by TA Moore
His heart still sank a little when Yana blew into the room.
“Mama,” Yana said happily as she bounced over the thick, stained carpet. She stooped down and kissed the air just above Donna’s dry, smooth cheek. Her hand braced on the back of the chair, and she whispered something through her smile into Donna’s ear. It was too low to hear, but it was mean enough that Donna’s eyes flickered mercury-flat for a second. Before she could retaliate, Yana had already pulled away and turned to look at Arkady. “And you. My little brother. How well you look, after everything.”
They glared at each other.
Yana looked like Arkady, enough that no one had ever questioned their family connection. The line of the nose was the same, and they had the same fox-amber eyes. But where Arkady was all gold and honey, Yana was old bones and blood. Her skin was a thick creamy white, the color of powdered bone, and her hair and lips were the exact same scarlet red. She looked vivid, as vivacious as Donna had reputedly been as a young woman, before she learned that fear worked even better than charm.
Except there was nothing to Yana but the skin she’d been born with. No power under her thick human skin, no monster restless in her bones. She wasn’t human—there wasn’t enough of her for that—but she’d never age into anything other than what she was right now.
She was a walking, manicured coffin for the monster she might have been. Monstrous enough for the Prodigium, but not for herself.
Cash cleared his throat.
“Yana,” he said.
Her eyes flicked up from Arkady, and she finally registered that Cash was there. She smiled with quick, surprising sweetness and clapped her hands together. “Casper! You made it,” she said. “I was afraid you wouldn’t.”
“You didn’t invite me.”
She shrugged that off as unimportant as she bounced around the chair to throw her arms around him. Her hair was wiry as a horse, and she smelled of gas and fresh blood.
“Is Baby here?”
“Ellie.”
She snapped her fingers behind his ear and tutted. “That’s it. Why did I have Jo in my head?”
A low, slow voice interrupted from the door. “That was the truck stop, sweetheart. Jo’s Gas and Dash. We ate there.”
Yana laughed. Her breath was warm and somehow sticky. “Oh. That’s right.”
Cash looked over her head at Jerome. A slender, tall man in a good suit stepped around Shanko and offered a tip, a fifty-dollar bill pinned between his knuckles. Shanko looked at it and barked a harsh laugh at him as he turned and walked out. Left with his flashy gesture limp in his hand, Jerome casually tried to tuck the money back in his pocket.
He was….
Cash licked the salt of despair off his lips and carefully peeled Yana’s arm from around his neck. He looked at Donna, who looked ruffled, but not by her visitor, and then at Arkady. Maybe that knock on the head had thrown him off more than he thought.
“He’s human,” Arkady confirmed for him.
“Part human,” Jerome interjected. “My grandfather is a kushtaka. Once I have an heir, I will be too. And you’re—”
He stuck his hand out. At least the fifty wasn’t in his fingers this time. Cash accepted the handshake, Jerome’s fingers cold as they wrapped around his.
“My ex,” Yana said. She ran sharp red nails down Cash’s arm. “My daughter’s father.”
Arkady leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs in front of him at the ankle. His eyes were bright and liquid, dangerous enough to make Jerome nervously shift his weight. It wasn’t about him any more than it was really about Cash, but if Jerome survived the wedding night, he’d learn.
“And currently my lover,” Arkady said.
“Again,” Yana said. She smiled, bright and empty, under Arkady’s glare. “Oh, don’t pout. You’d put him down, and he was so pretty, and it seemed a shame to let him gather dust.”
“Or Cash,” Cash said dryly to Jerome. “Most people stick with that.”
Jerome looked uncomfortable. He’d get used to that too.
“Okay,” he said. “And what are you?”
There was a brief, unpleasant pause at the insult. Cash broke it with a dry chuckle as he took his hand back. Either Jerome didn’t have any clue just how rude that was, or he did and he was stupid enough to show his true nature day one. Either way, it was Yana’s problem.
“Late,” Cash said. “Camp is going to send proof of life today, so I don’t want to miss that.”
Jerome laughed like it was a joke, and Cash shifted his money from “stupid” to “clueless.” He turned to Yana.
“Why don’t you come with me,” he said. “You can catch up on how Ellie’s doing.”
Yana rolled her eyes. “It’s camp,” she said. “If they’re still sending photos, she’s doing fine. You worry too much. It’s not like it’s her first year.”
Cash clenched his teeth. He was used to Yana, but sometimes her blithe self-centeredness still caught him off guard.
“Go,” Donna instructed. She reached over the table and flicked Arkady’s king over to cede the game for him. “Let your brother and I get to know your latest beau. Maybe he’ll impress us. Stranger things have happened.”
Jerome had, at least, enough common sense to look worried. After a knee-jerk glare at her mother’s order, Yana gave in with a shrug.
“Fine,” she said. “Show me pictures of Ellie while I unpack. I smell like gas fire anyhow.”
Arkady half turned in his chair to watch them leave. His expression was unreadable, which just meant he was irritated. Cash considered an apologetic look but decided against it. He was here to help plug a leak. Being the forgiven ex was just the cover story.
That was a lie. Cash didn’t even need the monster’s snigger to know that. It was a useful lie, though. Just like the one Cash told himself where the ache under his breastbone was just the fishhook of Arkady’s magic.
He let Yana take his arm and headed out of the hall.
Chapter Eleven
“SHE LOOKS like you,” Yana said. “I mean, of course she doesn’t. But she does.”
Cash knew what she meant. Taken individually—her nose, her hair, the length of her legs—Ellie looked like an Abascal. She moped at him sometimes that she wasn’t as pretty as her dad, and it wasn’t fair. Taken altogether, though, no one had ever questioned that she was his.
“Yeah, well, it could be worse,” Cash said. “It’s the sort of thing you tell your daughter, you know. Getting married.”
Yana handed him his phone back. On the screen Ellie grinned at the camera, her arms thrown over the shoulders of two other little monsters. Werewolves, from the eyebrows. All three of them were muddy, and behind them two boys were trying to get to their feet in the mud.
“Why? It’s nothing to do with her,” she asked.
“Jerome is going to be her stepfather,” Cash said. “A whole new family to be part of.”
Yana shook her head and sat down on the bed to take her boots off. They were in her suite, the mirror image of Arkady’s, from the shape to the decor. A set of expensive suitcases were stacked neatly in the corner, and a tray of something sat on the dresser, the plate covered with a chased silver dome.
“That’s stupid. I barely see Ellie. Why would Jerome want anything to do with her?” She kicked her boots across the room and pulled her feet up onto the bed. All of a sudden, she didn’t seem old enough to get married, all bony knees and rounded shoulders. Her eyes narrowed over high, freckled cheekbones. “Besides, that’s rich talk coming from the pot. My brother can’t make his own spawn, so he’s just moved in on you and my kid. Nice little readymade family, huh? What are you going to do? The three of you going to move to the heartlands and become cowboys?”
Cash was briefly distracted by that idea. “No. It’s not like that, and why would we? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cow up close.”
“Oh please, you were at Arkady’s wedding,” Yana said with a perfectly tilted lift of one eyebrow. She
held the mock-confused look for a second and then snorted at the expression on Cash’s face. “It was a joke, Kasparas.”
Sometimes Yana was a lot like her mother, but she wouldn’t thank Cash if he pointed that out. He glanced down at the photo of Ellie on his phone. Despite her grin and the camp’s thin comment, clearly unsure if it was a good trait or not—that she “was uncommonly personable and made friends easily”—Ellie still looked very small and very human to him.
Even though she shouldn’t, really.
Cash blanked the screen before he said anything, as if some sort of contagion were possible through a screen. Who knew, after all? It might be.
“Kohary’s here,” he said.
There was a pause as Yana absorbed that. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, her irises were flat human hazel. Her smile was tart and full of mockery as she hopped off the bed.
“Well, Mother’s hospitality is legendary,” she said. Her image in the long free-standing mirror caught her eye, and she paused to tidy her curls, as much as they’d cooperate. “If you survive it. Now that my brother is his good left pinky, I guess he couldn’t overlook the chance to partake.”
“You okay with that?” Cash asked. He put his hands in his pockets and shifted his weight.
With no one but herself to perform for, Yana’s expression in the mirror was empty. Her eyes flicked toward Cash, and she shrugged.
“Why would I care?” she asked. Her tone was light, but there was a barb hidden under the fluff she used as a lure.
“Because, once upon a time, it was his job to decide if you got to live or die?”
She hitched one shoulder in a shrug and leaned in closer to the mirror to tidy her lipstick with the edge of her nail. “It was nothing personal. Water under the bridge.”
“Because—” Cash broke off as he saw a shadow flicker, long and grayish, against the wall. A second later one of the housekeepers appeared at the door, silent in her sneakers, with a stack of fresh towels for the bathroom. He waited until she’d dropped them off, and by then the urge to be honest had passed. “It’s your wedding, and is Jerome really going to be comfortable meeting the Left Hand over canapés?”
Yana smiled. It was for herself and her mirror image and therefore faded and brief. She didn’t feel much, not like most people did—not hunger, not rage, not anything. It had seemed, when Cash was young, hungry, and spurned, to be enviable.
“Jerome won’t have a clue,” she said. “He’ll shake Luke’s hand and ask him what he does and if he enjoys it. Tell him the Kohary is here, and it’ll mean nothing to him. He might have heard of the Left Hand, but he doesn’t know enough to fear him.”
The thought of Kohary’s marsh-water eyes made Cash shudder.
“He’s scary enough on his own,” he said. “I wouldn’t need to know anything about it to know he was bad news.”
Yana turned and quirked an eyebrow at him. “That’s only because you are the bad boy.” She paused and then smiled at him. The expression was sickly sweet, and there was acid in her voice when she said, “When I heard Arkady had gotten divorced, I assumed Kohary would be his date to my wedding. I guess he wasn’t ready for the big-league bad boys, though. Not yet.”
She waited. So did Cash, for the brittle tide of self-loathing and insecurity to hit the back of his throat like bile.
They were both disappointed. Cash laughed when Yana’s smile folded into an annoyed pucker.
“I get good performance reviews at work,” Cash said. “The moms at Ellie’s school all think I’m a sweetheart and trust me to have sleepovers. It’s flattering I can even pass for bad-boy training wheels.”
She sniffed and dismissed that with a flick of her hand. “Don’t be smug, Cash. One raw spot scabbed over doesn’t make you invulnerable.”
“I thought you should know about Kohary, that’s all.”
Yana stepped toward him and touched his face, her fingers cool as they pressed on the salt-tender flesh under his eyes.
“That’s all? You sure?”
He stepped back. “It’s your mother’s house,” he said. “It’s never all, but it’s all I came here to tell you.”
Her hand dropped to her side. “Be careful. You got away once. My family never lets prey go to ground twice. Arkady won’t let you go again.”
“What’s he going to do? Lock me up? Tie me to the bed?”
That slipped out. It was more fantasy than fear. Yana had the grace to just give him a disparaging look and ignore it.
“I would,” she said. The corners of her mouth turned down slightly. “And mother would if she thought it would keep her golden boy happy.”
Cash shook his head. “You know better than that,” he said. “She hated that I crawled into Arkady’s bed. Some half-human charity case wasn’t exactly who she envisaged on Arkady’s arm at family events.”
“Yet here you are,” Yana said.
“Donna didn’t invite me.”
“Neither did I, and yet….” She trailed off and, point made, waved her hand dismissively at him. “If you’re done, then? I need to unpack my trousseau, prepare the bonbonnieres, and decide what I want to say with my bouquet.”
It didn’t feel done, but Cash supposed that his conscience was clear. Technically, which was the best kind of clear. He glanced down at the picture of Ellie and decided he could definitely face her when she got back from camp.
“You’ll need to talk to Ellie when you get back,” he said. “She’ll be upset otherwise.”
Yana glanced over her shoulder at him. “She’s a monster now,” she said quietly. “She’ll be upset by worse. Would you really want her here? With Kohary? With the great and the grim?”
No. Probably not. Not yet, at least. One day she wouldn’t have a choice, the same as with camp. Right now it was bad enough she was sometimes around her grandmother. But he wasn’t happy about it.
“Congratulations on your wedding day, Yana,” he said to her back. “I would have gotten you a gift, but it was short notice.”
He started toward the door. His foot had just touched the threshold when Yana’s voice caught between his shoulder blades like a hook.
“In fact, maybe you’re right,” she said. “If you and Arkady are a thing again, maybe Ellie should spend more time with me and Jerome.”
He turned around. “Yana—”
“See?” she said without looking around. “You’re still too soft to survive this family, Casper. Just like she is.”
“THEY’RE HERE,” Cash said as he slid onto the seat next to Harry. It was in the café instead of the bar, but the rest of his setup was the same. Harry twitched at the company and glanced around. “I saw Yana Abascal arrive earlier. She came in through the family’s private entrance.”
Harry lifted his cup to his mouth and pretended to take a drink. His mouth moved behind the cover of the rim.
“We aren’t supposed to know each other,” he said stiffly.
Cash shrugged and leaned over, his hand braced on the edge of Harry’s seat. “So, I’m hitting on you,” he said. Harry gave him a dour look from behind the heavy fake glasses, and Cash smirked at him. “What? You’ve never hit on a cute stranger in a coffee shop?”
“I’m straight,” Harry said. He put his coffee down and looked away from Cash to scan the room. He tapped the edge of his glasses twice as someone who passed by got his attention. His monster-hunting skills were fifty-fifty at the moment. “And I’m ordained.”
Huh.
The steam of the lie bled from cracks in Harry’s close-fitted aura. It was thin and acrid as nicotine, the taste of shame and regret. Most lies weren’t so obvious—or Cash would have known whether Yana was serious or not—but self-delusion had hang time.
It wasn’t Cash’s problem, although he filed it away for the monster to gnaw on. It might be useful later.
“There are cute girls in coffee shops,” he pointed out. “And you weren’t born with a collar.”
“I had a caul,” Ha
rry said. “So might as well have been.”
Cash resisted the urge to pull away. His skin crawled, and he struggled not to check Harry’s hands again for the Hunter ink. Just in case it had welled to the surface overnight.
It was superstition. The caul-born were resistant to monster tricks, but that was all. Useful enough for a Hunter or a Jesuit investigator but not dangerous. That was what everyone said, but the hair on the back of Cash’s neck believed in the old gory folk tales Shanko used to tell when he had a few in him. In those, the cauled Hunters could rip your monster out of your bones, screeching and gritty with marrow. That and worse.
The back of Cash’s neck itched as he casually leaned back.
“I know you’ve watched TV. Pretend you’re Tom Hardy and it’s a meet cute.”
A brief smile tilted the corner of Harry’s mouth before he bit it back. “I suppose I can do that,” he said. He took his glasses off, folded the legs neatly, and tucked them into his pocket. “How do you know it was—”
“I grew up around here,” Cash reminded him. “I’m dating her brother.”
“She’s the mother of your daughter.”
Cash’s mouth felt sticky. It wasn’t a secret. These days, if a monster wanted to live in the human world, they needed human identification. It could be faked, but why bother when you could get a real one if you just turned up with a baby. Admittedly, that was how some monsters got fake ones too. Yana’s name was on Ellie’s birth certificate, Donna was Cash’s emergency contact—which always felt odd when he had to fill it in, but if something happened to him she’d take care of Ellie.
Any sort of background check would turn that up. Cash hadn’t actually expected Harry to do one, but he should have. Still, he didn’t like the idea that Harry had read Ellie’s name. Maybe he’d even seen a photo of her.
“Cute kid,” Harry said, a pro forma compliment from someone who felt they had to say something. “It sounds a bit more complicated than a hookup.”
