by Kelly Meding
“That was a week ago,” he said.
“No kidding. Do you mind filling in the blanks?”
Despair crumpled his face. I bit the inside of my cheek, clenching my fists to resist the overwhelming instinct to hug him again. Something had happened to me, something very bad.
“Wyatt, what happened? How did I die?”
His eyes flickered toward my shoulder. “You’re hurt.”
“I’m fine.” Strangely enough, the knife wound didn’t hurt anymore. It sort of itched. “How did I die?”
He limped over to one of the dryers and opened the door. Wrinkled laundry spilled onto the floor. He put the yellow jewel on top of the dryer and began sifting through the clothing. I eyed the precious gem, wondering if that was the source of his invisibility cloak, and how much he’d paid for it.
“Wyatt?”
“Nice necklace.”
I fingered the cross around my neck. “Don’t change the subject.”
He checked the waistband of a pair of jeans and, determining them appropriate, tossed them onto the room’s center table. “I should have been there when you woke,” he said, returning to his search. “But you didn’t come back where we thought you would. Even dead, you’re pretty damned contrary, you know that?”
I smiled at the familiar jab. I always preferred questioning his orders over following them, and it drove him bat shit. Drove my partners bat shit, too, when they were alive. Even if I was wrong, the fun was in the argument.
“Next time leave a better trail of bread crumbs, and I’ll try resurrecting to the appropriate body,” I said.
He threw a cotton shirt on top of the jeans and stood up. Pain bracketed his eyes and pinched his mouth. My stomach tightened. I was such a bitch. Here he was, bleeding to death in front of me, and I kept nagging him for answers.
“Take off your shirt,” I said, closing the distance between us.
Wyatt arched an eyebrow.
I rolled my eyes. “Let me see the wound, jackass.”
I reached for his shirt, but he caught my hand. A tremor danced up my arm, awakened by his touch. I looked up, startled. Something dangerous flashed in his eyes, there and gone in a blink. Warning bells clanged in my head.
“I did it,” he said.
“Did what?”
His shoulders drooped. Agony radiated off him. He dropped my hand, and I mourned the loss of his touch. Only for a moment, though, because he spoke three words that shattered everything.
“I killed you.”
Chapter Four
69:47
“That’s not funny,” I said, fingers clenching into fists. A shiver wiggled down my spine.
Wyatt frowned. “It wasn’t a joke, Evy. You died because of me.”
A tiny bit of fear evaporated, replaced by annoyance. I could have belted him in the jaw. “Then why didn’t you just say that? ‘You died because of me’ and ‘I killed you’ do not imply the same thing.”
“It means the same to me.”
“You aren’t the one who died!”
He flinched as though slapped. Uncertainty flickered across his face, but the agony never wavered. Nor did the utter certainty that my death was somehow his fault—a fact that remained to be seen, since my Swiss cheese memory was missing a couple of important details.
He put his back to me and tried to take off his blood-soaked shirt. It rose halfway up, revealing a crisscross of pencil-thin bruises. They decorated his lower back like graffiti, dark blue and painful-looking. His arms caught in the tacky sleeves, trapping them above his head in a tangle that would have been comical if he hadn’t suddenly cried out.
The knife wound gaped open just below his rib cage and still oozed blood. Deep, but not jagged or life-threatening, as I’d first assumed. I turned him around and helped him pull his head and arms through the shirt, finally freeing him of the ruined cotton. More bruises, identical to the others, marked his chest and well-defined abs. He’d gone through some form of hell. And if I found out he’d gone through it solely for me, I’d give him a matching black eye.
“You might need stitches,” I said, tossing the old shirt to the floor in a soggy heap.
“It’s fine.”
“Really?” I planted my hands on my hips and fixed him with my hardest stare, hoping the stance was as effective on Chalice as it had been in my old body. “Since when do you downplay a wound of any kind, Wyatt?”
His mouth opened and closed several times in succession, until he finally gave up on a response. I rifled through the recently laundered clothing until I located a plain white cotton T-shirt. I ripped it into one long strip, and then folded the rest over into a makeshift bandage. When I returned my attention to Wyatt, he’d already stripped out of his bloody jeans and slipped into a new pair.
“Arm up,” I said.
He followed direction, folding his arm up and around his neck, giving me a clear field. I pressed the makeshift bandage against the wound. He hissed; I flinched.
“So are we going to talk about this?” I asked. “Hand.”
He pressed his palm against the bandage. “You know, I imagined this conversation a dozen times, how I’d try to explain everything to you. Now it’s just … hard.”
“Use small words.” I looped the strip around his waist and positioned it over the bandage. Twisted the ends. Pulled it into a knot.
He grunted. “Where should I start?”
“How about what day I died?” I suggested, doubling the knot. I didn’t need the bandage shifting.
“May seventeenth.”
Three days ago. Four days after the last I remembered. My mouth felt suddenly dry. “Okay, good. Let’s go further back, then, shall we? Why in the blue fuck did the Triads go in and murder the Owlkins? Because if we talked about it, I need a refresher.”
Wyatt reached for the fresh shirt, but didn’t put it on. He fingered the blue material, turning something over in his mind. I recognized his thoughtful face. One advantage to having a new body was that he didn’t know my tics and foibles anymore, the way I still knew his.
“I honestly don’t know why, Evy, but it was excessive,” he said. “The official story was that the Department brass wanted you neutralized at any cost. They think you killed your own Triad teammates. They blame you for Ash and Jesse.”
Well, they were half right.
“Apparently the Fey Council got wind that a Triad member had, as they put it, turned traitor,” he said. “When they found out about the trouble at the bridge, and that you were involved, they stepped in.”
Damn me and my infamous reputation.
He continued. “When one of the Council leaders calls up the brass and demands that their secret stash of Bounty Hunters Neutralize a threat, they listen. When the brass found out where you were staying, they planned an assault and ordered the Triads to carry it out.”
“Yeah, I remember that part.”
The sounds of my friends screaming as they died would never fade from my mind. Danika, barely sixteen by human years, had forced me to run. I never should have left the Owlkins alone to fight the Triads, who shouldn’t have attacked in the first place.
Putting aside the simple question of how they tracked me to Sunset Terrace (even I can make mistakes when caught in the clutches of grief), the attack made no sense. The Fey Council is to the Department what soft money donors are to politicians—silent partners who occasionally benefit from offering their support, but nonetheless hold sway. They also hold magic over our heads like a toy on a string. Giving us occasional swipes, but never sharing their intimate knowledge. Not even to our human Gifted, who struggle to understand and live with their unusual powers.
Considering the steady increase in Dreg-on-human violence over the last six months, a holy smack-down may have seemed inspired to the brass. The perfect excuse to nearly wipe out a species and send a very clear “Don’t fuck with us” message to the other were-Clans.
“Did anyone survive?”
“I don’t know, Evy.
I’m sorry.”
“I called you. We were supposed to meet. Did we?”
“Yeah, we met.” He slipped one arm into the shirt and through the sleeve. Slow, calculated movements designed to mask the flood of emotions running across his face. “You wanted to turn yourself in, and I tried to talk you out of it. I’d heard rumblings of a major deal going down between the goblin Queens and some of the Bloods, and thought if we could get something solid, the brass would be lenient.”
Goblins and vampires? Sure, they were united in their hatred of humans and Fey, but they rarely worked together. Both species were fiercely independent and proud. Teaming up was like admitting to weakness—something neither liked to do.
His other arm went into the shirt, and he didn’t bother hiding a pained grimace. “You said you would make contact, see what you could find out. The next day, you were captured by goblins. They tortured you for two days before we found you. You died before you could tell us anything.”
Tortured and killed by goblins. That explained my instant revulsion on the street. I forced away any speculation as to just what that torture had entailed. I knew goblins and their ways. Any details would probably make me curl into a fetal position and cry for a few hours. Perhaps memory loss was better for my sanity.
Still, it didn’t explain why I hadn’t been allowed to rest in peace. “So why bring me back? Resurrection spells aren’t cheap, Wyatt. Did I learn something about the goblins and the Bloods? Something important enough to pay the price?”
“I think you did, but you wouldn’t tell. At least, not around the people who were there when we found you. Even though you were dying, you didn’t talk. I could see in your eyes that you wanted to, but something frightened you into silence.”
“Something or someone,” I said, uncertain which I preferred. “So that’s why you brought me back? To pick my brain about those final moments, only I can’t remember them?”
“That was the plan. Obviously we didn’t account for this specific contingency.”
“That’s a pretty big fuckup, Wyatt.”
He had the temerity to smile. “You don’t look like you, but you sure as hell sound like yourself.”
I flipped him a one-fingered salute.
“And I get to be selfish about something,” he said, fishing his wallet out of his old jeans. “I can apologize to you.”
A novel experience: bringing someone back from the dead to apologize for getting them killed in the first place. “Well, you’re forgiven.”
“You may want to wait on that until you get your memory back.”
I didn’t know if that was simply self-deprecation (not something he did well or often) or said in earnest (much more likely), so I kept quiet.
“Let me see your shoulder,” he said.
“It’s fine.”
“Now who’s downplaying?”
I turned around. He lifted my hair up and away, so much more than used to be there. I had kept my straight blond hair cut short, just above the shoulder. The weight of Chalice’s wavy locks continued to startle me. Gentle fingers stroked my shoulder around the itchy spot. My stomach again fluttered at his touch. That was weird.
“Incredible,” he whispered. “It’s already starting to heal.”
“Really?” I reached back and touched the wound. Sure enough, a thick scab had formed, and it was barely sore to the touch. I checked the laceration scar on my arm—gone. Track marks, as well. “Cool. So is this a side effect of the spell, or does Chalice have superhuman healing powers we didn’t know about?”
“Who?”
I spun, striking a pose for him. “Chalice Frost, the chick we brought back to life. And since we’ve circled back to that, how did I end up in her and not in someone … I don’t know, graceful?”
“I’m not sure. We had a former Hunter ready for you, a girl about your age who had died two days ago. She was trained. I don’t know why you jumped to this body, and neither does the Elder who performed the spell.”
I studied his face, searching for truth and finding a blank stare. He was trying so hard to keep emotion out of this, but it continued to leak through in his words and his actions. Maybe he didn’t know what went wrong, but it was high on my list of things to find out. Soon.
“In the long run, I guess it doesn’t matter why,” I said. “Granted, having a body that does what my brain tells it would be nice, but we all have our crosses to bear. So if the Department put up for the spell to bring me back, is it safe to assume they won’t kill me on sight?”
Wyatt flexed his jaw, then chose that moment to pick up his soiled clothing and dump them into the room’s only waste can. Slow, deliberate movements. He was buying time again.
“Magic has a high price, Wyatt, and nothing is more costly than this.” I poked myself in the chest, smearing a spot of blood that had transferred from him to me. Ick. “Who paid, Wyatt?”
“The brass doesn’t know,” he said, back still turned. “Neither do any of the other Triads. I don’t trust them, not right now. It’s one of the reasons I was staying cloaked.”
I got into his face, pleased that I now stood eye-level to him, rather than six inches shorter. It made intimidation easier. Height and size made up for the brute strength Chalice’s body lacked. He didn’t back down, but he did keep his eyes fixed on the floor.
“Who paid?” I growled, both eager and terrified to hear his reply.
His nostrils flared as he exhaled hard through his nose.
I moved in, leaving only the tiniest cushion of air between us. I could smell him—blood and sweat and aftershave, the barest hint of coffee on his breath. The minuscule space was alive with electricity. The short hairs on the back of my neck tingled. Was he doing that, or was it my imagination? I hooked one finger beneath his chin and pressed until his eyes met mine.
Inky black pools teemed with frustration and worry, and with something else I didn’t dare label. Something so close to desire that it scared me.
“Who?” I asked.
He swallowed. “Me.”
I stepped back, eager for distance after hearing the response I both wanted and feared. Wanted because it meant he was convinced of the importance of what I knew—convinced enough to put up an enormous price. Feared because of the price he had likely offered in return. I thought of those bruises, and my stomach roiled.
For humans, the use of magic exacts a physical toll—always painful, sometimes even crippling. Gifted have little choice in the matter, but magical spells can be purchased for the correct price; often the price includes a promise of silence, because black market magic is frowned upon by the Council. Faeries selling spells will up the ante to include proof of sincerity on the part of the buyer. Sadistic creatures, no matter what books say, faeries are rumored to require a physical beating as that proof.
Fey magic isn’t cheap. What the hell had he gotten himself into?
“I must be repressing one hell of a secret,” I said, hoping to de-emphasize the enormity of what it meant to me.
He tilted his head up slightly, then back down in a curt nod. “You were with them for almost three days, Evy. When we found you, you were dying. You were mostly lucid, but someone in that room scared you into taking your secret to the grave.”
“And you thought that I’d wake up and give you all the answers you needed, right?”
“Something like that.” He furrowed dark eyebrows. “I never expected memory loss.”
I hopped up onto the wooden laundry table and leaned back on the palms of my hands, legs swinging freely. “Guess you should have used your price for a séance and saved the trouble of resurrection, since it’s obviously doing neither of us any good.”
His hand jerked. I’d struck a nerve. Good. My own nerves were well frayed. I wanted to share the wealth.
“We just need to jog your memory,” he said, slipping first his wallet and then the yellow jewel into his jeans pocket. “I’m not calling this a loss yet, Evy. Not until the clock’s run out.”
His shoulders slumped. “Three days.”
Hell. Seventy-two hours. I shivered. Was that enough time? It didn’t feel like enough, not if we were running cold.
His hands gently squeezed my knees, offering silent support. I looked up, right into his eyes. One of his hands reached up and brushed a lock of hair away from my cheek, carefully tucking it behind my ear.
I caught myself staring at his slightly parted lips, wondering … what? No, not wondering. Wanting. Wanting something I had never wanted before.
No. “Do you have a plan?” I asked.
He nodded, the intensity of his stare never wavering. “I want you to talk to Smedge. He would always talk to you, give up what he knew when you asked. He won’t talk to me. I’ve tried.”
Smedge, one of my most loyal informants. One of my strengths as a Triad Hunter was my ability to get Dregs to trust me, even if they had no reason for it. Maybe it was my smile, or my all-American blond-haired, blue-eyed looks. It didn’t matter, as long as they talked. But I hadn’t spoken to Smedge in weeks.
“I don’t think Smedge ever liked you,” I said.
“Bridge trolls don’t tend to like human males, period.”
“Too true, but he really didn’t like you.” I nudged his leg with my foot. “Can’t imagine why, though. You’re such a charmer in person.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “I insulted his bridge once.”
“You didn’t!”
Wyatt shrugged. I punched him in the shoulder.
“What?” he asked, drawing back.
“You never insult a troll’s chosen bridge, you idiot. Hell, even a trainee knows that.” Of all the stupid things to say to another species …
“I apologized later on,” he said.