Chapter Thirty-Three

I still felt a little out of sorts the next day. The sunlight was too bright, the world felt simultaneously overstimulating and undersaturated, and I was an odd mixture of exhausted and restless that had more than a passing resemblance to mania. I’d gotten some sleep, and it hadn’t been troubled by nightmares for once, but I was still tired.

But I was, in several ways, out of time. It had to be tonight. So while I was feeling dissociated and strung out, I was still a little bit southeast of Homestead Cemetery.

I didn’t have an exact address; Toby had only been able to narrow it down to this neighborhood. I didn’t think that was going to be a problem. It would be, if I were planning a surgical strike or something. But for what I had in mind, it was plenty. I just went to the right general area and started wandering around.…

Shadow’s Vision

Shadow describes itself as achromatic rather than monochrome; this is, as discussed in the notes on that chapter, an accurate distinction. I kept it brief there, but thought I’d go into more detail separately. I think people often conflate the two terms, in part because humans cannot have monochrome vision. Or, well, maybe; it’s hard to say whether what someone sees is grey or they’re subjectively seeing everything as a single color. Because monochrome means exactly that, that only shades of a single general color are going to be in use in an image. It gets used to refer to black and white but that’s not quite right; monochrome would be more that, say, all of the parts of the image are different hues of red.…

Chapter Thirty-Two

Somewhat to my surprise, the odd, supernatural poet actually was outside. They hadn’t simply vanished when they walked out the door, and were in fact walking at a casual pace through the snow. They weren’t dressed for this weather; just a black t-shirt and tattered black jeans, beat-up old sneakers, nothing like sufficient for a January night in Pittsburgh. They didn’t seem to care, or even notice.

I caught up to them easily enough, since they were moving at a pretty relaxed speed. I made a point of moving up beside them rather than directly behind them, giving them time to register my presence before getting close. People who had any involvement with the supernatural often ended up…jumpy.

“Hi,” I said, once I was close enough. “You want some company?”…

Rotting Flowers

The blossoms are still scarlet even when you close your eyes…

Chapter Thirty-One

On the walk back, I was interrupted by a booby trap.

I saw the tripwire stretched across the alley in plenty of time. I wasn’t quite sure what to do about it, though. It was…different than the other attempts. It had none of the blunt-object aggression of Ekaterina’s approach, but nowhere near the elegance and precision of Cormac’s side of things. And I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t think it was even connected to anything. I checked as best I could, which wasn’t very, and I didn’t see anything.

I hadn’t gone close to it. It had occurred to me that it would make some sense to use an obvious trap as bait so that I would miss the actual trigger for another trap. But I wasn’t sure what to do with that fact. I could just as easily say that the actual trap was in the next alley over, and this whole thing was a decoy. Falling into that kind of option paralysis was a terrible idea, too; staying still here was just begging for an ambush to hit.

So once I’d established to the best of my ability that it wasn’t directly hazardous, I just shrugged and continued. I stepped over the tripwire with exaggerated care—I didn’t want to risk breaking it, just in case—and put my foot down on the other side.…

Chapter Thirty

I did not wake up from the nightmare in a good state of mind. That was an understatement of almost criminal proportion, really. I managed to dislodge Saori from my chest and roll out of bed before I started throwing up, but that was about it.

I spent a while like that, shaking and retching on Capinera’s floor. I thought I might be crying also, but it was a little hard to tell. It was hard to tell how long it dragged on, too; time got weird when I felt like this, in ways I’d never quite been able to define.

Saori hadn’t woken up. That spoke volumes about just how tired she’d been. She was a heavier sleeper than I was, but I was putting off a fair amount of electricity, and had just rolled her off my chest before throwing up right next to her. This…would ordinarily be more than enough to wake her up.…