Only Ashes Remain

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Only Ashes Remain Page 24

by Rebecca Schaeffer


  Henry pursed his lips. “I was dismissive of your rules. I never understood their purpose. When you refused to torture Matt, I was furious.” He scowled. “But having seen what happens with someone that has no compunctions, I’ve found that I rather appreciated a zannie with some morals, no matter how withered.”

  Kovit stared, then bowed his head, hair falling into his eyes.

  Henry leaned forward. “I miss you. I miss the fun we had. No one will ever accept you the way I do.” He put his hand on Kovit’s shoulder. “Come home.”

  Kovit looked up and met Henry’s eyes.

  And Nita knew.

  He wasn’t going to give the signal to shoot Henry.

  It didn’t matter if Henry didn’t budge or wasn’t going to take back his threat. Even if Kovit couldn’t talk him down, he wasn’t going to let him die. Henry’s hold on him was too strong.

  Watching the two of them, the way Kovit stared at Henry, mouth opening and closing, searching for an answer, a new, slick fear coiled in the pit of her stomach.

  What if Kovit went back?

  The idea of being alone didn’t bother her. Nita could and would handle herself if she needed to. But the thought of losing Kovit, of having him turn away from her because she couldn’t handle him and he wanted someone who could, made her sick.

  Nita’s eyes narrowed and her fingers clenched tighter on the gun.

  No. She wouldn’t let Henry con him back. Kovit would go back only to end up dead for misbehaving again. Hell, it might even be a trap to quietly lure him somewhere to kill him.

  Kovit still hadn’t answered Henry. He was looking at the floor.

  Henry gently squeezed Kovit’s shoulder. “Please, Kovit, come home. I’m man enough to acknowledge I made a mistake. It won’t happen again.”

  Kovit didn’t shake off the hand still resting on his shoulder, and Nita’s fingers trembled. He was thinking about it.

  “Come home,” Henry whispered again, leaning close.

  Kovit closed his eyes softly and bowed his head, strands of hair falling in his face. He didn’t look at Nita at all, didn’t acknowledge her presence in the slightest.

  Then he looked up, met Henry’s eyes, and said, “Okay. I’ll come home.”

  Thirty-Eight

  NO.

  Nita stared across the room, mouth open slightly.

  Henry clapped Kovit on the shoulder. “Excellent!” He rose from his seat and pulled Kovit to his feet. “I have so much to show you. I’ve been experimenting with boric acid, you’re going to love it.”

  Nita had to stop this. She couldn’t let him be conned back. Her fingers tightened on the gun, and she pulled it halfway out.

  Then she stopped.

  She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t kill Henry.

  Oh, physically she could. She could pull her gun out and unleash chaos in the Starbucks. Shattered glass and blood in lattes.

  But Kovit would never forgive her.

  Hadn’t he said that Henry was like his adoptive father? Kovit couldn’t kill him, and he couldn’t let him die. Kovit would never forgive her if she murdered someone he cared about. Even if it was for his own good.

  But he wouldn’t see it that way. He’d see it as her trying to control his life. If she killed Henry against Kovit’s wishes, she had no more respect for his rules and boundaries than Henry did.

  Her fingers loosened on her gun. There was nothing she could do.

  Henry tugged Kovit away. Kovit’s head was bowed, hair falling in his face, and his shoulders slumped. He looked back, just once, and met Nita’s eyes. His were sad, dark, and heavy lashed, and his gaze skittered away from her.

  He looked down, and Nita’s phone buzzed.

  I’m sorry, read the message. It’s for the best.

  Then he was gone.

  The door clanked shut after him, and Nita rose and took a step forward, as though to chase him, before she stopped.

  He didn’t look back.

  She slowly sank to her knees, the tears in the corners of her eyes finally coalescing and slipping down her cheeks as his figure vanished down the street.

  Customers streamed in and out of the door, and baristas screamed out orders. It was all a buzz of noise of movement. Nita stared through it vacantly, after the vanished silhouette of a broken monster.

  She swallowed, trying to understand why he’d done it. Why he’d let Henry con him back. Kovit had always been so adamant about his desire to leave, to get away, as long as she’d known him. He had so much he wanted to do out here in the real world.

  Her heart sank as understanding bloomed. He’d done it all. And it had left him worse off.

  He’d wanted to meet his internet friends, only to find out that in person he couldn’t handle being around them. He’d wanted to find his sister, only to realize that she was an INHUP agent, he’d probably tortured and murdered her friend, and she’d surely arrest him if they ever met.

  And Nita, who was supposed to be on his side, couldn’t hide her terror of him.

  Guilt swirled in her stomach, making her nauseous. Because she knew the role she’d played in this.

  But at the same time, a small part of her wondered if this was such a bad thing. No matter how much Nita wanted to, she wasn’t able to ignore the monster in him—no, that was wrong. She was able to, but she didn’t want to.

  Maybe it was better that they part ways.

  Why had they started working together in the first place? In Peru, it had been desperation. They needed each other to survive. Nita would have worked with the devil himself to escape. Sometimes she thought she had.

  But here? In Toronto?

  She could work with anyone or no one. She wasn’t trapped or isolated. Neither was he. Why had they teamed up again?

  Nita gazed vacantly at a coffee tumbler covered in stylized trees as her mind stumbled for answers. University students with backpacks swarmed from a subway station into the line, gasping for coffee, and she watched them for a few minutes, her eyes lingering on the textbooks peeking out from holes in their bags.

  She wished she were them. She wished she could live that life, that she could go to school like them and study unnatural biology. Become an expert in her field. Go to conferences. Live her life the way she wanted, without the black market looming over her, waiting for an opportunity to capture her and take her apart. Make her just another face on a missing persons poster like the three she’d seen earlier today.

  How had she managed to screw it up so terribly?

  She’d spent the morning murdering an INHUP agent and trying to pretend that his screams didn’t bother her, and now here she was pathetically wishing the monster who’d tortured him hadn’t left her?

  She remembered when Kovit had shown up, fresh from the disastrous meeting with his internet friends. She felt like she understood why he’d come to her. He was alone for the first time in his life, and he was lost. His “normal” friends weren’t accepting, but he didn’t want to go back to the mafia. She was the only other option he knew.

  And Nita? Wasn’t she just the same? She was alone for the first time, and rather than running off and proving to her mother and the world that she wasn’t bothered by being alone, that she could take care of herself, she’d gone and clung to the person who appeared and offered help.

  They were using each other to stopgap their own isolation and figure out their messed-up, broken lives.

  It was pathetic.

  Nita clenched her teeth, even as the yawning, gaping hole inside her expanded.

  She didn’t need Kovit. She could kill Fabricio perfectly well all by herself.

  She continued to tell herself that, even as small tears trickled down her face like scars.

  Thirty-Nine

  NITA MADE HER WAY back to Adair’s place on the subway. She sat silent and stiff, trying to pretend that Kovit’s departure didn’t affect her. She didn’t need him. She wasn’t even sure she wanted him.

  She needed to focus on the important thin
gs: finding a way to catch and kill Fabricio. She also needed a more reliable source of money than a dead man’s credit card, which was probably flagged, and some still unconverted cryptocurrency, because Adair was going to kick her out eventually.

  But her mind wouldn’t focus, ideas skittering around and dying before they even fully formed.

  The pawnshop was closed when she got back, but Adair was lounging behind the counter, texting on his phone. He looked up when she returned and raised his eyebrows.

  “You look wretched.”

  “Thanks.” She sighed, rubbing her temples. She needed to stop thinking about Kovit and focus on her other problems. “Have you found anything out about the vampire?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that I don’t have a name.” His smile flickered, needle-sharp teeth showing for an instant. “But I did find something else.”

  Nita let curiosity pull her forward. “What?”

  “Your father’s murder case has been classified by INHUP. Only the highest level can access information on it.”

  Nita frowned. “Why would they classify it?”

  “Because there’s something sensitive in there. Something important, or connected to something important.” Adair shrugged. “It could be your father, his killer, the motive, even the place where it happened. Without having access to the file, there’s no way to know.” His eyes were alight. “It’s very intriguing.”

  What in the world about her father’s murder could be classified? Had they found out what he did? No, if that were the case, Quispe would have had some very different questions for Nita when she went to INHUP. Likely, it was related to his killer, who mysteriously wasn’t publicized on the list.

  “Can you get access to the file?” Nita asked.

  “I don’t have that kind of pull. We’d need to be talking to the director of INHUP for that.”

  Nita sighed. Stalled again. Nothing was going right.

  “I believe you owe me a username now.”

  “Why? You didn’t get anything. I don’t have anything but more questions.”

  He considered her for a long moment and then nodded, just once. “I’ll keep looking.”

  She gave him a ghost of a smile. “Thanks.”

  They were both quiet, the silence only broken by the soft clink as Adair brushed past an old tea set and the faint hum of a fan somewhere in the building.

  Finally, Adair asked, “Where’s Kovit?”

  Nita swallowed, hating the sudden pain that bloomed in her chest. “He went back to the Family.”

  Adair’s eyebrows rose. “Oh?”

  Nita looked away. “They were blackmailing him. He didn’t have a choice.”

  “There’s always a choice. It’s just that sometimes one choice is worse than another,” Adair murmured. He looked at her with narrowed eyes that flickered between swamp green and yellow. “But I’m surprised he left you.”

  Nita shrugged, but didn’t respond.

  “Trouble in paradise?” A thin, crafty smile curled Adair’s features. “Perhaps having to do with the body I got earlier today. It had clearly been . . . appreciated.”

  Nita flinched.

  “Ah.” Adair leaned forward over the counter. “I thought so. Don’t like Kovit’s more extreme tendencies, do you?”

  “I don’t think many people do.”

  “No, I imagine not.” Adair put his chin in his hand. “And yet he still chooses that, despite how it isolates him.”

  “He can’t choose to not eat.”

  “But he could choose how.”

  Nita bowed her head. She’d thought that many times before too. “I know.”

  Adair tapped a finger on his counter. “Have you ever thought about how Kovit would behave if zannies weren’t on the Dangerous Unnaturals List?”

  Nita blinked. “Not really.”

  “How do you think his behavior would change?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Kovit’s whole life had been shaped by that list. His mother had been killed for it, he’d run away to the mafia to hide from it. Kovit wouldn’t be Kovit without it.

  “You know what I think?” Adair steepled his fingers. “I think Kovit wouldn’t ever have hurt anyone if that list didn’t exist.”

  Nita frowned. “He’s a zannie. It’s literally his biological imperative to hurt people.”

  “It’s also my biological imperative to drown people and eat them, but here you are, not underwater or eaten.” Adair rolled his eyes. “And it’s a human biological imperative to reproduce, but you sure don’t look pregnant to me.”

  “Of course not!” Nita nearly gagged in revulsion, but she saw his point.

  “The thing I’ve always noticed about Kovit is that he’s a bit of a fatalist.” Adair continued. “See, there’s no point in trying when there’s no chance of success. Why try to be a good person when you’ll be shot on sight anyway? Why try not to hurt people you don’t know when they’d kill you if the places were reversed?”

  She’d never really thought about it that way. Kovit had lived with a sword at his throat his whole life, and no matter what he did, good or bad, that would never change.

  “Kovit’s been prejudged.” Adair’s voice was soft. “He’s been found evil. And if you tell someone they’re bad long enough, they’ll believe it. Especially children.”

  Nita frowned, remembering her earlier conversation with Kovit. “You’re trying to excuse Kovit’s actions by his upbringing?”

  Adair considered her. He seemed to reach some sort of decision, and he came out from behind the counter and gestured to the dining table. “Sit.”

  Nita sat, nearly knocking over a headless Greek statue in the process.

  “Tell me, Nita.” Adair sat across from her, his pale skin almost glowing in the semidarkness. “Who benefits from the Dangerous Unnaturals List?”

  Nita blinked. “People. Humans. Everyone who doesn’t die because a unicorn is on the hunt for a soul or a kappa is hungry for some organ juices. The list saves lives. That’s why it exists.”

  “And people like Kovit?”

  Nita was silent. Adair had made that point already.

  “Let me ask you something.” Adair’s voice was low and soft. “Would you want a zannie as your doctor?”

  “No!” Nita jerked away. “Of course not!”

  “Why not?”

  “They’d be more likely to make the pain worse for their own pleasure than heal it.”

  “Is that so?” Adair smiled. “But they can sense your pain. They know exactly where and how it hurts. They’ve felt thousands of pains and have a vast swath of data to compare it to. Do you think their diagnosis would be better?”

  Nita hesitated, then nodded. “Maybe.”

  “And their blood is one of the strongest painkillers in the world. The black market is full of people with chronic pain paying through the nose for a jar of zannie blood to make into cream for their pains.” Adair raised an eyebrow. “So a doctor who could immediately diagnose your pain and fix it. I don’t know, sounds pretty ideal to me.”

  Nita considered. She’d never thought about it that way before. Now that she was thinking about it, zannies would probably make excellent doctors.

  If they chose.

  “But they wouldn’t.” Nita blinked up at Adair. “Zannies like to make their own pain. They’d hurt their patients.”

  “So you’re saying the entire species is born psychopathic? Not a single one would consider getting their pain from the hospital without hurting someone?”

  Put that way, it seemed far-fetched.

  Nita’s eyes narrowed. “What are you really trying to say?”

  Adair leaned back. “I’ll rephrase my earlier question: Who profits from the Dangerous Unnaturals List?”

  Nita’s stomach began to flutter as things began to click together.

  Her mother profited.

  The people buying body parts, killing the creatures
on the list.

  The crazy dictators who sheltered zannies and used them as torturers.

  “The black market,” Nita finally answered, the words heavy on her tongue.

  Adair’s smile was sharp and thin. “Exactly.”

  Nita swallowed, and her fingers clenched into fists by her sides.

  “Have you ever noticed,” Adair whispered, “that every creature on the list is also profitable? Unicorn bone is used as a drug. Zannie blood is used for pain relief, and zannies themselves are popular pet torturers for dictators. Kappa organs are a powerful poison. Vampire bodies can extend your life by decades.”

  Nita’s voice trembled slightly. “Lots of other creatures’ bodies have properties.”

  “But other dangerous ones?” Adair shook his head. “Ghouls eat people, but they’re not on the list. Their corpses also do absolutely nothing.”

  Nita shook her head, but she was already mentally listing other creatures she knew that were particularly dangerous. The ones whose bodies couldn’t earn money weren’t on the list.

  None of them.

  Except . . .

  “Kelpies.” Nita met Adair’s eyes. “Kelpie bodies would make a lot of money on the black market. No one’s ever dissected a kelpie. They’re unknown. People would pay for that.”

  Adair’s smile tightened, and his eyes were hard. “I know. Why do you think I trade in information? Cash alone would never be enough to keep my species off the list. I make my bribes in knowledge.”

  Nita stared at him, and swallowed. “You’re serious.”

  “I’m always serious.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Those basement jokes . . .”

  “How do you know they’re jokes?” He grinned.

  Nita rolled her eyes, but her mind was still whirling, trying to process all the significance of what she’d been told.

  “Why?” she whispered.

  “Why what?”

  “Why is it like this?”

  “Ahhhh.” Adair’s smile turned crafty. “That is a good question, isn’t it?”

  “And you know the answer.”

  “I do.” He laced his fingers together. “But I’m not willing to give it up for free.”

 

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