Once I was on my way to the Loop, I turned the heat to maximum. Even though I'd felt a little claustrophobic in the tower, there was something weirdly soothing about cranking the heat on a cold night. There had been cold nights during grad school - nights when Mal ory had been late at work or on a date with some law firm or financial services cutie - when I'd taken a study break by climbing into my car and driving across the city. I knew which roads had less traffic and relatively few lights, and I'd use the drive to zone out, to forget myself, to forget everything except the road in front of me.
Occasional y, I'd bring along an audiobook, the twelfth or thirteenth instal ment in some long-running mystery or action series I couldn't seem to stop buying, even as the books became formulaic copies of the ones that came before. I'd crank up the sound just as I had the heat, and I'd drive across Chicago - sometimes into Indiana, sometimes into Wisconsin, sometimes into the Il inois countryside - to have a little time away.
This, of course, wasn't one of those times. I didn't have time for a joyride, and the trip wasn't relaxing. The city was stil fil ed with groups of people huddled on sidewalks or porches, staring tentatively up at the sky, taking pictures with cel phones and cameras.
There was no way "Crisis in Chicago!" wasn't the lead story on every news station in the country, especial y if the National Guard was involved. They'd al be looking for some reason for the sky and water, and I had absolutely nothing to offer them. I wish I had the answers they were looking for.
I crossed the river, the gleaming, inky black slice of it, and drove back into the Loop. The buildings were tighter here, but the sky seemed as red as it had at Potter Park, the tered lightning strikes just as frequent. No more, no less.
"Damn," I quietly muttered. It was probably one of the few times anyone other than a meteorologist or storm chaser had rued the absence of a giant sucking tornado, as Jonah had put it, in a populated area. But it would have given me an answer. And those were few and far between these days.
Instead . . . there were questions. Questions about me.
Questions about sorcerers. Questions about the House and its staff. Questions about the city and whether they trusted us to live our own lives without our constant reassurances that we meant them no harm.
After what I'd seen tonight - a fairy queen wil ingly scarring those who worked for her because they hadn't brought issues to her attention fast enough - maybe they were right. Maybe we shouldn't be trusted.
God, I was beginning to depress myself.
Without any better option, I pul ed over into a parking space and turned off the car. The city was relatively quiet, but the night stil carried a quiet buzz. There was an energy in Chicago. Even if we weren't the city that didn't sleep, we certainly were the city that never rested.
Thinking a katana was a little too lightning rod for my taste, I unbuckled the sword and left it in the car. Humans were already afraid of us; there was no point in riling them up when we had other problems to address.
I was a block from State Street, so I walked over to it, sticking close to the edge of the buildings while looking for anything that might be amiss. The streets were relatively empty except for bar-hoppers and folks scanning the sky for meteors or aliens or some other explanation for its color.
I fol owed State to the river, noting the strange tingle of its increasingly powerful magical vacuum, and walked across the bridge, stopping in the middle to take a look. The river stretched out in front and behind me - a frozen, black artery through downtown. The sky was uniformly red above, heavy clouds also tinted red by . . . whatever. The side effect of some curse, some ancient charm, some bitter hex?
Unfortunately, I had no clue. If there was a focus, I hadn't found it. Nothing seemed any different out here. There were no sorcerers casting spel s upon the sky. No fire-breathing dragons. Tate, as far as I was aware, hadn't escaped into the Loop to transfix us al with his strange magic.
While none of those developments would have been exactly welcome, at least they would have been developments. Hints of answers.
I walked back toward my car, pausing at a bus stop and sitting down on the empty bench. The city was undergoing natural disasters with no obvious cause, and apparently these were only the symptoms of some larger issue. How was I supposed to figure this out? Vampires could sense magic, but only if it was real y close by. This was way beyond my expertise. I needed a diviner - the witches who walked around with forked branches and searched out hidden springs - except I needed one for magic.
I sat up straight and pul ed out my phone. And since he was the closest thing to a water witch I had, I dialed up Catcher.
"You're stil alive."
"Last time I checked. And here's a fact to add to your database - fairy blood turns vampires batshit crazy."
I heard the creak of his chair as he sat up. "You shed fairy blood?"
"Actual y, no. Claudia, the Cldth="1emqueen, got irritated with her guards. They hadn't fil ed her in on the sky yet."
He made a low whistle. "Since the sky is stil red, I assume the fairies weren't the problem."
"They were not. That's three strikes. The water sups didn't mess with the water; the sky sups didn't mess with the sky. Claudia thinks we're seeing the effects of a larger magical problem with elemental magic as the visible symptoms."
I heard his sigh through the phone. "Elemental magic," he said. "I should have put two and two together. I should have thought about that."
My heart raced - were we getting somewhere? Did he have an answer? "Does that mean something to you?"
"It gives the magic context. It shows the pattern."
"Is there a group, a species, a person who uses that pattern?"
"Not specifical y. But it proves that magic is involved."
I rol ed my eyes. Hadn't we already figured magic was involved? Jonah's suggestions notwithstanding, it seemed unlikely humans had simply flipped a switch that had turned the sky red and sent lightning crashing across it.
As if irritated by the thought, a bolt of lightning suddenly struck a car three blocks down the street. Its car alarm began to chirp in warning. I huddled back into the bus stop, wishing I was already back in my car. I hated lightning.
"I don't suppose you have any better sense of what Tate might be? Claudia kept mentioning old magic, and that's the sense I get from him."
"Old magic wouldn't surprise me," Catcher said,
"although that's not a magical classification per se. That his magic feels 'old' doesn't signal what he is or who he might be."
Of course it didn't. That would be too easy. "Then we need to work that angle and figure it out. Can you get me in to see him again?"