Death of an Assassin (Saint Roch City Book 1) (2 page)

s expected, the manila envelope has been slid under my door. It must’ve only just made it under the crack, as it’s stuffed with stacks of Benjamins, non-coincidentally my favorite monetary character. I tear it open and count out my payment to make sure I haven’t been stiffed. I’m not sure what O’Halloran did to deserve becoming a hood ornament, and I don’t care, either. In my line of work―waste disposal―you learn not to concern yourself with the garbage you take out. A twenty-grand contract means I’ll be able to pay my bills for another month and still have enough to squirrel away between marks.

A yawn, bitter from a late night, escapes me as I kick off my heels and slide my dress off. A shake of my head and the blood-red hair melts back to my preferred black. Black hair doesn’t make the trust-fund babies come running. Can’t tell you why they enjoy thinking about the red sprawled out on their sheets. Part of me―the morbid part―likes to pretend it has to do with the stuff
they
end up leaking all over the sheets. Or the road, in O’Halloran’s case. And probably leaking down the drain at a twenty-four-hour car wash on the outskirts of Saint Roch. Whoever drove that sleek silver car had to be the type that likes keeping it sparkling clean, but that dent on the hood wouldn’t wash out.

After snatching the bathrobe dangling from the edge of the bathroom door, I carry my bounty to the bedroom and kneel down in front of my bed. After a night of dressing up for a crowd and a drunken fool, it is so freeing to have the plush carpeting on my bare skin, with no one to touch me. I slide out the heavy safe I keep beneath my bed, the wheels on the track it sits on squeaking just so. I punch in the electronic combination, pull the safe door open, and drop the envelope in beside the others. I run my fingers run over the papers, taking stock of my holdings while the dampness of the muggy winter night picks up in my apartment. My brow sweats and the plush of the carpet begins to soak at my knees as I lean over my bounty. Bounties.

Remember, Layla. Get half up front.
My mother used to drive that into me from the first day we stepped off the coach bus. I can still smell the exhaust from the engine way past its expiration date.

Saint Roch is a hell of a city, mostly ‘cause it’s the city from Hell.
That was the bus driver. He’d questioned my mother’s sanity in bringing an eight-year-old girl to this city. It’s not the kind of place you would bring a normal kid to. It’d be just north of negligent homicide.

I’m not the deadliest creature prowling the streets. Most nights I feel like the least dangerous thing. But I’m also driven. My employers like driven.

I close the safe and slide it back under my bed. I get to my feet and walk toward my balcony, the bright lights of the city pooling in over the wafting silk curtains. I reach past the red fabric and unlatch the glass door, then slide it open to let the billowing wind in, sending the curtains across my body. They shroud me, covering my body like the cocoon of a lethal moth. Bursting forth, I step out onto the balcony.

The crisp winter air nips at me, but I don’t care. The moon shines above, the sky surprisingly clear for a major metropolitan area. Nightclubs up on Fifty-Eighth Street radiate with neon lights, and the Crux even has its spotlights flaring to the heavens, as though anyone still needs to be told that it’s the center of the world. Robert Nox, the illustrious owner, operating the club out of the lower floors, has stopped just short of having a red portrait of himself created to shine off the high-rise building he owns.

The top floors contain the brothel. Even the Saint Roch PD is afraid to touch it.

I lean over the railing, my breath making involuntary clouds to float up the street to my neighbors. The skin of my hand burns frigid, the metal railing coated in a very fine layer of ice. The night twists and turns over my sheer-covered curves, desperate to find some place it can grab hold of me. But it doesn’t really matter; I won’t ever really feel it. The blessing of the siren, my mother said.

Her reasoning behind leading my father into the spinning tail rotor of a helicopter.

I shrug at the thought when I hear a short exhalation beside me, and I glance over to see my neighbor, Cassie, leaning on her own balcony. She’s clad in a thick robe, her hand grasping a wineglass like the life preserver of a sinking cruise liner.

“You should really cover up a touch more. You’re liable to catch a cold,” Cassie says. She takes a sip of the wine, and I shrug off her thought as quickly as I do my own.

“You’re one to talk.”

She grins, turning back to the city to take in the same view I’ve been devouring. Her own gifts show for a moment at her smile―twin reptilian fangs, hypodermic needles courtesy of some rather strange family traits. Cassie and I don’t exactly sit in the same knitting circles, but we’re civil neighbors. At least to the degree that we don’t judge each other for where our meals come from. Mine, the all-night burrito joint on the corner of Lexington and Eighth. Hers from the occasional hapless tourist.

“Long night?” Cassie asks, swirling her glass to let the red drink spin like a merciless sea.

Not for the first time, I consider stepping back inside to grab the bottle of Jack I’ve got stashed beneath my pillows. Once her breath-clouds drift to me, and I catch the acrid-sweet aroma of her fresh venom, I answer.

“You could say that. Had to work tonight.”

“I see.
Late
night, then?” Cassie says, pulling a wrought iron patio chair out and curling up in it. She tucks her legs up close, and I wonder―not for the first time―if she’s as cold-blooded as her serpentine animal kingdom relatives.

Snapping back from my wandering wonders, I nod. “Later than I would’ve liked.”

“Who was it this time?” She sips her wine, and when I look over to her, I catch the faintest glint of her slit pupils reflected in the moonlight. She really is quite beautiful for such a strange creature―as though I’m one to cast stones. I’m just grateful she takes only those of the male persuasion into her bed; otherwise she’d be trying to leap across the balcony to take me. Another blessing of the siren. Snakes can do a lot of strange things, but seventy-five-foot falls are likely not one of them.

I sit down on the floor of the balcony and cross my legs, the same fine layer of ice that coated the railing now melting beneath my robe and warm skin. I lean back against the closed portion of my slider and shrug. “Just some guy. No one special. O’Halloran?” I look over to see if the name rings any bells to her―or rather her crime-lord mother. Cassie stays out of the family business, but that doesn’t mean her ears stop working at Sunday dinners. Or whatever it is snakes do when they gather.

She seems more interested in the swirling of her wine, though. “Sounds like no one special. I bet you he just slept with some guy’s wife.”

My face cracks audibly in the night, and I’m comfortable with the smile growing there. “Probably. He didn’t seem like he’d be all that good a time. I feel bad for the guy’s wife.”

Cassie snickers beside me and takes a long drink from her glass, emptying it, and then setting it down on the wrought iron table, the metal and uneven legs scraping a little on the concrete of her balcony. She adopts the cross-legged position I’ve been sporting for the last few moments and looks up and down our street.

Unlike Fifty-Eighth, our slice of hell on Jefferson Street has long since gone quiet. Apart from the woman on the corner who sells spices and strange ingredients that Betty Crocker would never call for, Cassie and I are the only ones on our street. The only nonhumans. Most of our neighbors are just blue-collar people. Dock workers who are very aware that swimming in the Swift River―an original name if ever there was one―is a death sentence. A few doors down, there’s a cop and his accountant wife. I think one of the guys across the street runs numbers for Pete Dawson, the boss of the West End.

In the palette that is Saint Roch, our neighborhood is one of the few mixed colors. Humans and Inhumans living side by side, usually unknowingly. Nicolai Lecomte, one of the old-blood human patriarchs in our fair metropolis, owns most of the buildings around us, including our own. For all the superiority my kind might feel over them, the humans have always had one steadfast advantage. They were here first. For many, that very fact fuels the constant fire in the streets.

For my part, I could not possibly care less who lives on my block. Nicolai seems to feel the same, except that the number of zeroes in my security deposit tells me he knows what I am and likely what my source of income entails. But Cassie and I abide by the rule of not eating where you shit―or in this case live. She keeps to the streets of the flashy motels and illegal casinos for her meals when she has the desire. And, let’s face it, no one who can afford my rates has the urge to kill a taxi driver or a liquor store clerk. My marks lean more toward the wise-guy persuasion.

A shiver runs through my neighbor, and she spreads her robe out. Curious as to what a shiver might actually feel like when necessary, I stare at her legs and wonder if she has goose bumps spreading up her skin. Do the nerves beneath tingle at the night air? Abandoning my lotus seating, I stand, grabbing the railing to heave myself up. My robe ripples in protest, clinging to me as soon as I’m on my feet. As though thinking it finally has a chance, a stiff breeze blows down Jefferson and tries to illicit something from me. My hair tosses about, and I feel the wind slipping through the thin fabric to attack my thighs, my neck, my chest. But it’s nothing more than information.

Yes, Layla. There is wind hitting you right now. It’s somewhere near thirty-five degrees, coming from the southwest. Would you also like to know the debris of pollen, smog, and dead insect parts it contains?

But I can’t
feel
it. It doesn’t make me want to cover up as Cassie does. She looks to me and smiles a little as I probably look like I might pitch myself over the side, gripping the metal bars with the ferocity of a prisoner.

From the Eastside of town we hear a shrill scream from one of the high-rise hotels, and both of us look over just in time to see it. A man tumbling from one of the topmost floors, plummeting to be caught by the curb below. He’ll make the Saint Roch Police Department work late tonight.

Cassie chuckles and I glance over to see that she’s brought her camera out with her and has it trained on the high-rise. She stands up and walks to the very edge of her balcony, holding out the camera to me. “Here, have a look.”

I pad over to her, slipping a little on the ice, to fetch the camera. I bring it to my eye and tap a few buttons to try to zoom in. After taking a picture of the mailbox down on the street with my thumb, I find the knob and look at the hotel. From the single lit room, I zoom in as far as I can until I spot it.

A telescope.

I look back to Cassie and she shrugs callously.

“Guy was probably doing some star gazing and got distracted by a pair of headlights.” She nods toward my chest, and I hand the camera back to her.

If it’s true, it’s not the first time I’ve accidentally killed someone. It likely won’t be the last.

I drape my arms around myself, not cold or embarrassed. Just hopeful to keep the body count at a minimum for the rest of the night.

“I think I’m going to head in,” I mumble. “Good night, Cass.”

“Sweet dreams,” she says, stretching her legs out and exhaling a shrill breath, her thrill at being out in the frigid weather not yet satisfied. I step back into my apartment, feeling the plush floor on my feet, grip the slider, and then close it, hearing the reassuring clink that I’m in my own little world. A snow globe where there’s no one to kill and none that will die.

I wait for a moment, wondering if the warmth of the room will let me feel grateful.

Dear, Layla. You are now in a room of approximately sixty-five degrees. Your ass, which would likely be in the later stages of hypothermia right now were you human, is thawing nicely. Also, could you close the drapes so none of your neighbors swan dive out their windows to try to grab your rack from afar? Thanks.

I do as my sociopathic thoughts suggest, realizing that apart from Cassie, they might really be my only friend. Even if they are me.