Dying Is My Business (17 page)

“Like what?”

“Why the ward around the warehouse didn’t affect you, for one,” she said. “There are a small handful of immensely powerful magicians in the world called mages. They’re the only ones who can carry magic inside themselves without becoming infected. They’re powerful enough that certain spells don’t work on them—illusion spells mostly, like wards. They can see right through them. Given the things I’ve seen you do, it makes me wonder. What if you were a mage before you lost your memories? If you were that powerful, there might be some kind of subconscious connection with the magic inside you, almost like muscle memory or a survival instinct that kicks in when it’s needed.” She sighed then and shook her head. “But no, mages are much older. You can’t be a mage without decades of advanced study. Frankly, you don’t look old enough to be one.”

“Maybe I’m older than I look,” I said. “I could have lived a healthy lifestyle. Lots of vegetables and jogging.”

Bethany smirked. “Somehow I doubt that’s the answer. But when this is all done and we’ve got the box back safe and sound, I can ask Isaac to look into any reports of magicians or mages who went missing a year ago. Who knows, maybe he’ll find something.”

I stared at her dumbly for a moment, not sure what to say. I hadn’t expected her to want to help, especially without asking for something in return. I wasn’t used to anyone giving a damn. When I finally found my tongue, I said, “You’d do that for me?”

“We’re not so different,” she said. “I don’t know much about myself, either. I never knew my parents, or where I came from. I spent my whole childhood being passed from one foster home to another, waiting to be adopted, but it never happened…” She paused, absently touching the thick hair over her pointed ear. I could only imagine what it must have been like for her, passed over time and again for adoption because she was different. She must have felt like as much of a freak as I did. When she spoke again, she wouldn’t meet my eye. I could tell she wasn’t used to opening up like this. “I learned pretty fast not to get attached to anyone. Either they’d get adopted away or I’d get shipped off to another home. I spent a lot of time alone, looking for ways to pass the time. That’s how I discovered I had a natural aptitude for engineering charms. It’s funny how boredom and self-preservation can bring out your hidden talents, isn’t it?”

“It’s not everyone who would help out someone they don’t know,” I said. “Thank you.”

She opened the door and smiled at me. “You saved my life twice now, Trent. The least I can do is help you get yours back.”

I watched her walk out of the room and close the door behind her. Bethany kept surprising me. One minute she was an icy battle-axe, interrogating me like a cop and hiding gross, lie-detecting bugs on my body, and the next she acted like a friend, like she actually cared and wanted to help. The former I could handle, I was used to adversity, but the latter left me feeling conflicted and unsure of myself. I didn’t know how to deal with the sudden surge of warmth I felt toward her.

I looked at the photos on the dresser again. Morbius stared back at me through unknown years, strong, sure of himself, a natural-born leader. Ingrid had referred to him as mage. Could I be a mage, too, I wondered? Was it possible I was a mage so powerful I’d found a way to cheat death? But then, what had happened to me? How had I lost my memories? Bethany didn’t think being a mage was the answer, but I held onto it like a drowning man. Because if I was a mage it meant I wasn’t a freak of nature. It meant I wasn’t alone.

I felt like I was soaring inside. There was so much more to tell Bethany. So much more I hoped she could help me discover. For the first time I could remember, I felt like I’d found a place where I belonged, where I could be happy. For the first time, I felt truly alive, which was an odd thought for a man who can’t die. I felt like I was a part of the world around me. A world that suddenly felt wide open.

The grip of my gun peeked out at me from the pocket of my leather jacket. Damn. How was I going to tell her about Underwood? If I told her the truth about why I came to the warehouse, there was no way she’d still want to help me. Worse, I would be drawing her deeper into my own mess, putting her in more danger than she already was. There were consequences to knowing about men like Underwood.

He was still waiting for me to come back with the box. Probably, he was already wondering what was taking so long. It was only a matter of time before he sent Tomo and Big Joe to come looking.

What the hell was I going to do?

Fourteen

The bathroom at the end of the hallway was filled with pink bottles of hand lotion, baby-blue tubes of facial cleansers, and hanging sponges that looked like great puffs of lace webbing on a string. As I washed the last of the blood and dirt from my hands and face, I noticed the shower curtain was decorated with images of giant sunflowers. The whole room smelled of perfume and powder. It was hard for me to imagine it belonged to the same woman who had once fought and defeated a giant six-armed lizard-man from another dimension. And yet, despite the strangeness of it, it was also oddly comforting. This was a home, a
real
home, and a far cry from the cold cement walls of the fallout shelter. This was how people were supposed to live.

Walking back to my bedroom, a flash of light in the darkened hallway caught my eye. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the door to Bethany’s room was slightly ajar. Through the sliver of open space between the door and the frame, I caught a glimpse of her moving through the room. She’d taken off her cargo vest. I’d grown so used to seeing its bulky form covering her that I was surprised at how slim she was without it.

She turned her back to me and pulled her shirt off over her head, revealing a tattoo of a fiery bird that covered her entire back. Its burning wings reached across her shoulder blades, its talons framed the base of her spine. Was this the work of the nine-hundred-year-old shaman with the L.A. tattoo parlor, I wondered? The ink work was so vivid that even from where I stood I thought I could make out the shape of each feather.

I caught myself staring and continued the rest of the way into my room. I closed the door as quietly as I could behind me.

As the hours passed and the moon traveled across the night sky, I lay alone in my room and tried not to think about her. I didn’t know many women. It wasn’t like I had the opportunity to meet them through work like a normal person. The criminal underworld was still mostly a man’s world, and the few women I’d crossed paths with would just as soon stick a knife between your ribs as look at you. The only woman I saw with any regularity was the creepy, dark-haired woman who was always with Underwood, and I really, really didn’t want to think about her just then.

Bethany was different. I’d felt a connection with her from the moment we met, and yet we came from completely different worlds. Bethany risked her life on a regular basis trying to do good. Me, I was a thief. I stole things. Sometimes I stole lives. She was about rules and protocol. I was dumb muscle, paid to do, not think. We couldn’t be more different if we tried.

In my mind’s eye, I saw her pull her shirt up over her head again, saw the fiery bird inked on her back …

Annoyed at where my thoughts were headed, I got up from the bed. The night was creeping by at a snail’s pace and I needed something to distract myself. Things were complicated enough as it was, I didn’t need to add any more wrinkles by wondering what other parts of Bethany’s body might be covered in tattoos.

I didn’t have
The Ragana’s Revenge
with me to read, so I decided to rummage through the wall closet instead, hoping I’d find some clothes to replace my ruined shirt and jeans. Like most New York City closets, this one seemed to have been added as an afterthought to the already cramped living quarters. It was just a foot and a half deep. The shelf up top was cluttered with dusty old hats, a stack of ashtrays, a battered suitcase, and an awkwardly shaped object I couldn’t make out at first. I pulled it off the shelf for a closer look. It was a primitive wooden idol shaped like a man, but with hundreds of iron nails hammered into it from top to bottom. I shuddered and put it back on the shelf quickly. I didn’t know what it was. With some things, I figured it was just as well not to know.

Hanging from the wooden bar under the shelf were Morbius’s old clothes. I tried on a variety of the shirts and pants, but he must have been more broadly muscled than I was. They were all slightly too big for me. I was about to give up when I finally found a shirt that fit, and shortly after, a pair of pants. Hidden under some folded bedsheets I found a box containing a pair of black leather boots. I grabbed a coat as a replacement for my ruined leather jacket. Once I had them all on, I looked at myself in the mirror on the back of the closet door.

Black linen shirt. Black jeans. Leather boots. Long brown trench coat.

Now
that’s
more like it, I thought, beaming at my reflection.

A sudden creak of the floorboards outside my door made me freeze. Dim light from the hallway spilled through the crack under the door, along with the shadows of two legs. Someone was standing right outside my room.

Bethany? No, my instincts told me right away it wasn’t her, or any of the others. But that was impossible. No one else—
nothing
else—could get into the safe house. I kept my eyes on the shadows under the door and didn’t make a sound.

Then came the faint but persistent scratching of what sounded like a single fingernail on the door.

Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

A chill crawled up my spine. Slowly, quietly, I pulled my gun out of the leather jacket on the chair and crept toward the door. In the light underneath, the shadow legs moved off. Footsteps traced the floor outside, heading away from my room.

I opened the door slowly. In the hallway, the overhead lights were still out, but now there was some kind of faintly glowing ball hovering low on the floor by the baseboard. The magic version of a night-light, I supposed. Across the hall Bethany’s door was still ajar, a strip of pitch black space showing between the door and the jamb. My gut clenched. Had whoever was out here gone into her room? I heard the wooden steps creak under someone’s weight. I looked quickly and thought I saw a shape on the stairs that led down to the second floor, just a brief flash of silhouette, no more discernible in the dark than a shadow. I would have thought it was my eyes playing tricks on me if it weren’t for the odor lingering in the air. It was sickly sweet, like rotting meat. My first thought was Thornton, but this scent was different. It wasn’t him.

I reached the landing and looked down into the living room. The lights were off, but the bright glare of the streetlights bled through the curtained windows. It gave me just enough light to see a dark shape move across the living room floor in silhouette. It was a man, short and wearing a blazer that looked ragged around the shoulders.

I lifted my gun and hurried down the steps, but when I got to the bottom he was gone. No, there he was, descending the flight of stairs at the other end of the room, the black blob of his head and shoulders disappearing into the dark stairwell. Holding the gun in front of me, I crossed the living room and risked a quick glance down the stairs. Below was only an inky pool of darkness. I couldn’t see a thing.

The stairs creaked under the intruder’s weight, and then stopped. He’d reached the bottom. I strained to listen, trying to discern which direction he was moving in now, but I didn’t hear anything.

I started down the stairs slowly. I tried to be quiet but the steps creaked under my feet. I might as well have used an air horn to announce my approach. As I descended, the darkness swallowed me. I hoped if I couldn’t see the intruder, he couldn’t see me, either.

When I reached the bottom, I stayed by the stairs, listening for any movement. My eyes adjusted slowly to the dark, helped by the diffused haze coming through the curtained window near the front door, but I didn’t see anyone.

The doorway to the kitchen was on my right. It was the only place the intruder could have gone. Holding my gun with both hands, I crept into the room.

The stench of decay was stronger here. I felt along the kitchen wall for the light switch, and flipped it. The overhead snapped on and flooded the room with light.

I didn’t see anyone.

Just as I began to wonder if I was imagining things, he rushed me from my blind spot, little more than the dark blur. He slammed me up against the kitchen wall and put one forearm across my throat. He used his other hand to push my gun hand to the wall and pin it there.

When I finally had a chance to focus on his face, I gasped in surprise.

“Hello, errand boy. Long time no see,” Bennett said. His skin was pale and waxy. His lips and eyelids had darkened to a bruised purple. He was wearing the same blue pinstriped suit he’d worn last night, though now it was stained and torn. There was a long, straight gash across his neck. Beneath it, dried blood painted a trail down the front of his shirt. I stared at the wound in horror. God, was that what Underwood had done to him behind the black door? Slit his throat?

Except, now Bennett was here in Ingrid’s kitchen. Did nothing stay dead the way it was supposed to in this damn world? Was the barrier between life and death really so weak that anyone could just come and go as they pleased? He wasn’t wearing an amulet like Thornton, so what was he doing walking and talking when he ought to be six feet under? How the hell had he even gotten inside? Bennett wasn’t a ghost. He felt solid, real. Wasn’t there supposed to be a ward around the safe house to keep everyone out? If Bennett was here, it meant either the ward had stopped working or he’d walked right through it like it wasn’t there. Neither answer was comforting. But then, there was nothing comforting about being held against the wall by a walking corpse, either.

“You’re dead,” I managed to croak, like it would be a news flash for him.