Empty Vessels Page 3

  And if he was hallucinating this man, he’d have to have also hallucinated the shop, the guide to it, maybe even the old man who clearly thought the owner of this one was strange, he reminded himself.

  "Sirs?" the clerk asked again, tilting his head quizzically.

  "Wow," Lucas says. "You see me—for real?" He sounded almost embarrassingly relieved. "Hi."

  "Hi." The horned boy gave them another smile, this one tilting into sympathy. He reached up to rub his nose with the back of a hand. "A ghost, huh…" He ducked over his desk, bowing to him. "I'm so sorry for your loss."

  Keith turned to look at Lucas in shock—Lucas, too, seemed almost stunned. "Oh," Lucas said finally. "Thank you."

  "And you're human, but you seem to see well enough what's going on here," the horned boy added, and hopped up onto his own desk, crossing his legs. "Sixth sense?"

  Keith shook himself, trying to recover. "Uh, yeah," he said. "Pretty new to it, like five years…" He trailed off, not sure where to go with that.

  "Well, welcome to the community," the horned boy said cheerily. He held his arms open wide, gesturing to the room around him. "Did you come here looking for some Otherly goods? Or did you just wander in like a little lost lamb?"

  Keith couldn't seem to stop staring. The strangeness of him aside, the horned boy was probably one of the most attractive people he'd ever seen in his life, and he seemed to know it, dropping his arms to brace his hands on the desk behind himself so his chest was thrust out, legs crossed and one bouncing, a little smile on his face.

  It took Keith effort to clear his throat. "Uh, sort of both," he managed. "I didn't know it was an Other shop—you say there's a community, but I've really only met a few in passing. I haven't gone out of my way to talk to any. But I was looking for something, um, Otherly. Yeah."

  "You don't say! Well, no need to shout from across the entry if we're going to talk about that kind of thing." The horned boy crooked a finger, lips quirked. "Come a little closer."

  Pulse fluttering in his throat, Keith took a few more steps forward. "I, uh, my sixth sense," he stammered. "I get occasional visions? I had a really nasty dream last night, and I thought it was a true dream, but—"

  The horned boy was giving him a once-over, he realized. Head to toe and back up again, eyes heavy-lidded. "Mmhm?"

  Closer, Keith could pick up a scent off the horned boy, something wild and woodsy. Autumnal leaves, he thought, and opened his mouth a little to draw the smell in more deeply.

  "Yeah," Lucas said from behind him, a little loudly. "It was about Terrors attacking an Other. Have you heard anything about that?"

  The mood seemed to dampen abruptly, though whether it was at the sudden volume or the abrupt reminder of the details of that dream, Keith wasn't sure. The horned boy's little smirk fell off his face at once as well, upturned nose wrinkling and lips turning down.

  "Unfortunately, I have," the horned boy said. "Lots of Others are being attacked lately at night. Most of us who can are taking to staying indoors with company after nightfall. Not that Terrors haven't always been a problem, but they've really begun to step up their hunts."

  Keith drew a slow breath in, trying to get the heat in his veins fully back under control. "It wasn't just that they were attacking an Other. They were working together and using tools. In my dream, I mean."

  Those fine white brows furrowed and the horned boy tilted his head again. "Are you sure it wasn't a normal dream, then? That isn't how Terrors act."

  "I know," Keith said. "I've run into them before. Well… run from."

  "So," Lucas continued, pressing in behind Keith a little more closely than usual, a cold shock of air at his back. "We were trying to find out information about the tool they used. It was a bottle—Keith's sketch looked to me like an antique perfume bottle, and had a sharpened tip."

  "Uh, yeah. It was enchanted and used to stab," Keith said. "I was just looking around antique shops trying to find… well, anything. I don't know. It's not like you'd have sold a Terror a perfume bottle, enchanted or not."

  The horned boy let out a light laugh at that, head tilting back and showing a row of white, flat teeth. "Oh, yes. Not very known to want to smell pretty, those soulless abominations."

  "Yyyeah, exactly the problem," Keith said. "But I thought maybe they broke in somewhere and found one or something…? I mean, they had to get it from somewhere."

  "Do you have the sketch with you?" the horned boy asked. He seemed to sober again at how seriously Keith was taking this, holding a hand out. His fingers looked remarkably delicate, Keith couldn't help but notice.

  "Sure." Keith wrenched his gaze away, slinging his backpack onto the counter and opening it up, rustling through his notes until he found the right page. "Here."

  The horned boy took it, glancing the sheet over. "Dull-looking class. Your art skills are, hmm…"

  "I know. Don't say it." Keith leaned over too, looking at it with him.

  Laughing, the horned boy turned his head so his nose almost brushed Keith's. "I agree with your gentleman friend: it looks like it could be a perfume bottle. This shape has been used for centuries—some companies still use similar designs. I've seen stout bottles shaped like this too, but alcohol would have the brewer's stamp on the bottle. Any other details?"

  "Uh…" He was starting to wonder if the horned boy was doing something to him on purpose, or if it were just something about his scent, the air around him. "It was enchanted. I couldn't see much, but I could feel it in the dream. It was glowing—enchantments usually do that in visions. Any ideas?"

  "Hang on." The horned boy put a hand against Keith's chest. It almost tingled, Keith was so aware of him. But he was just pushing Keith back a little so he could hop off the desk. "Come with me, both of you."

  Keith began to fall into step, but Lucas was hanging back, so he slowed, then glanced back at him. "Lucas?" he muttered.

  Lucas's face was almost all shadow, a vague dark blur. He hesitated briefly, then took a few steps forward to catch up with Keith. "Be careful, man," Lucas murmured back. It was one of the only times that Keith had heard Lucas trying to be quiet, but then again, not many people could usually hear him. "I get that you're pretty into him, but you don't know him or anything."

  Feeling his face go completely red, Keith cleared his throat, ducking his head a little. "He seems friendly. Just… flirty. I don't think he means any harm."

  "I don't think he means harm either," Lucas said, the black mass of his mouth barely moving. "But be careful anyway."

  Ugh. It was embarrassing to even think about this. Keith nodded, shoulders hunching a little. "I'm not going to… do anything."

  "—I mean, you can if you want to," Lucas muttered, suddenly sounding embarrassed himself. His face swiveled away. "You've got a perfectly good room back there. I can stay outside."

  "I'm not kicking you out," Keith protested.

  "I'm just saying," Lucas said, strained, "you can't spend your whole life—"

  The horned boy's voice interrupted, floating down from a room away. "You two coming?"

  Lucas cut himself off, looking flustered and embarrassed, then gestured a vague hand in the direction the horned boy had gone. The conversation was apparently over. Guilty, and not entirely sure why he should be, Keith scrubbed at his cheek with the heel of a hand and followed the horned boy.

  The doorway between rooms was lined with bookshelves with antique books on them, and the room beyond it was, as the other antique seller had noted, full of glassware. Vases, figurines, porcelain dolls, china, plates, old glasses, and yes, bottles.

  "A lot of these are mundane items," the horned boy said, one white hand beckoning from around a shelf. Keith moved carefully around to join him, Lucas following close behind. "A few enchanted items but not too many. This is an antique shop first and foremost, though we sell the things people might need to help them with their work, if you know what I mean. I've got some similar bottles, but they're not enchanted."

 
He was crouching, sorting through items on a low shelf and keeping his antlers carefully out of the way. The glass clinking was loud, and Keith forced himself to stand very still, unable to shake the vague fear that he'd slip and break everything in the room.

  "Here. Hold this." The horned boy thrust a pot-bellied bottle at him. Keith caught it in a panic when he realized the horned boy was letting go whether he'd got a firm grip yet or not. "Your drawing wasn't exactly the best, but would you say the shape in your vision was like this?"

  "Yeah," Keith said, heart still pounding as he wrapped his palms around the heavy base. "Pretty similar. Not this exact bottle, but a lot like it."

  "Mm." The horned boy stood up, and suddenly there wasn't enough space between the glass-laden shelves, especially since Keith didn't want to move back with Lucas behind him. But the horned boy wasn't actively flirting anymore. Even if the scent around him was still intoxicating, it didn't seem to be deliberate, frowning as he was. "That's troubling."

  Lucas slid a hand between them, passing a fingertip over the curve of the bottle. "Why's that?"

  "Well, bottles with this shape are best designed spiritually for 'gathering'," the horned boy said. He put an emphasis on the word as if it was supposed to mean something to Keith. "That's why you see the shape used in all kinds of… oh, games and other fantasy works for potions."

  Now that he mentioned it, the shape really did look like some kind of potion bottle. "But, uh, 'gathering'?"

  "Gathering," the horned boy repeated gravely. Concerned silver eyes met Keith's as he began to tick off points on his fingers. "Uh, how to put it? Magic and essence and energy are all dense powers, so they sink into the wide bulb but can't all crowd out of the neck. So it's a good shape if you want to contain some kind of energy. It's not a great shape if you wanted a weapon, and a glass weapon is generally a bad idea—and Terrors don't use weapons, anyway. Nor do they work with essence or energy, so there's no reason to collect it. The most they can do is track it, and you needn't collect it for that. Finally, they can't enchant things. So either they got one already enchanted, had someone enchant it for them, or we're now dealing with wizard Terrors."

  His tone had lightened at the end, as if the absurdity was becoming just too much.

  Lucas made a humming sound. "Do you think it's coincidence? One happened to grab one?"

  "Not if multiple Terrors were working together," the horned boy said. "They don't do that either, so it sounds to me like someone was ordering them around."

  "Terrors can be controlled?" Keith asked, alarmed.

  The horned boy reached out and took the bottle from Keith, then placed it back into its spot on the shelf with care. Keith glanced at the price tag, a hundred and fifty dollars, and blanched.

  "Well, no," the horned boy admitted, after a long pause. "Not that I know of."

  "…Creepy," Lucas said. He began to back away through the shelves. Keith followed, wanting some room, and heard the horned boy fall in behind them. "Well. I'm not sure we're any further along on information."

  "Tell me something, lovely," the horned boy said, tapping Keith's arm. "What do you plan to do with this information anyway?"

  Despite the touch, it took Keith an embarrassing amount of time to realize the horned boy meant him. "Uh, Keith. Keith Marose."

  "What do you plan, Keith?" the horned boy repeated patiently, smiling again.

  Being asked a second time didn't help him find an answer. "I don't know," he said finally. "But when I have visions, it usually means I have to do something. Ignoring them makes them worse and I feel… guilty. I figured knowing more might help me know what I should be doing."

  Put like that, it sounded really pathetic. Directionless as always.

  "All right," the horned boy said, tone thoughtful. He paused in the main room again, then dug around on his desk for a slip of paper that he tore off an old envelope. He wrote quickly before passing it over.

  There were two things on it with a line separating them—an address and a phone number. "What's this?" Keith asked, confused.

  "I have a friend," the horned boy said, a small smile softening the sharp angles of his face. "She's given to premonitions too, but not about other people. Only about herself. She's been insisting that the Terrors are going to come for her. I've given her all the usual advice—stay inside after dark, don't go out places without company. And it's possible that her own fear is just interfering. We're all pretty nervous these days. But selfishly, I want to hope that if you had visions about this, and it led you here, it meant I was supposed to tell you this, and you might be able to help her."

  Abruptly, Keith was sure that, intoxicating aura and the rest aside, the horned boy meant well, that his friendliness was genuine. There was genuine concern in his eyes now, along with a sort of tiredness. Keith smiled hesitantly. "All right. I mean, we can try. Uh, who should I say sent us?"

  "Nice try," the horned boy said, and gently punched Keith's shoulder. "Very cute. I don't give out my real name to humans. Just describe me! She knows me well."

  Fair enough. "And the phone number, is that hers?"

  "Oh." The horned boy's silver eyes lit up merrily. "No. That's mine."

  The significance of that hit Keith, and he found himself going bright red again, sputtering. It was bad enough that he could see the color of his nose out of the inner corners of his eyes. "Y-you have a phone?!"

  The look the horned boy gave him was both scathing and amused. "It's the twenty-first century, Keith."

  "Right. Yes. You don't want to give me your name, but you'll give me your number?"

  The scathing look went away, replaced with just a naughty delight. "I want you to call me, not call me by name. Sound good?"

  "Sounds, uh, yeah," Keith said in an unflattering wheeze of air. "I'll let you know how things go with her."

  He almost fled outside, drawing in fresh, unscented air in great gulps, wishing his cheeks would cool down. In his hurry, he didn't hold the door, and Lucas had to pass through it, catching up to Keith after.

  Keith immediately felt worse. "Sorry—"

  "You going to call him?" Lucas asked, tone a little weird. "I mean, you might want to think about it. He was into you."

  "I thought you wanted me to be careful," Keith muttered, embarrassed.

  "Well, yeah, be careful, but…"

  Keith dared to look up at Lucas again. His eyes and mouth were back to normal, expression a little strained and embarrassed, but clear and recognizable.

  "I'll think about it," Keith said.

  chapter three

  It seemed as if the next step—insofar as there were steps and not just having no idea what he was doing here but wanting to do something—was to go find the girl that the horned boy had mentioned. The address turned out to be a significant trip across town, a location somewhere out in the suburbs. Keith looked it up on his phone and tried to figure out a bus route there.

  "She's probably an Other, huh," Lucas said, watching Keith fiddle with the bus schedules.

  "I'd guess so," Keith said. "Wow, this is going to be over an hour."

  "Make sure you account for the way back."

  "Last leg of the trip, the bus ends at six," Keith muttered. "We'll have to hike to this strip mall to catch another one if it takes longer than that."

  Lucas looked it over. "Not too long a walk. Fifteen minutes?"

  "Not too bad," Keith agreed, sighing as he closed out of the bus schedule planner before Lucas could see it. Today felt as though it had lasted at least a week.

  Lucas looked at him oddly, picking up something from his tone, and Keith forced a smile, walking briskly toward where they could catch the first bus a few blocks away. "Come on," he said. "Wouldn't it be stupid if we got there and she wasn't even home? What would we even do?"

  "Slide a note under her door. And sit there for a while," Lucas suggested.

  "I guess so," Keith said. "Get all the neighbors suspicious of us, get me arrested."

  "On the u
p side," Lucas said dryly, "the cops wouldn't see me."

  Keith laughed, distracted.

  Since they were heading away from town instead of into it, the bus was practically empty this time, and he found himself watching out the window along with Lucas, through him as much as past him, waiting for that one damn street corner to go by and trying to see if Lucas noticed it.

  Lucas did. Of course Lucas did.

  Keith realized it as soon as they turned down the street, though that particular intersection, Seventh and Elm, wasn't in sight yet. Lucas was sitting up straighter. His expression, though still visible, was strained, mouth tight, eyes too wide. There wasn't a hint of blur in his expression, but for once, that wasn't reassuring.

  Lucas was probably thinking completely about himself, after all.

  They approached the corner, and Keith didn't want to look, but couldn't bring himself to look away. His limbs ached with the phantom memory of the scrape of concrete, the screaming of tires, the solid pain of his ribs where he'd been impacted by a human body instead of a car.

  There was a wreath leaned up against the street post. They both looked at it as the bus stopped to drop off a passenger, then continued on. There was no way it was five years old.

  "Dangerous corner," Lucas said softly.

  Keith jerked his eyes up to Lucas's face again. It was hard to read his expression, eyes troubled but gaze distant, mouth relaxed.

  "Yeah," Keith said, awkward and anxious.

  They spent a few moments like that, Lucas gazing into space, Keith gazing at Lucas, and then Lucas let out a chuckle, expression warming. He met Keith's eyes. "You were so small then," he said fondly. "I didn't even think you were a teenager."

  His hand rose, came down on Keith's head, ruffled with a light touch like a cold breeze through his hair. Keith smiled weakly. They weren't going to talk about it. Maybe that was for the best. "I was pretty runty."