jinn 03 - vestige Read online

“We can’t just walk in and ask for a cadaver,” she whispered, tucking a drenched curl behind her ear, then clutching her hands together in front of her.

  “Of course we can.” She followed me down to the morgue beneath the hum of the fluorescent lighting. A person sat at the desk, doodling in a notebook. He looked up with dull eyes, and I focused on him for just a moment, seeking the right energy to exploit.

  “I was told we have something you might want,” I told him.

  His saggy gray face barely even flinched. “What’s that?”

  I pulled a penny out of my pocket and plunked it down in front of him.

  He stared at it, then scowled. “Get the fuck out of here. What am I going to do with a penny?”

  “Put it in your mouth,” I suggested, nodding. “It will be like nothing you’ve ever experienced. You like it and I’ll get you more.”

  He picked up the coin, looking at it closer. “It’s just a penny.”

  “Fine. I guess your friend was wrong about you.” I held out my hand.

  He hesitated. “Who sent you?”

  “Do I look like a narc?”’

  “Was it Jonesey?”

  I tapped a foot.

  “No, not Jonesey. Statler?”

  “Are you going to try it or not?” He popped the penny into his mouth. “Very good. Now hold it under your tongue, the effects are almost immediate.” As soon as he complied, I began to increase his euphoria. “How do you feel?”

  He smiled lazily.

  “Smooth, right?”

  “Totally, dude.” Suddenly he panicked, and pushed away in his rolling chair, hard. “What the fuck?” He pointed at me. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

  I looked at Maggie so she could see the flames and winked. She picked up on my meaning immediately, took off her sunglasses, and studied my pupils. “I don’t see anything,” she said, turning back to him.

  “But—you—dude—”

  “Must be having a bad reaction.” I grabbed him by the shoulders and leaned in, taking his ID badge. “Yeah. One of the worst I’ve seen. You’re fucked.”

  His eyes widened. “Bad reaction? I have to work.” He looked closer at Maggie. “No. No. Fuck. This can’t be happening.”

  She nodded gravely. “Spit out the penny then, dumbass.”

  He did so immediately.

  “Find a bathroom and rinse out your mouth for at least five minutes or it will only get worse.”

  He left at a run, and we walked toward the autopsy room.

  Maggie giggled. “That was fun.”

  I watched for security cameras as we went. So far there was only one that I could see, and it was directed at the morgue doors. I didn’t really have time to deal with this. I pulled out my gun and shot the camera. “We have couple minutes, tops. Wait for me at the exit.”

  She turned around and headed back out. I glanced through the glass, five employees. Shouldn’t be a problem. Finding the anger inside me was a little too easy, within seconds the bickering started and I scanned the man’s ID and walked in. The energy in the room escalated to such a degree that no one noticed me grab a liver off of a scale and drop it into a pan. The first punch flew as I swiped a lab coat to throw over my arm and the metal container holding the organ. A second fist lashed out, but I was already leaving. Maggie paced by the door as some sort of code was called over the intercom.

  When we were a safe distance from the morgue, we ducked into an alley and I handed her the pan. Her lip curled as she looked at it. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Do you want to keep making cupcakes all night?”

  Her head fell back and she drew in a long breath, then released it. Finally she pinched the end of the liver and picked it up. “Can’t you just kill me?” she asked.

  “I’m not going to wait all day.”

  Her lips pulled back and her front teeth sank into the fresh meat. Her head and shoulders lurched as the pan clattered to the ground. She spit and sputtered. “I’m going to be sick.”

  She pressed an arm against the wall as dry heaves pulled up nothing. She looked at me, fresh tears in her eyes. “I’m going to lose my mind, aren’t I?”

  Fifty more yards and she’d be in the ocean. There was no way this bitch of a selkie was getting away. I kicked it into high gear, ignoring the fact that my stiletto boots were sinking into the sand and slowing me down. I hated the ocean, the sand, and this chick. She had avoided all of my knives and was running faster than me now that we were closer to her natural habitat.

  I stopped, scooped up a rock and hurtled it at her head. Smack. The stone glanced off her temple and she hit the sand hard. I walked the rest of the way to her, heaved her up over my shoulder, then trudged back to my car with her, collecting my knives as I went.

  A selkie got the jump on me. There was no world, no universe, no fucking way a damned thieving selkie should have ever nearly gotten away. That was bullshit. I patted her down and found the hand of glory strapped to her lower back. Disgusting. She groaned as I untied the dead guy’s hand from her. Cuffs closed tight around her wrists behind her back, I tied her feet together—and that, of course, was when she woke up and began kicking, catching me underneath the chin. I tossed the hand of glory onto the dirt because it was a dead dude’s hand. The ground was where it belonged.

  “Kick me again and I’ll drown you in gasoline. Got it?” I said, working my jaw around. Just bruised, no real damage.

  She grunted. “That hand isn’t theirs anymore than it is mine.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Does this look like a face that cares? The hand is a fucking nuisance.” I threw the selkie into the trunk of the big boat of a car I now drove, slammed it shut, and retrieved the hand.

  No one needed a hand that would unlock doors and freeze people in place. I should have destroyed it right on the spot, but that wasn’t the bounty. Baba Yaga wanted the thief and the stolen object. When I got to the drop off place, an inviting little cabin smack dab in the forest with pies cooling in the window, I pulled the selkie out of the trunk and untied her feet.

  “Don’t give me to that old hag,” she said, refusing to move. “Do you know what she will do to me?”

  “Shove you in the oven and eat you for dinner? I suggest when she wants to feel your finger to see how meaty you are, you use a stick. Works in the books.”

  “Actually, yes.” She looked at me with pleading eyes. “I only took the hand to stop her from using it. She takes kids from their bedrooms at night with it.”

  It was a nice try, but this particular selkie was a known thief. She had stolen artifacts from all over the Abyss and sold them to the highest bidder. She didn’t have a higher purpose. “Then I guess you shouldn’t have gotten caught.” I shoved her forward.

  A hunched old woman stepped out on the porch, propping herself up with a knotty broomstick. Her nose was huge and hooked to the left. Wrinkles covered her face and her eyes were deep set and narrow, nearly hidden in the mass of lines.

  I pushed the selkie up the porch’s steps. The old woman offered me an envelope with my payment in it. I accepted the money and reclaimed my cuffs, then gave the selkie over.

  “And the hand?” the crone asked.

  I shrugged. “Wasn’t on her. I don’t know what she did with it. Probably sold it.”

  The old woman frowned, looking between the two of us. The selkie kept her eyes glued to the ground.

  I headed back to my car and drove through the night and a horrendous storm to get back to Chicago. The case wasn’t too bad, but now I had the hand of glory in my glove compartment (not nearly as dirty as it sounds) and no idea what to do with it.

  Sy called me as I entered the city limits like he knew I’d been away. “Hey, stop by the office when you get home.”

  “Sy, I’m tired. I just want to crash. I’ve been up all night.”

  “It won’t take long. I have coffee.”

  “Fine.” Within minutes I parked in front of the office. It was nearly ten a.m. I collected the
mounds of wrappers and fast food bags out of the front seat and shoved them in the trashcan as I walked inside. “What do you want?” I asked him as a greeting.

  Sy stood behind the bar like he always did, a beacon of chiseled features and elven perfection. There was a steaming cup of coffee and breakfast waiting for me. We were the only two in the room.

  “How’d the bounty go?”

  I shrugged. “Fine,” I said with a full mouth.

  “That’s not what Baba said.” He raised a questioning brow.

  I stuffed another bit into my mouth and glared at him while I chewed. “Since when do you question how I do my job?”

  “Did you find the hand, Femi?”

  I considered lying to him, but Sy was more my friend than my boss. “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you give it to her? That was part of the deal.”

  “Do you know what she uses it for?”

  He frowned. “That’s none of our business. If you don’t like her or her methods, then you don’t take the bounty. You know that—and you chose to take it.”

  “And I delivered her the selkie. There’s no fucking way I’m giving her back the hand so she can kill little kids. If you don’t like it, fire me.”

  He shook his head and sipped his coffee. “As far as anyone else is concerned you don’t have it.”

  “Fine.” We sat in silence for a few minutes.

  “I know I said I didn’t want to know, but I changed my mind. What the hell happened in Arizona? You’ve been strange since you got back.”

  I pushed my plate away, half finished, suddenly not hungry. “Nothing. Are we done? I have to go.” He opened his mouth to say something, but I was already to the door. I wasn’t going to talk about what happened there. No good ever came from looking back.

  I needed to stop by the warehouse to see if Olivia and Holden needed anything, but I was tired and it’d hold until later. Nothing was going to distract me from my bed in my apartment.

  I ignored everyone as I walked in, with tunnel vision focused on my door. I dropped all my shit on the floor just inside and pulled the key from the lock. The apartment was dark, the benefit of living in the basement unit and the relentless storm. I made a beeline for my bed and collapsed face first across it.

  “You didn’t follow through on our deal.”

  I rolled over and sat up in one smooth motion, pulling my gun and aiming for the vampire leaning against the darkest wall of my bedroom. “We didn’t have a deal,” I told Corbin.

  His white hair glistened in the darkness. “That’s not the way I remember it.”

  “I figured out the entrance on my own. You can show yourself out.” I motioned toward the door with my pistol.

  “That’s not really my problem, is it? You know where a fugitive is, and you’re going tell me, one way or the other.”

  I fired the gun, clipping his shoulder, and stood up.

  He chuckled, not even glancing at his arm. “That’s one.”

  “I’m not scared of you.”

  He watched me, still as a corpse. “You will be. Where’s Thomas?”

  “Corbin, I haven’t slept for thirty-six hours. Don’t try my patience.”

  “Your patience?” In a blink he was beside me, knocking the gun from my hand. “What about my patience? I’ve waited years to find Thomas. You will not stand in my way or your friendships will cease to matter to me.”

  “And which friendships are those?”

  His eyes were deep, dark pools. “I’m a much better friend than an enemy, kitten.”

  My right fist connected with his throat, as my fingernails on my left hand sunk in just above his kidney. He tried to pull me toward him, but I fought without seeing or thinking, taking bits of flesh from him. He hit me hard. Pain shot through me as a rib snapped. I kicked him in the face, pushing him back from me. We stared at each other, crouched, ready for the next attack. Calling me kitten was a mistake.

  “Get out of my house,” I growled through clenched teeth.

  He shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere. Until I have Thomas, you’re my new best friend.”

  I scoffed. “We’ll see about that. At least get out of my bedroom. I’m taking a nap.” I sat on the bed and took my boots off. When I looked back up he was gone. I lay back in bed, but my adrenaline was going and sleep was impossible. Fucking Thomas, still causing me problems though I hadn’t seen him since he left that night. It didn’t escape my notice that he left before the fight even began. He was coward, but he was my coward to deal with. Whatever problem Corbin had with him, mine predated it.

  A few restless hours later I came back out. Corbin was looking though my cell phone. I thought about shooting him again, but it seemed like a waste of a bullet. I simply plucked the phone from his hands, gathered my stuff and headed for the warehouse. If Corbin wanted to follow me there, it was his funeral.

  I cleared my throat, different responses running through my mind: It’s none of your business. That’s ridiculous. Please don’t tell. “I’m getting help.” The lie slipped through my lips, and I closed my mouth to keep more from coming out.

  Quintus studied me, and I held his gaze, hoping I looked honest, until I had to turn around to flip the girl’s sandwich.

  “What exactly is your ailment?” he asked.

  I sighed. “It’s a combination of things. The wound caused when they killed the angel still hurts, and I was already weakened from freeing the jinn.” I didn’t know any of this for certain, but in all my walking and thinking, it was the conclusion I had arrived at. It made the most sense.

  “Keeping this from Holden isn’t fair,” Quintus said. “He loves you.”

  I nodded. Despite everything that happened that was probably still true or he would have left. I scooped the grilled cheese onto a plate and cut it diagonally just like my mom used to do for me, then I set it down in front of the girl. She frowned at me, but ate the sandwich all the same. “I love him too—and that’s why he doesn’t need to know. There is nothing he can do to help me and all it will do is distract him from what he needs to focus on.”

  “Mammon,” Quintus said with a nod. “But who is helping you?”

  “Uriel.” I smiled at him. “I’m going to be okay.”

  He let out a breath. “Fine. I will respect your wishes, but for the record, it’s not right.”

  “Noted,” I said. “Now get out of here. We’ll be fine. I’m feeling much better. Thank you.”

  He came forward and kissed my forehead. “Call me if you need me for anything.”

  I patted his arm. “I will. Thank you.”

  With that Quintus left. I sat at the small table across from the little girl who was still happily eating, and dropped my head down against the soft, worn wood. What was I doing? Of course Quintus was right. I should tell Holden. If he held back something like this from me … I groaned. I needed help. I needed Uriel.

  The girl kicked me beneath the table and I looked up. She gave me a hesitant smile.

  “Eat?” I asked, though she still had part of her sandwich left.

  She shook her head.

  I tilted my head and studied her. She had large, soulful eyes for a child, and her cheekbones were too defined for someone her age. They should have been chubby and rosy, but they weren’t, making her look older despite her frail body. Definitely a human, though her aura was strong, blanketing everything around her. A guardian’s job was to communicate with humans. All I had to do was speak normally and it should cross any language barriers, but when there were no language barriers to cross, what were we supposed to do? Why couldn’t I reach the child?

  I held out a hand to her, watching her response.

  She bit her lip and looked from me to my hand and back to me. What was she thinking? Slowly her hand came toward mine, and she touched one finger to it, studying the spot where our skin met. Then she nodded very seriously, too seriously for a little girl, and placed the rest of her sandwich in my hand.

  My heart broke a litt
le. “For me?”

  She nodded. She was a smart little thing. More and more she understood what we were saying.

  “Where’s Quintus?” Holden’s voice came from the doorway.

  I looked over at him. “I told him to leave. I don’t mind watching her.” I waited for him to say what he was obviously thinking. Anyone else was better than me.

  His face was hard, his mouth verging on a frown. He blinked a few times then nodded, looking softer somehow, but still held out his arm slightly in an invitation to the child. She happily went skipping over to him and took his hand. He glanced at the grilled cheese in my palm. “She’s right, you know. You should eat something.”

  My eyebrows tugged together. “I don’t need to eat.”

  He shrugged and his face went back to the way it was before. “Well, you look like shit, but you obviously know best. You always do.” He turned and left with the girl.

  I snapped my mouth closed. Holden knew that I could eat or not. Guardians didn’t necessarily require food. We didn’t have bodies in the sense that humans did. I picked up the girl’s plate, placed the scraps of leftovers on it, then stood to go to the sink. Another sharp pain hit me. The plate tumbled from my hand and smashed against the concrete floor.

  I can help you, the Angel of Death said in my head, but I wasn’t in a hurry to die. That would come soon enough, even without a friendly chat. I can ease your pain.

  Um, no thanks? I thought back. I still have things I need to do here. I’m not ready to go.

  Then you should come to me. You cannot defeat Mammon as you are. Defeating Mammon is all that matters.

  I nodded. You aren’t going to kill me?

  Why would I try this hard to talk to you if I wanted you to die?

  Was this a trick? Baker and Femi had warded the warehouse against most everything. It was safe, but then again, was anyone ever safe from death himself? Was Mammon? Maybe with a wave of his hand Death could clean up our entire mess. Where?

  Our Sister of Mercy Hospital.

  Fine.

  I headed out. Holden didn’t say a word to me as I left. The rain came down in sheets, but I couldn’t transport. I was too weak and it took too much energy. The hospital was miles away. I’d have to take a cab.