Cheat the Grave

No, it was kinda creepy in a creepy sort of way. Was someone from my old life using Arun and his wealth to get close to my mortals? The coincidence was certainly uncanny, though I couldn’t think of who it might be. As far as I knew, only the agents of Light were aware of the connection between Cher’s family and me, and they were charged with protecting all mortals. Besides, if the Shadow agents knew, these bubbly socialites would already be sleeping in a shallow grave.

Still, my mind winged back to the feeling of being stalked while on the scavenger hunt. I looked back at Cher for signs of concern, but she was busy tousling her hair. I might have to warn her of impending danger later, but I decided against it now. She needed to be steady for her piercing.

Glancing over, I saw Terry holding statue-still, clearly waiting for a new earring. All I could see of the piercer was his hands and forearms as they rubbed alcohol over the area, but Terry was leaning forward into the light, his face ashen with anticipation.

“Are you sure you want to do this? Terry looks like he’s going to pee himself.”

“Terry’s a wuss.” Still peering into the mirror, she gave her newly tousled hair an experimental toss. “I have my Momma’s strong constitution.”

I thought of Suzanne running after a handful of spoiled debutantes, all huffy because someone didn’t hand them a yacht. It made me want to order her into therapy where someone could talk to her about being a chronic people pleaser.

“I mean my real Momma,” Cher said, catching my look and wincing in return. At least she recognized the disorder. “She wrote me letters when she found out she was dying. Loads of them filled with all sorts of advice. I still have them.”

“Wow.” Cher’s birth mother had passed away around the time Cher hit double digits, when a girl would need a mother most. Her father met Suzanne not long after, but because it’d been a May-December romance, he too had since passed. In all the years since, it’d been Cher and Suzanne going it alone, more girlfriends than mother and daughter, with Olivia a steady and welcome third wheel.

Slowly, Cher nodded to herself. “She thought of all the things I’d most need to know-the names of the best plastic surgeons in town, her personal shopper’s home number-and wrote them all down. My father accidentally stored them with her belongings, so I didn’t find them until recently.”

“What a wonderful gift.” Why couldn’t my mother have left me with a treasure trove worth of knowledge and advice? I could have used a straightforward lesson on paranormal espionage and politics. “You’re very lucky.”

A high-pitched squeal sounded as Terry’s earlobe came under fire. Cher glanced back and gulped, her Momma’s constitution getting a test-drive. “Guess it’s time,” she said as a pasty-faced Terry wobbled past. The bus wasn’t even moving.

“Want me to come with?” I asked as Cher shot him a finger wave.

“Accompanying one’s best friend in all things that will eventually be attributed to a misspent youth is in the BFF contract. You know that.”

“I misplaced my copy.” I said, but held out my hand.

“I’ll send you another.”

We strode to the bus’s dark back corner with as much boldness as we could while holding hands. The piercer was reclined, sucking back an entire bottle of water like he’d just run a marathon. Cher’s brows pinched as she took in his scuffed boots, workman’s jeans, and shiny black vest, but he didn’t note it from beneath the low brim of his Stetson. My guess was that he came from one of the rougher ink parlors, and I whispered as much to Cher. “He probably has a name like Tank or Bruise or Bomb.”

We giggled and she settled in the L-shaped corner. When I dropped down next to her, the piercer raised his head and my smile dropped like a stone.

“Hello, Archer.”

Harlan Tripp leaned forward, placed his elbows on his knees and cracked his knuckles. I blinked twice, my mind needing an extra moment to catch up as I stared at the rogue Shadow agent I’d both mocked and left frying in another world.

Trapped there, I corrected, swallowing hard. His body set to a slow burn in a world closer to earth’s core than this one. I wouldn’t have recognized him as Shadow if we hadn’t met before, but knew full well a charred skeleton lurked beneath his exterior of flesh, as did breath so rancid it could billow from hell’s belly itself. I couldn’t smell it now, but memory alone had my palms sweating.

My first impulse was to throw myself in front of Cher. My second was to run…though realistically I couldn’t save either of us. Tripp could catch me, kill me, without breaking a sweat. Even a rogue, stripped of troop status, could blow a hole through a mortal’s life with a rap of his fist…and Tripp was famous for loving to do just that.

I was fucked.

“Can’t say I like whatcha done with the place,” he said conversationally, motioning to the fat painter’s splats of neon outside the bus, like he saw it everyday. Telltale neon bulged from the desert floor, but beyond that there was little that remained of the Vegas he’d left. As proof, he said, “Was that a fucking pirate ship settin’ anchor in the middle of the Strip?”

“The light show’s a nice touch, though,” Cher said, oblivious to the tension between us.

He ignored her. “Even the grand ones-the Trop, Fla mingo, Caesar’s-they all look different. And what the fuck did you do with the Hacienda? And the little Glass Pool Inn?” Tripp still looked hard and mean, but also confused.

I shrugged…though I was melancholic about that one’s destruction, too. “Eighteen years is a long time to be gone,” I said stiffly. “Though not quite long enough.”

Tripp shook his head. “Looks like a new Vegas got built up over the old.”

“Can’t stop progress.” I shrugged.

“Can’t stop much,” he agreed.

“How’d you get out?”

Tripp’s feral grin returned. “What you should be asking yourself is if I’m the only one who did.”

No, I’d ask him, I thought, relaxing a bit. It looked like he was just here to talk.

“Now git up.”

Or not.

“Let me put it this way, Archer,” he said when I didn’t move. “Throw up the sponge now, and I’ll murder you gently.”

Despite the deafening beats of my heart, I managed a sarcastic drawl. “Harlan, you sure talk mighty funny.”

His sharp, black eyes darted from me to Cher. “Eighteen years of frying like bacon has made me a mite impatient. You’ll come…or she will.”

“Silly boy. I don’t come for just anyone.” The retort was classic Cher, though her voice shook as she spoke. No wonder Terry had been white-faced while having his lobe pierced. A mortal facing a Shadow was like a rat facing a hungry snake. Even if you’d never seen one before, you instinctively knew which side of the predator/prey relationship you were on.

Tripp knew it too. “Fine.”

One moment I was seated, the next I’d been hauled up, neck trapped beneath an unyielding forearm. “You still stink,” I managed before my eyesight grew spotty. I knew he heard me over Cher’s screams because his clinch tightened. Would he really kill me in front of all these people?

He loves to blow holes through mortal lives.

Yes, he would.

The partiers nearest us took up Cher’s chorus, a call-and-response of ascending fear. Terry flat passed out again. At least I think it was him. I was busy blacking out, so didn’t note the finer details. Unlikely relief came in the form of Cher launching herself onto Tripp’s back. His grip on my neck loosened enough for me to suck in one great breath before he resumed an even tighter noose as he angled from side to side. I let that last, lovely bit of air go in a futile warning. “Let go, Cher!”

He could dislodge her by throwing her through a window, squeezing her neck until her arteries popped, caving her head in against the minibar. Sure enough, after another second a thwack sounded before a soft limb fell into view, and Cher sprawled unconscious on the bench beside me. I had no breath left to scream.

The bus swayed, partygoers scrambling for the door in full riot. Tripp surprised me by stumbling as well, before