4

EXIT STAGE WRONG

Do you want to wake her up?” I asked Choo. I had carried Sig back to the overpass and found Choo cautiously inspecting the bodies there. Now we were both looking down at Sig’s prone form.

Choo made an after you gesture. “You’re the one who heals fast.”

He had a point, so I kicked the bottom of her boot experimentally.

Choo grinned, maybe for the first time since killing Andrej Dvornik. “I thought you Charming boys woke your women up with a kiss.”

“Those are just stories,” I observed. “And none of my ancestors had to worry about getting their collarbones broken.”

I kicked Sig’s boot a little harder and she lunged upward violently, cursing and reaching for the long sword that was no longer in her back sheath.

“You’re really not a morning person, are you?” I greeted. I didn’t really feel like joking around, but I had to make the effort or Sig would suspect something.

Choo and I had been busy. The van was parked closer, its rear doors open so that Sig could see knights stacked in the back storage compartment like cordwood. We had drugged them with their own tranks and chained them with their own chains, and the tops of the heads of a few others were visibly slumped against the back seat, their owners held in place by gravity and seat belts.

“What happened?” Sig asked.

“The sniper had a backup sniper,” I informed her, praying fervently that she wouldn’t count the bodies. “I took him out.”

Sig smiled faintly at that, then winced when the expression pulled skin tightly over her temple. “You still shouldn’t be here.”

“I know.” I handed her the SIG Sauer she claims to have been named after, though that sounds a little too cool to be true. I’ve always suspected that Sig’s birth name is Dorcas or Hulga or something.

She stood up and took the gun with another grimace. This time, the pain didn’t seem to be entirely physical. “We didn’t need you today, you know. Choo had my back.”

“You don’t have to get defensive,” I reassured her. “You had them. I’m the one who shot you.”

Yeah, like I really said that. The thought did go through me like a colonoscopy, though.

What I actually said was: “The whole reason you’re in trouble is because of me.”

“You’ve got to get your head on straight about death,” Sig scolded. “Especially since you’re around so much of it.”

I don’t know why that stung. It was nothing but the truth.

“Well, I’m pissed at him,” Choo said. “Does that count?”

Sig stared at Choo as if measuring him for a body cast.

Choo ignored her and looked at me instead. “I didn’t sign up for this, and I don’t want to sleep with you, either. No offense.”

“Choo.” Sig’s voice sounded a little strangled. “John’s saved your life at least twice! If you died because of him right now, you’d still be ahead of the game.”

Choo didn’t like that. “I only needed saving because your last boyfriend went crazy, and that was because of John.”

That’s not really true. I didn’t cause Stanislav Dvornik’s psychotic break. I exposed it. I could smell “sick animal” coming off that asshole the first time he darkened my door. Choo wasn’t really arguing about what he was arguing about, though.

Sig seemed to think so too. “Choo, could John and I have some privacy?”

Choo indicated the scene around us. “Don’t look like it.”

“Choo.” If she had gotten in his face or threatened him, he might have dug in, but she sounded disappointed, and he relented.

“Nothing personal, man,” he muttered to me. “Good luck.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You too.”

I watched him go, and when I turned to look at Sig she was closer to me.

Was it crazy that I’d missed her? My whole life, I’d made fun of the idea of love at first sight, and I had fallen for Sig pretty hard, pretty fast. But let’s be honest: I had a pretty big emotional void looking for something to fill it.

“Have you been stalking me this whole time?” She wasn’t as angry as she was trying to sound. I would have smelled it.

“Not in a pervy way,” I said. “Dammit.”

Sig had a habit of regarding me steadily. I liked it. We were within arm’s reach of each other when she said, “I don’t know how to say hi to you.”

I knew what she meant. We’d agreed to cool it in the romance department until we got our lives back under control, and that obviously wasn’t going too well. But a handshake didn’t exactly seem to cover it, either.

So I bent down, took her left hand, and kissed her middle finger lightly. “Hi, Sig.”

I didn’t let go when I straightened up. My thumb stroked the top of her hand while our fingers interlocked. I always wanted more with her. She was like Chinese food, which might explain why I don’t write a lot of love sonnets.

Sig leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “Hi.”

My mouth was suddenly dry. “We probably shouldn’t take too much time.”

“What are you planning?” Sig asked suspiciously.

“Something you won’t like,” I admitted. “But I guarantee I’m going to get the knights’ attention off of you and the others.”

“You could try to get help, you know,” she said. “There are werewolf packs out there who would probably accept you. Parth says there’s a huge one in the Midwest that’s already giving the knights the finger. He could get you in touch with it.”

Parth was the hacker in Sig’s merry little band of monster hunters and also a supernatural being in his own right, a naga. Sig trusted him. I did not.

“The one calling itself a clan?” I asked. “No thanks.”

Sig leveled her eyes at me like interrogation lamps. “You will not throw your life away. No beau geste. No kamikaze plans.”

She was too smart for my own good.

“Sig…” I began, and she put a finger on my lips with her free hand.

“Shut up. Your life is worth as much as mine. Maybe more. I’m no princess.”

I took her left hand and kissed it too, just to be fair. “You’re acting like I have a lot of safe choices here.”

God, I wanted to kiss her. I think she felt the pull too. At any rate, she pulled me forward slightly and we touched foreheads.

“I know there’s a part of you that’s ready to die for somebody else because you didn’t get a chance with Alison,” she said. “I don’t want to be something you have to prove to yourself. And I don’t like that you’re admitting so much, either. Whatever you’re hiding must really be stupid.”

I didn’t like hiding things from Sig. I hadn’t from the first moment I’d met her. I’d been up-front with her when it would have been smarter to hold back, trusted her when I barely knew her, and put us both in danger because of it. And I didn’t have any excuse for it. She made me selfish, and for some reason that felt like love.

And it had to stop. I have had one true love, and Alison died because she knew me. I had only just started to crawl out from under that weight, and Sig was a large part of the reason why. The idea of having knights kill Sig too was… nightmare. Anathema. Poison. Antimatter. There’s no word for it.

Unfortunately, even though I’m a Charming, I’m really not all that good at acting noble. I haven’t had a lot of practice. I didn’t have a speech prepared about it being a far, far, better thing I did than any I had ever done before or whatever. I was scared. I admit it. I usually channel fear into fighting or planning or running or joking. Giving myself up was messing with me. I didn’t want to die, but I wasn’t going to let anyone else I cared about get killed because of me, and I kind of wished she would just shut the fuck up and let me say my lines.

But I couldn’t say any of that.

So instead, I said, “I have to go.”

“Don’t give me that cowboy crap,” she snapped. “I know you have to go! The question is whether or not I’m coming after you.”

I almost pointed out that she couldn’t come after me if I was dead. Then it occurred to me that maybe she could.

Talk about high maintenance.

“Here.” She removed a ring from her pocket and tried it on my right index finger. With a little bit of encouragement, it fit.

I took the ring off and examined it suspiciously. It was plain gold and didn’t have any stave runes or markings that I could see. I’d never seen it on Sig’s hand before, but if it had any kind of tracking magic or charm on it, the ring wouldn’t work because of my geas, anyway.

“That was my father’s,” Sig said. “I want you to bring it back to me.”

“Sig,” I protested.

“Knights wear tokens, right?” Sig persisted. “I want you to remember me.”

“That’s not going to be a problem,” I assured her.

“Just wear it, all right?” she said. “Promise.”

The gesture seemed a little un-Siggish, but what was I going to say? That the knights were sure to remove the ring when they took me into custody?

“All right,” I said reluctantly.

I don’t know if I loved her. We had chemistry. Her skin felt like some amalgam of silk and honey and sunlight. I liked her. I wanted her, wanted her so badly that it felt like my body must be glowing with it. I understood some things about her that most people wouldn’t get. I know that part of me didn’t leave her.

Unfortunately, the rest of me did.