Another Kind of Dead

the floor near the tub. I couldn’t get out, but I could hear their voices clearly from the living room.

“Amalie is coming here,” Kismet announced. I wouldn’t have been more surprised if she’d said a meteor was going to crash into the city. “In about five minutes.”

“Does she know about Jaron’s avatar?” Wyatt asked.

“She didn’t mention it. She just said to stay put. She wants to talk to us, and it’s urgent.”

“Too urgent to say over the phone?”

“Apparently.”

The conversation waned. My legs ached from standing still. I shifted my weight but had little room in the small tub. Getting out would make a lot of noise, too noticeable with the door wide open. My trouble could be for naught anyway if Amalie showed up and mentioned me. I had a funny feeling all our work to keep my current “alive” state under wraps was about to be undone.

I stayed put anyway until a sharp crack on the apartment door preceded the familiar squeal of old hinges. Hazarding a peek through the curtain slit, I could see part of the sofa and the wall behind it. No one was in view.

“This is Deaem,” Amalie said, her voice clear as a bell. “She accompanies me now as my second.”

My stomach bottomed out as the simple statement confirmed my fear. Wyatt further clarified it by saying, “Jaron is really dead, then.”

If Amalie nodded, I couldn’t see it. “I do not understand.” The confusion in her words broke my heart. “The moment an avatar is wounded, the sprite returns. Instead, she chose to stay and so died trapped within the human host. I wish to know the reason for my loss.”

I imagined the icy look her avatar had directed at Wyatt. As a human, Amalie was a striking figure—tall and curvy and feminine, with tight red ringlets of hair and the beauty of a fashion model. She had the body most women wanted, and it often amazed me the owner of it never realized she got hijacked a couple of times a week.

“She had a message for me,” Wyatt said. “It must have been important enough to die for, but she was gone before she really said anything.”

“You are certain?”

“She said the word ‘betrayal,’ but not who or what specifically.”

Kismet made a choking sound as she was fed this tidbit of withheld information.

“I can only guess at the meaning,” Amalie said. “However, I have further news to report. News I felt must be shared in person. Where is she?”

Fuck. I was about to be outed.

“She who?” Kismet asked.

“This concerns her more than anyone else, Wyatt Truman,” Amalie said. “Produce her.”

I produced myself. Three jaws hit the floor when I stepped out of the bathroom. Felix and Milo were standing guard around Token, who’d been uncoupled from the wall and was bound at wrists and ankles. Their expressions were nearly identical and quite comical.

Kismet recovered from her shock first and coiled tight. A thundercloud hovered around her. I could well imagine her roiling cauldron of emotions—surprise, anger, betrayal, suspicion. She was standing an arm’s reach from Wyatt, and as I stepped closer, she retreated from him, toward the safety of the sofa. Never taking her eyes off me.

Amalie and her new guard—a small Asian man—hovered by the closed door. Her expression was grim, her manner disheveled. Not as together and in control as the few other times I’d seen her in this human body.

“How?” Kismet asked, the single word practically a growl.

I forced a quasi-sheepish smile, more for her benefit than because I was embarrassed by being alive. “Handydandy healing powers, plus a little help from some friends. If it makes you feel any better, the fire nearly did kill me.”

She grunted.

“Boss?” Felix asked. His right hand had inched beneath the hem of his sweatshirt, probably close to a sheathed knife or holstered gun. He looked past me, right at Kismet, waiting for orders.

I held my breath. Kismet had wanted me neutralized because I had posed a serious threat to the established order of the Triads. While I no longer had the same goals as a week ago, her opinion of me might not have changed. And Kismet knew how to hold a grudge.

“Please,” Amalie said. “There are more urgent matters at hand.”

Felix relaxed his stance, hand going back to his hip. Empty.

Good. Giving Amalie my undivided attention, I asked, “What’s going on that concerns me so much?”

“Something valuable has gone missing,” she said.

“Gone missing?”

“Stolen.”

Alarm bells clanged in my head, telling me I really didn’t want to know the answer to my next question. “What’s been stolen?”

“The crystal in which we sealed the Tainted One.”

Wyatt made a soft choking sound. I couldn’t tear my attention off Amalie, too mesmerized by what I saw in her face—fear. Never in my life had I thought to see a frightened sprite. They could manipulate so much power because of their direct ties to the Break. It was the reason sprites, and no other race, held the most sway over the Fey Council, and why we needed to keep them as our allies.

But more than that, my ears had filled with a dull roar, and even above the fear I saw in her, I didn’t believe what I’d just heard. Heart jackhammering, I asked, “Say that again?”

She didn’t. Instead, she started in on a story. “After your initial entrapment, we devised a method to more permanently seal the Tainted One’s essence into a crystal. When the spell was cast, we sought a safe place for it elsewhere. We gave it to our brethren in the forest west of here, an expanse of mountains few humans ever hike into. They could cloak the Tainted’s draw. I believed it was safe there.”

I snorted, red fury creeping into the corners of my vision. “Why the hell did you take it out of First Break?”

“The power of the Tainted affects not only humans, Evangeline, but many of my kind as well. Having its evil so near was … unsettling. I feared its effects on our well-being. One does not allow disease to remain in one’s orchard to infect all around it.”

“So you let someone steal it?” I seethed, in no mood to understand her reasons. Only one thing was crystal clear to me. “The fucking Tainted is loose?”

She shook her head, red ringlets flying. “No, I do not believe it is. Not yet. The person who stole the crystal would need to have knowledge of our magic and the spell used to encase the Tainted within the crystal. Few outside my people can manage such a feat.”

My stomach flipped. “That doesn’t make me feel better, dammit.” We’d sacrificed so much to contain the Tainted the first time and nearly lost. I’d seen the entity take over the body of an elf, growing to horrifying and grotesque proportions, becoming a black-skinned creature of nightmares.

I’ll put my wife into you, girl, it had said. I look forward to getting to know her again.

I swallowed hard, pressed my lips together, determined not to be sick. Wyatt moved into my line of sight. He grasped my shoulders and squeezed. I stared at his throat, unwilling to meet his gaze.

“Stay here, Evy,” he whispered.

“I’m fine,” I ground out, anything but. Leaning sideways far enough to see past his shoulder, I reaffixed my glare on Amalie. “What happened to seeking out other elves who could send the damned thing back across the Break?”

“We have tried and been unsuccessful,” she replied. “I told you once that very few elves still walk this world. They are difficult to find at the best of times.”

Wyatt shifted to my right side, probably sensing I wasn’t going to fall apart or leap across the room and throttle anyone. He stayed close, though, his left hand still lingering on my hip. I was grateful for his touch.

“Who did you give this crystal to?” Kismet asked, finding her voice. She’d been there the night we’d contained the Tainted, and had seen the things we’d removed from Olsmill. She’d spilled blood with the rest of us.