Indecent Proposal
Oh. Oh no way. I couldn’t even contemplate it because...
Because I couldn’t think of a reason.
I unmuted the TV and gulped some coffee.
“You take me to him, I give you all the information you need to find everyone responsible. I’ll tell you things Ms. Lain has no idea about. Where to find them. Who they are. All of it.”
“And you’re not going to need their protection from this apocalypse? I thought that was the whole point.” No way was he tricking me. I wasn’t smart but I couldn’t be a total idiot.
“Persephone, my dear, the apocalypse is contingent on you being alive. You meet your goal, however, and a little birdie has told me that you’ll put a bullet to your head and there goes the end of the world. Seems a fair trade off to me.”
It wasn’t going to be a bullet, but that was fair enough. “And if you lie?”
“You can kill me and I lose this body, which I’m growing rather attached to.”
Shit. Shit shit SHIT. I finished my coffee. Got up. Poured another. Paced. I glanced a few times at the closed bedroom doors—vampires were real, real good at hearing. They might be following all of this.
So why hadn’t anyone come out to kill me yet?
I stalked back to the couch and folded myself in the very corner, trembling hands wrapped around the warm mug. I could not do this. Not even consider it. Nic’s sunny expression falling into one of disappointment flashed in my head and guilt burned just thinking about it. She looked at me like I was better than that—the only person who ever had in recent years. Like I was more than a killer. More than someone who would trade everyone’s lives for herself. It was a lie, a terrible one, but I liked the feeling of someone seeing something else in me.
But my kids. My kids. I gulped down some coffee. “Then tell me now something Zara doesn’t know.”
Minutes ticked by with me not really paying attention to the television and ensuing drama of baby daddy revelations.
“This city,” he said carefully. “Macamigon. Do you know what that name means?”
I didn’t answer because I didn’t know. Wikipedia probably did, though, and he’d have to do a lot better to impress—
“It was a village, once upon a time—one abandoned. Feared. White settlers took the harbour, developed a thriving economy. The natives called the place anaamakamigong, or variations of it. Ojibwa. It means ‘in hell.’”
Clammy fingers walked my spine and that space in the back of my mind, the one that knew things, remembered things, whispered yes softly, smiling.
“There’s a reason Mishka Thiering lived and died here. A reason you were drawn here. A reason why you’re stronger here.”
How the fuck did he know that? Questions burned as I drank the rest of my coffee.
“We should go before dusk, however,” he said, picking at his nails. “Just a few hours left. And by six the Hunter will be back. How long a drive was it?”
Oh fuck. Fuck fuck—if I got caught—
Zara’s asleep. Forty minutes in the sun to the house. How can she possibly catch me? Best not to answer that one.
Nicolette was going to wake up and find us gone. And eventually they’d head to the safe house and know. She sat up for over a day with me, watched over me—helped me. Worried about me.
Oh, hell. My eyes shut, stomach knotted, everything in me saying not to...but my kids. My babies. Hisa’s voice in the background on the phone when I was talking to Ken, just minutes before the explosion, when the line went dead...
I’d already done nothing in life to send me where she went. Where they went. I had no hope of seeing them, but just one thing: to rest. I complete my mission, I get to rest. To sleep. Finally, forever. Relief. No more pain, no more missing them. I felt it, that place I opened—that place I came from—and knew I’d be at peace.
I set the mug on the coffee table. “Where’d she put her car keys?”
****
I spent the entire trek with Sellie expecting to be caught. We waited a half hour for everyone to be asleep and I expected Zara to come out with a gun just knowing what I was thinking. Then the elevator made a huge amount of noise and I expected that would wake her. But minutes later I drove one of her cars—a BMW convertible this time—out of the underground garage, my nemesis in the passenger seat and making me angrier as time went by. It took a swing around town before I recognized landmarks and found the highway that would take us to the suburbs.
I thought long and hard during the drive about trying to pry some information out of him beforehand, but the sound of his voice was grating and I was likely to cause an accident while trying to kill him. He kept his silence and I didn’t invite more.
The sun hadn’t set but it was close by the time we swung onto the quiet street I recognized. The sky had gone navy blue and pink, horizontal lines of clouds giving the air a texture, and leafless tree branches reached up like spindly fingers behind the houses. I pulled into the driveway of Zara’s safe house, idled the car, and searched around for her garage door opener. I found it and three more in the glove compartment and wondered briefly how many other houses she actually had. The door lifted open and I drove forward.
A dozen keys beyond the car one waited on the ring and I tried four before I got the interior door open. I was chilled from head to toe, just a sweatshirt over my tank top. I wasn’t able to go into Nic’s room to collect the rest of my gear but my only consolation was that Sellie didn’t have weapons either and given his build, I was pretty sure I could take him. Yeah, he had seven inches on me, but not much else.
I popped the door open and stepped into the cool hallway. With no natural light, the bulbs above burned white and made the white walls almost blue. Sellie stepped in after me and closed the door. Shivers crept down my spine. Keys jangled in my hand as I fidgeted and glanced around.
Forget Zara. Nic was going to kill me. I shouldn’t care, shouldn’t even think about it, but she’d sat there at my bedside making sure I woke up. She—
Stop. Thinking. About it.
“This way.” I shoved the keys in my pocket and started to walk for the basement door, all the while my stomach did an unpleasant dance. I’d done a lot of bad things but I very rarely betrayed people.
But once is enough. Once meant I couldn’t play the high road game and pretend I was above all this. I wasn’t; I was nothing. I was a heartless, horrible person, and I might as well just embrace it. Besides, I didn’t know this almost-dead vampire-guy. I didn’t owe him shit. I’d known the others less than a week—I didn’t owe them either.
Of course, they didn’t owe you and they helped you anyway.
Shut up, brain. That’s their mistake. Not mine.
I thumped down the basement stairs, my hand locked on the railing in case my shaking legs dumped me on my face. The basement was a maze of hallways but I tried to remember my path from a few days before.
My throat was dry and rumbled as I cleared it before speaking. “It’s around here somewhere. I think there are a few rooms down here.”
“And you didn’t expect you’d have to lead anyone back through it,” he said with a nod.
Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t. I didn’t know anymore—I just wanted to get the whole sordid deal over with.
At last I found an open doorway and led Sellie into a room that had a long metal coffin in it. The edges of the box looked sharp, almost white in the overhead light. A small table sat on the corner, blue ballpoint pen to the side and a plain notepad next to it. The top sheet of the pad curled and girlish blue writing covered three lines. Nicolette’s writing, her cheerful note informing the would-be vampire that everything would be okay.
Oh, irony.
My heart beat high and hard in my ears, thrumming louder and louder the closer I got. This guy killed the man who killed my family, and now I was handing him over. What the bloody hell was I doing?
Sellie moved past me before I could say anything, before I could suggest going back, his strangely blue gaze locked on the coffin. He moved past me like I was no longer there, no longer existed. He still had no weapons but with his brother’s incredibly fragile state, he probably didn’t need them.
I guessed I’d find out.
I sucked in a breath as he pressed his foot to the lid of the coffin and gave it a violent shove.
Empty.
I stared with a frown, still not trusting myself to breathe, as Sellie seemed to be doing the same. And then I felt it. Felt the shift in the air, the presence in the room—felt the prickle of awareness drag up my spine and shoot the fines hairs of my arms on end. I turned, dread sinking hard and fast in my gut, hoping strangely that I’d see a vampiric Nate there instead.
But it was Zara in the doorway, a gun trained on me.