Something to do with another girl was what it felt like to me—okay, it wasn’t that specific, but it had been a betrayal, and there was very little else that could have left Wild’s heart that torn.
“Pier 36, or what’s left of it,” the cabbie said as he pulled over to the side of the road, once more disturbing my thought process.
“Pay him.” Gregory reached over and poked at Ethan. “It’s about all you’re good for.”
“Assuming I have anything on me—hey!” Ethan barked as Orin grabbed him, cringing away from the not-dead-yet vampire. Ethan’s disgust and fear flared between us all and Orin’s face tightened.
Yeah, we needed to figure out this connection, and how to soften it or something.
Whatever had happened had certainly changed how we could sense one another in a big way.
Gregory pulled a wad of bills out of Ethan’s back pocket, throwing a glare at Ethan for good measure.
The cabbie shook his head but took the money, and we all scrambled out to stare at the destruction that was spread out over the space that had once been the House of Shade.
Chunks of cement, burned timbers and a lingering smell of smoke were the first things I noticed. A few support pillars still stood though they were partially crumbled and completely black. The footprint of the building was easily two hundred feet long and I couldn’t see how deep it had stretched back.
I’d seen the House of Shade once before, and while not pretty like the House of Wonder, it had been impressive. Strong and seemingly impenetrable. All of it gone now. I blinked and a few ghosts wandered out of the rubble, kids our age.
Shades in training. Most of them didn’t even look toward me. That was common with new ghosts, they were usually confused. I didn’t try to make contact with them. At this stage in their afterlife they would struggle to give me information without a stronger necromancer.
Ethan dusted himself off and stood a little to one side.
“Jerks,” he muttered.
Gregory made a rude motion with his hand, and I turned away from them. Whether any of us liked it or not, Ethan was one of us again. Whatever Wild had done to kick him out of our crew had reversed itself when she got taken by the Shadowkiller. Hopefully it didn’t turn out to be a mistake. Hopefully this time, he wouldn’t turn his back on the crew when we needed him the most.
“There,” Rory pointed to a black blasted area on the pier, pierced with a hole that went down to the water below, oblivious to the interplay of emotions between the rest of us. “That was the main building. We should start there and then spread outward with the search for . . . .” He trailed off and I knew exactly why.
Searching for something that had a keyhole, but not knowing what that keyhole might be attached to was more than a little daunting in the middle of what looked like ground zero. But we had to start somewhere.
The main building that was no more was as good a place as any. I took a step, then another and another. Yellow police tape fluttered in the air, but despite what the cab driver had said, there were no police here. Or at least none of the human kind.
Someone I was absolutely certain was a Shade stepped out of the shadows of a freestanding wall that hadn’t collapsed. Right behind him was what could only be a wolf shifter. I’d seen them before, their jawlines and noses giving them away, as well as the slightly tipped tops of their ears.
“What the hell are you doing here, Rory?” The Shade was lean like a whip but moved like all the other Shades I’d ever met—predatory and smooth like he was ready to pounce on someone and snap their neck.
Rory stepped in front of the rest of us. “Barret. There was an attack on the House of Wonder. Explosions, major destruction, and the Shadowkiller showed up along with Ruby. The house heads sent kids out in groups to various places over New York in an attempt to keep them safe and out of harm’s way. I’m with this group to keep an eye on them. Per Director Rufus’s request.”
The two older Shades exchanged a look, and the wolf shifter let out a snarl and glanced down at Pete, still trundling along in his honey badger form. The shifter’s bushy eyebrows raised. “Honey badger, huh? Badass.”
Pete gave a little grumbling snarl, but his pleasure was apparent through our new connection.
“You six stay here,” the wolf shifter said. “We’ll head out and see if we can help back at the House of Wonder.”
They’d only taken a few steps when I stopped them.
“Wait, do you have any extra clothes?” I motioned at Pete. “We left before we could grab any for him.”
The shifter grunted and retrieved a small gym bag from behind a pile of rubble, throwing it at me as he and the Shade took off, heading toward SoHo and the House of Wonder. “Might be a bit big, but it’ll keep him from swinging in the wind.”
The guys all laughed.
When I turned back, they were gone, leaving us on the pier with nothing but the sounds of the water, and the occasional blast of a horn out on the water. A more distant rumble of traffic.
“I’m surprised they left us so easily,” Gregory said. “Or that they were working together at all. That’s new.”
“I’m not,” Ethan said, his tone sharp. “They don’t give a shit about kids from other houses, and Rory is practically out of the program. Their job here was to keep an eye out for the Shadowkiller, and now that he’s been spotted elsewhere—”
“That’s where they’ll go,” Rory said. “And Gregory, you’re right. It is new. Rufus is trying to encourage the other houses to work together wherever possible. But being that he’s only a director for the House of Shade, his voice doesn’t hold much weight.”
I handed the gym bag down to Pete, who scuttled off with it behind the relative shelter of the half-fallen wall. A few minutes later, he hopped out on one foot, putting on a pair of runners that were not his own. “Not a bad fit,” he said. He’d had to roll up the pant legs and the shirt sleeves, but the shoes looked good.
I started forward, then paused, uncertainty rolling through me. I held the key in my palm and Ethan looked over my shoulder.
“You know that has a spell on it, right?”
I blinked up at him. “It does?”
He took the key and rolled it over in his hand. “I mean, it’s a brutally strong spell, woven into the fibers of the key itself, so if you aren’t careful you could actually destroy the key.”
Ethan moved to hand it back to me, but I pushed his hand away. “You have to take the spell off it, Ethan.”
He shook his head. “I can’t.”
“You have to!”
“But I’m not strong enough! I don’t know that even my father or Daniella could do it.” He again tried to give it back to me, but I held up my hands. His fingers clenched around it. “I’m not trying to not help. You can’t see it but there are weaves around it, like . . . a thorn bush.”
I frowned and leaned over his hand, and on instinct I put my hand under his. The second my skin touched his I could see the magic he was talking about. “I see it now.”
Orin and Pete joined us, each putting a hand on Ethan. “Holy cats on fire, look at that!” Pete said. “Look, it looks like the tail end of it is there.”