The Debt Collector (Season Two)

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  “I’m ready if Lirium is,” I say to Zachariel. Then I notice Wyatt at the opposite end of the church-turned-hospice, near the altar, watching us. I look away from his intense stare and pretend he’s not there.

  Zachariel doesn’t miss my double take. “Yeah, your assistant has been waiting for you to wake up for about an hour now.”

  I sigh. I’m not sure I’m ready to hear whatever Wyatt wants to say.

  “Do you want me to hold him off?” Zachariel says quietly. “You don’t need that guy harassing you right now.”

  It’s tempting, but I know Wyatt. He has to be burning with a million questions by now, and putting him off will only fan that fire. “No, it’s fine. I’ll see what he wants, then check in with Lirium.”

  Zachariel frowns. “Are you sure you’re up to this? If you want me to stay, I’ll stay.”

  I give him a half-smile. “You have somewhere else to be?”

  “Actually, if you don’t need me, I was hoping to sneak away for a bit. You’d be surprised how much high-tech gear a madam in the sex trades possesses these days. Lirium’s girlfriend has Madam A pretty well set up—and Elena’s a hell of slasher, too. Your friend Jax even has a few tricks. We’re going to try a little slash work together, see if we can crack this plot against Lifetime. And I want to try contacting my handler again, too. ”

  “Really?” I sit straighter. “That’s fantastic. You should go do that. I’ll be fine here.”

  “You’re sure?”

  The soft concern in his dark brown eyes is just the balm I need to settle my jitters about facing Wyatt. “I’m sure.”

  He gives me a short nod, then leans forward and kisses me on the cheek. It’s sweet and innocent, but it heats up my face just the same. Not least because I know Wyatt is watching—and Zachariel knows it, too.

  He lingers close to me. “However all this turns out, I want you to know I was serious about that offer. Witness Protection. All the life energy boosts you could want.” He leaves unspoken the other part—the hot nights between the sheets—but his eyes are promising it.

  I duck my head and lean back. “I’m not sure what the endgame is for all this.”

  He takes it well, smiling as he rises from the bed. “I’m just saying that option’s on the table.”

  I give him a playful smile. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

  He winks at me, which improbably flushes even more heat to my face, then he strides off in search of slashing tools and, hopefully, a way to save Lifetime… and maybe even all of us.

  Thankfully, Zachariel takes off toward the main stairs of the church, away from the end where Wyatt is burning me with his glare. I heave another sigh and wait. It doesn’t take him long to unlock his arms and stride over to me. I meet his gaze as he approaches. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Wyatt in so much turmoil—and that’s saying something, considering how much I’ve put him through in the last several weeks. A worm of guilt slides through me, twisting me up.

  He stops at the end of my bed and grips the railing that lines the mattress. “So, I guess you’re more than just friendly with debt collectors now.”

  That accusation irritates me more than anything else he could have possibly said. I’m tempted to tell him how hot Zachariel is in bed, but the guilt worm reminds me this is all a shock for Wyatt—I’m a debt collector, I’ve lied to him for years, everything he holds dear is under attack, and now he’s on the run because of me.

  So instead, I say, “Zachariel was just thanking me for saving him. Now he’s off to do his best to save us. And Lifetime. He’s a good guy, Wyatt.”

  He drops his gaze to his shoes, and I can tell he’s wrestling with a million questions in his head.

  I wait.

  “He called you Wraith,” he says, finally looking at me with those sky-blue eyes. “Is that what I should call you now?”

  “It’s just a collector name,” I say, my anger rising a little. “People are highly judgmental about debt collectors, so we tend to hide who we are. Taking a name is just part of it. Then there’s the lying, the secrecy, the sneaking out to…” I stop, tripping over my own words. Wyatt wouldn’t understand Wraith’s nighttime visits to the rich and high potential. Not in a million years.

  But he’s too smart to miss it. “Sneaking out?” He looks over my suit with dawning recognition. “You’re one of those freelance debt collectors, aren’t you? Do you collect for the mob? Or just for your own pleasure?”

  That’s it. I unfold my legs and stand up from the cot. It only takes three steps to reach him, and I’m surprised he doesn’t cower away from me. Which means he’s past the fear stage and working up to a full loathing. Wyatt can think whatever he wants about debt collectors, but that doesn’t mean I have to take his crap about it.

  “Let me tell you a little bit about being a debt collector,” I say.

  He meets my challenge with flare in his eyes, but he holds his ground.

  “The high of collecting is like nothing you’ll ever know. And the horror of paying out—or even just the guilt of carrying that life energy inside you—is enough to make you think you’re dying. Or maybe that you should die. But it’s not all death and horror. There’s a part that’s…” I stall out, not really having words for this new aspect of collecting. The part that heals, like Lirium. The part that’s life-giving without penalty, like when I’m boosting with Zachariel. And the fact that there are collectors who aren’t in it for the death or the high or the eternal life. Maybe not all. Maybe not even most. But some.

  “Not all of us are bad, Wyatt,” I say, lamely, feeling ridiculous under his heated stare.

  My words, as weak as they are, seem to have an impact on him. His face softens, and the turmoil is back. “I don’t think you’re… bad… Alexa. It’s just that… you know collecting is wrong. At least, I thought you did. Was that all a lie? All along? Did you not believe any of it?”

  It’s a legit question. One that makes me squirm. “It’s not as black and white as you think. And I’m doing the best that I can with it.” It’s a completely inadequate answer. I look away from his piercing stare. Lirium is waiting patiently for me, sitting and talking to the girl whose life we both want to save. “There are some good things that come out of it, even if that’s hard to believe.” The words are for Wyatt, but I think they’re for me, too.

  He follows my stare. “Who is that little girl?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, looking back to him. “But I’m going to help Lirium save her life.”

  He frowns, but the intensity of his stare, the hatred and anger, are all fading. “Can I watch?”

  My eyebrows lift. That’s possibly the last thing I expected him to say. “What? Why?”

  “I…” He swallows. “I want to understand what you’re doing.”

  He means it. He’s trying. I can tell, and it pricks my eyes with tears such that I have to look away. “Okay, sure. You can watch.” I brush past him, surreptitiously wiping my face as I go.

  “Will you explain it to me?” he asks, striding by my side.

  “Okay.” I’m not sure how I feel about this. Actually, I know exactly how I feel about this: terrified. Like Wyatt is cracking open some wide gulf of vulnerability and peering inside me. I don’t really want to let him see. But I also can’t say no.

  We reach the bed, and the little girl catches me completely off guard by beaming a smile up at me. “Hi, Wraith!”

  “Um… hi,” I say. I dart a look to Lirium.

  He’s grinning. “I told Tilly you were going to help us with her treatment today.”

  I nod. “Is it okay if my friend watches?” I ask Tilly, but I’m really directing it to Lirium.

  “Sure!” she says. Her eyes are big and brown, and she can’t be more than ten or eleven. Her smile makes her doll-face even prettier, and it’s impossible not to smile in the face of it.

  So I do. “Thanks.”

  I settle on a chair next to Tilly’s head. Lirium’s on the cot with her, and Wyatt re
mains standing. I give Lirium my hand, and he places his on Tilly’s thin arm. I start pulsing life energy into him, then I feel Wyatt’s presence leaning in, watching. Of course he can’t see anything, other than the flush on Lirium’s face. Then Tilly seizes up, the way Zachariel did whenever Lirium formed a life energy cage around the part he was healing. Lirium releases my hand. He needs a surprisingly small amount of life energy to do his job—one of the wonders of his ability—and I barely even feel the mercy hit glow from the small dose I’ve given him.

  Tilly slumps back in the bed. Once the cage is established, Lirium simply circulates the life energy throughout the wound, bathing it endlessly in the same, concentrated dosage. It’s not unlike when Moloch and Ishtar flooded my body with enough life energy to make me believe I could live forever.

  “What’s he doing to her?” Wyatt asks. There’s a touch of concern in his voice, even though Tilly’s face isn’t pinched any more, now that the cage is established.

  “Once I pass the life energy dose to Lirium,” I say, “he contains it within a small area inside Tilly’s body. Then it heals in just that spot, specifically, rather than spreading out to her entire body to extend her overall life.”

  “So… just the part that’s under his hand?” Wyatt’s questions are so basic, it makes me want to shake my head.

  But I don’t actually know what Lirium’s doing. “I’m not sure, exactly.” I direct my words to Lirium. “I don’t think Tilly has the same kind of problem that Zachariel had.”

  Lirium glances up at Wyatt with a look that’s not impressed, but then he focuses back on Tilly’s arm while he answers my unspoken question. “She has a rare form of leukemia. I’m trapping the life energy around one section of her bone marrow at a time. Slowly, we’re working our way through her body, but it takes time. And life energy. And it’s not always completely effective.”

  Maybe not a complete insta-cure like with Zachariel, but it’s still amazing. Yet when I look up into Wyatt’s face, it’s clouded. I know what’s going through his mind: the life energy came from somewhere; even if it’s saving her, it’s at the cost of someone else’s life, either shortening it or ending it. I know all of the arguments. But what Lirium’s doing—trying to save Tilly—is still undeniably good.

  “Is this what you do?” Wyatt asks me, quietly. “Heal people?”

  I wish I could say yes. “No, only Lirium knows how to do that. I just know how to transfer.”

  “From someone who’s not worthy to someone who is.” Wyatt’s voice takes on some edge again, and my body tenses. “How do you decide, Alexa?”

  The accusation, the loathing, stings even more because it’s true: I’ve spent years haunting the bedrooms of the rich and high potential making just that decision.

  I cringe in my seat. “I only take what’s already been stolen.”

  His face pinches up with disgust. “I guess that makes it better.”

  I look away. This was a mistake. Wyatt’s too good, too pure. In his high potential life, he’s never had to be the kind of person whose entire body was built to transfer life energy. He’s never made the hard choice between facing the abyss and going for another collection. It doesn’t help that I’m an addict on top of it. If Wyatt understood the high I got from collecting, the incomparable glow from a mercy hit… his revulsion would dig even deeper.

  Wyatt’s hard-soled designer shoes scuff Madam A’s polished wooden floors as he walks away. I look up to see him retreating to the main part of the church. He has a room up there, on the second floor somewhere, assigned by Madam A. It’s a place for him to hide from the debt collectors hunting him to get to me. We’re the worst of everything he’s fought against. It’s no wonder he hates me for all of it.

  “Don’t listen to him, Wraith.” Lirium’s voice is quiet, but it draws me back. He’s still holding the cage in Tilly’s arm, still curing her disease with life energy I got from Zachariel. Who got it from who knows where… but nowhere good.

  “He’s right,” I say. “Who am I to make that kind of choice?”

  “You make the choices you’re given,” he says. “You’re not what you’re born, Wraith. You’re who you choose to be. I learned that the hard way.”

  “The hard way?” I scoff. But his words are like caged energy bathing my heart with life. “You’re like some kind of debt collector saint. Healing the sick. Bringing people back practically from the dead.”

  He shakes his head, but there’s a smile under it.

  “I’m serious,” I say. “You’re like a debt collector boy scout.”

  He has a good, strong laugh at that, then lifts his hand from Tilly’s arm, apparently done. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew even a tenth of what I’ve done.”

  That sobers me. “That doesn’t matter to me.” And I mean it. I tip my head to Tilly. “This matters to me.”

  He nods. “That’s what I tell myself every day.”

  “I’d like to learn how you do it.” I try to be cool about it, but my voice still hikes up.

  He lifts an eyebrow. “Well… first, we have some more work to do. Then… maybe.”

  I smile and give him my palm. “Ready when you are.”

  It takes a couple hours, but Lirium works his way around Tilly’s body, seeking out all the bone marrow he can reach with this life energy cage. It doesn’t feel like I’ve donated much over that stretch of time, but the small drips and drops add up to a pretty good mercy hit high. Tilly glows like a perfect doll only with too much blush. Because it was so slow the adverse effects on Lirium and me are minimal, although Lirium’s eyes are a little more sunken, and I’m sure I’m the same. We’re collectively taking a breather when Miral strolls up in her pink sari. Her scowl should alarm me, but I’m still floating on the high.

  “I know you’re busy here, Alexa,” she says, her voice tight. “But I was wondering when you might be finished?”

  I lift my eyebrows. “Why? Is there some kind of problem?”

  “I’m afraid Wyatt is determined to leave, and I’ve run out of arguments to stop him.” She glances at Tilly. “If you can be spared, maybe you can talk to him.”

  I heave a sigh. “Are we done here?” I ask Lirium.

  He bites his lip. “There was one more thing I wanted to try, but if you need to go…”

  “No.” I shake my head. “Wyatt can wait. What is it? More treatments for Tilly? I’m ready for more.”

  “No, I think she’s good for now. I won’t know for sure if it worked for a while.” Lirium swipes open his palm screen and taps something up while he answers. “But there’s a device I’d like to try out. It won’t take much life energy, but we haven’t had any to spare recently, and I know Dr. Brodsky would appreciate the chance to test it out.”

  I sit up straighter. “Did you say Dr. Brodsky?” I flick a look to Miral, and her pencil-thin eyebrows are hiked up on her forehead as well. “That wouldn’t be Dr. Leonid Brodsky, would it?”

  Lirium leans back on his stool. “You know him?”

  “You could say that.”

  Lirium lifts his hand, pointing toward the end of the room. He must have just messaged the elderly scientist, because he’s already strolling down the aisle between the beds. I rise from my chair. Dr. Brodsky’s carrying some kind of foot-long glass tube sloshing with blue liquid. I don’t know what the device is inside, but I’m sure of two things: it’s life energy tech, and Dr. Brodsky and I had a major falling out when I fired him from Sterling’s lab a few years ago for developing exactly that kind of thing. And now, here I am, revealed as a debt collector.

  This is apparently the day for all my worlds, past and present, to collide.

  He recognizes me when he gets closer, his bushy gray eyebrows flying up and his lumbering frame coming to a halt before he reaches Tilly’s bed. Miral’s tiny body has gone stiff.

  “Dr. Brodsky,” I say, trying to smooth down the tension flaring up around me. “This is quite a surprise.”

  He narrows his eyes but
doesn’t step any closer. “I would say so, Ms. Sterling.” He takes in Miral’s frozen expression and looks to Lirium for help.

  He’s already on his feet. “Is there some kind of problem here?” he asks me.

  “No, it’s fine.” I hold up both hands now. I’m the one with the secret here, so it’s on me to come clean. “Dr. Brodsky, I have an apology to make and, well, a confession of sorts.”

  He’s perplexed, but his shoulders relax a little.

  I shrug and hold my hands out farther. “Turns out I’m a debt collector.”

  His eyes go wide. “Well, that’s not an apology, Ms. Sterling, but it is certainly a most interesting fact.”

  “Yeah, I know. Fascinating.” I take a breath. “And I am sorry about those, um, things I said. You know, when I fired you.”

  “What’s done is done, young lady,” he says with a small smile. “But it begs the question of why you’re here of all places. You are quite possibly the last person I would expect to find in the respectable madam’s abode.”

  I give him a smile in return. I always liked Brodsky. It nearly broke my heart when I found out he had been experimenting with life tech behind my father’s back.

  “It’s a long story,” I say. “But I’m here to help Lirium. He says you have a device you would like to test?” I’m hoping that diving right into the tech talk will allow us to skip over all the details about why Alexandra Morgan Sterling is doing all the things that no one would ever believe.

  “Indeed.” Brodsky finally closes the space between us, bringing his sloshing glass container with him. “This is many generations past the technology I had been working on in your lab, Ms. Sterling. I think you will be quite surprised by it.”

  I’m quite disgusted by it: the fleshy pink tube is gross enough, but one end is a bulb of veined tissue, while the other has tentacles that open and close. Miral looks fascinated, edging closer to gain a better look.