I’d been squatting in those bushes for at least an hour—maybe—when a light came on in the room at the very corner of the house. It appeared to be a home theater, with enormous leather recliners lined up in rows on three descending levels.
A couple of little girls skipped into the room, I’d have guessed they were maybe seven or eight, followed by a teenaged boy. Constance was next, carrying another child in her arms—a small child, but not a young one. I squinted, focusing on the kid. It couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl, but I could tell that the kid had some sort of a condition, something that made him or her appear extremely frail.
Constance said something—I’d never been a good lipreader—and smiled down at the child in her arms, her face filled with warmth and love. Not a second later, both disappeared behind oversized chair backs. It was as though my breath vanished with them.
Constance was the CEO and Chairman of the Board of a child-abducting, soul-stealing, Nejeret-torturing corporation. There was no way she didn’t know about everything Ouroboros had been doing in that secret lab, let alone whatever was going on with Sammy and the other sick kids back in the Tent District. There wasn’t a jury in this country that wouldn’t convict her to a lifetime in prison for her crimes.
Yet she was also a mother. And from the looks of it a pretty damn good one. It was ten o’clock on a Tuesday night—a work night, no less—and she wasn’t working late in her study or getting ready for bed, letting a nanny take care of her brood of kids. She was hanging out with them herself, and apparently having a good time doing so.
I pushed back my hood and raked my fingers through greasy hair, inhaling and exhaling deeply. Panic was peeking into the windows of my mind, lurking in the bushes surrounding my soul, trying to find a way in. Night started to close in around me, and I sucked in air uselessly.
I knew what it was like to lose a beloved mother. I wasn’t sure I could do that to someone else.
But the kids on the cots back in the hangar-turned-hospital—they had a whole lot less than Constance’s children. Didn’t they deserve the answers Constance could provide? Didn’t they deserve a chance at life? Didn’t they deserve justice?
There are twelve other board members. The realization brought a much-needed rush of oxygen to my lungs, to my blood, and I could think clearly once again.
I didn’t have to go after Constance, not yet. I could find someone else to target . . . to torture and interrogate. To kill. There was another way. Twelve others. I just had to track them down.
5
There’s a big difference between a human soul and a Nejeret ba. A Nejeret’s ba can exist outside of his or her physical body ad infinitum, like Dom’s. In other words, just because a Nejeret’s physical body dies, it doesn’t mean the end of that Nejeret. We don’t know where a ba goes once its body dies, just that it goes somewhere else—to some other plane or dimension or universe—and it will continue to be, to exist, until the end of everything.
Not so with a human soul, though. Human souls are tied to this realm, and when a human body passes, its soul dissipates; the energy that once clung together, forming a conscious, self-aware life-form, just sort of fades away until that person, body and soul, is gone forever. It’s exactly what happened to my mom two decades ago, and it sucks balls.
For years, I struggled with her death—not just with the passing of her body, but the ending of her soul. Oh, who am I kidding? I still struggle with it. But that’s the thing about being an immortal girl in a mortal world. Goodbyes become all too familiar; letting go becomes as easy as falling asleep. We might not want to fall asleep, we might hold onto wakefulness with all our might, cling to consciousness like our lives depend on it, but sleep will claim us eventually. We will let go eventually, whether we want to or not. At least, that’s what Dom tells me. Maybe in a century or two I’ll understand.
For most Nejerets, the death of the mother is the first introduction into the inevitable cruelty of our existence. We’re tied to humans, coexisting by way of reproductive dependency. As a byproduct of our hyper-regenerative abilities, female Nejerets’ bodies are incapable of sustaining a pregnancy to full term. Except for a few very rare cases—like Lex and Heru, literal soul mates whose bond alters Lex’s body, allowing her to sustain a pregnancy, or Nik’s mom, Aset, who was raped before her Nejeret traits manifested and rendered her infertile—a female Nejeret’s body will reject a fertilized egg almost as soon as it implants in the uterine wall. As a result, the burden of propagation, of sustaining our species, is left to male Nejerets and either female human carriers of the recessive Nejeret genes or young female Nejerets-to-be who are still fertile.
Because of this, nearly every Nejeret has a human mother. And all of us lose our mother, so often the one person who’s always been there for us, who’s loved us unconditionally. Who’s put us first, always first. Who will die. Whose soul will fade away, leaving us feeling lost and alone in this desolate existence. She is our first true taste of goodbye, and the bitterness lingers for ages, clinging to our tongues like resin. A constant reminder of the pain that comes from loving mortals, even as their fragility enhances their allure.
I’ve killed a lot of people—forty, to be exact—but they were all Nejerets, save for the human scientist who killed Dom’s body. All but one of my victim’s souls continued on after their bodies died. Somehow, that didn’t feel like truly ending a life. I’ve only ever taken the one human life. I’ve only ever ended one soul’s existence, and that shithead deserved it. Even so, the finality of what I’d done terrified me.
And if the kids infected with gods-know-what back in the Tent District succumbed to their illness in the end, their deaths would be as final as any other human’s, all because they’d been caught up in some ugly Nejeret business. It was my people’s fault that these innocents might die. That their souls might cease to be. That didn’t sit well with me. Even if it meant targeting and taking out—ending forever—a few corporate scumbags, I would see this thing through. I would fix this.
I couldn’t afford to fart around, skimming what little information I could from what was available to the public online. I needed help. I needed someone inside the system. I needed Officer Garth Smith, my favorite of Seattle’s finest.
Which was why I was lurking in the shadows across the street from the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday night. I could see Garth through the floor-to-ceiling windows at the entrance, manning the station’s reception desk. He was a sturdy, broad-shouldered fella who wore his Native heritage proudly. He still bore bruises from the attack at the Fremont Troll, faint but visible on his tan skin, but he looked good, considering he’d been in intensive care a week ago.
I was surprised they were letting him work at all, even if he seemed to be relegated to desk duty. Surprised, but relieved. Tracking him down would’ve been a lot harder if he was still convalescing at home. Mostly because I didn’t know where that home was.
Guilt riddled my conscience as I watched him work, shifting papers around, organizing things. It was my fault, him getting hurt. A Nejeret working for the Senate jumped him, having overheard us talking earlier that day. Garth “knew too much,” a leading cause of death in humans who get too close to Nejerets. He was the direct descendant of Chief Sealth, a legend in and of himself, who’d been tasked with the secret knowledge of our people almost two centuries ago. Sealth had passed that knowledge on, perhaps unwisely, which meant Garth knew way more about Nejeretkind than was healthy. Not that the Senate would care about Garth now—they had bigger fish to fry.
I huddled in the shadows across the street from the station for another hour in full-on creeper mode—hood up and hands stuffed into my pockets—watching Garth come in and out of view through the reception window. I’d gone nearly ten minutes without spotting him when he emerged from the door beside the reception desk and made his way toward the main entrance looking snug in his police-issued winter coat.
I waited u
ntil he was outside and heading up the block to follow him from my side of the street. I tailed him for another block and a half, until he slipped into a twenty-four-hour convenience store. A minute passed, then another. From across the street, I watched the time tick by on the register’s display. Another minute. Another.
“Shit,” I breathed. He’d given me the slip. He must’ve sensed someone following him.
Since the jig was up, I gave up any pretense of hiding and jogged across the street. I yanked the convenience store’s smudged glass door open and marched straight to the checkout counter. The clerk took a step backward.
“Where’d he go?” I asked, slamming my hands on the grimy counter. “The cop who was just in here—where did he go?”
Wide-eyed and hand shaking, the clerk pointed to a hallway lit by humming fluorescent lights in the far corner of the store.
I ran down the snack and chip aisle, then into the hallway. There was a storeroom on one side, a unisex bathroom on the other, and a door with a barely glowing exit sign over the doorframe. I peeked into the storeroom. It was cluttered, but there was no possible place for a guy as large as Garth to hide out.
I turned to the bathroom. The door was shut, and there was a nine-digit keypad over the handle. “Hey,” I called to the clerk. “What’s the code?” I keyed it in as he told me, then pushed down on the door handle, fairly certain the bathroom was empty. I couldn’t hear anyone in there, and I’ve got amazing hearing. Inhuman hearing.
“Garth?” I eased the door open. The bathroom was dark. And empty. “Damn it.”
I lunged to the exit and slammed the metal door open. And froze mid-step.
Garth moved into the glow of a floodlight a couple yards away, his sidearm drawn and aimed at my chest. “Why are you following me?”
Slowly, I raised my hands so I could push back my hood. As the damp fabric fell backward, I kept my hands up and where he could see them, assuring him I meant him no harm.
Garth’s eyebrows rose, his eyes rounding. “Kat?” He lowered his pistol.
The corner of my mouth lifted. “Jumpy much?”
He pressed his lips into a flat line. “I thought you were one of them.”
“I am one of them.”
He holstered his gun, and I lowered my hands. “You know what I mean.”
I took a step toward him, my eyes scanning his bold features. “You look good.” My eyes met his. His dark brown irises appeared black backlit against the floodlight. “Better, I mean.” I felt my lips curve into the barest of smiles. “You look better.” Not that he didn’t look good—he always looked good. He was an attractive guy, all tall and broad-shouldered and confident and kind. A guy who was a cop, while I was a killer. A guy who was human. A guy who nearly died because of me.
Garth laughed under his breath. “Just better?” He shot a quick glance around.
My cheeks warmed.
Taking a step closer, Garth ducked his head, his eyes skimming over my face and lower, taking me in. He frowned, placing a hand on my arm and moving me deeper into the shadows with him. “Everything alright? You look . . .” He trailed off when his eyes met mine. “How’s your brother?”
I touched the mirrored pendant through my sweatshirt. Dom hadn’t said anything yet, so I figured he was still back in the standing mirror on Bainbridge. “He died,” I said. “But he’s okay, sort of. It’s a long story.”
Garth nodded to himself, like my wackadoo explanation was the most normal thing in the world. “Are you okay?”
My lips parted and I inhaled, planning to tell him I was fine, but nothing came out. Because I wasn’t okay. Far from it. I just hadn’t realized how far until he asked me.
Garth’s features softened. “You look like you could use some warming up.” He nodded his head to the side. “I live a couple blocks that way.” He waved his hand and started walking. “Come on.”
My feet moved on their own, my mind still stunned by my reaction to his simple question about my well-being. And like a lost little puppy, I followed Garth home.
6
Garth waited for me to pass through the doorway to his condo before shutting the door. His place was on the Puget Sound side of Capitol Hill, as opposed to the Lake Washington side. He had a top-floor unit in a five-story building. It was an older building with a brick exterior, but the interior had to have been renovated sometime during the past decade. It was nice—clean and classy.
Garth locked the deadbolt, then turned to face me. “So . . . what’s up?” We’d been quiet during the walk, but apparently quiet time was over.
“Oh, you know . . .” Eyes wandering here and there, I passed by a small, open kitchen and through the living room to the two huge windows monopolizing the wall opposite the front door. “Quite the view,” I said, taking in the glimmering cityscape. From here, I could see I-5 at the bottom of the hill, the familiar Seattle skyline beyond it, and just a hint of the Sound reflecting the moonlight. It didn’t matter the angle, anytime I saw my city, I felt like I was home.
I glanced over my shoulder, quirking an eyebrow. “I didn’t know they paid you guys the big bucks.”
Garth flipped a light switch on the wall under the kitchen cabinets, and my view of the city dimmed as the lights in the kitchen flared to life. “I got a good deal. Besides, the place is small.” He turned his back to me and opened the cupboard over the microwave, reaching up to pull out a bottle of Jameson. “It’s just me and Eva, anyway,” he said.
“Eva?” I made my way back to the kitchen, moving between a microsuede sectional and a black-stained coffee table. I dropped my backpack off on the couch as I passed it, glancing at Garth’s left hand as I walked. No ring, so it didn’t look like Eva was the name of his wife. “Girlfriend?” My brows drew together. “Or daughter?” He’d never mentioned any family. Well, besides his ancestors and his relatives over on the Port Madison Reservation. But no SOs or kiddos.
“No, nothing like that.” Garth pulled two glass tumblers out of the dishwasher, then met my eyes. “I ran it this morning. They’re clean, I promise.”
I shrugged, stopping at the narrow kitchen island. The quartz countertop gleamed, a stark contrast to the dark-stained cabinets and stainless steel appliances. It wasn’t like I could die of food poisoning, anyway.
A cat jumped up on the counter, settling on the edge like a gargoyle, her luminous green eyes locked on me. The feline was on the smaller side, its fur mostly white but mottled with patches of gray and orange. Its slim tail was wrapped around its feet, the end twitching every few seconds.
“See,” Garth said. “Eva.”
“Oh . . .” I couldn’t tear my eyes from the creature, not when I was getting the very distinct impression that she was plotting my death.
Garth uncorked the whiskey, filled one glass a third of the way, the other quite a bit more, then slid the fuller one my way, along with the bottle. That got my attention, and I risked breaking eye contact with the cat to catch the glass before it reached the edge of the counter. The bottle didn’t travel quite so far, but it was near enough for comfort.
Garth picked up his own glass and rounded the island, taking a sip as he walked. He stopped by the cat—Eva—and scratched the top of her head. Her eyelids slid shut most of the way, just a sliver of green and black remaining trained on me.
“Don’t be offended if she doesn’t warm up to you right away,” Garth said, moving his hand under her chin. Eva stretched out her neck, giving him freer access. “She’s kind of a one-man cat.”
I forced a closed-mouth smile and picked up the glass, downing half the Jameson in a single gulp. It burned going down, just the way I liked it. “Thanks for this,” I said, clearing my throat, and saluted him with the booze. I cleared my throat, took another sip, then set the glass down. “It’s been a rough week. A strange week.”
Garth’s gaze moved over my face and hair. “Where are you staying?”
I stared at him, hard. “What makes you think I’m not staying at my place
?”
“I stopped by the shop,” he said. “Nik told me you wouldn’t be around for a while. That, on top of the warrant issued for your arrest this afternoon, well . . .”
I stiffened, feeling like I’d been doused in frigid salt water straight from the Puget Sound.
“Your photo’s been all over the news. They say you were responsible for the fire at that warehouse . . . and that you killed someone.”
“Shit,” I hissed. That might explain the stares from the librarian and the fear in the convenience store clerk’s eyes. If there was a warrant out for me, not to mention news alerts, my plans would have to change drastically. No more evenings in bars. No more traipsing around the city. And definitely no impromptu trips back to the shop. I had to lay low, for real this time. There was no doubt in my mind that the Senate was behind this. It was their way of slowing me down, using the humans to track me so they could focus their efforts on fighting Heru.
I supposed I shouldn’t be surprised. But that didn’t stop me from being irritated. And pissed off. What was I supposed to do now?
I could go to the Tent District. Law enforcement barely had any jurisdiction there since the city had already written off most of its residents as lost causes, nuisances better contained within the unofficial district’s fences than out and about on the streets of Seattle. I could duck out there . . . or I could leave the city altogether. My city. My home. My mission would take me away from Seattle one of these days, anyway, so why not today?
But what about the kids? I tensed at the thought. I’d made a promise to Dorman, and damn it, I would stick to it. I would find a cure for this damn disease and lock in the loyalty of Dorman’s followers. I would do it, damn it.
Garth touched my chin, and I flinched away from him. He lowered his hand back to the cat. “You’ve been staying on the streets, haven’t you?”
I stared down at the glass of whiskey. “Not exactly.”
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