The Lost

by Vicki Pettersson

  “Not to me.”

  Kit had never seen Grif this way. Though fully clothed, he looked naked somehow, like something had been taken from him. She swallowed hard. “You’re scaring me.”

  He opened his mouth but the words didn’t come. That just scared her more.

  “I have to go,” he finally said. “I’m her Centurion. I have to . . .”

  But he couldn’t seem to voice what he had to do. It was as if he no longer knew.

  “I understand,” she said, and straightened as if to stretch, though she really half-pulled him to his feet. “You need to secure her soul safely in the Everlast. I’ll leave and you’ll have your privacy.”

  She led him to the bed, telling herself she was saying good-bye to Jeannie, and not showing Grif what he needed to do next. Yet when she turned to leave, he stopped her with a hand on her arm. It was still cold, like he’d just come in from a winter storm, but at least it was now steady.

  “It was right, you know.”

  Kit didn’t understand. “What?”

  “Scratch,” Grif answered, and he frowned and winced at the same time. “It was right when it said that you were a light. Your soul . . .”

  “What?” Kit repeated, with more alarm this time. What was wrong with her soul?

  Still shaking his head, Grif closed his eyes. “It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. And then your tears began to fall, and I’ve never felt so loved and at peace and . . . pure.”

  Stunned, Kit said nothing.

  He opened his eyes again, and it was a steadier gaze that found hers. Good. He was coming back around. And yet his face was blank, the expression blasted from it. Grif, she realized, was terrified. “I couldn’t stop it. It would have had Jeannie. And it didn’t even want her, not really. But . . .”

  “But it’s fixed on me,” Kit finished for him.

  “It craves you like a caged lion, one that’s been malnourished for centuries.” He shook his head. “What were you thinking of when you . . . you know.”

  “When I started to cry?” Kit asked, and Grif nodded. “You.”

  Grif sighed, also nodding after a moment, before he jerked his head at Jeannie. “I have to take her. Now.”

  “Okay.” She turned again.

  “Kit.” He spoke her name sharply as she reached the curtain that led back into the bustle of the ER. She turned back around to find him more solemn than she’d ever seen. “Keep your emotions under control. I think that’s how it plans to circle back around.”

  Kit swallowed hard. “When will you be back?”

  “I don’t know. I need to deliver Jeannie to incubation. I need to talk to Sarge about Scratch and the Lost. I have . . . some other questions while I’m there.”

  “But time runs differently in the Everlast, right? I mean, you can arrive anywhere you want back on the Surface?” She meant anywhere in the future. He just couldn’t go back to the past. Join the club, Kit thought, blowing a hard breath as he nodded. “Okay, so meet me right outside the hospital . . .”

  “That’s less than five minutes. It’s tight.”

  Kit just stared.

  “All right.” He finally nodded. “Of course.”

  Kit sighed in relief. All she had to do was walk through these curtains and the ER, into the main hospital, then stand right outside the doors where they’d entered. It was safe here, and there were other people around. Then Grif would be there, probably holding his hand out to her before she’d even crossed the threshold. Together they’d figure out what to do about the fallen angel that’d swallowed both of their tears. That’d inexplicably fixed on her.

  That craved her like a malnourished lion.

  Kit counted her footsteps as she left the ER, just to keep her mind busy. No negative emotions, only steady action, forward motion. A shout and then running feet sounded behind her as she hit the double doors leading to the lobby. Jeannie’s name followed, clattering like a chaotic pinball off the walls of the ER, and she paused for a moment to look back.

  She felt sorry for the nurses, because she knew their work would be in vain, and for Jann Holmes, who was getting some well-deserved sleep somewhere in this city but would soon be woken by a peace-shattering call.

  And she was surprised to find that she also felt sorry for herself.

  Outside, she lit a cigarette as she waited, trying to keep that thought from blossoming into something more. The only way to do that was not to think about it at all. So, shielding her eyes against the sun’s rays, she emptied her mind and searched for Grif.

  Kit glanced at her watch; seven minutes had already passed. Where was he?

  Then a bounding, boisterous tune burst from her handbag. Kit jumped before she realized it was the ringtone she’d assigned to Marin. The song matched her aunt’s nonstop energy. Digging for her phone, Kit shunted her smoke aside and glanced at her watch. Past eleven on a Sunday. The paper would be silent, the presses cooling between printings. Even her workaholic aunt took the morning off.

  Squinting against the unrelieved assault of the sun, Kit scanned the lot as she answered. Still no Grif, and he should already be there. She needed him now, God knew she did, and he was never . . .

  “I’m at the paper,” Marin said, without preamble. “In the employee lot. Oh, Kit. Kit—”

  “Marin?” Kit froze. She’d never heard her aunt’s voice so panicked before. Not even in the worst throes of her cancer treatments. And never at work. “Are you okay?”

  But there was a clatter, and Marin’s voice, more distant, curled into a scream. “Oh, God . . . please, no! Please don’t!”

  The connection went dead mid-cry, and Kit was suddenly running. She glanced around the lot one last time as she yanked open her car door, but Grif simply wasn’t there, and she couldn’t wait. Someone had Marin.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Thoughts of Jeannie and krokodil, of Scratch and dangerous emotions—and even Grif, wherever the hell he was—were gone as Kit peeled haphazardly through Vegas’s urban core. But a buzzing filled Kit’s head—Marin’s tattered cry on perpetual repeat—while her heart pounded hard enough to breach her chest. She dialed 9-1-1. She gave the operator Marin’s location. Then she rocketed toward the newspaper’s offices, determined to get there first.

  The hospital and paper were each pinned in the middle of the city, but so was the police station, so Kit was surprised to arrive at the Trib’s grounds first. No guard, Kit realized, as she whipped through the open gate. It would have given her pause—why did it feel, suddenly, like danger lurked everywhere?—but she’d already spotted the small figure propped like a doll outside the employee exit.

  “Marin!” Kit was out of the car, screaming as she ran toward her aunt, only vaguely conscious of sirens rising into the air somewhere behind her. There was blood. There was her aunt, glassy-eyed and slack-mouthed, head rolling Kit’s way.

  There was a needle taped to the inside of Marin’s arm.

  In it, a viscous yellow substance was primed, and pointing dangerously at the delicate blue vein of her forearm, held in place by a dirty makeshift tourniquet. Masking tape, yards of it, secured Marin’s other arm so that it was pressed tight and useless at her side.

  Kit’s knees burned as she dropped down next to her aunt, gently edging a finger beneath the needle, and carefully angling it away. “I can’t remove it. It’s too tight.”

  Sirens wailed closer behind her, but not close enough. Kit searched Marin’s free arm for marks, but the blood seemed to have all come from her face. A split lip. A bloody nose.

  “J-just hold it clear until they get here.”

  “Okay. I— it’s okay,” Kit lied, lifting her head to find Marin’s shocked gaze trying to locate her own. Her aunt—who single-handedly ran the city’s newspaper, and had fought off cancer like an Olympic gold medalist—managed a wobbly smile. Kit nodded and lowered her eyes again, studying the poisonous contents. Krokodil.

  She fought back tears along with the shakes. She—and, more t
o the point, her aunt—couldn’t afford for her nerves to rise. Still, it was a lot to ask of someone whose sole living relative had just been attacked. Marin, who never missed any damn thing, realized it.

  “Talk to me,” she said, voice weak, though the command was suddenly there.

  “About what?” Breathe, thought Kit, breathe and stay focused.

  “Where’s Grif?”

  Damned good question. Kit jerked her head.

  “Okay, the case you’re working on, then.”

  You mean the one that did this to you? Kit wondered, but didn’t say. The one that put you in danger?

  “Did you find out any more about the dealers?” Marin pressed.

  Amazed, Kit just stared. The woman had just been attacked outside her own workplace, probably by those very same dealers, and while her blood was still wet on the pavement around her . . . she wanted to talk shop?

  Kit shook her head. Yet there was a waiting in the silence. Marin needed a problem to solve, and focusing on that might keep Kit’s emotions under control as well, so she swallowed against the dryness in her throat and tried to gather her thoughts.

  “Okay. Okay, well, I visited the user who survived. Jeannie Holmes. She was comatose, though. She couldn’t tell me anything.”

  “It was worth a shot,” Marin said, wincing against some unseen pain. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come up with nothing only to circle a story from the other side and hit pay dirt.”

  Marin’s breathing was beginning to steady, and the sirens finally seemed to be getting closer, allowing Kit to catch her breath as well. Perspective dawned with the passing minutes: this had been a warning, not an attack meant to hurt.

  Somewhat reassured, Kit blew out a hard breath. “Well, maybe it just looks like nothing. I mean, as I was sitting there with this unconscious girl, I couldn’t help but think of negative space. Sometimes what’s not there is just as important as what is.”

  “Elaborate, please.”

  Kit almost—almost—smiled at that. It was one of Marin’s favorite directives. So she nodded. “Well, it’s like when I decorate my home. I first consider the layout of the room, its shape and form and function. Then I place the large pieces, sofas and tables and beds. After that, I layer in the medium pieces, the side tables and lighting. The small touches come after that, vignettes and tablescapes and all the knickknacks I own and love.”

  Marin’s eyes began glazing over . . . and it wasn’t from shock. “The point?”

  “Editing,” Kit said, just as shortly. “I go through the rooms and subtract twenty percent of what’s there. Clean it all up. Simplify. Make it look pretty.”

  Marin wrinkled her nose at that, but in Kit’s world, pretty was always the point. “It’s the subtraction of detraction, Marin. That’s what makes a space impactful. It only looks like nothing is there. Follow?”

  “Feel free to push that syringe,” Marin retorted.

  Kit winced, then noted the closed-lip smile on her aunt’s face. In a chaotic situation, she’d once again taken control. “I’m just saying that it’s the same with people. You look past the obvious, and into the negative space they’ve left behind,” Kit said, like it was clear. “We still don’t know who this Bella woman is, but she’s not Yulyia Kolyadenko.”

  And then three squad cars suddenly squealed into the wide lot, and steel-toed boots sounded behind Kit before hands were gently pulling at her arms. Voices rang in her ears, shouts rainbowing over her head and shattering the air’s stillness in relieving arcs, but before moving away, Kit made sure the needle was freed from Marin’s soft, delicate skin. Then the paramedics arrived, too, and they all backed off, and Marin was no longer alone.

  “It was just a warning,” Kit heard someone say, a palm easing around her shoulder. Kit realized she’d sunk to the ground next to the exit. Her head had fallen into her palms and she was shivering despite the blazing heat.

  “Grif?” She sat up, shaking off the image of blood and that needle and the horrified expression on Marin’s face when she’d arrived.

  “It’s me, Kit,” the voice said, and her name settled her spinning mind.

  “Dennis.”

  “It was just a warning,” he repeated, palms warm on the sides of her head. His jaw clenched as he studied her face.

  “Yes,” Kit said mechanically. It was a terrible one.

  “Where is Grif?” he asked, voice strained.

  Kit looked around at all the officers, at the paramedics, at Marin, then back at Dennis. She finally shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  All she knew was he hadn’t been where he said he’d be.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Grif strode down the hospital corridor for the second time that day, though this time there was an urgency to his step that had been lacking before, one that had the few people he did pass at this late hour stepping quickly to the side. The pocket phone Kit had given him, the damned thing he never bothered to check, had been blinking for he didn’t know how long. And though the message had sat there for hours, the elapsed time did nothing to erase the urgency in Kit’s voice.

  Marin’s been attacked. Come as soon as you can.

  By the time he found his girl slumped on a cold plastic chair at the end of a long, bright hallway, her urgency had obviously burned away . . . yet something else had burned away with it. She turned her head, saw Grif coming, and instead of standing to greet him, simply sighed and put her head back in her hands.

  “It was a warning,” she said, before he could sit or even ask. “The Russians, in retaliation for the article that ran this morning. At least, that’s what they told Marin. She said before that they moved fast when wronged. I should have listened.”

  He knelt before her, hands on her knees. “What did they do, Kit?”

  “They left a note. It said, ‘This is for shooting off your mouth. Next try shooting this.’ ” Her gaze was watery when she opened her eyes. “They had her hooked up to a load of krokodil, Grif.”

  The memory of decaying flesh on a living body revisited him, and Grif wavered in his crouch. “Did they . . . ?”

  Kit shook her head hard, cutting him off. “The drug didn’t touch her.”

  “It was in the syringe, though?” he asked, and she managed a nod as footsteps fell behind him. Grif turned, then stood when he saw Dennis coming down the hall, a cup of steaming joe in each hand. When the hell did he get here?

  Accepting the coffee, Kit answered the unvoiced question. “Dennis brought me in. He was there when I found her.”

  Grif’s jaw tightened so much it hurt. “Good. Thank you.”

  “Of course,” Dennis said, then jerked his head at the door across from them. “I’m going in. See if she can tell us anything more.”

  “Thank you. For everything.” Kit put a hand on his arm.

  Very slowly, Grif followed the touch with his gaze, angling up to settle on the man’s face. Silent, seething, he kept it there until Dennis nodded and left. Then he shifted and sat, only to find Kit giving him an equally aggressive look.

  “Where were you?” she asked softly.

  Grif drew back. There was something thin and metallic—and somehow wedge-shaped—in her voice. It rose up between them and put a bump in his chest that had his own words speeding up. “I delivered Jeannie to incubation. She’s safe and clean and out of pain.”

  “And then?” Kit asked, not looking at him.

  Grif licked his lips. “I still had time . . . or so I thought. So I asked Sarge about the Third, about Scratch in particular—” He saw Kit’s jaw tighten and hurried on. “You gave it your tears, even after I told you not to—”

  “This isn’t about me. Where were you?”

  He hesitated. “Sarge, well, he mentioned Evie—”

  Kit sighed.

  “And it was the first time he ever brought it up himself, so—”

  “So you thought you’d stick around.”

  “It wasn’t long. Two minutes, more or less.”
/>   “A lot can happen in two minutes.”

  “Kit, I didn’t know.”

  “I know you didn’t know.” She shook her head. “But you left me alone.”

  “I was doing my job,” he defended himself. “I was watching after the dead!”

  “Maybe you should care a little more about the living,” she said, then held up a hand as he drew away. She shook her head, and he could see she wanted to take it back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

  “You’re sore—”

  “I’m not mad, Grif. I’m hurt and I’m scared. Marin was attacked because it was her name in that byline and not mine.”

  Of course. The article that’d run that morning, naming the Russians, reporting the drug.

  “And, Grif, I was alone. I needed you.”

  The damned hallway seemed to shift at that. Jesus, he thought, rubbing a hand over his face. What was wrong with him? “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry.” Exhaustion infused her sigh. “Just be here.”

  Grif opened his mouth, but she pressed a finger to his lips.

  “And I will be there for you, too. We’re a team, remember?” Grabbing his hand, she enfolded it in her own. “You don’t have to sneak off to the Everlast for answers to Evie’s death. Neither one of us has to be alone.”

  Words rushed out of him like a flood. “Yeah, but things are different lately, Kit. I mention her name and you flinch. I don’t want to hurt you if you learn things about me that I can’t change. I’m trying to protect you. Don’t you see?”

  “Don’t try to shield me from your feelings, Grif.” She shook her head. “Because that’s what really makes me feel alone.”

  Grif drew back, dumbfounded. Was that what he’d been doing?

  “Kit?”

  They both looked up.

  Dennis was peering from Marin’s room. Grif wondered how long he’d been standing there, and how much he’d heard. “She’s asking for you.”

  Kit gave a jerky nod, and rose. Grif re-sighted on Dennis as she disappeared.

  You, Griffin Shaw, are a stopwatch while Katherine Craig is an hourglass.