The Given

by Vicki Pettersson

  “See, Griffin?” Evie said, fur brushing his shoulder. “You’re not the only one who’s slow on the uptake.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Zicaro roared, tossing the gun aside. He glared at Justin with raw fury but still shivered in the small beam of light. “You’re throwing me over for that old broad?”

  Evie lifted her chin. “I think the line is, ‘Et tu, Brutus?’ ”

  “I don’t speak French,” Zicaro snarled. “Except for ‘fuck you.’ ”

  “No, fuck you,” Evie said, and fired a shot between his legs.

  Despite his waning powers, Grif did see the plasma then. It rolled in like a cosmic wave, a silvery supernatural tide, and there was enough of the luminous warning to mark them all for dead.

  “You’d better be real clear on what you’re doing here, son,” Zicaro warned Justin, who bent to lift something off the desert floor.

  “I’m not your son,” Justin muttered, and then threw the item at Zicaro’s feet. It was a pickax, one they’d obviously brought up with them. “And she promised me half.”

  “I could give you half!” Zicaro screamed, voice threading with plasma to spiral and spark in the icy night.

  Justin screamed back. “After six years of watching your back, running con after con, always being promised a next time, and being told that the big one is still to come? That we’re going to make out, we’re going to be rich?”

  Evie, still and imperturbable on Grif’s other side, only chuckled. “I just hate a man who can’t live up to his promises.”

  “You think I believe that you’re gonna make good on all that now?” Justin’s laugh sawed harshly and he picked up a second pickax. He was about to hand it to Grif when a shadow moved along the perimeter. Plasma coiled around both the ax handle and one fleeting brown paw.

  But Evie didn’t see the coyote or Justin’s hesitation. She was still focused on Zicaro, intent on opening that wound more, and rubbing in salt. “You gotta be generous with your people, Zicaro. Sal taught me that. Fear and greed are useful tools to curry loyalty, but nothing makes a man more steadfast than guaranteed green.”

  Zicaro snarled. “Yeah, you were real generous with Gina, weren’t you?”

  “Gina had it coming.”

  “And what about Kit’s father?” Grif said, out of the blue. “What about me?”

  Evie blinked, and for a moment she appeared genuinely surprised that he was still there. “Did I say you could speak?”

  “No, Evie,” Grif said, equally coolly. “I believe what you said was, ‘Till death do us part.’ ”

  “Well, then let’s get to it.” She kicked him in the heels, the barrel of the gun pressing into his back. “Start digging. You, too, Zicaro.”

  “Fuck you,” Zicaro said again, and this time Evie didn’t even sigh, she just shot him in the leg. Zicaro hit the ground before the report had cleared from the air. His screams were cutting, but Grif could barely hear them through the buzzing in his ears. The cries were futile, in any case. No one would hear him up here. Besides, what Zicaro couldn’t see as he writhed in pain was the plasma purling around his legs, rising along his back, linking smooth silvery tendrils gently around his neck. “You fucking shot me!”

  “Actually, I missed. I was going for the gut.” Evie turned her back on him and regarded Grif with narrowed eyes. Darkness made a puzzle out of her gaze, obscuring her features, wiping away the lines of age, and revealing only those parts of her face caught in the flashlight’s indirect beam. It made her look like she needed to be fitted back together. “As for you, Griffin, dear. Tell me something before you start digging. Before you die.”

  “What do you want to know?” he asked flatly. Zicaro continued to writhe and moan. The stars kept their icy watch. The coyotes, two this time, moved in closer again.

  “How’d you do it the first time?” she said, and narrowed her eyes when he only stared. “Was it a shovel? Bare hands? Did you have an ally? Did the coyotes help you?”

  “I don’t know . . .” But Grif looked down at the pickax in Justin’s hands, and he did know. The buzzing grew loud in his ears again, but this time it had nothing to do with gunfire. Because the plasma was sliding from Zicaro to him in concentric circles, and it was forming a third link with the pink boulder and the treasure that lay beneath it. The treasure and the grave.

  His grave.

  “I mean, how the hell does a man survive being stabbed, having his skull caved in, and then getting buried in one of Sal’s graves?”

  “You forgot being shot and betrayed by his wife,” he said, but Evie just shook her head. She didn’t care about that. She never had.

  “It defies reason.” Her upper lip curled in disdain. “It stinks of a miracle.”

  Grif felt something bubble up inside of him at that, and a snort escaped him before he could stop it. That, too, struck him as funny and he turned his head up to the night sky, as if howling at the moon. “Hear that?” he called out to the heavens, the Pure. “She thinks this is a miracle.”

  Still laughing, he dropped his gaze and studied the bumpy landscape again. Shouldn’t he have some sort of recognition of the spot? Shouldn’t he be able to recognize the place where he’d been buried for more than fifty years?

  But then Evie was directly in front of him. Something moved behind her, but it was gone from Grif’s periphery almost instantly, silent and swift. Whatever it was, it was of the earthly plane and of no concern to him anymore. However, Justin was watching the two of them closely, instinctively knowing there was something between them that he didn’t understand. Even Zicaro had stopped flailing on the ground long enough to observe their closeness, their marital intimacy.

  “I don’t think I love you anymore,” Grif said flatly.

  Evie just jerked the pickax from Justin’s hands and forced it into Grif’s. “Go dig up my fucking diamonds.”

  What did it matter? Plasma was already winding up the ax’s handle, interweaving with his grip. He lifted his other hand, wondering if he could touch it, but just as his fingertip disappeared into the phosphorescent mist, his celestial eyesight snapped out, and the plasma disappeared with it.

  So this is it, Grif thought, and realized that this was how it was supposed to end all along. A full circle back to the grave that held his old bones, now gone as gritty and porous as the rock that marked them. He decided that he’d go ahead and dig out Evie’s treasure for her. Then he’d climb back inside his grave and curl up into a past he should have never left. Dust to dust.

  Grif trudged over to the grave. Zicaro had ceased writhing atop it and had picked up the pickax Justin had thrown him as well. Zicaro was injured, and Grif was starting the Fade, but they’d do what they could to live a little longer. Survival, it seemed, was the strongest instinct of all.

  For a time, the only sound was that of their pickaxes striking the black earth. The volcanic rock was harder than the sandstone that burst from the desert floor farther north, but softer than the caliche plaguing most of the valley. Grif had to admit, Sal had picked a great place to bury him.

  After the top layer was dislodged, the digging became easier. His wound and age caused Zicaro to flag, but he pressed on, clearly intent on seeing the diamonds he was likely to die for. Eighteen inches straight down now. It wouldn’t be long.

  “Go wide,” Zicaro suddenly said, grunting as he cut away more of the dense earth. “They’re going to want us to make room for three.”

  Evie heard him and cocked her weapon. “No talking!”

  “Unless Justin here has changed his mind about that as well.”

  “You heard the woman, Zicaro,” Grif grunted, sweating and focused. “No talking.”

  “Fine. Just thought you’d want to know what’s gonna happen to your dearest treasure.”

  The vicious heat in Zicaro’s words couldn’t keep Grif from freezing. He swiveled slowly to look at the old man and, locating him, still saw only darkness.

  “She’s in the car,” Zicaro sneered. “Hog-t
ied . . . or at least zip-tied.”

  Justin was suddenly there, squatting next to the hole, his gun level with Grif’s gaze. “Shut up and dig, Al.”

  Zicaro thought about it for a moment before throwing down his pickax. He looked resolute, like he knew he wasn’t going to be able to figure a way out of this one. No sense in making it easy on his killers. “Make me,” he said, crossing his arms.

  A howl rose on the wind as if in response, ripping the silence of the night. Zicaro jumped, and whirled in time to catch the moving silhouette of a lone coyote trotting along the ridge above them. Backlit, it lay opaque and flat against the far-off wink of the city lights.

  Cursing, Evie shot at it.

  Grif’s ears rang again with the report and he dropped his ax, clutching his skull with both hands. The throb in his head pulsed from the center of his brain now, sending concentric ripples of pain to batter his skull. His stomach began to ache in the left side, too, and he realized he’d felt both of these injuries before. They were the ones that’d killed him the first time around.

  A blow across his face—Justin’s way of getting his attention—brought him back to the present. It wasn’t much more than a slap, but it knocked his fedora from his head and gave the throb an extra kick. “Pick up your ax and—”

  And Evie screamed behind him. Justin began to turn, but the dark shape that’d sprung from the desert floor was already in flight. Evie hit the volcanic floor on her back, the gun going off as she grunted under her attacker’s weight. Meanwhile, Grif did as Justin said. He picked up his ax and, using every ounce of strength left to him, lit up the left side of the crouching man’s face.

  Yet he’d also lost his equilibrium, and momentum sent him headlong into his own old grave.

  The move saved him. Justin recovered quickly, and shot at the first thing that moved. Zicaro grunted once, fell atop Grif, and didn’t move again. Justin then trained the gun between Grif’s eyes, but behind him was a figure haloed in moonlight. Her hands were bound by zip ties . . . but there was still enough room to grip a shovel. With one solid thwack, she sent Justin sailing into the grave as well. Grif’s body was now trapped beneath two still men, and a third—his own aged bones—lay beneath him.

  For a moment, there was only his labored breath to break the silence. The wind settled. The coyotes fell still. The city was just a far-off glittering thing.

  “Grif?” Kit finally said, voice thick with worry that he wouldn’t answer.

  Exhausted, in pain from injuries both old and new, Grif closed his eyes . . . and smiled into the cold night sky. “Hey, doll. Think you can give me a hand?”

  He heard a click. Grif’s eyes shot open and he saw that two women suddenly loomed above him, and the second one had a gun planted at Kit’s temple.

  “My husband,” Evie told Kit. “Always loved his five-shooter best.”

  And she had already fired four times.

  Neither Grif nor Kit spoke, causing Evie to laugh, a harsh ring of satisfaction in the cold night. “In fact, I’d say he was downright passionate about this gun. Same as with his lousy job as a P.I. Same with me. Every damned thing Griffin has ever done, he’s done with great passion.”

  “That’s not a bad thing,” Kit said. Her voice was stiff, but with a gun pressed against her skull, it was brave of her to speak at all.

  “I agree. Passion can be the most powerful emotion in the world when properly directed. I tried to explain this to Justin once, when we first agreed to work together. I even explained the etymological root of the word, passus. It’s Latin. It means . . .”

  “To suffer,” Kit finished for her. Evie blinked at Kit, who looked back, effectively turning her face directly into the gun. “Justin already explained all this to me, so you can save your fucking breath.”

  Evie’s jigsaw expression reordered itself into a cold, firm mask. “Fine. No point in wasting time speaking to the dead, anyway. Though I do need to thank you. I still hadn’t figured out a way to get rid of Justin after the three of you were buried.”

  “So that’s how you’ve lived the whole of your life?” Kit asked disdainfully. “Using men up, then burying them when you’re done?”

  “It’s worked wonderfully.”

  “I think the men might disagree.”

  Grif was still too stunned at seeing these two women together, engaging, to speak at all. Weakness, too, turned him into a mere bystander, gaping as Evie turned fully to Kit, straightening in her fur.

  “Yes, well, if it were left to the men in my life, I’d have spent the whole of it scrubbing other people’s toilets as my mother did, or thrusting snot-nosed brats from my body, having to reshape myself, my life, into whatever form they chose. This is a world led by men, dear. Problem is, if you follow them you’ll always be led into some form of destitution.”

  “Yet you had a man who would’ve followed you anywhere,” Kit said.

  Evie bristled, a shiver moving through her, ruffling her fur. “Fine. In retrospect, I can admit that Grif was different.” She didn’t look at him. “A true gentleman. Astonishingly loyal, a first for me. A man for whom the word ‘lover’ was created. I always thought of him as some sort of love savant. Capable of more of it than most, though that didn’t mean he still wasn’t stupid.”

  “That kind of love isn’t stupid,” Kit fumed. “It’s fucking regal.”

  Evie shook her head. “Trust me, girl. Time and again I’ve seen a woman grow mightier with age, strengthened by the hours she’s spent forced to her knees by a man. Wash his floor, bear his children, suck his cock. Meanwhile, those same men depend on their physical strength to get by. They think it’ll always be there, and when it finally begins to weaken, when they finally realize how dependent they’ve become on the women who run their worlds, they’re actually surprised . . . and as needy as suckling newborns.”

  “You preyed on that,” Kit said.

  “I learned early on that a man will give you everything if only you know what he values. You become that thing, an ingénue, a victim, a savior, but always hold a little back. It’s the small dignity you keep for yourself that will let you rise up and, in time, take it all. As I have.”

  “And yet,” Kit said mildly, “what would your life be like if instead of just taking you’d even once attempted to give?”

  The night went silent. For a moment, it was so still that it seemed they’d all turned to stone, as immutable and timeless as the surrounding terrain. Then Evie just tucked the gun inside Kit’s ear, and squeezed the trigger.

  Click.

  Grif chuckled darkly. “Four rounds, Evie. You used the fifth on me fifty years ago, remember?”

  Kit made a sound then, one that the coyotes surrounding them would recognize and appreciate. Before Evie could even blink, Kit sent a dual-fisted hammer punch right through the center of her startled face. Evie hit the black ground, and this time she didn’t move again. Kit, breathing hard, her hair whipping in the cold wind, turned back to Grif, who was still lying in his own grave.

  “I can’t believe you married that bitch.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Grif and Zicaro had done the majority of the digging, so it only took another ten minutes to finish the job. Yet Kit and Grif did not pull a doll with diamond eyes from that grave. It was wrapped inside a rug that bulged in irregular places while a remnant of material—structured cotton and felt—lay decayed on top. It was still recognizable as a once-fine fedora, and Kit lay her hand over Grif’s as they both gazed down upon it.

  The visual steeled them for what they did next. Propping Evie inside the grave, they refilled the hole so that she was facing the city where she’d plotted and schemed and caused so much destruction. When they were finished, Kit and Grif sat down on the blackened earth, side by side, wrapped in Evie’s warm fur as they waited for her to come back around.

  “Justin and Zicaro forced me up the hillside,” Kit explained, huddling close. “But when they saw that there was no place to hide me, they returned
me to the car. They didn’t want the sight of me to give you any hope.”

  They hadn’t wanted Grif to fight.

  “Fifteen minutes. That’s how long it took to get my feet free of the zip ties. I’d done it before, there was a tutorial on the Internet and I thought, you never know. It might come in handy one day. I hadn’t anticipated how nerves could counteract your efforts, though, so while I got my feet free there was no time to work the hands. You and Barbara . . . Evie, had already arrived.”

  She’d followed three criminals up a dark hillside because of Grif. “You never stop fighting, do you?”

  She lifted her head and looked at him square. “Not when it comes to a regal love.”

  Grif kissed her forehead, leaving his lips there for a moment, finding it warm. “I wouldn’t have known about her, or this,” he finally said, and nodded at his grave, “if it weren’t for you.”

  She inclined her head modestly. “Well, like you said. I’m a fighter.”

  But he didn’t laugh. “And don’t ever stop, Kit. The way you’re looking at me now, keep that. Keep the fire in your gut, too. Keep asking all those blasted questions . . .”

  Chirp, chirp, chirp. That’s what his girl sounded like, cheerful and enthusiastic, trilling her way through life.

  “Hey,” she said, suddenly taking his face in her hands. “I know what you’re saying, but I don’t want to do any of that without you. Got it?”

  He nodded yes. And thought, But do it anyway.

  A moan from in front of them disrupted the moment.

  “Good news,” Kit said, a false note of cheer lifting her voice. “We found your doll.”

  Evie groaned, head rolling to the side, eyes fighting to focus now that she was the one spotlighted in the night. She likely had a concussion . . . not that they cared.

  “The bad news is . . . we buried it again.”

  Grif shrugged when his wife’s unfocused gaze finally snagged on his. There was nothing of the woman he’d loved in that look . . . but it wasn’t because she’d changed in the last fifty years. Grif had been the one to project the love he felt, the passion, onto her. Even knowing she’d played Sal DiMartino the same way, he still felt stupid. Yet he also knew that, if given the chance to live again, he’d love the very same way. He’d lay it out there and simply hope that the same great and aching passion would return to him if he just gave enough.