Ghost Town (Hound of Hades Book 3), page 10
But when the dogs slowed down for the last time, showing not confusion but focused intent, I didn’t see a body. Instead, the dogs were staring at… a bank. I didn’t hear screaming from inside; no police cars had pulled up. The closest thing to fear I saw was when a businessman about to walk past us stopped dead in his tracks, stared at the dogs, and went white, crossing himself and muttering something about the devil.
The dogs pricked their ears toward the bank. Sniffed the sidewalk. Eyed the bank again. Then, just as I was about to take the opportunity to grab the leashes again and forestall any comments about leash laws, they rushed at the bank doors like bulls charging a matador.
I was amazed the glass didn’t break on the first hit. I hastily pulled the doors open before the dogs could slam their fist-sized paws against them again. I didn’t love the idea of explaining why I was bringing three bears who appeared to be on fire into a place of business, but better that than explaining why they were destroying property. Bastian and I followed the dogs in, Bastian already reaching into his laptop bag.
“We’re closed,” a voice snapped as we stepped into the air conditioning. The woman who had spoken rushed up to us and started making frantic shooing motions, until we had to either back up toward the door or let her run into us. She didn’t even spare a glance at the hellhounds—not until they shoved in front of her, blocking her path.
“What the—” she muttered as she bumped into a large furry body. She looked down, and let out a sound that was somewhere between a yelp and a squeak. “This isn’t happening,” she said under her breath, staring at the hellhounds as if that could make them disappear. “None of this is happening. I’m having a bad dream, and I’m going to wake up any minute now.”
“What do we do?” a quavery voice called from behind the counter. “Did anyone’s training cover this? Because mine didn’t.”
I didn’t think they were talking about the hellhounds. If they were, it seemed like a bit of an overreaction. I looked around for the dead body I had been expecting, but saw nothing more sinister than a misaligned stack of business cards.
The woman in front of us pinched her own arm. “Come on, wake up.”
“I’m on the phone with the police,” a third voice shouted. “Um… what do I say?”
The woman finally looked back up at us. “We can’t help you right now. Download our app; it will tell you where to find the next closest branch. We’re very sorry for the inconvenience.” She started to herd us toward the doors again, but with the dogs still unmoving in front of her, there wasn’t much she could do but give us a helpless frown.
Wait. The dogs hadn’t moved.
They should have rushed forward again by now, or at least started their confused-sniffing routine. Sure, they didn’t want us to get kicked out, but I was willing to bet they cared about finding that spirit a whole lot more than they cared about blocking one bank employee’s path. So why hadn’t they moved?
They weren’t looking at the woman anymore. Instead, all three of them were looking up.
I looked up too—and saw a wobbly stack of cash floating through the air. It crashed into a chandelier, sending it swaying back and forth like a pendulum, as it headed for the door.
One of the dogs let out a series of outraged barks. Another growled low in its throat. The third looked from the money to me, as if asking, “Well? What are you waiting for?”
“The police hung up on me! They warned me not to make any more prank calls. What should I—Hey! Dogs aren’t allowed in this building!”
As if that was what they needed to worry about right now. “It’s okay,” I said, as soothingly as I was capable of—which, honestly, wasn’t very. I have my strengths; calming civilians down isn’t one of them. “We’re here to help. Bastian?”
Bastian pulled out his device. “What is that thing?” the woman yelped. Both of us ignored her.
Bastian held it up over his head, as close as he could get to the floating tower of money.
Nothing happened.
“Is it supposed to glow or something?” I asked. “How can you tell if it’s working?”
“When the stacks of money fall, that will be a fairly good indicator that it’s working.” Bastian shook the orb. Nothing happened. The cash continued its leisurely journey toward the door.
He lowered the orb and blew on it. He raised it up again. Still nothing.
I looked down at the dogs. “Looks like it’s up to you after all. Do your thing.”
I had thought the howl was bad. The sound that that came out of their throats now, somewhere between a whine and the screech of a smoke alarm, was worse. They arranged themselves into a circle around where I imagined the spirit to be, jumping up to nip at the air, herding the spirit slowly but surely toward the doors. Of course, he had been headed for the doors to begin with, so I had no way of knowing whether their efforts were doing any good.
The bank employees all had their hands over their ears. I couldn’t blame them. If anything, the sound only seemed to be getting louder. I hadn’t realized a dog could sound so much like a police siren.
Then, through the doors, I saw flashing lights in the distance.
“The police!” A happy shout from the one who had complained about getting hung up on. “I thought they weren’t coming.”
“I activated the silent alarm,” a weak voice said.
“That’s only for robberies!”
“Well, what would you call this?”
As the sound of the sirens grew louder, the dogs’ piercing whines turned into pained whimpers. One of them abandoned its efforts entirely to lie down on the floor with its paws over its ears.
“You don’t have any room to complain about noise,” I muttered to the slacking dog. Then I raised my voice to be heard over the sirens. “Make it work, Bastian. We don’t have much time.”
Bastian threw the orb in the direction of the cash. It hit the wall, leaving a dent, and rolled across the floor. The money didn’t even change course.
The doors opened without anyone pushing them. The money pile floated out into the street.
I took off through the door. I didn’t hear any footsteps behind me. I paused to look over my shoulder, and saw Bastian chasing the orb across the floor. The other two dogs had joined the first one on the floor, covering their ears and letting out soft complaining groans.
The dogs would just have to take care of themselves. And Bastian could catch up. I turned back around—to see three police cars pull up in front of the building.
Bastian grabbed the orb and ran outside. From the direction of the police cars, a chorus of shouts greeted him. The cops had come here looking for a bank robber; between a spirit no one could see and two tense-looking people leaving the building in a hurry, I had a pretty good guess as to who looked the most guilty.
Still no sign of the hellhounds. But waiting around for them wasn’t an option. We ran.
Chapter 12
We stopped at a park a few blocks away, once we were sure we had left the cops behind. Before I could open my mouth to wonder aloud about the hellhounds, the dogs in question walked up to us, heads lowered, tails drooping. “It’s okay,” I assured them, swallowing my frustration. “Good dogs.” They didn’t deserve to have me yell at them just because they had been created thousands of years before the noise and chaos of the modern world. I dug around in my pockets for a bit of food to give them, but only came up with a couple of pieces of lint and a receipt for falafel.
Bastian pulled a tennis ball out of his laptop bag and threw it across the park. The hellhounds tripped over each other in their eagerness as they bounded after it. “I like to be prepared,” he said in response to my raised eyebrow. “I bought it when I picked out the leashes. Actually, I bought three.”
“One will be more than enough. We aren’t here to play fetch.” Although we weren’t here for much else either, until the hellhounds picked up the scent again. “Was I seeing things back there, or did our spirit rob a bank?”
A slight smile crossed Bastian’s face as he watched the dogs wrestle each other for the ball. “It does seem unusual.”
“From murder to bank robbery inside of an hour. Why?”
“You said his family’s new apartment left a lot to be desired,” Bastian pointed out.
“True. But if you’re going to steal money for your family, would you do it right after you’ve killed someone?”
“No,” said Bastian, “but I’m not a serial killer.”
“I’m just saying, if I were McCabe, killing for the fun of it, I wouldn’t be thinking about my wife and kids. I read his letter—or what was left of it. He sounded like he felt guilty. If not for what he had done, then for what he had put them through. He’s not going to want to dwell on those feelings while he’s killing. It would take the fun out of it.”
“Unless the murder prompted the guilt that led him to steal the money.”
“I guess.” But it still didn’t feel right. Maybe it was just that I was having a hard time getting inside McCabe’s head. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand killing. If anything, my body count was higher than his. But I killed because I had to. I’d gotten used to it—the faces of the people I killed hardly ever showed up in my dreams anymore—but I was never going to like it. McCabe did. I read the articles about him. If he had any justification for what he did, no one could ever find it. He had killed those people for the fun of it.
And that was what didn’t feel right. He had crossed back over into the mortal world and picked up right where he had left off. Now that there was nothing the police could do to him, he was treating the mortal world as his playground. That didn’t fit the image of someone who wanted to use his newfound invincibility to fix the damage his death had done to his family. Either he wanted to let loose or he wanted to do the right thing—if robbing a bank could be considered the right thing—but I had a hard time believing he was out to do both at once.
But those thoughts tickled something at the back of my mind. Something about using the mortal world as a playground. “We forgot something,” I said slowly. “Or rather, somebody.”
“What are you thinking?”
“If you were a seven-year-old kid, and you could suddenly do anything you wanted, without consequences, what would you do?”
Bastian exhaled slowly as he thought. “I see your point,” he finally said. “But jumping straight to a life of crime seems a little extreme.”
“He’s probably young enough that the morality of that kind of thing is still pretty abstract. When I was a kid I used to daydream about burning down my swanky private school. I hated that place. I never thought about all the people who would get hurt, or the fact that arson is a crime. It was just a daydream. But now he’s suddenly in a position to make his daydreams real.”
“When I was that age, I used to imagine that once my superpowers kicked in—don’t laugh, I read a lot of comics back then, and my mother had always been honest with me about the fact that my father wasn’t human—I would go to the rich neighborhood I used to walk past on the way to school, break into all the apartments, and bring the money back to my mom so we could use it to buy a mansion in some exotic location. I never could decide between the Caribbean and the edge of a volcano.”
“If this kid decides to take off for the nearest volcano, the dogs are on their own. I have my limits. Until then, hopefully they can help us find him before he does any more damage.” I whistled for the dogs, who were busy rolling around in the grass. They ignored me.
Conspicuously not giving me an “I told you so” look, Bastian reached into his laptop bag and pulled out a second tennis ball. The dogs rushed over, one of them dropping the mangled remains of the first ball at his feet.
“All right, dogs,” I said, “let’s try this again. Where’s our bank robber?”
The dogs looked longingly at the tennis ball.
I grabbed it from Bastian and stuffed it into my pocket. “Where’s the killer?”
One of the dogs started sniffing the ground, stalking with purpose across the park. “That actually worked?” I stood up from the bench—just in time to see an earth elemental the size of my head scurry out of a hole at the base of a tree and into its branches. The dog sat at the foot of the tree and barked.
With a sigh, I slipped the collar back over its head, then did the same to the others. “It doesn’t look like these mutts are giving us any new leads anytime soon. And I can’t try any other avenues with them in tow.” Or without checking in with Ginevra beforehand, apparently. “You might as well head back to work.”
“Technically, I’m still at work. I’m logging this as field testing.” He frowned into his bag, where the orb rested. “It performed much better under controlled conditions.”
“Doesn’t everything?” My stomach let out a growl loud enough that one of the hellhounds twitched an ear toward me. “In that case, want to grab a late lunch while we wait? Or would it be an early dinner at this point?”
Bastian stood. “The burrito place near you, like usual?”
“We have a usual? That’s news to me.” It wasn’t as if we had lunch together that often. There had been that one time last week. And twice the week before, but that was because I had wanted an update on his adopted demigod’s training. But nothing the week before that. Okay, there had been that one time when I couldn’t sleep, but did it count as lunch at three in the morning?
All right, so we did this a little more often than I thought. Or a lot more often. And that was on top of the phone calls. And the dinners that Bastian kept insisting were a regular thing, even though they weren’t. Maybe I happened to find myself over there about once a week, but that didn’t mean anything.
The first time we had met up for lunch, I had chosen the burrito place mainly because it was quick. You could eat one of their burritos in two bites and then part ways. It had been a compromise—a way to get a little time with him, but not too much. I hadn’t wanted to admit I would have taken as much time as he would give me. Even thinking about it now made all kinds of warning bells go off in my mind. Going ghost-hunting with him was fine. Admitting that I had actually wanted him out here with me, that I wanted to hear the steady rhythm of his voice, wanted to feel him focus on me like my mind was a miniature universe and he intended to map every corner of it … not so fine.
Once upon a time, I had let myself go there, long before Bastian had ever come into my life. I had smiled the silly smiles, doodled the hearts, written the poetry. But no matter how good it was at the beginning, in the end it always came down to sex. And the problem didn’t start with the ending, the same one every time, where I told them I wasn’t going to change and they told me they couldn’t live with that. Sex started changing things long before that, whether we were having it or not. I could see forward to the day when those probing looks of his, the ones that made me feel like he could see straight down into my soul, transformed into the lust-glazed stare that someone gives you when they’re ready to hop into bed with you that second and assume you’re feeling the same way. I could hear the way his teasing about my prickliness and my coffee habit and a hundred other things would turn into something more single-pointed, with double meanings lurking behind every word. I could even imagine the tone he would use, that low laughing voice—they all used that same damn voice for that kind of thing—inviting me to get in on an inside joke I wanted no part of.
A lifetime of holding him at bay would be better than watching our relationship rot from the inside out.
So I gave myself a maximum number of times I could call him per week, and I stuck to it. I didn’t ask him for help unless I absolutely had to. I got a burrito with him, ate it in two bites, and said goodbye.
Meanwhile, he had put aside his work at Humanity Ascendant to come help me. Say what you will about Humanity Ascendant—and trust me, I could say a lot—I got the impression they had been Bastian’s sole driving focus since the day he had joined. Even when he was at home, he never really left; his stacks of books and notebooks were proof of that. But when I had called him, he had left, no questions asked. And although the conflict of interest had made me hesitate, dialing his number had still sent a little jolt of happy lightning through me. I had felt it again when I saw him, even if I hadn’t wanted to admit it. I felt it every time I saw him. No amount of keeping him at arm’s length would change that.
And it wasn’t as if I was doing such a great job of that these days. That lifetime of holding him at bay wasn’t going to happen. I had known it ever since I stayed for dinner after the last mission he had helped me with—stayed not because we’d had more business together, but because I had wanted to.
I was postponing the inevitable for no real reason, and he was letting me. I was always looking for an angle, and he was here demonstrating technology he might use against my side someday, as if he didn’t know I could use that information against him—or didn’t care. He was postponing his work for his own cause in order to help his enemy, and I was offering him two-bite burritos.
Bastian waved a hand in front of my face. “Are you all right?”
“I’m tired of burritos.” I made a face. “Let’s get sandwiches at my apartment instead. It’s not that much farther. We don’t have the greatest selection of stuff to put on bread, but it’s still better than burritos again, right? I think there might be some leftover Indian takeout hanging around, too, although I can’t promise it’s from this century—” I was babbling. I forced my lips shut.
“Your apartment,” Bastian repeated.
And here I had been hoping the small avalanche of chatter would distract him from that part. “That’s what I said.” I shrugged, as if it was no big deal.
