Hellbent (31 page)

“Perfectly understandable. I hope everyone had a marvelous time on my dime.” I stood up and stretched, and cracked my back. Everything ached, but no worse than the night before—which was a step in the right direction as far as I was concerned.
No worse
was becoming equivalent to “good times.”

I eyed my roommates with suspicion. They were getting along, successfully playing leisure games. They’d gone shopping. Elizabeth had showered and brushed her silvering hair, and was wearing something tasteful but simple—a white classic button-up and khaki slacks with brown Eastlands. Adrian was wearing new jeans (dark wash, boot cut) and an oatmeal-colored Henley. They looked civilized and innocent, so clearly I must have been missing something.

At the end of my visual appraisal, it occurred to me to ask, “Wait. Plane ticket to where?” Even as I suspected the answer.

“Seattle, of course.” Adrian said it lightly, casually. Almost coldly, but you had to know what to listen for.

Elizabeth said, “He told me about your home, the building in Seattle where the homeless children live, and your blind friend.”

“Ah.” I almost started yelling at Adrian that he shouldn’t tell people about Ian like that, but what was it going to hurt? “What else did he tell you? Anything interesting?”

“He said you’re a vampire, but I’m okay with that. And I want to thank you for your generous offer to keep me there for a while. I’m not sure what I did to deserve it, but I could use a place to lie low. I’m not saying that the cops were right on my tail or anything, but a simple scry told me that people were beginning to question the coincidence.”

I said, “Right. Yes. Well. You’re welcome, of course. Adrian lives in Seattle, too, you know. I’m glad you two get along. I expect you’ll be seeing a lot of him.”

She laughed. “That’s funny. A lot of him, yes.”

“What?”

“I told her about Neighbors, and the drag show. You’ll have to bring her, one of these nights.”

“One of these nights, sure. I don’t suppose you told her the address, or anything? So she knows where to go when she gets into town?”

“I’ve arranged for a car service to pick her up under the name of Meredith Hand. And I’ve already called Ian and given him the heads-up.”

“How … 
efficient
of you.”

I’d be lying if I said I was utterly shocked that Adrian had made these arrangements. I wasn’t shocked; I was only somewhat surprised. He’d certainly done a thorough job of it, to give him due credit. And, I mean, come on. It’s not like his vindictiveness came as a huge, heart-stopping betrayal or anything.

Besides, the longer I stood there like a dummy, the more I was actually okay with it. Was it a bad idea? Yes. A terrible one. But wasn’t it what I wanted, in a warped way? Kind of. My feelings on the matter were too complicated to focus into an Official Position.

I went out on a limb and asked a silly question. “Just
one
plane ticket to Seattle?”

“Yeah, just the one. I figured maybe I’d tag along with you to Atlanta. Our flight leaves an hour after hers.”

If I was going to pick a fight with him, this was the moment.

But I let it pass. I sighed, sat down on Adrian’s side of the bed (it had a better view of the television), and picked up the remote. “Two hours to departure, huh?”

Elizabeth answered. “That’s right. We thought we’d leave as soon as you got up. I don’t think I have anything that’ll get me stopped by security, and I have my own ID under … not the name you know. I like to leave myself plenty of wiggle room.”

“That’s fine,” I said. Then I broached the money thing, because it’d better come up sooner rather than later. “Now about those bones—”

She said, “Clearly they’re yours now. You stole them from me fair and square, and it’s not as if I don’t owe you for the hospitality.”

“About that …” I tapped my fingers on the duffel bag I held beside my lap and did some very hasty thinking. I unzipped the bag and asked, before I could start counting, “How many bones are left?”

She answered fast. “Thirteen.”

“An auspicious number,” I mused, noting that she wasn’t lying. They were all there, bundled together. “But I suspect Horace can be convinced you’ve burned through a few of them. I don’t have to give him the whole batch.”

“Horace?”

“The lying weasel, as previously discussed.”

“When?”

“Last night,” I said, slightly perturbed by her failure to recall—but I didn’t call attention to it. It might not’ve been a mental
illness thing. It might’ve just been a side effect of a crazy night and a whole lot of magic floating around. “He’s the guy who tried to buy the bones on the antique parade thing, but don’t worry about him. I’ll take care of him.”

“You’re selling him the bones?”

“Let’s say instead that I’m passing them along for a very healthy commission.”

She pondered this, and said, “Millions. That’s what you could get for thirteen bones.”

To which I replied, “Yes, and he can still get millions for fewer than that. Say, eight or nine of them. We’ll just tell Horace that you blew a handful of them practicing your spells.”

Adrian shot me a confused look, then his face lightened. He knew me so well, it surely had nothing to do with the blood link. “You want to save a few?”

“To sell them on the side?” Elizabeth asked quizzically, since she didn’t know me as well as my faux-ghoul did.

He told her, “No, no. She wants to save them as insurance.”

“Against what?”

“Against future trouble.”

“But I don’t intend to make any trouble for you,” she objected. “I got Buck Penny, and I undid my marriage.”

“I’m sorry … you did what?”

“Penny’s dead, I’m sure. And the marriage never happened.”

Adrian frowned, but didn’t contradict her. Our gazes met and we fired a whole silent conversation back and forth between us, transmitted via eyebrow wiggles, mostly amounting to, “She’s nuts, right?” “Yeah, I think so.” “Can you undo the past?” “I have no idea.” “Let her think what she wants.” “Okay.”

Moving right along without arguing, I clarified. “We’re on our own up there in Seattle; we don’t have a House to protect us.” She was about to ask me what a House had to do with anything,
but I headed her off at the pass. “Not a house like what you live in; vampire Houses are organizational structures, and they can be useful. They can be much worse than useful if you don’t belong to one. That’s the short version of what I’m getting at.”

“I think I see,” she said slowly. “You want … to keep these bones … so that I can use them? To protect you and your friends?”

“Well, if you’re going to be hanging around, you might as well make yourself useful. Are you willing to use them for vengeance-free purposes? For that matter, are you
capable
of doing so? Or is some dramatic motive required to make them work?”

“I’m capable, don’t worry about that. But doesn’t it require a certain measure of trust on your part? What if … I hate to say it, but what if I have … you know. An episode? Tonight I feel good. I’ve had my medication for the first time in a few weeks so I feel fuzzy, but mostly secure.”

“We stopped to refill it,” Adrian chimed in.

I considered this a very worthy use of funds, but to say so might’ve come off wrong, so I only nodded. “I know how it goes,” I said, because I did. “We’ll work something out. Let me think about it, and we’ll discuss it when I get home. For now, I’ll keep the bones with me.”

“I understand.” It was funny. When her eyes weren’t glowing and she wasn’t chanting, she seemed almost normal. Not quite, but almost. She still had a tense, feral posture that said she anticipated trouble—maybe from within—at all times. And every now and again, her eyes would twitch or her head would cock, like she was looking for something or listening for something that wasn’t there. But all things being equal, she didn’t come off any nuttier than somebody’s favorite aunt with a bunch of cats.

I thought of Pita and realized I was heading down that road myself. I might only have one cat, but I sure was amassing a collection of other strays.

“So that’s settled,” I announced. “You’ll head back to my place, and Ian and Domino will help you get settled in to some corner of the flat or another. They’ll bring you up to speed on the ground rules, not that there are very many of those. Meanwhile, me and Adrian will head for Atlanta, where everything will go smoothly and no one will get hurt, and everyone will have a productive time learning a great many useful things.”

Elizabeth scooped her cards up into her palm and set them on the table with the rest of the pile. She gave me a funny look. “Right. I know sarcasm when I hear it, but I hope things go half that well, at least.”

“It’s not sarcasm so much as desperate optimism. And mostly for the second half of what I just said. Actually, I’m pretty sure you’ll be fine in Seattle, assuming your trip is uneventful and the car is there waiting. And I’m still holding on to the bones.”

She said, “I can make plenty of trouble without them, you know.” And it didn’t sound like she was bragging.

I hesitated. “Is that a threat?”

“It’s full disclosure.”

“Okay. Good to know.”

Adrian was beaming at me with triumph, smugness, and something else—a faint mirroring of my hopeful desperation, I think. He knew just how hard we were bullshitting here, after all.

But the first half of my cheery prediction went down without any aggravation. In another hour, we’d bundled up Elizabeth with her duffel bag stuffed with toiletries and what few personal items she’d had on her when I’d nabbed her. Then drove her to the airport in Adrian’s rental.

Again, in his quest to prove he could be a useful ghoul-type assistant, Adrian had snuck out and dumped the Hummer a couple miles away—in the kind of neighborhood where it’d be stripped down to the frame within hours, or that was the plan. I
didn’t have any serious fears that it’d be tracked back to us; we were on the guest list under pseudonyms, and according to the local news, the Johnson Space Center was flattened and crawling with chaos.

At least twenty people had died in Hurricane Elizabeth, as I’d come to think of it. Another hundred had been hurt, dozens of cars had been destroyed, several buildings had been ground down to sea level, and many others had been so badly damaged that they would be covered in scaffolding for months to come.

Something told me no one would be making too many hard-hitting inquiries into one missing vehicle. For all anyone knew, it might’ve been blown to the top of the museum roof. It sounds batty, but that’s where they found Buck Penny’s Mercedes.

Speaking of the target himself, I didn’t know if Elizabeth had actually gotten him or not. The newspeople weren’t naming the dead until all families could be notified, and the Internet didn’t seem to know … so either the situation was messier than it sounded (making it truly epic), or someone was being very careful to keep the particulars quiet.

I couldn’t help but wonder if Elizabeth hadn’t inadvertently damaged some national-secret-type thing that the feebs were looking to cap. If she
had
done so, it almost certainly hadn’t been deliberate, but that wouldn’t change anything.

As I’d learned the hard way over the last year, there’s no reason to underestimate (a) money, or (b) the government’s capacity for persistence and secrecy.

So whatever mayhem had occurred over on the other side of Houston, it wasn’t my problem and I couldn’t see myself getting too worked up about it. Privately, I thought it was an egregious case of overkill and lunacy, but somehow that didn’t bother me.

Although when I thought about it too hard—and I eventually think about everything too hard—I wondered if it was a good idea
to send this unstable woman into a household of people who frankly weren’t in the world’s best position to defend themselves if things were to go wacky. If Elizabeth had another “episode,” would they be able to manage her? Or in lieu of that, defend themselves?

Dear God, what if she decided she wanted to “undo” them, or whatever? Maybe she undid her marriage, and maybe she’s got quantum magic scrambling her brain, I don’t know—but I was shipping her home to camp out with the kids.

But shit, life is full of risks. As it turns out, so is the afterlife.

Anyway, the kids already lived with two vampires, including one with a nasty case of post-traumatic stress disorder and an inability to see where he was throwing things. It’s not like they were living in Nerf City. One more homicidal maniac shouldn’t make much difference, or that’s what I told myself as I waved at Elizabeth from the send-off spot outside the security checkpoint.

Soon she was gone, slipped through the scanner without a hitch, and headed toward the terminal where she’d catch her flight back to my place. My stomach felt sour, and the farther away from us she got, the less confident I became.

I smiled at Adrian anyway.

“What are you grinning about?” he asked, sensing that I was full of shit.

“One thing down, one to go. We got the bones. Now we just have to get in and out of Atlanta alive, because tomorrow’s our last night to do so. The convocation goes down the night after that.”

We already had our tickets, though our flight left an hour later—so we had time to kill before it was worth submitting ourselves to the TSA tickle.

“I knew you’d cave,” he said to me.

“Cave on what?”

“Your vow that I wouldn’t come with you to Georgia.”

“Don’t get too self-righteous. I knew if I dangled that carrot over your head, you’d take care of my incidentals and do a decent job of it. Really, I just wanted you to get Elizabeth squared away and ditch the getaway car.”

“I bet. You just magically planted those ideas in my brain.”

“I didn’t say that,” I argued. “Those things needed to be done, and I couldn’t do them while I was out cold for the day. But you would’ve half-assed them or ignored them without some positive reinforcement.”

I expected it to piss him off, but he only shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. It wasn’t that big a deal, and now you have to bring me along. Totally worth it.”

“I don’t
have
to do anything.”