Flesh Circus (25 page)

I keyed the code into the climate-control pad and slid the glass panel aside. A few items Galina keeps for me; I learned my
lesson when that Sorrows bitch stole Mikhail’s talisman and rifled all his personal stuff. But the papers are here. All the
salvageable vitals on the hunters of my lineage, down from the first and second Jack Karmas. Before the first Jack, we don’t
know anything.

This isn’t the kind of career that lends itself to leaving evidence in the historical record. The day world, the real world,
doesn’t want to know. Hunters sometimes rely on sheer outrageousness to slide by unnoticed. A regular civilian’s reaction
to a genuine paranormal event is usually screaming and running in the other direction.

Emerson Sloane’s files were very thin. The big Santa Luz fire of 1938 had eaten most of the records he’d left, one way or
another. A bare triple-handful of manila folders labeled in a round Palmer script, some with notations in Mikhail’s broad
firm hand with its Cyrillic notations followed by English translations.

I flipped through them. About twenty had no connection to anything remotely resembling the current clusterfuck we were looking
at. My pager went off; I dug in my pocket and pulled out the other thirteen files that looked promising.

I gave my pager a cursory glance. It was the Badger. Maybe she had something for me.

“Do you still want me?” The words just burst out of Saul and hung in midair.

It was like being punched in the gut. I sucked in dust and paper-laden air. The dead quiet of the bookstore closed around
the sound, and my hands went nerveless for about half a second. I almost dropped the files.

“Of course I do,” I told the hole in the floor. “I always have. What the fuck?”

“My family’s gone.” It was a simple statement of fact. “My mother’s dead. Billy Ironside killed my sister. My mother’s sisters
are… well, I’m not theirs. They have their own cubs. If I didn’t have a mate, it’d be different. But…”

“But there’s me. And I’m not a Were.” There it was, half the dysfunction in our relationship laid out in plain words. The
other half didn’t need to be spoken.
I’m tainted. I’ve got a hellbreed mark on my wrist and a serious rage problem. I’m not a nice person, Saul. I’m not even a
good
person, despite your thinking so. I’m a hunter. End of story.

“I don’t care what you are,” he answered quietly. “You need me, Jill. You’d kill yourself over this if someone wasn’t reminding
you…”

“Reminding me of what?” I flipped through the first file, scanned it. No connection. The second, too. My eyes were hot and
grainy, and I was hoping I wouldn’t miss anything. My heart was a lump in my throat, the words had to squeeze around it.

Five little words. “That you’re worth a damn.”

Mikhail was the only man who ever thought I was worth a damn,
I’d told him once.

Not the only one,
he’d told me later. Tit for tat, we were even, except we weren’t.

We would never be even. Not while I was still breathing. Only it wasn’t the kind of debt you could repay, or even anything
that could be called a debt at all.

I didn’t know what it was, except maybe love. Or something so huge it could swallow me, something that terrified me when I
thought he might not want
me
anymore. Mischa thought I was worth plucking out of a snowdrift and training, but he left me behind. I wasn’t worth enough
for him to stay. And that little voice inside my head, buried under a hunter’s iron.

You’re not worth anything. You’re ugly. Too ugly for anyone to love.
Even my mother, the bitch, had said so.

And, I mean, come on. Just look at the man. Even gaunt and grieving, he was Native American calendar beefcake, broad-shouldered
and dark-eyed.

Who wouldn’t want him? Who wouldn’t feel their breath catch every time he looked their way?

The third file fell open under my numb fingers. I blinked back hot water and what felt like rocks in my eyes. The little tingle
of intuition ran up my arms and exploded under my breastbone. A puzzle piece fell into place with a click so loud I was surprised
it didn’t knock over a few books.

“Holy shit,” I breathed.

There, clipped to the inside of a folder probably older than I was, a singed, faded black-and-white photo glared at me. Saul
approached, but I kept staring.

The jaw was the same. So was the blond hair, the sculpted lips, and the straight thick eyebrows. And the glint of gold around
the teeth. And the bad skin, but underneath that…

All this time I’d thought she was just an ugly woman. Funny how beauty mutates according to expectation.

My Were bent down, and his warmth touched my back. “Huh.” The faint ghost of zombie clinging to us both faded under the good
smell of him, male and fur. “Is it Zamba’s brother?”

“I think it’s Zamba.” I moved my hand so he could see what Sloane had written on the mat, the fountain pen marks digging hurriedly
into the yellowing fibers.

Arthur Gregory, missing, presumed dead.
I flipped the file closed. “Jesus.”

“Huh. She didn’t
smell
male.”

“It can’t just be a coincidence.” I handed him the file and leaned forward, jammed the others back in vaguely where they went.
“Right under my goddamn nose all the goddamn time. I
hate
that.”

It took under a minute to get the vault closed up. I tugged the carpet square back over the cover and smoothed it down, turned
sharply to find Saul just standing there, a line between his dark eyebrows, staring at me.

The urgency of a case heating up bit me sharply, right in the conscience.
Goddammit, can’t this wait?

But no, it couldn’t. I braced myself and met the problem head-on. “Don’t worry about me.” There it was again—that sharp tone,
the grating whine underneath it. “I did this job before you came along, Saul. If you’re aching to get back to the Rez, you
can go. I wouldn’t hold it against you. God knows nobody else has ever been able to fucking put up with me.”

Jesus. I meant to say something gentler. Like
I love you, don’t leave me.
Or even just,
I need you too much. I don’t care.

I
did,
though. I cared that the dark circles under his eyes were getting bigger, that his ribs were standing out sharply, and that
his shoulders were hunched. Those were only the first few things in the long list of things I cared about when it came to
him. It all boiled down to him maybe not wanting to keep banging his head on the steel wall I couldn’t figure out how to drop.
The place in me where I’d been broken and remade, beaten until I turned strong. I’d figured he knew the way through the wall
without my having to tell him. It was there every time I woke up next to him and my heart hurt because he was next to me,
warm and breathing.

Because he
knew
me.

“Do you want me to?” His mouth pulled down at the corners, bitterly. “What did I do?”

Huh?
I searched for a handle on my temper, didn’t find one. The rock in my throat turned into sharp ice edges. “You? You didn’t
do anything, goddammit. If you’re trying to figure out how to gracefully get rid of me, Saul, don’t worry about it. It’s okay.”

I was lying. It wasn’t anywhere near okay. But I would say it was. For him.

“Jill…” He made a helpless motion just as my pager buzzed again. “I’m sorry.”

I had a sudden, violent urge to grab my pager, throw it across the room, and shoot the motherfucker for good measure. “Don’t
be sorry. Look, I know something’s wrong. It’s been wrong since you came back.
I’m
sorry. I should have known it was too good to be true.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” There it was, a spark of anger. It was a relief—when he was angry, the twenty-pounds-underweight-and-unhappy-too
wasn’t so visible.

I grabbed the file. He didn’t resist. “You don’t have to make any excuses to me,” I informed him. “No promises, no deals,
no bargains. You said that the very first night. If you can’t stand me anymore, it’s okay. I expected it. Just go ahead and
go. Find a nice tabby and raise a litter or three. God knows you’re domestic enough.”

“Are you
insane?
”

Holy hell and hallelujah. He’d actually
shouted
at me. No more moping; he was now officially pissed off.

I closed my eyes, the massive mental effort needed to think clearly dragging at every inch of my body. The shaking had me
in its jaws and wouldn’t let go.

Zamba, Arthur Gregory. Some kind of beef with the Cirque, and his brother? Who knows? He found a bargain somewhere—probably
voodoo. And the Twins, they specialize in androgyny. It would make sense, it would make a whole lot of sense.

He went to Lorelei, Lorelei brokered a deal. Now that the Cirque is back, Lorelei was a liability, and her death would serve
as fuel, and payment for the
loa
too. As well as the deaths of Zamba’s inner circle. The possessions could be aftershocks or for some other part of Zamba’s
plan.

And once the possessed had died inside their violated bodies, they were easy meat for reanimation,
and
payment for the
loa.
Zamba was mortgaging herself to the hilt for this, whatever it was. Revenge?

Probably.

There were things I had to do. I opened my eyes, found I was staring at the ceiling. The acoustic tiles all but vibrated until
I realized my goddamn eyes had fucking flooded. I couldn’t blame it on the dust in the air. Everything shimmered as I blinked,
trying to get them to reabsorb the water. “I’m not crazy. I’m just saying that if you can’t bring yourself to touch me anymore,
something’s obviously very wrong. You’re torn up over your mother, I know. I
understand.
But don’t kill yourself staying with me because you think you have to. If you have to cut me loose and go back to the Rez,
if this isn’t what you need or want, you’re free as a fucking bird. I can’t keep you, Saul. I
won’t
keep you.”

My pager quit buzzing. I tipped my chin back down and got a good look at him.

Saul stared at me as if I had indeed lost my mind. His mouth opened, then closed. I clutched the file to my chest like a schoolgirl
with her books.

“I’ve got to go,” I finally said. It sounded very small in the stillness. “I’ve got to figure the rest of this out. Any moment
now it could blow sky-high.” Knowing pretty much who I was dealing with gave me more to work with. The other big question—
why
—could be attacked now, and wrestled to the ground. Not to mention pistol-whipped and shot, if the occasion called for it.

I was so tired it didn’t even sound like a relief.

“Jill—” Saul had finally found his voice.

If he was going to tell me that he wanted to go back to the Rez, I was going to start screaming. I couldn’t afford to lose
it now.

People were counting on me. A whole city full of them. My people, in my city.

“Save it.” The words were a harsh croak. “Do what you’re gonna do, Saul. If you’re going to leave me in the dust, make it
quick and clean. If you ever loved me, do it that way. Don’t drag it out.”

I stamped past him, every string in my body aching to stop and touch him, throw my arms around him, and maybe engage in some
undignified begging. Screw the entire city, screw
everything.
I didn’t care as long as he stayed with me. As long as there was a
chance.

But. One teensy-tiny little
but.

I’m a hunter. It’s that simple.

If Zamba-Arthur or whoever it was kept killing Cirque performers, things were going to get sticky. There’s very little a really
motivated voodoo queen can’t do to you, and she’d already hit the hostage, too. Perry was there, but if she found some way
past him—or if he decided it was too much trouble and some chaos served his ends—well, it would be party time for the entire
Cirque
and
I’d have Perry and a renegade fucking voodoo queen to deal with.

Big fun.

It meant a lot of innocent people dead or maimed. It meant hellbreed thinking they could slip the leash and make trouble in
my town. It meant years of steady work keeping things under control wasted.

It meant more victims.

And there was just no fucking way I was going to stand for that.

No matter
what
I stood to lose.

W
hen the Badger gets her teeth in something, she doesn’t let go. “It was a job and a half to find out who holds title to that
goddamn house.” Behind her, another phone rang, and I heard Sullivan’s big voice raised. He was probably cussing at his coffee.
The way Homicide bitches about the coffee, you’d think someone would have brought in some decent beans by now.

Other than that, it sounded like a cubicle farm on speed. Which is to say, a usual morning in Homicide.

“Huh.” I closed my eyes. It was easier that way, with the outside world shut out. “In what way?”

“I had to go rousting.” She sounded almost indignant. “It wasn’t in the usual databases. I had to go down to the tax assessor’s
office, they sent me to some goddamn basement. Had to pull records from 1930, can you believe that? They haven’t got around
to putting that slice of the city in the databases, he said. Weird, since every other district is.”