Nate sat in an armchair in the shadowed corner of The Hive’s bar, a black coffee in one hand, the locator in the other. The dial told him his collection was to the south-west. It should take him less than a few hours to narrow it down, even if his target kept moving.
He never delayed a job. Efficiency was crucial. But even now, even decades on, the prospect of what he was pursuing chilled him. The prospect of the unknown that always went hand-in-hand with them. The prospect that this might be the collection he didn’t succeed in; that he didn’t make it out of.
‘Looks like you need something stronger,’ Cordy said as she placed the glass of whisky in front of him.
She nestled back in the armchair opposite.
He flashed her a fleeting smile as he tucked the locator out of sight in his pocket. ‘You think so?’
‘I know you don’t like to talk, Nate, but I’m a good listener. A discreet listener.’ She knocked back a mouthful of her own whisky. ‘Something’s been on your mind for a long time.’
‘Just a few demons from the past, Cordy.’ He knocked a mouthful back for himself. ‘And not in the literal sense, before you ask.’
‘And you’re debating what to do about them?’
‘One I’ve solved. Now it’s time to deal with the second.’
‘You are heavy laden.’
‘It keeps my feet on the ground,’ he remarked, casting her another fleeting smile.
‘And your heart encased,’ she retorted.
Her gaze lingered as she awaited his response. A response that he knew as well as she did wouldn’t come.
‘So why are you facing them?’ she asked. ‘And why now?’
‘Because someone needs me to.’
‘Someone?’
‘Someone I owe a debt to.’
‘And then you’ll be clear?’
‘I don’t think I’ll ever be clear of this one, Cordy.’
‘Then why face your demons at all?’
‘Because it means they’ll be free of theirs.’
Her eyes studied his for a few moments. ‘Yet you sit there looking like you’ve lost something precious. Something irretrievable.’
‘I guess that’s because I have.’
He knocked back the remains of the whisky and slipped money for it across the table.
She slid it back. ‘Not this time. That one was on me.’
Leaving the bar, he wandered back out through The Hive.
He pulled his collar up against the rain and removed the locator from his pocket.
He’d walked the streets for three hours, drenched by the rain, when the dial finally began to spin. Vibrating subtly in his hand, it told him he was finally within reaching distance of his target.
He looked down the length of the quiet street on the far south-west of Lowtown; a street he knew only too well. Primarily residential, his collection could be in any number of the various apartments. Could have any number of other witches with him or her.
He glanced left to the café, the light spilling out onto the glistening pavement outside. It had never looked warmer or more like home. And within that warmth, he found himself instinctively searching for her.
Ember finally moved into view as she served one of the window tables. The table he often chose. Her smile was polite. Functional. Professional. He knew the difference by now.
As if sensing him out in the darkness, she glanced up.
Masked by the shadows across the street, he knew she wouldn’t be able to see him like he could see her. Her lingering gaze could nonetheless have convinced him otherwise.
As she reverted her attention back to her customers, even as she turned away to head over to the counter, she glanced once more over her shoulder, her frown telling him that sensing his presence had unsettled her on some subconscious level.
He looked back down at the locator as he strolled onwards, watching for the subtlest increase in its spinning that would tell him he was closing in.
But the further he ventured down the street, the slower the dial spun, reverting back to pointing north again. He turned one-eighty and back again before turning the full three-sixty. Each time, the hand always pointed in the same direction: the café.
He turned back the way he’d come. He’d only been walking for a matter of minutes before the dial picked up pace again.
He crossed the road to stand in the middle of the street opposite the café. The locator buzzed wildly in his palm. He closed in on the periphery of the café’s front. The locator stopped. The hand fell to neutral – the first time it had done so.
His characteristic slow-beating heart picked up a notch.
Nate discreetly tucked the locator in his pocket as he entered the last place he needed to be. Ember’s assumptions would be rife. It almost felt cruel to show up again. Walking out of that apartment had been hard enough. Hearing her plea for his help had been tough enough. Now to potentially raise her hopes – or her fears – was worse.
The warmth of the café, the scent of coffee and sugar-laden food, instantly encased him as he headed left to where a booth in the far corner by the window was free, where the table next to him was equally vacant.
He did his usual trick of scrolling through the phone, something he often did in-between casting surreptitious glances at Ember. Except now he was doing it in-between assessing the twelve customers. His target could be any one of them.
She re-emerged from out the back carrying a couple of bowls of soup. She stopped in her tracks, but somehow managed to retain her grip on the crockery.
She dropped her gaze from his instantly. The subtle lick of her lips betrayed her anxiety, her smile even more forced as she headed over to the table she was in the process serving.
He tugged his attention away from her to continue studying the rest of the customers, particularly to watch that no one left.
He removed the vial from his pocket and twisted it over and over between the fingers of his left hand under the cover of the table as he scrutinised each of them in turn. But he knew better than anyone that witches were impossible to detect them from any other human.
In the interim, he expected one of the others to come and serve him. He saw Casey move forward to do just that, but Ember caught her arm and said something in her ear – something undetectable even to him. Whatever it was, Casey squeezed her friend’s arm and pulled away.
The girl had guts – something he had long admired in her more than anything. But he needed to remain as impassive to her as always. Give her as little attention as always. Do something to let her know as quickly as possible that his being there was nothing to do with her. And, above all else, was closed to further questions if that’s what her approach had been about. This was not the time or the place – now more than ever.
‘Usual?’ Ember asked, her pen poised on her notepad.
It took a moment, but she finally made eye contact. Despite her attempt to give him an icy glare, the strength of the hurt behind her eyes dissipated it. The truth of both their pasts aside, what had happened between them that night before had meant something to her. In amongst everything else, it had been easy for him to forget that. And deny it all he wanted, what he had felt in the latter moments of having sex with her, the pain he had literally felt, was evidence that it had meant something to him too. She had got to him. On a level that had long been inaccessible, Ember had someone found a way in – further reason that the sooner she was as far away from him as possible, the better.
Out of all the things he could have uttered, he simply said, ‘Please.’
She held his gaze for a moment longer, as if waiting on the cusp of something more, before pulling away. He half expected her to spin back around, to demand what he was playing at being there but, instead, she walked away in silence.
He closed his eyes for a split-second, trying to block out the way she’d looked at him, his grip simultaneously tightening on the vial. He couldn’t relent. For her sake as much as his, he had to leave it be. But the draw was immense. The desire to take her aside and explain he was trying to protect her, that the risks to her if he told her the complete truth, was overwhelming
The sooner he was out of her life, the better.
He unscrewed the lid and subtly dropped the vial out into his palm. Checking no one was paying him any attention, he leaned forward as if tightening his laces and dropped a loaded pipette of blood onto the tiled floor.
He placed the pipette back in the tube and the tube back in the vial before tucking it away in his pocket again.
Discreetly, he watched the floor, waiting for something to happen.
What should have dispersed instead defied physics as the droplet rolled into a ball, solidified like a marble, and began its journey. It rolled away as if on a slant, passing all three tables in front of him.
He exhaled tersely, reassured that it did work.
Breaking the laws of physics again, it took a sharp right to veer out of Yvonne’s way as she served a couple of tables away, before it got back on track again.
As Casey stepped out from behind the counter, it veered towards her, drawing closer and closer, Nate’s frown deepening as it did so.
Casey.
One hell of a complication.
But then it took a sharp left past her towards the counter.
As Ember appeared from behind the counter to bring him his coffee, his heart rate picked up to an almost human pace.
Eyes downturned again, he watched the bead, not her, as she headed towards him.
Watched the bead stop as she passed it. Watched it trail back over its own path as it followed behind her.
She placed the coffee in front of him, the aromas bringing him into a sharp state of reality that he didn’t want to be in.
He glanced up at her as if he’d never seen her before, as if he’d never really known who she was.
She hovered awkwardly as if needing to speak yet not being able to find the words. Until a customer called her away.
Nate stared back down at the floor as he watched the bead turn back on itself again to follow her path.
As she stopped, talked to the customer, it climbed her shoe, it climbed up under her trouser leg. Mid-conversation, she brushed it away mindlessly as if it was nothing more than an itch.
Nate rose from his seat. He brushed past her. He headed out into the cold night air.
He should have known. He should have linked both together. Suddenly it made sense. It all made perfect sense.
He marched down the street and veered left into the first alley he came across.
And punched his fist hard into the wall.