Bitten to Death

“So speaks the woman with a Spirit Eye, a Spirit Guide, and a tendency to rise from the dead.”

Smartass. “Say I buy your explanation.” Which I think I’m going to have to, dammit. “Does that mean I can’t kill the adult? I mean, if Blas set it on Hamon to suck out his secrets, do you need to know what they are now?”

“I think we can surmise what Blas needed to know without risking our lives any further.”

“Really?”

“Certainly. Blas obviously lied to you. He was the one who wanted Hamon’s authority. Or perhaps he and Disa both wanted it. But it is a powerful position, and ascendance requires secret knowledge to which only Hamon had access. If I had challenged and beaten him, he would have been forced to hand that knowledge over to me. Blas and Disa obviously found another route. But something went wrong, either before or during the coup, and she turned on him.”

“So I can shoot the creepy crawler?”

“Be my guest.”

Finally, good news. Should we celebrate? If I backed up a step Vayl would be pressed against me like a winter coat. Maybe, if I killed the grall, he’d even be in the mood to forgive me for returning Cirilai. Which I was beginning to think I wanted back. I gave myself a mental shake. This is why you shouldn’t hook up with your boss, Jaz. So distracting when you’re trying to concentrate on the job.

I considered the situation for a moment. If the adult hadn’t moved at the prospect of fresh, vulnerable food, it obviously meant to stay put until we left. Or forced it into action. “Somebody’s going to have to get that body jiggling.”

This is going to be so gross. The stuff of nightmares, actually.

“I will do it.” He stepped forward.

“Don’t!” I realized I’d laid my hand on his chest and he was looking down at me, his lips inches from my own. “I . . . it’s just, the grall’s so fast. Speedy enough to take a vamp like Hamon off guard, right?”

“Why, Jasmine, you act as if you care.”

“I . . .” Aaargh!

“Never mind. I have another plan. Give me your belt.” I did as he asked, watched him connect mine to his and then loop one end of the resulting rope around the hilt of the knife. “Ready?” he asked.

I steadied myself and raised Grief. “Yeah.”

Walking to the edge of the sarcophagus, he held one end of the belt rope in his left hand while he balanced the blade of my knife in the other. His throw, strong and true, buried it in the corpse’s thigh. Using careful side-to-side movements, Vayl got the corpse to move. Unfortunately the wire it hung from had some give in it, so it also began to bounce.

“Vayl, this is not a pleasant moment for me,” I confessed.

“No?”

“Locked in a windowless, doorless room with a dancing, headless corpse and a secret sucker that can move fast enough to tear us both a new one if I miss?”

Vayl took a second to ponder. “Think of the body as what Pinocchio would have looked like if he had lied to the Mob.”

“That’s so not funny.”

“Then why are you chuckling?”

“God, we are so warped. And the grall?”

“An amoral gossip that must be silenced before it can spread the word that Santa subcontracts much of his work out to the Chinese.”

“I love Santa.”

“Then take the shot.”

I narrowed my eyes. There it was. Crouched behind the body’s left hip, appearing every third jiggle and bounce, its antennae waving like wrinkled fingers as it tried to figure out what the hell its cover was up to now.

I raised the gun. Took my time. Made the rhythm part of my breathing. One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three—bam!

The grall dropped to the floor. As it began to writhe I shot it again. And again.

“Jasmine?”

“Yeah?”

“I believe it is dead now.”

I looked up at Vayl. “That’s what you get when you malign Santa.”

He nodded gravely. “Indeed.”

Chapter Sixteen

Vayl and I had just emerged from the closet when Sibley appeared at the far end of the hall.