Cheat the Grave

“Skamar said she’d help,” I said, but the promise sounded hollow even to me. At some point Mackie would be too close to me, she’d be too far, and by the time she finished her death-dealings with the Tulpa, it would be too late.

And the other agents of Light? The ones I once counted as friends? Tekla had some sort of dealings with Caine, the Seer who’d just sacrificed himself for me, for relevance. She’d appeared in my dream, saying not everyone had abandoned me. But that was just a dream. It remained to be seen if she’d lift a finger for me in real life.

And what would Vanessa and Felix do, the couple that’d gradually become my closest new friends? Or Micah, who’d healed me more times than I could count? How about Gregor, who had a warden like Luna that was as protective of him as he was of her? Would their indifference to my mortality turn into aggression, just on Warren’s say-so?

Feeling unsteady, I leaned against a giant green machine called the Mulch Master. “You said before I could leave the city.” Maybe it was still an option.

Tripp said, “And go where? You got paranormal contacts elsewhere? Someone who knows how to deal with ol’

Sleepy Mac?”

“Do you?” I snapped back.

“Yup.” He spat something black and nasty into the green bin. I imagined it working like cement, binding the mulch together. “Why do you think we’re here?”

“You lie, Shadow.”

“I’m rogue,” Tripp corrected. “A free agent, though I still know a brethren Shadow when I see one.”

“I’m Light.”

“Goodness and Light,” Tripp taunted, scattering ash.

I ignored his sarcasm. So he was here on someone else’s orders. Not to save the petite mortal girl from a magical blade. Fucking Shadows.

“Did you tell this someone about Mackie?” I asked. “His quest?” His blade.

Tripp nodded.

“And he’s still willing to side with me?”

“He’s been waiting to do so for years.”

Options bounced around my skull like superballs. Slowly, dreamlike, I pulled Warren’s phone from my pocket and stared at it, trying to anticipate a conversation that had me explaining about Sleepy Mac and asking for sanctuary. That was the one place, I knew, the man from Midheaven couldn’t go. Hidden underground, protected by a security system even the strongest of Shadows couldn’t breach, and located on the other side of reality, it was home to the agents of Light.

And inaccessible to mortals, I thought, sighing. I couldn’t enter even if he did relent.

Which was what Warren would argue without even trying to find another way. I sighed. He’d then probe me for everything I knew about Mackie and Tripp, but what then? Would he have a sudden change of heart? Offer the troop’s protection if I agreed to work as a mortal beard or spy for the troop? Or would he kill me, as Tripp suggested?

“Sleepy Mac killed my warden,” I told Tripp, tilting my head, watching carefully for his response. “He killed a Seer too, a man as powerful as any I’d ever seen.”

Tripp only removed that strange cigarette again and slowly licked his lips. “Do you want to live?”

Was it wrong that I had to think about that for so long? Fletcher grumbled as he plucked leaves from a topiary, but Tripp shot him a silencing look over his shoulder.

If I wanted to live.

I glanced again at the phone Warren had given me, remembering how afraid I’d been before of losing it. Of losing, I now knew, anything else.

Losses aren’t bad things in themselves. Not as long as you remain open to new sensation.

Irritated, I huffed. Like working with Shadows?

Then again, Caine had been of the Shadows. Maybe he’d been born “free,” as he put it, but his lineage was stamped on his disposition as clearly as postage. And yet he’d sacrificed himself to Sleepy Mac’s blade for my sake.

Maybe, while I wasn’t looking-while I was getting reaccustomed to my mortal skin-my old defenses had become my prison. With the agents of Light turning their backs, and the sanctuary closed to me, the city I’d always found refuge in did suddenly resemble more of a tomb. But what had me pushing upright and turning to the mulch machine was that unanswered question, and the full comprehension of a niggling I’d already sensed. My T-Rex brain, I thought with a small laugh. Sparking to life.

Because though I didn’t know what Warren would do to me, I knew I didn’t trust him to protect me, not as I once had. Mortal or not, I no longer counted in his world-view, and he’d like nothing more than for me to disappear, become part of the woodwork…at most a bit of scaffolding on which to build his own idea of the way the world should be. To him, I was just someone to run down with his ambition.

Once you decide a person has no control over you…they no longer do.

And Warren’s mind didn’t create my reality. I would not be overrun because, all- powerful leader of Light or not, I mattered. I counted. And would as long as I lived.

“Your days are numbered, old man.” It was my T-Rex brain talking, pitching my voice low, my lips barely moving. No matter that he wasn’t there to hear it. Tripp heard, and one corner of his mouth lifted as I tossed the phone over the side of the mulcher, waited to hear it clank on the steel bottom, then laid my palm against the red button on the panel to my right. “You’ll go down so hard the earth will quake.”

The mulcher started up with a screeching roar, blades battering my only remaining connection to those I’d once counted as allies in the paranormal realm. Now, like Olivia said, I could live my dreams-or at least what remained of my life-my way. So I left the mulcher running, ensuring that if found, Warren would know exactly what I thought of his treatment of me. Then I nodded and left the nursery the way I came, through the back gate, under the cover of night.

But flanked by Shadows.

11

The supernatural community at large could move around in ways mortals couldn’t, but we just took a cab. Yet when Tripp directed the driver to an address on Main, I couldn’t hide my surprise.

“El Sombrero? Seriously?”

He shrugged, indicating it wasn’t his first choice. Of course, he’d spent the last eighteen years living in an environment about as comfortable as a deep fryer. A momand-pop shop with tonsil-dissolving salsa was probably well behind his vote for Ben & Jerry’s. However, Milo and Fletcher were already debating the merits of a verde relleno versus a red enchilada, while the cab driver-also a fan-put in his vote for the menudo. I just wondered what a handful of rogue agents were doing at the oldest Mexican restaurant in town.

We hopped out on Main Street, and I stared at the neon green and red sign. El Sombrero Cafe was a hole-in- thewall if ever there was one, in the best possible sense of the word. It’d been in the same location since the fifties, and the interior was as dated as the exterior, both adding to its charm.

“You sure it’s open?”

“Well there’s open,” Tripp replied, as I gave the door a fruitless tug, “and then there’s open.” He pulled on the steel handle, and the entrance swung fluid and wide.

“Show-off.”

“You should see me two-step.”

The Big Hat was definitely closed. Every surface wiped down and reset for the next day’s crowd, the kitchen quiet and dark, the scent of rice and beans faint as a memory. Yet a sole man sat in the room’s center, as if stranded there. Posters of matadors and raging bulls surrounded him, and giant hats were pegged indiscriminately