waves. He was so clearly not of this world that I was surprised he’d been able to stand so close to the mayor without eliciting concern from the mayor’s bodyguards, even with his unusual hair color covered up.
The three of us stood there for a moment, Nathaniel and I side by side, our hands clutched together, and Alerian across from us, ancient and roiling with power beneath the surface of his gaze.
I’d been a terrible student in school. I was lucky that I remembered how to add and subtract. Yet a fragment of a Tennyson poem I’d heard in some long-ago English class came back to me as I stared into the storm in Alerian’s eyes. Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea, His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep . . . Until the latter fire shall heat the deep; Then once by man and angels to be seen, In roaring he shall rise . . .
Alerian was rising. That was why Nathaniel and I could feel his presence at all times. His power was drawing up, building in a way that it had not since the ancient days. What did he intend to do once he reached his apex?
If Alerian truly was related to Lucifer and Puck, then he would have some complex machinery in place, a knotted web that I’d spend a great deal of time cutting through before I finally figured out the plot.
These thoughts passed lightning-quick behind my eyes in the moments we all stared at one another. Then Alerian smoothly moved to one side and gestured for us to enter.
4
Nathaniel and I silently passed through the door. The room was pristine, not a personal object in sight save the jacket that matched Alerian’s pants slung over the chair.
He closed the door, and I felt an uncomfortable prickling on my skin. With the door closed, his presence seemed to fill up all the empty space in the room. The energy coming from the river intensified the feeling that I was surrounded on all sides by Alerian.
My uncle did not sit. Neither did we.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of your company—finally?” Alerian said. “I have been in your city for close to four months and neither of you have sought me out to pay respects as you should.”
“You haven’t stopped by my place for a barbecue, either, pal,” I said.
Beside me, I felt rather than heard Nathaniel’s nearly inaudible sigh. I was scared out of my wits and staring down a very old and very powerful being, but my mouth shot off without any consideration for the possibility of harm at the hands of that being. I blame Beezle.