**NB. This story is as it comes – straight out of my head and may contain typos**
CHAPTER 13 – BLANE
“Is that…is that blood?”
Wren was standing in front of the refrigerator when I walked into the kitchen with Joseph, and her expression morphed from confusion to horror, quite unnecessarily.
“Yes, but it’s not mine.”
That didn’t seem to reassure her. “Then whose is it?”
“Zion’s.”
“What? How?”
“He had a nosebleed.”
“A nosebleed? That’s all?”
“Some people are prone to them.”
Judging but the state of Zion’s nose—flattened and not particularly straight—it wasn’t the first time it had been broken, and if he kept acting like a murderous thug, it wouldn’t be the last either.
“What did Zion say? Does he know where Caria is?”
“No, but I hired him to find out for us.”
Ah, now we had shock and possibly a tiny bit of anger.
“You…hired him? As in, you’re paying him money? The man who broke into my apartment and tried to kidnap me?”
Uh-oh. She sounded far from happy, and now she had her hands on her hips. When Nevaeh used to do that, it had been a sign to tread very, very carefully.
“Yes, but only temporarily. I’ll dismantle his business empire later, but we’re in a time-critical situation, and I needed to get him on-side fast.”
Wren sagged against the counter. Her hair was damp from the shower, and despite the fact that the couch was reasonably comfortable, she didn’t appear to have slept well. Those dark circles under her eyes looked as if they’d been drawn on with a Sharpie.
“What if he tells Laurent?” she asked.
“He won’t.” Zion was crazy, not stupid. While I wasn’t his favourite person, I’d seen the fear lurking in his dark little piggy eyes after I let him scramble to his feet. More importantly, he thought I was crazy too, and he didn’t want to wake up minus his spine. “So all you have to do is stay safe until we retrieve Caria, and then life can get back to normal.”
“Oh, you think? Laurent’s never going to stop searching for us.”
“Once Caria’s safe, we can get the authorities involved.”
“Didn’t you listen to anything I said before? Laurent owns the cops. That’s the reason Caria was taken in the first place.”
“Not all the cops. Think about it—if the police didn’t worry him, why go to so much trouble to keep the two of you quiet? Why not let Caria tell whatever stories she wanted to? If he was confident that no cops would act on the evidence, he wouldn’t care what she said. No, she got unlucky, that was all. If she’d spoken with a different officer, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Not only that, I bet Detective Callahan would be interested in finding out the name of the cop who’d betrayed Caria. That bad apple needed to be put through the waste disposal.
But Wren didn’t seem convinced. “I’ll have to discuss it with Caria.” A sob burst free. “If we can find her.”
“We’ll get her back.”
And once we located the missing woman, Joseph and I could pay a visit to wherever she was being held and flick souls out of bodies left, right, and centre. But first, we needed an address. If we went to the wrong property and one of Laurent’s men raised the alarm before I managed to separate him into his constituent parts, then Caria would be in more danger than before. One phone call, and Laurent would move her. Or kill her. My sister Decima could work medical miracles in an emergency—if I grovelled hard enough—but if a soul had departed a body, it wasn’t always possible to reunite the two.
“How?” Wren asked. “How will you get her back? Laurent will be armed to the teeth.”
“Let me worry about that.”
“That’s it? That’s your answer? Maybe you don’t understand, but Laurent’s a psycho. A rich, mean psycho, even worse than Zion. I heard that one time, a drunk teenager peed on the wheel of his car, and Laurent had two men hold the kid down while he lopped his, uh, man part off with a cigar cutter.”
I puzzled over the logistics of that. “It must have been a large cigar cutter. Or a smaller-than-average dick.”
“Perhaps it shrivelled?” Joseph suggested. “If he was scared, it could happen.”
“Or maybe it was just a tall tale.”
Rumours didn’t take much to get started around here. Sometimes, I heard stories about myself—that I’d abandoned a man to die in Death Valley after I saw him slap his girlfriend in Club Dead, that I’d burned a punk’s house to the ground after he insulted a homeless person, that I’d broken a fool’s jaw when he insulted a server in the VIP area, that I’d once thrown a drug dealer out of an airplane—but only half of those things were true. I mean, I didn’t even own an airplane. It was a helicopter.
Anyhow, I let the rumours persist because I’d rather be feared than taken advantage of. Perhaps Laurent took the same approach?
“I hate this,” Wren said. “I hate it. Laurent gets away with everything.”
“Not this time. And as long as you’re safe, he has to keep Caria alive, so just relax while Joseph and I deal with the tricky parts.”
“Relax? How can I relax?”
“I don’t know. What do you usually do to unwind?” As long as drugs weren’t involved, I could probably facilitate it. I recalled the note on the mirror in Wren’s apartment. “Yoga?”
Joseph could pick up appropriate clothing and one of those mats if Wren needed them. Hiring a teacher would have to wait—the fewer people who knew Wren was here, the better—but there was bound to be some kind of app available.
“I go to classes at the community centre, and I used to enjoy cooking too, but it’s been a while since I had the time to do that.” Wren glanced around the kitchen. “This place is a chef’s dream. I thought that maybe I could make a salad for lunch, but the healthiest thing I found was a jar of olives. You’re not a big fan of vegetables?”
Ah, the perks of being immortal. I could eat whatever I wanted without having to worry about clogged arteries.
“They taste okay when they’re coated in batter and deep fried.” I held up the bag from Rosetti’s. “Plus we brought calzone. I’m almost certain there are olives on it.”
“How do you not have scurvy?” She pulled open the refrigerator door. “Look in here—there are four kinds of cake, three kinds of cheese, and a bottle of Chardonnay.”
“It’s an excellent vintage, from my own vineyard, no less. And you should try the cakes—Marianna delivers them daily.”
Lola’s mom was a proud woman who hated to take handouts, so instead of giving her cash, which Joseph said would be weird in any case, I supported her fledgling business with regular orders for baked goods. Usually cakes, but she made excellent cookies and pastries too.
“That wasn’t the point I was trying to make. I mean, how do you look like that if you live on junk food?”
“Look like what?”
Now Wren’s cheeks went quite pink. “Like, uh, like…”
“Like he got airbrushed into an infomercial for an AbTrainer-3000?” Joseph suggested.
Pink turned to scarlet. Interesting.
“Uh, yes. That.”
“I have excellent genes.” Gently, I steered her away from the refrigerator and closed the door. “But if you want vegetables, I’ll get vegetables. Make a list, and I’ll have someone deliver them. Fruit too. Clothing, books, anything you need.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“What kind of host would I be if I couldn’t provide you with a carrot? Now, just relax and make yourself at home. In a few days, we can forget this ever happened.”
I was a born liar, but at that moment, I honestly believed I was telling the truth. If only I’d seen the storm that was brewing, I might have repented my sins, fallen to my knees, and begged Father for my old job back. Because Plane Five was about to become Plane Three on Earth.
But although I had many gifts, foresight wasn’t one of them. Crystal balls were nothing more than pretty decorations. So when Wren sighed and opened the paper carrier bag I’d dumped on the kitchen island, I merely fetched three plates and the requisite cutlery, took a seat alongside Joseph, and tucked into lunch.
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Go to Chapter 14
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