“You know a way to kill the Stick Man?”
She grinned. “I do. But it’s not easy, and it’s not pretty.”
“I don’t do pretty or easy, so tell me.” I heard the edge in my voice. Rose’s eyes crinkled at the edges as she smiled.
“Blood fire.”
I frowned at her. “What?”
A thump behind us stilled me. The scratch of branches across the door. Rose hissed and threw a vial of red fluid into the bucket with the still-dancing slivers, struck a match and dropped it in.
The flame that burst out of the tiny tin bucket reached the ceiling. Blood fire; that vial had been the blood of an abnormal, I could smell it. I glanced at Rose.
The door behind me shuddered and Rose gave me a nod. “I can hold him for maybe a few minutes. Is that enough time for you to get out?”
I frowned at her. I still didn’t understand why she was helping me, but I nodded. “I’ll take it. Thanks.”
I positioned myself behind the door and waited for Rose to give me a nod. Her gray curls bobbed and I yanked the door open.
The Stick Man spilled through the door, filling up the space even though his limbs were scrawny.
He froze in mid-swipe toward Rose. She skirted around the edge of the desk, her eyes on him.
“Go, Nix. Go and find your boy.”
I’d taken a few steps but I stopped where I was. “What?”
“Go, I can’t hold him.” The Stick Man roared and twisted out of her hold, driving its arms through her upper body and lifting her above her head before she could strike her lighter. She was dead; I knew it.
I turned to go as she dropped Linx. I grabbed the tweezers from the air and clutched them against the folder in my arms as I ran for the elevator.
I hit the button, frantic. The idea of more of those creepy-ass slivers sliding through my skin and working toward my heart was too much.
The elevator opened and I stepped in, grateful for the crowd of women in it once more. “Are they evacuating?” one of them asked me, and I nodded. Unable for the first time in a long time to find the words I wanted.
It had been a long time since I’d seen an abnormal attack another abnormal, and even longer since I’d seen any of the guardians.
Pull your shit together, Phoenix, I thought.
I ran a hand through my hair, knowing it would stand up more. But that was the goal. I would stand out as I left. And would have to hope it would be enough to keep the guards on the main floor from stopping me.
“Forgot your shoes?” one of the women asked with her eyebrows raised.
I managed a forced laugh. “Something like that.”
Miraculously, she handed me a pair of flats she had folded up in her purse. “These have saved me more than once. I suggest you get yourself a pair.”
“You are amazing, thank you,” I whispered as I balanced on one foot and then the other to get the thin black flats on.
She sniffed. “You’re too pretty to be this dumb. Get yourself some smarts, girlfriend. This company eats pretty girls like you for lunch.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I figured that much out already.” I stuffed the folder and papers I’d taken off Gabe into the back of my skirt, under the ties of the shirt around my waist. I held Linx so he was flush against my arms. My bleeding, punctured arms. More than a few of the women were giving me looks. Shit, I was going to stand out in the worst way.
The doors of the elevator opened and there waiting were the guards . . . and Gabe.
I tucked in behind one of the women, using her as cover as I walked out with the group of women.
“Brown hair, black-rimmed glasses, heels,” Gabe snapped. “Where the hell is she? Did the Stick Man get her?”
He pushed through the women and there were gasps all around, of which I joined in. His gaze flicked over me, sliding off me like I was nothing. I turned so I was further into the group, my hands on my arms as if I were cold.
I picked up the pace, hurrying to the front door.
A guard stood there, his arms over his chest. “Sorry, we’re on lockdown.”
“Well, shit, that isn’t going to fly.” I snugged up close to him, whipped my one leg between his and shoved him off balance. He went skating backward, his arms windmilling as he yelled.
I didn’t wait to see who noticed. I just walked on out the doors.
“Stop her!”
That was my cue to move.
I bolted, more thankful for those damn flats than I ever could have imagined. I squeezed Linx tightly.
“Oh yeah, I Iike you already,” he said.
Down the sidewalk, I ran, weaving my way through the crowds of men and women on their way to work. I knew Gabe wouldn’t give up easily. I knew he was going to look for the woman who’d taken the papers, but for how long? It wasn’t money, so I was banking on a week or two at the most. But the Stick Man, he’d come for me. He’d keep looking. Rose was right about that.
Shit, like I needed a second killer coming for me.
I made it all the way to my motel room, up the stairs and had the door closed behind me before I dared to so much as glance at the papers. And when I did . . . I slid to the floor, my entire body shaking as the words that stared up at me shattered everything I thought I knew. Everything I thought I’d understood.
Job on File
Place: Jackson Hole, Wyoming
Mark: Justin Stark.
Called in by: Luca Romano
Chapter Seventeen
The papers I’d printed at my father’s business, that I’d taken from Gabe before bolting out of the Blink Management building, rattled in my fingers. They shook so hard, I had a difficult time reading them at all. Abe pushed against me, desperate for attention as always. I pushed him away. “Not now, buddy.” I whispered the words.
“What is it? Let me see,” Linx grumbled from the floor where I’d dropped him.
“Who is that?” Dinah barked. Their voices faded, white noise all around me.
I’d taken the papers from my father’s office, thinking I would find out who was still looking for me; that I’d find out which bogeyman was on my trail to punish me for stealing from my father and the mob all those years ago.
What I didn’t expect to find was the exact information on who had called in the hit on my husband. I had all of three sheets of paper, two of which were nothing but Justin’s statistics— known aliases: Justin Black, Joseph Donald, JJ Gray—and his most recent jobs. But that wasn’t what had me on my knees. No, that was much, much worse.
The person who’d called the hit in on my husband, who’d called in the mob to do his dirty work, was Luca Romano.
My father.
Less than an hour before, I’d been two feet from the man who’d had my husband killed. The man who’d put a hit on my family, and in doing so, had killed my son. Abe whined softly, his warmth against my leg the only thing holding me together as the last of my world shattered.
Rage did not begin to cover the hatred swirling through me, spilling upward like a blizzard that iced over the last of the warmth my body held. My father had made me what I was. He’d made me a killer to use against those who he thought had done him wrong, to hunt the abnormals that had cheated him in his mind.
He’d created me, let me develop into the boogeyman he’d used to threaten his rivals.
Now that boogeyman was about to come home to roost.
I sat on the floor until the shakes left me entirely, and my body was once more under my control.
I forced myself to look at the rest of the papers from the folder.
There was talk of the new studio in Hollywood Romano had started, of the money flowing in and out. Millions every month. Another scam, another scheme. I didn’t care. None of that mattered now. Magic and money went together like ham and cheese, and I had no doubt he was dabbling in the latter still.
I closed my eyes. Rose had told me to find my boy. My boy, she had to mean . . . who? Not Bear, of course, not Bear. But who then? What b
oy was mine?
I stood, stripped out of the business attire and slid into casual clothes. I slipped Dinah and Eleanor onto my back, grateful they were quiet.
“Abe, come.” I slipped a leash onto his collar.
We didn’t have far to go to get to a payphone, one of the reasons I’d chosen this motel. I could have grabbed a cell phone, but I didn’t trust them. I knew they could be traced.
Taking coins from my pocket, I slid them into the metal slot and dialed Zee’s number.
He picked up on the first ring. “Nix?”
“It was my father who called in the hit, Zee. Justin was doing something that involved my father, as we suspected, but it was Romano who called it in.”
“Justin knew who you were,” Zee said, his voice thoughtful. “He could have been using it against your dad. We suspected that.”
“Does it matter?” I realized then it really didn’t. I didn’t care about the reasons why Justin had been dealing with my father. What mattered was that he was gone. Bear was gone, and I knew who to blame.
“Nix. I’ll leave right now. I can be there in—”
“No,” I cut him off, “I’ll be done by then, so don’t bother coming.”
He was quiet a moment. “What about your tail? Simon?”
I snorted and turned in the phone booth so I could see up and down the street. “He thinks he’s a big bad ugly. I’ll deal with him when he shows up. He’s trying to frighten me with street kids.” I didn’t mention that I had the Stick Man looking for me. For the first time, I didn’t want Zee here. I wanted him to stay where he was and let me do this on my own.
“You sure about that?”
“He won’t be able to stop me, not now,” I said.
“You sure, Nix? You need to be sure.”
Those few words held a wealth of understanding of who I was, and where my mind had gone. Was I sure that killing my father would fix the harm he’d done to me? I wasn’t. But I didn’t know how else to handle this. I didn’t know how else to make things right. There had to be something that would allow me to make my father pay, and his life seemed like a measly pittance against my sweet Bear’s.
“I’ve got to go, Zee. If I don’t phone you by tomorrow morning, you know why.”
“Nix, wait . . .”
I was hanging up the phone, but I could still hear him.
“Phoenix, there are better ways—”
I shook my head and held the receiver down hard. I glanced at Abe. He would have to come with me. His fate was tangled with mine, and if I died doing what I planned, he would at least be with me and Bear, too.
I rubbed a hand over his head. “Come on, Abe.”
“Who are we hunting now?” Eleanor asked, always the more perceptive of the two guns.
“Forget that, who was the talking tool back at the room?” Dinah snapped.
It was a struggle to speak, but I knew it would help if I told them what I was doing. If nothing else, they always backed up my violence.
“Luca Romano killed my husband and son. His life is forfeit. The tool’s name is Linx and he was given to me by a woman who saved my life.”
“An abnormal saved your life?” Eleanor asked.
“Yes.” I didn’t say more than that. I needed a place where I didn’t have to worry about my next step, a place where I could just walk and walk and let my mind settle into my plans.
Walking—or running—had always been the place where my mind had found the threads I needed to splice together in order to make a complicated plan work.
I scanned the area we walked constantly as Abe sniffed plants and bushes. A park with a trail that looped around the edges was perfect and I set my feet on autopilot.
My father in the past frequented La Bella Cuisina after work, like a king taking the time to eat with his subjects. He always had a few business people with him, at least one of my brothers and very often whatever girlfriend he had on his arm at the time.
Run by abnormals that owed him, he ate and drank for free. Of course, that put the owners at a loss, which forced them to go to him for more money. By now if Romano didn’t own it outright, I’d be surprised.
Getting to him would be difficult if he’d changed his routine, but like so much about my father, I doubted he ever thought about how someone might try to kill him. That had been part of my job, and I’d thwarted two attempts on his life that he didn’t even realize happened.
We were on our second loop around the park before the itch in my shoulder blades announced someone following me. I stopped and bent down to Abe, picked up his front left paw and inspected it as though he’d gotten a thorn. From the corner of my eye, a figure picked up speed.
A broad daylight attack would be something ballsy. I had to give whoever was coming at me that.
I stood and twisted, my right hand diving to my lower back to Dinah’s handle. The man coming at me didn’t slow, not for a second. In fact, he picked up speed, smiling. Mid-thirties, trim, average face and coloring. Nothing about him stood out, nothing about him would make you look twice. Brown eyes.
“Hello, Phoenix.”
I didn’t take my hand from Dinah, but I didn’t bring her out either. “You have me at a disadvantage. You know my name.”
He smiled, but did not hold his hand out. “Simon.”
“Simon,” I said softly, “so you are the one tracking me?”
“Ah, not exactly.” His smile faltered. “You see, I was working for your father, but he decided not to pay me.”
I couldn’t help the laugh that burst out of me. “You aren’t getting a paycheck from me.”
He tipped his head to one side, and his eyes glittered. Eyes that spoke of more than a trickle of magic.
My father had sent an abnormal after me.
“Ah, but I have an offer. You see, between you and me, we could do some serious damage to your father, and convince him to give us large sums of money.” His smile was back now.
“The girl you sent to me with the note?” I arched an eyebrow.
“Aptly named, Pink. She works for me. You gave her a bit of a scare, but she was impressed that not only did you pay her, you weren’t the psycho we thought you were.” He waved a hand forward, suggesting we walk together.
Abe didn’t growl at him as he stepped up beside us.
That was interesting. Abe was trained to essentially warn me if an abnormal was close.
I didn’t get even a single growl from him. “Traitor,” I muttered.
Dinah sniffed. “He’s a dog, not a gun.”
Simon slowed and looked to my back. “Who was that?”
“Someone you don’t want to meet,” I said. Talking about Dinah and Eleanor, even to an abnormal who would understand the concept of an inanimate object being able to speak and think, was not something I did.
“No lisp?” I arched an eyebrow at him.
“Ah, no. Just trying to throw you off.”
“Smart.” I’d give him that much.
Simon tucked his hands into the pockets of his slacks, his coat tucked behind his arms. He looked like a casual businessman on a lunch break. “You see, your father . . . well, you know how little he likes to pay out his precious cash.”
I didn’t respond. If Simon was going to talk, and dish on my father, then I would listen and learn what I could.
He glanced at me. “You stole a great deal of money from him and lived away from him for a long time, using Zee’s magic to hide you. I think we could do it again.”
I took a shot in the dark, one that I was sure to miss but I took it anyway. “You burned my house down, and now you want me to work with you?”
He didn’t even blink. “No arson from me. I was on my way to find you because your father stopped paying me months ago.”
“And the kid, Bradley?”
He shrugged. “What about him? He was meant as bait. Your father thought he’d find you, and you’d kill him, and we’d have you then.”
“Obviously, it didn’t work,�
� I pointed out.
“Well, obviously. Long as little Bradley doesn’t show up and spill the beans, we should be good. He had quite the crush on you.” Simon rolled his eyes. Like we were old friends talking about a mutual acquaintance.
“Bradley is dead.”
He grunted. “Pity, kid had potential, even if he was obsessed with you.” Simon squinted into the distance. “So, what do you say to my proposition?”
“I’ll think about it.” I had no intention of doing any such thing. I just needed to get him out of my way, and now that he’d pointed out he wasn’t interested in killing me, all the better.
Mind you, there was still the Stick Man to deal with.
The trees around us suddenly seemed to loom in close. “I have to go,” I said. I was a fool. What had I been thinking, coming to a damn park?
There was a creak of branches behind us, and Abe’s ears perked up, a low growl slipping through his teeth.
Simon pulled one hand out of his pocket slow enough that I knew he was being careful on purpose as he handed me a card. “I’m very good at finding people, Phoenix. That’s part of my abilities. You’re good at killing people, and from what I understand, you have some other rather . . . unique . . . skills for a normal.” His eyes darted to my lower back. “I think we’d make a good team.”
I took the card and glanced at it. No name, nothing but a number.
I flicked it once with my middle finger, and tucked it into my back pocket. “Like I said, I’ll think about it.”
“Do that.” There was more than a hint of warning in those two words. I raised my eyebrows and let a smile slide over my lips. A very not nice smile.
“Let me be clear, Simon. Threatening me in any way will make it so you are no longer doing your job. It will ensure you not being able to breathe anymore. Abnormal or not, capiche?”
“And threatening me is no more of a better idea, Phoenix.” He smiled back at me, and I saw the darkness in him. I saw the way he’d dressed down, deliberately blending into the world around us. A pair of killers out in the open, having a nice chat about killing each other.
“I’ll call you tomorrow with my answer.” I deliberately turned my back on him.
Fury of a Phoenix (The Nix Series Book 1) Page 18