Starling (Starling Saga) by Lesley Livingston

Author:Lesley Livingston
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-08-27T16:00:00+00:00

As soon as Roth left Daria Aristarchos’s office, he gunned his Harley and headed south, weaving through traffic at breakneck speed. Gwendolyn Littlefield’s penthouse unit was on the fifty-first floor of a Tribeca high-rise. It faced north and offered a view of almost the entire island of Manhattan, framed by the Hudson on one side and the East River on the other. Gwen’s particular talents had ensured that she’d be set for life, even if it wasn’t a life she wanted.

“Gwen?” Rothgar entered the apartment and walked across the living room. He knocked gently on the sliding glass door of the penthouse’s balcony, where he could see the crumpled form of a willow-slender girl, pale and dark eyed, with choppy purple hair, curled up outside on a chaise. He opened the door and stepped outside.

“You okay?”

She sat up and smiled at him wanly. Roth nodded and silently opened his arms. Gwen stood and walked into the embrace.

After a moment, Roth led her back inside. In the kitchen, the counter surface of the island was covered with a sheet of painters’ plastic drop cloth, held down at the edges with four smoldering pillar candles. Off to one side lay a thick stack of hundred-dollar bills and a razor-sharp silver knife. In the center was a rewrapped bulky square of brown butcher’s paper. It never ceased to gall Roth that the Fates had chosen to make this frail, gentle girl a haruspex. That they had given her the ability to divine the future by way of staring at the insides of a sacrificed animal—and then, just for added irony, made her a devout vegetarian.

“How bad?” he asked.

“I might have to invent new words.” She looked up at him, her gaze still haunted by the visions she’d seen. “Things have changed, Roth.”

He nodded and said, “Get some things together. Essentials. I’m taking you to Gosforth.”

“You’re taking me to the place they kicked me out of?”

“The place you kept trying to run away from. They’re going to be looking for you, Gwen—”

“So you want to march me right into the heart of the enemy’s camp.”

“It’s the last likely place anyone’ll search.” Roth smiled grimly. “And it’ll probably be the safest place in all of New York City in the coming days.”

“How can you say that? The place was just overrun by—”

“Get your things, Gwen. Now.”

Roth watched as she turned and went into the bedroom. Then he fished a cell phone from the back pocket of his jeans and hit a speed-dial number. “The haruspex is gone,” he said in a flat voice when Daria picked up. He paced back and forth, listening, and Gwen came back out into the living room with a bag.

“No, not taken,” Roth said. “Fled. I found a space in the closet where a suitcase should be, but she left behind her toothbrush in her haste. She’s on the run.”

Gwen raised an eyebrow at Roth and fished in her bag for her toothbrush.

“Fear is a powerful motivator,” Roth said, then listened again.

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