"Who came up with the password Quasimodo?" Spade muttered as he got out of his car.
"Hello, Spade," I called out, shaking the debris off the rake I'd made from thin strips of metal and a truck axle.
Spade stared up at me, revulsion and disbelief competing on his handsome face.
"Lucifer's hairy ball sack. You've become a Morlock."
Seeing Spade looking so suave in his white shirt with his shiny black shoes and creased pants reminded me that I was covered head to toe in dirt and probably smelled like a bad case of flatulence.
"I've been buried underneath a junkyard for days, what did you expect?"
Spade slammed the door to his car. Just looking at it, I fought an impulse to jump in and drive until I passed out at the wheel.
"I can't sit back and watch you and Crispin drown in your own stubbornness any longer. Good Christ, Cat, just die already and be done with it."
I blinked. "Fuck you too, pal."
"Move back to your vehicle, you're not expected," Techno, one of the vampires stationed there, said. He'd come around from the side of the building and had an Uzi that was loaded with silver bullets pointed at Spade.
"I'm on the list, you imbecile," Spade barked. "Now turn around before I break that toy off in your arse."
Spade's back was to me. I grabbed a nearby tire and chucked it at him, smiling to see tread marks ruin the perfection of his white shirt. "Don't talk to him that way, he's doing his job."
Spade recovered from the tire beaning him in the back and was in front of me with nosferatu swiftness.
"For God's sake, Cat, take the leap, what are you waiting for?"
For a second, I wondered if I'd really lost it. It sounded like Spade was trying to taunt me into killing myself.
"Did I do something to piss you off?"
Spade spun around, balling his fists. Techno looked at me in confusion, as if questioning whether I was in danger.
"Want me to shoot him?" he inquired.
"Do you want to incite things? You're barely human now; why do you persist in clinging to your last useless, mortal shred?"
"Don't shoot," I said to Techno, who'd raised the Uzi with purpose. "In fact, go away."
"He's not - " Techno began to sputter.
"Not what?" Spade asked. "Not supposed to tell her about it, I'll wager? That's why she's looking at me like I'm barmy, right? Because she doesn't have a clue what I'm talking about."
My jaw clenched. Techno's face confirmed it all. Son of a bitch.
"Is it the ghouls again?" I asked, inwardly cursing that I'd been so wrapped up in my own problems, I hadn't been suspicious about the lack of word on that front.
Spade gave Techno one last threatening look before folding his arms.
"Yes, it's the ghouls. Their rhetoric is growing bolder. In certain areas, Masterless vampires have begun to disappear. It could be they're stupid and got shriveled by one of our own kind, but there's reason to believe it might be something more."
I stared at him. Spade's tiger-colored gaze was uncompromising. Gregor is behind this, I realized. The more paranoia about me becoming a vampire/ghoul hybrid, the more support he garnered for his cause to get me back so he could control me.
"Why wasn't I told?"
Spade rolled his eyes. "Can't you guess? Crispin doesn't want this to influence your decision whether to turn into a vampire."
"He doesn't care about me," I muttered before I could stop myself.
"You're an idiot."
I could feel my eyes turning angry green. "Excuse me?"
"Idiot," Spade repeated, drawing the word out for emphasis. "Why do you think he fetched you from Vlad's? Crispin knew if it came to a choice between you or Vlad's people, you'd lose. Tepesh might be fond of you, but he's beastly protective of his people."
I had to glance away for a moment. Then I shook my head. "If Bones cared about me, f**king his way up and down New Orleans was a funny way to show it."
Spade regarded me with cynicism. "If you thought Crispin was yours, and you didn't care for his actions, why weren't you waiting for him after New Orleans instead of jetting off with Tepesh?"
My jaw dropped. "Do you hear yourself?"
"You're not thinking like a vampire," Spade muttered. "The sooner you're done with your human perceptions, the better. Look, can we discuss your reasoning inadequacies later? If I have to smell this rancid air a moment longer, I'll dry heave."
"Inadequacies? Screw you!"
Spade gave me an arch smile. "You should be less concerned with what I'm saying and more focused on what you'll say to Crispin when you try to convince him to change you into a vampire."
That made my heart skip a beat. Spade heard it and snorted. "Got your attention now, don't I? Crispin's the one who has to do it. I certainly wouldn't dare. He'd kill anyone who changed you, make no mistake."
"How do you know I've decided to cross over, anyway?"
The sarcasm and flippancy were wiped from Spade, and he gave me the most serious look he'd bestowed on me.
"Come now, Reaper. We both know you've been hanging on to your humanity too long. You just needed a push, didn't you?"
So many different things ran through my mind. I remembered all the years of my childhood, hiding my growing inhuman abilities so I didn't upset my mother. Later in school, how out of place I'd felt pretending to be "normal" when nothing about me was normal. And later still, in my teens and early twenties hunting vampires, hadn't my humanity been more of a disguise than how I felt inside? Then there was now, how frustrated I was that I was too weak to take Gregor on myself. With no element of surprise about my dual nature, I'd always be too weak to battle the really old, mega-Master vampires - as long as I stayed part human, that was.
But more than that, even if Bones and I were through, the situation with Gregor magically disappeared, and there were no ghoul rumblings, could I ever go back to living among humans, pretending to be just like them?
No. I couldn't pretend anymore that all the things inside me weren't there. Even if I walked away from the undead world for good, I'd still be more vampire than human. And if I wasn't going to walk away or try to pretend to be human again, then why was I still hanging on to my heartbeat? God, was Bones right? Had it really been just my deep-seated prejudice that held me back from taking this step before? There were a lot of reasons to change over. Did I have even one to stay the way I was?
"I'll ask Bones to do it," I heard myself say. "But he'll probably say no."