Arabesque: A Wings Companion

Chapter Thirteen

Tamani studied the rough sketch again, though he'd had it all but memorized for days. Whatever the girl's talents, she wasn't much of an artist. The figure she'd drawn appeared to be an asexual humanoid of indeterminate age, with hair falling past its waist. Her waist? Maybe. It was draped in something that might have been a dress or a long tunic, but also had some kind of ribbons hanging off of its arms.

Something about its face was ... inhuman. Not bestial, like a troll, but wrong, somehow. Of course that could just be the Oracle's artistic failing. Still, whoever—or whatever—this was, they didn't look like the sort of person human law enforcement would handle well. If it did turn out to be some kind of deranged cultist cosplay, Tamani could pacify the perpetrator without resorting to violence. And if it was something else, well, all the more reason for Tamani to be the one to deal with it.

So it was that at 9:25PM on Friday night, he was waiting exactly where he'd been told to wait by a human girl who somehow managed to know far too much and far too little at the same time. He had dressed in his usual blacks and was tucked deep into the shadows of the rocky cove, where he could see a vast expanse of the shoreline while remaining essentially invisible to others.

And he was pretty sure he'd identified the victim already. Between the darkness and distance, he couldn't see very many details, but there was a human down by the shore, wandering around alone. She was definitely a woman, on the younger end of her twenties, stomping back and forth with her head down while kicking up arcs of sand. Probably out looking for solitude to vent some sort of frustration.

A decision she was going to pay for with her life, if Charlotte was to be believed. It was a devilish trap—if the Oracle was some kind of fraud, then there was no reason to pester the woman. But if she was right, Tamani's urge to interfere, to run out and Entice the woman away from the beach, could cost the lives of everyone in San Francisco.

And of course there was always the slim possibility that this was a trap of some kind, though he couldn't imagine how anyone would even know enough to set a trap for him. Was that why the human authorities sometimes ignored his anonymous tips until he'd called them in a few times—or Enticed others to do so? Fear of being manipulated by others with an information advantage? Because, Tamani realized, if he had any other leads to follow, likely he wouldn't have bothered, in spite of how certain the Oracle has seemed.

But of course he had no other leads.

A soft sound caught his ear and he jerked to attention—as did the woman. But it was just a snippet of song, an a capella number likely carried on the breeze from a nearby beach party, or passing traffic. It was kind of relaxing, actually. Beautiful, if a bit haunting, and Tamani had never heard anything quite like it. It suited his mood and, thinking Laurel might enjoy it as well, he made a mental note to look for it online.

The human woman, meanwhile, was gazing out into the ocean, her sand-kicking utterly forgotten. Did she see something, out there in the waves? Something Tamani couldn't? That seemed unlikely, but it wasn't impossible, so Tamani crept a few feet toward shoreline.

As he did, he realized that the singing was getting louder—and wasn't coming from anywhere on land. It was coming from the ocean. As the waves withdrew, they revealed the source. There were shadows emerging from the waves at a slow glide, and they were singing.

Tamani worked his way around the large rocks scattered along the cove, his feet soundless on the slick surface. But the closest rock big enough to conceal him was still a hundred feet from the shoreline, and it was dark. Tamani shoved a hand under his hoodie and grabbed a dropper bottle from his belt. "Thank you, Laurel," he whispered, and tilted back his head, putting a drop of the dark solution into each eye. Two blinks, three, and the darkness receded; to Tamani's eyes, the beach appeared much as it might just after dawn.