Dying Is My Business

dead.

She rolled Thornton gently onto his back. Then she depressed the center of the starburst pendant with her thumbs. A long, sharp spike popped out of its back with a metallic snik. She held it over Thornton and chanted some words I didn’t understand. They were in some other language, one I’d never heard before, but there was something eerie about it that drew a shiver down my spine.

“What are you doing?”

She ignored me. When she was done chanting, she took a deep breath and slammed the pendant down on Thornton’s chest, driving the spike into his heart like a dagger blade.

“No!” I shouted, reaching to stop her, but it was already too late. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

She lifted Thornton’s head gently and slid the chain around his neck. “Now we just have to wait and give the Breath of Itzamna time to work.”

I stared at her, wondering if I ought to leave her behind after all. She was clearly out of her mind. Or maybe the whole damn world had gone mad. After all, I’d died nine times already but was still here, alive and kicking. In what kind of sane world did that happen?

She saw the confusion in my face and said, “That’s what the amulet’s called, the Breath of Itzamna. It was given to me by a nine-hundred-year-old Mayan shaman in a tattoo parlor in Los Angeles. Let’s hope it works as well as he said it would.”

Ridiculously, I felt a pang of disappointment that someone so beautiful and brave could also be batshit crazy.

Against my better judgment, I asked, “Do you really expect me to believe there are nine-hundred-year-old Mayan shamans living in L.A.?”

“Just one,” she corrected me. “The others are in San Diego these days, mostly. They share an apartment complex near the zoo.”

Of course. I should have guessed as much. “That’s insane,” I told her.

“Not really,” she said. “It’s nice there and the rents are cheap.” She turned to me, her brow knitting with sudden confusion, as if it had only just occurred to her that I was a complete stranger. “Who are you?”

“My name’s Trent.”

“Trent.” She shook my hand. Hers was so small it practically disappeared in my grip. “I’m Bethany. Thank you, Trent. If you hadn’t come along when you did, I don’t know what would have happened. I guess I owe you my life. I don’t think I could have held off six gargoyles on my own, even with the Anubis Hand.”

I raised my eyebrows. “The what now?”

Bethany nodded at the staff on the floor with the mummified human fist. “Only two things in the world can hurt a gargoyle. Sunlight—or any bright light, really—and the Anubis Hand.” She looked at the pile of ashes by the wall that had once been Harelip. “But maybe you can help me out, Trent, because the thing is, I’ve never seen the Anubis Hand do that before. It can hurt gargoyles, it can knock them unconscious, but it’s never burned them to cinders before.”

I shrugged. “Maybe you can only knock them out, but I’m, what, three times your body mass? No disrespect, but I gave that gargoyle a pretty good smack.”

She looked at me skeptically. “Well, whatever you did, it saved my life. Probably yours, too.”

Not likely, I thought. I turned away from her, and Bethany gasped in alarm. “Trent, you’re injured!”

The adrenaline from the fight had numbed the pain so much that I’d forgotten about the wounds on my back. So much for getting through the night without ruining another shirt. “I’ll be okay,” I told her. “I’m tougher than I look.”

“It’s not every day someone walks away from a gargoyle attack,” she said. “You should count yourself lucky.”

“I guess so.” I still didn’t fully understand what had happened. Gargoyles, a staff called the Anubis Hand, an amulet named the Breath of Itzamna, a man who just a few minutes before had been a wolf … If the door had opened just then and a magical, telepathic Q’horse had trotted in, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

“Come on, Thornton,” Bethany whispered.

“What exactly are you expecting to happen here?” I pressed.

She ignored me and continued talking to the dead body. “We need you. You’re the only one who knows where it is now.”

“Where what is?”

Finally, she acknowledged my presence again. She shook her head and said, “A box. It’s nothing you need to concern yourself with.”

Oh God. In all the chaos, I’d forgotten about the box. My stomach dropped. Bethany was one of the squatters Underwood had mentioned. I’d made a serious mistake. I saw that now. I’d gotten carried away in the moment and let my guard down. I never should have told her my name, or found out hers. That was only going to make it harder to do my job.

“Tell me about the box,” I said. She didn’t answer. She kept her eyes on Thornton.

I’d saved her life, only to have to kill her myself. Because she didn’t just know my name, she’d seen my face. She could identify me, trace me right back to Underwood, which was exactly what he didn’t want. I reached behind my back for the gun in my waistband. My mouth went as dry as sand. My heart lurched into my throat. My fingers grazed the gun’s handle. This was important, I told myself. There was too much riding on this.

When the box is in my hands, and the ones you’ve taken it from are dead, then I’ll tell you everything you want to know.

I wrapped my fingers around the grip of the gun. My index finger touched the trigger guard.

“Bethany, where is the box?”

I started to pull the gun free.

Between us, Thornton sat up suddenly, gasping air into his lungs.

Seven

There was no doubt in my mind that Thornton had been dead. Well and truly dead. I’d seen the body with my own eyes, clear as day, and they didn’t come any deader. And yet, one minute he was lying motionless on the floor with his guts practically falling out of his stomach, and the next he was sitting up and hyperventilating like he’d just surfaced from a deep-sea dive.

Startled, I let go of my gun, leaving it tucked in the back of my pants. Adrenaline surged through me, my muscles coiling, ready to spring away if he made any sudden moves. In the back of my mind, I wondered if this was how Bennett had felt when he saw me coming for him after I died.

The thought blossomed into another, more earth-shaking one. Was it possible Thornton was like me?

“Thornton?” Bethany said.

He stared at her, gasping and choking, still trying to catch his breath. “Bethany? What happened to me? I—I can’t breathe.”

“Take it slow,” she said. “Don’t force it. Just stop trying to breathe and you’ll be okay.” She turned to me. “Help me get him up.”

I closed my mouth, suddenly aware that it had been hanging open this whole time. Bethany took one of Thornton’s arms. I reached for the other, then paused. I didn’t want to touch him. I didn’t want to be anywhere near him. I had the sudden and inexplicable urge to beat him with a shovel until he stayed down for good.

“Please, I can’t do this alone,” she said.

We didn’t have a lot of time before the gargoyles came back, so I reluctantly took Thornton’s other arm. His skin felt cool and clammy, like a slab of raw meat. I didn’t like it, it didn’t feel right, but I helped him get to his feet. He was heavy, cumbersome, awkward. In that moment, I finally understood the term dead weight.

Thornton wobbled unsteadily on his feet. He tried to walk, but his knees buckled under him and he stumbled. Bethany and I kept him upright. “I can’t feel my legs,” he said.

“Just take it slow,” Bethany repeated.

I glanced at the hole in the warehouse ceiling and wondered just how slow we could really take it. Bethany