Cheat the Grave (7 page)

It also wouldn't change the fact that Sleepy Mac had crept over into my waking hours. I could no longer pretend he was locked securely in another world, slumped before a piano, and waiting for me to offer up the last third of my soul. He was here, after me, his soul blade already poised in my direction.

I quickly shut off the thought, my fear of Mackie strong enough to bloom into scent. Besides, it wasn't thought that was needed now, but rote movement; robotic limbs, a cold heart, and a quiet mind.

Yet shutting down emotionally somehow seemed a step backward. Hadn't I just gotten over relying only on myself? Hadn't I worked hard to become a part of something larger than me, earning a place in a troop and proving they could trust me? Even before Olivia reappeared in my dreams, when I was rehabilitating in Xavier's mansion, I'd decided no one was going to strip me of my hard-learned lessons. I was determined to drive forward on the twin turbines of belief and faith. I would live, I would love again, dammit, and find others to trust…but I would do it on my terms.

Meanwhile, I needed to put one foot in front of the other, and stay ahead of Mackie. Maybe a former ally, like Tekla, would help me. Maybe not. But my sister was waving at me from the other side of death, and Mackie had breached the
barrier between my world and his. I didn't need my T-Rex brain to tell me that Harlan Tripp was right. It was only a matter of time until Mackie found me again, and next time there might not be anyone standing between me and his blade. Next time I might not get away so easily.

After all, there were only so many ways to cheat the grave.

I had to return to the bus, of course. Or the “scene of the crime,” as Terry whispered when I came up beside him, not looking over as he mentioned he had been there, seen everything…and survived. I glanced at him askance, then realized he thought I was a spectator, and he'd positioned himself behind the yellow police tape for just this purpose. Prima donna.

But there was quite a crowd for him to play to. Even my cabbie was standing alongside his open door, smoking and gossiping and staring at the destroyed party bus now surrounded by the yellow tape and flashing sirens. It was an abnormal sight, even for Vegas.

A handful of ambulances made a U shape in the center of the street, back doors flung wide to administer aid to the lightly injured, which helped me feel momentarily protected. Mackie wouldn't return as long as there were this many people milling about. He, like all agents, operated in the shadows.

“…not everyone else was so lucky.”

I glanced back at Terry as he closed his eyes, a tear slipping from beneath one tarred lash. The mesh of his shirt
was torn, his eyeliner smeared, and the new piercing in his ear was bright pink against his sallow flesh. I bet Tripp hadn't even sterilized the piercing gun before sticking a hole in the poor guy. For some reason, that made me feel sorry for him. I returned my gaze to the destroyed bus, its top peeled back like a tomato can.
With a blade alone
. I shivered.

“We are lucky.” I shook my head, but immediately regretted it. It was as if Tripp's infective, tapering smoke had slid past my earlobes and into the fragile drums to clog my thoughts like swamp water. I raised a hand to my head. “Though my hearing feels funny.”

There was a gasp beside me, and I turned in time to watch Terry's eyes widen. “Concussion!” he screamed, pointing at me.

Three EMTs surrounded me like bees on a hive.
Great.

“The cowboy knocked her out as he carried her out of the bus,” Terry said as someone started feeling up my skull. “She shouldn't even be standing here now!”

Well, that was true enough.

A female tech tugged me in the direction of the nearest ambulance, but I was practically bowled over halfway there.

“Suzanne.”

The bear hug tightened. “Oh, darlin'! Oh, dear! Oh, honey—are you okay?”

She punctuated each exclamation with a smacking kiss, but I managed to nod in the middle of the gentle mauling, which earned me more bracing hugs and heavily accented endearments. The female EMT, clearly used to such emotional displays, disentangled me from the distraught woman and her seemingly eighteen limbs, but when Suzanne pulled back, I noted the knots in her hair and circles under her eyes. She looked a decade older than when she'd trailed a bunch of disgruntled socialites off the bus.

My heart fell cold and plummeted to my toes.

“Cher?” I asked in a small voice. The last I'd seen
her,
she'd just been tossed none-too-gently from Tripp's back. Where she'd only been because of me.
Just like Olivia.

Oh God. If something had happened to the vapid, shallow, softhearted ninny because of me …

As I searched Suzanne's swollen red eyes, the fine lines of worry around them crinkled, belying her age. “She's in the hospital, but she's fine. They're making sure the bump on her head is no more than just that.”

“Like we should do with you,” the tech put in, blotting out Suzanne as she shone a light into my eyes.

I let out a breath I hadn't even known I was holding, and blinked away the spots and threatening tears. Suzanne gave me a watery smile when I again met her gaze, while a stethoscope was pressed to my back. The tech had the endless pockets of a circus clown.

“But what happened to you?” Suzanne asked as I was dragged to the bright interior of one of the ambulances and pushed onto a stretcher despite my obvious fitness. I concocted a story about being woken by the sound of sirens, alone in an alley, sans pocketbook. I was halfway through an explanation of the alley's other inhabitants when a man sidled up next to Suzanne.

“Excuse me.” He had a cop's inflection, though he wasn't wearing a uniform. I sat up, ignoring the EMT's protests, eyes flicking to the badge at his waist. “Can we finish your statement now?”

Suzanne looked at me with injured eyes. “They won't let me go to the hospital until I finish telling them everything I know.”

Like she was a criminal.

I turned a cold eye on the cop. “Her daughter is there.”

“Stepdaughter,” he clarified, and Suzanne and I both narrowed our eyes. “And if we get this over with now, we can find the man who did this to her much faster.”

I put a comforting arm around Suzanne, who'd begun softly weeping. “You clearly don't have children.”

His brow lifted. “And you
do,
Miss Archer?”

The professional tone altered into derision. I leaned forward, slipping a fraction inside of his personal space. “I have people I care about, if that's what you're asking. I was with one of them when she got knocked unconscious by …”
A Shadow agent. A rotted man. A grave-dodger.
“…a cowboy.”

“Then maybe I should take your comments as well.”

“I don't think so,” I said, matching the arctic chill in his voice, and before he could protest, I sat back. “I'm suddenly feeling a little dizzy.”

The EMT glommed onto me like she'd been waiting for those words, and my arm was cuffed before I blinked. The officer shifted into view over her shoulder, mouth thinned. “Then maybe I should contact you at your workplace instead?”

“Sure,” I said lightly. I pointed with my free arm into the distance at the tallest, brightest building in the sky. Valhalla Hotel and Casino. Which I now owned. “You know where it is.”

His eyes narrowed into pinpricks. “Yes, being a casino heiress seems to pay very well. Though even the loftiest job can't keep you safe all the time, huh?”

He dug out a business card and handed it to me, and one to Suzanne as well. “You ladies contact me if you manage to think of anything useful.”

Suzanne, missing the slight, just sniffled as she deposited the card in her purse. I crossed my legs and gave him a carefree smile, letting it fall when he joined a handful of other officers across the lot. After a moment they looked over, shaking their heads and muttering under their breaths. I knew how Suzanne and I looked in our designer wear and bleached hair—like two fireflies trapped in a bottle between the late night neon and harsh ambulatory lights. I didn't need superhearing to know they thought us frivolous and useless, our brain matter as thin as tissue. Everyone made judgments based on first impressions, and police officers were most often proven right. Besides, how
could those men know that beneath this waxed, perfumed, sculpted frame was a former heroine with a vigilante's heart?

Then again, most people had some form of street smarts lurking beneath their chosen exteriors. Even Suzanne had some iron to her spine. She ran marathons, had raised a teenager on her own, and navigated the annual sale at Nordy's with a warrior's instinct. I glanced over to find her cleaning her nail beds.

Well, a shark's instinct, anyway.

But Suzanne's sort of savvy, as well as Cher's, was harmless. Admittedly I hadn't always felt so benevolently toward them, but after being turned into Olivia, I'd lost the ability to sum a person up based on their skin alone. I no longer judged them for using their looks to shape their realities. Besides, it wasn't as if they were operating a Ponzi scheme. Their need to shellac, color, and buff every possible body part was a bit obsessive, but it didn't hurt anyone else. So big deal.

“Don't pay attention to it, Livvy-girl.”

I hadn't realized I was glaring at the clustered men until Suzanne spoke. I shook my head, my hearing taking a momentary dip until equilibrium returned. “They're jerks.”

“Well, that's as obvious as Terry's need for attention,” she said wryly, causing both me and the tech—clearly the one to treat the distraught man—to snort. “But what did I tell you years ago, when you were broken-hearted for your sister and embarrassed about your runaway Momma?”

I frowned, not knowing. Olivia had never shared it with me. “Um…hot pink is the new black?”

She kept her gaze even and didn't smile, that iron spine peeking through. “That it ain't your business what other people think of you. Especially assholes.”

“But they're
wrong
.”

“Which is their right.” She shrugged and started playing with some cables, letting them drop when the tech cleared her throat. “Can't change it. Might as well ignore it.”

“Is that what you do?” I asked, then cringed when I realized I'd just told her people thought she was a bimbo.

“Yes,” Suzanne said resolutely. “I ignore the gossips and naysayers and, yup, the assholes, and just go about doing what I gotta do to claim my own life.”

I glanced back at the party bus containing booze, boas, and stripper poles.

She followed my gaze, pursing her lips. “You know, people criticized me when I married an older man, first saying I was a gold digger, then sayin' I was the one who put him in his grave.” She swallowed hard at the memory. “But we shared a powerful love, even if it was short-lived.” She lifted her chin as she returned her gaze to me. “So I was never embarrassed about it. After all, I knew true love…”

“And how many people can claim that?” the EMT put in, sighing. Suzanne nodded.

Frowning, I thought of my childhood sweetheart, Ben, whom I'd outgrown through time and experience. Then of Hunter…who'd thrown me away.

“After Cher's daddy died,” Suzanne continued, oblivious to my silence, “I was also criticized for tryin' to raise a girl closer to my age than not. I neither had kids nor knew the first thing about 'em, but I knew something those assholes didn't.”

“What?” asked the tech, wrapped up in Suzanne's story. I wondered too.

Suzanne's responding smile was fierce. “I needed that little girl's love, just as I'd needed her daddy's. And my little Cher-bear needed mine.”

Olivia had too. She'd escaped to their home after our mother abandoned us, and while I shut down—thinking I'd caused the abandonment—Olivia could only find ways to endure it.

Suzanne addressed the tech now, chatting like friends over tea. “So now people are talking about Arun like he's a golden egg. Like I laid a trap and he slipped right in. But I'll just chin up and ride through that too. Ride all the way
into my late years like I'm straddlin' the sunset. And you know why?”

The tech, unblinking, shook her head.

“Because I choose love again. And no gossip or naysayer—certainly no ass
hole
—is going to keep me from love.”

The tech slumped, leaning back on her haunches. “You're so right.”

“Yes I am.” Suzanne put a hand on the woman's leg. Only she could bond with another woman under such circumstances. I'd have rolled my eyes were it not for the force of her words. “True love never dies. Even when it's gone, its memory keeps you safe.”

Even the loftiest job can't keep you saf… 
.

Asshole, I thought again. Though the officer was right about one thing. “Love can't keep you from getting sideswiped by a bus. Like tonight.”

We'd almost lost Cher.

Suzanne turned back to me, the knowledge stark in her eyes. She finally nodded. “But it isn't love that's dangerous. Every life gets sideswiped at one time or another. Sometimes more than once. The question is, what do you do after that? Build something new out of the shrapnel…or just stay safe?”

The now-sniffling tech put her hands on me again, and I squirmed, suddenly tired of being touched. Having lone wolfed it for years after the attack on my life, I still got twitchy with too many people around me, too many hands on my body, even if they were soft and reassuring and supportive. I simply fared better emotionally when my knuckles were wrapped and I was punching something heavy. Having something to beat against loosened tension inside of me, enabling me to drop my worries behind like fallen foes until I was the last woman standing. I shut my eyes, mentally sparring.

Double jab.
I am not weak.

One-two-three.
I keep myself safe.

Push for space, front kick…take out a fucking kidney
. I protect my friends too.

But I
was
weak. I was not safe. And Cher and Suzanne were not safe around me. Mackie now knew what they looked and smelled like. If he thought I really cared for them, he'd use them to get to me.

I sat up quickly, ripping off the cuff, and pushing the tech's hands away.

“I have to go,” I whispered, clamoring from the ambulance, tears cutting through the words. I added something about Cher and the hospital, though I had to stay away from her too. Especially now.

Head lowered so my hair hid my face, I picked up my pace, ignoring the EMT's calls, the watchful cops, and the rubberneckers snapping photos and video to upload to YouTube.
Look what I saw on my Vegas Vacation.

“Olivia! Wait!” Suzanne rushed to catch up, her mouth already open in protest. Yet whatever she saw in my face had her mouth moving soundlessly before she managed, “Do you have a ride?”

I jerked my head curbside, where Kevin waited. My driver had practically arrived before I'd hung up the phone. After all, I
was
Olivia Archer.

Suzanne's lips pursed, and I could tell she wanted to say more, but at last there was only a teary smile of her own, and a final hug enveloping me in her custom perfume and soap and shampoo. All signature Suzanne. Then her phone trilled from within her handbag, and she untangled herself with a sob.

“Arun—” she was already saying as she lifted it, hands shaking, to her ear. I turned away to give us both privacy, but glanced over my shoulder once. She was curled around that phone like it was a lifeline, arms wrapped around her slim body as if holding herself up. But she wasn't keeping herself upright, I thought as I turned away. It was Arun. Because she chose him, and love.