I pressed my lips together. “Okay, you’re right. Except for the rushing off part,” I said. “This one’s going to take some planning. I’ll tell you about it, but first there’s something else you have to know.” It was the one thing I’d kept back from him, because I thought if he didn’t know, maybe Milus Dei would leave him alone. But now that was unavoidable. They would come after him, and everyone I knew, if we didn’t stop them first. “It’s about that thing I do on the job,” I finally said. “Er, the intuition?”
Abe nodded. “Your super murder-solving sense,” he said. “What about it?”
“Well, it’s not just intuition,” I said, trying to choose the right words to explain. “It started out that way, or at least I thought it did. But when I found out I was half-Fae, I kind of got a double whammy because I’m also … something else.” I released a short breath. “I’m the DeathSpeaker.”
“You’re the who?” Abe said slowly. “What’s a DeathSpeaker? It’s not like a vampire or something, is it?”
“No, nothing like that.” I managed a small laugh. “DeathSpeaker is a title, not a species. I guess it’s kind of … a power that gets passed around. There’s only one DeathSpeaker at a time, and right now, I’m it.” I paused to gather the words again. “The thing is, I can actually talk to the dead.”
“Er,” Abe said. “And do the dead talk back?”
“Don’t call the men in white coats just yet,” I said, grinning. “Yeah, they do. They can’t lie to me. If I ask them a question, they have to answer truthfully.”
“Holy shit. So you’re, like, a spiritual lie detector?” Abe looked both mystified and amused. “Well, that explains how you keep finding out who killed people. You can just ask the victims.”
“Exactly.” I was relieved that he wasn’t freaking out, but I hadn’t gotten to the bad part yet. “But the DeathSpeaker thing is the reason Milus Dei’s been after me all this time,” I said. At least Abe knew about Milus Dei and what they did, so I wouldn’t have to explain that mess. “They want me to interrogate dead Others, so they can learn all their secrets and figure out how to wipe them out. That’s what those assholes were doing on the ship, because the guy who knew about the Scrolls of Gideon was supposed to be dead.”
I watched him process all of that. “So, this Dante you told me about. The head of Milus Dei,” he said carefully. “You’re going after him.”
“Yes. We have to.” At least it was out there now, but I sure as hell didn’t feel any better for having it said. “First we have to find him, and I don’t know how long that’s going to take. And when we do … well, we’re pretty much going to need an army to take him on.”
“Yeah, I think I got that impression.” Abe was silent for a few minutes. Finally, he said, “Okay. Where do we start?”
“Abe, I—”
“Don’t you even think about telling me to stay out of this, Gideon.” He looked hard at me. “I might not be an Other, or a witch, or even whatever your pal Grygg is. But I’m a cop. It’s my job to put bad guys away, and Dante is a really, really bad guy.” A muscle clenched in his jaw. “If you think I’m going to look away and stick my fingers in my ears while this stone bastard tries to kill my boy, then you don’t know a damned thing about me. And I refuse to believe that.”
Damn it. If people kept making my eyes water like this, they were going to dissolve out of my skull. “Yeah, I know you,” I said. “You’re the man who saved my life. Fuck’s sake, Abe, I was practically feral when you found me. If you’d been anybody else in the world, I would’ve burned hot and died young. But you got through to me.” I could hardly get the words out. “So don’t you tell me that you haven’t done enough. You’re not dying for me.”
“No, I’m not dying. But I’m damn well making sure you stick around, too. If I have to hang around in this miserable world, so do you. That means I’m helping.” The corner of his mouth twitched a little. “Besides, I have to protect my investment. Putting you through college was expensive, kid.”
I didn’t expect the laughter that burst out of me, and it eased some of the aching dread in my gut. “All right! I know when I’m beat,” I said. “But will you at least promise that you won’t … I don’t know, try to arrest Dante or something? Because that whole squash-you-like-a-bug thing comes into play there, and you’re a lot squishier than me.”
“Gee, thanks a lot,” Abe smirked. “Don’t worry, I know what you mean. No arresting the four-hundred-year-old statue. Got it,” he said. “Let’s start with helping you find him. There has to be some record of him, somewhere, right? I’ll check all the databases, national and international. We’ll see if maybe your NSA friend can get me a higher clearance, too.”
“Holy shit, that’s an awesome idea,” I said. I hadn’t even been thinking about Frost.
Abe grinned. “I do have those occasionally.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Even if you are a stubborn old man who won’t let me save his life.”
“Yeah, thanks for telling me everything for once. Even if you are a stubborn punk kid who won’t take a nice, normal job that won’t get you killed, like accounting. Or fishing.”
I frowned. “Pretty sure fishing has the highest on-the-job mortality rate in the world.”
“Not the way I fish,” Abe said. “It involves going to the grocery store and buying a damned box of fish sticks. Screw that spending hours on the boat and having to clean your own catch nonsense.”
“I take it you’re not planning on retiring to a cottage on the lake,” I said with a laugh.
He shrugged. “I’ll retire when I’m dead. Meanwhile, we’ve got a bad guy to catch.”
“Yes, we do.” And if we managed to catch this one, maybe I really could retire from the fighting evil business. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to spend my retirement on a boat.
I’d probably just have to settle for a castle.
Thanks for reading!
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More books by Sonya Bateman
THE DEATHSPEAKER CODEX series page
THE CURSING STONES (Avalon Rising, book 1)
IN THE SHADOW OF DRAGONS
The Gavyn Donatti series:
MASTER OF NONE
MASTER AND APPRENTICE
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About the Author
Sonya Bateman lives in “scenic” Central New York, with its two glorious seasons: winter and road construction. She is the author of the Gavyn Donatti urban fantasy series (Master of None / Master and Apprentice) from Simon & Schuster, and the House Phoenix thriller series. Under the pseudonym S.W. Vaughn, she’s the author of the Skin Deep paranormal M/M erotic romance series.
Contact her at [email protected], or like and post to her page on Facebook.
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