She curled her fingers to her palm. “Everything works.” She pulled her shoulders back.
“Don’t touch me for a while,” I said. “I’m in control, but it’s not solid.”
She nodded.
I finally turned my full attention to Victor.
He was on his back, in his pajama pants, his shirt cut to shreds, the edges of it burned. Blood soaked the carpet. Terric was kneeling in it.
I walked the few steps to Victor’s prone body. It seemed to take three long years before I reached his side. I rested my hand on Terric’s shoulder and for a second, he leaned his head against my arm.
I felt his sorrow as if it were my own. Because it was.
I wanted to scream. Instead Terric whispered a prayer. It was the words of a very old spell—Peace.
Grief knotted my throat and clenched my gut. I didn’t have time for grief. I couldn’t have time.
So I pushed it away, fed it to the monster within me. Any pain would sate it, even my own.
Terric lifted his head away from me and stood as I knelt, trading places, his hand falling now on my shoulder. Perhaps it seemed an odd thing, the way we moved in tandem without thought, but it was natural as breathing to me.
“The marks,” Terric said.
I moved the edge of Victor’s shirt away, uncovered the shredded mess that was his torso. He had been carved, and carved, and carved again.
Spells: Pain, Refresh, Fire, Refresh, Crush, Break, Sever. Refresh, and Refresh again. Every dark agony cut into him in a continuous circuit of unending torture.
The bastard hadn’t even had the fucking decency to carve Death into his skin. He had carved Life instead. He had squeezed every last ounce of pain out of Victor.
And in the blood around his body was another spell. But from the ragged streak trailing off to one side, it was clear that the spell had been interrupted before it was finished.
“Eli,” Terric and I said at the same time.
It wasn’t a name anymore.
It was the shape of the thing we were going kill.
Chapter 25
I paced. Smoked. Just outside his room. Just over the threshold of his death.
Waiting. For Terric to finish talking. Couldn’t remember who was here worth talking to. Didn’t care.
Cigarette burned down. I flicked it to the fireplace as I paced past, lit the next one. Hungry. Angry.
Because there wasn’t room in me for grief.
Just rage.
The floor cracked like ice under my feet. I’d drawn all that could be drawn out of the wooden floor, out of the bracers beneath them. Had drawn all of the moisture from the air. Three plants in the room: dead. The bushes outside: withered.
Six people in the house, only one was dead: Victor. But there would be more if I stayed longer.
Rings on my fingers hissed and snapped as I turned and followed my anger back to the other side of the room.
This house was my cage. And I was an animal who wanted out. But I’d stay here until Terric told me differently.
Because I’d promised Zay I would listen to him.
I didn’t know if Terric called Zay or not. Hadn’t been paying attention to the bedroom’s blood-covered walls, hadn’t listened while the police came in and Terric told me to stay in the living room and kill no one. Had no idea where Dessa was.
Better that I didn’t.
I was anger. Anger that keened for the hunt. Eli had said he’d give us a day, maybe less.
Eli had lied. He was never going to give us time.
Terric was walking my way, I could feel it before I saw him.
Strode into the room. Still had a streak of dried blood in his white hair, blood on his jeans, his shirt. Victor’s blood.
His eyes were as hard and steady as his stride.
Didn’t stop, didn’t pause. Walked right up to me. Stuck one hand against my shoulder, and grabbed the back of my neck with the other.
“I need you to come back, Shame,” he growled. “If you can’t fight the magic in you, I will.”
The rings on my fingers hissed with magic. The stone on his chest caught white fire.
Life and Death pushed between us like two magnets repelling each other while being shoved together.
Then Life slipped like a clean knife to clash with Death in the middle of my head.
It hurt.
And with pain came clarity.
“...are you clear on that, Shamus?” he was saying.
“I got the last half,” I said.
“We are going to let the police take care of this. You and I are going home together so I can keep an eye on you.”
Oh, that was not going to fly. Terric’s fingers dug into the back of my head, and I realized he wasn’t telling
“Jesus,” I said. “Fine. But you are not my fucking boss, Conley.”
His expression washed in relief. He must have thought that I wouldn’t catch on to his lie and help him tell it. Or maybe he didn’t think I’d return to a semblance of sanity.
Right now I’d do fucking anything to get out of this house. Because I had a man to kill.
We had a man to kill.
Terric let go and stepped back, his body language falling into that corporate clean-cut, responsible, trustworthy falsity. Sure, sometimes Terric was all of those things. But right now I knew he wanted Eli just as dead as I did.
“I’ll keep him for the night,” Terric said. “Please let me know if you get any leads on this.”
“I will,” Detective Stotts said, not unkindly. “We upped the drive-bys on Allie and Zay’s house too. Do you want us to send a unit past your place every hour or so?”
“No,” Terric said smoothly. “If anything happens, we’ll break magic and Hold him.”
“Are you sure you can do that?” Stotts looked over at me.
I just gave him a slow blink.
“I can control him,” Terric said, meaning me, not Eli. “I promise you.”
Stotts nodded, but didn’t look away from me. “If you have any trouble at all, call me. We can lock him up and put him under so far he won’t even know what his name is.”
I couldn’t help it, I smiled.
I could never forget my name because it was stamped in the face of every person I saw: Death.
Stotts’s gaze finally skittered away. With a nod to Terric, he walked back to the other beating hearts in the room.
“Let’s go, Shame,” Terric said.
He walked toward the door. I followed, the floor snapping like old glass beneath my boots.
Then we were outside. His car was there. And so was another pulse beat—Dessa.
“I’m going with you,” she said.
“This isn’t any of your business,” Terric said.
“We’re hunting Eli, aren’t we?” I said, my voice a little too low.
Terric didn’t say anything, just shot me a look.
“She wants him just as dead as we do. She comes.”
