Page 88 of Hijack the Seas: Tsunami

I watched the guy grab a pot from over a barbeque grill he had to one side, on which he’d just finished heating some sugar and water to a deep golden color.He then took a couple of forks and, tilting the pot, began flicking sugar strings into a large metal bowl.Within a minute, he had enough to stuff into a new cone because Æsubrand wasn’t buying the old ones that might have dust in them.

But he did buy this, although with what I wasn’t sure.Until I saw the merchant bite a gold coin as if he couldn’t believe it.I couldn’t either, but I wasn’t looking at the coin.

I was looking at Æsubrand, scion of one of the most noble houses of Faerie, handing his prize off...to a kitchen maid.

“We should have known when they hated each other,” Pritkin said, and I burst out laughing.

“Yeah,” I choked.“We should.”

And then I spied someone else down below, shielding his eyes with his hand and looking up at us.His face was back to the swarthy Latin lover type, but the eyes were the same.I stared down into them for a moment before he turned on his heel and walked quickly away, melting into the crowd before I had time to say anything.

Although what that would have been, I had no idea.

And then I saw someone following him.

It caught my attention because it wasn’t a person or even a zombie, a few of which were lurching around the street below, not getting nearly the reaction from the crowd that I’d have expected.One old woman batted at one that had gotten too near her stall with a broom, shooing it away like you might a stray dog, and others moved out of their path to avoid them, mild disgust on their features.But nobody looked freaked out, and nobody so much as flinched at the far more subtle ripple on the wind that followed the incubus.

It was so pale that I almost didn’t notice it either, but then, I didn’t need to.I could feel it: a tingle up my spine, a ripple along my skin, a wash of gooseflesh down my arm.Like a cool breath on a too-hot day, murmuring seductively of darkness and moonlight.

Ghosts.

Now that I started looking for them, they were everywhere.Not easily seen because of the brilliant light of day, and not noticed by the people thronging below.But here, nonetheless, almost as many as had been in Stratford.

But then, of course, they were, I thought.Vegas was nearby.How many people had been in that city when it fell, and how many had fallen along with it?

And how many of those had been unready for that death, unable to reconcile it, unable to move on?A lot, by the feel of things.So many that I wasn’t sweating despite the sun.

If anything, it was getting a little chilly up here.

“Cassie?”Pritkin said, and I shook off the feeling of...I wasn’t sure what.

“Did you tell him?”I asked as we watched his incubus disappear into a building down the street.“About your epiphany?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“Too little, too late.”

Yeah, I thought.

Just about summed up everything lately, didn’t it?

“So now what?”I asked.Because we had to face it—I had to—sooner or later.This was my job, however much I wanted it not to be.

“That’s not for me to say.”

“If not you, who?”

“The one who has to do it,” Pritkin said flatly.“I can give you information, present alternatives, advise—”

“Then what would you advise?”I asked harshly, pretty sure I already knew.

But he surprised me.

“—in most cases, but not this one.”

“Why not this one?”It came out as a whisper.

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