Chapter 5
In retrospect, Nyx considered that maybe she should have planned for them to arrive somewhere around two in the morning, but she’d thought maybe the tales of NYC traffic congestion were exaggerations.
Also, she had wanted to fly, which would have allowed them to take public transportation upon arrival, and obviated the need for driving altogether.
Now, she was wishing she’d decided to return the car somewhere on the drive in, and taken public transportation from there.
Too late now. She had a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel because, having not driven more than a handful of times in the last few years, the press of vehicles surrounding her, combined with the blaring of horns and the sense of constant urgency the city seemed to produce, had her nerves on edge.
In truth, NYC was the last place on Dead Earth she would ever have chosen to visit.
Well, it and every other densely populated city in the world.
Realistically, given how claustrophobic and out of her element she already felt, Nyx should be grateful she was in New York and not another country’s metropolis, considering a casual research tangent had shown her that while NYC might be the most densely populated city in the United States, it didn’t even crack the top twenty-five worldwide.
At least she had silence in which to focus, probably because upon entering the thrum of city traffic, she’d snapped at everyone to “Shut the fuck up so I can drive.”
They had shut the fuck up. This had been fairly easy for Evra, fairly difficult for Morgen, and a non-issue for Kaden, who hadn’t spoken a single word the entire trip.
In all fairness to him, the Dramamine had knocked him out for two hours.
The only sound he’d made since awakening had been a grunt in response to Morgen’s inquiry into his beauty rest, and ever since they entered the city he’d been too busy sending out pulses of tracker magic to speak any words.
If some part of her hoped he actually would catch a trace of Tristen this early into their search, that part was disappointed as she navigated her way to their hotel without any declaration from Kaden that he’d caught the scent they were looking for.
Even so, as she parked—and half of the reason she’d paid the exorbitant price for the hotel she’d chosen was because it offered parking in NYC—and turned the car off, she asked him, “Anything?”
He shook his head. “I was only scanning surface level though.”
Which should have been more than adequate, unless Tristen Veld was a recluse who never left his apartment. But then, considering who they were looking for—and who he might be hiding from—that was a distinct possibility. “How old of a trail can you pick up?”
“It depends on how many others have crossed it, and where I pick it up. If it’s the only trail in an area, I could find it even if it’s months old.
if I’m following a trail from a known origin—Morgen leaves the car and I track him from here through the city—it isn’t a problem.
I already have the trail and I can hold it no matter how many others overlap it. ”
Well, that explained why running to the nearest large city had never worked when she and Seth ran away—their early attempts, before Seth had worked on masking their trail—because Viktor had had their trail from the house so he couldn’t lose it.
“But if I’m trying to pick the trail up from in the middle of the overlapping pieces…
” Kaden shrugged. “It’s picking out a piece of string that’s only marginally different from the ones surrounding it.
If it’s near the top, it’s not an issue.
Bury it between a few hundred others that are masking and degrading it and I can’t guarantee I’ll find it.
Especially in Dead Earth, where everything’s…
duller. When I came searching for your mother I looked for weeks, and it was a miracle I found you. ”
Nyx let out a short laugh. “Yeah,” she said bitterly, “some fucking miracle.”
The car went awkwardly quiet. She resisted both squeezing her eyes shut to see if everyone would disappear, and apologizing.
She hadn’t meant to be rude, but she couldn’t help how she felt, and the filter that let her keep her rude thoughts to herself had holes in it these days, and things kept slipping through.
This was what she’d been afraid of, coming back to the Station—to her friends—in the first place.
Maybe Evra hadn’t lied, and they didn’t all expect her to be nice normal Nyx, but this wasn’t the first instance that had made clear they didn’t know what to do with sharp biting Nyx who’d appeared in the former’s absence.
The thing, though? This had always been a part of her.
It was just the part she’d hidden from everyone except Seth.
You know, you’ve got everyone fooled, he’d told her once.
They think you’re so sweet, but it’s only because I bear the brunt of all your violent tendencies.
And he’d said it in that way that said he loved her, loved the sharp edges she didn’t show to anyone else because she didn’t think anyone else could get cut on them and still love her.
Kaden opened the passenger door and got out.
She’d have felt better if he slammed the door behind him, but he just closed it normally.
A second later, Morgen followed him out.
Evra remained, she and Nyx watching as Morgen and Kaden went through all the normal stretching and walking in small circles that occurred when a person was finally freed from a long car ride.
Finally, the silence got to be a little too much, so Nyx broke it.
“If you’re going to tell me I should be nicer to him, I already know.
” He didn’t have to be here, helping her.
She didn’t really even know why he was, but she assumed it had to do with the bridge-mending he was clearly working on with Morgen, and the guilt complex she suspected he was carrying around.
“That is certainly not what I was going to say.”
“No?”
“I was going to suggest a change to your initial plan.”
Her initial plan consisted of following Kaden around while he did his magic tracker thing.
“There is no point in all of us going with Kaden around the city. We cannot aid him. Let him and Morgen search in one direction, and you and I may search in the other.”
It was tempting. Very, very tempting. She couldn’t seem to do anything right around Kaden.
In addition to not liking feeling concerned about him, if she expressed that concern, it pissed him off.
And made her feel awkward. If she was rude to him, like just now, she felt like an asshole.
Nyx suspected there was a very good reason most people didn’t attempt to be friends with their exes, and it was because it was hard to be normal around them.
“I would love to do that,” Nyx admitted, “but I don’t know what the point is.
There are close to two million people in the Manhattan area alone, and I don’t even know that Tristen is actually in this borough.
I’m guessing he is, based on the fact that you’d have to be stupid rich to be a Dead Earther who both knows about the wider universe and can afford to kidnap a Shaman from it, and the stereotype is that rich New Yorkers live in Manhattan.
“But I don’t know if Tristen’s actually here. I don’t know if he was ever here. I am not a private investigator. I don’t know how to find him without magic powers that only Kaden has.”
“Where would you look if you did not have Kaden?”
Nyx started to answer “nowhere” but realized it wasn’t true. She wasn’t a give up kind of girl. Even if she didn’t think she would have any hope of success, she would still try. “Gossip, I guess? Reports of miraculous healings that supposedly can’t be explained?”
“Then you and I will start there.”
“You realize you just volunteered for research, right? As in, libraries and newspaper clippings and searching the internet?”
Evra’s face took on a look of determined stoicism. “I am capable of bearing up under adversity.”
Nyx snorted and opened the car door. “Okay, Aurelius.”
“Who is this Aurelius?” Evra demanded, following her out.
“An Earth philosopher who was really into ‘bearing up under adversity’.”
“He sounds wise.”
“Eh, Epictetus was better.” Nyx had gone through a stoic philosophy phase during the whole my-boyfriend-abandoned-me-overnight-and-literally-no-one-knows-I-exist period in her life.
Thank the stars she’d decided to read chronologically rather than by fame, because while Aurelius might be the most well-known of the stoic philosophers, he was by and large her least favorite, and if she hadn’t hit Epictetus and Seneca before him, she probably wouldn’t have made it through Meditations.
They got out of the car, Nyx retrieving Alihana and Veritas—Hidden again, of course—and buckling them back on.
She and Evra grabbed their bags, collected Morgen and Kaden, and went inside.
Despite her irrational fears to the contrary, the hotel staff did not appear to be possessed of supernatural abilities that let them know this was her first time checking into a hotel—she’d let Seth handle that part on her last cross-country drive—and the process went smoothly.
When they asked for a card to file for incidentals, she handed over the same debit card she’d used to book the room.
She’d had one of the last few checking accounts that didn’t charge a monthly fee without a minimum balance or monthly direct deposit requirement, so it had miraculously still been open and in good standing—with its total remaining balance of one dollar and thirty-four cents—when she’d first started slipping across to Dead Earth a few weeks ago to make cash deposits in preparation for this trip.