Game of Cages Read online

  Game of Cages

  Harry Connolly

  The Twenty Palaces Series by Harry Connolly

  CHILD OF FIRE

  GAME OF CAGES

  For MaryAnn

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from the next Twenty Palaces novel

  Copyright

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was three days before Christmas, and I was not in prison. I couldn’t understand why I was free. I hadn’t hidden my face during the job in Hammer Bay. I hadn’t used a fake name. I honestly hadn’t expected to survive.

  I had, though. The list of crimes I’d committed there included breaking and entering, arson, assault, and murder. And what could I have said in my defense? That the people I’d killed really deserved it?

  Washington State executes criminals by lethal injection, and for that first night in my own bed, I imagined I was lying on a prison cot in a room with a glass wall, a needle in my arm.

  That hadn’t happened. Instead, I’d met with an attorney the society hired, kept my mouth shut, stood in at least a dozen lineups, and waited for the fingerprint and DNA analysis to come back. When it did, they let me go. Maybe I’d only dreamed about the people I’d killed.

  So, months later, I was wearing my white supermarket polo shirt, stocking an endcap with gift cards for other stores. It was nearly nine at night, and I had just started my shift. I liked the late shift. It gave me something to do when the restlessness became hard to take.

  At the front of the store, a woman was questioning the manager, Harvey. He gestured toward me. At first I figured her for another detective. Even though the last press release about me stated I’d been the victim of identity theft and the police were searching for other suspects, detectives still dropped by my work and home at random times to take another run at me. They weren’t fooled. They knew.

  But she didn’t have a cop’s body language. She wore casual gray office clothes and sensible work shoes, an outfit so ordinary I barely noticed it. She walked briskly toward me, clutching a huge bag. Harvey followed.

  She was tall and broad in the hips, and had long, delicate hands, large eyes, and a pointed chin. Her skin color showed that she had both black and white parentage, which in this country made her black. “You’re Ray Lilly, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “Who’s asking?”

  “My name is Catherine Little. I’m a friend of your mother’s.”

  That hit me like a punch in the gut. The last time I saw my mother, I was fourteen years old and headed into juvie. She was not someone I thought about. Ever. “Who are you again?”

  “I’m Catherine. I work with your mother. I’m a friend of hers. She asked me to contact you.”

  “Where is she?” I peered through the glass doors into the parking lot, but it was pitch-dark outside.

  “Okay. This is the hard part. Your mom’s in the hospital. She’s had some … issues the last few days. She asked for you.”

  I laid my hand on the gift cards on the cart beside me. They toppled over, ruining the neat little stacks I’d been working with. I began to tidy them absentmindedly. “When?”

  Catherine laid her hand on my elbow. “Right now,” she said. “It has to be right now.”

  Something about the way she said that was off. I looked at her again. There was a look of urgency on her face, but there was something else there, too. Something calculated.

  This woman didn’t know my mother. I knew it then as clearly as if she was wearing a sandwich-board sign that read I AM LYING TO YOU.

  Her expression changed. My face must have given me away, because she didn’t look quite so sympathetic now, but her expression was still urgent. “We have to hurry,” she said.

  Harvey laid his hand on my shoulder like a friendly uncle. “Ray, go get your coat. I’ll clock you out.”

  I told Catherine I’d meet her out front and went into the break room. She had to be with the Twenty Palace Society; there was no one else who would want me. I had been dreading the day they would contact me again. Dreading it and wishing for it.

  I grabbed my flannel jacket and hurried outside without speaking to or looking at anyone. I could feel my co-workers watching me. Just the thought of talking to Harvey—or anyone else—about my mom, even if it was a bullshit cover story, made me want to quit on the spot.

  Catherine waited behind the wheel of an Acura sedan, one of the most stolen cars in the country. I sat in the passenger seat and buckled up. She had a sweet GPS setup and some electronic equipment I didn’t recognize. I squinted at a narrow slot with a number pad on the side—I could have sworn it was a tiny fax machine. While I had been living the straight life, cars had moved on and left me behind. She pulled into the street.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “That really hit you hard, didn’t it? They told me to contact you that way. I didn’t realize … Sorry.” She seemed sincere if a little standoffish.

  “Who’s ‘they’?” I asked, just to be sure. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Catherine. Really. ‘They’ are the Twenty Palace Society. We have an emergency and I need help. You’re the only other member in this part of the country at the moment.”

  My scalp tingled. It was true.

  Part of me was furious that they’d dangled my mother in front of me like bait, but at the same time I wanted to lunge across the hand brake and hug her.

  Finally. Finally! The society had come for me. It was like a jolt to the base of my spine. Finally, something worth living for.

  “Are you okay?” she asked warily.

  “I’m okay.” I did my best to keep my voice neutral, but I didn’t succeed all that well. Christ, she’d even said I was a member of the society. I belonged. “We need to go by my place.”

  There were no tattoos peeking from the cuffs of her sleeves and the collar of her shirt. She had no sigils on her clothes or the interior of the car. No visible magic. She might have had something hidden, of course. I was tempted to rummage through her pockets to search for spells.

  She drove to my place without asking for my address. My hand was trembling and I gripped my leg to hide the adrenaline rush. I’d thought about the society often over the last seven months. Aside from a visit from an old guy with a brush mustache who’d debriefed me about Hammer Bay, I’d heard nothing from them. I hadn’t even gotten a call from Annalise letting me know how she was. I had been telling myself I wanted to be cut loose. I had been telling myself I wanted to be forgotten.

  But now they had come for me again and every traffic light and Christmas decoration seemed saturated with color. In fact, all my senses seemed to have been turned up to ten. I felt alive again, and I was grateful for it.

  At my aunt’s house, I had Catherine drive around to the back. I climbed the stairs to my mother-in-law apartment above the garage and let myself in. I went to the bookshelf and pulled a slip of paper from between two yard-sale hardcovers. It had been covered on both sides with mailing tape and had laminate over that. A sigil had been drawn on one side.

>   My ghost knife. It was the only spell I had, except for the protective tattoos on my chest and forearms. They didn’t count, though; the ghost knife was a spell I’d created myself, and I could feel it as if it was a part of me.

  I slipped it into my jacket pocket and looked around. What else did I need? I had my wallet and keys and even, for the first time in my life, a credit card. Should I pack clean underwear and a change of clothes?

  Catherine honked. No time for that, I guess. I rushed into the bathroom and grabbed my toothbrush. Then I wrote a quick note to my aunt to tell her I’d be gone for a while and please don’t worry. Catherine honked again before I was done. I carried the note down the stairs and annoyed Catherine further by running toward the back door of the house. I stuck the note on the backside of the wreath on the screen door, rattling it in the frame.

  The inner door suddenly swung inward. Aunt Theresa was there, looking up at me. “Ray?” She wore a knit cap over her wispy gray hair and a bright red-and-green scarf around her neck. Cold, she was always cold. It was one of the many things about her that made me worry.

  “Oh! I thought this was movie night. I was leaving you a note.” She must have come to see who was honking.

  She popped open the screen door and took the note with fingers bent sideways from arthritis. “Movie night is tomorrow, dear.” She opened the note and read it. The note didn’t mention my mother—it was Catherine’s cover story, not mine, and I wasn’t going to lie to my aunt about her little sister.

  I glanced at the room behind her, expecting to see Uncle Karl in his badge and blue uniform, scowling at me. He wasn’t there.

  Aunt Theresa looked up me. “Will you be back for Christmas?”

  The way she said it startled me. Of course I had gifts to give her and Karl, but I hadn’t expected her to care if I … I felt like an idiot.

  “I hope so,” I said, and meant it.

  She shuffled forward and hugged me. I hugged her back. She knew a little about what I did. Not about the society itself, and not enough to get into trouble, but enough to worry. “Be careful.”

  We let go. I backed down the stairs and hurried to Catherine’s car. I should have said something reassuring to her, but it was too late now. Time to go.

  I climbed into the Acura and belted up. My adrenaline was high, and I couldn’t help but smile. Catherine didn’t like that smile. “Do you have everything now?”

  The ghost knife in my pocket felt like a live wire. “Yep.”

  She rumbled through the alley and pulled into the street. I thought it would be best to let her tell me what was going on when she was ready, but after driving in silence for four blocks, I couldn’t hold back.

  “What’s the emergency?”

  “Well …” she said, then fell silent while she negotiated a busy intersection. Her body language had changed again—she was irritated. I wasn’t sure why; didn’t it make sense for me to stop at home before I went on a job?

  “Well,” she said again, “earlier today we found out there’s going to be an auction. Tonight. In fact, it might be taking place right now, although I hope not. I went an hour out of my way to pick you up, so you better be worth it.”

  This was a sudden change in tone. I wondered where it had come from. “I’ll do my best,” I said, but that made her scowl and blow air out of her nose. “What’s being auctioned?”

  “A predator.”

  That was the answer I didn’t want to hear. Predators were weird supernatural creatures out of the Empty Spaces. I’d seen two so far, along with the pile of corpses they left behind. “Do you know what kind?”

  “What kind?” She seemed to think this was an idiotic question, but I had no idea why. “No. I don’t know what kind.”

  “Okay.” I was careful not to snap at her.

  “Who are you?” she asked. She looked me up and down. I didn’t feel a lot of friendliness coming from her.

  “I’m Ray Lilly,” I answered, keeping my tone neutral. “Remember? You just pulled me out of work.”

  “I know your name,” she said, leaving out the word dumbass but implying it anyway. “What were you doing at that supermarket? What are you doing in that apartment?”

  “Working. Living.”

  “That’s not cover for a mission? Okay. What I want to know is who you are in the society. Because you are definitely not a peer. Are you an apprentice? An ally?”

  “I’m not any of those things,” I said. “I’m Annalise Powliss’s wooden man.”

  She exhaled sharply, then laughed to herself a little. “For God’s sake,” she said, then fell silent. After a few seconds more, she pulled into a Pizza Hut parking lot. She didn’t turn off the engine. “All right,” she said, and I could tell by her tone that I wouldn’t like what she was about to say. “Somebody fucked up. You shouldn’t be here, not with me, and I shouldn’t have been sent a fucking hour out of my way to pick up a fucking wooden man, not on a supposedly emergency job. What’s the point in having you along? I don’t need you and I don’t want you. Hell, I don’t even like looking at you, knowing what you are.

  “So here’s the deal: you keep quiet and do what I say, or you get out right now. I have a long night’s work ahead of me, and I don’t need you getting in my way. So, which is it going to be? Because if following orders is going to be too much for you, you need to be out of my car and have yourself a nice day.”

  She stared at me, waiting for a response. It had been a while since anyone had spoken to me like that. If Catherine had been a guy …

  Not that using my fists had ever turned out well for me. Old habits don’t just die hard, they make living hard, too. “You must be part of the diplomatic wing of the society.”

  She sat back, rolled her eyes, and sighed. “What the hell did I do to deserve this?”

  “I’ll tell you what you did,” I answered. “You talked to me like I ran over your dog. Whatever your problem is, it has nothing to do with me.”

  “Oh no?” She turned the key, shutting off the engine. “Bad enough to have a peer or an ally along. Then I would spend all my time praying the collateral damage doesn’t hit me. But every wooden man I’ve ever met was either a stone-skulled thug, terminally ill, or a terminally ill stone-skulled thug.” She made sure to look me straight in the eye as she said it. She had guts. I would have liked her if she wasn’t so obnoxious. “Which are you?”

  “Well, I’m not terminally ill.”

  She frowned. I’d lived down to her expectations. “Well, that’s just dandy.”

  “If you order me to get out of your car,” I said, “I’ll hop out right here. I’m not going to ride with someone who doesn’t want me. But that’s the only way I’m getting out. When the friendly guy from the society turns up to debrief me, I’m not going to tell him I chose not to go. Understand?”

  She turned away from me. The society had kept me out of jail, somehow. I had no idea what would happen if I refused to take a job. Would they kill me? Would they lift whatever spell kept the cops off my front door? I had exactly one person handy who I could ask, and she was trying to kick me out of her car.

  Pizza-delivery guys carried red cases across the lot. They didn’t seem happy about the way we were parked. I wondered how much they made a month.

  “All right then,” Catherine said. “We go on the job, and you take your orders from me.”

  “That ain’t going to happen, either,” I told her. As Annalise’s wooden man, I went when she said go and I did when she said do, but that didn’t mean I was going to take orders from everyone in the society. Not unless Annalise told me to. “If you have a good idea, I’ll be happy to go along with it. If not, then not. That’s the only deal you’re going to get. If that’s not good enough, you can explain why you gave the boot to the guy the society sent you an hour out of your way to pick up.”

  She chewed on that for a while, then pulled into the street and drove onto the ramp to the highway. We weren’t talking, apparently, but I could bear it. A
t least she didn’t want to kill me.

  We drove to 520 and headed east toward the Cascades. Two hours and several increasingly narrow roads later, we turned off just before we came to a pass. We drove north for a short while, following a winding two-lane highway through the mountains.

  It occurred to me that Catherine might have a report or a file about the job we were on. I asked, but she shook her head. Either she didn’t have one, or she wasn’t sharing. They came to the same thing for me.

  We changed roads a couple of more times, weaving and winding through the Cascade foothills. We didn’t play music. Catherine was a very good driver, although I doubted most people would recognize it; she had complete control of the car, held the same steady speed, and had excellent lane discipline. Nothing flashy, but she knew what she was doing. I wondered how much time she spent behind the wheel every day.

  We skirted a small town, passing along a road in the hillside above it. It was late, but Christmas lights still burned in the town below. It felt strange to be traveling several hundred feet above a star, but I was probably just tired.

  I didn’t see the name of the town and realized I had no idea where we were. It didn’t matter. By my watch, it was just past eleven. The road and rain forest looked fake in the headlights, like a TV show. I felt adrift in the darkness.

  We curved south and quickly came upon a high black iron fence on one side of the road. Catherine pulled to the shoulder and checked her GPS against a slip of paper in her pocket. “This is it. The gate should be up ahead.”

  “I can cut through the fence,” I told her. The long drive had eased tensions between us. “We could hide the car and sneak onto the property.”

  “That would take too long. The driveway from the gate to the house stretches three miles, and the terrain would be difficult. There’s also a second road off the grounds that heads east-northeast toward town and a whole twisty mess of access roads and horse trails, otherwise I’d suggest we hide outside the gate and snap photos of drivers and license plates of everyone who leaves. We’re going to have to risk driving it.”