As Lie The Dead (9 page)

Only three doors, though. One has to be the bathroom, which means two bedrooms. Sharing. Fucking fantastic.

A young man with Hispanic features unfolds himself from the sofa and stands. He’s tall, towering over the chick by a good foot, broad-shouldered and muscular. Handsome in a high-school-football-player kind of way. He waves his hand at me—not in a greeting. I close the door. Guess I know who my roommate isn’t.

“Evangeline Stone?” he says.

“Evy,” I say. “Who are you?”

“Jesse Morales. Welcome.” Long legs carry him across the room. I tense, but he only offers his hand, which I tentatively shake.

The woman perches on the arm of one of the chairs, keeping herself a good distance away. “Welcome her when she’s lasted more than a week,” she says.

Heat flushes my cheeks, and I clench my fists. “You want to see me fight? Bring it on.”

“No one’s fighting,” Jesse says. “That’s Ash Bedford, team senior.”

I roll my eyes. “Terrific. So where’s the guy who gets my paperwork?”

“On his way,” Ash says, accusation in her tone. “You’re early.”

“Look, if you’ve got some sort of stick up your ass about me being here—”

“You’re here because our partner died, kiddo, so don’t expect a warm welcome and a hug. Prove you belong here, and then the stick comes out.”

She is dead serious. I killed a girl my age in order to graduate Boot Camp, but it hadn’t occurred to me
that someone else died to make a place for me in this Triad. Two deaths to get in. Three people to a team. It’s how it works.

“How did your partner die?” I ask.

She blinks, seems unprepared for the question.

Jesse replies. “His name was Cole. Found his charred remains in a furnace last week after being missing for two days. He was probably drained by Halfies first, because it was near a known hangout over on Worchester. Ash and I went in and burned the place to the ground.”

Wow. “Sorry,” I say.

Behind me, the doorknob turns. I dart sideways and avoid being smacked with the bulky metal. In walks another man, older than Jesse but half a head shorter. Black hair and eyes, a five-o’clock shadow on his chin and jaws. Dressed in khakis and shirtsleeves, he looks like he’s more at home Uptown among the nine-to-fivers than here in Mercy’s Lot. Might even be cute if he stops looking so annoyed.

“You sure as hell know how to make an impression,” he says to me without preamble but with the same once-over treatment I got from Ash.

I glare. “Excuse me?”

“I stepped over a guy downstairs moaning about a blond bitch and a misunderstanding, so I can only assume he meant you.”

I cross my arms over my chest, plastic bag swinging. “I’m not a fucking whore, and he’s not likely to forget it anytime soon.”

He slams the door hard enough to make me jump, then steps closer. Sinister. “The first thing you need to remember, Evangeline, is that Triads work best when
we aren’t remembered. We require secrecy to be effective. You keep going around dressed like that and nut-kicking drunk idiots, you’ll end up just another name carved into the wall.”

Everything about him makes me want to punch him. He hasn’t introduced himself, but he has to be the Handler. He looks like a Wyatt. And a prick.

“Where are your papers?” he asks.

I dig the envelope out of the bag and hand it over. He rips into it, scans the contents. I have no idea what’s written there, but it doesn’t seem to impress him. He folds it, then tucks it into his back pocket. From the other pocket he produces a cell phone and holds it out. I take it gingerly. I’ve never owned one before—they’re expensive as hell.

“Your number is stored in the memory, so memorize it,” Wyatt says. “Memorize the other three numbers on speed dial. I’m 1, Ash is 2, Jesse is 3. You are never to use this phone for personal calls unrelated to work, and you are not to divulge your phone number to anyone outside of the Triads under any circumstances. Understood?”

“Yep.”

“The work schedule for each team is four days on, two days off, on a rotating basis. When you’re on, you’re on for twenty-four hours. You are to be available and answer when I call or text you. If more than fifteen minutes pass without a response, and you are neither dead nor seriously wounded …”

His poisonous stare fills in his unspoken words, and I nod. He is seriously scary when he tries hard. “I might as well be, right?” I say, perhaps a bit too glib. “But those two days I’m off, my time is my own?”

“Yes. Just don’t call attention to yourself. The Dregs may be animals, but they do remember faces. You flash yours around town too much when you aren’t working, and you’ll make yourself a target.”

“Right. And no more kneeing drunk assholes.”

The corners of his mouth quirk. “Exactly.”

“So are we on or off right now?”

“We’re off rotation at the moment. We’ll go out tomorrow and show you the ropes—”

“I grew up around here. I know the Lot.”

Ash snorts loudly. “Which clubs within thirty blocks of here are most often frequented by Halfies?” she asks. “Which apartment building north of us exclusively houses a population of were-birds?”

I really don’t like her. How the hell I’ll work with her is beyond me, so I stay quiet. Because I don’t know those answers.

“We show you the ropes,” Wyatt continues, “and then you go out patrolling tomorrow night with Jesse and Ash. You survive the night, even bag something bad, and we go back into the rotation.”

“Fair enough,” I say. I look forward to bagging something. It’s why I’m here. And to wiping that sneer off Ash Team Senior’s face.

Wyatt smiles. It’s the first crack in his otherwise serious veneer, and he proves my theory correct: he is handsome when he smiles. He walks over to the kitchenette. I wait mutely, not sure what’s next. Jesse and Ash don’t move.

In the kitchen, Wyatt pulls five small glasses out of a cabinet, followed by a bottle of whiskey. He pours a finger of liquor into each. Only when he’s finished do Jesse and Ash approach the counter. They each take a
glass, Wyatt a third. I feel as though I’m intruding on something private, so I stay put. Until Wyatt pushes one of the remaining glasses toward me.

I set my bag on the floor near the door, approach, and take the offered glass. I don’t like straight whiskey but am willing to play along. They look so serious. They raise their glasses over the fifth, so I do the same.

“To Cole,” Wyatt says. “And to Evangeline.”

“Evy,” I say.

He nods. We drink. The whiskey scorches my throat and sears my stomach. My eyes water. Nasty.

We move on to other business, and the fifth whiskey glass remains untouched for the rest of the night.

10:30
A.M.

Kismet’s stomping footsteps preceded her by a good thirty seconds. She rounded the edge of the exam table’s pristine white curtain, eyes blazing as hot as her flaming hair. She stopped at the edge, took a moment to look me over—needlessly bandaged forearm, healing bruises on my face and shoulders from my tumble to the concrete—then laid into me.

“What the hell happened down there, Stone? Three cars destroyed, and now Truman’s in surgery?”

I flinched internally but was able to keep my expression neutral. “How many Halfies have you met who run around with grenades in their pockets?” And I wasn’t asking as sarcasm; the unexpected explosive had me thoroughly flummoxed.

“You’re lucky we were still upstairs, or you’d be trying to explain all that to hospital security.”

“Hey, I didn’t invite him to the party, Kismet; he was waiting. He knew where to find us.” I briefly filled her in on the Halfie’s familiarity and the few tidbits of
information he’d shared, all of which helped morph Kismet’s glare into puzzlement.

“Someone’s still trying to kill you,” she said.

I rolled my eyes. “Someone’s always trying to kill me. My problem with it is that this someone is using the same people the old someone was.”

“Are you certain you were the target?”

My mind shifted gears, spinning back to the first few moments after the explosion. On my back with Wyatt pinning me down. Smoke stinging my eyes, making it hard to breathe. Struggling to stay conscious. Losing the fight.

“No,” I said, an odd catch in my voice. I cleared my throat. Hard. “No, I’m not sure.”

Kismet took a few steps forward, moving within arm’s reach of the exam table. Her expression softened, less business and more friendly. “What has the doctor said?”

“Not much.” I glanced at the curtain, as if able to summon a doctor by that simple gesture. No one came. “If you like irony, you’ll love this. The knife I used to gut the Halfie was turned into shrapnel by the explosion. A piece of it got Wyatt square in the back, but I don’t know what it hit.”

“He’s come out of worse.”

I snorted. “Yeah, sure, he died and lived to tell about it. Too bad not everyone’s been so lucky.”

And once again, my thoughts circled back to Alex, and the part of me that was still Chalice nearly collapsed under her grief. My fingers found the delicate silver cross, undamaged by all it had been through. Luckier than its wearer. Worry for Wyatt combined
with grief, and a knot formed in my throat. I swallowed.

“About that,” Kismet said.

My head snapped up; she had my full attention. “About what?”

“Sooner or later, we’ll need to decide on a plan of action for Alex. I’m sure he has family, coworkers, friends, who will start to worry when he stops showing up.”

“If they haven’t already.” I didn’t know any of those things. Not consciously, at least. If Chalice knew his family and social circle intimately, her imprinted memories weren’t sharing the info. Another good reason to leave that apartment behind, before her pals and old boyfriends started showing up.

“Procedure is—”

I cut her off with a sharp wave of my hand. “I know what the fucking procedure is; you don’t have to remind me.” The idea of reporting Alex Forrester as a missing person, and then making sure the file found its way to the very bottom of the Department’s priority list, made my blood boil. He deserved better than being remembered as another case number.

“He’s not missing,” I said.

“His remains are gone, Stone. We couldn’t set his death up to look accidental if we wanted to, and the brass isn’t going to give me permission to exhaust manpower trying. Not with two Handlers out, a third of our Hunters dead, and now this PR nightmare with the Clans.”

“God forbid we give a shit about anyone else outside of the Triads.”

She bristled, hands balling into fists. “Look, Stone, I don’t know how this whole reincarnation thing has affected your judgment, but rein it in. Everything going on at this moment involves you in some way, shape, or form, and I need you focused on it. Not on someone who wasn’t even part of your life until three days ago and is no longer a part of it now. He is irrelevant. The job you have waiting for you is not, and no one else can do it but you.”

I wanted her words to bounce off and be forgotten, but they misbehaved by sinking in and making perfect sense. I hated that no one else could do my job, but she was right. I had promised Phineas, I had promised Rufus, and I couldn’t bear to let either of them down.

I slid off the exam table without a hint of wobble, not caring that the clothes I’d just changed into were stained and soiled. I stood toe to toe with Kismet, topping the petite Handler by several inches.

She didn’t back down, didn’t flinch, just stared right back at me and said, “You can hate me all you want for what I just said, if it helps. Sometimes our anger is the best fuel we have.”

“You get that advice from a fortune cookie?” I asked.

“No, from Wyatt, a long time ago when he was training me to be a Handler.”

I blinked. I hadn’t given the training of Handlers much thought, and even though I knew Wyatt had been around since the official formation of the Triads, the idea of him training Kismet was … well, weird.

“You’ve got to box it up,” she added.

“Trust me, if it was just me in here, I’d have no problem compartmentalizing all this until the crisis has passed. Unfortunately, I’ve got a lot of Chalice floating around fucking up my head, so it isn’t as simple as just shutting the door on it. I would if I could, because I’d function a hell of a lot better if I didn’t spend half my time worrying about Wyatt and mourning Alex.”

“It’s not easy when you love someone.”

The statement pushed me backward a few steps, giving us a cushion of air filled with discomfort and understanding. “Chalice loved him. I barely knew Alex,” I said.

“I meant Wyatt.”

I forced myself to remain quiet. It couldn’t be that obvious. Handlers weren’t supposed to form attachments to their Hunters, as it was their job to constantly order us into deadly situations. Hunters within Triads often grew close, even though we were warned against it. Romantic love wasn’t forbidden (as far as I knew), but if it existed between Hunters, it just wasn’t talked about.

And I wasn’t going to have that conversation with Gina Kismet. We’d exchanged more words in the last few hours than we ever had over the last four years, even on the few occasions our Triads had crossed paths. She’d always come across as rule-driven, deliberate, and—when not dealing directly with her own Hunters—cold. What the hell did she know about my relationship with Wyatt?

“No,” I said, “it’s not easy when you’re sharing your brain space with a ghost. That’s what’s not easy.”

She sighed, a heavy escape of air through her front teeth. She looked deflated. Less the woman in charge, almost a friendly face. “Whatever you say, Stone, but from one woman to another? It won’t work.”

I arched an eyebrow. “And what’s that?”

“Relationships between Handlers and Hunters. They don’t work. They never have.” The pain in her voice, absent from our conversation so far, struck me dumb. Her expression didn’t change; her posture remained at slight attention. Only the way she spoke, with authority on a guarded subject, exposed her anguish with alarming clarity. Authority born of personal experience with the topic. Had she had a relationship with one of her Hunters? Someone else’s Hunter?