“How you gonna bury the hatchet with a dead man? You gonna bring along a necromancer?”
“I want to visit his grave. It’s a perfect time. My family’s out of the country. There’s zero risk.”
Shay shook her head. “You want to go visit that grave? You’re gonna end up in a grave, you fucking idiot. Just because I think it’s safe for you to have an apartment doesn’t mean I think you should go back to the lion’s den. I won’t let you.”
“Maybe I’m not asking if you’ll let me.”
Shay marched right up to Peyton and grabbed him by the shirt. “You think you intimidate me, Peyton? I had a fucking invisible mob chase me the other night. A giant cobra tried to eat me recently, and I went to war with an entire gang. Don’t try tough guy with me. You can’t fucking pull it off.” She let go of his shirt and pushed him away.
Peyton stumbled back and looked down at the ground, his face red.
Shay sighed. She wasn’t trying to be a bitch, but the risk was too great for a minimum payoff. It wasn’t like he’d even get anything out of it. Closure? His brother, at the minimum, still wanted him dead.
“I want to make a deal with you.” Peyton forced himself to look up.
“A deal?”
“You go with me to NYC so I can visit my father’s grave.”
Shay narrowed her eyes. “Why would I do that?”
“Because I know where you can get some adamantine.”
“You son of a bitch. You found some, and you’ve been holding out of me.”
Rage mixed with respect. The more Peyton learned how to set up leverage to protect himself, the longer he’d last if anything ever happened to Shay.
Peyton lifted his chin higher. “If you want to pull a gun and threaten me, do it.”
“I just want to understand, if we go to New York, you might die.”
“No, I won’t.”
“How can you be so sure?”
Peyton managed a smile. “Because you’ll have my back.”
Shay ran her hands through her hair. “You’re a fucking idiot, but whatever, you have a deal.”
Shay continued her IR sweep of the graveyard. Her recent experience in Ohio only reinforced that relying only on one’s normal sight to detect enemies might end with one’s death. She set up a small tripod connected to an antenna and set it on the ground before flipping the on switch.
She flipped her goggles up and then pulled out her phone to check the LIDAR feed from the black drone hovering about 500 feet above them. As far as she could tell, they were the only people in or near the graveyard. Not that she expected a huge crowd at midnight.
Yeah, going to a graveyard at midnight. With my luck lately, fucking Dracula will show up.
She waved to Peyton in a nearby gray Kia. It was the most non-descript car she could find on short notice.
Peyton stepped out of the car, a pensive expression on his face and a small framed picture of him and his father in one hand and a shovel in the other.
“This is still idiotic,” Shay muttered.
“My life to risk.”
“Let’s just make it quick.”
She fell in behind Peyton as he made his way to his father’s grave.
HERE LIES WILLIAM ALEXANDER COOLIDGE. LOVING FATHER AND HUSBAND.
Peyton handed Shay the shovel and then stared down at the grave in silence for several minutes as she started digging.
“I know he was a son of a bitch in a lot of ways, Shay. I’m not an idiot. It’s just… family is difficult. Thanks for helping with this, though. I think… it’s what I needed.”
Shay shoveled another pile of dirt from the grave. She didn’t care about going six feet down, just far enough that they could hide Peyton’s picture. A coming rainstorm forecast for the next morning would hide the evidence they were ever there.
“Family’s a weird thing to me.” Shay sighed. “My parents were worthless, and I gave up on them when I was much younger than you.” She laughed. “Who the hell knows, though? You know it’s like Brownstone. That dude has been a lone wolf his entire life, and now he’s suddenly inherited a daughter.”
“You’re sure spending a lot of time with that guy lately. Shit, you helped him rip the heart out of the local Harriken. You into him?”
Shay scoffed and pointed to her hole. “Of course not. Toss your picture in there. You can fill the hole.”
Some truths Shay wasn’t ready to share with anyone, even the man she now considered a friend.
Peyton dropped the picture into the hole and took the offered shovel. “Not saying there’s anything wrong with that. I mean if he looks like what I’ve seen in the pictures, got a lot of nice muscles. Chicks dig muscles.”
“Trust me. It’s not like that. Brownstone… it’s all professional.”
“Helping him kill a bunch of Harriken was all professional?”
Shay shrugged. “Now he owes me, and I can use all those muscles and guns to help me when I need it.”
Peyton shoveled some dirt back into the hole. “Whatever you say.”
An hour later, Shay parked in an underground lot, miles away from the graveyard. Neither she or Peyton had said much of anything since leaving the graveyard.
“Okay, Peyton. I helped you. Now you can help me.”
Peyton sighed. “You know, I would have told you anyway.”
“Huh?”
“About the adamantine.” Peyton shrugged. “Even if you didn’t help me with the grave thing. Not everything has to be a bargain, you know. I just… whatever.”
Shay stared at him for a moment and nodded. “Okay, from what you told me on the plane, the guy who has the metal is some sort of collector? This Larry Patino?”
“Yeah. Strange, strange guy. From what I can tell, he collects rare materials and resells them, but he’s also ruthless as hell. My research says he got the metal by killing a dwarf who’d been hired to make an item for a different client.”
Shay rubbed her
