Another Kind of Dead dc-3

by Kelly Meding

  “Right. I don’t suppose you can shed any light on this mystery girlfriend, or where I might find her?”

  I bit down on my lower lip, mostly to keep in an amused snort. If he only knew how close he stood to the mystery girl, he’d shit his shorts. I hated snooping into a conversation in which I couldn’t participate.

  “Like I said,” Wyatt replied in a mimic of Leo’s earlier comment, “I hadn’t seen Alex in twenty years. I heard he died, so I came to support his dad.”

  Reilly reached into his jacket. I tensed, but instead of a weapon, he produced a well-thumbed notebook and nub of a pencil. He flipped through scribbled-on, dog-eared pages until he found a clean one near the end, then wrote what looked like gibberish. I couldn’t scoot around to read over his shoulder—I might be invisible, but my feet would still imprint on the grass, and my jeans would whisper my presence. Couldn’t risk it around someone so used to noticing tiny details.

  “I apologize for taking your time,” Reilly said for the umpteenth time. Someone who apologized so much needed to work in a confessional. He tucked the pencil nub behind his ear, then thumbed back a few pages. “Just one more question, and I’ll leave you be.”

  “Which is?” Leo asked.

  “I’ve been equally unsuccessful at locating someone else involved in the fire that killed your son, Mr. Forrester. The man whose apartment was the source of the blaze—a man named Rufus St. James.”

  I grunted before I could stop myself. Reilly’s head snapped to the space between Wyatt and Leo, right where I stood. He seemed to look me directly in the throat for a moment, then down. At my feet. I followed his gaze.

  The creepy thing about the invisibility spell was that I was not only cloaked from other people, I couldn’t even see my own damned self. Not my own hands or legs or feet. Just the four vaguely flat patches of grass where my boots’ heels and soles pressed down. I kept still and held my breath.

  “Don’t know him,” Leo said.

  Reilly pulled himself out of it and looked up. “And you, Mr. Truman?”

  Wyatt shook his head. “I wish I could help you out. Have you tried the hospitals, or local motels?”

  “Yes, I have, actually, but thank you for the suggestions.” Reilly shook both of their hands briefly, then turned and strolled back toward the narrow road where his car was likely parked.

  No one spoke until he was well out of earshot.

  “That was bizarre,” I said.

  Leo jumped a mile, hand flying to his heart. “Christ, I forgot you were there.”

  “This is just what we don’t need,” Wyatt said. “Some glory-hungry P.I. poking around, asking questions.”

  “We’ve dealt with them before,” I said. With all the strange events that happened in the city on a daily basis, someone was always asking the wrong questions. Trying to dig up an explanation for misshapen, rotting bodies that didn’t look human. Rag reporters looking for answers to questions they were better off not asking, until the Triads politely instructed them to shut the hell up.

  I’d always hated threatening civilians, but the alternative was allowing them to ask the wrong question of the wrong person and end up dead. Or worse. And contrary to popular opinion, there are things worse than death.

  “Yeah, but back then we weren’t freelance, remember?” he said.

  “He seems harmless enough,” Leo said.

  “Yeah,” I replied, “and so does a rose until it stabs you with a thorn.”

  “People stab themselves on thorns.”

  I started to retort, but words failed me. Good thing he couldn’t see my expression. I imagined it was full of priceless confusion.

  “Regardless,” Wyatt said, “I don’t like that he’s asking around about Chalice or Rufus.”

  “So report him to the Triads and be done with it,” I said, not much liking the idea but unable to offer an alternative. Investigating private investigators wasn’t my idea of a fun afterlife.

  He sighed and dug his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Guess we should go.”

  Leo gave his son’s marker another look, then turned awkwardly and walked back to the cars; his was parked in the lane in front of Wyatt’s. We didn’t speak, which suited me fine. Dozens of thoughts whirled through my mind—questions about what was next for us, with Wyatt stuck in some sort of limbo with the Triads, not really fired but not allowed to just quit, and me dead (again). The city was still picking up the pieces after the Parker’s Palace massacre, and people were asking questions. Headlines reported everything from a massive gang initiation to a gas leak that made everyone inside the theater go mass-murder crazy.

  Everything we’d dedicated our lives to protecting was starting to crumble.

  A tremor vibrated through my feet, into my legs, all the way to my chest. I faltered. Stopped walking. The vibration was so faint, I was certain I’d imagined it. Like the gentlest of earthquakes, it was there and gone in seconds.

  “Whoa,” I muttered.

  “Did you feel that?” Wyatt asked. He’d stopped an arm’s reach from his car and was looking at a point just past my head, but close enough.

  “Yeah, I felt it.”

  “Felt what?” Leo asked.

  “Small earthquake, just now. You didn’t feel it?”

  “No.”

  He wasn’t lying. I saw it in his face. So why had Wyatt and I felt it?

  “Probably nothing, then,” Wyatt said.

  I scowled but didn’t press. It wasn’t something to discuss in front of Leo.

  “I suppose I should get going,” Leo said. “No use in hanging around here all day when I’ve got miles to make.”

  My heart sped up. As much as I didn’t want Leo to stay so I would worry about his safety, I also didn’t want him to leave. He’d saved my life and kept my bizarre secret. I’d never known my own father, and while Leo had a truckload of faults, in the end he’d loved his children.

  He’d also never be safe in my world. We’d talked about it for long hours and, finally, agreed that leaving the city was the lesser of two evils.

  “Wish I could see your face to say good-bye.”

  “It’s not safe,” Wyatt said.

  I could have punched him in the arm for that, but refrained. “You don’t have to go,” I said. But we all knew he did.

  Leo looked in my direction. I shifted so at least I knew he was looking me in the eye. “Thanks for being his friend,” he said. “You did more for him than I ever could.”

  The irony in his statement struck like a fist. As his father, Leo had given Alex life. As his friend, all I’d done was take it away from him. I’d introduced him to my horrifying, painful world, then to death.

  I touched his face. Leo flinched from the unexpected contact, then relaxed. I wanted to hug him but didn’t. I had to let him go, and quickly. “Good-bye, Leo. Take care of yourself.”

  “You, too, Evy Stone.” He gave my invisible form a wide berth, then shook Wyatt’s hand. “You take good care of her.”

  “I will if she lets me,” Wyatt said.

  This time I did swat him on the shoulder. The blow rustled the fabric of his shirt. Somehow he caught my hand in his and gave it a gentle squeeze. The way his fingers curled around air, even though I felt the warmth of his touch, looked a bit ridiculous.

  Leo’s mouth quirked in a wistful smile. His plan was to leave the city and drive north, past the mountains. There were some nice towns up there. I hoped he found the fresh start he wanted. He climbed into his car. The engine gurgled to life a moment later. We watched him navigate the narrow road that wound through the cemetery, until his car was out of sight.

  “That wasn’t an earthquake, was it?” I asked.

  “Not a normal one, no.” Wyatt squeezed my hand again, let it go, and then unlocked the car door. “That wasn’t from the ground, Evy, not the tremor I felt. It came from deeper than that.”

  “What do you mean?” I slid across the bench into the passenger seat.

  He climbed in a
nd slammed the door shut, mouth drawn and face pinched. I hated that look. “It wasn’t external. It was an internal tremor that only you and I felt—two Gifted people, Evy. I think something’s happening at First Break.”

  Chapter Two

  Besides being an enormous underground community of faeries, sprites, gnomes, pixies, dryads, and sylphs—creatures more commonly referred to as Fey or Fair Ones—First Break is also a doorway of sorts. I don’t know exactly what’s on the other side, besides banished demons and the source of magic in our world, but I do know that the Fair Ones protect it. They keep the demons—the Tainted Ones—from crossing over, and have been human allies for … well, at least for the ten years the Triads have been in operation.

  Wyatt and I had both felt the tremor, which meant it had something to do with the Break and our connection to its magic. Only we had no way of contacting First Break to find out what was going on. It was miles outside the city and deep underground; I knew of only one way in that didn’t include being swallowed by a troll, and we didn’t have time to make that trek. It wasn’t like Amalie, the sprite Queen, had installed a phone after our last visit. She appeared when she wished, via her human avatar, then disappeared when her task was finished.

  As soon as we returned to our shared apartment in Mercy’s Lot, Wyatt was on his cell phone. It was the same apartment I’d once shared with my old Triad partners and as close to a real home as I’d ever known, even if it was kind of a hole.

  I realized I was still very invisible and pulled the slim crystal out of my pocket. It was due to lose its potency in a few hours anyway, so there was no sense sitting around like a ghost. I repeated the foreign words I’d used to activate the crystal and its spell—spells are cast in the native language of the person creating them—and felt the same stomach-churning sense of being flipped inside out. It wasn’t painful, just uncomfortable.

  I blinked back into existence, once again able to see flesh and fingernails and clothing. Part of me expected something to go wrong—because, seriously, how often had things gone my way lately?—and for there to be a hole left someplace. But, no, a quick inspection showed everything was visible.

  Wyatt was pacing in and out of the narrow kitchenette, lips pressed together, eyebrows furrowed. He dialed another number, then listened. He had to be getting a lot of voice mails, but he wasn’t leaving messages. Unless they were ignoring him, which was also entirely possible. Apparently, while I was unconscious and recovering from my dive out a four-story window, Wyatt had said some pretty cruel things to both of his former fellow Handlers Gina Kismet and Adrian Baylor.

  I perched on the arm of the apartment’s faded sofa and watched him dial again.

  His face brightened. “Morgan, it’s Truman. Look, has anyone else reported a minor earthquake this morning?” He listened. “Claudia’s Gifted, right? Yeah, thought so. I felt it, too.” Another pause. “No idea what it could be, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. If you hear anything … Yeah, thanks.”

  He snapped his cell phone shut and dropped it on the narrow counter.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked.

  He started, gazing at me with surprise. As if he’d forgotten he should be able to see me. “I’m thinking I started out the day hoping to relax after the memorial, and now that hope has been shattered.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Come on, Evy. Anything strong enough to affect the entirety of the Break like that isn’t going to just go away.”

  “Doesn’t mean we’ll automatically get swept up into it.” But even as I said the words, I knew how ridiculous they sounded. Ever since my resurrection, I’d been at the center of every major event affecting the city and its nonhuman inhabitants. Factor in my training-born need to protect the innocents of the city, and I’d probably get myself sucked into it anyway. “Dead” or alive.

  “We’ve put up with so much these last few weeks,” he said, almost sulking. “I just want a couple of days of peace and quiet.” He didn’t have to say “with you.” The words were in his tone and in the way he was looking at me.

  Three days ago, after waking up from a brief coma, I’d finally told him I loved him and hadn’t repeated it since. He didn’t push. I didn’t want the inevitable discussion that would come with a revelation of feelings. I didn’t want to talk about it or us, or anything else. Avoiding it meant avoiding any potential “next steps” in our burgeoning relationship.

  It wasn’t like we’d never had sex. Well, that was half-true. We’d slept together once, two weeks ago, right before I died and left my old body behind. We hadn’t had sex since my resurrection—although we’d come close once—mostly due to my inability to figure out my own emotional chaos.

  Before I’d died, I hadn’t been in love with Wyatt. I’d loved him, sure, as a coworker and a man I respected. But being born again into the body of Chalice Frost came not only with handy teleporting powers but also with a powerful physical attraction to Wyatt. My head and my heart were on two different wavelengths, and I just didn’t know how to reconcile them.

  Sex with Wyatt now, as the people we’d both become, was a step I both craved and feared. I wanted him; I also didn’t think I deserved him.

  “Peace and quiet don’t come with the job description,” I said.

  “Need I remind you we’re both unemployed?”

  I slid off the arm of the sofa and sank into the springy cushions. It was the same sofa from when I’d lived here before; nothing had changed except the inhabitants. The apartment had always been a haven of sorts, a place away from the chaos and bloodshed of our daily (and nightly) lives. It still felt like that sanctuary. But with the ghosts of my old life so firmly entrenched in each piece of furniture and carpet stain, it also felt like a prison.

  Wyatt sat next to me, sinking the old cushions toward the middle. I let gravity tilt me sideways and rested my head on his chest. He draped his right arm over my shoulders in a gentle embrace. His familiar scent—spice and cinnamon and male musk—filled my senses. Relaxing and safe.

  “Five gets you twenty your phone rings in the next ten minutes,” I said, “and shatters the mood.”

  He chuckled, the sound rumbling through his chest, against my ear. He didn’t laugh nearly enough. Neither of us did. “You do realize you’ve jinxed us by saying that?”

  “Oops.” I picked at a lint pill on the front of his shirt. “So about that earthquake—”

  “It wasn’t an earthquake.”

  “Yeah, okay, so about that Break-quake … any thoughts? You’ve been Gifted a hell of a lot longer than me.” Over a decade longer; he’d discovered his Gift as a teenager. Mine had technically belonged to Chalice, the woman whose body I’d inherited and who was also a part of me now. Even my healing ability was new, cleverly gifted to me by a gnome name Horzt. “Has it happened before?”

  “I’ve never felt anything like it, so I don’t think it’s happened recently. Not in the dozen years or so I’ve been aware of my Gift.”

  “Which rules out only the recent past.”

  “Right.”

  Terrific. “Too bad we can’t just call up Amalie and ask her.”

  “Where’s the fun in that?”

  I snorted and poked him in the ribs. “Sitting around and wondering why we both felt a magical earthquake, and if it’s leading up to something bigger, is not my idea of fun, Truman.”

  “Maybe you aren’t sitting right.”

  I was in no mood for his teasing. I started to stand, but he snagged my left wrist. A week ago, I probably would have fought tooth and nail to get free of his grip, spurred on by fear of capture and the memory of my wrists being bound by cold, biting handcuffs. I probably would have kicked and punched, maybe drawn blood. Overreacted in the worst way to a simple attempt to keep me from walking away.

  I guess I’d grown some since last week, because I simply froze in place, not fighting but also not sitting back down. He didn’t say anything until I turned and looked at him. D
own at his concerned black eyes, strong jaw, narrow nose—a face I knew so damned well.

  He asked, “What, Evy?”

  I had no good answer, so I didn’t give him one. He tugged gently; I gave in and sat back down. He caught me around the waist and pulled me closer, practically into his lap. It was both a ridiculous and an alluring position to be in. I pressed my hands against his chest. Felt his heart thrumming steadily as his arms snaked around me.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not making light of this Break-quake, but there’s not much we can do at the moment. I reported it to the Triads. I still feel my tap to the Break, and I’m guessing you do, too. There’s just nothing left to be done, and I know that makes you crazy.”

  The corners of my mouth twitched. He had me there. “I hate waiting,” I said, “about as much as I hate being on the outside of this.”

  “I know. Your drive is one of the things I love about you.”

  Oh God, he said the L-word. I swallowed back a tiny, blinding moment of panic. Irrational panic. Something I needed to get a fucking handle on before it drove me insane. His eyes flickered back and forth, searching mine for something—some sort of reaction. Very few people had the ability to render me speechless the way Wyatt did.

  Actions speak louder than words, though. I skated my fingertips up his shoulders and around to the back of his neck, tilted my head, and brushed my lips across his. The gentle kiss worked wonders as a distraction, and, like a moth to a flame, his mouth sought mine.

  The second kiss was more insistent. I parted my lips, enjoying the heady taste of him. The way he lazily drew his tongue across my teeth before probing more deeply. The sensation of his fingers running through my long hair, tangling and touching. The way my stomach quivered, and the heat that went straight to my core when he pulled me closer.

  My hips ached from the awkward position on the too-soft sofa. I shifted around until I was kneeling on both sides of his hips, butt resting on his thighs, in a more dominant position now. More comfortable, too. He squeezed my waist, just above my hips, and I yelped.