“So you’ve said.” Nox had to keep stalling. He’d already survived this long. He just needed more time to figure out his end game. It was one thing to pretend to do business with Abraham Ravenwood. It was another thing to spill blood on his behalf.
Necro grunted. “It’s not a request.”
Nox drew a breath. “Don’t be so dramatic. When haven’t I done everything you’ve asked?” It was true, as much as Nox hated to admit it. It hadn’t been easy, but he’d made a few suggestions here and there. He had delivered both the Siren and the Incubus, at least as far as the club. His form of Persuasion wasn’t as obvious as a lollipop, but it was infinitely more powerful. Not even the most powerful Natural in a millennium had seen him coming.
“If you had done everything I’d asked, you’d be digging graves by now.” Necro-Abraham did not look impressed.
“It’s happening. The plans are in motion. I can give you both of them if you give me enough time.” Just because Nox hadn’t decided what to do didn’t mean he couldn’t do it. He was his mother’s son. He believed in options.
“Then why are they still alive?”
It was a legitimate question. Nox had been wondering how to answer it. Stalling would only buy him a little time. Eventually, it would run out for everyone, and heads would roll.
His and theirs.
He gazed across the tracks. “You’re a greedy old man, Mr. Ravenwood. Greedy and impatient.”
“I’m a dead man, Lennox. You know what the problem is with dead men? We’ve got nothin’ to lose.”
“Sometimes,” Nox said, “neither do the living.”
Necro drew her switchblade out of her pocket, moving it up to her neck, guided by Abraham Ravenwood, the monster inside her.
She pressed the blade so hard against her skin that Nox was sure she was going to cut herself.
“Is that so, Lennox?” Abraham’s voice rasped from her lips.
Nox froze.
The point pushed deeper.
“I’ve made contact with Silas now. There are other Necromancers. I don’t need this one anymore. But you seem mighty fond of her.”
Do not react. Do not let him see you flinch.
The skin was beginning to separate beneath the point of the knife. A thin trickle of blood was racing down the pale skin of her neck.
If he thinks you care, she’ll be dead. You can’t do that to her.
Nox sighed. “If it means less time spent talking to you, I’ll slit her throat myself. Obviously.”
“Obviously.” Necro pulled the knife away from her skin and held it out to Nox with an eerie smile. “Be my guest,” she growled.
Nox stood there for a long moment. Then he tossed the cigar down onto the tracks.
The longer he stayed, the more danger his Necromancer would be in. He was powerless; all he could do was go.
It wasn’t a feeling Nox Gates liked.
As he walked away, all he could hear was the sound of bitter laughter echoing through the tunnel behind him.
CHAPTER 22
Damaged Soul
How’s it going, Rid?” Lena’s voice crackled over the speaker of Ridley’s new cell phone. Nick the Nerd Warrior was a good friend, and she had the reception to prove it.
Aside from that, there wasn’t much to feel good about. It had been a long day of work for Ridley, who, though no closer to finding her dream than before, had at least determined it did not involve Mortal hair.
Ridley sighed. “Great. Perfect. Like a dream come true, Cuz.”
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday. So many days for nothing but work. Why do there have to be so many of them in a row?
Her feet hurt. Her hands had some kind of itchy rash, probably from disgusting scalp fungus. The heel had snapped off one of her black Louboutin ankle boots on the subway. Talking to her cousin only made it worse.
“Is New York amazing?” Lena asked.
“The most.” Ridley tried not to let Lena hear her sniffle. She held the phone away from her face and then brought it back to her ear again.
She caught a glimpse of Lucille Ball sitting in the doorway of the kitchen, judging her. Ridley made a face at the cat, but Lucille didn’t so much as move.
“Have you seen all the sights?” Lena sounded excited. It only made Ridley feel guiltier, like she should have returned one of her cousin’s fifty messages before now.
“Yep. That’s why they’re called sights, L. You see them.” She didn’t elaborate on what glam sights she had managed to see. Like the dirty subway tunnels, the old diner. Oily ladies’ scalps, reeking trash cans in the streets.
“What about the club scene? Charming your way into fabulous restaurants and amazing boutiques?”
“You know me. I’m practically out of lollipops.”
“I’m so jealous. All I do is study, study, study,” Lena complained. “Although I got into this writing class. It’s a poetry seminar, actually, and the professor is really great. I didn’t think…”
Blah, blah, blah.
The conversation faded into a strange collage of images Ridley couldn’t—and to be fair, didn’t really want to—process.
Red cups and college sweatshirts and late-night pizza and dorm restrooms. Football games. The dining hall. The Creation of Adam and Guernica and Hopper’s Nighthawks and the life of Buddha.
Did she really say public restrooms? With the kind of showers that you have to wear shoes in?
The conversation ended when Lena had to go to something called a study group to talk about things called handouts—or something like that.
What could Ridley say?
There was no way to explain the jam she’d gotten herself into, or the mood she was in.
How could someone as Light as Lena understand cheating at a card game and losing a marker, let alone two? How could Lena believe that someone was controlling Link and his stupid band, and using them for their own secret agenda? Worst of all, how could her cousin hear or solve or even understand the one problem that loomed over all the others?
Him and his stupid club. His threats and his lies.
Ridley herself could hardly stand to even think his name.
The phone crackled. “Are you listening, Rid?”
“Yeah, of course. I’m here. I’m just tired.”
“I’m worried about you. Every time I think of you lately, my ring turns bloodred. Like fire. Sometimes it even burns my finger.”
Red? Ridley’s ring always turned green.
“I’m sure it’s nothing.” Ridley glanced down. Now Lucille Ball was sitting at her feet, looking at her with enormous cat eyes, as if to say Red? Really?
Lucille Ball was not pleased.
“I asked Ethan, and he said Link never has time to talk,” Lena said.
“Well, you know. Rock stars.”
Lucille thumped her tail. Tell her.
“You’d tell me if something was going on, right?”
Lucille thumped her tail again. Tell your cousin.
Ridley ignored the cat. “Of course.”
“Anything the least bit out of the ordinary?” Lena asked.
“I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Honestly, I’ve never been happier. Or more ordinary.”
Lucille howled, stalking out of the room.
By the time Ridley hung up the phone, she’d told so many lies she could barely remember her own name. She knew that her life in New York was nothing close to regular, and more importantly, nothing close to a success. She had lied on the phone to her cousin, and she had been lying to herself. She was not cut out for this. It wasn’t who she was.
Link was right. She didn’t belong here. Maybe the two of them really were through.
Maybe this week’s breakup was for real.
She couldn’t ask him, though, because he was avoiding her, spending all his time with Floyd in the practice room.
By the time she went to bed, she felt like crying. By the time she fell asleep, she was. Even in her dreams.
“I told you not to wea
r that old thing. You look like a hair ball some cat vomited up.”
Ridley pulled on her cousin’s sleeve, twisting the knit sweater out of shape. She knew she was being mean. She even felt mean, but she didn’t care.
Her cousin might as well be walking around with a big old target on her forehead.
“Shut up, Rid.” Lena looked like she wanted to shrink back into her locker.
“That sweater says Kick Me.” Ridley pinched her harder.
Lena was standing by the lockers, because Lena was always standing by the lockers. It was as far as she’d venture into the open waters of middle school.
Ridley had no problem venturing anywhere, on the other hand. It was just the trouble that ventured with her wherever she went that was the problem.
“Did you even do your geography homework?” Lena asked with a sigh.
“Why do you care?” Ridley sighed back, one hand on her hip. She was wearing her favorite outfit: a kilt she’d cut off short with her Gramma’s scissors, a T-shirt with the neck ripped out, and a pair of old black boots she’d found in someone else’s locker, two schools ago.
Her first heels. They made her feel good. Tall, like she could look down on everyone in the whole world, the way she liked it.
Lena handed her a piece of paper covered in pencil scribbles. “Here.”
“Aww, you doing my homework now, just in case?”
“Someone has to.”
Ridley held up her hands, refusing to take the paper. “Has it ever occurred to you, L, that what happens at this miserable little Mortal school doesn’t matter?”
“Stop.” Lena was embarrassed.
“None of these stupid little brats—” Ridley raised her voice even louder.
“They’re not brats. Not all of them.” Lena looked around uncomfortably.