The Given

by Vicki Pettersson

  But for a woman like Evie? It was never enough.

  “What are you planning?” she finally asked.

  “Well, we know how long and hard you’ve been searching for those diamonds,” Kit said, huddled close to him. “How many lives they’ve cost, how many lies you’ve told. So we decided they really should be yours.”

  Evie’s eyes actually burned. Buried to her shoulders in a grave of her making, and she still had the audacity to hope.

  Maybe Kit had hit her harder than he’d thought.

  “That’s why we buried you with them,” Kit finished, extinguishing that greedy light.

  “Stretch out fully,” Grif added, sickened by the hate that sprung up in Evie’s face. “You might even be able to touch them with your toes.”

  Evie just lifted her head from its sandstone pillow and wriggled her shoulders, managing to loosen a couple of rocks. Kit’s hands fisted themselves at her side, and Grif knew she wanted to reach down and firm them back in place. Reaching over, he took her hand in his instead, and had the greater satisfaction of seeing Evie’s eyes narrow.

  “Griffin—” Evie began.

  “Don’t talk,” he said in a low voice, and somewhere on the jagged sweep of the Black Mountains, a lone coyote howled. As chilling as that was, it was still preferable to this woman’s voice. Grif had heard enough of her lies to last two lifetimes.

  Standing, Kit made a show of dusting herself off. “We packed the gravel loosely, so you can get out if you want. You can run and hide like you’ve been doing the whole of your fraudulent life.”

  “But you won’t have time to dig out the diamonds as well,” Grif said, pushing to his feet. The sky spun overhead.

  Kit linked her arm in his, righting him in place, back on the Surface. “That’s right. An anonymous call citing some serious tomfoolery on this mountainside will be placed to Metro as soon as we get down that hill. Of course, you could just sit there and wait for the authorities to find you surrounded by the bodies of two criminals.”

  They had, in fact, already recovered Kit’s cell phone and put in a call to Metro. Any minute now and they’d see blue and red strobes flashing up the mountainside. They’d find Evie . . . along with Zicaro and Justin and the diamonds . . . and everything else that’d been long buried in that warped carpeting.

  Grif held the flashlight beam steady on Evie while Kit gathered the weapons Justin and Zicaro had carried up the mountainside. Evie was already fighting her way out of that hole.

  “Ready?” Kit returned to Grif’s side, and together they turned away.

  The cry came after only a few steps. “Griffin! Baby, you’re not going to just leave me here like this, are you?”

  Kit’s hand tightened on his when she felt him pause, but he just squeezed it as he half turned, facing his past one last time. The outline of Evie’s skull was all that was visible beneath the moon, and for a moment he was able to project her youthful visage upon that frame, but then he realized that no, this was what had always been there. This blank slate of darkness, an emptiness living inside of her that couldn’t be filled, even with the entirety of a good man’s heart.

  “Hold on,” he told Kit.

  “But—”

  He cupped her warm cheek, pressed his lips to hers. Then he turned and walked slowly back to Evie. Bending low, he leaned so close that all he could see were those deep chocolate eyes he’d once so loved. Then he whispered so that Kit wouldn’t hear. “You’d better hurry, Evie. It’ll be here soon.”

  “It’ll—?” But she heard it then. The scrabbling of paws slipping over loose rock. The pant of a desert animal’s hot breath.

  “They don’t usually attack humans, but these guys are hungry.” Neither of them blinked. “You know what it is to be hungry, don’t you?”

  Grif returned to Kit then, who only glanced at him quizzically. Then they headed directly back down the hillside, clinging to each other to keep from falling. Even though Evie, buried up to her shoulders, was the only other person on that mountainside, Grif still felt eyes trained upon them. It was a feral night. Even the breeze felt hostile. Then a yelp punctuated the frigid wind, and Kit jolted, but it quickly became a disconnected sound. It could have even been imagined. Grif pulled her forward.

  They’d just reached level ground when a scream finally did arch high on the air, spinning into the wild night. Kit stopped Grif, gripping his biceps. Her head whipped back up the hillside, where a coyote could be heard calling to others, and she gasped in understanding. “You knew.”

  “She reeked of plasma” was all Grif said, and turned his back on the hillside and headed to Kit’s car.

  Kit helped Grif into the passenger’s seat, and then immediately started the car, cranking the heat high and angling the vents toward Grif. His teeth were chattering even though she’d draped Evie’s fur atop him, and his fingers were stiff with cold. Maybe it was just the pale aspect of the moon, but he also seemed unnaturally white. Eyes shut, his mouth was slightly ajar as his head lolled against the headrest.

  In just over twenty-four hours, he will be dead.

  Kit shoved Sarge’s voice from her mind and the car into reverse. “I’m going to get you to the hospital, Grif. I think you’re . . .” She didn’t say “dying.” “Seriously injured.”

  But his hand stopped her from shifting into gear, his touch weak but insistent. “What time is it?”

  Tears sprung to her eyes. “Do not ask me that!”

  “After four, then.” Grif nodded to himself. “Please, put the top down.”

  Kit protested again, but he silenced her by pressing his index finger firmly against her lips. “I just want to see the stars.”

  She couldn’t keep the strangled sound from escaping her throat, but she shifted back into park, and worked to lower the soft top on the Duetto. The cold, greedy fingers of the mountain air shifted over her, but Grif was huddled low in his seat, the heater shoving them back out again. Kit killed the headlights, and the black void above them married with the mountain to erase the entire world. It felt like being cupped in a giant onyx palm.

  “There they are,” Grif said, his voice gone reedy and thin. Kit looked in the same direction that he was staring, but saw nothing.

  “They?”

  “Her Centurion. He’s just there . . .” Grif pointed off into the distance, but his arm fell after only a moment. Then his head swiveled and he smiled at something—someone—on the other side of Kit.

  They.

  “No!” Kit shouted it in the direction he was staring, then shifted so that she was on her knees in her seat and leaning over Grif. Grabbing his face, she forced him to look at her. “No,” she told him, too.

  “I’m dying, Kit.”

  “No,” she said, slipping his fedora off his head, and pulling him into her arms. He needed comfort right now, that was all, and she could give it. She could. “It just feels that way.”

  He whispered his next words, one per breath. “You sound so certain.”

  “I am,” Kit said, and fiercely kissed his forehead. She was shocked to find it ice-cold. “Sarge owes me a miracle. He told me so himself.”

  It wasn’t exactly true. What the Pure had said was that he would owe her. In a perfect world.

  “And you think I’m your miracle?” Grif tilted his head up and gazed into her eyes. The light from the dash glinted off the severe angles of his face, making him look like he’d just stepped from the screen of an old black-and-white movie. Like he belonged somewhere in the past.

  “Of course you are.” They both ignored the way her voice cracked. “I knew it the minute I saw you. You appeared in my bedroom, fedora drawn low and fists raised high, and even while you were in the midst of saving my life I said to myself, that’s the guy for me. I want him, and no other. And it’s been that way ever since. We were fated, don’t you see, Grif? Bound together long before we knew it.”

  She cut off with a shake of her head, realizing she’d begun speaking in the past tense. No.
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  “Maybe you’re right.” He made an effort to shrug. “Only time will tell.”

  That’s when Kit began to pray. “No, Grif. No. You tell whoever is standing on the other side of this car that we’re not done!”

  She choked back a sob, and glanced at her watch over his shoulder. Four-oh-eight. He turned his head into her neck, his breath warm, yet somehow cold, on her skin. “Just hold me.”

  “Hold me back,” she hissed in return, and, to her surprise, he did. As her hot tears streaked over his too-cold face, he clung to her like he was rallying.

  His whisper, tinged faintly with licorice, sent icy chills up her spine. “We really are a great team, aren’t we?”

  “The best,” she whispered back, and, bending her head, wrapped herself around him and held on tight. The coconut of his pomade tickled her nose. The muscles beneath his suit bunched up, squeezing her back before slowly going lax.

  And at precisely 4:10 in the morning, fifty-one years to the day of his first death, Griffin Shaw—Kit’s partner and lover and Centurion—died in her arms.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Kit found the note one week later.

  She didn’t know what it was at first. She hadn’t checked her mailbox since before Grif’s death, but Marin had gathered all the mail in a neat pile for later. Though she didn’t feel up to dealing with the bills, throwing the supermarket advertisements and magazines in the recycling bin made her at least feel like she was accomplishing something. Yet the sight of the slanted cursive had her dropping the rest of the mail heedlessly to the floor. She knew that handwriting, and seeing it now felt like Grif had reached out and touched her, once again, from beyond the grave. It began:

  Today I die.

  She remembered then, Marin’s office. She thought he’d left the room so that she could reconcile privately with her aunt—and they had; Marin had been steadfast by Kit’s side ever since Grif’s death—but he’d really been off mailing this. And he’d planned it, she saw, recognizing the stationery as part of the monogrammed set she kept at home.

  This morning has more weight to it than others. I can actually feel it, the heaviness of the day. I think I felt it the first time I died, too, but couldn’t recognize it then for what it was: the relentless gears of fate picking up speed while my mortal clock began to slow. That’s why I’m writing this letter at two in the morning on scented paper in a shockingly pink kitchen while you sleep off our lovemaking as if you’re the one about to be thrown into oblivion.

  (I love that about you, by the way. Men are supposed to be the ones who lose themselves after sex, but by the time my head clears of your scent and I’ve finally caught my breath again, you’re usually out cold beside me or on top of me or below, limbs like lead, breathing deep. I absolutely love it. I don’t think I’ve ever loved anything more.)

  I don’t want you to think that just because I’m fated to die today, or because I’m writing this good-bye, that I’ve given up. I’ve cheated death before, even from beyond the grave, and went on to live an amazing second life, and who else can say that? But the Host is on my heels now, the heavens are working against me, and someone on this blasted mudflat still wants me dead. It’s a pretty full plate, but I’ll dig on into it, because I believe that we have a shot at changing all that. More than that, whatever happens will affect your fate, too, and honey, that’s really why I continue to fight.

  Ten minutes. Kit thought she was all cried out, that there wasn’t enough moisture left in her marrow to spare for tears, but that’s how long it took before she could continue reading. The note was slightly crumpled now, the ink smudged with her tears, but she could still make out the words of Grif’s steady, careful script.

  Yeah, I still want to know who set me up for the DiMartinos. Who told them I hurt their little Mary Margaret after I brought her safely home. Who lied about me working with the Salernos to steal those diamonds.

  Who the hell took my life away from me while I still had so much living to do?

  But all of those questions feel brittle and old under the weight of this heavy, newborn day. They feel like this slip of paper will in another fifty years, filled with thoughts that’ve been rendered irrelevant with the passage of time. Besides, a more important question thrums in my chest now, and this one is so alive that it drew me away from your flesh and your scent and your bed to ask:

  What the hell is going to happen to my girl? My doll? My love?

  My Katherine Craig?

  I can’t answer that. And I don’t think I’ll be able to before day’s end, either. And then I find myself wondering what will your sunrises look like if I’m gone? How will your days stretch out before you, and what will you do to fill in all of those years, all that time? It scares me that after all the things I’ve done, the lives and the Takes and the joints I’ve seen . . . I can’t even imagine it.

  Who will you be without me?

  But I do know what I imagine for you, and it’s very simply more of what’s already there:

  The way you throw your head back when you laugh, like you’re ready to swallow the entire world. The way your arms stretch wide as if you’re opening up your very chest for a hug. The dizzying chatter that speeds from your mouth when you and your hens really get going—laughing and dancing and doing that strange nattering that women do when they’re together. The way your eyebrows turn down as you work out a story, finding answers and meaning and truth in your work. And your day. And your life.

  I know how important truth is to you, and I want to give you mine before I go:

  I love you, Katherine Craig. I love you like God loves His Chosen. And if fate decrees that this day not go in our favor, then I will tell the heralds to sing your praises, and the Guardians to watch over your dark head. I will threaten the archangels if anything is to befall you, and I will do everything in my power to see you safe and protected and duly blessed from my place in the Everlast.

  And, Kit, listen to me: You must live. I may be the Centurion, but you’re the one with the real wings. You hold more love for what God has created than anyone I know. The Host may have thrust the breath back into my chest as a form of punishment just over a year ago, but it was you who really taught me how to live.

  I’m going back to bed now. I’m going to claim you as mine again before this fated day really gets going, and I’m going to watch your limbs fall, weighted and limp, across my chest. Your breathing will be like the ocean’s roar in my ear, and for a moment, at least, I am going to wipe your mind of any worry. But no matter what happens, you must not grieve for me. I have learned something in this second lifetime that I didn’t in my first go-round. You have taught me the most important truth of all:

  Love isn’t just worth remembering and saving. True love is what saves us all.

  It was that letter that finally got Kit up and out of her house. It propelled her past the bathroom mirror that she’d shattered in her anger over the heartlessness of a Pure, and into the shower to wash off the grief that felt like it was caking her soul. She stayed under the spray until the hot water ran out and her fingertips were wrinkle-tipped, and when she returned to gaze into that broken mirror, she told herself she felt a little lighter, a little better. Perhaps in time she’d even believe it.

  Her gaze dropped to the cracked webbing of the glass, and for a moment she saw the dust of stars swirling behind the aluminum coating on the other side. But, no. It was just steam from the shower. Kit was utterly alone.

  And Grif wouldn’t want her to stay that way.

  “Live until you die, right?” she said to her reflection. Again, there was no reply and she hurried to her closet to dress. Afraid, Kit realized, to answer the question herself.

  When she showed up an hour and a half later at the nightclub, she was given a welcome most often reserved for a soldier returned home from war, which almost felt true. Enveloped in the arms and chatter of her closest friends and the jumping three-chord change of classic rockabilly, she was happy to simply listen
as Fleur prattled on about a new competing hair salon offering a blow-dry bar and a makeup menu. As Charis proudly told of her baby, now sitting up, soon walking. Still, it all felt like an out-of-body experience, like she’d been dropped into a fishbowl, told to sink or swim.

  She was just sipping at her old-fashioned, thinking she had nothing to add to the environment and that she might as well leave, when she felt a presence at her side. Looking up, she smiled. “Dennis.”

  He had dodged fate one more time. The blow that Justin had landed on his head had merely gained him a concussion and a healthy interest in watching his back. For now, though, he was looking at Kit with a gentle smile on his face, one that didn’t even require she smile back. Just like a true friend. “Please tell me that you’ve come to dance.”

  Aware that all chatter at the table had ceased, and that she was currently being studied by a half-dozen curious gazes, Kit set down her tumbler and held out her hand. “This is one of my favorite songs.”

  She ignored the lift of Fleur’s painted-on eyebrows, and let herself be led to the center of the dance floor. The band had switched it up a bit, and were giving the crowd a breather with the Eddie Cochran ballad “Yesterday’s Heartbreak.”

  “I’m glad to see you here,” Dennis said, palming her right hand with his left.

  Kit bit her lower lip. “I wouldn’t have come but . . . I had a little nudge.”

  “Brave,” he said, drawing her closer, breath moving her hair. “If there’s anything I can do . . .”

  She smiled up at him. “You’re doing it.”

  Dennis smiled back and, keeping his touch light, uncomplicated, and chaste, he rocked her through the notes of the song. Kit closed her eyes, happy to be led. Her eyes opened, though, when Dennis unexpectedly jolted.