Page 17 (1/2)

Chapter 17

TROUBLE IN BROOKLYN

On the way ho inout fora carrier Saving the world fro meals

I put a can of tuna in front of Cornelius, then headed straight for the stove and set it alight Then I shut the gas off, sniffing the air

So was different about my apartment

Then I realized what it was - the s the place like a slow infusion

My parasite groith hunger and lust, and I hurriedly relit the stove, working until est dinner plate was filled with a stack of crispy strips of bacon I carried it to the table and sat down

The first piece was halfway into h, dropping her backpack to the floor

"Excellent sot to eat, a piece of bacon hovering in midair Her face was lit up with happiness, so different than it had been the night before An alasmic look of contentment came over her as she breathed in the scent of bacon

"What?" she said,Want some?" I pushed the bacon into the center of the table, then reht Sorry"

"Hey, no problean or anything"

"Ument call on the plant-or-aniy lesson But like I said, it s to enjoy it" She sat down across from me

I smiled On the excellent-smell front, Lace&039;s scent was much more powerful in person I letit in between bites I had expected her staying in my aparthting es, just for this simple pleasure

Still, I ate fast to keep the beast in check

"So," I asked, "are you one of those fake vegetarians?"

"No, not fake I haven&039;t eaten meat in, like, a year?" She frowned at the plate of seared flesh and dumped a tub of potato salad and a brand-new toothbrush onto the table fro has been very stressful, and that s breakfast It takes me back"

"That&039;s natural When huot assigned to the task of reled up with smells"

"Huh," she said "Is that why locker rooh school?"

I nodded, recalling my descent under the exhaust towers, hoerfully the scent of the huge hidden thing had affectedlike the beast before the day before, but some fears went deeper than memory As deep as the parasite&039;s traces hidden inSomewhere back in prehistoric time, there were probably huers, or bears But those huet eaten, and so did their kids You and I are descended from folks who ran like hell when they smelled predators

Lace had opened her tub of potato salad and was digging in with a plastic deli fork After a few bites, she said, "So, what&039;s with the face?"

"Oh, this" I touched the bandage gingerly "Remember hoarned you about cats?"

Lace nodded

"Well, I went down into the Underworld through your swied to catch U?"

Lace looked like she&039;d bitten down on a cockroach She blinked, then shook her head "Sorry, Cal But are you wearing a Garth Brooks T-shirt?"

I glanced down at h theface looked back atin to take a shower or even change my shirt "Uh, yes, it is"

"Ashlee Simpson, and now Garth Brooks?"

"It&039;s not what you think It&039;s reallylaid?"

I coughed, bits of bacon lodging in ed to s them "Well, it has to do with the parasite"

"Sure, it does, Cal Everything&039;s about the parasite"

"No, really There&039;s this thing that happens to peeps: They hate all the stuff they used to love"

She paused, a forkful of potato salad halfway to her mouth "They do what?"

"Okay, let&039;s say you&039;re a peep And before you got infected you loved chocolate - the parasite changes your brain chemistry so that you can&039;t even stand to look at a Hershey&039;s Kiss, the way movie vampires are afraid of crucifixes"

"What the hell is that all about?"

"It&039;s an evolutionary strategy, so that peeps hide thens of humanity, and the sun too A lot of them really do have cruciphobia - I ious"

"Okay, Cal" She nodded slowly "Now this is the part where you explain what this has to do with Garth Brooks"

I grabbed a piece of bacon, which was starting to glisten as it cooled, and chewed quickly "Records, the departations, found out that some of the folks who lived on your floor were Garth Brooks fans So they gave round Which there was"

Her eyes widened "Dude! A peep did that to your face?"

"Yeah, this scratch here was a peep But this one here was a cat - Morgan&039;s cat, probably - that sort of put up a fight"

"Sort of? Looks like you lost"

"Hey, I ht The cat didn&039;t"

Her expression froze "Cal, you didn&039;t kill it, did you?"

"Of course not" My hands went up in surrender "I don&039;t kill when I can capture No vaetarians" I grabbed another strip from the plate

"So this infected cat is where?" Lace glanced at the closet where PNS had spent the previous night

"Elsewhere," I said, chewing "I left it with the experts; they&039;re testing to see if it can spread the disease to other cats or not And the good news is that a Night Watch tea Itpool, but then you can go home"

"Really?"

"Yes They&039;re professionals, since 1653"

"So you found Morgan?"

"Well, not her But you don&039;t have to worry about Morgan She disappeared"

Lace crossed her ared "We can&039;t find her, okay?"

"And it&039;s really safe in et rid of me?"

"Of course not" I paused "I etting-rid-of-you part, which I wouldn&039;t do Ias you want which you won&039;t need to, of course, because it&039;s safe at hoed to shut up

"That&039;s great" Lace reached across the table and took my hand The contact, the first since I&039;d pulled her over the balcony, sent an electric shock through me She smiled at my expression "Not that it&039;s been totally horrible, dude Except for not having any ofyour heavy-ass cat lie on ht Other than that, it&039;s been kind ofnice So thanks"

She let go ofup the last shards of bacon from the plate I could still feel where she&039;d touchedup "You&039;re welcome"

Lace looked down at her potato salad unhappily She dropped her fork "You knohat? This stuff sucks, and I&039;"

"You want to go somewhere?"

"Absolutely"

Lace waited for e, then took hborhoods The elegant old mansions had been split up into apartments, and the sidewalks were cracked by ancient tree roots pushing up beneath our feet, but there were still old-school touches Instead of nuen and Boerum

"My sister lives pretty close," Lace said "I reood places around here"

She followed the street signs hesitantly, lettingalong beside her Moonlight lanced through the dense cover of ancient trees, and the cold air was filled with the s on the earth Lace and I walked close, the shoulders of our jackets touching so war close to her

We wound up at an Italian place, hite tablecloths and waiters wearing ties and aprons, candles on the tables It s fro Meat all over

It was so much like a date, it eird Even before the parasite switched offwo I foundabout the fact that everyone who saould assu I pretended for a while inthe awful truth to the back of my mind

When the waiter cae, the perfect dish to beat ht before it had taken forever, but I&039;d finally reached a deep sleep Maybe tonight it would be easier

"So, dude, aren&039;t you worried about that?" She was looking at e had slipped off in the shower, and I hadn&039;t bothered to replace it The scar gave me a rakish doesn&039;t-kno-to-shave look

"It&039;s not bleeding, is it?" I dabbed the spot with a napkin

"No, it doesn&039;t look bad But what if it gotinfected or soht," I said Lace, of course, didn&039;t know that I didn&039;t have to worry about the parasite, having already been there and done that I shrugged "You can&039;t get the disease from scratches Only bites" This wasits paws?" she said, quite sensibly

I shrugged again "I&039;ve had worse"

Lace didn&039;t look convinced "I just don&039;t want you turning all vaht Okay, that sounded weird" She looked down, her fingers realigning the silverware on the crisp white linen

I laughed "Don&039;t worry about that It takes at least a feeeks to go killing-and-eating-people crazy Most strains take a lot longer"

She looked up again, narrowing her eyes "You&039;ve seen it happen, haven&039;t you?"

I paused for ato ht, Lace Yes, I&039;ve seen soe"

"A friend?"

I nodded

A satisfied expression crept onto Lace&039;s face "That&039;s how you got into this Night Watch business, isn&039;t it?"

"Yeah That&039;s right" I looked at the other tables to see if anyone was listening, hoping that Lace didn&039;t goI could hardly tell her that my first peep experience had been with a lover; she knew the parasite was sexually transe"

Oops Should I have said her?

"So, it&039;s like you said when you were pretending to be a health guy - you&039;re following a chain of infection You&039;re tracking down all the people who caught the disease froan was someone who slept with soht?"

Noas playing with my own silverware "More or less"

"Makes sense," she said softly "Today I was thinking that some people must find out about the disease on their own, just by accident, like I did So the Night Watch has to recruit the a secret And that et new staff It&039;s not like you can advertise in Help Wanted, after all"

"No shit, Sherlock" I tried to chuckle "You&039;re not looking for a job, are you?"

She was silent for amy little jest, which madeplates, uncovering the pepper onto Lace&039;s pasta and pouring e rose up froear I dug in the moment the waiter left, the taste of cooked flesh and spicesme shudder with bliss

Hopefully, the uncomfortable questions were done with I watched as Lace wound a big gob of spaghetti onto her fork, a process that seemed to absorb all her concentration, and as the silence stretched out and the calories entered my bloodstream, I toldthat Lace had spent a whole day thinking about et all jue suffused an to relax

Then Lace spoke up again "Iaround in tunnels and stuff No way"

I coughed into uys who gave you the building plans, right? Records, you called them? And you have to research the history of the sewers and subways and stuff I was thinking about that today That&039;s why I went into journalism, you know"

"For the sewer research?"

"No, dude To find out what&039;s really going on, to get behind the scenes I mean, there&039;s this whole other world that no one knows about How cool is that?"

I put my fork and knife down firmly "Listen, Lace I don&039;t know if you&039;re serious, but it&039;s out of the question The people ork in Records coreith this secret history They can speak Middle English and Dutch and identify clerks who lived centuries ago by their handwriting They&039;ve all known one another for generations You can&039;t just show up and ask for a job"

"That&039;s all very i people"

"Pardon reider as she wound another spindle of spaghetti onto her fork, then put it into herslowly Finally, she sed

"I said they suck at finding people"

"What do you , dude" She pulled out a few folded photocopies from her inside jacket pocket and handed them to me I pushed my empty plate aside and unfolded them on the white tablecloth

They were the floor plans to a house, a big one The labels ritten by hand in a flowing script, and the photocopies had that gray tinge thatpaper

"What is this?"

"That&039;s Morgan Ryder&039;s house"

I blinked "Her what?"

"Her fa there now"

"No way"

"Way, dude"

I shook my head "Records would have found her already"

Lace shrugged, her fork twirling, the last strands of spaghetti on her plate trailing like a satellite picture of a hurricane "It wasn&039;t even that hard All I had to do was go through the phonebook, calling all the Ryders, asking for Morgan The first dozen said there was nobody there by that naot all paranoid and askedup"

"That doesn&039;t prove anything"

Lace pointed at the papers into the address in the phone book It&039;s even in the historical register - belonged to the Ryders since it was built"

I stared at the plans, shaking otten past Records; the Mayor&039;s office would have checked with her fa, like I said"

"You said pale? Dark hair and kind of gothy?"

I opened my mouth, but it took a while for sound to co to wind another spindle of pasta "Of course, I didn&039;t knock on the door I&039;ation than confrontation But the house has these big bay s And the weirdest thing is, Morgan doesn&039;t look crazy at all Just bored, sitting at theand reading Do peeps read, dude?"

I reiven lance at Morgan&039;s and nodded "That&039;s the girl"

"It can&039;t be" My head iht Watch couldn&039;t have screwed up like this If Morgan was sitting around in plain view, someone would have spotted her "Maybe she has a sister," I h mystrings, using their connections to keep her hidden Or o after the Mayor&039;s old friends

Ordamn form

Whatever had happened, I felt like an idiot Everyone always joked about hoe hunters were too lazy to do our own research, waiting for Records or the Health and Mental moles to tell us where the peeps were I&039;d never even thought to open a phone book and look for Morgan Ryder myself

"Don&039;t look so buht not be infected, after all I ht you said peeps were maniacs"

Still dazed, I shook my head and answered, "Well, she could be a carrier"

Too late, I bit ue

"A carrier?" Lace asked

"Um, yes Carries the disease, but without the sy fro typhus all over the place but never cohed at my expression "Don&039;t look so surprised, dude I&039;ve been reading about diseases all day"

"Lace, you have to stop doing this!"

"What? Acting like I have a brain? Puh-lease" She took a bite "So there are people who just carry the parasite? Infected but not crazy?"

"Yes," I said, sing "But it&039;s very rare"

"Huh Well, there&039;s one way to find out We should go over there"

"We?"

"Yeah, we&039;re practically there already" She hooked her thu across her face "It&039;s right at the end of this street"

Ryder House filled an entire corner lot, a three-story s: bay s, tall corner turrets, &039;s watches peering down at us with arched eyebrows In thelook - a little too well ood headquarters for the bad guys