The Lazarus Codex Boxed Set 2

by E. A. Copen

  Maybe it was the power outage. Something about the darkness made the house seem smaller, and the flickering candlelight made the setting more…romantic.

  Romantic? That didn’t seem right. Did it? There wasn’t anything like that going on. Was there? We’d been hanging out a lot lately, but I didn’t really have any other friends besides her and Nate, so it didn’t feel weird, especially when I had Remy along. Sure, we talked on the phone late into the night sometimes, but late was the only time I had. Then there was that thing she was going to say earlier before the power went out. What had she wanted to tell me?

  I put the candle down on the coffee table and rubbed my aching face. Then there was this whole soul sacrifice thing. Why would she do that? Emma was smart. Too smart to just throw something that important away.

  She doesn’t view it like that. She doesn’t think she threw it away. She made the deal to save you, you idiot. And you know you’d do the same for her in a heartbeat. Doesn’t matter that it’s the most knuckle-headed, moronic thing to do. You’d do it because you can’t imagine a world without her in it.

  That wasn’t true. I’d survived everything the world had to throw at me for twenty-plus years before I ever met Emma Knight. Magic, monsters…I’d made it through prison on my own. But I’d been miserable, enough so that I latched onto the first person who showed me the tiniest fraction of affection and had a child with her. It hadn’t worked out. Nothing had. Through all that, even when shit hit the fan and there was no way out, Emma was there, ready to kick my ass to keep me on the straight and narrow. If I woke up tomorrow and she was gone, I’d tear the city apart to find her.

  Holy shit.

  I was in love with her, and she might’ve been stupid enough to love me back.

  “Are you okay?” Emma stopped in the doorway, a glass tumbler in each hand and a bottle of gin hanging from two fingers.

  No, I’m freaking the hell out. My best friend and the only person in the world I trust without question screwed up her entire life, and her afterlife, because she’s in love with me. And I was too dumb to see it.

  “Yeah, totally.” Fuck, why did I say that? I sounded like I’d just walked off the set of Saved by the Bell.

  She gave me a skeptical look. “Right. Anyway…” She held one of the tumblers out to me.

  I grabbed it and downed it before she could see the way my hands shook. Being a beer guy, I’d never had the opportunity or desire to drink gin before. It tasted like swallowing a fruity Christmas tree, or Sprite mixed with rubbing alcohol. I almost choked on it because I was expecting something more in line with vodka.

  Yeah, I’m so smooth.

  Emma raised both eyebrows and frowned. “Easy there, Laz. This stuff will go to your head.” She sank onto the sofa and deposited the bottle and her untouched glass next to the candle. “Why don’t you tell me what’s really bothering you?”

  I bit my tongue. Because of a previous and very binding promise, I couldn’t lie to Emma except by omission. If I answered that question, I’d be walking on shaky ground, and I wasn’t ready to answer that question.

  “Everything,” I answered, sitting next to her. “We’re about to walk into an arena filled with gods and monsters who want to kill us, armed with weapons books and operas are written to describe. I held the freaking Rod of Aaron in my hands earlier today, Emma, and watched a Hellhound eat a chicken. And you…” I paused to think about how to word it right. “Why’d you do it, Emma? Why me?”

  Emma grabbed her glass and took a sip, shrugging. “Why not you?”

  “Because I didn’t deserve it. Not after everything that’s happened to you because of me.”

  She lowered the glass and sighed. “That’s where you’re wrong. You do deserve it. You deserve to be happy, no matter what you’ve done or didn’t do. Everybody does. Besides, in a weird way, having my arm and shoulder all messed up was the best thing that ever happened to me. I don’t think I ever would’ve taken a break from the job if it hadn’t happened. I needed that.”

  “So, you wouldn’t change anything if you got a do-over?”

  Emma crossed one leg over the other and tapped a finger against her glass, thinking. “I don’t know. Grandpa used to say who we are is made up of what we’ve done. Change one thing in the past, and it echoes into the present. I wouldn’t be who I am, and you wouldn’t be who you are. There’s no going back, Laz. There’s no future in chasing ghosts of the past.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I refilled my glass while I thought it over. “Okay, then. We’ll talk about the future. What’s in it? Where are you headed?”

  She chuckled. “Me? You’re the fortune teller. Here, why don’t you read my palm?”

  “Sure.” I scooted the table a little closer for better light before taking her right hand.

  Palmistry is quack magic, completely bogus. At festivals, it was a quick way to make twenty bucks and make someone feel good about themselves. It was less about reading the hand and more about reading the person, much like tarot or the face reading they do in the Far East. Such forms of divination were social science and required a level of empathy. Or, in my case, a credit check. I almost always ran them on clients before they showed. A credit check would show all kinds of things about a person, and they were easy enough to get for a small fee. With Emma, I didn’t need one. I felt like I knew her well enough that I could’ve done a decent reading in my sleep.

  “How does it work?” She shifted so she was sitting on her knees on the sofa. “Walk me through it.”

  “Well, first thing is to look at the overall shape of the hand,” I explained. “You’ve got a sort of rectangular shape, long fingers, strong grip. Worn at the knuckles.” I pointed out the dry skin across the second joint of each finger.

  “Gardening,” she said. “Dries out the hands.”

  “Means you’re a workaholic. Even when you’re not working, you’re working. You keep yourself busy.”

  She nodded. “Guilty.”

  “But you don’t do it for recognition or for whatever the end goal is. It’s busy work.”

  The smile that had been playing on her lips disappeared. “How do you know that?”

  “Fingernails.” I turned her hand over and dragged my thumb over the uneven edges of her nails. “Stop chewing ’em off.”

  “They break off! Gardening.”

  “Uh-huh.” I turned her hand over again so the palm was up and ran my finger along the line going from the top of her pointer to the dip of her thumb. “You keep people at a distance. It’s not on purpose, and you think you’re protecting them by keeping your distance, but it makes you lonely.”

  “I’m not sure I like this reading.”

  “It gets better.” I traced the line that curved in from near the thumb. “This is your life line. Yours is very deep, a strong curve that goes all the way down to the wrist.”

  She leaned forward. “Let me guess. I die young and horrible.”

  “No, nothing like that. Means you love life. You’re passionate about preserving it in all its forms. This is the part where I normally tell people they should pursue a career that has something to do with justice because you’ve clearly got a strong sense of right and wrong.”

  “No kidding? What’s this one?” She pointed to the topmost line on her palm.

  “That’s your heart line. That and the Venus mound here—” I traced a circle around the area just beside her thumb. “—are all about relationships and romance.”

  “And what do they say?”

  I looked up from her palm to meet her brown eyes. Her face was so close to mine that I could taste the gin in the air. It would take almost nothing for me to lean forward and taste if from her lips instead. Yet if I did, things would change between us. I’d be risking our friendship for a chance at a romance that probably wouldn’t work out. Why should it? Even if everything else was going right for me, that was the one area of my life I’d never managed to make work. I was a scattered, emotional mess an
d I couldn’t ask Emma to love that. I respected her too much.

  So, I turned back to her palm. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but when both are pronounced like this it means you’ve got a lot of…let’s call it energy. But see these lines that cross the heart line? Those usually represent heartbreak.”

  “Are you going to break my heart, Lazarus?”

  I wasn’t prepared for a direct confrontation like that and made the mistake of meeting her eyes again. Before I was staring straight at her, I had the beginnings of a response right on the tip of my tongue. Any hope of ever speaking it disappeared. My heart was hammering painfully hard in my chest. I couldn’t lie, and I didn’t know how to tell the truth, yet an answer slipped out anyway, my voice barely a whisper. “I don’t know.”

  My mouth and throat were suddenly made of sandpaper, and I wished I had something to drink, but I’d already drained my glass. When had I done that? How many drinks had we had? I didn’t feel drunk, but that’s exactly what drunk me would say. I felt… I didn’t know. For as many different relationships as I’d started—and failed at—I hadn’t ever had this weird sick to my stomach, about-to-be-in-a-car-crash-and-drown feeling. It was like jumping out of a plane without checking my parachute first, although I’d never done that either, so what did I know?

  “I don’t want to,” I said. “But I don’t know if I could. Do this, I mean. With you. I’m dangerous. People around me get hurt. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  She smiled. “Lazarus, I can take a little pain.”

  “I’m serious, Emma.”

  “You’re stalling,” she said. “Do you want to kiss me or not?”

  I hesitated. Trick question. “Yes, but—”

  “Then do it.”

  The space between us shrank further. I wasn’t sure which one of us was moving, but it felt like we both were. Moving, yet standing still. It was confusing, frustrating, and electrifying all at once.

  The living room light suddenly flared to life. In the kitchen, the fridge buzzed into action, and the microwave beeped as power was restored.

  We stopped, faces so close together we drew the same breath.

  Emma huffed out a breath through her nose and moved her head to the side, resting her head against my shoulder instead. “Maybe you’re right. This is a bad idea.”

  Dammit, dammit, dammit! I’d messed things up again. I could feel the disappointment in her body as she lay against me. If I could stop being such a screw-up for five seconds, maybe my life would stop being a jumbled mess and start to make some sense. I’d missed my chance. Not that my stupid caveman brain got the memo. All it knew was that a pretty girl in a tight, skimpy dress was pressed up against me.

  “Lazarus?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Is there something in your pocket?”

  My face burned. “Nope.”

  She made an irritated noise and pushed away from me to stand. “I’m going to bed. You can crash on the couch.”

  “Hey, in my defense, the damn thing’s got a mind of its own, and you were hitting on me hardcore just now. Most girls would be flattered.”

  Emma rolled her eyes, shook her head and tugged the hem of her dress down. “Goodnight, Lazarus.” She stepped around the couch and disappeared into the back of the house. A minute later, I heard a door shut.

  When was the last time I slept over a woman’s place and got the couch?

  I puffed my cheeks and exhaled, letting my head rest against the cushions. “Well, I’d say I’m screwed, but clearly that’s not going to happen either.” The bottle of gin was still sitting on the table though, so I poured myself another glass and toasted it to the air. If I wasn’t going to get that kiss, might as well get smashed.

  Chapter Eight

  I dreamed about someone I hadn’t seen in almost twenty years: my father.

  In the dream, I was eight years old and sitting on the kitchen floor, grasping my dog’s bright red collar while he barked. Mom and Dad weren’t arguing yet, but I had that horrible feeling in my gut, knowing it was coming.

  Two chipped coffee cups rattled as Dad slammed a fist on the table. “Shut that damn dog up!”

  I was too paralyzed to speak, let alone move. My legs ached to get up and carry me outside to the front stoop where I normally waited things out, but this time something was different. It wasn’t that I wanted to stay. I didn’t. More than anything, I wanted to get the hell out of there. I just couldn’t move.

  Black coffee sloshed over the side of the cup as Dad grabbed it. Glass smashed into the wall next to my head. “I said shut him the fuck up!”

  “Leave ’im alone, Bill. Ain’t his fault.”

  “Yes, it is. Boy’s too stupid to understand. Look at him. Takes after his mom.”

  Mom stood, pushing blonde curls over her bony shoulder. “Laz, sweetie, take Buddy outside.”

  “But it’s raining,” eight-year-old me said. Thunder rolled through the house. The storm was inside, not outside.

  She took a step toward me and I suddenly remembered why this time was different. Mom was pregnant with Lydia.

  Dad surged to his feet. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “I’m just going to get him a damn umbrella, Bill!”

  Dad drew a fist back. Lightning flashed. Next thing I knew, I was in Mom’s station wagon, riding through the storm with the dog on my lap. Blood had crusted on her lip under her nose and she had two black eyes. Rainwater sprayed through the window she had down while she puffed on a cigarette.

  We passed a sign that said it was twenty miles to Little Rock. When had we passed into Arkansas?

  Bright red ash flicked out into the night. “Don’t you let nobody hit you, Lazarus,” she said. “Not without makin’ ’em pay for it. You give as good as you get. No matter what.”

  “Why does Dad hate us? What did I do wrong?”

  Her jaw flexed, and she tapped broken nails on the steering wheel. “Oh, baby, you didn’t do anything wrong. Your Daddy just gets the Devil in him when he’s had too much to drink. It ain’t fair, is it? That you kids have to pay for your mamma’s sins.” She reached over smooth my hair with the cigarette still crushed between her fingers. “Don’t marry for love, baby. Love don’t last. It just tears you up inside.”

  I woke up naked with a headache and a full bladder. The first part of that was confusing until I remembered Khaleda’s spell. Shit. I’d forgotten and fallen asleep. Outside, the sun was up, but I didn’t hear Emma moving around. Maybe I could sneak into the bathroom and find a towel or something. Yeah, ’cause that’d be less awkward. Either way, after four shots of gin, the bathroom was a must.

  By the time I’d finished that, my head was killing me, so I raided the medicine cabinet in search of aspirin. I opened one side, and a prescription bottle crashed into the sink, so I picked it up. That’s what I was supposed to do, right? Clean up after myself? I didn’t mean to read the labels. It was just one of those things that happen. I saw the name of the medication and paused. Prozac? I knew Emma was out of work on medical leave, but this was an antidepressant. Maybe she was struggling with more than just a little lingering pain in her shoulder.

  I replaced the bottle and closed the cabinet. It wasn’t something I planned to bring up with her directly, but it did make me worry more about her. How bad was it? Would she take stupid risks during this tournament and get hurt? Was it because I’d introduced her to this crazy world full of monsters? It was a lot for anyone to swallow.

  Whatever she was going through, she’d still showed up to fight with me every time. She was still the strongest person I knew, even stronger if she was fighting those demons on her own. I’d rather watch her face down a god any day of the week than battle her own mind. That sucked.

  Three loud knocks sounded on the bathroom door. “You okay in there?” Emma asked.

  I jerked a towel down and wrapped it around my waist before cracking the door. “Yeah, I just seem to have woken up without any clothes.”

&nb
sp; “Right,” she said. Emma had obviously been smarter than me. She’d put on a pair of purple pajama pants with a matching shirt. “Khaleda’s spell.”

  “Yeah. I don’t suppose you could loan me a pair of sweats or something?”

  Emma pressed her lips together and looked down. So that’s how it felt every time I looked at some girl’s cleavage.

  “Emma?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “Seriously. Just until I can swing by my place?” My face was burning.

  She didn’t mind. “I’ve got an orange taffeta bridesmaid dress I wore to my cousin’s wedding.”

  “Now that’s just inhumane.”

  Emma smiled and wiggled her eyebrows. “You should’ve worn the shoes.”

  “Emma!”

  “All right, all right!” She raised her hands in surrender. “I’ll get something. Wouldn’t want you to get arrested for public indecency.”

  I grumbled my thanks and closed the door to wait. Emma knocked again a few minutes later and handed in a pair of loose gray workout pants. They’d be too short for me, but at least they wouldn’t be skin-tight.

  Finally decent, I went to join Emma in the kitchen. She was busy dumping some whipped up eggs into a pre-heated pan. The eggs sizzled and hissed loudly until she turned the heat down and went back to chopping up a tomato and onion. The atmosphere seemed awkward, but maybe that was just me fighting off my hangover.

  She dumped the tomato and onion into the pan with some spinach and went to pour two cups of coffee, all without saying a word. Her movements were fluid, and she didn’t slam anything, so she didn’t seem angry. Just busy. Emma placed a cup of black coffee in front of me.

  I hooked a finger around the handle. “Emma, about last night—”

  “Moses called. Said they found the Escalade down the block from the Jackson Park.” She flipped the omelet.

  The change in topics threw me. Guess we’re not going to talk about it. “Oh. That’s good.”

  “So I called for a cab to come and get us at ten. We’ll swing by your place and you can get some decent clothes and your staff, then to the address Morningstar gave me.” A couple of seasonings went into the pan. “I know he promised you the Rod of Aaron, but I figured you’d rather have your own weapon just in case as a backup.”