“Like?”
I started walking again. A gentle breeze swirled from behind, bringing with it the acrid odor of burning things. Not sweet like charred meat but heavy and oily. Disgusting.
“I’m exhausted, Wyatt,” I said. “Mentally, physically, emotionally, and any other L-Y you want to toss into the mix. I just want to find a motel in the middle of nowhere and sleep for a week. Then take a long, hot bath and sleep for another week.”
“And after you’ve slept for two weeks?” he asked, from somewhere behind me. A second, unvoiced question followed, hinting at the one thing I’d left off my list—him, sharing in these activities.
Maybe after the first week of sleep, I’d have the stamina to contemplate my new Evy/Chalice super-combo existence and his place in it. Part of me wanted to haul him into that hypothetical motel and physically celebrate surviving the battle until we were exhausted and sore. But fear of my reaction to him the last time we’d attempted intimacy kept sex firmly out of my near-future plans. My new body may have given me a physical distance from the memories of being tortured and raped by a goblin, but Wyatt was right—three days was nowhere near enough time to process it all. With my deadline over, I had time to figure out this thing I felt for Wyatt. The attraction had started in Chalice and been fueled by my memories of him, and it was now something entirely its own.
Something I was unable to articulate.
I’d figure out how to articulate it later. “After I’ve slept for two weeks, maybe I’ll use this cell phone to give Kismet a call and make sure the world hasn’t gone to hell in a handcart while I’ve been asleep.”
“Hell seems pretty keen on crossing the Break.”
“Well, Tovin’s dead, the Tainted is contained, and the Fair Ones still guard First Break. I’d say their chances of getting across are looking pretty damned bleak, wouldn’t you?”
“Sure, until someone else decides to take over where Tovin left off.”
I sped up my pace, unable to outrun the stench of the bonfire that was raging out of sight. “There’s always been someone trying to unite the species against us, Wyatt.”
“Before Tovin, no one ever actually got them to do it. Especially the goblins, who are notorious for not playing well with others.”
I didn’t want to admit that he had a good point. Saying it would give his point power, and I was sick of others lording power over me. Sick of being spun around, manipulated, and used. The Triads had done it, Wyatt had done it, and Tovin had done it. No more.
“Hey, look at me.”
He grabbed my left wrist. My stomach clenched. I pivoted, twisting my wrist at the same time, then ducked and spun around behind him, effectively bending his arm backward and up against his own back.
“Do not grab me,” I said in his ear.
“I’m sorry.”
I let go and stepped back, breathing hard for no good reason. Not like that little defensive move had winded me. No, it was the damned adrenaline pumping through me. My heart hammered as my body caught up to my brain. His grabbing my wrist should not have caused such a reaction. Of course, maybe it wasn’t my reaction at all.
I had a lot of Chalice Frost to sort through while my brain acclimated to her residual memories. Taking permanent residence in a dead woman’s body was going to require some getting used to. Especially a woman dead by her own hand. My entire life was about not giving up no matter the agony or overwhelming odds. Chalice had killed herself rather than face the figurative demons fueling her depression. I knew now it was rooted in her undiscovered Gift, but she hadn’t. She just gave up.
I wanted nothing to do with it. But did embracing her attraction to Wyatt mean embracing her fatal weakness, too? If I couldn’t have one without the other … it wasn’t in me to give up. Not the me that was Evy Stone.
“I really don’t want to talk about this, Wyatt,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about Tovin, or the Fey Council, the goblins, the Bloods, or anything else that isn’t related to me getting some time off from this unholy shit storm called my second life.”
“You can’t ignore it forever, Evy,” he said as he turned to face me.
“I’m not planning to ignore it forever. Just for the immediate future.”
“You also going to ignore Chalice for the immediate future?”
“Kind of tough to do now, wouldn’t you say?”
“I don’t know. You haven’t exactly been forthcoming with the details of what happened when I died.”
I looked at the ground, wishing he’d stop saying that. Stop talking about dying so casually—it was my routine, not his. Maybe Wyatt’s death had broken the resurrection deal and allowed me to live, but the healing crystal I’d accepted from an elderly gnome named Horzt almost hadn’t worked. We’d almost lost.
A single finger touched the bottom of my chin and pressed. I let him raise my head high enough to stare right into his coal black eyes. Full of curiosity and pain and life. And deep down, probably so as not to scare me, love. Not the platonic love of a Handler for his longtime Hunter but the love of a man who’d willingly exchanged his soul to give me a second chance at life.
The kind of love I wanted to return and couldn’t. At least, not physically. Not until I reconciled Chalice’s past with my own. “You really want to know what happened when you died?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“My heart shattered in my chest. Metaphorically. Happy now?”
He made a strangled sound in his throat, caught between a gasp and a cry.
“About five seconds later,” I continued, “I saw a blinding gray light, had about a thousand different memories flash through my mind, felt a hundred unfamiliar sensations all over my body, and nearly combusted when I realized how powerful my connection to the Break had become.”
My new body’s Gift of teleportation had been strengthened by this connection, in turn strengthening me. In the instant Chalice and I finally became one entity, my perspective had changed. My senses had altered. The world wasn’t quite the same shade as it had been two hours ago. I didn’t know what sort of residual “self” remained behind when a body died, but bits of Chalice had made themselves at home in my brain.
“You saw her memories?” Wyatt asked.
“Some of them, I think, but it’s not like how I remember my life. More like emotions and sensations attached to events. Growing up and feeling like an outsider, how she felt about Alex.”
God, what about Alex? Chalice’s best friend had given his life to help me. I knew nothing about his family, his job, his friends. People in his life would be wondering where he’d disappeared to. They’d want answers. I certainly couldn’t tell them he’d been turned into a half-breed vampire, and that I’d shot him in the head to put him out of his misery.
Grief tightened my throat. My eyes watered. I bit the inside of my cheek—no more tears. I had to keep it together.
Wyatt’s hand drifted to my shoulder and squeezed. I reached up, twined my fingers with his, and smiled.
“We should keep going,” I said. “It’s still a long walk back.”
I knew him well enough to see how much he held back—the things he wanted to say or do, and didn’t. “Okay,” he said.
We reached the main road and continued along the shoulder. No cars passed this early in the morning, and we arrived at our hidden (stolen) car a few minutes later. The gas station was just waking up, its neon “Open” sign blazing orange in the window. I smelled bitter coffee—the kind you buy only when no other option presents itself and it’s down to overbrewed sludge or falling asleep at the wheel.
My stomach grumbled. Too bad. We were both slathered in blood—human and other. The clerk would call the police before we got five steps inside the door.
“We’ll have to ditch this car soon,” I said once we were back on the road to the city. The guy we stole it from should be waking up soon—if he hadn’t already—and reporting the incident. Regular cops knew nothing about the Triads, and I didn’t like the idea of spending the day in a holding cell.
“We also need to figure out where we’re going,” Wyatt said. “A motel’s a good idea, but we need food and fresh clothes.”
“What about the were-cat’s apartment? The one we stayed in a few days ago?”
He shook his head, slowing the car for an approaching intersection. We were coming out of the forest, into
