Requiem for the Dead (7 page)

He rattled off a phone number as the screen changed. To my face. Or rather, what looked like a school ID photo of Chalice, taken maybe a year or two ago. She wasn't smiling, her hair was pulled back in a messy bun, and her eyes were haunted. It was a face I'd seen in the mirror every day for almost four months, but it was also the face of a stranger. And it was being broadcast all over the city and the fucking internet.

Rufus hit the Pause button on the video.

One by one, everybody turned their head to look at me, but I couldn't stop staring at my photo on the computer. This was going to make my life way more complicated than it needed to be right now—just like Astrid had said.

"Well, shit," I said.

"Your parents are still alive?" Milo asked.

"They're not my parents. They're her parents." I pointed at the screen.

"And that's your face, Stone," Astrid said. "The last thing this operation needs is a lot of tips going to the police, and them coming looking for you. You don't have police protection anymore."

Too true. Back when the Triads were active and effective, we had three moles in the police department who made files disappear, reassigned cases, and kept the cops off our asses while we did our jobs. Up until the Triads were wrecked and those supposed moles all killed themselves in a group suicide. We found out too late that they were all sprite avatars—fully controlled by three sprites who reported back to Amalie, the queen bitch who'd betrayed us all.

The closest thing we had to an "in" with the police was James Reilly. A former West Coast cop, he became a private investigator after his own partner was killed by a vampire, and his investigations led him here. We managed to snare his loyalty by providing him with answers to a lot of burning questions, and he in turn was able to work his police contacts in our favor. To an extent. Even he couldn't do anything about this shit-tastic problem.

"There's no way to halt the broadcast?" Milo asked.

"It's been showing since last night," Rufus replied. "Even if we could get it off the internet, it's been seen. And it doesn't sound like the Frosts are going away."

"They want to know the truth about what happened to their daughter," Wyatt said.

Rufus turned his head away, but I saw the flinch. He was keeping a very large secret of his own from Wyatt, and sooner or later he'd have to spill.

"This is going to be a major problem for us," Astrid said.

"No kidding," I replied. "What would you like me to do? Resurrect myself into somebody else?"

"Hardly."

"And don't even say you want to bench me, because there's too much going on right now—"

"May I speak?" A slight feline growl came out at the end of that, so I shut up and let Astrid talk. "I was going to say exercise extreme caution when you're in the field. I can't afford to bench anyone right now, but you've been racing around the city for months wearing this girl's face. People are bound to remember they saw you, and others will be flat out looking for you."

She was right. And what if the Frosts managed to track down Leo Forrester, father of Chalice's dead roommate Alex? He was a kind man, but he was a recovering alcoholic and not a very good liar. He couldn't tell them that he didn't know who I was. I'd given him a condensed version of the truth about myself and his son's death before running him back out of town for his own safety.

"You could always dye your hair," Milo said. "And cut it. Make it harder for people to recognize you."

I nodded, even though the idea didn't appeal to me. Before I died, my hair had been short, thin and blond. Now it was long, thick and wavy brown, and it had taken some getting used to. But I was used to it. Not that it wasn't a pain to take care of on occasion, especially when I got blood in it. Maybe it was time to try a new look.

"Is hiding her truly the best option?" Marcus asked.

Milo frowned. "As opposed to what?"

"Having Stone contact the parents and put their minds at ease about their daughter's well-being."

Marcus's suggestion didn't surprise me; it also wasn't something I was comfortable with for a whole slew of reasons.

"Their daughter's dead," Milo retorted. There was a level of anger in his tone that caught my attention. He seemed genuinely annoyed, but I suspected it had more to do with Marcus himself, than with his words. The unusual tension between the pair was suddenly unmistakable.

"And yet her body is wandering the city still."

"So she should pretend to be their dead daughter? For how long? A day? A month? Ten years?"

"It was an alternative to hiding, Milo, that's all."

"Okay, so I've got options," I said. "Great, I'll consider them all while I keep my head down and try to not be noticed. Meanwhile, are there any developments with Riley and the challenge?"

"Not so far," Marcus replied.

Good news so far. "Are there any new goblin sightings we should know about?"

"None that have been reported," Astrid replied. Her cell phone rang. She glanced at the display, then put it to her ear. "Dane." Her eyes slid in my direction. "Yeah, hold on."

She held the phone out to me. "It's James Reilly. Said he's been trying to get you on your cell."

I tried to remember where I'd left—back pocket. I'd turned it off so it didn't interrupt my night with Wyatt. I took Astrid's phone. "This is Stone."

"You're a hard woman to reach sometimes," Reilly said. His normally even, conversational tone was tinged with annoyance. Had everyone woken up cranky today?

"Sorry about that. Extenuating circumstances."

Wyatt squeezed my hip.

"Indeed. Some information has fallen into my lap, Ms. Stone, and I thought it would be of some use to you and your colleagues."

"Depends on the info."

"It isn't about the Frost girl's parents, if that's what you're thinking. Although I imagine that's a complication you didn't expect."

I rolled my eyes. "Something tells me you expected it?"

"It had crossed my mind a few times when I was first looking for her and Alex Forrester. But no, I'm not calling about that. This has to do with some very sick, former allies of yours."

The vampires. I knew without him saying it. We'd been trying for weeks to get information on the condition of the vampires infected by an unknown virus that was slowly killing them. Isleen, Eleri, Quince, and others had been carted off by their Families and not seen since. I needed whatever he had.

Downside of working with Reilly: he hated giving information over the phone. "When and where?" I asked.

"Usual place. Be there in an hour."

"I can be there in half that."

"Terrific. I'll see you in an hour."

I handed the phone back to Astrid, then held up a hand before Wyatt could say anything. "You're not coming with me."

He lifted an eyebrow. "Why not?"

"Because you scare the hell out of him, and I really like him on my side."

"You're not going alone."

"I'll take Milo." No one objected. "Excellent. Let's go."

#

Fifteen minutes later, Milo eased our borrowed car out of the parking area and through the mall corridor that led outside. He'd beaten me to the car, so I didn't much care that he wanted to drive. It was more important that I take a few minutes to change into fresh clothes, twist my hair up, and hide it under a light blue bandana. It wasn't much of a disguise, but it was something. He'd likewise traded his sweat-shorts for a pair of jeans and looked less like he'd just rolled out of bed.

The usual meeting place was Sally's Coffee Shop. It was open twenty-four hours, was in the middle of Mercy's Lot, and Milo, Tybalt, and Felix had frequented it back during their Triad days. Reilly had an unhealthy obsession with the pancakes there—he was eating them every time I met him. But the coffee was good, and it was a difficult location to ambush.

It would take about fifteen minutes to get there, give or take traffic congestion, and I spent half the time silently staring at Milo from the corner of my eye. He looked pissed, wearing that same cloud of anger that had followed him around for a good month or so after Felix's infection. I hadn't requested his company so I could pick his brain, but the opportunity was just too good.

"Do me a favor today?" I said.

"What?"

"Whatever you're mad at Marcus about? Don't take it out on Reilly."

He glanced over at me, eyebrows furrowed and lips pressed tight, then back to the road. His hands tightened around the wheel. "I won't."

The fact that he hadn't denied he was pissed at Marcus startled me into a momentary silence. I'd never seen the pair not getting along, even from the first day they met on the Boot Camp battlefield. "Milo, you know I'm going to ask."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"If it's affecting quad dynamics, we need to talk about it. The four of us have to be able to work together."

"We can work together."

"Uh huh."

"Can you leave it alone for now?"

I stared out the window and left it alone for the time it took him to park two blocks down from Sally's in the first open space he could find. One he turned off the engine and palmed the keys, I asked, "What did you do?"

He shifted around in his seat, eyes wide, caught somewhere between stunned and angry. "What did I do? What the hell makes you think it was something I did?"

"It was something you did or he did, so I had a fifty-fifty shot of being right. Am I wrong, then?"

"Yes."

Now I was really confused. For all of his growling and bluster and bulk, Marcus had a gentle soul. He loved his sister Astrid, and he was fiercely loyal to both his Pride and his friends at the Watchtower. He was the kind of guy I wanted on my side, so what could he have—fuck. "Did he give you shit about being gay?"

Milo's eyebrows rose into his hairline. "Hell no. He didn't give me shit."

"But he knows?"

"Of course he knows."

Okay, that wasn't it, and good thing or I'd have knocked Marcus on his furry ass. I didn't know much about Milo's pre-Triad years, but I'd seen the scars on his back—they were the kind of scars you got from repeated beatings. I had seen them on my old Triad partner Jesse, and he'd once drunkenly admitted they were gifted to him by his stepfather's leather belt. Milo's heart had been broken when Felix died, and I was protective as hell of the friendship Milo and I had built since then.

Even if it was a friendship built solely on the present, with little visitation of the past, or pondering of the future.

"So what's with the hostility before?" I asked. "You looked like you didn't want Marcus within twenty feet of you."

"It wasn't hostility, exactly.

"It looked hostile."

"It was frustration and confusion."

"About?"

Milo let out a long breath. "Marcus he kissed me."

Before I could even process that bomb, much less respond to it, Milo sprang from the car and slammed the door shut. He was halfway down the block before I caught up with him, and I still couldn't get control of my whirlwind thoughts. Thoughts that shifted from confusion (over Milo's frustration), to joy (over Milo finding someone who seemed interested in him, too), to concern (over all of Marcus's current troubles and the possible backlash over a human/Therian pairing during so much Pride upheaval).

It was too much to talk about on a public street, and Milo gave me a quelling glare when I fell into step next to him. We walked to Sally's in silence. I kept my gaze moving, wandering over the faces of strangers, feeling truly exposed for the first time since my resurrection. Any one of these people could have seen my face on the news. Hair covered up or not, I was still recognizable, and I didn't like it.

And even though this city was pretty big, with my luck I'd run right into Chalice Frost's parents and have no idea what to say to them.

Sally's was nearly full with the seven a.m. breakfast crowd. A harried waitress pointed us toward an empty booth near the back. We sat across from each other, mostly to mess with Reilly's head. I freaked him out a little because I'd been resurrected into a dead girl, and he'd only met Milo once before. The waitress swooped by to pour our coffee. Milo and I stared at each other from opposite sides of a grimy Formica table that had seen better days. He seemed to be daring me to bring up Marcus, but I had enough self-control and respect for Milo to not bring it up here.

Reilly's shadow fell across the table a few minutes later. In his mid-forties, with curly gray and brown hair, he looked more like an accountant than a former cop and current private investigator. He eyed his choices of seating, then gingerly slid into the booth next to me.

"Why do I feel like I just interrupted an argument?" he asked.

"You didn't," I replied. "Milo's always grumpy this time of morning."

Milo made a face at me, but said nothing. The waitress zipped by and poured more coffee. "The usual for you, hon?" she asked.

"Yes." Reilly glanced at us. "Anything for you two?"

I hadn't realized I was hungry until he asked. "Scrambled eggs and toast."

"Wheat or white?" the waitress said, committing it all to memory.

"White."

"Sausage or bacon?"

"Bacon."

"For you?" she said to Milo.

"Uh, the same."

She nodded, then walked off with her coffee pot.

"What is it with you and pancakes?" I asked Reilly.

"They're really good here," he replied. "And they remind me of happier times."

"Times when certain things were only characters in books?"

"Precisely." He measured out sugar and stirred it into his coffee.

"So are you going to make us wait for the food before you tell us why we're here?" Milo asked.

Reilly stared across the table, his sharp gaze cataloguing Milo in seconds. Something seemed to stop on the tip of his tongue, then he shook his head. "No, I won't make you wait." He pulled a business card out of his shirt pocket and handed it to me.

Alucard Communications & Development.

The logo was a simple circle around what looked like an old-fashioned pair of radio headphones. Of course, if I looked at it sideways, it could have been a smiley face with fangs. The address was south of Uptown, near the outskirts of the city. I'd never heard of it, and there was no other writing on the card except a telephone number.