Page 15 of The Salt-Black Tree
GOOD HUNTING
The Griffith Observatory was a beautiful damn building, much more impressive in real life than in movies or pictures. A white spike like a bony finger loomed over her—at first she thought it was a fountain, but it was just a decorative feature, a copper plaque at its base indistinct in the darkness.
She couldn’t decide whether this place was comforting or creepy deserted at night—after all, that was when you were supposed to see the stars, right? Except with a city’s nightglow staining the sky, there probably wasn’t much in the way of celestial pinholes to watch, and if she had to deal with a crowd of regular people eyeing her weirdness and sudden arrival, she might start screaming and never stop. Could a divinity be locked up in an asylum?
She didn’t want to find out, and the perpetual threat from her teenage years—look out, the men in the little white coats might come and take you away—still grasped her nape with firm cool fingers, demanding she keep her head down, her behavior acceptable, and her weirdness from flying above the radar.
Nat, her chin almost touching her chest and her hands cupping her wool-clad elbows, peered through stray blondish curls at the observatory. She looked very much like Leo in that moment, though she would never know it; she was too busy gawking. She could almost see James Dean lounging against one of the white walls, his collar turned up and his pompadour gleaming—andtherewas a question, had he achieved divinity status? If Jay was still throwing parties in New York, maybe the rebel without a cause was still slouching and suffering through this city.
But Dean had died in a car crash. Or had he just sort of… become something else? Maybe he’d died but then somehow, impossibly, come back like Elvis was rumored to?
It wouldn’t take a lot for her to start believing in nutbar conspiracy theories or UFO sightings, at this point.
The night was breathtakingly soft after the freeze of South Dakota, and full of the tang of smog married to something floral as well as a citrusy, woody topnote. A thread of jasmine pulled it all together, and Nat, alternately staring at the observatory or at a vast field of city lights visible behind its majestic bulk, couldn’t decide between enduring car rides with Dmitri and this method of travel, whatever it was. Her stomach rolled before subsiding with a nasty, breathless twinge.
He’s going to be angry.Of course the gangster would think she’d done this specifically to double-cross him, but Nat didn’t have the faintest idea just what had occurred.
It was literally the story of her life.
The breeze ruffled her loosened hair, a warm, forgiving touch. So far California was a very nice place indeed—nobody yelling at her, making snotty little comments, or sneering with mockery. A disbelieving laugh rose in her throat; Nat clapped a hand over her mouth as if Mom had a headache and any noise was unbearable, unthinkable, unforgivable.
The image of the little yellow house, forlorn and crumbling, rose inside her head again. Maybe she was having some kind of hallucinatory breakdown.
Did divinities go mad? She had so manyquestions. Not that Mom had ever been big on answering even small, commonplace queries. Leo was better, but there wasn’t much he could have said.
Not with dirt in his mouth.
Candy’s short hurried whispers, Ranger’s drawled asides, and Dmitri’s offhand remarks were all Nat had to go on. She could start applying the scientific method, testing and retesting—all while collecting the arcana and eluding those terrible cold mouthless things. It was a tall order, and the urge to just sink down on the pavement and let the whole insane, malevolent world go on without her was overwhelming.
Night wind rattled tall bushes—oleanders, she thought, and rhododendrons—and tugged at her hair since her green knit cap was now tucked in a pocket. Nat hugged herself harder, watching the city lights. As soon as her stomach settled fully a quiet, inarguable sense of rightness dilated inside her—ever since she’d looked into the Well, the signal was coming through loud and clear.
There was something in this city she needed to find. It would lead her to the next piece, and the next, and once she had what she’d set out to get… what then?
She will eat you, Drozdova.
Her immediate panicked insistence that it had to be a lie had faded into used, sopping tissue stretched over a wide, yawning abyss. Nat hunched her shoulders, defensively. “It might even be a relief.”
The words stung. After all, how else did you pay for the sin of being born? At least nobody was around to hear her talking to herself.
Crazy Natty. Witch-girl.
She turned in a complete circle, scanning for an exit; the parking lot was a good place to start. The surf-sound of traffic, while ubiquitous, wasn’t very close. The thing she wanted wasn’t in the big white domed building—that odd inner certainty was very clear—so she had no idea why she’d been dumped here, of all places.
It wasn’t bad, she decided. Just puzzling. How in the hell had she done this? Dima said there were different ways of traveling.
He was going to befurious.
Well, she was just going to have to avoid him too. It was a pity she couldn’t simply teleport wherever she wanted, but she probably shouldn’t do it again until she had some idea of how it actually worked. The nausea was bad enough, but the risk of leaving a few internal organs behind like she was on a malfunctioningStar Trekepisode was, for all she knew, more than zero.
If those cold, mouthless shadows came after her again, though, she might have to reconsider in a hurry.
Nat hitched her backpack a little higher. Her boots made soft, companionable sounds; the white parking lines had been freshly repainted and glowed under inadequate lamps. Pretty soon she was going to have to carry her coat.
The world wants to obey,Dmitri said.Just ask.
Well, like Leo always muttered when child-Nat was frustrated with her bicycle, she wouldn’t get anywhere without practice. Thinking of him made her heart hurt. Had Mom told him to change the house number, or was that image—broken windows, rotting walls, listing picket fence, dead-frozen garden—actually true, a type of celestial security camera? Had Mom been the only thing keeping the house together?
That was impossible, the house was fine for months with just Leo and Nat living there. Even the finicky, perpetually blooming orchids had been fine.
