The Iron Hunt by Marjorie M. Liu

not a good memory.
    I
leaned over the boy, smoothing back his dark hair. He looked younger with his
face relaxed. He smelled sickly sweet, like chloroform.
    But
he was alive.
    I
slowly exhaled, and got out my cell phone.

CHAPTER 4
    GRANT
arrived in ten minutes. He drove his old Jeep, which had been rigged to accommodate
his bad leg. Pulled up, opened the door, and reached out with one long arm to
grab me close for a rough hug. He smelled like cinnamon and sunlight, warm as a
fire in winter. Grant was always warm.
    His
flute was in the passenger seat. Weapon of choice. He let go of me and reached
behind for his cane, then limped to the back of the van. I followed him. Heard
his breath hiss.
    “The
boy saw Badelt,” I said.
    “That’s
why he’s here?”
    “Hard
to say. But he was used as a shield for a zombie. ”
    “Tell
me,” he said, and I had to take a moment. Not because the story was hard. Went
deeper than that.
    Grant
would never understand what it meant to me, to stand with another human being
who knew me, all of me, and have a simple question asked with such casual
expectant intimacy. No one could appreciate, except the boys, just how alone I
had been, all those years. How alone I had thought I would be, for my entire
life.
    Or
how important these small moments were. How much I loved them.
    I
explained what happened. Including Edik’s message. Grant caught my wrist, his
eyes dark, thoughtful. “You okay?”
    “No,”
I said, and crawled into the van. I carefully hauled the teen into the cool
night air and slung him over my shoulder. He was light for his age, and I was
stronger than women my size. Most men, too. I had to be in order to handle the
weight of the boys. They were dense, and their bodies weighed the same, whether
flesh or tattoo.
    The
teen remained unconscious. I slid him into the Jeep. Grant glanced around to
see if anyone was watching us, but it was just Zee and the others scouting the
edge of the parking lot. Eating broken glass. In the distance I saw headlights.
My face was wet. Rain.
    Grant
shut the back door. “Is the boy still in danger?”
    “I
don’t know.” I hesitated, thinking of the girl with brass knuckles. “This is my
fault.”
    “No.
Badelt, what happened to this child—”
    “—wouldn’t
be an issue if I had still been on the move.”
    He
said nothing. Just looked down between us, the long fingers of his left hand
twitching, like he was playing the piano or flute, thinking and seeing in
melody. Which was the literal truth.
    Grant
had a neurological condition. Synesthesia. When he played music, heard
voices—any sound at all, from the clatter of a pan to the song of a bird—he saw
color. Color in people, too, regardless of what sounds they made. Reflections
of souls and spirits, the essence of a human heart, mirrored in shades of light
and energy. Auras, singing.
    And
when Grant sang back… things happened.
    He
touched the ends of my hair, delicately. The sensation, the sight, ran warmth
down my spine, into my heart. I craved that heat.
    “Sweet
heart,” he murmured, and I could hear and see the separation in those words,
because he wrote me notes like that, offhand scribbles when he wanted to remind
me of something, or when he woke up first in the morning. My sweet heart. My
heart.
    Not
sweet enough. I pressed my forehead against his shoulder, savoring the hard
strength of his hand creeping up my waist beneath my jacket. I was so tired.
Grant pushed back my hair to kiss my ear, and scratched under Mal’s chin. Dek
purred.
    We
got into the car. Grant drove. The boys sat at my feet, resting their bony
cheeks on my knees as I stroked their heads. Zee crawled into my lap and closed
his eyes. I cradled him like a child. He stuck his thumb in his mouth. Someone
needed to watch Yogi Bear tonight.
    “I
found Badelt’s office,” Grant said. “It’s in Chinatown. ”
    I
leaned my head against the cold window. “Did you call?”
    “I
got an answering machine. Then I