“No,” I said, an odd catch in my voice. I cleared my throat. Hard. “No, I’m not sure.”
Kismet took a few steps forward, moving within arm’s reach of the exam table. Her expression softened, less business and more friendly. “What has the doctor said?”
“Not much.” I glanced at the curtain, as if able to summon a doctor by that simple gesture. No one came. “If you like irony, you’ll love this. The knife I used to gut the Halfie was turned into shrapnel by the explosion. A piece of it got Wyatt square in the back, but I don’t know what it hit.”
“He’s come out of worse.”
I snorted. “Yeah, sure, he died and lived to tell about it. Too bad not everyone’s been so lucky.”
And once again, my thoughts circled back to Alex, and the part of me that was still Chalice nearly collapsed under her grief. My fingers found the delicate silver cross, undamaged by all it had been through. Luckier than its wearer. Worry for Wyatt combined with grief, and a knot formed in my throat. I swallowed.
“About that,” Kismet said.
My head snapped up; she had my full attention. “About what?”
“Sooner or later, we’ll need to decide on a plan of action for Alex. I’m sure he has family, coworkers, friends, who will start to worry when he stops showing up.”
“If they haven’t already.” I didn’t know any of those things. Not consciously, at least. If Chalice knew his family and social circle intimately, her imprinted memories weren’t sharing the info. Another good reason to leave that apartment behind, before her pals and old boyfriends started showing up.
“Procedure is—”
I cut her off with a sharp wave of my hand. “I know what the fucking procedure is; you don’t have to remind me.” The idea of reporting Alex Forrester as a missing person, and then making sure the file found its way to the very bottom of the Department’s priority list, made my blood boil. He deserved better than being remembered as another case number.
“He’s not missing,” I said.
“His remains are gone, Stone. We couldn’t set his death up to look accidental if we wanted to, and the brass isn’t going to give me permission to exhaust manpower trying. Not with two Handlers out, a third of our Hunters dead, and now this PR nightmare with the Clans.”
“God forbid we give a shit about anyone else outside of the Triads.”
She bristled, hands balling into fists. “Look, Stone, I don’t know how this whole reincarnation thing has affected your judgment, but rein it in. Everything going on at this moment involves you in some way, shape, or form, and I need you focused on it. Not on someone who wasn’t even part of your life until three days ago and is no longer a part of it now. He is irrelevant. The job you have waiting for you is not, and no one else can do it but you.”
I wanted her words to bounce off and be forgotten, but they misbehaved by sinking in and making perfect sense. I hated that no one else could do my job, but she was right. I had promised Phineas, I had promised Rufus, and I couldn’t bear to let either of them down.
I slid off the exam table without a hint of wobble, not caring that the clothes I’d just changed into were stained and soiled. I stood toe to toe with Kismet, topping the petite Handler by several inches.
She didn’t back down, didn’t flinch, just stared right back at me and said, “You can hate me all you want for what I just said, if it helps. Sometimes our anger is the best fuel we have.”
“You get that advice from a fortune cookie?” I asked.
“No, from Wyatt, a long time ago when he was training me to be a Handler.”
I blinked. I hadn’t given the training of Handlers much thought, and even though I knew Wyatt had been around since the official formation of the Triads, the idea of him training Kismet was … well, weird.
“You’ve got to box it up,” she added.
“Trust me, if it was just me in here, I’d have no problem compartmentalizing all this until the crisis has passed. Unfortunately, I’ve got a lot of Chalice floating around fucking up my head, so it isn’t as simple as just shutting the door on it. I would if I could, because I’d function a hell of a lot better if I didn’t spend half my time worrying about Wyatt and mourning Alex.”
“It’s not easy when you love someone.”
The statement pushed me backward a few steps, giving us a cushion of air filled with discomfort and understanding. “Chalice loved him. I barely knew Alex,” I said.
“I meant Wyatt.”
I forced myself to remain quiet. It couldn’t be that obvious. Handlers weren’t supposed to form attachments to their Hunters, as it was their job to constantly order us into deadly situations. Hunters within Triads often grew close, even though we were warned against it. Romantic love wasn’t forbidden (as far as I knew), but if it existed between Hunters, it just wasn’t talked about.
And I wasn’t going to have that conversation with Gina Kismet. We’d exchanged more words in the last few hours than we ever had over the last four years, even on the few occasions our Triads had crossed paths. She’d always come across as rule-driven, deliberate, and—when not dealing directly with her own Hunters—cold. What the hell did she know about my relationship with Wyatt?
“No,” I said, “it’s not easy when you’re sharing your brain space with a ghost. That’s what’s not easy.”
She sighed, a heavy escape of air through her front teeth. She looked deflated. Less the woman in charge, almost a friendly face. “Whatever you say, Stone, but from one woman to another? It won’t work.”
I arched an eyebrow. “And what’s that?”
“Relationships between Handlers and Hunters. They don’t work. They never have.” The pain in her voice, absent from our conversation so far, struck me dumb. Her expression didn’t change; her posture remained at slight attention. Only the way she spoke, with authority on a guarded subject, exposed her anguish with alarming clarity. Authority born of personal experience with the topic. Had she had a relationship with one of her Hunters? Someone else’s Hunter?
Not that I was inclined to ask. Gossip was a waste of time, and I had more pressing shit to deal with than Kismet’s personal life.
“Wyatt and I aren’t sleeping together, if that’s what you’re getting at.” Truth that bordered on a bold-faced lie. We’d slept together once, just before I died the first time. Night before last, we’d nearly slept together again. Nearly.
Kismet cocked her head to the side, seeming to consider my statement. “Keep it that way, so it doesn’t get one of you killed again.”
Ready for the conversation to swing away from my sex life, I reached for sarcasm and said, “Your concern is overwhelmingly touching.”
She shrugged. “We can’t handle any more losses right now. We’re spread pretty thin as it is after Olsmill. We’ve got some teams out hitting known Halfie hot spots and others putting the screws to the goblins. And now looking into those … things from the lab …”
I perked up. “Looking into what now?”
“The creatures we found in Tovin’s lab, remember those? Elves are smart, but according to Amalie and several other sources, they aren’t geneticists. Tovin didn’t have the brains to run that lab on his own, so Willemy’s looking into the possibility of an accomplice. If he turns up anything, he’ll let us know.”
An accomplice hadn’t occurred to me. Nor should it have. I was a Hunter. Point me toward a target, and I kill it. That sort of investigative thinking was a Handler’s job, not a Hunter’s. “By himself?” I asked.
Her slim eyebrows knotted. “He asked for an assignment, so we gave him one. Rhys Willemy lost two of his Hunters this morning at Olsmill. Or did you forget six people died?”
I hadn’t forgotten. I just hadn’t bothered to ask who. Focusing on those who survived seemed more important than on those who’d died. I could commiserate with the survivors; I knew their pain. I thought of the familiar dark face from Burger Palace who’d laughed at my zombie joke just this morning. “And the Hunter who lived?”
“Temporarily off duty.”
“I meant his name.”
“David.”
Voices rose in pitch on the other side of the curtain. I looked over; Kismet turned around. Closer. My heart thudded harder. The same voices fell. Squeaking shoes moved away. I exhaled, unaware I’d held my breath.
