Two white spots appeared on his cheeks, his eyes going hard. “You think I need a crutch? Or saving?” He laughed an exhale. “I can’t tell if you think less of me or yourself.”
“Trust me.” I smiled sweetly. “I don’t think less of myself.”
“No?” He cocked an eyebrow, tossing his linen napkin on the table, and reaching for the sake. “Not even if you were my second choice?”
Only sheer gritty tenacity kept me from flinching. “Aw, baby,” I purred. “You don’t think you were mine?”
Rohan froze in mid-pour, setting the carafe down with careful precision. “Meaning?”
I tossed my hair, a hard smile sliding across my face. “I hooked up with Drio. In Prague. The night of your wrap party performance.”
Rohan pushed away from the table, standing over me. Of all the responses he could have given me–anger, outrage, betrayal–the last one I expected was a smirk. “Drio told me the next morning.” His lips brushed my ear as he whispered, “Didn’t conclude that, did you, baby?” and was gone.
10
Slamming my car door wasn’t particularly satisfying. Rohan had known about me and Drio and hadn’t cared enough to comment. I was such a fool. I really had been his second choice. Beating on my steering wheel and screaming curse words was slightly better.
Drio and I may have started out as the worst of enemies but we’d grown into an odd sort of friendship and mutual respect. Yet boy, had he killed it with his blabbermouthing to Rohan.
I hit speed dial, not bothering with greetings. “You kissing and telling motherfucker!”
“What is your problem now?” Drio’s Italian-accented English was a low rasp, his voice thick with sleep. Even given the time difference between Vancouver and Rome, where he was currently on a mission, it wasn’t that late. Wonder what he’d been up to?
“You told Rohan about us?”
There was silence for a moment. “Oh. Not much of an us considering my blue balls that night.” He scratched some part of his body with a loud scritch. “That upset you?” Given the glee in those words, he’d unleashed the sadistic grin that always preceded demon torture time and was bestowed on me about thirty-five percent of the time. He and I had come a long way from the ninety-nine percent I’d first rated.
I repeatedly shot the phone the finger. “It was none of his business! Do something useful for a change and make him to go back to Los Angeles.”
“He should be soon. Rabbi Mandelbaum always personally greets new Rasha so he came to see your brother–”
“And me. My greeting was definitely personal.” I wrenched the ignition key on.
“…and since Ro had to go back to Vancouver to pick up his things, they had the debrief there.”
Debrief and clothing retrieval. I gripped the wheel, not yet releasing the parking brake lest I drive off in a homicidal rage. “As we’ve both moved on from our little fling, the sooner he leaves, the better.”
“Quit toying with him.”
“Other way round.”
He gave a pffft of disbelief.
“What’s the deal with you two?” His loyalty to Rohan was a dark fierce bond. One day I’d figure out their relationship which I’d shortlisted down to a top three of blood brothers, lovers in a hard, rough one night stand, or co-perpetrators in some heinous crime. God knows, I had my preference.
“I’d tell you but then I’d have to kill you, bella,” he purred.
All righty, I was one twisted dudette because fan me now, that was hot. “I hate you.”
He laughed and hung up. Death by testosterone. It was pretty much a given in my future.
Enough of him and his annoying BFF. I called Cole, snorting at the irony that he was my least stressful dynamic these days. “Come bowling with me. Now.”
“What’s with the sudden need for five-pin, Avon? Feeling sentimental?”
“Just felt like flinging some balls, looking for an easy score.”
“Not so easy anymore.”
Truthfully, we’d both been pretty terrible bowlers. I should have met up with Ari and kept investigating but he’d text me if he had any leads. Probably. Until I worked off some of the anger pumping through my veins, I’d be no good to him. Plus, I couldn’t be responsible for what might happen if Ari looked at me sideways when I was in this mood.
“In or out, Cole?”
He chuckled. “See you there.”
Once I’d exchanged my heels for bowling shoes, I headed up the narrow staircase, grinning at the disco music growing louder. I stepped into the darkened room. Glow-in-the-dark flowers and paisleys painted on the wall and a dim purple light were the only illumination for the ten lanes up here. I sidestepped the gaggle of small children that seemed to be here for a birthday party given their identical pirate hats, and headed for Cole, already waiting for me at our lane by the far wall.
“Should have said the dress code was semi-formal,” he teased.
I smoothed down my dress, about to reply that he looked just fine in the T-shirt stretched tight across his pecs when my brain got past these new changes to Cole’s frame enough to process it was a Twenty-One Pilots concert tee. I growled.
His brows creased in a feigned look of confusion.
“Oh, you bastard. You did steal my shirt.” I jumped on his back. “Give it.”
We wrestled for it, me laughing and beating on him.
“Ouch!” Cole shook out his arm. “Electric shock.”
I clasped my hands behind my back. “Yeah. Ouch.”
The curve of his spine and his head dipped close to the score keeping machine as he typed in our names was a familiar and comforting sight, as was the TV screen mounted above us lighting up with Avon and Cold-Hearted, the bowling moniker I’d given him due to his constant refusal to let me use kiddie bumpers.
I smiled and motioned him to the balls with an arm flourish. “Prepare to meet your doom.”
Forty-five minutes later, Cole bowled his third straight strike, annihilating me.
“Huh,” I said, watching the fallen pins reset, “that didn’t go as planned.”
“Did I forget to mention I’m on a bowling league?” He strutted back to the hard orange plastic seats.
“Awwwww. Do you wear matching button-ups with your names embroidered on them?”
He shook his head. “Strike Force wears black T-shirts, thank you very much.”
“Of course they do.” I toed off my shoes.
He jabbed a finger at me. “For that diss, you’re buying me a double scoop.”
We hit up my favorite gelato place in separate cars. Walking inside, Cole shook his head at the panels behind the counters boasting colorful chalk murals of the Seven Wonders of the World. “Tacky as ever,” he said.
“Fabulous as ever.” I trailed Cole around the store.
“How’s it going getting Davide’s family some money?” he asked, sampling some moccachino chip.
“We’re pursuing some very promising avenues.” With every lie today, my place in Hell was that much more assured.
“I’m glad. His family are good people. They deserve something out of this loss.” He gazed off, a wistful expression on his face, the tiny pink sample spoon clutched in his fist. “It’s so crazy. Davide was convinced that if he ever died young it would be because he fell in a climb. I guess dying at home is better than your family having to identify bits of you at a morgue.”
“The morgue!”
“What?” He tossed out the spoon.
Okay, yes, I had said that with a bit too much enthusiasm, but Cole had just given me an excellent idea. I schooled my features to look chagrined and somber. “I just thought… how awful for them to have to go to the morgue and see him in any circumstance. Sometimes working on cases like this really brings it home.” I shook my head. “You must miss Davide a lot.”
He tucked an errant curl behind my ear. “I do.” He met my eyes. “I didn’t realize how much until he was gone.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty awful
when people go away.”
Cole dropped his hand.
Transitional. “So what flavors do you want?” I asked brightly.
He settled on cherry cheesecake and coffee.
“My grandfather used to really like that combo, too,” I said.
“At least I try new things.” Cole pushed me toward a case on the other side of the store. “Stop drooling. Go get the chocolate raspberry.”
“Nope,” I said, quelling a longing glance at my favorite flavor. “I’m all about new experiences these days.” I ordered a lemon sorbetto, my second favorite, but what he didn’t know couldn’t hurt me.
We stood in the store, munching on our cones, and watching the blustery clouds through the glass doors. “You and Ari still play that disgusting ‘what’s that flavor?’ game?”
“It’s the best game and not lately. We’ve both been busy.”
“Yeah? Is Ari doing summer semester?”
“Kind of a work study thing,” I hedged. Really mastering the art of spewing utter bullshit, Nava. Thankfully, Cole had no idea that I was, and probably wouldn’t have challenged me if he had.
I never thought I’d need to prepare a cover story because I was hanging out with him again. Our interactions were going to have to get a lot less verbal.
I finished the last bite of my sorbetto. “Thanks for the bowling. I needed this break.”
“Play hooky. We can grab dinner later.”
“I can’t. Work beckons even on a Sunday. How about tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow it is. I’ll text you.”
“Sounds good.” I paused, my hand on the door. “Hey, Cole?” He looked over at me, the sight of his tongue darting out to catch a drip on his cone distracting me for a second. “I will be getting that shirt back.”
He grinned. “We’ll see.”
I bounded out to my car in a much better mood.
The Sunday evening plans I wouldn’t break for Cole involved a light bout of B&E at our local neighborhood morgue.
To be fair, I would have told my brother but his phone kept going to voicemail and when I went back to Demon Club to find him, Kane was surprised that I wasn’t with him, given Ari had gone off to do something around the investigation. I didn’t need to be in charge but his refusal to even treat me as an equal was going to end up biting him in the ass when I cracked this case first. The look on both his face and Mandelbutt’s would be worth savoring.
And capturing in photo form for multiple viewings and possibly a Hanukkah card.
A few hours later, I drove past the row of buildings comprising the large Vancouver General Hospital complex in mid-town, parking the car around the corner from the entrance to the emergency ward. I tucked my key inside my bra under the nurse’s scrubs I’d purchased after leaving Cole, and put a fake employee lanyard around my neck.
Walking with purpose, I crossed the small drop-off area, past the couple of ambulances parked there and entered the sliding glass doors under the neon Emergency sign with a measured stride. From my own visits here when I’d been dealing with my Achilles injuries, I knew that the security doors immediately to the left of the admittance desk led to the ER ward itself while to the right was a waiting area.
I curved around the desk, skirting the plastic lounge chairs that at 3AM on a Monday morning were only a quarter full.
Not having a magnetic access card to get me through the double doors where the elevators were, I checked for any security camera and finding none, zapped the keypad. A small current snaked over the pad before it shorted out. I pushed through the metal doors, finding myself in a quiet hallway with linoleum floors painted with multi-colored lines leading to different departments. I headed for the bank of elevators at the end of the hall, passing more exam rooms.
A nurse turned into the hallway from an X-ray room, pushing a bed with a patient on it, but other than a nod, took no notice of me.
Once inside the elevator, I pushed the button for the next level down, figuring the staff would want the shortest distance possible to take the bodies. If I was wrong, well, I’d go through each floor one by one.
I expected creepy flickering and buzzing fluorescents, but the hallway was surprisingly well-lit. Dead silent. A good sign. Halfway down the corridor, I found the morgue. A bright, open room with lots of stainless steel sinks and tables.
On one wall was a list of body parts including Thyroid, Lung R, Lung L, and Heart written on plastic signs and tacked along one side of a chalkboard. Next to the board was a scale. Empty, I was happy to note, though the orange “biohazard” buckets under a couple of the tables were disconcerting.
A grizzled middle-aged man in plain scrubs and a disposable surgical cap stepped out of a doorway. “Can I help you?”
I jumped. “Oh. Hi. You’ve got a Jane Doe here? Early twenties, red hair? Heart attack.” I rubbed my hands over the goosebumps springing up on my skin.
He twirled a finger around the room. “Constant current of cool air. Prevents smells from stagnating. Has our JD been identified?”
“Possibly. I was sent to check for a tattoo.”
“No kidding.” He handed me a surgical cap and latex gloves. “Put these on. We don’t want to contaminate her remains.”
He led me into a huge cooler where sheeted bodies were stacked in rows on refrigeration shelving, kind of like an IKEA of the dearly departed. Along one wall were the latched drawers I’d expected from years of crime show watching.
“That’s where we keep the rotters,” the attendant said.
I gagged, tasting bleach.
He unlatched a drawer, sliding out the slab with the Jane Doe, our first victim. I braced myself but she didn’t stink. He smirked. “We also seal certain bodies to preserve evidence.” He grasped the sheet covering her. “Ready?”
“Go for it.”
He uncovered her and left me to check. My excitement at getting a leg up on Ari dimmed in the face of my first human corpse. Jane had only been dead a short time and since she’d been in the cooler, decomposition had yet to set in. She looked exactly like bodies in the movies did except what was dismissible up on the silver screen packed a punch when I was close enough to see the ragged cuticles that she must have had a habit of biting, and the small scar cutting diagonally through her left eyebrow. When I was close enough to see the chipped purple polish that was eerily close to my own.
I curled my latex-covered fingers into my palm.
Her entire right side was covered in an elaborate tattoo of tropical flowers in brilliant colors running from her shoulder down past her hip. No wonder the attendant had laughed. Pretty distinct ID.
I wondered how she’d spent her last hours. Had she lived her life to the fullest, burning brightly, believing the world was hers for the taking? Or was her life a mess of failed dreams and half-formed regrets?
My chest grew tight.
Since there was no sign of the Arabic word for love anywhere on her front, I reached out to turn her over. My fingers froze inches from her body. It was the nail polish: the sight of her lifeless hands so similar to mine. Dizzy, I gripped the door to her drawer, my fingers tingling.
Pull your shit together.
Had this been part of Ari’s training? I’d cycled through a lot of emotions on missing out on the twenty years of being an initiate but jealousy had never been one of them. This probably wouldn’t have been his first corpse. He wouldn’t have frozen up.
The image of his smirking face kicked my butt into gear. I pinched my arm until pain dissipated any panic, then, steeling myself, rolled her over.
There it was. Once more in felt pen, woven through the stem of one of the flowers curving around her hip. I snapped a photo of it and, with a whispered promise that I’d avenge her life that had been cut far, far too short, pitched my gloves into the trash, and got the hell out.
I barreled through the corridors, car-bound. Two wrong turns later, I found a service elevator that took me down into the underground parking garage. I stepped out and push
ed the bar to open the door to the garage but nothing happened. Tried again. Still nothing.
I threw my weight against it, hysteria dancing over my skin. I needed out of this building of death. Eyes darting around, I found a scanner requiring an access card to get out, but the lights on it were cycling from red through to green. It was broken and zapping it didn’t make a difference. Which meant my choices were go the long way through the hospital, out the door open this late at night to the street, and down the block to the garage entrance or…
Making a fist, I rotated it clockwise, and blew the door into the garage.
That had been louder than I’d anticipated, but given it was the middle of the night, no one was around to raise any alarm. I raced across to my car in the far corner, the skin between my shoulder blades prickling.
A figure jumped out of the shadows.
I let out a sound somewhere between a gasp and a scream and threw a right hook that should have done some serious windpipe damage.
My assailant dodged my blow and flipped me onto my hood, pinning me in place with his hip.
Rohan ripped my surgical cap off. “Getting a jump on the day?”
I shook out my curls, calming my beating heart. “I’m bringing my C game. It’s like my A game but bigger and more supple.”
His eyes darted down to my boobs.
I pushed him off. “Are you following me?”
“Yes.”
I blinked, not expecting him to be honest about it. “Well quit it, stalker. I have work to do.”
“Can’t let anything happen to my partner before we retrieve the spine.”
I wiggled all my bits, checking for damage. “We’re not partners.”
Rohan sat on my hood. “I’m not totally useless at this. Kinda have a lifetime of training in assessing character and making judgment calls about life or death situations.”
“I don’t want you making judgment calls. I want you doing what you’re told.”
“Right. In Nava-land, my role is ‘dance, monkey, dance.’”
The Unlikeable Demon Hunter Collection: Books 1-3 (Nava Katz Box Set) Page 67