by Kelly Meding
You forgot painful. Also not healing. I’d been away from the Break for too long. I had told Thackery that my healing Gift was more magic than physical. All that I’d endured, just for Thackery to get away. “Did you save … anything?”
“I saved you, Evangeline.”
Not what I meant. I swallowed, ignoring the fire in my throat. “Recover research? Computers? Information?”
“One of my brethren searched the wreckage. He is more familiar with human technology than I. He retrieved one item. I shall fetch it for you.”
He left the room with those same thundering stone steps. I’d never noticed before how heavily he walked. He returned moments later with something that made me want to hug him—Thackery’s PDA. The one he’d used to record every minute of our time together. Bingo.
“It is damaged, but my brother is certain it can be repaired.”
I needed to get it to the city, into the hands of people who could decipher the scientist-speak and tell me what Thackery had learned about my blood. Any leaps he’d made in his plans to eradicate vampires. I had to tell people, too, that I wasn’t dead. Someone in particular would be worried about me. Someone I cared about a great deal. Who? The broader strokes were filling in, but I was still missing details. The things closest to my heart weren’t there, and I needed to find them.
“Phone?”
“I am sorry, I do not possess a telephone. Nor have we contacted anyone else about your recovery. I wished to know your mind before I did so.”
It was kind of thoughtful, really, to make sure he didn’t accidentally tell an enemy I’d been found. If I couldn’t call anyone—and several phone numbers rattled through my head, just no names to go with them—I’d have to go to them. “Home, please.”
“The sun will set in two hours. We shall return to the city at that time.”
I nodded. I didn’t want to wait but had no choice. Not when my only means of transportation would crisp in the sun.
“Do you require anything?”
I required a whole hell of a lot but said no. Mostly I just needed to get closer to the Break so I could start to heal. I’d gotten used to it. Thackery had taken advantage of it. And until I returned, I was helpless to do anything except wallow in every ache and pain.
True to his word, Max and I were in the sky moments after sunset. Stars were just peeking through the cloud cover, winking in a purple and navy sky. Two other gargoyles flew with us in flanking positions, each as tall and hewn as Max. I’d never seen three at once and guessed several more had stayed behind in the house.
The town was tiny—just a few houses around a blinker-light intersection, a market, and a church. It seemed like the kind of village where no one could keep a secret for long, and yet a coven of gargoyles was hiding out a few miles down the road.
I was wrapped up in three blankets, tight like a body cast, and Max held me to his hard chest as though I were his child. Each movement sent shocks of pain through me. I closed my eyes and tried to block it out until we arrived, to ignore everything except the brush of humid night air on my face. I’d always wondered how gargoyles’ small wings—maybe four feet of thin skin stretched across a batlike frame—kept their huge forms in the air. And somehow Max was managing it with me as added weight, and with no apparent hindrance.
On the edge of sleep, it occurred to me I hadn’t asked how long I’d been with Thackery. Max wouldn’t know, even if I told him the date I’d turned myself over. Gargoyles didn’t have calendars, didn’t follow time the way humans did. I’d have to ask my friends.
Friends. I had friends waiting for me, worrying about me. Had they been searching for me? Surely yes. The man with the black hair wouldn’t have stopped as long as he knew I was alive. I was certain of it. Secure in his love for me. He’d do anything to find me.
Wyatt.
I choked on a gasp, and the sound made Max turn his head. “Are you all right?”
“Fine.” I shouted to be heard over the roar of the wind.
With that one name, dozens more slammed home and restored my memory completely. Wyatt. Phineas. Kismet. Tybalt. Milo. Felix. Baylor. Amalie. Rufus. Bastian. Each slid into place like a perfectly cut puzzle piece, re-creating the picture of my life.
My heart ached for Wyatt. For leaving him behind with the uncertainty of my future. For how much I loved him and wanted him to hold me in his arms until the hurt went away. I recalled his cell number and wished for a phone so desperately my body trembled. Just to hear his voice and let him hear mine. Put his fears to rest.
“We are over the city,” Max said at some point.
I hazarded one eye open and saw the high-rises and gleaming buildings of Uptown passing by beneath us. Headlights and street signs and business billboards glared up from the ground, lighting the sky with their particular type of pollution. The cathedral spire of the Fourth Street Library loomed, and the three gargoyles swooped down. They alighted on the library roof—a narrow strip of gravel that surrounded a hollow building in which Max had once nested.
The familiarity warmed me. Max crawled through the passageway that led inside. The heated interior sent a flush across my cheeks. He put me down in a corner and loosened the blankets. Tears threatened, teased out by all the movement. I didn’t let them fall. I curled onto my side, uncomfortable on the stone floor, with humid summer air all around me.
But I was home. I searched with my mind and felt the sudden, electrical spark of the Break. Its energy flooded my mind, tingling through my very core. Enveloping me like a warm sweater I’d almost forgotten I had once owned and loved. I snuggled into it and let it carry me into unconsciousness, this time sure I’d wake feeling better.
And I did. Daylight shone through the tunnel leading outside, adding to the stifling heat inside. I stretched and rolled onto my back, tired muscles protesting their stiffness. My left hand still hurt with the constant itch-ache of my healing Gift. My head throbbed from exhaustion, heat, and lack of food and water. Everything else seemed healed.
I sat up. Max was huddled in the corner, far from the reach of the sunlight, wings folded over his face. Asleep for the day. His companions were gone. Guess they’d only been traveling bodyguards. I started to stand, then thought better of it. I was still dressed in the same cotton gown Thackery had put me in, stained with blood and vomit, and torn in immodest places. It also didn’t tie in the back.
I wanted something to drink badly. I also wanted a cheeseburger and fries, with ketchup and onions, but the idea of nourishment made my stomach roll. Those lemon-flavored shakes had been my only food for a long time, and if I hadn’t hated lemons before …
Max stirred. His wing curled back, and he raised his head, looking directly at the passageway. I followed his gaze. Two shadows moved in the light, then footsteps scuffled toward us. I scooted back, closer to the wall, drawing one of the blankets up around my waist. Two familiar figures stepped into the room.
“Holy shit, you really are alive,” Gina Kismet said. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open.
Milo Gant stepped toward me first, smiling warmly, his eyes sparkling. He squatted down, and for a brief moment, I panicked. Then I threw my arms around his shoulders and hugged him, overjoyed just to feel the comforting embrace of another human being. A friend. He held me close. I didn’t realize I’d started crying until he leaned back and wiped an errant spot of moisture off my cheek.
“How many lives are you down to now?” he asked. “Six?”
“More like four,” I replied. My mouth was dry, but talking no longer felt like gargling razor blades.
Kismet crouched next to us and offered me an open bottle of water. I took a few sips, eager to guzzle the entire thing, holding back only because I wanted to keep it down. It moistened my mouth and cooled me a little. I handed it back and licked my lips.
“Where’s Wyatt?” I asked.
Milo looked away, and Kismet couldn’t hide a flash of guilt. My heart thundered in my chest. Blood roared in my ears. I grabbed Kis
met’s wrist and squeezed.
“Where?”
“We don’t know, Evy,” she said. “No one’s heard from him in three days.” She cringed, and I loosened my grip on her arm.
“How long have I been gone?”
She chewed on her lower lip. “Twenty days.”
Everything tilted. I’d expected to hear a week, ten days max. Not twenty days. Almost three weeks. Wyatt must have gone out of his mind. Or accepted I was dead and moved on. Or accepted I was dead and—No, no more “ors.” Not going there.
She didn’t need prompting from me to start filling in the gaps. “We lost track of you at the park that day. You moved so damned fast the tracking dye was useless before we could get on the road. It was two hours before we got a call telling us where to find Phineas.”
He’d laid on that cold cement for two hours, alone. “Is he okay?”
“Almost one hundred percent again, last I heard. Therians not only grow faster than humans, they also heal much more quickly.” She cleared her throat. “He was taken to the hospital while we searched the parking garage. We didn’t find anything except tire tracks, footprints, and some odd paw prints. Any trail we might have followed was cold. We drove around all day and half the night with that computer, until long after Bastian said the effects of the dye would wear off.”
Bastian—grrrr.
“I finally dragged Wyatt to my place and made him sleep for a few hours. We all looked for you, Evy, as often as we could, even after the brass forbade it. Whenever Wyatt wasn’t in the field searching, he was at the hospital with Phineas. Both of them felt so guilty. Wyatt went back to your apartment once, I think. After Phineas was released, he stayed with them. Rufus is still wheelchair-bound, and I’m sure he convinced Wyatt that the two invalids needed him, but I—”
“Rufus wanted to keep an eye on Wyatt,” I said.
“Yeah. He’s been so cold, Evy.”
I closed my eyes, fighting back tears. I blinked away a film when I opened them again. “Amalie couldn’t sense that I was still alive?”
Another uncomfortable look. “As far as I know, no one has had contact with Amalie since the day Thackery shot you and we told her we didn’t recover the Tainted crystal.”
Shit. “No one?”
Kismet shook her head. “There was another disturbance—Break-quake, Wyatt called it—about a week ago, and another one yesterday, according to Claudia. There’s been no contact with any of the Fey for more than three weeks, not to the brass or the Assembly.”
“That’s …” I didn’t know what it was, but “bad,” “screwed-up,” “fucked-up,” and a number of other things raced through my addled mind. “And you haven’t seen Wyatt for three days?”
“No. Rufus said Wyatt got a phone call on Wednesday, talked to whoever it was in private for nearly half an hour, then just left.” She sucked in her lower lip and looked away, hiding something. Some detail she didn’t want to share.
“For fuck’s sake, what?”
“Phineas is gone, too. He’s been missing the same amount of time. Rufus hasn’t talked to or seen either of them, and Michael Jenner isn’t returning my calls. I’ve tried to get the brass involved, but they no longer consider Wyatt an active Handler, so they won’t interfere.” The sneer in her voice was striking. “I even called Aurora yesterday, and she said she hasn’t heard from either of them in days.”
Poor Aurora. The gentle were-kestrel was one of Phin’s last living Clans-people, and he had already gone to great lengths to protect her and her daughter, Ava. Being abandoned by him had to hurt like hell.
“You tried his phone?” I asked stupidly. “The apartment again?”
“Went straight to voice mail, and now the damned box is full, so I can’t even tell him you’re alive and hope he hears it. We bugged the old apartment, but no one’s gone in or out. We’re trying, Evy, but Wyatt knows how to disappear if he wants to.”
“But he can’t.” It came out as a wail, and the sound shamed me. I could not lose it now, not in front of Max and Kismet and Milo. I found moderate comfort in the fact that Phin and Wyatt were probably together, wherever they were. It meant Wyatt hadn’t done something really stupid, like fling himself off the Wharton Street Bridge.
“Thackery’s still out there,” I said. I had to focus on business or I’d fall apart. “It sounds like he lost most of his research, so he’s going to get desperate.”
“Desperate people make mistakes,” Milo said. “And then we catch them.”
“Bastian?”
“He was interrogated, with both Claudia Burke and a freelance telepath present,” Kismet replied. “They believed him when he said he never shared our information with Thackery. He accepted information from him only regarding certain scientific applications of his research. He said Erickson’s team never knew where the information came from, so they were cleared, too.”
“Bastian was cleared?” I gaped at her.
She frowned. “Pretty much. He got a wrist slap for not passing along what he knew about Thackery after Olsmill went down. The brass is of the opinion that the Hunter known as Evangeline Stone died on May seventeenth, so nothing that happened to you afterward is their problem.”
My shoulders were shaking as I tried to rein in my fury. “That’s what they’ve declared, huh? Thackery slips Bastian info that helps us build a better bullet, so he gets a free fucking pass?”
“They still want Thackery caught, but, yeah, Bastian remains on the payroll. I guess they think they’re hemorrhaging Handlers and Hunters so fast they can’t afford to lose any more people.” Her voice was bitter enough to make a lemon pucker.
I studied her face—the lines of grief bracketing her eyes and the dullness of her skin. Milo had the same basic look, down to the red veins spiderwebbing his eyes. They both seemed overstressed, sleep-deprived, and ready to shatter. Twenty days later and their lives had descended into Hell. Unless it was … Damn.
“Felix?”
Milo flinched and his brown eyes went dull, cold. My heart ached.
Kismet said, “The infection kept him in ICU for days. It weakened his heart. A severed nerve in his back has pretty much left him in serious pain all the time. He can walk, but I don’t—” She paused.
“He’ll probably never hunt again, just like Tybalt,” Milo said, so quietly I almost didn’t hear him. I squeezed his hand, not bothering with placating words, and he squeezed back—a gesture of comfort for another hurting soul, small comfort though it was. His tentative smile never reached his eyes.
“Anything else happen while I was out of town?” I asked, exhausted and emotionally torn—a dish towel wrung out hard and left to slowly untwist. “Token? Was he found?”
“No, he wasn’t,” Kismet said. “There’s been no sign, but all active Triads have a description. So far no one’s seen him. He’s either dead or hiding.”
I was impressed something as unusual as Token had remained hidden for so long. Unless we just hadn’t yet tripped over his body.
Someone else was still unaccounted for. “Reilly?” I asked. “The guy looking for Chalice? Where’d he end up?”
“He has a pretty interesting story, actually,” she replied.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t think he took pictures of vampire royalty for shits and giggles.”
“Not exactly. He really is a P.I., though, with some pretty impressive police assists on the West Coast. He stumbled onto some vampires out there while working on a case, and a few months ago his investigation led him here.”
“What’s he want?”
“The truth, mostly. And he’s gotten a heaping helping of it lately, but I can give you those details later. It can wait until you’re back on your feet. You feel up to changing your clothes? Walking out of the library like that’s going to be kind of conspicuous.”
I snorted. She retrieved a bag from the mouth of the passage. Everyone, Max included, turned their backs while I slipped into jeans that gapped around my waist and a shirt that, when tu
cked in, helped keep the jeans up. I was dangerously thin and needed to put some weight on before a strong wind blew me to Oz.
I tucked the PDA into my back pocket, keeping its existence a secret for now. When I tried to thank Max, he held up a stony hand and shook his massive head. “I have been in your debt from the moment of your capture by the goblins, Evangeline. I have repaid it.”
“Are you leaving the city again?” I asked.
“For now. Nothing is as it was. Good journey to you.”
“And you.”
The sun beat down on us from the midday sky, hot and oppressive. Summer was upon us, and it was only going to get hotter. Terrific. The three of us made our way through the library without incident or strange looks. The last time I left here, I’d been accosted in the street by an old friend of Chalice’s. No such distraction met us on our way to Kismet’s Jeep. I settled into the backseat and let the city go by in a blur.
Kismet insisted on walking me up while Milo waited with the Jeep. I didn’t have the energy to protest. I realized halfway up the narrow stairway that led to an equally narrow hallway of tiny apartments that I didn’t have a key. It was an absurd thought, really. We had a spare hidden beneath a loose piece of the doorframe. I pried it out, unlocked the deadbolt and knob, and let us in.
The apartment was spotless. The old rug had been replaced by a new one, deep blue and thick-pile. The cement floor was scrubbed clean and still smelled of bleach. Even the walls were freshly painted, erasing all signs of what had occurred my last day here—Jaron’s death, Token’s capture and interrogation, and all the blood spilled. Even the hole where Wyatt had knifed Token’s hand to the wall was filled in, as if it had never existed.
Everything was straight, clean, in its place. Not a sign that anyone had lived here in quite a while. The sterility of it squeezed my heart. A place that had once felt so cozy, so much like home, felt about as welcoming as a motel room.
How did I get here?