Dying Is My Business

stopped and turned toward me, as if somehow it knew I was watching. Inside the hood was a skull, not of bone but of polished, gleaming gold. The flickering light from the alley reflected off its hollow eyes and rictus grin.

The shadowborn thumped angrily on the other side of the door, and Bethany shouted, “Trent, the dresser!” I turned to look at her, then the door, then back to the window. Below, the sidewalk was empty. The shape was gone. So was the strange flickering light.

“I thought I saw…” I started to say, then stopped. What did I think I’d seen? The Grim Reaper? Death finally coming for me? Had someone really been there, or was I seeing things?

I slid the dresser across the floor and propped it in front of the door as a barricade. The shadowborn continued banging from the other side. It sounded like they were throwing their shoulders into it, trying to force it open. The dresser rocked away from the door. Without its drawers, it wasn’t heavy enough to do the job, but there was no time to gather them and put them back in. Instead, I put my back to the dresser and dug my boots into the carpet.

Another heavy thump. The door rattled in its frame and the dresser bucked behind me. “We need to get out of here, fast,” I said. “It’s too far down to jump out the window. We’d never make it without breaking our legs on the sidewalk, and then we’d be sitting ducks. You got anything else in that vest of yours that can help? Like maybe a rope ladder?”

Bethany shook her head. “Besides, we can’t leave without Ingrid.”

“Ingrid’s dead,” I said. It came out with all the delicacy of a blunt object to the head, but I had to break the news to her and we didn’t exactly have time for tact.

Bethany’s shoulders slumped. “Oh God. She insisted on staying downstairs and holding them off so we could find a place to hide. I told her it was too dangerous, but…”

The shadowborn battered the door. The dresser lurched against my back. I dug my boots deeper into the carpet and hoped the door would hold.

Thornton paced back and forth across the floor, limping on stiff legs. The decomposition that plagued him in his human form had transferred to his wolf form as well. His gray pelt was mangy, knotted, and in places thin enough to show the discolored, rotting skin beneath. The stench of decay came off him even more pungently than before, caught and amplified by all the hair. The amulet’s lights pulsed rhythmically from where it sat embedded in the fur of his chest, above the dark zigzag of stitches along his underbelly.

“I don’t understand,” Bethany said, pulling my attention back to her. “This house was supposed to be safe. How did the shadowborn get in? Did the ward fail?”

“No,” I said, “the ward is still up. I felt it downstairs, just as strong as before.”

“Then how the hell did they find us?” she demanded.

“They’re not the only ones,” I said. “Someone else got inside. Last night, when you were asleep.”

Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. “What? Who?”

“His name is Bennett. Was Bennett. He’s dead now.”

She blinked. “You killed him?”

“Complicated question, but no, when he stopped by he was already dead. He was all … messed up.”

“You should have told me someone got in,” Bethany said angrily.

“I didn’t have a chance. He gave me something, a charm I think, and the next thing I knew it zapped me across town to Columbus Circle. But first Bennett warned me. He said something was coming for me. Bethany, this is all my fault. It’s me they’re looking for.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “They’re not looking for you, they’ve been turning this place upside down looking for the box. That’s the only reason Thornton and I are still in one piece. They were too busy trying to find the box to look for us.”

“That doesn’t make sense. The box isn’t even here. You said it was with Gregor.”

“They don’t know that.” She chewed her bottom lip as she thought. “Whoever summoned them gave them the wrong information. But it still doesn’t explain how they got past the ward.”

Ingrid had wondered the same thing. She’d said someone had betrayed us.

And then it hit me. God, how could I have been so stupid? I’d wondered why Bennett was bothering to help me, but I should have trusted my instincts. When I’d come back to the house, the front door was unlocked. Someone had to have done that from the inside, and there was only one person who would have.

Bennett. He’d led the shadowborn right into the safe house.

If I saw that dead son of a bitch again, I would put a stake through his fucking heart.

“It was Bennett,” I told Bethany. “He lied to me. He played me like a damn fool.” But if Bennett and the shadowborn were working together, why give me advance warning? Why get me out of the house before they came? What was he up to?

The dresser bucked hard against me, as if all three shadowborn had thrown themselves against the door at once.

“You said he gave you a charm?” Bethany asked. “Let me see it.”

Bracing my legs, I pulled the small, bean-shaped object out of my pocket and tossed it to her quickly.

Bethany studied the charm a moment, turning it over in her hand. “It’s a displacer, a limited range teleportation charm. They’re almost impossible to come by and extremely difficult to engineer. Dead or not, this Bennett has some impressive skills.”

“I doubt he made that thing,” I said. “That’s what keeps sticking in my head. If Bennett had access to something like this, he would still be alive.”

She frowned. “You should have told me. It’s never a good sign when the dead are up and walking.”

Thornton growled at her.

“Present company excluded,” she added.

“But that’s the weird thing, he wasn’t like Thornton,” I said. “He didn’t have an amulet. He was just … walking and talking.”

“That’s impossible,” she said. “Spirits of the dead can only possess the living, they can’t possess dead bodies, not even their own. At least, not without the help of a charm like the Breath of Itzamna. And to even get a dead body to rise at all is…” She paused. “Wait. Did you see anything in his eyes, like a light that didn’t belong there?”

I nodded, gritting my teeth as I pushed back against the lurching dresser. “A red light.”

Thornton stopped pacing. He turned to Bethany and whined.

“Trent, that wasn’t the man you knew,” she said. “That was a revenant, a dead body controlled by magic. It’s a puppet, nothing more.”

“But he knew me,” I said. “He mentioned things only he would know.”

“Whoever created the revenant would have access to his memories as long as his brain was still fresh enough. But to even create a revenant, you’d have to be an extremely powerful necromancer…” She trailed off, chewing her lip again. “I don’t like this. Something’s going on. Revenants, the shadowborn … this is much bigger than we thought.”

There was another thump on the door. This time, the sharp tip of a katana broke through the wood. I flinched away from the blade but kept my back against the dresser.

“We’re running out of time,” I said. “Tell me you’ve figured out a way to get past the three zombie musketeers out there.”

She sighed. “We can’t, that’s the problem. We’re trapped here. The Avasthi phalanx is the only thing keeping us safe. The minute we leave this room, we’re dead.”

“There’s got to be a way,” I said. “We fought off the gargoyles, we’ll fight these guys off, too.”

She shook her head the way you do when a small child says things that are funny and sad at the same time. “We don’t stand a chance. The shadowborn are trained assassins. They don’t leave survivors.”

“We’re not dead yet,” I told her. “We’ve still got Bennett’s charm, the whatever you call it, the displacer. Do you know how to make it work?”

Her grim expression told me it wasn’t going to be as easy as that. “I do, but displacers are designed to teleport a single individual, not three. It won’t get us all out.” She held the charm out to me. “You should take it. I can get you away from here. This was never your fight to begin with.”

The shadowborn pushed against the door. I strained against the dresser to keep the door from breaking. “Forget it. We’ll find another way.”