by E. A. Copen
But if I delayed, someone else in the city would die. One more faekin would be murdered so Imseti and Hapi could have a snack. Maybe they’d even split up and kill two. But who? I hadn’t managed to get a list, but maybe Paula could help. Then what? Emma and Moses couldn’t guard every fae organ donor in the city. They might not even be able to find them in the few hours they had left. But I had to do something.
I squeezed Beth’s hand. “Don’t worry. I’m not letting you or that box out of my sight until this is all settled.”
She closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief, nodding.
“What can I do to help?” Seb asked.
An idea popped into my head out of nowhere, one that would solve everything. Well, most of my current problems, anyway. “What time does that gala start tomorrow night?”
“It starts at four, but the ribbon cutting ceremony isn’t until six. Why?”
I glanced down at my watch. If today was anything to judge by, the sun wouldn’t set until just after seven, which meant my idea would work beautifully. If everyone did their part, that was.
Seb turned around in his seat and frowned. “What did you have in mind?”
“I’m going to need you to deliver a message to your brothers for me.”
Beth squeezed my arm tighter. “Lazarus, you’re not going to give them this box. I won’t let you.”
“I’m not giving them the box,” I promised Beth and nodded to Seb. “I’m donating the box to the museum, just like you suggested. And Seb here is going to make sure Imseti and Hapi both know it’ll be on display during the ribbon cutting ceremony, won’t you, Seb?”
“Why would I do that?” Seb stuttered. “If I tell them when and where both the box and you will be, they’ll show up, steal the box and kill you!”
I smirked. “Oh, I’m counting on them trying.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The bar was closed, but that didn’t mean Paula wasn’t in. When I pushed through the doors, Beth at my side, we found her sitting in the dark at one of the tables, an open bottle of Jack’s in front of her. Phil Collins blared at full volume from the jukebox in the corner. When she saw us, she looked up, her eyes red and puffy. Her foot kicked out the chair across from her in invitation.
I sat across from her while Beth pulled a chair over from another table.
Paula slid one of the two tumblers in front of her across the table to me after filling it two fingers high. “You’ve got the look of a man caught between two bad choices,” she said. “Tell me about it?”
I held the glass between my fingers for a minute before looking over at Beth and sliding it to her. She looked like she needed it more than me. “I know the connection, and I know who’s behind it. But there’s nothing I can do to stop them tonight. Not without your help.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.” She emptied the glass in front of her, drawing a sleeve over her mouth. “You realize you’ll be asking me for a favor? Creating a debt?”
I’d sort of been hoping she’d bend the rules for me, but I nodded anyway. Some rules in the supernatural world can’t be bent or broken, no matter how much you try. Paula wouldn’t abuse the debt, not like a lot of fae probably would, but she was still fae, and it was in her nature to try and get the best deal. I knew the size of the debt would depend on the size of the favor, and I was asking for something big, but I liked to think of Paula as more a friend than a landlord. She’d never ask me to do anything that she thought would be dangerous. Then again, she had asked me to meet with Nyx. Maybe she hadn’t known how that would turn out.
She sighed and rubbed her temples with her thumb and forefinger. “There is something else you need to know.”
“That you’re a member of the Shadow Court?”
“How’d you know?”
I shrugged. “Seemed like the logical conclusion. Nyx wouldn’t come to someone outside her court to arrange a meeting, and I was assuming she kept you from revealing her identity and anything you might know about what’s going on with a binding oath.”
“I didn’t know what was going on.” She shook her head, her shoulders slumping as she studied her empty glass. “At least not about the suitors killing fae. I knew there was a competition of some sort, but you have to realize court politics don’t usually concern me. I live here, in New Orleans, and not in Faerie for a reason. I’m not even full-blooded fae. I’m normally so far below anyone’s radar they don’t know I exist. I only put it together this afternoon after I heard the report about the morgue attack. There are still things I don’t know, like who’s responsible.”
I eyed her fingers tightening around the tumbler. “Three of the four sons of Horus, the Shadow Knight, and I guess I am, indirectly.” I stretched my arms across the table to take her fingers in my hands. “Paula, someone out there is running out of time. Maybe more than one someone. I have to do everything I can to try and stop them from killing again tonight. To do that, I need a list of every fae or faekin in the city so the police can cross-reference it with a list of organ donors to find the most likely victims. Can you get me this list?”
“You’re cold.” Her gaze fixed on her fingers in mine.
To me, she felt burning hot, feverish. Everyone felt that way anymore. Some people’s skin even felt warm enough to leave behind a mild burn, like a sunburn.
“Paula, the list?”
She blinked, and a tear escaped. Paula wiped it away, sucking in a shaky breath. “I can get you a list. I don’t know how complete it is, but it should help. But if I get you this list, Lazarus, it’s going to cost me something. Which means it will cost you something.”
Another debt. I did already owe three days of my time to Mr. Morningstar, provided I took care of the last two sons of Horus. I also owed Darius some money. I’d been handing out a lot of debt lately, and that was going to have to come to an end as there was only so much of me to go around. But this was important.
I nodded and squeezed her hands in mine. “I’m willing to take on that debt.”
She nodded and pushed her chair back. “Then I’ll make the call.”
Paula left the table and went to the back of the bar. I watched her, a gnawing feeling in my gut. She’d said this was going to cost her. She’d already lost her niece, which was the only family I knew about. What else did she have to offer?
“She seems nice,” Beth said. She lifted the drink, sniffed it and pushed it away.
“Don’t get used to it. She’s off her normal game. Paula’s one of the meanest people I know.” I meant it but still smiled as I said it. Mean wasn’t always a bad thing to be. When your job is dealing with belligerent drunks all night, it had to be hard to be nice.
“Maybe that’s just a front. Some people are like that until you get to know them. Remember the first time you introduced me to Pony Dee?”
I huffed out some strained laughter. “Boy, do I. I thought he was going to skin me alive for having a girl over, but he just stood there, a sour look on his face, his thumbs hooked in his belt.” I raised my voice to a mocking tone and shook my finger at her. “‘Son, I swear to the good Lord if I hear the two of you doing anything other than studying for that history test, I’ll whoop the both of you! Does her mamma know she’s here? With you?’ As if I were somehow worse than any of the other boys at school and you’d ever do anything other than study with me.”
Beth’s cheeks flushed, and she smiled. “Oh, I would’ve. I thought you were cute even then.”
I blinked. Me? Cute? I’d been called a lot of things, but that was the first time that had come up. “What about Tommy What’s-his-face?”
“Tommy Dale?” Now it was Beth’s turn to laugh. “He was failing English. Needed C or better to stay on the football team, so his mom hired me as a tutor. And Tommy was gay.”
“He was?”
She nodded and raised her eyebrows. “Super gay. I think his mom hired me in the hopes he’d be more interested in me than the team captain, but… Well, the heart wants what it
wants.” Beth intertwined her fingers in mine.
I looked down at our fingers, twisted together, unsure of how to feel. I’d had a crush on Beth since the eighth grade. We’d dated in college, even after I dropped out, and I’d thought for a long time that she was the one. But she abandoned me when I went to prison. Never wrote. Never called. She’d have continued to pretend I didn’t exist if chance hadn’t brought us back together. There was still something there between us, but maybe it was only a memory of better days.
And then there was Odette. I still couldn’t think about her without feeling a pang of loss in my chest. She’d lied to me too. Used her fae magic to manipulate me. I still wasn’t sure why or how real what I’d felt was. Odette was gone, and anything we’d had was officially over, even if she came back. I couldn’t trust her.
But that didn’t mean I should trust Beth either.
Maybe we could start over, pretend like the last ten years had never happened. Except those ten years had changed us both. She’d grown into a busy woman with a career and a future full of life. I’d become Death. The two of us were so different now, I wasn’t sure we could make it work. Still, sometimes memories were enough to make it worth trying.
I squeezed her hand. “For the record, I’ve never been called cute before.”
“Well, I’ve never beaten a flying alligator to death with my shoe either, so I guess this is just a day full of firsts for the both of us.” She tried to smile, but there was a hitch in it, something sad, an emotion I didn’t have the proper name for. A sense of innocence destroyed.
Beth had always known about magic, lived at the edge of the world of the supernatural. Her abilities didn’t lend themselves toward fighting the things that hid in the darkness, nor did she have the predisposition to get involved in other people’s problems, especially when we were younger. She was a good girl, a healer. Everyone’s friend. The kind of person everyone trusted with secrets because she was good at keeping them.
Even good people have a breaking point. In the last few hours, I’d dropped a lot of bombshells on her. Revealing the existence of gods and fae, that souls were currency in some sick underground market, that I was the Pale Horseman working for Baron Samedi. Even flying alligators that were way bigger than any normal alligator had any right to be.
She’d taken it all in stride, moving with me from one moment to the next and fighting alongside me, even when Osric abandoned us. We’d stood against evil and won, even if it was temporarily.
But it had cost her. Once you know the kind of evil that’s out there in the world, there’s no going back. The world becomes a darker, more dangerous place. Trust becomes harder to give and even harder to win. In such a world, the good moments were sand in a broken hourglass, slipping through your fingers. I’d pulled Beth into a life she hadn’t asked for and knew almost nothing about, and now there was no going back to the way things were before.
She pulled her hand away and traced a finger along my jaw. “Are you always saving someone else like this?”
“Not always. Sometimes the bad guys win.” I grabbed her hand and pulled it away from my face. “I can’t change that. Even if I did this every day of my life for the rest of my life, it’s just a drop in the bucket.”
“Then why do it? Why not run away and do something safe?”
Safety. That’s what Beth had gone in search of when she left. And she’d found it. She had a nice, stable job restoring ancient artifacts, reading old books, and working in dusty libraries. Low risk. No magic. No danger. The worst she’d ever thought could happen to her was a paper cut before I came along. I was anything but safe.
“Because if there are enough drops in that collective bucket, it makes a difference,” I said. “Maybe I am just one guy with superpowers and a big magic stick, and maybe I only save a handful of people, but it’s worth it to the people you help. I’ve got a gift, Beth. Magic. I don’t have a whole lot, but I’ve got that, so why not use it to help whoever I can?”
“Yes, but aren’t you ever afraid?”
“Every damn minute of every day.” I pulled her fingers to my lips and smiled against them. “The trick is making everyone else believe you’re not scared out of your mind. See, they mistake idiocy for bravery most of the time. Works in my favor.”
She laughed, the sound pure and warm. Another memory from brighter days come back to haunt us. There was a time I’d have moved mountains to hear her laugh. Hearing it again reminded me why.
The door to the back of the bar opened, and Paula stepped in. Beth unwound her fingers from mine and shifted in her seat, tucking some hair behind her ear. Paula stopped by the table, frowning as she looked at Beth’s flushed cheeks, but she didn’t say anything about it.
“I got your list,” she said and dropped a small stack of papers on the table in front of me. “You’ll have to get it to your cop friend.”
I started to thank her but stopped myself. I was already in debt to Paula and didn’t need to add to it. Instead, I nodded and took out my cell phone, dialing Emma’s number.
She must’ve been waiting by the phone because she picked up on the first ring. “Tell me you’ve got something useful, Laz.”
“I’ve got a list of tonight’s potential victims,” I said. “But I’ll need you to cross-check my list against a list of organ donors in the city. Can you do that?”
“I’ve got a list.” The phone creaked as she shifted it and I heard papers rustling in the background. “You thinking once we narrow down who’s left, we can protect them?”
“You can’t engage these guys,” I said emphatically. “They’ll just rip you apart like they did the other cops. But if you know who you’re looking for, I’m pretty sure we can protect them. Things might get…weird, but no one will die.”
“Okay, I have my list. Read me yours.”
It took about a half-hour to go through all the names on my list and compare them to the names on hers. There weren’t many fae in New Orleans. Paula said that was because it was contested territory, and most fae tried to avoid conflict, choosing instead to reside firmly inside places clearly claimed by either the Summer or Shadow Court. Apparently, both had laid claim to New Orleans and had been duking it out in a Cold War-style series of indirect conflicts in Faerie. It was a good thing my list was only four pages long; Emma’s contained thousands of names. We spent most of the time waiting for her to type the names I gave her into the computer to get search results.
In the end, we found twelve names that matched both lists, seven of which belonged to people already in the morgue. One was Paula. That left four faekin to find and detain until after dawn, just to be safe.
“I can pull their information up in the computer,” Emma said. “Should be able to get them all here in an hour or two, plenty of time before midnight. But once I’ve got them here, what am I supposed to do?”
“You wait for me. I’ll be there as soon as I can get a cab.”
“It’ll probably take me an hour or two to pull everyone together, so don’t hurry.”
Emma thanked me, and we said our goodbyes before hanging up.
Beth cleared her throat. “So I guess you and Paula will be going to the police station.”
“You’re coming too.” I nodded to her purse. “And you’re standing inside that circle with the rest of them until after midnight.”
“But I’m not fae.”
“Doesn’t matter. They’ll kill you to get to that box, and I’m not letting them.”
She sighed and crossed her arms. “Fine, as long as I get to change first. A ripped-up evening gown isn’t exactly comfortable. And a shower would be even better.”
I nodded. “You can use mine. And I think I can find something to fit you. Won’t be the most comfortable thing, but there’s probably at least a shirt and some sweats.”
“I’ll clean up while I wait on you two then.” Paula looked out over the bar. It didn’t look messy to me since she hadn’t even opened, but maybe she saw something I didn
’t.
With all the details straightened out, I pushed away from the table and stood. Beth followed me up the stairway to my apartment, slowing her pace to match mine. Every step made my eyelids feel heavier. As much as I would’ve liked to change and shower like Beth had planned, I was dead on my feet. I needed to get a few minutes of shut-eye while I could.
I unlocked the door and stopped, cringing at the chaos beyond. Bottles and cans crowded the counter, most of which were empty. Take-out containers sat stacked next to an overflowing trash can. I wasn’t even sure I had clean towels for Beth’s shower.
Beth took in the mess, frowning.
“Sorry,” I muttered and rushed in to try and collect all the trash, but I didn’t even know where to begin. “Haven’t had any guests lately.” I pulled the trash bag out and tied it off before going to get another bag only to find I was out of trash bags. Dammit, just my luck.
Beth stopped in the middle of the kitchen, glancing around. “Bathroom?”
I pointed her in the right direction, praying I’d left at least one clean towel, and went about picking up as best I could. After filling up the bagless trash can again, I could barely keep my eyes open, so I washed my hands and staggered to the bedroom. Mountains of laundry called from every corner of the room, reminding me that I’d spent the last two weeks holed up abusing my liver instead of washing laundry, but I was too tired to deal with that now. The clock read seven fifty-two. If I passed out now, I could get an hour or two before I had to get to the station. Drawing the circle and powering it would only take a few minutes, so as long as I was there by eleven, we’d have plenty of time, so I set the alarm for ten-fifteen.