“One week,” Nita confirmed softly.
Patchaya’s head bowed. “So little time.”
“We were hoping, since you’re an INHUP agent and working in the dangerous unnaturals section . . .”
She shook her head. “If you’re asking me to delete documents or something, I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Can’t.” Her voice was heavy. “Those kind of reports are handled by the central INHUP headquarters in France. To get rid of that information, I’d have to fly to France, wipe their servers, and then somehow stop the three to five people working on his case from talking.”
Nita frowned. “Why so many people?”
“When an individual is reported to the Dangerous Unnaturals List, it’s a multistep thing. First, someone has to verify the claims. That could mean DNA evidence is tested, or video files are reviewed by experts, or any number of other things.
“Part of the verification also involves sending that information to people working on cases involving zannies. For example, if there’s a report on a zannie in San Diego, and a murder by horrific torture was committed there recently, the information is sent to the people working on that case to see if the culprit is the zannie.”
The train doors whooshed open as they hit the next station, and Patchaya sighed. “There’s also an investigation crew that usually tries to independently verify the information.”
“That’s . . . a lot.”
“Yeah. There were mistakes in the early years. We’re careful now.” Patchaya looked away, mouth pressed into a thin line. “If his information has gone to INHUP . . . there’s nothing I can do.”
Nita’s throat was tight. She hadn’t truly understood the scale of INHUP operations, of how many different people in how many different places would be involved before Kovit’s name went up.
The cat wasn’t just out of the bag. It was long gone and had kittens.
In her mind’s eye, she pictured the day the wanted ad went up. Kovit would be sitting in a hotel room, terrified to go outside, terrified to be recognized, terrified to exist. But it wouldn’t matter, because the takeout place across the street would see him when they went to deliver pizza. And they’d post it on the internet, and the mob would force Kovit to pay for the crimes he’d committed.
Or maybe Kovit would be walking down the street. New haircut, fake glasses, full disguise. And then someone would see him, see through the look, and call the police. They’d surround him, dozens of cars, dozens of men in blue, guns raised high. And Kovit would look up at the sky, hopelessness writ large in those beautiful black eyes.
And he’d die.
Kovit’s information was going up online in one week, and there was absolutely nothing Nita could do about it.
Nine
NITA AND PATCHAYA got off at Spadina station. As they rode the escalator up, Nita checked her cell phone for texts, but there was no reception. She wiped her sweaty palms on her pants.
Patchaya chewed her lip, a small furrow between her brows.
“Deep in thought?” Nita asked.
“Trying to think of anything I can do to stop this.” She shook her head. “Short of somehow getting rid of the whole Dangerous Unnaturals List, I don’t know how we’d stop it.”
Nita blinked.
Get rid of the whole list.
Adair, the information broker she’d stayed with until yesterday, had told her that the list had been built corrupt, that the only creatures on it were the ones with body parts valuable on the black market. That the list wasn’t there to protect people as INHUP claimed, but to make people money. That the creation of the list was, in and of itself, leading the monsters on it to commit crimes. After all, if it was a crime to be born, there was no legal way to live your life, so you had to turn to illegal ones. A vicious cycle of making monsters.
But if the list weren’t there . . . well, a lot of problems would be solved.
But how could she get rid of the list?
“Are you okay?” Patchaya asked.
Nita gave her a tight smile. “Fine. Just thinking. Trying to find other ways out of this.”
“I’ll look into it. I don’t think I can do anything, but I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t at least try.”
Nita nodded, but her mind was already past her plan to use Patchaya and working on something much better.
At the top of the escalator, people bustled through the station, shoes clicking on the tiled floors as they passed through a series of metal turnstiles. A bored attendant sat in a booth, and the faint hum of guitar music from the busker in one corner echoed just under the hubbub.
On the other side of the turnstiles, Kovit waited for them.
He was staring at his phone nervously, and he kept running a hand through his hair, mussing it. They’d agreed that if Nita deemed contact safe, she’d bring his sister here, and if she didn’t, then Nita would come alone.
Patchaya paused at the turnstile. “I really should get back.”
Nita raised her eyebrows. “Don’t you want to see Kovit?”
Patchaya froze, mouth open, and in that instant, Kovit saw them. He swallowed, and then came over, his footsteps slow and heavy.
Patchaya turned and met his eyes. Her gaze flicked over his face, examining all the changes, placing the face of the young man in front of her over that of the boy from her past.
He gave her a frightened, tentative smile, voice hoarse. “Pat?”
Her face crumpled, and she threw herself through the turnstile and embraced him. “Kovit.”
Kovit froze for a second before wrapping his arms around her and burying his face in her shoulder. Both of their chests heaved softly, and Nita couldn’t tell if they were laughing or sobbing.
Nita stepped back, suddenly feeling like an intruder. She wondered what it would be like to have a sibling who loved her that much. Who was willing to risk everything just to see her, who wept when they were reunited. She tried to imagine anyone in her life caring about her that much, and she couldn’t. Her mother wasn’t the emotional type. Her father . . . her father was gone. Murdered by a vampire while Nita was trapped in Death Market. A vampire Nita still needed to find and take her vengeance on.
No, there was no one who would care about Nita that way. She’d never really wanted a sibling before, but seeing the grief and love in Kovit’s and Patchaya’s faces, her heart ached like she’d missed out on something precious.
Patchaya pulled away and brushed a strand of Kovit’s hair from his face. “Look at you, all grown up.”
“Speak for yourself.” Kovit’s smile was a bit crooked. “Look at you, all old. You even have a gray hair.”
She swatted his shoulder. “I’m only twenty-five, you brat.”
Kovit laughed, light and free.
Patchaya said something in Thai, her smile still wide.
For a moment, Kovit’s face was blank, and then he slowly began speaking in Thai. The words didn’t sound as smooth as hers, but they came, creaking and groaning with rust and disuse. It looked like he hadn’t forgotten it after all, despite his fears. Or at least, not all of it.
After a few sentences, though, Patchaya switched back into English. “Where have you been the last decade?”
Kovit looked away. “Here and there.”
She raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Here and there.”
He sighed, and then laughed. “How do you still always manage to make me feel guilty with that eyebrow?”
“It’s a superpower all older sisters have.”
He snorted. “Superpower. The only superpower you have is being an INHUP agent. How in the world did that happen?”
She winced slightly, mood darkening. “It’s not what you think.”
He gave her a sad smile, just a little broken. “Oh?”
She couldn’t meet his eyes. “I just wanted to make a difference.”
Nita felt bad for the two siblings. They clearly loved each other, but one was a monster and the other a monster hunter, and the
disconnect of those ten years where they’d ended up on such wildly different paths was painted in the unspoken tension and the broken spaces between their sentences.
“Well,” Kovit replied, his voice light and teasing. “What a terrible motive. Imagine wanting to make a positive impact on the world. The horror.”
Patchaya blinked and then burst into laughter and hugged him.
Nita’s heart tightened. She cleared her throat, feeling more of an intruder than ever. “I have an errand I need to run. I’ll see you back at . . . I’ll see you later, Kovit.” She turned to his sister. “And it was nice to meet you.”
Kovit frowned. “Errand?”
They’d agreed Nita would stay close by, just in case Kovit’s meeting ended in some unforeseen disaster. But that was before Patchaya had said she couldn’t help, before Nita’s whirring mind had come up with a new plan.
“I need to check on something.” Nita smiled tightly. “I need to talk to someone who might . . . know something.”
Kovit’s eyes widened in understanding, and his voice was careful. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
Nita smiled. “You never know if you don’t try. But if I’m not back when you’re done, you know where to look.”
Before Kovit could protest more, she turned away.
Her steps were heavy as she went to the one person who could tell her if her plan was possible, who had the connections to make it happen. The question was: would he help her?
Or would he kill her out of spite?
Because Nita and Adair hadn’t parted on the best terms.
Ten
NITA WALKED the familiar road from the station to Adair’s pawnshop. The sidewalk pavement was a bit cracked, and all the buildings looked like they’d seen better days. It wasn’t truly a sketchy area—she’d been in far more uncomfortable places, but the pawnshop certainly wasn’t located in the nicest part of town.
It suited Adair perfectly, not just the aesthetic of it—slightly sketchy and a little uncomfortable—but because it was close to the water. Kelpies like Adair were semiaquatic, and needed places underwater to hide the rotting human corpses they ate. Though she supposed he could also hide the bodies in his murder basement.
Nita approached the front door. The sign was turned to CLOSED, but the light was on inside, and she could see shadows moving around.
She took a deep breath. She hadn’t left this shop last time on the best circumstances. Adair had betrayed her, she’d tried to murder him, and in the end, Diana, his ghoul assistant, had interfered and they’d called a truce.
Adair said he didn’t do vengeance. It was bad for business. And Nita believed him. Mostly. If she was wrong, he’d drag her into the underground pool in his basement and drown her and then eat her rotting corpse.
But she had to try. She didn’t know anyone else as knowledgeable and well connected in the black market who actively wanted the Dangerous Unnaturals List gone. And she thought he might be willing to overlook their feud and help her with it.
She knocked on the front door and waited. Silence. She knocked again.
Diana’s voice rang out from the other side. “We’re closed!”
“It’s me,” Nita called back.
“Then we’re definitely closed.”
“I need to talk to Adair.”
The door opened, and Diana stood there, her long dark brown hair pulled into a ponytail, her eyes tired. Her light brown skin looked gray with exhaustion and poor lighting. She reminded Nita a little of Mirella, Nita’s fellow captive in Death Market and the first person Nita had heard Kovit torture.
Nita shoved her mind away from that thought.
“Go away, Nita. Adair doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“Have you asked him?” Nita countered.
She sighed. “I don’t need to. He’s furious, injured, and not in a great mood. If you go in there, he’s going to kill you.”
Nita crossed her arms and smiled with a confidence she didn’t feel. “Well, he can try. But we know who won the last fight, don’t we?”
Diana’s eyes narrowed. “Because you ambushed him. He won’t be tricked like that again.”
Nita blew out a breath. “Look, I just want to talk. Let me in, I’ll say my piece and leave.”
Diana gave her a long, assessing look, and then finally opened the door a little wider.
Nita took a step in, and Diana grabbed her arm. “Nita, if you ever hurt Adair again . . .”
“You’ll what? Get vengeance? You, who tried to talk me out of violence? Who couldn’t kill her own family’s murderer?”
Diana flinched, and Nita ripped her arm away.
Diana was quiet. “No. I was going to say I wouldn’t save you from Adair’s wrath again.”
Nita blinked. Diana had saved her and Kovit from being thrown out of the shop and onto the streets when the hunt for Nita had been heating up. She’d stood as a wall between two angry monsters and calmed Adair down. And later, she’d stood as a wall between Nita and Adair and calmed Nita.
“That’s fine.” Nita’s lips curled into a warped smile. “I don’t need anyone to save me. I’m perfectly capable of that myself.”
She took a few steps into the cluttered pawnshop. Old cabinets and tables were jammed together so tightly there was barely any room to make a path to the back counter. Glass chicken butter dishes stared at her with painted-on eyes, and a bronze statue of a general on a horse tried to stab her with its sword as she passed.
She made for the back stairwell. Two sets of stairs awaited, one leading up, one leading down. Nita and Kovit had stayed up at the top of the stairwell in a small guest room. That was where she’d left Adair last night, cooling in the bath, trying to recover from the effects of Nita’s boiling water attack, which had sloughed his glamour off and revealed the monster beneath.
Nita took a step up, and Diana called out, “Not that way.”
She turned around. “Where is he, then?”
Diana hesitated, then nodded to the stairs down.
Nita stared at the dark stairwell to the basement and laughed. “I didn’t think you’d start in on Adair’s stupid murder jokes.”
“It’s not a joke.” Diana came over. “He had me help carry him down there last night. There’s more water. He needs full submersion to recover properly.”
Nita hesitated. Everything at her screamed that this was a trap, that she was being led down the stairs into an underground murder chamber. Of all the people in the world to lead her into a murder chamber, Diana was on the bottom of her list.
But Nita had been wrong before.
Diana rolled her eyes and leaned against the counter wall. “He’s in the basement. You want to talk to him, that’s where you go.”
“Can’t he come up?”
“No.” Diana’s eyes were hard. “He needs the water to recover from what you did to him.”
Nita remained silent a moment. “Isn’t he the one who told me never to go down there, or he’d murder me and eat my rotting corpse?”
Diana’s mouth quirked a little at that. “Sounds like something he’d say.”
Nita held her ground. “You can go down and get him. I’ll wait here.”
She shrugged. “He won’t come up.”
“He will.” Nita took a deep breath. “Tell him I might have a plan for getting rid of the Dangerous Unnaturals List.”
Diana’s eyes widened. “What?”
“You heard me.”
Diana was quiet for a time before finally nodding. “I’ll go tell him.”
She descended the stairs, and Nita leaned against the stairwell, waiting. Part of her was intensely curious what was down there in the depths of the pawnshop.
And part of her was very certain she wouldn’t live very long if she found out.
She looked away, her eyes running over a curio cabinet full of ceramic salt and pepper shakers in the shapes of various animals, then moving on to a cribbage board made from an elk antler perched precariously o
n top of a moldy record player from the sixties. Where the hell did Adair even find some of this crap?
After a few minutes, there was a heavy thunk on the stairs, and Diana reemerged. “Take a seat. He’s coming.”
Nita obliged, heading over to an antique dining table. She moved a porcelain ballerina from the chair and seated herself. Diana vanished again, and when she returned a second later, she was supporting Adair.
He looked awful.
Usually, his glamour was up and strong, making him look human. His favorite look was of a young man, white, with wavy black hair, swampy greenish yellow eyes, and a sly smile.
Now, black and scaly, Adair looked less like a human and more like a crocodile-dragon hybrid. His long, slitted yellow eyes watched her with menace, and his head was more than half mouth, long thin teeth overlapping each other, creating a toothy cage.
Seeing him like this was a stark reminder that he wasn’t human, had never been human, no matter how much he pretended.
Diana helped him sit down, lowering that toothy face away from hers and easing him into the chair. Adair looked at Nita, but she couldn’t read the face of something that looked like it had walked straight out of an Alien movie.
Adair tilted his head, and as Nita watched, small pockets of mucus beaded on the scales of his face.
Diana’s eyes widened. “Don’t strain yourself.”
“I’m fine, Diana.” Adair’s voice was as smooth and slick and human as always, and it was disconcerting hearing it from the toothy face. “But we have a guest. I can’t just come in undressed.”
As Nita watched, the small beads of mucus spread over his face, and it rippled softly, like the surface of water.
And then a human face was staring back at her. Adair’s face.
His hands were still taloned claws, and his body was still black and scaly, but his face was very human and very angry.
“Nita. I didn’t expect to see you so soon.” His smile was tight, and she couldn’t forget the teeth that lurked just beneath its facade. “You’ll forgive my appearance. Someone burned my skin off last night, and I’m in a bit of a foul mood. I haven’t even been able to go home yet because I can’t look human enough.”
When Villains Rise Page 6
