Die and Stay Dead (22 page)

“We play cards,” I said.

He arched an eyebrow, clearly having trouble believing that. “You play cards. And that’s all you do?”

The question made me fidget. I wasn’t just in the spotlight anymore. Now I felt like I was being dissected. “That’s all. Why?”

“Never mind. I guess I was wrong about you two,” he said. “Today is one of those days where I’m wrong about everything, it seems. Even myself. I very nearly crossed the line with Crixton.”

“How so?” I asked. “We’ve killed Infecteds before.”

“This was different,” he said. “This felt sadistic. Cruel. But the worst part is that I didn’t care. I wanted Crixton to suffer for not giving me the ledger. I think I was going to kill him. It’s one thing to kill in self-defense, or the defense of others. But to kill him out of frustration? To kill him because he said no to me? I wanted him dead so badly it shocked me. That’s what brought me back to my senses. It’s why I let him go.”

He looked tired, his face drawn. For the first time since I’d known this nearly sixty-year-old man, he actually looked his age.

“Are you sure you’re okay, Isaac?” I asked.

He sighed and waved off the question. “It’s just stress. We haven’t had much of a break since we started chasing down Infecteds. I suppose it’s catching up with me.”

“The past is catching up to all of us,” I said. “I saw Philip in the hall just now. He didn’t look very happy.”

“Philip and happy seldom go together,” Isaac said. “We may not see him again for a while. I sent him on a mission. He volunteered, actually. I think he needed to clear his head, and I can’t argue that. He never wanted that story to come out. He even kept it from me, and I thought I knew everything about his past.” He sighed and ran his hands over his face. “It’s a lot to process. I think some time apart may do us good.”

“Did you send him to find the fragments?” I asked.

“Something else, actually,” Isaac said. “If we’re lucky, we’ll find the fragments ourselves before Arkwright does, and prevent a catastrophe. But if something goes wrong, if Arkwright gets his hands on the Codex Goetia before we do, we’re going to need a way to tip the scales back in our favor. A Plan B. I sent Philip to get the one thing that will do that for us.”

“A weapon?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, standing up. “Let’s leave it at that for now. It’s getting late, and I wanted to hit the books tonight to see if I can find out where the fragments are hidden. There have to be some clues out there. If there are, I’ll find them.”

I stood up, too. “Need some help?”

“Your head wouldn’t be in it,” he said with a patient smile. “Things are going to heat up soon, Trent. Once I figure out where the fragments are, I’m going to need all hands on deck with no distractions. If you want to talk to Jordana, you should do it now, while there’s still time.” He clapped me on the back. “And good luck. I hope she has the answers you’re looking for.”

So did I.

I went back to my room. Outside the window, the dusk cast a grayish-blue hue over Central Park. Kali stared at me from where she lay curled on my pillow. She’d claimed that part of the bed for herself and refused to relinquish it. It was just as well. I never slept. Someone might as well use it.

I dug my phone and Jordana’s business card out of my pocket. I stared at the number she’d written at the bottom of the card, my thumb poised over the screen of my phone. I felt like I was bursting at the seams. There was so much I wanted to ask her, I hardly knew where to begin. But before I could dial, the doubts started nagging me again. If I was Lucas West, all-American high school football star from Norristown, Pennsylvania, why hadn’t the Janus Endeavor found my likeness anywhere? Why hadn’t there been anything about me online? Maybe I hadn’t searched deep enough. What if there had been something about me on the very next page of search results when I stopped reading? But damn it, I’d gone ten pages deep already, and the results had started to repeat. I had to face it. There was nothing about me online. Nothing about me
anywhere
.

And yet … Lucas West. The name stuck in my head, impossible to ignore.

Clarence Bergeron’s parting words were still fresh in my mind. He was a spoiled, privileged old asshole who thought his wealth entitled him to stand above the law. But even assholes could be right about some things, and Bergeron was right about this. The name Trent
didn’t
fit me. It had been given to me by someone I despised, someone who had used and manipulated me. I should have dumped the name ages ago, but it was the only one I had.

Until now.

If
Jordana was right.
If
I really was Lucas West.

I hated all these ifs. Somehow, being this close to the answer without knowing for sure made it worse. I felt like I was going to explode. Isaac was right. The questions were too big to ignore. I owed it to myself to find the answers.

How did Lucas West get this thing inside him that wouldn’t let him die? How did he lose his memory? Why did magic go haywire around him? How did he know how to fight like he’d been doing it all his life?

Who the hell was Lucas West that he could do these things?

My aura wasn’t human. Neither was my scent. These things I already knew. So what had happened to Lucas West to make him … me? Had he taken magic into himself? Been changed by it, like Biddy and Crixton and so many others? But the thing inside me was more than magic, wasn’t it? Stealing other people’s lives to cheat death was something no magic could do. Bethany had told me that. Something else must have happened. But what?

I felt like I was going round and round in circles. A knock on the door pulled me out of it. I put the business card and phone down on the dresser and opened the door. Bethany stood in the doorway, shuffling a deck of cards like a smooth Vegas dealer.

“I was thinking this time I’d let you win for a change, just to see what it feels like,” she said.

“Do you mind if we skip tonight?” I asked.

She raised her eyebrows. This was the second time I’d turned her down. “What’s going on?”

I sat down on my bed and sighed. Kali decided I was too close now and jumped down, vanishing into the dark space under the bed.

Bethany stopped shuffling the cards. She came a few more steps into the room and tucked the deck into the back pocket of her jeans. “Are you okay?”

I chuckled. I couldn’t help it. “Am I ever?”

“You know what I mean,” she said. “Comparatively.”

I took a deep breath and said, “Lucas West.” The name still sounded new to me. My tongue wasn’t used to saying it. And yet how many times had I said it before my amnesia?

“Lucas West,” Bethany repeated. “Does the name ring any bells?”

“No, but it wouldn’t. I can’t remember anything from before.”

“You were sure some part of you would recognize your name if you heard it again,” she said.

“I know. I thought hearing it would spark a memory, a feeling,
something
.”

“Don’t you think it’s strange that it didn’t?”

“I don’t know. Something took my memories away, Bethany. All of them. Even my name. I know you’re skeptical about Jordana, but it feels like…” I paused, not sure what I was trying to say. Sometimes it felt like whatever had taken my memories also took my words when I needed them. “It feels like she’s all I’ve got.”

Bethany came over to the bed and sat down next to me. Her hair smelled like lavender shampoo. “I know what it’s like not to know where you come from, or why you’re different from everyone else. But I also know how desperate it can make you for answers. It makes you willing to listen to anyone who claims to know something. I went down that road once, too. I wish I hadn’t. I wish someone had warned me. I wish I’d been smart enough at the time…” She trailed off. Apparently, this was a story she wasn’t ready to share yet.

She shook her head at the memory, her dark brown locks sweeping and bouncing along the shoulders of her blouse. It was only then that I realized she wasn’t wearing her cargo vest. Funny, I was so used to seeing her in it that she looked even smaller to me without it. Delicate, even though I knew that was the furthest thing from the truth about her. But it made me feel protective. It made me want to keep her safe from that memory. From everything. I looked at her, marveling again at just how bright and blue her eyes were.

Then I got up off the bed, uncomfortable being so close to her. I kept thinking about the kiss she and I had shared on the tournament field at the Medieval Festival—that brief, amazing moment before she’d pulled away and told me she couldn’t be with me. Then, as if my mind were flipping a page, I thought about Jordana and the kiss we shared in her office. Jordana hadn’t pulled away. Jordana hadn’t told me we couldn’t be together. I was confused, a drowning man floundering for purchase and finding none. I walked to the opposite side of the room and leaned back against the wall between the door and the dresser, crossing my arms.

“You’re preaching to the choir, Bethany,” I said. “I believed Underhill for a long time when he was pretending to help me. But this is different. I felt something with her. A connection, like we … knew each other.”

Bethany stood up off the bed and came toward me. I watched her. The air felt electrified, as if suddenly anything was possible, anything could happen, if we only wanted it to.

She stopped when she saw Jordana’s business card resting on top of the dresser beside me.

“I was about to call her when you showed up,” I said.

“You know I’m still not a hundred percent on this,” she said. “I know Jordana’s very pretty and all—”

“Is that what you think this is about?” I asked.

She looked up at me sharply. “Isn’t it?”

“Bethany, I have to do this. It’s the only lead I’ve got. I have to follow it. You know that. You would do the same thing in my shoes.”

“What makes you so sure you can trust her? You still don’t know anything about her.”

“Then I’ll get to know her,” I said. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to call her. So I could spend time with her, get a sense of who she is, what she’s like.”

“You mean, like a date,” she said.

“What if it
were
a date? Would that be so bad?” I asked.

She blinked at me, not answering. For the first time in a long time, I couldn’t read what was going on behind her eyes. I decided to deflect the growing tension the way I always did, with humor.

“I know you think a guy like me doesn’t stand a chance with someone like her, but—”

“I never said that,” she interrupted.

“I know. I was kidding.”

Suddenly everything felt awkward. I’d never felt this awkward with Bethany before. We used to be able to joke around without missing a beat, completely in sync. Now it was like we were strangers speaking different languages.

“I should call Jordana before it gets too late,” I said. I didn’t want to have this conversation anymore.

I reached past Bethany for Jordana’s business card and my phone on top of the dresser. Bethany didn’t move out of my way. Suddenly, we were right up against each other. I could feel her unusually warm body heat passing through the thin layers of clothing between us. She looked up at me with eyes that flashed so blue they looked like pools of water.

“Take me with you when you see her,” she said.

“What? No.” I grabbed the card and phone off the dresser and backed away from her.

“I don’t trust her, Trent,” she said. “Something doesn’t smell right about this. I’d feel a lot better about this if I were there, too.”

“No,” I said again. “This is
my
life, Bethany.
My
past. It’s got nothing to do with you.”

She stared at me, her mouth a hard, tight line. “And I would be a third wheel. On your date.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you were thinking it,” she said. She put up her hands in mock surrender. “Fine. I was just trying to look out for a friend. Don’t let me stand in your way.”

She started toward the door.

“Bethany, come on,” I said.

She stormed out the door and slammed it behind her. I sighed, annoyed and confused. How had this conversation gone so bad so quickly? Was it something I said? It usually was.

A single playing card lay facedown on the floor. It must have fallen out of the deck when she put it in her pocket. I picked up the card and turned it over. The three of hearts. I glanced at the door, thinking about going after Bethany to give it back, but considering the way she’d left, I thought better of it. Besides, it was getting late and I had a phone call to make.

I sat down on the bed. From somewhere below me, Kali mewled a warning not to get too close.

“Shut up, cat,” I groused. It seemed like everyone was trying to tell me what to do today. I was tired of it.

I dialed Jordana’s number and listened to it ring, wondering if she would pick up. Wondering what I would say. Wondering what
she
would say. About me. About who I was. About us.

The ringing stopped, and suddenly I heard her voice in my ear. “Hello?”

My heart lurched into my throat. I fiddled nervously with the playing card in my other hand. “Hi, it’s Trent,” I said. “Um, I mean Lucas. I think. We met today at your office?” I winced. God, I sounded like an idiot. I’d fought gargoyles, revenants, shadowborn, infected magicians, even a mad, thirty-foot-tall Ancient, but talking to a beautiful woman on the phone? Apparently that was where my courage drew the line.

“I’m so glad you called,” Jordana said. Her voice melted all the stress and confusion right off my shoulders. “Did you find the fragments?”

“Not yet,” I said. “I was calling because I—I wanted to talk some more.”

“Maybe we should talk after you find the Codex Goetia,” she said. “You need to find it as soon as you can.”

“We’re working on it,” I said. “But I don’t think I can wait that long. I spent a year not knowing who I am. I don’t want to spend another minute not knowing, not if you can tell me.”

Her voice softened. “Well, you’re in luck, Lucas. It turns out my plans for tonight fell through anyway. I could meet you for a drink if you’re up for it.”