“Did you see the way he looks at her?”
“Maybe he just wants to get laid.”
“Good luck with that,” Jim muttered. “And yeah, she’s going to be an asset for us.”
The question now was, Where were the crossroads. Sooner or later, Devina was going to set up a choice, and Jim had until then to get a completely conscienceless, power-hungry despot to do a one-eighty.
Great. Juuuust great.
He was so completely surrounded by job satisfaction at the moment that he was positively choking on the shit.
“Let’s get down to that hotel,” he said.
“What hotel?”
“The Marriott.” He went for his wallet. There was a credit card in it under the Jim Heron name that was up-to-date—and MasterCard wasn’t going to know he was technically dead because he hadn’t told them.
Adrian wiped his mouth with a Goldstein’s Deli napkin. “Are you sure you want this to be so public? Lot of people downtown, and Devina loves to be the center of attention.”
“Yeah, but the lack of privacy will tie her hands—first of all, she’ll have to clean up any messes. And second, she’s going to have to be very careful about how she proceeds in this round—and I can’t believe that killing innocent civilians of the human variety is going to put the Maker in His happy place.”
Jim went over to the dresser, such as it was, and got his holsters out. Slipping them on, he put his dagger in on one side and another of his guns in the other. Checking his pockets, he went to see how many cigarettes he had—
The folded piece of paper in the ass of his jeans stopped the hunt, and he closed his eyes briefly.
There was no reason to take the newspaper article out; he knew it by heart. Every word, every paragraph—and especially the picture.
His Sissy.
Who wasn’t really his.
Always with him. Never forgotten.
Making sure Adrian couldn’t see, he outted the piece of eight-and-a-half-by-eleven, unfolded the page, and sneaked a peek at her face. Nineteen when she was taken by the demon, eternal down below in that wall of souls—
Jim frowned and looked to the door. Matthias had been in that vicious hell. What had he seen inside of it….
Or, f**k, what had he done there?
The idea that that girl was in there suffering was enough to make Jim see white with rage.
“Hurry up, Ad,” he muttered. “We got to go.”
16
Riding in the passenger seat of the Toyota, Matthias felt like things were going at a dead run. In fact, not only was Mels obeying all the traffic laws, but they were creeping along at five miles an hour through a construction zone full of jackhammers and paving trucks.
He glanced over at her. Behind the wheel, she was fine, calm, normal, even with the not-a-clue about Jim Heron.
What the hell had the guy done to her?
Man, ordinarily Matthias would have called bullshit on the whole thing. Hypnosis his ass. Except…well, he was kind of in the same situation, although instead of losing a couple of minutes, he’d pulled a blank on his whole f**king life.
And what did he know from “ordinary” anymore anyway?
As they stopped at a red light on the far side of the assault on asphalt, he stared through his window. “I don’t do well with being out of control.”
“Not many people enjoy it.” Mels took a deep breath. “I’m glad you’re letting me take you back to your hotel.”
If you’re with her, then you can make sure I leave her alone, right?
He pushed his fingers underneath the rims of the Ray-Bans and rubbed his eyes.
“Almost there,” she said. Like she thought he was going to pass out or something.
He wasn’t sporting a case of the vapors, though. “You make me feel…powerless.”
“I don’t think that’s me. I think that’s your situation.”
“No, it’s you.” He had the sense if she were not around, things would be clearer, even if he never remembered another event from his life: In that hypothetical, all he’d have to worry about was himself, and one problem was definitely better than two.
“I’ve tried to do the right thing,” he muttered, and then wondered who he was talking to.
“And you are—by going somewhere you can rest. Things have been chaotic as hell for you in the last twenty-four hours. You need to sleep.”
Letting his head fall against the headrest, he closed his eyes and thought of facing off against Jim, fully prepared to pull the trigger and kill the guy.
Sleep did not appear to be what he needed. More like handcuffs and a psych eval: In that moment when his finger had been on the trigger, there had been no hesitation on his part: not with the speed that he’d put the muzzle to the guy’s jugular, not because there had been witnesses, and not from any sort of moral hmmm-this-is-a-human-life.
Had he been a soldier? Because that shit was nothing civilian, everything military.
Yeah, he thought, that was it. And he’d been one of the most dangerous kinds of fighters…those who had a dead space in the center of their chest. Which meant they were capable of anything.
You hated the man you were.
As the light turned green, Mels took them past a section of minimalls, the stores like LEGOs linked together on the far sides of narrow parking lots. It was everything he never noticed, the cutesy coffee shops, the places that peddled folklore gifts, the low-end jewelers and dollar stores. So banal. So day-by-day. So normal—
“I tried to commit suicide.”
Mels hit the brake for a hairbreadth, even though traffic was flowing evenly down the four-lane stretch of byway.
“Did you…” She cleared her throat. “Is your memory coming back?”
“Bits and pieces.”
“What happened? I mean, if it’s not too personal.”
Thinking back to Jim Heron, he answered with the other man’s words. “I didn’t like who I was.”
“And who were you?”
Dark as night, cold as winter, cruel as a blade. But he kept that to himself. “You’re tenacious, you know that.”
She touched her sternum. “Reporter. It’s part of the job description.”
“I’m learning.”
Matthias closed his eyes again and listened to the rise and fall of the engine. When something warm and soft covered his wrist, he jumped. It was her hand, her elegant hand.
On some level, he couldn’t believe she wanted to touch him.
Swallowing hard, he gave her a squeeze and then retracted from the contact.