Ryan was waiting for me right inside the door. He looked a bit haggard, but he flashed me a quick smile when I entered, then allowed the hostess to lead us to one of the vat/booths in the back. I scooched into the booth and took the menu from the waitress while Ryan got settled in.
I looked across the table at him, more relieved than I could say aloud that he was here, that he’d called me. I was still angry and hurt, but his friendship was important to me. Too important? a small voice inside worried at me, and I pushed it down as best I could.
“I was a dick,” Ryan said without looking at me as soon as the waitress walked away. “Sorry.”
Well, it was better than no apology at all. “It’s all right. Are you feeling better?”
“Yes, I am. I slept about ten hours and woke up feeling human again.” His eyes met mine briefly, then dropped down to the menu, flicking over the offerings. “What’s good here?”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re the one who picked it. I figured you’d been here before.”
He shook his head. “Nope. I just heard it was a cool place.”
I gave him a sharp look, but his attention was on the menu, so I decided that the pun was unintended and unnoticed. I’d let that one slide.
“I don’t go to restaurants very often,” I admitted. “I’m a microwave girl.”
“Yeah, well, you need to start eating more,” he said with a slight scowl as he looked up again, eyes raking me.
“Fine. Then you can pay.”
“Deal,” he said, a smile lighting his eyes.
I laughed. “Hey, that was easy.” The knot of tension in my shoulders began to unwind. Apology offered and accepted.
The waitress came to take our drink orders, and since the menu wasn’t complex—or all that interesting—we went ahead and ordered burgers. After she walked away, I looked back at Ryan. “So is this an apology thing, a make-Kara-eat thing, or one of these we-need-to-talk things?”
He lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “All of the above, but don’t make it sound so damn ominous. I was a dick. You do need to eat. And we do need to talk. But not a we-need-to-talk kind of needing to talk.”
“Uh-huh.” I picked a pink packet of sweetener out of the container on the table and started to toy with it. “So what do we need to talk about?” Good, I’d managed to make that sound casual and not as angsty as I actually felt.
“Jesus Christ, Kara,” he said with a scowl. “Not that kind of we need to talk, just a we need to talk to each other more because we’re friends. Plus, as far as knowing shit about the arcane, neither of us has too many people we can be open with.”
I made myself smile, but old doubts churned within me. “Yeah. Friends,” I said. “And we can talk about the arcane.” Would we even be friends if not for that? “Though Jill knows now. About the arcane and the summoning.”
His eyebrows lifted. “How the hell did that happen?”
I gave him a quick rundown of Jill’s encounter with Kehlirik. “And she was okay with it,” I said, still feeling the relief that she hadn’t run screaming. “Or at least okay enough with me to accept it.”
He leaned back in the booth. “I like Jill, what little I know of her. Haven’t seen much of her since the Symbol Man case, of course, other than at the funeral. And my present case isn’t the kind that has me working with any local agencies. But she seemed pretty cool.”
A stupid spike of jealousy jabbed at me, and I fought the juvenile urge to scowl. What am I, in third grade? It’s just Jill. “Yeah, she’s cool,” I said, deliberately bright.
“Any progress on finding your essence-eater?”
I made a face. “No. I’m pretty much fumbling around blindly right now.” I paused while our food and drinks were delivered. “I still need to do a lot of research,” I said as soon as the waitress left. I picked up my burger and took a bite, then grimaced. Now I knew why this place was deserted on a Friday afternoon. It wasn’t horrible, but it certainly wasn’t great.
Ryan’s expression mirrored my own as he swallowed his first bite. “I’m not sure I want to know what kind of animal was put into this burger.”
I took a long swig of my diet soda to wash it down, then tried the fries to see if they were any better. Overly greasy, with too much salt. I sighed and blotted at them with my napkin. “Anyway, the reyza was able to remove the wards, so now I can get into my aunt’s library.” I made a face that had nothing to do with the quality of the food or lack thereof. “Now my only challenge is finding the right book or paper or scroll. If she has a system in there, it’s way beyond me.”
He was quiet for a moment as he continued to work on his burger. “Have you been to see her?”
“My aunt?” I sighed and shrugged. “I’ve been a few times. But it’s not her. I mean, she’s not there, and it feels really weird sitting in a room visiting the empty shell. It’s like visiting a chair.” I toyed with a limp fry, dragging it through the ketchup. “But I know it’s expected of me, so I go every now and then, enough to keep people from saying I’m a lousy niece.”
He surprised me then by reaching across the table and gripping my hand. I looked down at his hand on mine and then up at him. “Not everyone’s against you,” he said. “Give it time. Like you said, stuff blows over.”
I forced a smile. “I know. It’s cool.” A busboy entered through the back door, and I had to breathe shallowly as the smell of rotting garbage from the alley wafted in with him. “Okay, I’m officially blaming you for choosing this place.”
“It’s pretty vile,” Ryan agreed.
I looked up as the busboy came over to the table, and I pushed the barely eaten burger away from me. “You can take that,” I said, gesturing to the plate. “I’m finished.”
The busboy scooped up the plate but nearly dropped it again as a din of barking and snarling erupted from beyond the back door.
The waitress looked up from her lethargic table-wiping. “Tommy, go chase those damn dogs away. I told you to stop feeding them scraps.”
Tommy dumped my plate into a plastic bin, then set the bin on a table near our booth, casting a black glare at the oblivious waitress as he slumped out the back door.
“Next time you can take me to someplace really classy,” I murmured to Ryan. “Like maybe the fried-chicken stand at the gas station.”
Ryan laughed and opened his mouth to respond, but a sudden nauseating roil of potency swept past us, momentarily robbing us both of breath before it was gone, leaving what felt like a taint of sewage in the arcane. “What the fuck was that?” Ryan gasped, gripping the edge of the table.
“The parking lot … by your office,” I managed to say, fighting back the taste of bile. “Feels the same.” A heartbeat later, a shrill scream of pain and terror came from the alley.
“That’s the kid,” Ryan said, already out of the booth and moving to the door. I wasn’t as fast but managed to stumble after him, only a few steps behind. It was hard to move quickly when you were trying hard not to throw up. Obviously Ryan hadn’t felt that awful surge of yuck as intensely as I had.
Ryan yanked the door open—not bursting through like an idiot but taking an instant to assess the situation in the back alley.
Not that it made a difference. In the split second that it took Ryan to finish pulling the door open, a sleek black shape hurtled through the door, striking Ryan square in the chest and knocking him flat. I caught a flash of teeth and claws as Ryan twisted as he landed, throwing off the … dog? That was the closest analogy I could come up with in those rushed seconds. Caninelike head and snout, lots of teeth, four legs, but with a slick, reptilian way of moving.
I yanked my gun from its holster as the thing launched itself at Ryan again. But Ryan reacted with a speed that impressed me, getting his legs up in time to catch the creature in the chest, shoving it away.
“Shoot it!” he yelled over the shrieking of the waitress. I didn’t need the encouragement. I squeezed off three quick rounds, the sound of the shots slamming through the restaurant, setting my ears ringing. The dog-thing jerked and shrieked as at least two of the shots found their mark, but a heartbeat later it was back on its feet, snarling at the two of us. Now I could get a better look at it, but it didn’t help. It was still vaguely doglike and really fucking scary-looking.
Ryan was breathing hard. “Did you hit it?”
“Yes! Shoot it some more!”
We both lifted our guns and started shooting, but this time the demon dog was ready, twisting to evade with unnatural speed that allowed only a few of the rounds to find their mark.
“Sonofabitch! Is it a demon?” Ryan demanded, as it appeared to shake off the effects of being shot as easily as shaking off a mosquito bite.
“Not one of the kinds I know,” I shouted, probably louder than necessary, but my ears were ringing from the shooting. “But it’s definitely other-planar.” I could see the telltale light instead of blood streaming from the wounds. I tried to remember how many rounds I’d fired. I didn’t have a spare magazine on me. I’d been going to lunch, damn it!
It launched itself at us again, in a blur of red eyes and white teeth. We both dove in opposite directions, as if we’d rehearsed it, but the dog-thing had apparently missed that particular rehearsal and twisted in midair to rake its claws at Ryan.
Ryan let out an explosive curse, then, in an act that was either incredibly courageous or incredibly stupid, grabbed the dog by its lower jaw and jammed his gun into the creature’s side, angling down and squeezing the trigger repeatedly until the slide of his gun locked back on his empty magazine. The dog-thing let out a howl of pain and rage, but a gut full of lead still didn’t seem to slow it down much. It snarled and twisted its head free of Ryan’s grasp, and I could see it poised to snap those deadly jaws onto something vital. I let out a yell and copied Ryan’s technique, jamming my gun against the creature and firing until the gun was empty. It had the desired result—at least partially. It screamed and lost interest in Ryan, turning that crimson gaze on me.
Okay, this is bad, the thought flashed through my head. I was out of bullets, and even with what had to be more than a dozen rounds in it, the thing wasn’t dead. Or, rather, it wasn’t dead enough. White light streamed from it in several places, but it didn’t look as if it would be discorporeating in the less than a second I probably had before the jaws clamped down on me. Given more time, I could possibly dismiss it back to whatever sphere it was from. But, then again, I didn’t think I’d be able to open a portal in the very short amount of time I had to work with.
Before I had a chance to enjoy the last split second of life as a whole person, another shot slammed through the room. The dog-thing’s head exploded in a burst of blue light, and then the body dropped heavily to the floor. I crabbed back, struggling to catch my breath as sparkles began to crawl over the body. A few seconds later the sparkles had completely consumed it, leaving behind nothing but a foul-smelling stain on the floor.
I looked up, past the arcane stain, then smiled weakly in relief.
“Good to see you, Agent Garner,” I said, voice only a little shaky. “That was some mighty fine shootin’, Tex.”
Zack grinned and gave me a mock salute as he lowered his gun. “Why, thankee, ma’am.”
I managed a wheezing chuckle, then got to my feet and looked to Ryan. “Are you all right?”
Ryan scowled and lifted his shirt, revealing a set of rippled abs that would have been incredibly nice to gaze at for a while if not for the four parallel scores across them that were just beginning to ooze blood.
“Barely got me,” he said, tugging the shirt back down. “I’ll be fine.”
I gave him a small smile of relief, then stepped over to crouch by the stain on the floor. I stayed there for a few heartbeats, absorbing the feel of the lingering residue, then straightened.
“That’s what we felt the other day by your office,” I said to both of them.
“So it’s been stalking us for a few days,” Ryan said, expression grim.
“I think so,” I said, then looked back to Zack. “Don’t take this the wrong way, because your timing was fantastic, but what are you doing here?”
A slight smile touched his lips. “I, uh, get ‘feelings’ sometimes. I’ve learned to listen to them. And I had a feeling I needed to see what Ryan was up to.”
So Zack had a touch of clairvoyance? I had a hard time being surprised, especially since I knew that he was sensitive to the arcane. “Well, I’m quite grateful to your feelings right now.” My gaze shifted higher. “And even more grateful that your hair is no longer orange.”
He laughed and ran a hand over his head. “Yep, surfer blond again.”
Ryan’s gaze swept the restaurant, taking in the waitress cowering under a table. “We have bigger problems right now.” He jerked his head toward the back door. “Zack, check the back. There’s a busboy out there, possibly hurt.”
Zack met his eyes, a strange expression on his face. “You’ll take care of the rest?”
Ryan’s face went stony and bleak, and he gave a stiff nod. Zack slipped out the back door.
What the hell was that about?
Ryan stepped over to the table the waitress was hiding under and crouched in front of her. He placed a hand on hers and I thought he was going to help her out from under the table, but instead she went very still and quiet when her eyes met his. I watched the bizarre tableau, perplexed, as Ryan continued to hold the woman’s hand, eyes fixed on hers while a strange and terrible smile curved his lips.