Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(34)

It was fifty feet away and it was through cluttered booths and the light was dim, but it didn’t matter. Ronan would recognize his dead mother anywhere.





18

Bryde, they said.

Everyone was saying it, all over the hotel. Farooq-Lane felt as if she heard the end of the word the moment she walked into a room and heard the beginning of it the moment she walked out.

Bryde. Bryde. Bryde.

Maybe a Zed. Definitely someone of note. Whoever he was, he had everyone in this strange place under his spell. Who was he? Someone to keep your eye on.

And if he had the attention of people at a place like this, he had to be something strange indeed.

Unfortunately, she could tell at once that she was in over her head. This wasn’t Carmen Farooq-Lane standing in a group of armed Moderators facing down a Zed or two. This was Carmen Farooq-Lane, a previously quiet citizen hurriedly turned specialized operative, in a building full of people who existed outside the bounds of most of the world. She felt like they could see it on her the moment she walked into a room. Glancing at her and away, their attention spotted just out of the corner of her eye. Just like that name. Bryde. Bryde. Bryde. She hadn’t thought her usual linen suit and long coat would be an inappropriate choice, but it was. She appeared too clean, too straight-edge, too at home in the world as it was currently constructed.

“They don’t like law there,” Lock had told her on the phone. “They’ve got an understanding.”

“An understanding?” she’d echoed. “Like a no-fly zone? A no-go zone? A …”

She had heard about places like this on the news but couldn’t remember the name for them in the moment. Places where cops didn’t go, places with their own local law. She supposed she hadn’t really believed in them.

“Outside our pay grade, Carmen. Save the world,” Lock said, “and then you can go back into the Fairy Markets and clean up.”

She was supposed to be looking for signs of Zeds, which generally meant anything unusual. But everything here was unusual. Uncomfortable. Weapons. Stolen art. A room of demure young men and women displayed as wares. Dogs clipped to look like lions. Electronics with product numbers rubbed off them. Boxes of driver’s licenses, passports. These masks? Were they dreamt? This ivory?

She didn’t know how to tell.

As the stares increased, Farooq-Lane found herself losing her temper at Parsifal once more. Unbelievable, considering he hadn’t even come in with her. Nonetheless, he managed. If his vision had been more specific, she would have known what she was looking for.

Her cover, if anyone asked, was that she was a buyer. She had thirty thousand dollars in cash to go along with her linen handkerchief invite. PADMA MARK. She didn’t think she looked like a Padma. Parsifal had an invite, too, not that he was using it; it was in his own name. When she’d asked Lock why he got to be PARSIFAL BAUER when she had to be Padma, he said it was because Parsifal had a properly disruptive history if anyone bothered to look it up. Parsifal looked like someone who would come to one of these things.

Parsifal Bauer? Disruptive?

Bryde. Bryde. Bryde.

They were all looking at her. She thought: Buy something. They would all stop looking at her if she bought something.

But she didn’t want to buy anything illegal; it would make her feel complicit. Her world operated on a system she mostly believed in, a system of laws designed to promote ethics and fairness and sustainability of resources.

There were only so many of her principles she was willing to let slip, even to save the world.

There. A fortune-teller. Fortune-telling was dubious in value but not in legality. Farooq-Lane waited until a knot of men who seemed to be priests moved out of her way, and then drew close. The woman behind the table had a third eye tattooed between her eyebrows and odd silvery curls all over her head, so tightly formed that they seemed to be metal. Maybe she was dreamt, Farooq-Lane thought, and nearly laughed.

She realized she was very frightened.

“How much?” she asked the woman. She didn’t sound frightened. She sounded like Carmen Farooq-Lane, young professional who you could trust with your future.

The curls didn’t bob as the woman looked up. Maybe they were a wig. “Two thousand.”

“Dollars?” This was the wrong question, somehow. Farooq-Lane felt it draw attention. Four women in garb that looked as if it was formal attire somewhere that wasn’t corporate America glanced over their shoulders at her. The priests seemed to move in slow motion. A tall man put his hand inside his bomber jacket in a worrisome way. Hurriedly, she dug out the bills and sat at the chair the woman indicated.

She felt quite woozy once she was off her feet. The air was richly scented; maybe she was high. Maybe it was just her racing heart, her too-fast breaths. Were they still looking? She didn’t want to check.

Bryde, Bryde. They were still whispering it even now. Maybe she was imagining it now.

“Give me your hand,” the fortune-teller instructed.

Reluctantly, Farooq-Lane slid her palm over; the fortune-teller gathered all her fingers together as if collecting a bundle of sticks. She would feel Farooq-Lane’s flapping pulse, she thought.

But the fortune-teller just said in an old New Jersey accent, “Smooth. What do you use?”

Farooq-Lane blinked. “Oh. Uh. Oatmeal and argan oil?”

“Very beautiful,” the fortune-teller said. “Like you. Beautiful woman on the outside. Let us see the inside.”