The Wise Men of Gotham (The Midnight Scoop Book 2) by Craig Schaefer

Author:Craig Schaefer [Schaefer, Craig]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Demimonde Books
Published: 2023-05-27T16:00:00+00:00

thirty-seven

School’s a ghost town , Seelie thought when she arrived the next morning. That was an exaggeration; there were only one or two people missing from each of her classes, three at most, but that was too many empty desks for an ordinary day. A few of her classmates had gone back to wearing flu masks. A valiant effort, she figured, but she didn’t think it would accomplish much. Not with the whispers in the hallways, furtive notes passed from desk to desk, all bearing the same warning.

The Sleeps.

Everybody knew somebody who had it, and for once, this wasn’t a “sister’s cousin’s brother” urban legend. Eliot Olivetti from Seelie’s first-period English class had face-planted into a bowl of pasta at the dinner table. Kayleigh Emmert from fourth-period social studies had collapsed in the middle of cheerleading practice, sending an entire human pyramid tumbling to the mats. Over the course of a single night, the Sleeps had evolved from a weird, maybe-fake novelty to a real and ferocious force sweeping through the hallways.

The full impact didn’t hit Seelie until the lunch bell rang. Normally she had to scramble to find a seat in the cafeteria. Now there were ragged pockets of humanity here and there, clinging to one another, with gulfs of empty benches between them.

Seelie didn’t have a clique to take shelter with. Being the new kid in senior year, showing up just in time for the closing bell, made it hard to form connections. Being the daughter of a notorious crook who tried to steal the personal data of every man, woman, and child in New York, just for starters, sealed her status as a social outcast. Most people didn’t hold it against her, but they weren’t inviting her to any parties, either.

That was all right. A witch had to live on the borders of the world, close enough to civilization to keep an eye on things, but not so close that she lost her taste for the wilderness. Part shepherd, part wolf.

And I’m overdue for some shepherd work. She loaded up a tray with a carton of milk, a slice of cardboard pizza, and a ladle of green beans while she puzzled it out. The Sleeps should have been right in her wheelhouse; the wild, tangled surge of magic that swirled around each new victim was proof enough of that. She should have been studying it since the first case, should have been—

Enough, she told herself, ferrying her tray between long cafeteria tables and a swirling miasma of whispers. “Should have” doesn’t help anything. Besides, I’ve been distracted.

Dead ghouls had led her to an artist who painted in blood. Unrelated to the Sleeps, on the surface, but Seelie wasn’t convinced. There were eight million people in this city and plenty of room for more than one weird thing to happen at a time, but she couldn’t shake the synchronicity: the Sleeps were a local phenomenon, with not one recorded case outside of the Five Boroughs, and the more that Antonio Silvara painted, the more the sickness spread.

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