I stored the deposit bag in the safe in my bedroom closet, swapped my tank top for one not smeared with drying blood from our impromptu scuffle, then headed back out to the living area. Nik was in the kitchen, scoping out the contents of my fridge.
“Eat whatever you want.”
“That’s easy to say when there’s nothing to eat.” Nik pulled out a Chinese takeout carton, sniffed it through the closed lid, and gagged. “I’d throw this in the garbage, but I think the smell would stink us out of here,” he said, replacing the carton in the fridge.
I pursed my lips, trying to think back to when I’d last had Chinese takeout. Or any takeout. I shrugged one shoulder. “There’s some frozen pizzas in the freezer. Pick out a couple.” I replenished my stock every few days. It was what I lived off of—that and Dick’s Drive-In, just a short walk down Broadway. Oftentimes, my trips to grab greasy fast food were the only times I left the shop. All of the teens who worked there knew me by name.
“Maybe you should convert the fridge into a freezer,” Nik suggested, head in the actual freezer. “Monthly trip to Costco, and you’d be set . . .”
Fists on hips, I watched him. Or, at least, what I could see of him from behind the freezer door. He’d slung his long, black leather jacket onto the back of one of the kitchen chairs, revealing his array of tattoos in black and varying shades of gray. Our kind healed preternaturally quickly, and as a result, ink didn’t stick quite so well in our skin.
Much as I wanted to take full ownership for my own love of the inked needle, I wasn’t delusional. Nik had been there when my world fell apart all those years ago. He, and even more so Dom, were the ones who picked up my broken pieces and fitted them back together as best they could. Nik had left an impression. One only needed to look at my choice of business and the ink in my own skin to see that.
“Yeah, maybe.” I pulled out a chair and started shuffling my cards. Habit. “So where’ve you been, anyway?” Shuffle. “And let me offer up a preemptive fuck you for saying, ‘Around . . .’”
Nik barked a laugh, pulling his head from the freezer to look at me, those icy eyes glittering with mirth. “Like I said, you grew up, Kitty Kat.” The top quarter of him disappeared for another second or two, and then he emerged with two pizza boxes. “Hawaiian and Supreme—two of my favorites.”
“Adventurous . . .”
He turned on the oven. “You’re the one who bought the pizzas.”
I gave him a side nod. “Touché.” Was it weird that it felt so not weird for him to be there? “So where’ve you been—really?”
“Everywhere.” He tore into one of the boxes. “Nowhere long enough to matter.”
“You know, I hated you for leaving like that. After everything . . .” In many ways, I still did.
“I know.” That was it, that simple agreement. No apologies, no explanations. Not that I’d expected any. I learned a long time ago that expecting anything from other people was the quickest pathway to disappointment. So I stopped expecting things. No more disappointment.
I huffed a laugh. If only I could do the same with myself.
Nik glanced my way but remained quiet. Good. I wasn’t up for sharing my feelings, and I had work to do.
After one last shuffle, I laid out a simple three-card spread—past, present, and future. I didn’t need more than that, not with my cards, and not while finding Dom was preeminent in my thoughts. I wasn’t surprised to find that the deck had redesigned itself further after the events of the past hour. The illustrations were even more realistic than before, the colors even starker.
The leftmost card represented the past with a row of five crystal tumblers lined up on a barren surface, an ouroboros—a snake eating its own tail—burned into the surface, encircling the cups. Two were shattered, one was broken in half, and the other two remained half filled, one with a clear liquid, the other with something bloodred. Disappointment. Inability to let go. Bitterness. Refusal to give up, to move on. A sliver of hope. The Three of Cups was a depressing card to represent Dom’s past. Especially when I knew, deep in my bones, that it was about his past with me.
My eyes burned, but I jutted out my jaw and moved on. The past was the past. I couldn’t do anything about it now.
The middle card, representing the present situation, was the King of Swords, reversed. The king sat in his upside-down throne, his massive black claymore planted in the floor at his feet and his head bowed over the pommel, concealing his face. Tyranny. An abuse of power. Deceit. Manipulation. Relentless drive toward a goal. An at-any-cost mentality.
I squinted and picked up the card to get a closer look. There was something engraved into the steel of the sword blade, just above the hilt. “What the hell?” It was another ouroboros, much smaller this time.
“Everything alright?” Nik asked from the kitchen. He was sitting on the counter opposite the oven, watching me. I could see him in my peripheral vision.
“Yeah,” I said with barely a glance his way. The self-cannibalizing snake was one of the many ancient symbols my people had used over the years, representing eternity and the cyclical nature of time, but I’d never drawn it on my cards. Why the hell was it showing up now? “Just a . . .” Frowning, I shook my head. “Nothing. It’s probably nothing.”
“Is this how you do it—tarot cards?”
“Be quiet,” I said absently, then moved on to the third card.
The Hanged Man. Again. Goosebumps rose on my skin, starting on my arms and moving inward. The illustration showed Dom dressed all in black and hanging upside down by his ankle. A bright light glowed behind him, illuminating the dark, inky tendrils creeping in all around him, and a snake coiled around his calf, suspended from a branch, holding him in midair. Indecision. Sacrifice. Waiting. Letting go. Surrender. But who—me, or Dom? And why the hell did the snake’s tail, once again, disappear into its mouth?
I gathered up the cards and shuffled twice more, then drew three, laying them on the table in a neat row. It was the same cards. One more time—the same spread, the same cards—and I accepted that it was locked in. The universe had spoken.
I settled into a pattern of drawing a single card, a single, specific question in mind.
Where is Dom now?
Did someone capture him?
Is he in pain?
Is he alone?
Who could help me find him?
Is he alive?
Eventually, no matter what I asked, I pulled the same card—the Hanged Man. Wait, it seemed to be telling me. Not yet. You’ll understand soon enough.
Frustrated, I flipped the entire deck over and fanned out the cards. They all had one thing in common—the ouroboros. Sometimes it was hidden, and sometimes it was blatant, but it was always there. I settled into the kitchen chair and started going through the cards one by one. There had to be more they could tell me. There had to be.
Chapter Three
“Why’d you do it?” I ask a hulking Nejeret who calls himself Shank. He’s down on his knees, his hate-filled eyes locked on my face, the point of my sword, Mercy, digging into his neck hard enough to draw blood. “Why’d you make him kill himself?”
“Why not?” Shank says. “He was just a human.”
I feel my eye twitch, and I’m having a hard time not shoving Mercy’s blade forward. That human was my friend. He was helping me. And for that reason alone, this asshat decided to use him as a warning. I grit my teeth. “Give me the names of two others, and I’ll let you live.” I’m literally lying through my teeth, shame-free. This Nejeret is going to die, regardless of anything he tells me.
Shank smirks, his eyes still locked on mine, and jerks forward. His eyes bulge and his body stiffens as Mercy’s blade slides through his neck with almost no resistance.
I raise my right foot and plant the bottom of my boot against his chest, pushing him off the blade. He slumps to the floor, twitching and gurgling as he dies. Preemptive, but no matter. I was going to kill him anyway.
I drop to one k
nee to wipe the blade off on the side of his sweatshirt.
Shank’s eyes are wild now. Scared. Good.
I lean over him and bring my mouth close to his ear. “Don’t think this is over.” Nejeret souls live forever. If there’s a way to make the rest of his existence one of never-ending agony, I’ll find it. He’s on the top of my shitlist, dead or not, just under the Nejeret who killed my mom.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
I snorted awake, jerking upright in my chair and reflexively wiping the lower half of my face with the back of my hand. It came away wet. Of course.
I could still smell the tangy, metallic scent of blood. I could still hear Shank’s final, gurgling breaths. No matter how deserving my victims were of death, they still haunted my dreams.
BANG. BANG. BANG. It was the door downstairs, the one from the street to the shop.
“You should probably get that,” Nik said from the couch behind me. “Sounds like a cop knock.”
“Oh joy of joys,” I grumbled. I pushed my chair back with a screech of wood on wood and stood, blinking gritty eyelids. My cards were still on the table, though not in the neat stack I’d left them in, thanks to my flailing arms. I combed my hair back with my fingers, running my tongue over my teeth in an attempt to decide how terrible my morning breath might be. Pretty bad, I gathered. I felt my chest. At least I was wearing a bra.
I trudged past Nik and the couch, slogged down the stairs, and rubbed my eyes with my left hand as I pushed through the beaded curtain. It was bright, but not full-morning bright. Early-dawn bright. Like, five-in-the-freaking-morning bright. I don’t do five in the morning. At least, not from this end.
A large man stood on the other side of the glass door, his physique disturbingly similar to Shank’s and his dark blue uniform looking almost black in the pale morning light. Nik, that sneaky charlatan, had been right. Cop knock, indeed.
I unlocked the door and pulled it open a few inches, keeping the toe of my boot wedged behind the door so the guy couldn’t shove his way in. I don’t have anything against the po-po—they’re great, I’m sure. Do-gooders and all that. But I’m not, and that makes us potential adversaries. I have a past that would incite this fresh-faced officer to try to take me in and throw me behind bars without hesitation. Then things would get ugly and he would get dead, and I would feel bad. And really, I wasn’t looking to murder one of Seattle’s finest at five in the damn morning.
“Is there a problem?” I asked, then cleared my froggy throat. I could hear footsteps on the stairs in the back. Relative immortality, crazy-fast healing, and the occasional “magical” power aren’t my kind’s only gifts; our senses are extra keen and our reflexes unnaturally quick. I had no doubt that Nik was eavesdropping from the back room. Just in case.
The cop, a Native guy in his mid- to late twenties, nodded to me in greeting. He was quite a bit taller than me and twice as wide—all muscle, from the looks of it. “Morning, miss.” He did a quick scan of me, his eyes lingering on the tribal orca tail tattooed on my exposed abdomen, the flock of seagulls flying along my collarbone and over my shoulder, and on the two tiny studs in the snakebite piercings on my lower lip. He glanced over his shoulder, then back at me. “Can I come in?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Why?”
He frowned. “I have an important matter to discuss with, uh . . .” He glanced down at his hand, where my name was scrawled across the palm. “Katarina Dubois. She owns this business, doesn’t she?”
I raised one eyebrow. “She does.”
“Well, can you get her?” Again, he looked over his shoulder. “Please?” He didn’t know enough about me to know that I was Katarina Dubois, which told me he wasn’t after me for an arrest or anything like that. But he definitely wanted something from me. My help in finding someone, probably. Too bad for him—I only worked for private clients, never for the police. Too many strings.
I flashed him a bright smile. “Sure. Be right back.” I shut the door, locking it before turning around to head to the back. I was fully intending to return to the apartment upstairs to continue my investigation into Dom’s and the other Nejerets’ disappearances. The cards had been stubborn last night, not revealing anything new, no matter how long I studied them. For all intents and purposes, I was in a universe-ordained holding pattern, and it pissed me the hell off.
Nik stepped away from the wall, blocking my passage through the beaded curtain. His eyebrows were drawn together, and the corners of his mouth were turned down. He wanted me to listen to the cop, and he was judging me for planning to ignore the guy. His feelings on the matter were plain as day. Damn it, if Nik was functioning as my moral compass, my own personal Jiminy Cricket, then the world was seriously screwed up.
My shoulders slumped, and I let my head fall back, a groan rumbling up my throat. “Fine.”
“Good girl,” Nik said, placing his hands on my shoulders and turning me around.
Feet dragging, I headed for the door. I unlocked it and yanked it open. “Come on in.” Once the cop was inside, I twisted the lock again and turned to face him, leaning my back against the glass. “Officer . . . ?”
“Smith,” he said, pointing to the name tag on his right breast pocket: G. Smith. He craned his neck to peek into the nearest tattooing office. “Officer Garth Smith. Will Ms. Dubois be joining us soon?”
“You’re looking at her,” Nik said, pushing through the curtain. I glanced past the cop, and my eyes locked with Nik’s for the briefest moment. It was like he was allergic to minding his own business.
To Officer Garth Smith, I was sure it looked like Nik was there to intimidate him—it was what Nik did best, after all. But I knew better. He was there for the cop’s safety. He probably still thought of me as the loose cannon I’d been two decades ago—the one who’d nearly killed herself in a suicide mission attempting misplaced vengeance for her mother’s death. But he didn’t know that girl was long gone, killed by an assassin of rogue Nejerets. Killed by me. He didn’t know any of that, because he hadn’t been around.
“You’re Katarina Dubois?” Officer Smith said, spinning around to face me.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Last I checked.”
He did another scan of me, longer than before, from my black combat boots up until, finally, he reached my face. I imagined what he saw—a troubled girl who’d been out partying all night, if the mussed hair, disheveled clothes, and smudged and crusted dark makeup around my eyes were anything to go by.
“You own this place?” he asked dubiously.
“Yep.”
“And you’ve been helping people find their missing loved ones for the past two years?”
“Yep.”
“But you can’t be more than nineteen—”
“I’m older than I look,” I said dryly.
His head quirked to the side, his keen eyes narrowed. He thought I was yanking his chain. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-five,” I lied. I’m thirty-eight, but experience has taught me that telling people anything beyond twenty-five is pushing it. Now, here’s to hoping Officer Garth Smith here didn’t go look up my actual records . . . then he’d learn the impossible truth. It was probably time for me to start posing as someone new—my own daughter or niece, maybe. But damn that sounded like a lot of work.
“Call it a hunch,” I said, “but I’m betting my remarkably good genes aren’t the reason you’re here.”
“Oh, no, of course not, um . . .” Officer Smith shook his head, a surprisingly adorable smile curving his lips. “I’ve heard rumors—well, more than rumors, really—that you can find people . . . people nobody else has been able to find. I looked back over a few of the cold cases that were solved this past year—always assisted by an anonymous tip.” His gaze became hawklike and focused. “It was you, wasn’t it?”
Looking to the side, I shrugged.
“The guys whisper about you . . . they say you’re a psychic. A real one. Word is you track people through sketches.” He inhaled,
hesitating with a held breath.
Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it.
“They call you the Ink Witch.”
I looked past him, to Nik. The ancient Nejeret burst into laughter, almost doubling over.
I glared at him, my hand balling into a fist. “I hate that name,” I said under my breath.
Officer Smith looked from me to Nik and back, missing the joke. I was the joke.
“You still haven’t told me why you’re here. I have other things to do . . .” Other people to find . . .
“There’s a case,” Smith said. “Homeless folks have been going missing for a couple months now, but the department can’t afford to commit any resources to it.”
I cocked a hip and examined my nails. “So, what—you want me to solve your missing bums case, pro bono?” We locked gazes. “Out of the goodness of my heart?”
“Well, um . . .” His shoulders drooped; his whole body seemed to deflate. “Yeah.”
“Well, um . . . no.” I smiled at him, lips pressed together and fake as hell. “Sorry, bud, but I don’t work for free.” I pushed off from the door, unlocked it, and pulled it open, holding it for Officer Smith.
He headed for the door, pausing when he reached me. His rich, coffee-brown eyes searched mine, his face filled with pleas. “They’re kids, mostly. Dozens of them.”
My resolve wilted.
“Dom . . .” Nik’s voice was barely a whisper, too quiet for Smith’s human ears to pick up. I couldn’t afford to waste a single ounce of concentration on anything other than finding my half-brother. Not even on missing kids. I had to be ready for the moment the universe decided to throw me a bone and feed me some useful information. If I let myself become distracted by another case, if I let my concentration split, I might miss whatever signal the universe sent my way. Not even poor, missing kids could lure me away from what I had to do.
The Kat Dubois Chronicles: The Complete Series (Echo World Book 2) Page 3