Organ Grind (The Lazarus Codex Book 2)

by E. A. Copen

  “That makes sense, I suppose,” Emma said, nodding.

  The room fell back into its anxious silence, and Emma resumed her pacing. Moses inched closer to the nearest floodlight. My eyes darted around the room, watching every shadow for signs of movement. The floodlights had removed a lot of them, but even with full light, there was no way to eliminate every shadow in the room. We still had our shadows, however shortened they were, and the space under the desk was shrouded in darkness. The floodlights themselves had small shadows around the base too. None of them twitched or moved except to follow Moses on his short trip across the room.

  “Hello, Lazarus.”

  I spun around to find the cage and the rest of the room gone. Darkness shrouded the space all around me save for a small patch of light at my feet. A form stepped out of the darkness, shadow moving around him in a miasma as if it were as alive as he was. Osric carried a dagger in each hand but didn’t attack, preferring instead to stay just out of my staff’s reach, circling. I didn’t dare let him circle behind me.

  “Osric,” I said by way of greeting. “What’s all this?”

  “I pulled you into your shadow. We need to talk.”

  “Those necessary for this kind of talk?” I nodded to his daggers.

  “Maybe. Depends on you.” He stopped circling, but didn’t give up his aggressive stance.

  “Does your queen know about this meeting?”

  Osric’s silence was the only answer I needed. He was here without her knowing, which meant he probably wasn’t there to kill me.

  I relaxed my shoulders but not my careful watch of his every move. “I know you’ve got a dog in this fight. I know Nyx tricked me into entering her silly contest. You should know there’s one less contestant since I ripped out Duamutef’s soul earlier. Oh, and Imseti’s probably stronger, since he freaking ate it.”

  “I don’t want Imseti to win,” he said.

  “Of course not. You’d rather win, am I right?”

  To my surprise, Osric shook his head. “I have no desire to be the queen’s consort. Whoever takes that position will just be another pawn in her game against Summer. I’ve been a pawn long enough, since I sold my soul to Nyx thirty years ago.”

  I blinked. Sold his soul to the Shadow Queen? Guess that’s how the Shadow Knight inherited his position. He wasn’t serving of his own free will, but rather fulfilling a debt. Stepping up into the position of Queen’s Consort wouldn’t change how much time he owed the queen, but it would potentially create more problems for him.

  “I was ordered to enter. No matter what, I can’t disobey a direct order from my queen. That doesn’t mean I can’t bend a few rules if she doesn’t word her orders well.” He shrugged. “Someone will win this, but it can’t be Imseti or Hapi. And I don’t want it to be me. That leaves you.”

  Me? Oh, hell no. My love life was already a crazy mess. The last thing I needed was to add the Shadow Queen to the mix. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

  “I thought you might say that, which is why I came to tell you that the queen has ordered me to kidnap the Summer Princess.”

  My throat tightened. Odette. He was going to nab Odette and take her to the Shadow Queen. For what purpose? Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good, not with Summer and Shadow on the verge of war. This would tip the scales and bring the two of them into direct conflict. But why would Shadow risk that unless they were certain they could win?

  Maybe they could. No matter who won this contest, Nyx would gain control of someone powerful enough to change the tide of a war. Hapi and Imseti were both gods, true immortals so long as their souls stayed intact. Not even fae-wrought weapons would kill them. If Osric won, she’d have Odette as a failsafe. Trade Odette to Summer for control of the contested territory of New Orleans and expand her power base, giving her a stronger striking position. Or just kill Odette, which would probably enrage the Summer court. They’d make a mistake, and Nyx would be in the optimal position to take advantage of that.

  But getting me? That’d be the ultimate prize. She’d have someone immune to iron at her beck and call, someone who could rip the souls out of her enemies.

  I clenched my teeth. “Why are you telling me?”

  “Because I think it’s a mistake. We might be able to win the war, but it’ll be costly. Once I’ve brought the princess before her, she’ll order me to kill her. You can’t let that happen.” He opened his fists, and the daggers disappeared in a wisp of smoke. “Bring her the box. Take your prize. Stop me from killing the Summer Princess by any means necessary.”

  I picked up my staff and pointed it at him. “I could stop you right now.”

  “You could,” Osric said with a shrug. “But then you wouldn’t be in a position to intervene later because Imseti and Hapi will kill you without my help.”

  He was right, and I knew it. The only reason I’d been able to take out Duamutef was that Imseti let me. Against the two of them, I didn’t stand much of a chance. I’d been counting on Osric’s backup to make my plan work.

  “Are you offering to help then?”

  “The queen did order me to help you bring back her box. She also implied I should try to take it from you when I could, though it wasn’t an outright order, so I have some wiggle room.” He smiled. “I’ll gladly help you kill Hapi and Imseti and do my best to keep her alive until after they’re dead and you’ve presented Nyx the box. You do realize this means you’ll be accepting the position of Queen’s Consort and you will technically be betrothed to the Shadow Queen?”

  I shuddered. He was right again. I didn’t see any way around it since Nyx had backed me into a corner. Getting married to a manipulative fae queen wasn’t on my bucket list though, so I’d have to find some way out of it. That’d have to come later, after I stopped the Egyptian god freaks and saved Odette. “Yeah, I get it. Whatever. I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it. Now, send me back.”

  Osric made a low bow. “As you wish.”

  I blinked and I was back in the jail, staring at the clock. The second hand ticked forward, announcing that I hadn’t lost more than a few seconds being pulled into my own shadow. That was a neat trick, one I had to find a way to keep from happening again. But how do you destroy your own shadow?

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Twelve-thirty came and went, and still, there was no sign of either Imseti or Hapi. Maybe they’d gotten the hint, or maybe they’d found someone not on our list to snack on. Either way, the people we’d gathered in the drunk tank all breathed a collective sigh of relief when Emma announced, “I think we’re through the worst of it. But you should all stay until morning, just in case.”

  As for me, I found a wall and sat down with my back against it, my staff tucked into the bend of my elbow under crossed arms. I’d just intended to rest my eyes a minute, but when Moses nudged me with my shoe, I found the clock and saw almost an hour had passed.

  “Why don’t you take one of the bunks in an empty cell?” He thumbed back toward the rest of the jail.

  “Honestly? I’d rather sleep on the floor given half the choice. No offense, but six years on a prison mattress was enough.”

  “Well, then quit sawing logs so loud, will you?”

  I looked up at Emma who was drifting off, standing up. She jerked herself awake, blinking hard. Maybe I preferred the floor, but she could use a bed. “What about you?” I called to her. “You’re dead on your feet, Emma. You getting any sleep at all these days?”

  “I’m fine,” she insisted, reaching for her coffee on the desk. It was empty though, so she scowled and threw it into the trash.

  “Come on now, Emma.” Moses raised his eyebrows. “You ain’t doing nobody any good in your current condition. Go with him, and the two of you get a power nap, at least. I can cover this for a bit. You said so yourself, we’re past the highest risk time. And if anything happens, you’re only a radio call away.”

  I was pretty sure she wanted to argue, but like me, she didn’t have the energy. When I stood and
put an arm around her shoulders, she all but collapsed against me. “Yeah, okay. But just a half-hour.”

  “Half-hour,” Moses repeated and tossed me a set of keys. “First cell on the left.”

  I nodded and walked out of the big room, back to the mostly empty jail.

  The first cell on the left was a little bigger than the rest; end of the row cells always were by a few inches. Thin blue mattresses sat propped against the wall with clean sheets sitting in an open cabinet at the end of the hall. I grabbed a pair of sheets and itchy wool blankets before going into the cell and making up both the top and bottom bunks, just as I’d done every morning for the better part of six years.

  “You want the top or the bottom?” I asked once I finished. The weight of Emma’s stare made me turn around. “What? Something wrong?”

  “It’s not fair, what happened to you.”

  I shrugged. “Life’s not fair. One of the first things I learned.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  My mouth opened and I expected something smart to fall out, but nothing came to me. People had said all kinds of things to me when they found out about my checkered past, though most preferred to change the subject and pretend they hadn’t heard I had a criminal record. I obliged because I didn’t care to think about it. It hadn’t been so bad, being on the inside. By no means ideal, but it wasn’t like I was in maximum security or solitary. Some days, it was actually kind of nice to know exactly what you were going to do with your day because it was the same thing you’d done every day for years. A life without change or surprise.

  That was also the worst part. If you didn’t find something to occupy all that sudden downtime, a guy could go crazy. Some guys busied themselves with books if they could get their hands on them. Others let thoughts of revenge consume them until it ate away every bit of humanity. Me, I’d turned to the arts. I’d found I wasn’t much of a painter, and I outright sucked at drawing, but I’d learned to string a few sentences together. Enough that I’d composed several pamphlets on ghosts, spirits, and the dead that now decorated my office. They weren’t riveting, but it did help to collect my thoughts.

  Still, no one had ever apologized for what happened. I figured I deserved it. I had broken into the morgue and punched the officer who dragged me away from Lydia’s body. I made a poor choice and so had to live with the consequences the rest of my life. Didn’t matter if it was fair.

  When I realized there wasn’t anything I could say, I just shrugged again. “Not like you were the one that arrested me. Not that time anyway.” I tried to flash her a smile, but she wore a mask of pity, and that was the last thing I wanted.

  I cleared my throat. “So, I’ll take the top if you don’t have a preference.” She didn’t object, so I climbed the metal ladder two rungs at a time and rolled over onto my back.

  The mattress beneath mine creaked as Emma settled in. A thought occurred to me, something I’d wanted to ask her when I got the chance. Now seemed as good a time as any. “Hey, Emma? Remember the body in Jackson Square I told you about? Was there anything unusual about it?”

  “All the organs were there, if that’s what you mean,” she said. “I don’t think it’s related to this case, but I’d love to hear how you knew about it.”

  Rather than reveal my source, I decided it was best to redirect her attention back to my original question. “Yeah, but there was nothing weird about it at all?”

  “Hard to say. The body belonged to a child, a boy about ten or eleven. Emaciated. Won’t know the cause of death yet for a while, but I didn’t see any obvious injuries.”

  Just like Lydia. I thought it before I could stop myself. There was no proof that the body in Jackson Park and Lydia were related in any way, except in my own mind. They were of similar age, and Lydia had wasted away, dying with no obvious cause too. Still, I didn’t know for sure there was any connection, and I had more immediate things to worry about.

  She was quiet for a long time, long enough I thought she’d already drifted off to sleep.

  “Laz, I hate to ask this, but ever since you brought me back after the fire, I’ve been having these dreams. Dreams where I’m stuck in a tiny cell just like this one, and I can’t get out. I can’t breathe. I’m just…waiting for it to end. Helpless.”

  I opened my eyes and stared at the dark ceiling above me. I’d been having weird dreams, too, dreams I suspected weren’t mine. The Kiss of Life I’d given Emma had psychically linked us, and I’d been unsure at the time of the lasting consequences. When the dreams started, I figured they’d fade over time. Except they didn’t. If anything, they seemed to be becoming more frequent.

  While she dreamt of being trapped and helpless to change her own situation—one of my worst fears—I’d woken up plenty of times drenched in sweat and choked by guilt. Once, I’d even seen the guilt Emma carried around with her, weighing down her soul. She didn’t deserve that, either. Guess we each had our own crosses to bear.

  Now, she’d confirmed my theory. We’d swapped nightmares.

  My fingers intertwined over my chest and I closed my eyes. “I think it’s a side effect of the Kiss of Life.”

  “Oh.”

  The pause that followed was heavy. It felt like I should say something, anything, that should’ve explained it or made her feel better, but I didn’t have the right words.

  “Laz? Does that mean you’re having nightmares too? My nightmares?”

  I didn’t answer her, deciding if I did it would lead to a longer conversation and she needed sleep right then more than she needed answers. Even if that sleep was filled with nightmares.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. The bed squeaked as she shifted and quickly fell asleep.

  Sleep eluded me, however. All I could think about as I lay awake was what Osric had said, all the deals I’d struck, and the debts I owed. I’d been racking up quite a lot lately, and it was all about to come due. Once I’d taken care of Imseti and Hapi, I’d have to face what that meant. Being engaged to the Shadow Queen didn’t sound too bad, but I knew better. I’d already been bespelled by one faerie, and I was still suffering the consequences of that.

  I shouldn’t have cared when Osric told me he was going to have to kidnap Odette. It was over between us, and yet it had taken all my willpower to keep from bolting from the building when I’d come back and running to her side. Never mind that I didn’t even know where she was or how to get to her. The heart wants what it wants, Beth had said. But my heartstrings had been so twisted I didn’t know what I wanted going forward. The only thing I was sure of was that I didn’t want to get romantically involved with any more fae, and that included the Shadow Queen.

  I had to figure out how to get out of it, but if I did, either Odette would die or one of the Sons of Horus would gain enough power to keep killing, no matter what I did.

  If I’d been a proper hero, the kind they make movies and books about, I’d have sucked it up and done what was best for the most people. That was marrying the Shadow Queen; reason had already proven that. But I was no hero. I was an ex-con necromancer who had spent the last two weeks drinking instead of dealing with my problems. I was a selfish human. The last thing I wanted was to give up my comfortable bachelor life to be some faerie queen’s consort to save the bitch who’d lied to me for eight months and some nameless, faceless fae.

  But I’d do it just the same. Not because I was any kind of hero, and not because I was in love with Odette, but because I wasn’t smart enough or strong enough to see another way out.

  I let out a breath that deflated my chest and closed my eyes. It’s too bad Emma doesn’t have any magic, I thought. She’d make one hell of a wizard.

  ***

  There were no attacks that night, at least not on the fae we’d gathered in the precinct. If Imseti and Hapi had snacked on any fae, it wasn’t one of them. Emma released them all with the promise that they wouldn’t sue the police department. The only resistance came from Mr. Voorhees, but he came around with a little en
couragement from Moses.

  As the only one who’d gotten any real sleep, I called for a cab to take me, Beth, and Paula home. Paula fell asleep on the ride back, and Beth wasn’t far behind her. She stayed awake only because we were quietly hashing out the details of the gala that night.

  I still didn’t know how I was going to get a suit, and I was out of time to pay Darius, but there wasn’t much I could do. No way was I going to ask to bum money from Beth or Emma to invest in a porn studio. Darius and I would just have to come to some alternate arrangement. Maybe he’d give me a little more time. Yeah, ’cause my request for an extension had gone so well last time I owed him money.

  By the time we stopped at Beth’s hotel, she’d agreed to pick me up around five. She paid the cab driver to wait long enough for her to go up and grab some things and we went up to her room together.

  It wasn’t until we reached her room on the second floor that she paused, her shoulders stiffening.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “I forgot something.”

  Panic washed over me. The only thing she had of any value was the box. If she’d left that back at the precinct, we were in trouble. Everything hinged on her keeping that box safe until the gala. That’s why I wasn’t going to let her out of my sight.

  I didn’t get the chance to question her because the next minute she was kissing me. It’d been so unexpected that at first all I could do was blink in surprise, but only for a moment before I melted into her. The uneven scruff on my face ground against her soft, perfect skin, the kiss deepening, the motions familiar. Her fingernails scraped against the skin of my upper arms, dragging me closer until there was nothing between us but our clothes, and even that seemed like too much of a barrier, even though her warmth was scorching me.

  She broke off the kiss first and left me breathless, my heart pounding in my ears. “I forgot what that felt like. Forgot how nice it was.”

  “Yeah, me too.” My voice was gravelly, barely recognizable as my own.

  A wicked smile touched her lips. “Want me to tell the cabbie to just take Paula home?”