The Given

by Vicki Pettersson

  But why hadn’t any of the neighbors reported a blast? Grif wondered, gaze winging to the hole in the wall. And where were the footprints leading away from the body?

  One thing was certain, Grif thought, lowering his gun. The killer was gone—likely out that open window—and so was her Centurion. So why, he wondered, gaze winging up to the dark hallway across from him, was there still plasma snaking down the . . .

  Grif’s .38 flew from his hand as a thump cracked the back of his skull. The shards from one of the ceramic figurines scattered around him, and Grif thought, Oh. Not just for catching dust anymore. He pushed to his knees, but the gun was too far away and instinct had him spinning instead. He barely managed to raise an arm to block the faceful of flowers hurtling his way. Then a shot rang out, and glass fragments rained over his head. He shielded himself again, shocked at how close his head had come to looking remarkably similar to the dead woman’s.

  But the gunshot from the hallway had done the job. Grif’s fedora was askew, blocking his vision, but he could sense that his attacker was already gone. He lunged for his .38 anyway. Then he cleared the center of the room, holding himself up against a wall until his vision stopped scattering into geometrical patterns. He didn’t know if the person down the hall—the one the plasma had been chasing—had been trying to hit him with that shot or not, but he had to find out.

  Ears pricked, Grif stood unblinking, trying to thrust his mortal senses outward. It would be just like Sarge, he thought, to set him up. The story about feeling their pain could be pure baloney. Taking him two days back in time, directing him to a murder scene so new that nobody had even learned of it yet, would be a good way to appease the Host, get his errant charge killed and back into the Tube.

  “C’mon, Shaw,” he chided himself, even as he thought it. Sarge wouldn’t do that.

  Would he?

  Cocking the hammer back on his snubnose, Grif sidestepped the body and moved farther into the silent condo. The footprint of the home was intuitive, and favored the north side of the building. That’s where the money view was, so the guest bath lay on the right, while the stunted hallway broke to the left. More of the strange, sexy artwork swirled up the walls like colored smoke, but Grif put his back to the largest frame, softened his gaze, and stared at the closed door rounding out the home.

  He couldn’t see through it, his celestial powers didn’t extend that far, but he was looking for signs of plasma, an indication that someone was about to die. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t be able to see the telltale warning if he were the fated victim. You never saw the plasma when it came for you.

  But instinct, honed by two lifetimes and fifty years of limbo in between, told Grif that something was moving behind that door. Besides, who the hell went around closing doors behind them in their own house?

  Grif planted himself to the side of the door before turning the handle and shoving it open. He didn’t enter. Experience had taught him that most people found silence and stillness unbearable when anticipating confrontation.

  More pastels and white, he saw, risking a glance inside. Ruffles and lace, silken pillows and more knitted throws, things he knew were expensive though he didn’t know why. He had no desire to snooze atop some oversized doily. McCoy had been in the green, no doubt about it, but she was too showy about it. If he had to guess, she hadn’t always possessed the funds she did now.

  Or used to.

  Sidestepping into the room, Grif angled toward the walk-in closet and the attached bath beyond that. He’d just emerged when a muffled voice sounded from beneath the bed. “Grif?”

  He damned near shot off his own foot.

  Then a slim hand appeared atop the bedspread, red-stained, not with blood but lacquer. The half-moon manicure had a silver base and metallic maroon tip. He only knew what it was called because the woman who edged from beneath the bed had once taken an entire half hour to explain it to him.

  Katherine Craig looked exactly the same as the last time Grif had seen her, maybe a little thinner, though still lush where it counted. She wore a pencil skirt in the same crimson color as her nails and a black sweater that echoed the hue of her hair. Her pearl brooch competed with her skin for translucence and even the fear widening her eyes couldn’t erase the seductive slant of those lids. Maybe it was her makeup, maybe it was just the lighting, or maybe it was the fact that they hadn’t made eye contact like this in six full months, but Grif couldn’t remember her ever looking so fragile and beautiful at the same time.

  “Wh—” she started breathlessly. “How did you get here?”

  “Why—?” He took a breath, but the words tumbling in his mind curled into a knot by the time they reached his throat, so he exhaled and tried again. “Why the hell would you reveal yourself like that when there’s an intruder in a home with a dead body?”

  “Grif—”

  “Jiminy Cricket!” He jerked his hat from his head and slapped it against his leg. “No, it’s like you want to get clipped. You might as well just wave a flag. ‘Hey, bad guy, next victim right here. Come and get it.’ ”

  Kit’s spine seemed to grow another couple of inches. “Are you seriously yelling at me? Right now?”

  Grif was about to tell her that someone needed to, but snapped his mouth shut instead. Nerves did strange things to a man.

  “I wasn’t revealing myself, okay?” She put a hand to her chest, coming around to his side of the room. “I wouldn’t have come out if I wasn’t sure it was you, but I was. Besides, I have this.”

  Grif’s eyebrows winged up at the dainty .22. At some point in the past six months, his Kitty-Cat had grown claws. He glanced at the peashooter, looked at her also considering it, and took an involuntary step back. He couldn’t be sure yet how sore at him she still was.

  “So how’d you know it was me?”

  “Eau de angel,” she muttered, reaching down and pulling out a vintage doctor’s bag from beneath the bed. Grif grimaced as he watched her. Of course she would hide her precious bag, probably some thrift-store find that she cherished more than her damned life. Grif was about to match her sarcasm with a quick rejoinder, but suddenly Kit deflated into herself.

  Falling into the wingback in the corner, she blew her thick bangs from her forehead and dropped her face into her hands. Grif would have thought nothing of striding across the room and pulling her into his arms at one time, but now he hesitated, his body wavering with the uncertainty of his thoughts.

  Kit didn’t give him much time to wonder anyway. She recovered quickly, gazing up at him for a brief moment before gesturing to his shoes. “Vintage Stacey Adams wingtips that look brand-new. Round laces, minimally worn soles, and a faint scuff on the right side. They’d sell for a pretty penny these days.” Then she added, almost to herself, “I’d recognize them anywhere.”

  Sure she would, Grif thought, swallowing hard. She’d seen them every day for six months. Even when he undressed—even after she helped him do it—the shoes would return to his body, along with the rest of the clothes, at 4:10 every morning. The exact hour of his death. Kit had always laughed good-naturedly and called it magic. Grif called it a pain in the tail.

  “Are you here to Take her?” Kit whispered.

  Grif shook his head. “No, she’s already gone.”

  She looked up. “Me, then?”

  He tried to soften it for her. It would be a shock for anyone to learn they were due to be murdered in two days’ time. “Not yet.”

  A shiver ratcheted up her spine at that. Guess it hadn’t come out as gently as he’d intended.

  “Of course,” she finally said, and sighed. “Why else . . .” Kit gestured at Grif, meaning why else would he be there. He’d have been offended at the insinuation if her life hadn’t been threatened so many times since he’d entered it.

  “Hey, you’re the one sitting in a dead woman’s home,” he reminded her.

  Kit’s hand twitched on the .22. They were nipping at each other now, though it was better than having her cr
y or shake or scream about the body still cooling in the next room.

  “Barbara called me,” she said, standing. She lifted her chin, knowing that wouldn’t sit well with Grif.

  It didn’t. Grif narrowed his eyes. Had Kit actually become friendly with a woman who thought he deserved to die? Both Shaws got what was coming to them.

  “She told me she had something to show me,” Kit said, joining his side. “But she also said she felt like she was in danger.”

  Grif tried to feel some sympathy for the dead woman. “Guess she was right about that.”

  Sympathy wasn’t his strong suit.

  “I saw the guy. I guess I could pick him out of a police . . . whoa.” She swayed, and Grif reached out to steady her. Yet all the strength had gone out of her arms, and it suddenly fled her legs, too. He had to lunge, his palm cradling the back of her skull just before it struck the bedpost. “What’s going on? Why do I see stars?”

  She meant literal stars . . . because Grif saw them, too. They were tiny and stabbed at her like brilliant needles, swirling around her so quickly that he got dizzy trying to track them. The plasma, Grif realized, too late. It’d been coming for her.

  If you choose this path, if you go back in time, nothing will happen as it’s meant to. You’ll be rewriting history, and fate will try to rip the pen from your hand and scribble over your intentions. Do you understand what I’m saying?

  He’d said yes, but he hadn’t. Not really. He’d come back intending on saving Kit two days from now . . . and fate had made a run at her early.

  Grif tried to focus, but her weight and warmth in his arms was familiar, and all he wanted to do was hold her tight. “It’s fate, honey. It’s switching up on you, altering directions.”

  “What does that mean?” she said, managing to lock gazes with him despite the specks of light encasing her like bees surprised from a hive.

  “It means this is going to feel a little . . .”

  But her head jerked back then, eyes rolling with it as her body arched away from his, leaning hard into a backward dive. The speckled dots of light poured like a shining river into her mouth and her core convulsed, arms and legs jerking in rapid spasms. All Grif could do was hold her, but when he lifted her up to pull her close, her mouth fell open, tongue sparkling like she’d licked glitter. The same sheen of stars pasted over the whites of her eyes.

  Kit jerked from side to side, the motion of her body actually ripping her from his arms, and he fumbled to keep her from striking the bed and hurting herself. The movements soon evened out, blurring together until her body just hummed with a single vibration, like the beat of a heart monitor. One line indicating one life, one direction. One fate. She collapsed and fell still, the whole episode lasting less than thirty seconds, and all Grif heard was the rasp of his own rapid breath.

  He needed to get her out of there. She was destined to remain alive for now, but anything could change that, a moment when he made the wrong step . . . or one in which he didn’t act at all. He just needed to get her out of there, he thought, lifting her deadweight into his arms. Then they could figure out what to do next.

  As long as it included him not leaving her side until this thing was over.

  Kit wasn’t entirely unaware of her surroundings. Although her senses were blunted, numbness coating everything from her fingertips to her tongue to the eyes shaking in her head, she still felt the cold air envelop her as Grif carried her outside. It attacked her skin in sharp contrast to the reassuring warmth of his arms around hers, and his chest felt almost hot against her cheek. She was scared by Barbara’s death, and shocked by the changes writhing like snakes inside her own body, but somehow she also felt safe.

  Kit had grown up afraid. When your mother falls fatally ill when you are twelve, and your father is murdered four years later, it rather deepens the suspicion that the world is not a safe place. She’d fought the effects of that by deliberately choosing things that, while not safe, were inherently good.

  Her job was good. She fought to uncover the wrongs and ills in the world, and make it a better place through fantastic reportage. She might not be able to change anything on a large scale—nothing globally or cosmically, like Grif—but she could do her part, one story and one person at a time.

  She also chose her attitude. The swing skirts and crinoline and Betty bangs were more than just show. When you walk around the world attempting to make it a brighter and better place, sometimes a bit of that shine actually takes hold. So now, she chose to focus on the feeling of safety as if it was a talisman, and after a few more seconds she was able to focus her eyes, her mind, and her other senses outward as well.

  “Put me down,” she rasped when they were tucked around the back of a nearby steakhouse. Grif obliged wordlessly . . . and Kit doubled over. Her legs buckled and her knees scraped the pavement, but Grif caught her under her arms once more, and again, his contrasting warmth made all the difference in the world. His arms were strong and firm around her shoulders, and the Sen-Sen that always scented his breath wafted over her as he spoke soothing words in her ear.

  I’m in shock, Kit realized, as one last shudder numbed her core and reverberated out through her limbs. From the moment the first gunshot had roared through the suite, she’d been wondering when the shakes would start. Yet the subsequent jolts—Barbara’s body splayed on the floor, the surefire instinct that the killer was coming for Kit next, and then Grif’s almost immediate arrival—had delayed the onset, at least for a bit.

  She’d have chided herself for falling apart in front of Grif—of course, he was as coolly assessing as ever—but then why would he mind after walking in on such a grisly murder? He could see death coming and going. He practically held the door open for it every time.

  Kit realized her teeth were chattering, and she clenched her jaw shut and tried to right herself again. Grif released her only after he saw that she was stable, and she caught one last whiff of his pomade as he steadied her on her feet. Then it, and the security of his arms, was gone.

  “What?” she said, realizing he’d been speaking. She rubbed her nose, hating the way gunpowder clung to the soft lining inside.

  “We’ll get somewhere safe and work it out . . .” Grif was saying, taking on most of her weight as he pulled her forward. Here he was, after so many months of her wishing it to be so. Absent, and then there. A memory and then her reality, once again. That alone was enough to make her dizzy. It also made her want to laugh and cry at the same time . . . though that could have just been the shock.

  “Not going anywhere . . .” he was saying, “. . . stick close to your side . . .”

  But hadn’t he said that before?

  Don’t be a fool, Kit. I don’t see anyone else helping you up off the ground.

  And there was certainly no one else she trusted with her life more than Griffin Shaw. Maybe not her heart, not that ever again, but her life? Yes.

  “How did you get here?” she asked.

  “How did you?”

  “I told you. Barbara invited me over.”

  “You knew her?”

  Blowing out a trembling breath, Kit gave Grif a nod, both in answer and to let him know her legs would hold. Yeah, she thought, as they walked more swiftly, this grumpy retro angel had broken her heart. He’d been so obsessed with the past that he couldn’t see through it to a future with Kit, but he was never cruel. Besides, if Grif thought she was in trouble, then she believed him.

  She halted again suddenly, and saw him brace, ready to catch her if she fell. “I am in way over my head,” she said suddenly.

  Grif stared at her for so long she wasn’t sure he was going to answer. Then he gave his own shaky laugh. “Have you ever uttered those words before in your life?”

  And Kit laughed. Or at least she did in her mind. On the outside, where the wind was blasting a chill up her skirt and a woman lay headless in a high-rise suite behind them, she just stood and stared. But the levity helped in a moment when she realized that da
nger was once again a certainty in her life. It also helped her ignore the way her mind had unclenched for the first time in months. She was suddenly no longer burdened with the task of trying not to think about Griffin Shaw.

  Unfortunately, the very first thought that whipped through her head when she saw his sturdy, shit-hot wingtips pointed directly at her, like divining rods, under that guest-room bed was another shock: God. I don’t love him even an ounce less than the last time I saw him.

  It was also partly why she still shook. For Kit, it was perhaps the most dangerous thing of all.

  The hired help came in sweating and shaky, smelling of gunpowder and blood, and huffing even though he’d driven all the way across town and there was no way he should be out of breath. Working beneath the trained glare of a green banker’s lamp, the man behind the desk gripped the pencil so tightly that the lead splintered between his strong fingers, and he had to force himself to relax. It’s okay, he told himself, as he removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He’d been working for hours, a way to keep his mind off the night’s planned events. The numbers in the ledgers were beginning to squiggle before his eyes anyway.

  Swiveling in the office chair, he folded his hands over his belly and stared at the man who was supposed to be a cold-blooded killer.

  “Justin,” he said by way of greeting. He would ask nothing, though he expected those who worked for him to tell all.

  Justin fidgeted on his feet, which was rare. “Shit.”

  And that said it all.

  The man sighed and waited.

  “My man . . . he screwed up.”

  The man closed his eyes and waited some more. “First of all, we weren’t seen on the way in. You were right. The party was a great distraction. We used the residents’ parking garage to go up and back.”

  “But.” Not a question. When someone overexplained, there was always a “but.”