Alysia opened the door a crack. The Onyx Hall was kept dark, which would work in her favor, but she still needed to get outside so she could get to a car and a phone.
Unfortunately, she needed to stand rst, which she did very carefully and incrementally with the help of a red oak bo sta someone had been kind enough to leave lying about. She debated grabbing some of the other weapons that had been left along the back wall, but if she ended up trying to use them, she would only fall over anyway.
Besides, she was a member of Frost. The sta was deadly enough, if she could manage to lift it.
She had to pause to catch her breath once she was outside, but then she circled the building until she found a beat-up old Jeep that looked like it had gone o -roading and possibly rolled down a mountain at least once. She wasn’t the rst to check out its electrical guts, either; the panel was already missing.
Getting in the seat left her panting and sweating, but she managed. Once she was a little farther away, she would nd a phone and call a hospital … and possibly SingleEarth, since they would help with her injuries even if they believed that she was a coldhearted killer.
Shock and adrenaline kept Alysia going as she eased out of the parking lot, grateful that the Jeep had an automatic transmission. Her body did not have any energy to support fear or anger, but she was vaguely aware that if this was Sarik’s fault, the tiger would have to pay in some slow and painful manner.
A car horn blared at her and she jumped. She had zoned out and drifted into the opposite lane. She wasn’t going to get far this way.
CHAPTER 16
LYNZI HAD NO idea what she was asking of him.
Jason knew that was his fault. He had told Lynzi that he had worked for Maya, but he had never explained what that meant. Maya didn’t have
According to vampiric law, Jason belonged to her, but Maya didn’t value her
“possessions” more highly than cash. She wouldn’t refuse to negotiate with SingleEarth. It was only habit that made it seem to him that she would try to snatch him back, when rationally he knew that she would consider giving up one pawn a small price to pay for
SingleEarth’s favor. Maya was practical.
He had to keep telling himself that as he picked up his phone. He didn’t know a direct number for her these days, but he was con dent that he could nd her. After all, what use was a mercenary if no one could reach her to hire her?
Alysia would have been the natural choice for this job. She had a history in Bruja; she knew how to speak the language of payout that piqued a mercenary’s interest. But she was in the hospital now, collateral damage of the current conflict.
He dialed, knowing there was no chance that Maya herself would pick up. He spoke to
“ orists” and “jewelers” and “caterers,” always leaving the same message:
Some of the numbers probably were those of legitimate businesses that had never heard of Maya. It had been six years, after all. But he was sure that some of the contact places he knew were still taking messages. She would hear.
He left messages, grateful that he did not have to hear her voice just yet, and then returned to the residential building. He needed to rest. No, he needed Sarik. He needed her to remind him that he wasn’t the creature Maya had tried to make him.
When he reached their room, though, Sarik wasn’t there. Instead, he found a note scrawled in her handwriting on a piece of SingleEarth stationery. The pen still lay nearby.
He stared at the note. Picked it up. Read it again. Saw in the black ink a telltale wavering that said her hand had been shaking while she’d written these words.
The only thing missing from the room, beyond Sarik herself, was the bag in which she stored her identi cation, cash, and credit cards—items she never needed at the Haven but that she kept handy for when she needed to go out into the world.
He sent himself to the cubs’ enclosure, where his sudden appearance made Mark jump nearly out of his skin and exclaim, “Don’t do that!”
“Sorry. Do you know where Sarik is?”
He could already tell that the cubs were gone. Even if they had been sleeping inside, he would have been able to hear their heartbeats.
“She said she was taking the boys on a eld trip,” Mark answered. “It seemed like a good idea to me.”
It would have been, if she’d been planning to come back.
If she had taken the cubs with her, she could only be going one place: back to her father, the abusive bastard who had so completely terri ed and dominated her for sixteen years that even now, the merest mention of him made her freeze like a squirrel facing an oncoming car.
How many Mistari tribes were there in the United States? It couldn’t be that hard to track down the one she—
Jason’s cell phone rang, and this time it was his turn to feel like a small animal staring into the bright glare of headlights.
He stepped away from Mark before he answered the phone.
“Hello?”
“It is you!” The voice on the other side was light, cheerful even. One of the rst thoughts he had ever had about Maya, when she had found him homeless on the streets, was that she had a lovely voice. “When my Paulo told me I had a message from Jason, I was sure it had to be someone else. It’s such a common name. But now that I’m sure—”
He let out a yelp as she appeared in front of him, ending the call as she met his gaze with her own black one.
“I am so looking forward to hearing your explanation. How’re you doing, darling?”
Words fled.
As usual, Maya was dressed to the nines, which today meant designer jeans, a scarlet kimono-style blouse, three throwing daggers on her left wrist, and a katana in an elaborate sheath at her left hip. Though she originally hailed from Cape Verde, sometime in the last half decade she had apparently developed a taste for Japanese fashion, which meant her thick brown hair was pinned up on top of her head in a style Jason associated with high school girls fascinated with anime.
On the other hand, the adorable pink rhinestone hair-stick he could see was probably sharpened to a deadly point treated with poison.
Jason noticed three hunters creeping closer and held up a hand, indicating that they should pause. He said to Maya, “I work here now. I called you for a business meeting that you might find profitable. Are you going to be professional, or are you just here to play?”
