Not Even Bones

by Rebecca Schaeffer

  Agent Quispe was silent for a long time.

  Nita felt uncomfortable. Something was wrong. “Who is that man?”

  “Not a man. A vampire.” Agent Quispe sighed. “He’s a fixer for certain mafia groups.”

  A fixer? As in someone who fixed problems, usually with death or blackmail?

  What the hell was someone like that doing looking into Nita’s mom?

  Mom, what did you do?

  Agent Quispe was still talking. “He was spotted in your hometown recently.”

  Wait. What?

  Nita got a horrible, terrible feeling in her stomach. “Why was he there?”

  Agent Quispe was silent for a long time, folding and refolding her hands. “Nita, I’m so sorry to tell you this. Your father was murdered just over a week ago.”

  Nita sat there, rigid in shock. Then, finally, she broke and began to cry.

  Forty-One

  SHE SPENT THE next three days curled up in bed sleeping, trying to recover from the crippling migraines that had been plaguing her since she’d abused her powers so thoroughly. When she felt well, she wandered the parts of the facility she was allowed into and sat in the park behind the building, crying into the flower bushes.

  She tried mentally going through dissections, but she couldn’t focus. Each piece of the image would crack and break, fading into memory, until there was only Nita standing with a scalpel in the dark.

  At first, nothing had seemed real, everything just a blur of pain and horror. After the grief calmed down a bit, Nita paused to wonder: How had Zebra-stripes found her father? He was clearly tracking her mother, and knew of both her mother’s and her own abilities.

  The fact that Nita’s kidnapping and her father’s murder were so close together was also suspicious. Could Fabricio have heard Nita mention her father? No. And even if he had, there was no way he knew enough details to find him.

  So, on a surface level, her father’s murder seemed unconnected to Nita’s kidnapping. But Nita couldn’t shake the feeling something was wrong.

  And why was Zebra-stripes hunting her mother in the first place?

  Nita shook her head. Too many questions, not enough answers.

  Nita sat in a small lounge, staring aimlessly at a large portrait of Nadezhda Novikova, the founder of INHUP. Nita had heard she was still technically its president to this day, though she was more of a figurehead at this point than anything else. The picture had been taken sometime near the founding of INHUP in the 1960s, and Nadezhda looked young in it, Nita’s age.

  Supposedly, Nadezhda had established her reputation as an unnatural hunter when she was only sixteen, by killing one of the most notorious vampires of the age, Bessanov. Nita had always wondered if INHUP had started out as an organization for hunting unnaturals and then gradually changed into protecting them, or if both ideals had always been there from the start.

  “Nita.”

  She turned to find Agent Quispe on the other side of the room.

  “Yes?” Nita’s voice was soft.

  Agent Quispe stretched out her hand, and there was Reyes’ phone. Nita reached out and took it.

  “We submerged it in rice for the past three days,” Agent Quispe said. “It turns on, but you have a passcode, so I can’t check whether it still works.”

  Nita nodded. “Thanks.”

  She tucked it in her pocket. Later, when there were no INHUP agents hovering over her shoulders, she’d see if there were messages from her mother. She’d email Kovit and ask him how his wound was.

  Now that her father was gone and her mother was in trouble, possibly dead too, she felt frighteningly alone in the world. Kovit’s anonymity plan didn’t seem so bad at the moment.

  She thought of him on the pier, whispering that email address in her ear, and she shivered with something intangible.

  “Also,” Agent Quispe continued, “we’ve booked a flight for you to our North American office. Representatives will pick you up in Toronto.”

  “Okay.”

  “Oh, and we have another refugee from the black market. There was an issue in the Quito office, so he’s come here. You’ll be seeing him around. It’ll do you both good to talk to someone who’s been through the same thing.”

  Nita stiffened. Quito office. In Ecuador.

  Agent Quispe turned around at the sound of footsteps. “Ah, this will be him now.”

  A young man with dark brown hair and blue-gray eyes walked into the lounge. Nita felt her heart stutter in recognition.

  It was the boy whose life Nita had saved. The boy who had sold her. The instigator of this entire, horrid mess.

  Her betrayer.

  “Nita, meet Fabricio.”

  Acknowledgments

  This is not the first novel I’ve ever written, but this is the first one that’s made the journey all the way to publication. I could never have gotten here without the help of a lot of amazing people.

  Firstly, my wonderful agent, Suzie Townsend, who loved this book and found it the perfect home in record time. My editor, Sarah Landis, who saw the potential of my dark little monster book and helped me take it to the next level. Nicole Sclama, who helped guide me through the entire publication process.

  Brenda Drake, for creating the wonderful Pitch Wars contest, which gave me the opportunity of a lifetime. My amazing mentors, Rebecca Sky and Stacey Trombley, who picked me out of a slush pile of talented people, helped me edit, and supported me through this journey. You guys are incredible, and I’m so lucky I met you both.

  My early readers, the Dark Forces of Narnia, who looked at a rough first act and helped reorganize it. The Storybook Dreamers for helping me polish that first act so it gleamed for submission. Thanks to Allison Latzko and Michaël Wertenberg, who read the first, truly appalling draft of this novel.

  J. S. Dewes, who read the second, much better draft, and went above and beyond answering questions and loving the story and the characters. Aurora Nibley and Julia Kantic, who read a whole bunch of the book just because they liked it, and gave me wonderful comments to make it even better. Lynn Miller, Rebecca Carter, and any other beta readers whose names I have forgotten from that mad editing summer in my life.

  Xiran Jay, who read it twice with a critical eye and is basically the reason the science makes sense in the novel. And who listened to me rant and rave, and helped me cook up vengeance schemes whenever bad things happened and celebrated when good things did.

  Special thanks go to my sensitivity readers, especially Yamile Saied Méndez. The book is so much better because of the time you spent. Any errors in the book are entirely my fault. I apologize for any mistakes.

  Thanks to Koech, the company I worked for in Peru. Without the opportunity to live and work in Lima, this book would likely be radically different. Gracias por todo.

  I also have to thank Marie De Zetter and Sam Markham for reading my last God-knows-how-many novels and providing critical, honest, and invaluable feedback, which made me grow and learn and rewrite. I wouldn’t be the writer I am without either of them.

  Publishing is a crazy wild stressful business, and I definitely need to thank the entire EaF group for being so amazing and supportive, especially Kester Grant, who pulled me into the group and out of a bad time. You guys are the best, and I love all of you.

  Thanks also to my publishing house sister Alexa Donne, who helped me with my website; to Jerry Quinn, who let me crash on his couch when I pitched the book at the NYC pitch contest one time; and to all my fabulous friends and fellow writers whom I’ve met along the journey to publication. I’m constantly blown away by how supportive the writing community is, and I’m so grateful I’ve been able to be a part of it.

  I also want to thank my parents, for supporting me in this journey from a young age. Thanks to my mom, for typing out my handwritten novel back in grade seven, and for letting me crash at her place for several months to write this book. And thanks to my father, who read and edited all that trash I wrote in high school and university eve
n though he didn’t like fantasy. I couldn’t have asked for a better or more supportive family.

  And finally, thanks to all the readers who make this possible. Thanks for loving my little monsters and joining them on their journey. I promise many adventures ahead.

  Prepare for more dark twists and turns in the sequel to Not Even Bones, coming in September 2019!

  www.hmhteen.com

  About the Author

  Author photo by S. Schaeffer

  REBECCA SCHAEFFER was born and raised in the Canadian prairies, but her itchy feet have taken her far from home. You can find her sitting in a café on the other side of the world, writing about villains, antiheroes, and morally ambiguous characters. Not Even Bones is her debut novel.

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