Hallow Point by Ari Marmell Read Free Book Online Page B

town.
    Me, I planted my keister on a random seat and leaned my head back against the wall. I’d gotten real accustomed to the steady
clack-clack, thud-thud
of the L by now, enough so that it
almost
distracted me from the damn itch of being inside the whole technological contraption.
    Clack-clack. Thud-thud.
    The car was empty, ’cept for one gink down at the far end trying to pretend he
wasn’t
completely out on the roof, and having exactly zero success with it. He was swaying faster’n the train was, and even one of you mugs coulda smelled the hooch wafting off him.
    Couple stations passed. More screeching. More swaying. Boozehound got off at the third, looking unsure if this
was
his stop or not. Nobody else got on, not in this carriage, anyway.
    Thud-thud. Clack-clack
. My noggin rocking back and forth against the wall, almost a massage, lulling me to…
    Wait one goddamn freakin’ minute!
    I bolted upright, a single step taking me to the middle of the car, already grabbing for the L&G. And all I could think, beyond gunning for a threat I
knew
hadda be near, was
When did I turn into such a fucking twit?
    No way,
no way
do I just suddenly decide I’m imagining some danger. No way do I get a premonition as strong as the one I had in the stairwell and then just shrug it off. Uh-uh. That ain’t me at all, and if you’re wondering why I’m just now wising up when you knew something was off from the minute I talked about it, well, that’s why I kept hitting the whole “exhausted unto stupid” thing.
    I’ve monkeyed with enough minds to recognize when it’s been done to me. Even if sometimes, such as tonight, it’s a bit of a belated recognition.
    Right. Door.
    I was hot enough—with whoever’d been shadowing me and with myself—that I forgot the mortal façade as I made for the next car. I didn’t sway with the train anymore, instead adjusting faster, more minutely, than any human. Not a fraction of an inch of wobble in the L&G, now aimed and ready. I wasn’t blinking anymore. Faintly, not so anyone else woulda noticed at first, the flickering of the lights started to change. Brighter than they shoulda been, almost daylight; then black as pitch, as if they were
projecting
dark. Slowing until each flicker matched the smack of my heels against the trundling floor. One of the bulbs, the newest and brightest, burst in a shower of sparks and slivers.
    Makes me sound all tough and unshakable, don’t it? Yeah, I’ll come back to that in a minute.
    The anger drained outta me just as quickly, though, fading into a sorta resigned futility even as I reached for the door handle. Three stations, with a fourth coming up long before I could cover the length of the train. Even if my tail had boarded the L at all, he (or she, or it, or any combination) could well be long gone. Even if not, well, I couldn’t be sure I’d tumble to him (or her, etc.) no matter how careful I looked.
    Grumbling some profanities that woulda got me burned at the stake in other times, I thumped back down onto one of the wood benches. The lights’d gone back to their normal stuttering, and I was even blinking again, like a good little human.
    Still had my wand in hand, though. If I felt even a
tingle
of magic, someone was getting a mug full of disaster.
    All that cursing up a storm, though? Squeezing the L&G until it creaked, lookin’ for an excuse to shove some mojo down someone’s throat? I was
tryin
’ to stay angry, or at least focused.
    Because my other option was scared, see? I ain’t the toughest thing to ever come outta Elphame, but I got my fair share of power. Wasn’t a whole lot out there could muck around in my mind too easy, and even less could do it without me at least suspecting something was hinky.
    So who or what the hell had my trip to the Field gotten all riled up?
    I didn’t even question that this was related to the museum case. Coincidence follows us
aes sidhe
like a begging mutt, but not
that
much.
    So who was keeping