As Lie The Dead (29 page)

“You need to laugh like this more often,” Wyatt said, sitting next to me.

I tried desperately to sober myself. “Why’s that?”

“Because you’re beautiful when you do.”

That worked better than a bucket of ice water. The giddiness disappeared, replaced by embarrassment at his compliment. He wiped the tears off my cheeks with the back of his hand. Traced a finger down to my chin. Tilted my face up. I gazed into smoldering eyes that sparkled with love. His mouth drew down toward mine, warm breath whispering over my lips—

A sharp knock on the door took that warmth away, and we both looked up. Nothing happened. Supposing they were waiting for permission, I said, “Come in.”

Michael Jenner stepped inside wearing baggy blue jeans and a brown T-shirt, with white socks on otherwise bare feet. The picture of comfort was so far removed from the uptight lawyer I’d met twice before. He even smiled, and it made his face look ten years younger.

“Ms. Stone,” he said. “You look well.”

“Almost a hundred percent.” I still leaned into Wyatt, and it was obvious what we’d been attempting. Wyatt, for his part, also remained where he was, unashamed at being caught. If anything, he drew closer to me, almost protectively. He obviously didn’t trust Jenner much.

“Your healing abilities were not exaggerated.”

“Yeah, they come in handy once in a while.” I cleared my throat. “Thank you, Mr. Jenner. For this.”

He nodded. “I may have hidden it, being not my place to influence the Assembly, but I did believe you. I do believe you. I only hope tonight’s audience swings in your favor.”

“Tonight’s audience?” My heart sped up, anticipating his response.

“You’ve been summoned to appear before the Assembly of Clan Elders to present your case.”

I very nearly leapt across the room and hugged him. Only the vaguest notion of propriety reined me in. “When?”

“One hour. I’ll drive you.”

I shot to my feet; the briefest needle poked my knee. “Does Phin know?”

“I only just received the call, and Phineas is required elsewhere. He’ll be absent from the Assembly, but his opinion is well documented and shall be voiced again by me.”

“Do you think I can convince them?” Good God, was I doubting myself in front of Jenner? Seeking his approval?

“You speak with passion, Evangeline. Like humans, Therians are guided by our emotions. We’re more alike than you think.”

I was beginning to see that and more. I was also beginning to see how the Therians were a threat to other races. With larger numbers and more diverse personalities than vampires or goblins—and with distinctly less political power than the Fey—Therians were an uncontrollable element. They rarely attacked humans, so were rarely hunted by the Triads. And we
knew next to nothing about them, as I was quickly learning.

I also hadn’t forgotten his fairy-tale riddle, and, with gratitude and confidence spilling all over the room, it almost seemed like the right time to ask. Would he give me the answer? Probably not. Maybe after the Assembly ruled in my favor….

An awkward silence had settled on the room. It was my turn to speak, but I had gone off into la-la land. I said the first non-riddle-related thing that came to mind. “I’m going to need clothes.”

Jenner’s gaze flickered to Wyatt, who stood and opened a dresser drawer. Inside were neatly stacked and folded jeans, tops … Wait.

“That’s the stuff I took from my apartment,” I said, thunderstruck. “How’d it get here? I left that bag in the stairwell at the factory.”

“Phin found it last night,” Wyatt said. “He went back to see if he could track the gremlins to their new location, but no luck. The bag we tossed because it stank to high hell, but the clothes washed up.”

“What about the photo and laptop?”

He pulled the next drawer. Acrid air drifted up, and I peeked inside. One item on top of another. The photo was facedown, but I had memorized the image the first day I saw it. As I stared, heart swelling with gratitude, a thought struck me. Something I’d been missing recently without realizing.

“Wyatt, do you still have the ne—”

He dangled it in front of me, the silver cross flashing in the room’s lamplight. I hooked the chain around my finger, amazed at my attachment to the simple trinket. Part of it was Chalice’s love for her
dearly departed best friend; part of it was my own fondness for the man I’d known for just a few days. It was the only physical object in my life with a sentimental value.

“I’ll let you dress,” Jenner said, and bowed out of the room.

I put on the necklace. My fingers tangled in knotty hair. I knew I’d been sponged down and smelled pretty clean, but my hair seriously needed washing. I doubted the Assembly would care about my appearance; I just despised greasy hair. I changed into clean clothes without much thought to Wyatt’s presence, choosing the nicest of the pieces that I’d grabbed. Black jeans, white tank top, and button-down short-sleeved blouse. I braided my hair into a long rope and secured it with a piece of medical tape, in lieu of an actual rubber band. And once again, I was reduced to the same blood- and soot-stained sneakers. That just couldn’t be helped.

The woman who stared back at me from the dresser mirror was rosy-cheeked and straight-backed and no longer a stranger. She’d still surprise me for a while, but I was comfortable in her skin. In my skin.

Wyatt shuffled up behind me, and I met his gaze in the mirror. “Nervous?” he asked.

“Not really. Why?”

“Because you never used to look at yourself so critically right before meeting someone for the first time.”

“That’s because I never used to care how I looked. I cut my own hair, remember?”

His smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. “What’s changed?”

“What hasn’t?”

He slid his hands across my back and up to gently squeeze my shoulders. I leaned into him, against his chest, seeing us side by side for the first time. My brown hair and brown eyes to his black hair and black eyes. The light smattering of freckles on my nose to his five-o’clock shadow that never went away. Almost matched in height, and now much closer in age.

But below the surface of this new body, I was still an insecure, twenty-two-year-old orphan with anger-management issues and a foul mouth. I’d never felt as comfortable in Wyatt’s arms as I felt at that moment, but I feared where acceptance of that comfort—screw it, of that craving—might take us.

We’ll see where the day takes us
. It had skated us close to this edge so many times—a thin border between accepting and denying—that I wanted to scream. Or to laugh at the hilarity of it all. I had a man beside me who admitted to loving me, wanting me, and I’d been given a second (third? fourth?) chance to be with him. And all I could do was stare mutely into a mirror and wonder what the hell was wrong with me.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Wyatt asked.

I barked laughter. “It’ll cost you at least a dollar.”

“Worth it.”

“I’m thinking we should go.” I spun in his arms and put my palms on his chest. His hands slid to my waist. We drew together at the same time, mouths finding each other in perfect sync. It was a gentle kiss, without the fervor of lust or need, but I still felt it in my toes. The touch and taste of him, the smell of him in my nostrils. The soft stroke of his tongue against
my lips, and the way my belly quivered when his fingers pressed into my hips.

“For luck,” I said when we parted.

“Think we need more luck than that?” he asked, arching one eyebrow suggestively.

“I think it’ll tide us over. Come on, Truman, we’ve got a date with some shape-shifters.”

Michael Jenner’s house turned out to be a two-story condo in a new development ten minutes’ drive outside the city, tucked several miles west of Parkside East. Nearly in the mountains that bordered that side of the valley. He drove a Cadillac, which didn’t surprise me in the least, and he coasted along the winding roads like a practiced race car driver. Fast turns on sharp curves, as though exhilarated by the speed and danger.

I was enjoying myself and the view from the front seat, but Wyatt had a death grip on his door. He sat behind Jenner, at an angle from me. Every time I cast an amused smile his way, he’d glare.

As we closed in on the city, the whispering tendrils of the Break sparked brighter, and I realized just how faint it had been at Jenner’s house. Isleen was right—the center of the city, specifically the northern section of Mercy’s Lot and the mountains above, was like a beacon to those who could sense the Break. No wonder Wyatt had never moved out of the city. And leaving hadn’t done much for Chalice’s mental health.

“It won’t be like facing a panel of judges,” Jenner said when the first hints of the Uptown skyline came
into view. “They won’t bite you, and they can’t sentence you. Just say what you wish to say, and then wait to be told what to do.”

“You mean either wait to be told what I want to know,” I said, “or to be told to get the hell out?”

“Yes. Most likely, though, they’ll ask you to leave the room while they argue among themselves.”

“Sounds a lot like a courtroom to me. Will Wyatt be allowed to go inside with me?”

“No, the audience is with you alone.”

Wyatt grunted his disapproval. Nothing to be done about it now.

“I don’t suppose the Assembly has anything on the name Leonard Call?” I asked.

“Nothing that they’ve shared with me, no.”

“It’s odd, since he’s been recruiting a large number of Therians.”

“True. However, my answer remains the same. If your police records were unable to produce an identity for this man, it’s likely the name is merely a front. Right now, our best option for identifying him lies with Phineas.”

“I know.” Wrapping my brain around the idea of a human turning against the Triads just made my head ache. What could have happened to make someone so angry at their own species? Granted, I’d been pissed at the Triads when they killed the Owlkins and took the last of my friends away. Stripped me of the last of my family … “Hey!”

I sat up straight so fast I banged my knee on the underside of the dash. I ignored the flash of pain and twisted around to face Wyatt. “This Call, or whatever
his name is,” I said, “he’s got to be super-fucking pissed to go after the Triads like this, right?”

“Either pissed or he’s making some sort of power gambit,” Wyatt replied, eyeing me cautiously. “Why? What are you thinking?”

“That the violent loss of a family can make someone homicidal. You remember the Greek restaurant ten years ago? You said two teenage sons were left behind.”

Wyatt stiffened. “Yeah.”

“Do we know what happened to either of them?”

It seemed like a good epiphany, and the motive fit the pattern. From Wyatt, I got something I didn’t expect—a sharp head shake and terse “It’s not them.”

“How do you know?” I asked, a little deflated. It felt like a good lead. Granted, it hadn’t been the Triads who’d killed those women, not exactly. But close enough for someone still holding a grudge to—

“Because I knew them, Evy. Catalyst for the Triads, remember? One of them died less than a year after the fire. The other isn’t Call.”

“How—?”

“Just trust me, he’s not.”

“Fine.” So much for my investigative instincts. Wyatt’s refusal to offer up more information was vastly annoying, but it made sense he’d know. I could imagine him keeping tabs on those early victims out of some noble sense of guilt, even though he’d not been responsible for the deaths of their parents.

“But maybe you’re onto something,” Wyatt said a moment later. His eyebrows scrunched in thought. “Instead of looking at it from Call’s angle, look at it from the motivation angle. They’ve been recruiting for
a month, right? What happened, Dreg-wise, roughly five weeks ago?”

Middle of April. I’d been down with the flu for the first half of the month and had just been allowed back to work. Confinement to our crappy apartment, sipping tea and cocoa, and listening to Jesse and Ash chat about their latest assignments for ten days—five of which were spent in the haze of a high fever—had been hellish. Most of the details of those conversations were lost. I really remembered only the four-day goblin hunt I’d gone on my first day back.

“You’re going to have to fill in those blanks,” I said. “I wasn’t in much of it, as I recall. What was everyone up to?”

“Routine stuff, as far as I remember.” He gazed down at his interlocked hands, as though the answers were etched on his skin. “Baylor, Sharpe, and Nevada all had extended assignments south of the city. Rufus was looking into a string of muggings in the Lot that were linked to Dreg activity. Willemy’s team was off duty, recovering from some nasty magic virus they’d stumbled into while on routine patrol.”

I listened, attentive and amazed at his recollection of so many events. He rattled off three more Triads and their whereabouts during the time frame. All accounted for except one. “What about Kismet and her boys?” I asked.

“Neutralize job Uptown.”

Those had always been my favorite. We got our suspect and our choice of weapons and, depending on the victim, our own time frame in which to “neutralize” them. Goblins and Halfies were always easiest, but we also had open Neutralize orders on them—if
you saw one, kill it. The more specific Neutralize jobs were given over high-profile suspects—vampires, Therians, even the occasional psychotic Gifted human. They were rare assignments, which made them preferred. A nice change to the routine.

“Do you know the target?” I asked.

Wyatt looked up, his hands no longer interesting. “You know we don’t share that information among Handlers.”

“Figured it was worth asking, especially since, of all the things happening during that time frame, it sticks out the most. Think Kismet would tell you if you asked?”

“Maybe, given the circumstances. It isn’t really a policy to not share, it’s more of a safety measure. The less we know about one another’s business—”

“The less likely someone else can beat it out of you.”

He smiled grimly. “Exactly.”

We’d passed through Uptown and were pointed toward the Axelrod Bridge, the only major crossing over the southern tributary of the Black River—below where the Anjean connected—that separated Uptown from the East Side. For some reason, I’d expected the Assembly to meet in Mercy’s Lot. Showed how much I tossed all Dregs into one basket, even though Jenner’s own address proved that Therians did indeed live all over the city.