Indigo(15)

She craned her neck to get a better look, then spied a big-rig trailer much closer to the object of her interest, about fifty yards away. She breathed into the darkness, and it took her like smoke, draping her and moving her, giving her permission to slip through the yard unseen—and into the spot beside the truck, where the morning light couldn’t quite reach.

Her feet squished in mud and God knew what else, but she didn’t flinch. She hunkered down and followed with her eyes as the swatch of red walked past.

The splash of red was a dress—expensive, made of linen or raw silk, Indigo couldn’t tell from where she was hiding. It was tea-length with three-quarter sleeves. A church dress … the thought flickered through her head. Yes, a church dress. Somebody’s costly Sunday best.

The woman was walking away, showing a narrow backside and seams on her stockings. Her heels sank into the gravel and mud, but she hauled them out and kept going toward firmer ground. A gravel path turned into a sidewalk. A sidewalk led into a blocky old building so dull, so outstandingly ordinary, that it was almost invisible.

Indigo shook her head and blinked hard to clear her eyes. It might be magic, or it might be the clouded sensibility of a city woman, all too accustomed to sights like this one. But she didn’t think so.

Another woman, equally well dressed, joined the lady in red on the sidewalk. This one wore a cream-colored suit, a hat with a tasteful white feather, and knee-high boots made of leather so soft that it clung to her calves and stretched gently with every step.

Then a man came along. His suit was a shade of blue just too light to call navy, and the heels of his shiny dress shoes clicked happily on the concrete.

A Lexus pulled up, its chrome details sparkling, and its dark gray finish slicker than oil. Four people got out, a black couple and two white women. A BMW pulled up beside it, wheels grinding in the half-paved surface of the lot that was swiftly filling up with gleaming late-model luxury cars.

Under her breath, where only the darkness could hear her, Nora whispered, “Found you.”

Except that she hadn’t found Luis Gallardo—she’d found a bunch of fancy people dressed for a service of some kind. But this was no church, and these were no benign parishioners bound for a potluck. These were the New York chapter of the Children of Phonos. Indigo knew it in her soul.

The warehouse’s windows were covered with a light, filmy fabric or paper that let only shapes and motion show through—but she detected a number of figures drifting back and forth inside. It was hard to say how many people were already present for whatever ceremony the cultists were cooking up, but it didn’t matter. She could handle them. All of them, and with great prejudice. The time for caution and leniency had damn well passed.

Nora might’ve hesitated, but Indigo was finished with whatever mental bullshit had kept her from wiping them off the face of the earth when she’d had the chance.

Well, here was another chance.

She sensed them as she crept closer; she heard a low hum of chatter and song … chanting, she thought. People chanted in church, didn’t they? This congregation was no different, not in that one small way. They were all dressed for the occasion, too—high heels, high style, and high-end everything, even though they gathered at a warehouse that no one would’ve looked at twice. Not even someone who was looking for it.

The place was shielded somehow, with some spell that kept it from standing out in any way, or looking like anyone’s obvious destination. Indigo frowned. The cult dabbled in black magic, ritual sacrifice, that sort of thing, and she was well aware that this group was only one chapter, but she’d never sensed this sort of real magic around them before. Through the shadows around her she could practically feel the magic vibrating, burning with its own dark power. This wasn’t bullshit dabbling—this was sorcery. It occurred to her that other chapters of the Phonoi might be more advanced with their magic, but to her—from this group—this was new.

Two more cars pulled up in the lot, for a total of sixteen by Indigo’s count. Dozens of people could be inside.

Dozens of happy worshippers, and one miserable victim. Three victims, Bullington had said. Three at once. So Luis isn’t likely to be in there alone.

But his was the name she knew, and she kept it in mind because she didn’t know his face. She hadn’t thought to look up a photo. She imagined him a thin kid if he was the skating type. Puerto Rican, if he was local to the neighborhood—or that was as good a guess as any. Lost and trapped among people who would do to him … the kinds of things they’d done to others before.

But not again.

Indigo raged, and smoky tendrils clung to her tighter than perfume, a black cloud that sought out cracks and overhangs, stairwells and closets and unused rooms sealed shut in a building so unremarkable that no one had even condemned it yet.

She squeezed the darkness and told it where to go—somewhere quiet, somewhere safe. She stretched and felt for some crevice and found it behind a door in an empty office. With a flick of the morning shadow, fast and thick, she took a deep, furious breath.

She emerged inside.

She exhaled and winced.

It was louder here, where all the voices mingled into a weird soup of conversation. Her ears rang, and it was so hard to make out the words—but they sounded eager, and excited. Somewhere, a huge door clanged shut. Indigo thought of the monastery, with its huge doors. Wood, with metal rivets and hinges. Oh, how they creaked on those hinges.