Scalding hot water poured over Adair.
He gasped as the water hit him, and steam rose where the water made contact with his cold skin.
He began to melt.
Kelpies were designed for cold. Adair needed to regulate his body temperature—that was why the shop was so cold, why he ate ice cream, why kelpies only ever lived in northern climates. Which meant he was very susceptible to sudden climate changes.
Put a reptile in icy water, and its body would shut down. Cold-blooded, they called them.
Put Adair in hot water, and well . . . the idiom didn’t come from nowhere.
The melting started with his head. His face flickered a few times before becoming completely translucent and shimmery, like he was wearing a liquid mirror. The hot water melted it off his skin, dripping down and off his face like some sort of mucus. And Nita finally saw Adair for what he really was.
A monster.
Black scales rippled across his skin, almost crocodilian. His head was a little too long, and more than half of it was filled with a giant mouth, large enough Nita could probably stick her whole head in, if not for the teeth. Razor-sharp teeth, each one as long as a finger, but half as thin. Hundreds of them, each overlapping, creating layers of jagged, vicious teeth.
His eyes covered the rest of his face, yellow and slitted, like a dragon. His nose was flat and almost invisible, and he had no ears or hair, just smooth black scales and a ridged, bumpy spine starting just between his eyes, going up over his head and down along his back.
Adair cried out as the water burned off his illusion, his still-human-looking hands coming up to cover his face and hide it from view.
Nita grabbed the desk chair and smashed it over his head while he was still stunned, and he went down across the ground.
She’d lit everything she could in the room before he arrived, lights, candles, anything that generated heat, until it felt like a sauna. Bad for the dead bodies, but worse for Adair.
She took another tub of hot water and poured it over him as he lay on the floor, and this time, he screamed, his cries of pain rising into the air and mingling with the smoke from all the candles and steam from the boiling water. He choked, as though trying to beg her to stop, but the words couldn’t come out from between the cage of his jagged teeth.
His body started to melt too, his clothes first, and Nita was disconcerted to realize even those were fake, built from the same mucus-y substance that created the human illusion of the rest of him. The scalded mucus pooled on the floor around him, sloughed from his skin and leaving his body bare.
Since he was crouched on the floor, it was hard for Nita to get a sense of the shape of his body, but he did have two arms and two legs, though there was a lot of webbing between them. His body was thick, and his arms set closer to the main part of the body than on a human. Probably an adaption for the cold.
“Stop!” he screamed as Nita hefted another bucket of boiling water.
“Stop?” Nita hissed, and poured the water on him while he screamed. “You fucking sold me out!”
Adair’s voice trembled with rage, and his words were distorted by his teeth. “Oh, did trouble find you at my store? My store, where you said you definitely wouldn’t bring problems? I recall you saying you just wanted to hide out—then you got on the news for murdering people. Didn’t you promise me no police? And look who I got raided by.”
Nita gritted her teeth. “So, this was vengeance?”
Adair coughed and tried to lift himself from the floor, but failed. “I don’t do vengeance, Nita. It’s stupid and pointless, and if you fuck it up, it just makes more problems.”
Nita flinched, feeling the truth of that in her encounters with Fabricio.
“I’m a businessman, Nita. I do what I do to stay alive. I helped you, even when it wasn’t in my best interests. You put me in danger, over and over. You were going to keep doing it, you didn’t learn,” he gasped, voice hoarse, and a sticky film covered his yellow eyes. “So I took action.”
“I gave you INHUP agent names as payment.” Nita’s voice was tight. “This wasn’t about danger, you just knew I’d run out of names.”
Adair curled on the floor, chest heaving. On his neck, gills fluttered softly. Nita would love to dissect him and see how his body was adapted to breathe with both gills and through his mouth.
“Those names of corrupt INHUP members? At least half are dead, and the other half I knew.” He choked softly. “I knew from the start it was unlikely you would give me anything useful.”
Nita frowned. “Then why did you let me stay?”
He snorted, nostril holes flaring, spines on his neck rattling, and Nita had a sudden image of him as a dragon. A weak, small, wingless dragon. “I felt sorry for you.”
Nita flinched.
“You’re lying,” she said, more because she wanted him to be than because she believed he was. The idea that he had helped her out of pity hurt too much. “You’re just trying to manipulate me into not killing you.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
Nita wrinkled her nose as his black scales began to flake and a strange green ooze coated the floor. He wriggled toward her, and Nita leapt back, pulling out Henry’s gun. Adair froze, his scales shining.
They stayed that way for a moment, Nita with her gun at the ready, Adair on the floor, watching her with reptilian eyes. Nita’s gaze kept being drawn to his teeth, massive and long and viciously sharp.
Downstairs, the door of the pawnshop slammed, and Nita jerked.
She waved the gun barrel at Adair. “Who’s coming?”
Footsteps barreled up the stairs.
Adair sighed. “The only other person who has a key to the shop. Who I texted after I got the—presumably fake—call that the shop was flooding from a hole in the roof.”
The door smashed open, and Diana stood there. Her long hair was down, and her shirt inside out. She stared at the scene in front of her, taking in Nita, the gun, and the monster on the floor.
“Adair?” she asked, hesitantly stepping toward the kelpie.
He curled away from her, trying to hide his face, like he didn’t want her to see him that way. “Yes.”
Her mouth set in a firm line, and she turned to Nita. “Put the gun down.”
Nita’s hand tightened on the handle. “He betrayed me. I nearly died.”
Diana moved forward slowly and stood between them. “I said, put the gun down, Nita. If you want to kill Adair, you’ll have to go through me.”
Nita swallowed, chest tight. “He’s a monster. Why are you protecting him?”
“Why did I protect you when he wanted to throw you out?” Diana asked. “Because it was the right thing to do.” Her jaw clenched. “And you’re far more of a monster than he is.”
Nita raised an eyebrow and looked at Adair. “Have you seen him?”
“I judge by actions, not appearance.” Her voice was cold.
Nita didn’t respond.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Diana said, voice steady. “You’re going to lower that gun. I’m going to shove Adair under a cold shower until he’s not a toothy fish anymore. He’s going to thank me and not”—she glanced over her shoulder—“make any stupid jokes about murdering me in the basement lake, because I’ll beat him up.” She turned her gaze back to Nita. “And you’re going to leave.”
Nita looked at Adair. He’d sold her out, but he’d also helped her. He’d let her stay, given her information, even when there was nothing in it for him. And he was right. She’d been a pretty awful guest.
Nita lowered the gun, anger melting away as quickly as Adair’s fake skin had under heat, leaving only emptiness behind.
“All right.” She met Adair’s slitted eyes. “We’re even now. I don’t want to hear of you coming after me.”
Adair glared at her, eyes yellow but still recognizably his. “Believe me, Nita, I don’t care a whit about you. I told you—I don’t do vengeance. Ever. It makes you stupid, and it ex
poses you to threats you don’t need.”
Nita looked away. She hated it when he was right.
His voice was soft. “And most of the time, you’re going after people for the wrong reason, or without knowing the whole story.”
Nita put her gun away and glared. “I didn’t forget what you said about Fabricio’s motives, if that’s what you’re trying to say.”
He just looked at her, completely and fully inhuman, and said, “No, that’s just what you decided to hear.”
Diana pursed her lips. “Enough. Go, Nita.”
She turned her back on Nita and grabbed Adair’s arms and hauled them over her shoulders, so that terrible toothy, throat ripping mouth was right next to her face. Diana didn’t seem to notice how close her cheek was to those teeth, or perhaps she just didn’t care.
She began dragging Adair with difficulty to the washroom and cold water. He stumbled, leaning heavily against her, gasping for air, until they were in the washroom. The sound of the shower running drowned out his whimpers.
Nita swallowed, unmoving as the bathroom door closed behind them. She could still hear Diana’s voice, faint and soothing, through the wood.
Finally, Nita turned away sharply and left the room, closing the apartment door softly behind her.
Forty-Nine
KOVIT HAD TEXTED HER the location of Henry’s apartment, so Nita took the subway north. She washed her hands in the washroom of the pawnshop before she left and picked out an old jacket to cover the blood stains on her shirt. It looked like something Queen Victoria might have worn and she got more looks than if she actually was riding the subway covered in blood.
While she sat on the train, she flipped through the conversations in Henry’s phone, looking for something specific.
There.
Fabricio.
Henry had texted him when he caught Nita, and Fabricio had responded. She looks pretty alive. I said contact me when she’s dead. Is she dead yet?
Soon.
That was over an hour ago. There was no response. Henry had been talking to Nita and Kovit. Then he’d died.
The phone buzzed as another message from Fabricio came in. I found your online sale, and she looks pretty alive there too. Our deal is off if she’s not dead.
Nita tapped her finger on the side of the phone and finally responded, She’s dead now. Do you need to see the body to confirm?
She got off the subway at Yonge and Eglinton, the same stop that she’d gotten off when she’d murdered those black market dealers. It turned out Henry was staying a ten-minute walk away from there. Nita went into a tall chrome building, taking the elevator to the third floor. She checked her phone to see if Fabricio had responded. He had.
Yes, I want to confirm she’s dead. Do you have the body?
A wicked smile crossed Nita’s face. Fabricio was still in the city. He hadn’t fled. He should have run while he had the chance.
I do. You know where I’m staying?
Of course. I’ll be there in an hour.
See you soon.
Nita clicked off the phone as the elevator dinged on her floor.
Her eyes searched the long beige hallway until they lit upon the sign: Heavy Hitting Recording Studios.
She walked over to the fire-engine-red door and knocked.
The door opened quickly, and she was facing Kovit.
He blinked and looked away. There were shadows in his eyes she didn’t think he’d ever escape, and there was a softness to his movements. A slowness. Like a piece of well-oiled machinery slowly winding down before it stopped for good.
Nita swallowed. She didn’t like that idea.
She stepped into the studio and closed the door behind her. They were in a reception room with black couches and a small black coffee table. Magazines were stacked all over the end tables, and two heavy doors led to what Nita assumed were the recording rooms.
Of course Henry would rent a music studio while he was here. Given what she knew of him, he would want a place to indulge in his sick tastes without other people interrupting. So, soundproofing.
Nita turned her mind away from that thought. “Where’s Gold?”
“In music room A. She said she wanted to sleep, but I think she just wanted to be away from me for a bit.”
Nita resisted the urge to flinch. There was something deeply fatalistic in the way he spoke. She’d brought Kovit back from the brink, but he still stood near the edge, and she didn’t know how to lead him away from it.
“Is she okay?” Nita asked.
He held up his arm, which had a long cut on it. “I used some of my blood to numb her pain, and we picked up some slings and crutches at the drugstore.”
“That’s good,” Nita said.
They stood there for a long moment, neither speaking. Nita desperately wanted to fill the silence, because it was strangely awkward. She didn’t know where she stood anymore.
“Is Adair dead?” Kovit finally asked.
Nita slumped. “No.”
He raised an eyebrow. “He got away?”
Nita couldn’t meet his eyes. “I let him go.”
There was a long silence before Kovit whispered softly, “I’m glad.”
Her head jerked up. “Pardon?”
“I’m glad you let him go.” Kovit met her eyes. “I’ve lost enough today.”
“He betrayed us.”
“Well, that’s Adair.” Kovit shrugged. “We knew going in that he might. I don’t feel like blaming him for something we both suspected he’d do.”
“So you just wanted to let him get away with it?”
“Yeah.” Kovit brushed a hair from his face. “I did.”
Nita was silent for a long time. Finally she asked, “Why didn’t you tell me you felt that way?”
Kovit shrugged and turned his face away, his messy hair tumbling over his eyes. “I don’t know. I didn’t think it mattered.”
“Why wouldn’t it matter?”
Kovit snorted. “Nita, when you want to do something, you do it. You never listen to my cautions.”
“You’ve never told me not to do something,” she protested.
“I’ve been telling you since we met. I asked if you were sure about luring those black market traders to their death, about kidnapping Fabricio—”
“You asked if I was sure, you didn’t tell me not to do it.”
He looked away. “It’s your decision.”
Nita closed her eyes, replaying all the times he’d asked her to think something over twice. All the times he’d hesitated.
Nita had never really had much interaction outside her mother. And when her mother didn’t want to do something, she was extremely clear, and Nita crawled in a corner and obeyed.
Kovit wasn’t her mother. They weren’t playing power games with each other. They’d been trying to be partners, and Nita simply hadn’t thought about what that would mean in terms of objecting to things.
She looked down. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were uncomfortable with so much. All this time.”
He shook his head. “I should have spoken up more. I should have been more blunt. I’ve never had a relationship like this, and I didn’t really know how to tell you to stop without making you angry. And I didn’t want to lose you.”
Nita’s throat tightened. “I don’t want to lose you either.”
He hesitated, then stepped a little closer, and Nita swallowed, feeling the heat of his body next to hers. But he didn’t touch her, didn’t move.
He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry about the INHUP agent. I knew you didn’t want me to hurt him, I know you don’t like to . . . You don’t like that. I was angry and hurting, and I felt like you were ignoring my warnings and just using me like Henry did, and I wanted to hurt you like you hurt me.”
Nita tried to get the memory of the man’s screams out of her mind. “I’m sorry too. It was my stupid plan that went wrong. You never wanted any part of it, and I didn’t see that.”
He nodded o
nce, tightly, and sat down on the couch. Nita hesitated, then sat beside him. He shifted so that their legs were touching, and she didn’t move away.
He let out a long breath. “Where do we go from here?”
Nita picked at the fabric of her jeggings. “I’d like you to stay with me. If you feel comfortable. I’m still in a bit of a mess with the black market hunters trying to kill me, but I’ve got a new plan. A better one.” She swallowed. “One that doesn’t involve murder or blowing up anything.”
Kovit’s smile was soft and disbelieving. “Somehow I doubt that.”
Nita snorted. “Okay, less murder.” She licked her lips. “And after this is all settled, I want to go to college. Maybe you could join me?”
He blinked, slowly. “I don’t know what I’d do in a college.”
Nita shrugged. “It might be fun to find out.”
He considered, his eyes off in some distant place. “Maybe.”
“And we could find your sister?”
“I don’t know,” he whispered. “I don’t know if I want that yet.”
“Is there anything you’d really like to do?”
He considered. “I want . . . I want to go back to Thailand one day.”
“That sounds nice.” She was relieved there was something he could think of. “I’d like to visit too.”
He smiled slightly. “I’d like that.”
Nita’s heart clenched so hard it hurt, and her hands trembled where they were folded in her lap. “I think if we stay together, we should make some new rules.”
He tilted his head to one side, a question.
“I have rules to not break me.” Nita’s voice was soft. “You have rules to not break you. But I think we need rules to keep from breaking us.”
Kovit regarded her with dark eyes. “What kind of rules?”
“I talk through my plans with you, and if you veto them, we think of new ones. Bizarre as this feels to say, I think you have a better moral compass than me. Even if you ignore it a lot.”
A soft smile flitted across his face. “That’s not something I ever expected to hear.”
Nita snorted. “It’s not something I ever expected to say, either.”
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