Deadtown (23 page)

“ ‘If we handle this correctly.’ By
we
, you mean
me
. And I’m not going to do it.” Maybe I could get away with pure stubbornness as my excuse. Kane spent enough time complaining about that facet of my personality.

But he changed tack. “This could be great for your business, you know. Think of all the publicity. We can make sure that they introduce you as a professional demon exterminator. You’ll have clients coming out of the woodwork.”

“The demons are the things that come out of the woodwork.” He didn’t smile. “It’s
because
of business that I won’t do it.”

He didn’t say anything, just raised an eyebrow, so I continued. “I’m on a long-term assignment. It’s good money, and it requires some . . .” What was the word I wanted? Got it: “Some
discretion
. It would cause problems for my client if I started doing these interviews you want me to do.”

“Why?”

The water was getting cold. Goose bumps rose along my skin, and I wanted more than ever to get out of the damn tub. I’d had enough of this argument. I wasn’t going to play politics for Kane, and I wasn’t going to stay trapped in this cooling, dirty water. I also wasn’t going to sugarcoat anything for him. So I just said it: “Because the client is Frank Lucado, okay?”

Kane closed his eyes and gave his head a shake, as though he was the one with water in his ears. “But you finished your job for that blood bag. If you’re worried he’ll stop payment on his check—”

“I killed his Harpies, yeah, but I left the guy in a bad position. Thanks to me, he’s got a Hellion stalking him and no bodyguard.” My mind flashed on the image of Wendy, Lucado’s big, scary bodyguard, passed out on the floor. “I agreed to be his nighttime bodyguard.”

“You’re going to be Frank Lucado’s bodyguard.” Kane repeated the words slowly, like he had to say them out loud to understand them. “Let me get this straight. I tell you I wouldn’t mind seeing the guy dead, and the first thing you do is run over there and offer to protect him.” He turned and slapped the wall, hard; the water in the bathtub rippled. “Of all the rich assholes in Boston, why pick him? Why not Baldwin himself?”

I tried to defuse the situation with a lame joke. “Lucado made me an offer I couldn’t refuse?”

Kane didn’t crack a smile. He didn’t even bother to roll his eyes. Instead, he focused on me with a laser-beam gaze. Now it wasn’t the bath water giving me goose bumps; his stare was frightening. “You did it to hurt me,” he said. “There can’t be any other reason. You know how important this election is to me, and you just don’t give a damn. You don’t give a damn about me, and you don’t give a damn about Boston’s PAs. You don’t give a damn about anybody besides yourself.” He slapped the wall again, then wheeled around and stormed out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

Before I could reach for a towel, the door flew open and he stormed right back in. “No, I take that back. You don’t give a damn about yourself, either. You’re not one of them, Vicky; you’re one of us. If PAs are outlawed in Massachusetts, that includes you.” His eyes narrowed. “Unless you’re planning to become a brood mare like your sister.”

“A brood mare!” That was too much. “Don’t you dare say that about Gwen. I don’t agree with some of her choices, but that’s no reason to insult her.” I wished I had something to throw at him, but somehow a handful of bubbles wouldn’t make the statement I was going for, so I shot him my fiercest glare instead. “Don’t you tell me who I do or don’t care about, Mr. Big-shot Werewolf Lawyer. You don’t know why I took the job. You weren’t there, and you won’t shut up long enough to let me explain.”

He folded his arms and squinted at me. “So explain.”

“Hand me a towel first.”

He growled, but he snatched a towel from the rack and flung it toward the tub. I barely managed to catch it before it hit the water. I spread the towel wide, making a curtain, then stood. I wrapped the towel around myself, tucking in the end, then took another from the rack and twisted it around my head in a turban. Kane drummed his fingers impatiently on the sink.

Wearing a towel was only marginally better than being in the tub, but at least I wasn’t lying down. I turned to face Kane, eye to eye. “You may not care whether the Destroyer comes back and kills Lucado,” I said, “but I do. I don’t leave my clients in danger.”

“You already said that. If that’s the only—”

“No, it’s not the only reason. I’m going to kill that Hellion, Kane. No matter what else happens, I’m going to obliterate that thing from the face of the earth. It knows Lucado; it’s been to his condo. The Destroyer is not one to let a victim go. Once it fastens on someone, it won’t rest until it destroys him.” For a moment, I saw my father, writhing on the floor of Aunt Mab’s library. I pushed the image away. “Last night, the Destroyer’s master called it away. But it’ll be back. Sticking close to Lucado is my best chance to find it.”

“Bullshit. You’ve got this perverse streak in you that makes you want to go against what’s right.”

“Keeping my client alive is what’s right. Killing the Destroyer is right.” I took a deep breath to calm my suddenly pounding heart. “Avenging my father’s murder is right.”

“I’ll tell you what’s right.” He opened his mouth, then closed it, shaking his head. “Why bother? You don’t know or care about what’s right, Vicky. You never have.” He stalked out of the room. And this time, he didn’t come back.

SLEEP WOULDN’T COME. HOW CAN IT BE THAT ONE MINUTE you’re so exhausted you can hardly see your way to bed, and then the next minute, as soon as you hit the sheets, you’re wide awake? The more I thought “I need to sleep,” the wider awake I became. Kane’s angry stare. Kane slamming the door. I wished we hadn’t argued. But he expected too much. He had no right—none—to tell me who I could work for or what my politics should be.

Sighing, I turned on my side. The room was cold, but I was sweating, comforters pushed aside, the sheet twisted around me in damp coils. I turned over my pillow to find a cool spot, punching it into shape. I punched it again, and then again, harder. Hitting felt good. My right forearm twitched; the demon mark was fiery red, feverish. Now I knew why I felt so hot, and why I wanted so badly to hit something. The urge was like a desperate itch that needed hard, vigorous scratching
right now
, and who cared if you scratched yourself bloody? Hitting wouldn’t be enough. If I let myself, I’d tear the whole bedroom apart.

I flopped over onto my back again and stared at the ceiling, willing myself to lie still until the urge subsided. Gradually, it did. Gray light struggled through the blinds, making everything look flat and dull. A dusty, abandoned cobweb hung down where the ceiling met the wall, stirring with air currents I couldn’t feel.

You don’t know or care about what’s right,
Kane had said. He didn’t understand. How could he? As a lone wolf,
un solitaire
in the tradition of his French-Canadian pack, he’d left his family group to strike out on his own. It had been his choice to leave behind his father and mother, his brothers and sisters, to pursue his work. It was different for me. I hadn’t left my family; they’d left me. When Gwen married Nick, she was rejecting our Cerddorion heritage to become as human as she could. My father died—no leaving was more final than that. After his death, my mother took off for a retirement community in Florida. In her view, Florida was perfect because everyone there had left the past behind, along with the snow, the kids, the careers they’d retired from. Nobody cared about your past there, she said; everyone was living for the moment.

What the hell was so great about living for the moment? What about honoring the past? What about holding on to those things you could touch only in memories? I shifted my gaze to my dresser, to the dim outline of a rectangular frame that sat there. I didn’t need light to see the photo it held. My father and I stood on a Welsh hillside, wind blowing our hair across our faces, our arms draped across each other’s shoulders. I was smiling; my father’s mouth was half open. “Hurry up, Mab!” he’d said. “Snap the picture before this wind blows us into the valley.” The photo was taken the day before he died. Now, my father, like that moment, belonged to the past. I’d never feel his arm on my shoulders, never hear his voice. Only in memories—my memories. They were all that kept him alive.

Nothing would make me give him up. Nothing. Not even Kane, so devoted to his cause that he’d sacrifice anything for it. I wondered if that included me.

I’d told Kane, but he didn’t get it. I was going to kill Difethwr to avenge my father’s death. That was my cause.

17

AFTER A COUPLE OF HOURS OF TOSSING AND TURNING, I gave up and got out of bed. The wood floor felt chilly on my bare feet as I walked down the hall to the living room. The oversize Harvard T-shirt I wore wasn’t exactly warm, so I stopped in the bathroom to grab my terry cloth robe. In the living room, I sat on the sofa, tucking my feet under me, and picked up the phone. I had to call the garage to come and tow the Jag, then fix whatever was wrong with it.

A stutter tone sounded on the line, indicating voice mail. Maybe Kane had called to apologize, I thought. After I’d called the garage, I punched in the access code, knowing as I did so that any message from Kane would not hold an apology.

“You have twenty-seven new messages,” a computerized female voice chirped. Oh, goody. I picked up a pen and a pad of paper and started going through them. Twenty-four were reporters requesting interviews; I deleted all of those. Nothing from Kane. Only three were worth returning: one from Daniel, one from Gwen, and one from a possible new client. I wouldn’t be able to take on any more clients while I was working for Lucado, but I’d call her back anyway. If her infestation wasn’t too bad, I might be able to put her off for a week.

I called Gwen first, maybe because I’d been thinking about family instead of sleeping. Or maybe because I still wasn’t sure what to do about the stomach flutter I’d felt when I heard Daniel’s voice. Gwen answered on the second ring. I could hear one of the kids, probably little Justin, crying in the background.

“Bad time?” I asked.

“Give me a minute. Can you hang on or should I call you back?”

“I’ll hang on.”

She put down the phone, and I could hear her soothing the crying child. Gwen was a good mother. And being a mother was good for her. It wasn’t the choice I’d have made, but then, her life wasn’t about me. Maybe Mom had been right. Maybe my sister’s longing for children had been less about rejecting what we were and more about giving herself something she needed.

I hadn’t gotten very far with that line of thought when Gwen came back on the phone. “Sorry,” she said. “I was making pumpkin cookies for the neighborhood Halloween party. The minute I turned my back to answer the phone, Justin managed to pull the mixing bowl off the counter and onto his head. What a mess.”

“Is he okay?”

“He’s fine. Just covered with cookie dough. He wants to say hi to you.” A second later, Justin’s voice said, “Hello?”

“Hi, kiddo. Do you know who this is?”

Silence. I pictured him shaking his head.

“This is your Aunt Vicky.”

“Aunt Vicky?” More silence.

Pretty good phone skills for a two-year-old. “Can you put Mommy back on?” I could hear him breathing, with those thick breaths that follow a child’s crying bout. “Give Mommy the phone now, Justin, okay?” No response. How did you make a toddler give up the phone? I had an idea. “Say bye-bye now, Justin.”

“Bye-bye!” he shouted. I was right—he’d been waiting for his exit line. Hey, I wasn’t so bad with kids myself. At a distance, of course.

Gwen got back on the line. “Ugh,” she said. “The handset is all sticky with cookie dough. Not to mention my entire kitchen.” She sighed. “I guess our homemade Halloween cookies will be the kind you get at the bakery.”

“Speaking of Halloween, did you work things out with Maria? About her costume?”

Gwen sighed. “How on earth did you manage to get on television, Vic? Now that you’re a celebrity, there’s no way Maria’s giving up that costume. She’s told everyone in the neighborhood you’re her aunt.” The line hissed as she caught her breath. “Not that that’s a bad thing. You know I don’t mean that. It’s just—”

“Don’t worry, Gwen. I know what you mean.” And part of what she meant, even though she’d never admit it to my face, was that she’d rather the neighbors didn’t know her sister was a monster who jumped into interspecies bar fights. Oh, well. I loved her anyway. “Hopefully CNN will get sick of that story soon. Kane tried to sign me up for a truckload of interviews, but I’m not doing any. Once they get tired of playing that damn tape, I’ll be off the air for good.”

“Good. Uh, good for you, I mean. It must be awful to have reporters hounding you.”

“It’s a pain, yeah, but they’ll give up sooner or later. It’s a good thing most norms are too scared to venture into Deadtown. Otherwise I’d have reporters camped out on my doorstep. But who wants a campsite crawling with zombies, right?”