Cheat the Grave

that didn’t bother me. If things went my way, I’d soon return to a realm where this cold, blasted patch of desert would be as dreamy as a day at Laguna Beach.

Because Midheaven wasn’t done with me yet.

And after reading this manual, I wasn’t done with it either.

I was guided back to the rogue bunker by another hurricane lamp. It was a beacon leading me closer, and though the night hid all but his outline, there was no question who stood there. Yet I was surprised to also find a bistro table set up right behind the cell’s cavernous mouth, complete with two battered chairs and a softly fluttering tablecloth. Less surprising were the two shot glasses and half-full tequila bottle perched atop, and when Carlos caught me peering at the bottle’s glass bottom, he laughed as heartily as he had when escaping the Light. “Not this time, mi molcahete. Not this time.”

I took a seat. “A candlelit dinner in the middle of a nuclear blast site. Carlos, you do know how to romance a girl.”

He pretended to flip back the tails of an invisible tuxedo as he settled across from me. “I’m trying to make up for the state of the place. Maybe entice you to stay…”

I looked away as his voice trailed off. He thought I might want to run after being attacked by a tulpa, a madman with a soul blade, and the entire troop of Light in the same evening. Shows how well he knew me. Though I had to admit, a fresh start elsewhere sounded good. But that wasn’t my life. I turned back to him. “Alex will die.”

Carlos inclined his head. “By morning at the latest.”

“Faster than Tripp.”

“A more severe wound. Plus, I suspect Harlan picked up some vital immunities during his time spent in Midheaven. One can’t go through a heated kiln without being changed. Strengthened.”

He raised his glass for a toast, brows lifting meaningfully at me as well. I ignored that. I didn’t feel any stronger for having been in Midheaven. That place had stripped me raw. I also, for once, ignored the drink.

“Will they stay long, do you think?” I asked Carlos after he’d sipped.

“Of course,” he said, jerking his head in the direction of the city. “They’ll pace the barrier until morning, trying to figure out a way around it and into our hideout. They are stunned by the bright new knowledge of our existence. It upends the world as they knew it…along with your own timely revelations, of course.”

So he’d been in the tunnels long enough to hear about Hunter, I thought, gazing at the tequila. Well, it only made sense. I ran my index finger along the glass rim, dipping my finger into the golden spirit, but still didn’t drink. “Did you know the Jaden Jacks story, Carlos? I mean, had you ever read about it in a manual or even heard the rumor before?”

He shook his head, and sipped. “The ways of the written word are mysterious, weda. As great a magic as any power we possess.”

“But why are some things in the manuals while others aren’t? The open knowledge that Hunter was really Jaden Jacks could have saved him from having to enter Midheaven.”

“Maybe,” Carlos said, with less care than I’d have liked. “Or it could have led to his death. You can only trust that such information is revealed in its heralded time.”

Just like life. I leaned back on the chair, parked on the desert floor. I was nothing special out here on the edge of a crater. Another speck of dust piled on top of the rest.

“For example,” Carlos said, breaking back into my thoughts. “Take a mother in possession of a child’s biological makeup. Maybe she waits some time to tell the babe of her alcoholic uncle, or the cancer riding rampant over her mother’s side. It doesn’t determine a person’s entire fate, but it certainly marks their life. Yet are they to worry of it before misery even visits them? Or are they meant to live well, making the best choices they can, no matter what is fated in the future?”

I could feel my emotions passing like storms in my expressions. Doubt and bitterness and anger all made appearances in sweeping succession. It made me want to hide my face in the tequila until my lips were numb. But there was something-someone-else I wanted more. “So you’re saying it’s for our own good?”

“I only trust that it’s for our own good.”

“So what about now? The Light knows where you are. It won’t be long before the Shadow does too.” Because Warren would let the secret out. The Shadow and Light were enemies, but rogue agents were a common one. A third party would upset the balance between the two warring factions, and the Tulpa wouldn’t welcome that either.

“It doesn’t matter.” Carlos said, again with that shrug. “They can’t cross the line.”

“But Mackie?” I asked, because that’s where the line blurred.

Carlos set his glass down. “And now you have come to the reason we’re here.”

Because as a rogue, Mackie could cross into Frenchman’s Flat as easily as the rest of us, and with the Light stalking the perimeter like wolves, it wouldn’t be long before he pinpointed my location. My mind-so recently settled, and spinning with joy-cringed. This was why I wasn’t drinking. Best to face fated truths sober.

“Where is he?”

“We led him to the California state line. He’s probably still in Barstow somewhere. Maybe he stopped at the outlet mall.”

My mouth quirked upward, but only at one side. “Can we stop him?”

“Sleepy Mac is our bunker buster.” Carlos gazed at the stars and blew out a deep breath. “He will plow through anyone and everything standing in the way of his quest to murder you.”

“Comforting, Carlos. Thank you.”

“I wish I could say differently.” He shook his head. “But I’ve never met a being so single-minded and strong.”

Yet he sat with me, sipping tequila in the starlight on the edge of an abyss, even though Mackie couldn’t be stopped. It was forlornly comforting…and made me think again of Alex and Tripp and the rogue agents forming a family out of a bunch of paranormal misfits. Carlos should be running from me, but instead he was sitting. Dining. And the men downstairs were celebrating, even though fate might have plans as heinous as Alex’s for them.

“So then what do you say we speed things up a bit?”

Carlos’s eyes dilated, and I knew that beyond the liquor in his glass, he smelled something that excited him.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think we should allow Mackie to even attempt to breach the cell’s crater.” It was the least I could do for those who’d stood, and sat, and lay dying, for me. “You guys need this place. It’s your home.”

“And you suggest?”

“A show of boldness verging on the insane,” I said grandly, pouring him more tequila.

“I like it already,” he said in his liquid, rhythmic voice, though for the first time he looked uncertain.

Smiling, I reached over and squeezed his hand. “Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, and more importantly, the date of the grandest, most lavish wedding this city has ever seen. The papers have been announcing it for weeks. Dignitaries from all over the world are expected to attend. I’m a bridesmaid.”

He cocked a dark brow. “Which Mackie surely knows.”

“Which,” I emphasized, “means I’ll have to stick very close to the Tulpa.”

The irony in sticking close to one enemy to avoid another had one corner of my mouth lifting, but Carlos’s considering exhale was a teakettle’s hiss. “This is your grand plan? Kill the Tulpa in front of hundreds of guests, gain the aureole, then escape Mackie for Midheaven?”

And stop Suzanne from marrying a freakishly obsessed man with ties to a paranormal underworld. After that?

I was going to fucking ferry Hunter away from Solange and back into this world. Unless I died trying, I thought, shrugging. “You have a better one?”

“Wedita,” he said, laughing humorlessly, “I never thought we would get this far. I have no plan at all.”

“Okay, then.”

Carlos reclined again, one arm over the back of his chair. “Of course, you’re forgetting one grave detail. You can