Is it going to burn me? I was acutely aware of sweat touching the curve of my lower back, blood and hellbreed contamination all over my clothes, the scar humming a soft little chortle of corruption on my right wrist. And who was I kidding? Both my cheeks were wet, because my eyes were brimming with tears.
My throat clicked as I swallowed drily and blinked away the water, looking for traps. He’d had plenty of time to lay them, but I saw nothing except the burning etheric smear of an angry and awake Talisman. The smell of burning intensified.
The Talisman hummed, plucking at the strings under the world’s surface. But not like a hellbreed. No, this was music. It was humming along with the song that naturally unmade things. The same music that triggered landslides and catastrophes, a great harmonic resonance instead of the crashing discordance of hellbreed corruption.
I don’t even believe in Sekhmet, I’d told Mikhail.
And his response? I don’t either, milaya. But never hurts. Don’t have to believe to do job. Just have to do.
It took more courage than I thought I had left to take the final five steps to the table and reach down. I was prepared for sparks, or for a backlash of etheric energy to knock me away. Prepared for anything, actually, other than the thing that actually happened.
My fingers touched cool metal. The thready curls of smoke evaporated, leaving behind the smell of burning and the reek of rotting hellbreed. I found I was holding the Talisman, and the sharp edges of the chain brushed lovingly against my hand. They didn’t cut, they just scratched a little.
Like fingernails against a lover’s skin.
Oh, my God. The gem nestled in my palm and thrummed at me. When I lifted it to my throat, the broken links of the chain slid across my skin and melted together as if they’d never been ripped from a hunter’s chest. The Talisman settled against my breastbone, its low humming note disappearing into the sound of wind touching the walls and the etheric protections settling back down.
And I knew, miserably, that I should have shot Perry when I had the chance. Because sooner or later I was going to have to go back to the Monde Nuit and ask him how he got his hellspawn hands on the gem my teacher’s killer stole.
3
Mickey’s on Mayfair Hill is the kind of restaurant locals like to keep to themselves. Good food, a full bar down two steps in the back, pictures of film stars decking every wall, and a strict policy of toleration. It helps that Mayfair is the part of town where you can see same-sex couples walking hand in hand more often than not—the churches have rainbows on their signs, most of them stating unequivocally ALL ARE WELCOME!
The nightclubs are wildly popular, too. I’d call it a cliché, but that might get me in trouble.
It also helps that Mickey’s is completely owned and mostly staffed by Weres. When you have claws and superstrength, tolerance takes on a whole new meaning.
Lean dark Theron met me at the door. The Werepanther’s face was unusually solemn, and his shoulders came up a fraction as I swept the door closed. “Kid looks shaken up.”
Not even a greeting. Weres are normally so polite, too.
“He should be.” I glanced past him, saw Saul in our regular booth. Across from him, Gilberto slumped, staring at his beer bottle. The bottle’s label was half picked off.
The kid wasn’t old enough to drink, but that didn’t matter in the barrio. It doesn’t matter on the nightside, either. I turned a blind eye—God knows an apprentice is kept on a short enough leash otherwise.
Theron didn’t move. The front of Mickey’s is a narrow tiled foyer, a half wall holding back the tables to your left and the kitchen directly in front of you, with all its steam and heat. One of the cooks, a slim dark bird Were, was tossing a spatula, plucking it out of the air with graceful dexterity while he stared back at the freezer, tossing it again.
I finally looked up, met Theron’s steady gaze. “What? Am I not allowed to come in?”
“I’d tell you to be gentle.” Theron folded his arms. “But that’s so not you.”
I had washed my face, smearing my eyeliner and putting fresh on. But I hadn’t bothered to change. I could spare the time to rinse my face, and I like to do it. The rest of me doesn’t matter so much.
The Talisman hummed low on my breastbone, beneath the ruin of my black T-shirt. The shirt still covered all my bits, but I wished suddenly that I’d stopped to grab a new one. I used to wear shirts with witty sayings, but now I bought them—black, V-neck, three-quarter sleeve, slightly fitted—in job lots. Saul sometimes found nice ones at Goodwill, especially old concert shirts, but I bleed all over them so often I feel kind of bad about it. There’s only so much he can do with a sewing machine and a T-shirt.
“Theron.” I tried very hard for what could be considered a gentle tone. It sounded like I had something dry stuck in my throat, or like I’d been smoking a pack a day. “Why are you standing in my way?”
He leaned forward a little, on the balls of his feet. “You smell like burn—” Then his eyes dropped to my chest.
If I’d had any breasts to speak of after the workout I get all night, I might’ve been insulted. As it is, I’m scrawny in that department. Sometimes I wished I was a little more feminine, a little curvier, for Saul’s sake. But no, a B cup is about all I get. The rest of me is packed tight with muscle and crisscrossed with scars.
Saul doesn’t seem to mind. He traces some of the scars with his fingertips, gently. I usually let him.
Sometimes he even kisses them.
“Ah.” Theron actually backed up, palms out as if he wanted to tell me to take it easy. “Sorry. My mistake.”
I stalked past him. He actually skipped back out of my way as I hopped up the stairs to the tables. We were a regular dance team.
“Jill.”
I didn’t turn around. But I stopped, one hand light on the half wall. My nerves were twitching raw, and taking it out on a Were wasn’t a good idea. He didn’t deserve it.
“You smell like Mikhail,” he said quietly. “I’ll bring you a beer.”
In other words, a peace offering. Not like he needed to. But goddamn Weres, they notice the damndest things. I did not raise a hand to the Talisman’s lump under the ragged T-shirt.
Instead, I just braced myself and headed for the table, the flayed edges of my leather trench flapping a bit around my ankles.
Gilberto’s color was better, but he would never be a prize. Sallow even on the best of days, with lank dark hair and a nose that belonged on an Aztec codex, acne scars pitting his cheeks, dead eyes. His long fingers played with the beer bottle, and as I approached he slid down further in the bench and took a long, throat-working draft.
I did not blame him at all.
I stopped and checked him, smart and dumb eye working together. Having an apprentice is like that—you add up everything you see, no matter how small. Constantly weighing. Not judging, because that implies they won’t make it. Weighing in order to give them the best chance to make it.
After they show up on your doorstep and refuse to go home, that distinction is the least you can give them.
Gilberto’s hands looked too big for his wrists, like a puppy’s paws. He hadn’t even finished growing yet, and you could tell it from the way he ate—hunched over the plate, as if someone or something would snatch it from him, shoveling the food down in great gulps.
That’s the way kids in juvie eat, too. And prisoners.
He wasn’t old enough to drink or vote. But those flat dark eyes belonged in a killer’s face. Even in the ferment of the barrio, that kind of gaze makes people step back and reconsider, some without knowing quite why. He’d just graduated to being able to hold his own for thirty seconds in the sparring room against Saul. I watched, and weighed, while they went at it.
Gilberto did not give up. He kept getting up long past the moment when any rational person would have decided it wasn’t worth it.
He had potential.
Right now he was still shaking a little. The fume of emotio
n on him was complex fear and shame, as well as defiance. Still just right. Of all the people I’d run across in my city, he was the only one who had even an inkling of what it takes to be a hunter. There had been a girl—Hope—not too long ago… but she hadn’t lasted two weeks.
Sometimes they don’t.
We’re rare. It’s probably a good thing. Without training we could end up worse than the things we hunt. Even with training, we’re no picnic.
Saul glanced at me. His dark eyes widened a little, but he said nothing as I finished my once-over and strode up to the table.
I slid in next to my apprentice, bumping him with my hip as he scrambled to crowd up onto the wall. “Thought I’d find you here.”
“Bruja.” Gilberto, getting the first shot in. He was actually sweating, and his pulse thudded along like he’d just run a marathon. “He was just there. One minute I’m sittin’ on the couch, the next, chingada, there he is. He’s el Diablo, right?”
Not quite. “Or so close it makes no difference. But he’s just hellbreed, Gilberto. Relax, you did okay. Take a deep breath and get your pulse down; it’s loud.”
He gulped down a breath and concentrated. I waited as if we had all the time in the world. Saul studied me, a line between his dark eyebrows. The paint on his cheeks was still fresh, two bars of vivid red. I never asked why he did that. It just seemed fitting. And, well, I don’t need to offer a comment on any Were’s sartorial choices.
Not when I walk around in leather, silver, and increasingly heavy eyeliner. The leather is so my skin doesn’t get erased when I land on concrete. The silver is a mark of what I am, a bulwark against Hell’s legions.
The eyeliner? Well… Saul isn’t the only one who needs war paint.
Finally, Gilberto’s pulse smoothed out. His eyelids fluttered, and I could almost feel him making that subconscious little click, shifting over into the place of calm. It was getting easier for him.
Saul was still watching me. I pulled the neck of my T-shirt down so he could see the barbaric, sharp-looking silver links. The top edge of the Talisman peeked out.
“Smells like a forest fire.” His eyebrows came up slightly. “What is it?”
“The Eye of Sekhmet.” It was hard work to keep my tone level. “What Belisa stole. When she…”
The unreality of it hit me sideways. I put my hands on the table, flat, and had to inhale deeply as well. The scar was dissatisfied, puckering against itself; I’d taken a spare leather cuff from the dish on the counter and buckled it on before I left. The relief from hellbreed-jacked sensory acuity was as intense as the new feeling now squirming around inside my uneasy belly.
That feeling was something suspiciously like fear.
“Oh.” Saul absorbed this. Then, as usual, he gave me the right question. “How the hell did he get hold of it?”
I watched my left hand make a gun of thumb and index finger, cocked it, and shot at him. “Bang. Dead on, squire.”
And then the next question: “What are you going to do?” His expression didn’t change. Thoughtful, and worried.
I let out a sigh that was only half annoyance. It had taken me the whole trip down here to come up with what I should do instead of what I wanted to do. “I’m not going to do anything. Perry wants me down at the Monde. That’s one place I’m not going. I have the Talisman, fine. It was mine in the first place, Belisa stole it, I’m not goddamn going to dance to his tune and come asking questions.”
“Unless that’s what he expects, you avoiding him.”
Good point.
I snorted. Then shut my mouth, because Theron was back, setting two cold bottles of beer down for me, one dark microbrew for Saul, and a plate of cheese blintzes and hash browns, with a small dish of fresh strawberries on the side for my apprentice. That was worth a raised eyebrow, but Saul’s twitch of a smile told me the Weres here were feeding Gilberto what they thought he should be eating, not anything he’d order.
Gilberto opened his eyes, stared at his plate, and shut his mouth before a word could escape.
He caught on quick.
Theron paused, dangling his tray in long, expressive fingers. “Other food’ll be just a second. You want some water or something?”
Another peace offering. Was I really looking that temperamental tonight?
I shook my head, watching my fingers against the tabletop. Bitten-down nails, tendons standing out under fishbelly-white skin—I don’t tan, I’m never up during the day—and a healing scrape across my left knuckles. The skin was repairing itself as I watched, the scar on my right wrist humming a dissatisfied little song. “No thanks.” My lips felt a little numb, and the Eye was warm against my chest.
It was surreal. I never thought I’d be wearing Mikhail’s greatest treasure. Not even while he was training me and saying, Some day this will be yours. I’d never thought that far ahead.
He’d seemed eternal to me. I guess your parents—or those you choose as your parents—always do. Until they’re not.
Theron lingered a little longer, then left as one of the cooks swore. There was a hiss of something hitting the grill, and I looked up to find Saul watching me.
“Chingada,” Gilberto mumbled. “No frijoles.”
The laugh caught me by surprise. I bit it in half, swallowed it, and Saul’s expression went from thoughtful to outright concerned.
“Do you think…” he began, but left the sentence hanging.
“I think I’m safer staying out of the Monde.” Each word carefully held back from a sharp edge. “I think whatever Perry expects me to do, me ignoring this is not in his plan. Therefore, I am going to do what is not in his plan.”
Saul nodded. Thought it over. “And the fact that he’s fooling around with the Sorrows again?”
I took a long pull off one of my beer bottles. It hit the spot. There’s nothing quite like a beer to bolster you in a situation like this. “That’s why you’re taking my apprentice to Galina’s.”
“Oh, man,” aforesaid apprentice piped up. “Again? She just makes me take care of her plants.”
“You have to be alive to be trained, Gil. And if the Sorrows grab you, you’ll wish very hard you were dead.” I kept my gaze steady, locked with Saul’s.
My Were’s dark eyes did not waver. “Where should I meet you after that?” Careful, tactful, and to the point.
In other words, You’re not leaving me behind, Jill. Don’t even think about it.
“I’m going to be visiting the son of a bitch who Traded with Watling.” I set the bottle down with a click. Bacon was frying, and it smelled good. “I want that sewn up tonight.”
But I didn’t tell him where, even though I knew. I couldn’t say what I suspected, but I did know I wanted Saul nowhere near where I was going tonight. Full ’breed nightclubs aren’t healthy for Weres.
A short, sharp nod, his hair falling across his forehead. It had grown out, and he could tie charms to match mine in it now. A silver wheel gleamed near his left ear, knotted in with red thread. “So I’ll just follow the screaming.”
“Unless she decide to blow something up, man. Then you can follow the fire and screaming.” Gilberto was looking down when I glanced at him, my mouth set in a straight line. He forked up a gigantic mouthful of hash browns, his arm curled around the plate. Shielding it.
I decided I wouldn’t really take him to task, because it was true. “Gil, poquito, the adults are talking. Cierra el pico.”
He mumbled something impolite. I let it go. Picked up the bottle again and drained it. It went down easy, but it didn’t quite get rid of the bitter taste in my mouth.
Saul tapped once on the tabletop, twice. Thinking. “I don’t like this. It’s not like one of his kind to give anything away.”
“He needs something out of me, or he has a plan.” I shrugged. Silver in my hair jangled a bit, restless. “Like every single other time he has a plan or wants something out of me. He’ll have to deal with disappointment.”
We looked at each other,
Saul and I, and both of us knew it was pure bravado. I hadn’t gone over the edge yet, even with Perry pushing and cajoling. I’d stood there and watched the abyss yawn right next to my toes, and the only thing that kept me from going down into damnation was…
… what?
Was sitting right across from me, playing with his beer bottle and looking worried, the way a Were almost never looked worried.
They don’t usually date hunters. And I was helltainted to boot. We were an exception all over, Saul and me.
I slid out of the booth, pushed myself upright. “Get to Galina’s. If all else fails I’ll see you at home, at dawn.” A judicious pause. “There’s a mess there. Sorry about that.”
“Jill—”
I shook my head. Silver clashed and chimed. A small sickle-shaped charm dangled in front of my eye for a moment, I tossed it back. “Got work to do, Saul. Depending on you to get my apprentice under cover. My instincts are tingling.”
“I hear they have a cream for that. Jill—”
“The cream’s for burning. Not for an unpleasant tingle. Give my apologies to Theron.” I turned, sharply, and strode away. Made it outside without anything else happening, and let out a deep, dissatisfied breath. It was rude to leave before they fed me, but the night was wearing away and I wanted to get this wrapped up.
The Talisman’s warm weight against my chest throbbed like a second heartbeat. Sooner or later Perry would come back, and I’d find out what he was dabbling in now.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t question other hellbreed. And I knew exactly where to start.
With the hellspawn who was eyeing the number two position in Santa Luz’s ’breed hierarchy. Who just happened to be the same spawn who had Traded with Trevor Watling.
What a coincidence.
4
The Kat Klub was closed for good, Shen An Dua—the ’breed who ran it—dead in a stinking cellar room way back last year. But hellspawn are like pimps. There’s always someone lower on the food chain willing to step up, if profit’s to be had.