than he let on. I considered becoming visible and scaring the shit out of him—an amusing fantasy I had no real inclination to enact. Keeping my cover was more important.
“I never met Chalice,” Leo finally said. “Alex and I … we didn’t talk much. I came to the city hoping to fix things, but I was too late. Missed my chance.”
“But you’re still here.”
“Like I said, I’ve got nowhere to go.”
Reilly nodded, then shifted his attention. “And you were a friend of the deceased, Mr. Truman?”
Wyatt didn’t even blink; he’d probably been rehearsing his story from the moment Reilly walked over. “Alex and I were pals in elementary school. We even liked the same girl on the playground once.”
“Which school was that?”
A deep frown creased Wyatt’s forehead. “It was twenty years ago, halfway across the state,” he said, doing a great job of appearing deep in thought.
“Mancini Elementary, wasn’t it?” Leo asked.
“Yeah, that was it.”
“Of course,” Reilly said. “I’m sorry, Mr. Truman, but I didn’t catch your first name.”
“That’s because I didn’t give it to you.” He said it matter-of-factly, no hint of confrontation or ire. It could have been a joke between friends, and Reilly seemed to take it as such. The man was inscrutable.
“Right. I don’t suppose you can shed any light on this mystery girlfriend, or where I might find her?”
I bit down on my lower lip, mostly to keep in an amused snort. If he only knew how close he stood to the mystery girl, he’d shit his shorts. I hated snooping into a conversation in which I couldn’t participate.
“Like I said,” Wyatt replied in a mimic of Leo’s earlier comment, “I hadn’t seen Alex in twenty years. I heard he died, so I came to support his dad.”
Reilly reached into his jacket. I tensed, but instead of a weapon, he produced a well-thumbed notebook and nub of a pencil. He flipped through scribbled-on, dog-eared pages until he found a clean one near the end, then wrote what looked like gibberish. I couldn’t scoot around to read over his shoulder—I might be invisible, but my feet would still imprint on the grass, and my jeans would whisper my presence. Couldn’t risk it around someone so used to noticing tiny details.
“I apologize for taking your time,” Reilly said for the umpteenth time. Someone who apologized so much needed to work in a confessional. He tucked the pencil nub behind his ear, then thumbed back a few pages. “Just one more question, and I’ll leave you be.”
“Which is?” Leo asked.
“I’ve been equally unsuccessful at locating someone else involved in the fire that killed your son, Mr. Forrester. The man whose apartment was the source of the blaze—a man named Rufus St. James.”
I grunted before I could stop myself. Reilly’s head snapped to the space between Wyatt and Leo, right where I stood. He seemed to look me directly in the throat for a moment, then down. At my feet. I followed his gaze.
The creepy thing about the invisibility spell was that I was not only cloaked from other people, I couldn’t even see my own damned self. Not my own hands or legs or feet. Just the four vaguely flat patches of grass where my boots’ heels and soles pressed down. I kept still and held my breath.
“Don’t know him,” Leo said.
Reilly pulled himself out of it and looked up. “And you, Mr. Truman?”
Wyatt shook his head. “I wish I could help you out. Have you tried the hospitals, or local motels?”
“Yes, I have, actually, but thank you for the suggestions.” Reilly shook both of their hands briefly, then turned and strolled back toward the narrow road where his car was likely parked.
No one spoke until he was well out of earshot.
“That was bizarre,” I said.
Leo jumped a mile, hand flying to his heart. “Christ, I forgot you were there.”
“This is just what we don’t need,” Wyatt said. “Some glory-hungry P.I. poking around, asking questions.”
“We’ve dealt with them before,” I said. With all the strange events that happened in the city on a daily basis, someone was always asking the wrong questions. Trying to dig up an explanation for misshapen, rotting bodies that didn’t look human. Rag reporters looking for answers to questions they were better off not asking, until the Triads politely instructed them to shut the hell up.
I’d always hated threatening civilians, but the alternative was allowing them to ask the wrong question of the wrong person and end up dead. Or worse. And contrary to popular opinion, there are things worse than death.
“Yeah, but back then we weren’t freelance, remember?” he said.
“He seems harmless enough,” Leo said.
“Yeah,” I replied, “and so does a rose until it stabs you with a thorn.”
“People stab themselves on thorns.”
I started to retort, but words failed me. Good thing he couldn’t see my expression. I imagined it was full of priceless confusion.
“Regardless,” Wyatt said, “I don’t like that he’s asking around about Chalice or Rufus.”
“So report him to the Triads and be done with it,” I said, not much liking the idea but unable to offer an alternative. Investigating private investigators wasn’t my idea of a fun afterlife.
He sighed and dug his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Guess we should go.”
Leo gave his son’s marker another look, then turned awkwardly and walked back to the cars; his was parked in the lane in front of Wyatt’s. We didn’t speak, which suited me fine. Dozens of thoughts whirled through my mind—questions about what was next for us, with Wyatt stuck in some sort of limbo with the Triads, not really fired but not allowed to just quit, and me dead (again). The city was still picking up the pieces after the Parker’s Palace massacre, and people were asking questions. Headlines reported everything from a massive gang initiation to a gas leak that made everyone inside the theater go mass-murder crazy.
Everything we’d dedicated our lives to protecting was starting to crumble.
A tremor vibrated through my feet, into my legs, all the way to my chest. I faltered. Stopped walking. The vibration was so faint, I was certain I’d imagined it. Like the gentlest of earthquakes, it was there and gone in seconds.
“Whoa,” I muttered.
“Did you feel that?” Wyatt asked. He’d stopped an arm’s reach from his car and was looking at a point just past my head, but close enough.
“Yeah, I felt it.”
“Felt what?” Leo asked.
“Small earthquake, just now. You didn’t feel it?”
“No.”
He wasn’t lying. I saw it in his face. So why had Wyatt and I felt it?
“Probably nothing, then,” Wyatt said.
I scowled but didn’t press. It wasn’t something to discuss in front of Leo.
“I suppose I should get going,” Leo said. “No use in hanging around here all day when I’ve got miles to make.”
My heart sped up. As much as I didn’t want Leo to stay so I would worry about his safety, I also didn’t want him to leave. He’d saved my life and kept my bizarre secret. I’d never known my own father, and while Leo had a truckload of faults, in the end he’d loved his children.
He’d also never be safe in my world. We’d talked about it for long hours and, finally, agreed that leaving the city was the lesser of two evils.
“Wish I could see your face to say good-bye.”
“It’s not safe,” Wyatt said.
I could have punched him in the arm for that, but refrained. “You don’t have to go,” I said. But we all knew he did.
Leo looked in my direction. I shifted so at least I knew he was looking me in the eye. “Thanks for being his friend,” he said. “You did more for him than I ever could.”
The irony in his statement struck like a fist. As his father, Leo had given Alex life. As his friend, all I’d done was take it away from him. I’d introduced him to my horrifying, painful world, then to death.
