The Given (18 page)

She swore it on her soul.

Justin scoffed again, though not as readily.

Kit didn't care if he believed her or not, because the beings she was really swearing this oath to, the angels, did. “The heavens owe me, Justin, and I won't hesitate to call down the wrath of the entire Host on your head.”

There was a short hesitation and then a long, drawn-out scoff. “And they say Zicaro is loony.”

Kit opened her mouth, snarled reply ready, but the line went dead and reply was no longer an option, and neither was swearing. And neither, she thought, was sleep.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

R
ecalling how lightly Grif slept, Kit was careful to make little noise as she tiptoed down the hall and then the stairwell, rounding the corner into the cozy living room only to confront a single table lamp glowing in the dark. She made out the figure curled in the armchair, and smiled wryly.

“Somehow I knew you'd be up,” she told Marin, taking a seat across from her.

“Funny, I was just going to say the same of you,” Marin answered, and motioned to the coffee table where a second glass of wine was already poured and waiting. Kit smiled as she took it, and felt steadied despite Justin's threatening call. Her aunt and she might not be on the best of terms, but there was comfort still in being known.

“Where's Amelia?” she asked, curling her feet up beneath her.

“She went home.”

“Because of us?” The apology was in Kit's voice.

“No.” Marin smiled. “She has to work tomorrow.”

Kit was again struck by how little she knew of her aunt's personal life. It thawed some of the anger she'd built up toward Marin these past many months. Her aunt had just been trying to protect her, and Kit may have done exactly the same thing in her place. Still, it was precisely because Marin did know Kit so well that she should have told her what she'd known.

She shouldn't have had to learn of it from a demon.

Marin Wilson lied to you.

Kit shuddered at the memory. Like their lofty brethren, demons could slip into the mortal world using the bodies of the very young or old, the weak or infirm. Marin had been in a drug-induced coma when this particular member of the Fallen had entered her body and rifled through her memories.

Kit sipped her wine, using the liquid strength to draw herself back to the present. Focusing on the past would do nothing for her. “What does Amelia do?”

“She's an ER doctor.”

“So she's a workaholic like you,” Kit said, nodding her head.

“She's worse,” admitted Marin, but the censure was muted.

“Is that even possible?” Kit teased, pleased that her aunt had found happiness, that she wasn't alone.

Not like Kit.

The realization lanced through her, and Kit took a long pull at her wineglass.

“You might be surprised at what's possible, Kit,” Marin said, watching her closely.

Kit snorted as she thought of the angelic human upstairs. “Try me.”

Marin looked down, her hands knotting. “For one, I've come to realize lately that there's more to life than just chasing down the next story. Such as creating stories, and a life, of your own.”

“I could have told you that,” Kit said softly.

“I think you tried,” Marin said, looking back up. Her chin wobbled. “I'm sorry, Kit. For hiding things from you, for trying to protect you from the truth. It's just, after your breakdown, after you were institutionalized—”

“I don't want to talk about that.” She wasn't that person anymore. She didn't even know who that was, which was comforting. You could actually become someone else in the same lifetime. Maybe it meant she wouldn't always be a silly mortal yearning for a brooding angel she could never have.

Marin held up a hand to let Kit know that wasn't her point, and that she agreed. “I simply didn't feel like I could risk it after you were released.”

“But I put myself back together.” And she'd do so again. She
was
doing it again. Proof? She wasn't up there banging down Grif's door.

“You did, didn't you?” Marin's gaze went distant as she remembered for herself, and after another moment she shook her head. “I've seen a lot of things in my day, but I swear, that was the gutsiest thing I ever did see. Yet somehow it made me want to protect you all the more. And then you started in with the rockabilly phase—”

“It's not a—”

“I know, it's a
lifestyle
. It's a way of life. And it's your armor.”

Kit jerked, but realized it was true. A coat of arms comprising crinoline and cat's-eye glasses. Half-moon manicures to paint over her vulnerabilities. Fears reined in by the discipline required of heels, in the exactness of a pencil skirt. Why hadn't she realized it before?

“I didn't understand that at first,” Marin said, talking faster, like she'd opened a spout and now couldn't turn it off. “But honestly, Kit, you're as tough a woman as I've ever seen. Tougher than me.” She glanced down again, and swallowed hard. “Tough like your mom.”

And the spout turned off. The relationship between Kit's mother—the flighty and aristocratic Shirley Wilson Craig—and Kit's aunt—the plain and steadfast younger sibling, Marin—was a rarely broached subject between them . . . and never initiated by Marin. But the hour was late—or early now—and they were drinking alone in the moonbeams. Besides, Marin seemed different, more open and vulnerable. Perhaps Kit wouldn't have recognized it without the distance of the past few months wedged between them, but she saw it now, like clouds parting to reveal the face of the moon.

“Do you know she used to lock me out of the house?” Marin said suddenly.

Kit knew Marin and her mother hadn't been bosom friends. She was starting to understand that the woman she loved then, and in memory, was not the only Shirley Craig that there was. That her mother, though fiercely loving and always supportive of Kit, had also been a bit of a bully. “No. I didn't know that.”

“Yeah, it was in retaliation for always getting As. For being better in track. For, I don't know, breathing.” Leaning forward, Marin over-poured another glass of wine, though she didn't drink it. “She stole my first boyfriend just to prove she could. Not that I was really that into him.”

They both chuckled, but Marin's smile fell almost immediately. “Sisters are weird that way. They can be each other's biggest champions while still being each other's biggest adversaries.” She shuddered, evidently remembering a different slight at the hands of her older sister, then shook her head clear of it. “She loomed over me like a giant shadow. I felt lesser, judged. I was nothing like her, and she let me know it.”

“I'm sorry,” Kit said. It wasn't at all the way she remembered her mother, but who could ever truly know another person? Last summer she'd actually been inside of Grif's thoughts—again, because of that malevolent demon—and she still didn't know the whole of him.

“I just want you to know that though I never had a child of my own, never intended to—”

“Until I was thrust upon you.”

“No.” Marin put her hand out, spine straightening. “No, you were a gift. One I never dared dream for myself. I felt this huge responsibility to care for you. You were all I had left, and vice versa, but in addition to grief, there was guilt. Because I had you and I knew she wouldn't have wanted me to. I hadn't earned you. You were hers.”

Kit had no idea what to say to that.

“I did what I thought best by you, and have ever since. But I complicated it,” Marin said, and Kit knew this was her way of apologizing.

Again, a memory shared by that demon seized her, though this one was Marin's. In it, her aunt was secreting away a file from a room Kit recognized, her father's study as it'd looked fourteen years earlier. And afterward? Marin had gently stroked Kit's forehead as she slept, and said, “It's for your own good.”

And that was why her father's murder, always suspicious, was now a cold case.

Kit glanced away. She loved Marin, she missed her, and even understood her . . . but she couldn't quite forgive her. Not yet. So instead of simply accepting the apology, she said, “It's not too late, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“To come clean. To tell me the truth about my dad's death.” Kit bit her lip. “And about the folder he sent you the day he died.”

Marin froze. “How do you know about that?”

A little demon told me
.

“I think the real question is, after everything you just said, why aren't you telling me about it now?”

Marin remained quiet.

“Let me make this a little easier on you,” Kit finally said, folding her hands together. “I know that my father sent you something, and I believe that something was the reason he was killed.”

It was the secret she'd been keeping from Grif, a nugget of information that she was hoarding for herself until she knew what to do about it . . . if anything at all.

“Now,” Kit said. “We can keep going down this path we've been on, with you professing to be sorry about the very thing you continue to do”—
lie
—“or you can tell me right now. What was in that folder?”

“Nothing.”

Kit shook her head. “I went back into the family archives and looked, Marin. I knew you wouldn't leave something so important undocumented. You annotated it. You cross-fucking-referenced it. There was something in that folder that made you suspect my dad's murder was more than a routine line-of-duty death.”

Marin's chin lifted. “And it looks like I was right to hide it, wasn't I?”

“Did it have anything to do with Barbara DiMartino?”

“You tell me.”

Kit stood, amazed. “Why are you stonewalling me on this?”

“Because in addition to putting up with your mother's shit, I swore to her that I'd keep you safe.” Marin's softness had disappeared and now she only glared. “And I'm keeping that promise, Kit. Even if it means protecting you from yourself.”

“He was murdered right after he left Sal DiMartino's house,” Kit said, glaring back. “Did you really think I wasn't going to put it together? That I wouldn't find out?”

Marin just shook her head. “Some things are best left buried.”

“Like the DiMartinos? Like their feud with the Salernos?”

Like mysteries that spanned fifty whole years?

Marin just sat on her sofa, looking suddenly small . . . but resolute. She wasn't going to speak.

Kit whirled away so fast she felt dizzy. “Fine. I'll figure it out myself. I'll also be out of your hair”—unspoken was, out of your
life—
“first thing in the morning.”

“Leave it alone, Kit,” Marin called from behind her.

“Oh, Marin.” Kit just shook her head, pausing with one hand on the doorjamb. “It's like you don't even know me at all.”

G
rif moved in and out of his dreams like a fish swimming from light into shadows. Therefore his sleep was similarly clouded, and he woke late with a dry mouth and a pulsing behind his eyes. Already dressed, he headed downstairs to remedy both, and found Marin and Kit seated across from each other at the long dining-room table. Marin's laptop was open between them, but the wedge of space that separated the women was made greater by their matching postures—stiff and straight, legs crossed so their bodies formed a V. Neither woman looked up as Grif headed to the kitchen, where he found Zicaro nibbling toast and perusing a stack of printouts over the top of his bifocals.

“It feels good to be on the beat again!” Zicaro said, voice too loud.

Grif motioned for Zicaro to turn up his hearing aid, then looked at him as he poured some coffee. “They put you to work?”

Zicaro nodded, and Grif's gut automatically clenched. His inclination was to tuck people away somewhere safe while he pounded the pavement and did the heavy lifting. But Zicaro was nearly shaking with excitement as he showed Grif a printout of the Paris casino floor. Grif began to shake, too, when the old-timer went on to tell him about Kit's midnight call and the threat to Marin's life.

He hid his frown behind his mug. There was a time when Kit wouldn't have hesitated to come to him first with a problem, even in the middle of the night. He knew he no longer had a right to expect it, yet he still wished she had, and not merely out of pride. Grif was already running out of time. It was now Monday, the original day on which Kit was scheduled to die, and though he believed his actions the previous day had altered that fate, he wasn't taking any chances.

Besides, he hadn't forgotten about Donel's prophecy.

Lifting his large mug of coffee, he rejoined the women in the dining room.

“How did you first find out about Sunset?” Marin asked, without preamble and without looking up, as Grif pulled out a chair.

“
I
found it,” boasted Zicaro, rolling in, toast balanced on his knees.

Grif helped him to the table and settled his papers before him, but pointed out, “No, you didn't. You just happened to be living there when Justin Allen and company took over.” He turned back to Marin. “Why? What'd you find?”

“Wait till you see,” Kit said, finally looking up. She was already made up for the day, face powdered, eyes lined, dark hair pinned in front, the back tucked inside a crimson snood. He knew she always kept a change of clothes in the car, so didn't wonder at that, but what had his breath catching in his chest was the excitement that brimmed beneath all that gloss.

Eyes shining, she motioned him over, her mouth curling up at one corner, a nearly forgotten look. It slid into his heart like a splinter, and he tried to forget it again as he sauntered over to stand behind her. She was just excited; the look wasn't meant for him.