I was taller than Anya, and broader in the hips. But the leather pants fit me just fine, and the black Angelcake Devilshake T-shirt too. I knew that wasn’t mine—I’d started buying my tees plain and in job lots, because they ended up shot and blood-drenched, not to mention sliced, diced, and dipped in unspeakable foulness so much. Just like the rest of me.
Even the sports bra and unmentionables fit just fine. There was a pair of scarred leather boots that looked damn familiar, and hugged my feet as if they’d been broken in but good.
But it was the weapons that did it.
Another modified .45, this one shiny instead of dull black. Holsters for both the old gun and the new. A complicated array of leather straps that came alive in my hands, buckling itself on like an octopus hugging me, holding weapons. Knives with silver loaded along the flats, from the big main-gauche to a slim stiletto almost lost in its sheath. Cartridges of silverjacket ammo, and the crackling-new bullwhip with wicked-sharp sweetsilver jingles at its tip, secured in its own little loop.
The coat was a little too long, a black leather trench instead of a duster like Devi’s, and it smelled like comfort. Copious pockets and more loops sewn in for the pile of ammo Devi had brought up in two paper grocery bags. The more I slipped into the loops, the better I felt.
“Thou who,” I whispered, and shut my mouth. The prayer had no place here, but it kept going under the surface of my conscious thought. When I repeated it, the wasp-noise retreated, left me alone.
Thou who hast given me to fight evil, protect me; keep me from harm.
Except it was useless. I’d ended up dead. There were Weres hiding in the barrio. And Anya was still here, instead of back over the mountains in her own territory, keeping the scurf down and the Traders under wraps.
The bathroom was white tile, clean as a whistle, and my dirty clothing had been whisked away by a tight-lipped Amalia. The shower was ancient, the kind with the curtain attached to a hoop bolted to the wall, and the mirror showed a gaunt woman with mismatched, exhaustion-ringed eyes and a habit of not meeting her own gaze. I was milk-pale, but the shaking in my hands went down with every weapon I strapped on.
Oh, yes. This was what I’d been missing.
The knock startled me, and I thought it was Anya. But when I swept the door open, it was him.
He was still too thin, leaning against the wall. The plaid flannel shirt and jeans hung scarecrow on him, and his hair fell in his dark eyes, scarred with small silver charms. His cheekbones stood out sharply, his proud nose a blade of bone and skin, and his mouth turned down at both corners.
My jaw dropped. I stared.
Weres are beautiful. There is no corruption in them, nothing like a hellbreed or Trader. Hunters can track ’breed; humans have an advantage in hunting what we’re akin to. But in Weres, everything is burnished. It’s humanity, yes… but with so much of the crap burned away.
He was holding something up, his expressive fingers just knobs of bone and skin. “I thought…” His voice was a rasp, he coughed and the words came a little easier. “Thought you’d want this.”
It was a stick of kohl eyeliner. I grabbed for it. “My God. Thank you. I didn’t even know I was missing—”
“Are you all right?” The words cut across mine, and all of a sudden the leather on my back didn’t feel very much like armor anymore. “What happened to you? I couldn’t find you anywhere, Jill. Not even the wind carried a hint. You were gone.”
Everyone keeps asking where I was. You’d think I’d know. “I woke up in my own grave.” The words were beginning to sound routine.
Not really.
He stared at me. Not disbelievingly. Apparently the idea that I could wake up in my own grave wasn’t very outlandish to him.
Of course not. He knew me better than anyone.
I searched for something else to say. “I’m here now.” I clutched the eyeliner like it was going to try to escape. “The last thing I remember is screeching up to the Monde, because they’d taken you. Right outside Galina’s. Perry…” Perry, I knew him. I shook the thought away, damp strings of hair touching my cheeks. “Devi says she’s got a way for me to remember how the case ended up.”
He stepped forward, stopped. Braced one shoulder against the wall. I thought of the bone underneath pressing out through wasted muscle and skin, how much that had to hurt. “Are you sure you want to?”
The only thing I’m sure of right now is that every bit of firepower I strap on makes me feel better. Oh, and that I’m going to put a bullet or twelve in the head of anything that hurts you. A good grocery list to start out with, right? “She says she can do it. She’s got an idea, I guess, and as soon as she tells me I can get started—”
“No.” A shake of his beautiful, wasted head. One of the charms—a silver wheel, tied in with faded red thread—moved against his temple. “Are you sure you want to remember?”
“I… yeah. Of course.” I backed up a step, shifted my weight as if I was going to turn. The fragile stick in my fist creaked a little, and I eased up on it. “I’ve got to. There was Perry, and Belisa was mixed up in it. The Eye, too—Gilberto’s probably got that. Gil’s at Galina’s, I’m betting.”
He thought this over, watching me, those dark eyes soft. Almost wounded.
“Yeah,” Saul finally said, heavily. “Locked up tight, poor kid. Just let me get some more food, and we’ll get going.”
That might not be such a good idea—I opened my mouth to protest, but he beat me to it.
“Don’t even start with me.” His head dropped forward wearily, and he glared at my chin through his lackluster, silver-scarred hair. “If you’re going, I’m going. I’m not losing you again.”
“You didn’t—” I began, but I couldn’t finish. The words lodged in my throat, because I was suddenly sure that I had been lost, and in a big way.
Utterly lost.
“Here’s what I know.” He reached up, brown fingers gripping the doorjamb. “You told Theron to make sure the first thing I heard when I woke up was She loves you. And Devi, God damn her, always finding a reason not to be in the room when I showed up. Until I cornered her and she told me you’d been… that you’d bargained yourself away. For me.”
I blinked. Was that what happened? Who did I… My brain shivered inside its bone casing. I shuddered.
“And I couldn’t find you,” he continued. His free hand flicked, and flashes of silver chimed as they hit the floor. My gaze didn’t drop down to check, riveted to his face. “I couldn’t find you anywhere. Even inside. You were gone. I went half mad looking for you. Then I came back to the barrio to die.” He waved aside my instinctive protest, knobs and spindles of bone moving under his skin. “And now, here you are. Inside and out.”
“Saul—” The thing in my throat wouldn’t let anything else get past. Just his name.
He shook his head, so hard I was afraid he’d snap his wasted, scrawny neck. His fingers tensed against the jamb. Wood groaned. “No. Everywhere you go now, I’m going with you. Everywhere.” He turned on his heel, sharply, and stamped away. The hall almost rocked around him, one gaunt Were with the burned-candle smell of anger trailing behind him in eddies and swirls.
Even their anger is clean. It doesn’t twist into hatred. You won’t ever find a Were Trading.
But you might find a hunter Trading, a deep voice whispered inside me. You just might. Especially for what she loves.
I found out I was trembling. A wave of shudders went through me, but I bent over anyway. I found the charms and tweezed them up delicately. Three of them—a tiny silver shoe like the one from the Monopoly game, a Celtic cross, an exquisitely carved spider.
It was there, on my knees, clutching the eyeliner and the small bits of silver, that it hit me.
The blue-eyed mute who had paid for my breakfast and given me my gun. He had seemed familiar. Too familiar.
And now I knew who he was. The knowledge opened up another door in my head, but only halfway.
Halfway was enough.
“Shit,” I muttered, there on the floor. “Oh, God. God.” My arms came up, and I hugged myself, rocking back and forth.
God didn’t answer.
He never does.