Four Roads Cross (Craft Sequence #5)(31)

She could not run, but after she killed the pain receptors in her ankle, she forced herself to a brisk walk.

By the time she reached the market, there was little left to see—only a crowd around the Crier’s dais, and there, interviewing a young dark-skinned couple whose body language screamed “traumatized onlookers,” Gavriel Jones.

“Excuse me,” Tara said to the couple, politely as she could manage, then grabbed Jones’s trench coat and pulled her aside. “We need a moment.”

“Ms. Abernathy. Care to comment on tonight’s events?”

“What did you do?”

“I don’t do.” Jones raised her hands. She still held her notebook. “I came for a color piece, reactions to this morning’s story. Are you okay?”

“Let me see that.” She tried to grab the notebook, but Jones hid it behind her back.

“You’ll hear everything in the dawn edition.”

“Give me a preview. Please.”

“Another gargoyle in the open, and a genuine miracle. I’ve never seen a better prompt for poetry.”

“Don’t sing this,” she said. “It’s not what it looks like.”

Jones looked at Tara as if she’d grown a second head.

“You don’t know the full story.”

“Are you implying, on the record, that there is a full story for me to know?”

“Do not test me, Jones. I might bring you back to life just to kill you again.”

“You use that line on all the girls?” Jones straightened her coat and stuck her pencil behind her ear. “We have gargoyles on the rooftops and a goddess in our sky. A goddess who’s supposed to be dead. What right do I have to keep this secret?”

“There’s more at risk than you know.”

“Fill me in.”

“I can’t.”

“Typical Craftswoman,” she said. “Force a few dead gods to dance for you, all of a sudden you think you know what’s best for everyone. No trust in people.”

Trust, the moon whispered in her ear.

“Don’t give me that,” Tara said. “You say you care about people, but you don’t help. You just watch them fall and write about it.”

“That’s my job. I saw a fight, I saw a gargoyle, I saw a miracle. You want me to help? Where were you? Where were the Blacksuits?”

“You choose what to watch.” She reined her voice before it rose to a shout. “You choose what to say.”

“And you choose what to show me. You know exactly what’s going on here. You’ve known since the beginning. When the church hides, I go digging. And this is the second time you’ve tried to shut down my story.” The couple whose interview Tara interrupted shifted behind Jones, on the verge of leaving. Jones held a hand up to Tara and turned back to them with an easy smile. “Just a sec, sorry.” The couple didn’t seem happy, but they didn’t leave either. “We’re done, Ms. Abernathy. Unless you have something you want to tell me.”

Tara had summoned dead things to walk, ridden lightning; she knew the seventy-seven names of Professor Halcyon. There were ways to deal with this damn Crier, full of smug certainty. She could seize Jones’s mind. Wouldn’t be that hard—tell a story to bring the woman in, lower her defenses so Tara’s Craft could take hold. She’d done it before.

As it had been done to her.

So easy.

Tara cursed the teachers who gave her options that were always easy, but never right.

“Report the gargoyles,” she said. “Hold off on the rest, the miracle, and I’ll give you an exclusive like you won’t believe.”

“When?”

“Two days,” she said. “Sooner, I hope. I need to make arrangements.”

Jones’s face betrayed little. “Deal. But this better be big.”

“Trust me.”





18

Tara did not look at the moon while she stormed the three blocks to her apartment. The moon didn’t seem to care. She slammed her front door open with a Crafty glance, and mailbox ditto. Bad form, she reprimanded herself as she marched upstairs, flipping from envelope to envelope. Ms. Kevarian would be disappointed. The weak-willed gratified themselves with needless displays of power. The shadows that stalked Tara, the deep drums her footfalls became, the tarnish that spread from her touch on the banister—these seemed impressive but were at heart only a child’s tantrum strained through sorcery.

She allowed herself the tantrum’s comfort. Ms. Kevarian wasn’t here.

You shouldn’t be either, chattered the contemptible voice in the back of her head. You should have stayed with her.

And left Alt Coulumb to weather this storm on its own? No. She’d chosen this path. She’d walk it. She just had to get hold of herself.

The mail did not reassure. This week’s Thaumaturgist. An advertisement from a continuing education course. A sealed letter with an Edgemont postmark she’d not open yet. And, at the bottom, a utilitarian envelope from the Hidden Schools, containing a student loan bill.

“Fuck.” She leaned against her apartment door, 403. Her heart was racing for reasons that had nothing to do with the stairs. She stopped it entirely, and stopped breathing too. Her limbs chilled and she heard small sounds—carriages on the road outside, mice skittering over floorboards, a drunk man’s laughter from the first floor, and beneath all these the bass fiddle note of the revolving world.