Twilight Crook

by Eva Chase

  I let my voice carry across the concrete yard. “In a messed-end town in a dread-sent world, the beast-blend boys can stress their girls…” Nope, even warping lyrics was taking me in a gloomy direction.

  This was my life now: murder and mayhem and never setting my head down anyplace any other human wanted to be. Maybe I wouldn’t have anything like a normal life back in a month—maybe I wouldn’t next year.

  It’d been easier not to think about long-term plans during the hunt for Omen’s captors when we’d had no idea who we were up against, and then when it hadn’t seemed all that sure I’d even be alive in a few days’ time. Easier not to wonder if I was meant for a normal human life at all when I hadn’t had an obnoxiously domineering shadowkind insisting I had some kind of supernatural power.

  That was impossible, wasn’t it? The uneasy quiver rose through my chest again, but the memory of Omen calling me a coward hardened my resolve. I glared at a tattered popcorn bag drifting across the concrete and pictured it going up in a burst of flames.

  Burn. Burn!

  Not so much as a flicker of heat wavered off the paper shell. With a surge of relief that maybe was a tad cowardly, I shook my head.

  Of course I couldn’t set a piece of trash on fire with will alone. The rest… it had to be a string of coincidences. Heck, when you played with fire as much as I did, was it really surprising that now and then something strange would just happen to happen?

  My restless rambling led me back toward the funhouse. As I skirted an ancient-looking transport truck someone had left parked between the building and the now-deserted go-kart track, voices reached my ears. I paused out of view to listen. Hey, long-time thief here—why would you expect me to be above a little eavesdropping?

  The first voice was Thorn’s, even more somber than usual. “—pick them off a few at a time, and it hardly seems to make any difference.”

  “We’re getting there,” Omen replied. “Even I didn’t know how complex this mortal conspiracy was going to be. But all that picking away at them will get us closer to shutting them down completely.”

  “It’s not the kind of war I’m used to fighting. They’re not the kind of opponents I’m used to going up against. To kill one who’s been talking to us cheerfully as if we’re his comrades…”

  “Just because they don’t fight the same way as the armies of times past doesn’t make them any less formidable. If anything, they’re more so, don’t you think? If they came at us in a horde with swords swinging, you’d make mincemeat of them in an instant, and we’d be done with it.”

  “That’s true.”

  My hackles were starting to rise at the thought of Omen badgering Thorn into acting against his conscience when the shifter’s voice softened.

  “I do appreciate all you’ve offered to me and this cause already, old friend. I wouldn’t have called you out of your seclusion if I didn’t think you could save so many more now than were ever at risk back then. Not that I believe you owed anyone more than you gave all those eons ago. You definitely don’t owe me anything. While you stick with us, we do things my way—but if you need something from me to make the sticking easier, just say the word.”

  Thorn sighed. “It feels as if time has passed so quickly and yet so little of it has gone by. Someone needs to stand up for our kind, and I’m more equipped than most. I’d just wish for a clearer way if one were available.”

  “Wouldn’t we all?” Omen said with a chuckle, and then paused. “How do you think the others are holding up? You’ve spent more time in their company than I have by now.” To my surprise, he sounded honestly concerned, as if he cared about Ruse’s and Snap’s well-being beyond how well they could carry out his orders.

  Thorn took a moment before answering. “The incubus is difficult to read, but he’s seemed happy enough. Maybe a little too merry at times, if anything. The devourer remains steady as long as he’s not prodded about his greater power. He has more resilience to him than I might have expected.”

  “All right. If you get the sense either of them is faltering, let me know. I didn’t start this crusade to ruin the only shadowkind willing to stand with me.”

  Holy hiccupping hellfire, the boss had a heart and a conscience after all. What would he say about me when he thought I couldn’t hear?

  As much as I’d have liked to indulge that curiosity, I had a covert meet-up to get to. I strolled around the truck as if I’d only just arrived back at the funhouse.

  Omen’s expression immediately sharpened at the sight of me. Thorn drew himself up even straighter as if he felt the need to look extra imposing after the doubts he’d expressed to his boss, but I’d stopped being intimidated by his size days ago. Mostly.

  “I’ve got to get back to the city now,” I said. “Important news from a friend—something too delicate to be passed on over the phone. Who’s driving?”

  I hadn’t really figured Omen would volunteer, no matter how much heart he’d hidden behind that authoritarian attitude. “Ruse,” he barked. “The mortal needs someone inhuman to drive that human vehicle.”

  “Hey,” I said. “We can’t all learn everything. Unlike some of you, I’ve only been in existence for twenty-seven years, and for all but eleven of those, driving would have gotten me thrown into juvie.”

  Omen ignored my attempt at defending my honor. As Ruse materialized by the camper van, the hellhound shifter motioned to Thorn. “You go too. Make sure our walking disaster doesn’t cause any new catastrophes.”

  Snap poked his head out from the funhouse doorway. “I can—”

  “You,” Omen said, “are going to sample that corpse like you did the man that led you to my prison. Maybe he’ll be slightly more informative now that he’s dead. Let’s get to it.”

  Snap shot me a pained apologetic glance, but he couldn’t exactly claim he’d provide more protection than the warrior. I hopped into the passenger side of the van, and Thorn vanished into the shadows in the back. It held two padded benches—one of which was going to serve as my bed tonight—and various cupboards Pickle darted off to continue exploring.

  Ruse arched an eyebrow at me. “What are we up to tonight?”

  “The thrilling art of grocery shopping,” I said.

  “Hmm. Maybe this is more Snap’s area after all.”

  Despite his initial joke, he flipped on the radio and drove from the fringes of the city toward the downtown core without attempting any additional conversation. When I made a wry comment here or there about the passing buildings, he offered a smile and a quick response, but nothing to encourage his usual flirty repartee.

  The most he spoke was when he had me call up our hacker ally and put her on speakerphone so he could bolster his supernatural influence before I sent her the address and photos Vivi had passed on. “Everything you can find out, as soon as you can find it,” he said, his voice dripping with charm. “Your help has been absolutely invaluable.”

  As I hung up the phone after our next steps were all set, I studied him from the corner of my eye. Maybe this newfound reserve of the past few days meant he was starting to take our current circumstances more seriously than Thorn had given him credit for.

  Or maybe, despite all that initial flirting and the heat I’d thought I’d felt between us just a few nights ago in the barn, he was bored of my mortal companionship already. He’d been with who knew how many other women before me, after all, and he didn’t usually stick around for much chitchat after the deed was done. I should have felt honored he’d invested as much attention in me as he had.

  But to tell you the truth, it only added to the uncomfortable hollow in the pit of my stomach. Call me greedy, but it seemed I liked each member of my trio more than was probably wise.

  Any worries about Ruse’s interest in me or lack thereof vanished when the glowing windows of the FoodMart came into view up ahead. The downtown grocery store took up half a city block, open from the wee hours in the morning until midnight. I guessed even Jade might use it for purpo
ses other than covert meet-ups—shadowkind might not need to eat, at least in the traditional mortal way, but many of them enjoyed doing so simply for the pleasure of chowing down. It was just hard to picture the bar owner’s sleek, green-haired form amid the aisles of canned veggies and jars of pasta sauce.

  There she was, though. I spotted her within seconds of heading inside, Ruse and Thorn following invisibly through the shadows. Her dark hair swallowed up the artificial light, turning the green almost black.

  She caught my eye for just a second and then drifted farther down the aisle to contemplate the cereal boxes. Lucky Charms were on sale—now that was lucky. I picked up a box and pretended to be fascinated by the nutritional information. What vitamins did they stuff into those marshmallows?

  “What’s up?” I asked quietly.

  Jade turned and inspected a container of peanut butter. “I know this is ridiculous, but we’ve had a few mortals come into the bar asking rather pointed questions. I think it’s best you steer clear of the Fountain until this situation you’ve gotten yourself into is… cleared up.”

  My throat tightened. I’d already suspected the Company might have asked around about me at Jade’s, but I hadn’t meant to bring more trouble to her doorstep. “Understood. I’ll be a stranger until it’s safe again.”

  “I do have some—well, possibly—good news too. A couple of occasional patrons stopped by yesterday talking about a conflict with mortals, and I told them you were working on something like that. They seemed interested in joining forces. I’ll let you figure out how to reach out to them. Here’s Glisten’s number.”

  A shadowkind named Glisten? What sort of shiny being would that turn out to be?

  “Thank you,” I said with intense gratitude as she surreptitiously passed me a slip of paper.

  The corner of Jade’s mouth quirked up. “Wait to thank me until after you’ve met them. They might be of some use. Take care of yourself.”

  With that, she set the peanut butter back on the shelf and walked away. I gazed longingly at my box of Lucky Charms for several seconds longer, but that was made for people who had things like bowls and spoons and, y’know, fridges in which to keep milk. A.K.A., people other than me at the present moment. Sighing, I put it back and headed for the door.

  I came around the corner by the cashiers and stopped in my tracks with a stutter of my pulse.

  A lanky man with shaggy black hair was just handing his credit card over to the woman at the counter. A man I’d recognized from his posture in an instant, but he turned his head enough for me to see the profile of his face and remove any doubt.

  I’d lived with that man for almost a year, until I… hadn’t. It’d been years since I’d last seen Malachi. Our paths hadn’t crossed since he’d left—mostly by his design, I suspected.

  I’d been as over our relationship as I could have been without any kind of closure, but seeing him out of the blue sent a flush that was half shame and half anger surging through my body. No way in hell did I want to deal with him now of all the possible times I could have run into him. A significant part of me would have liked to run him over. I spun around and darted for the entrance before he finished paying.

  As I clambered into the van, Ruse reformed on the driver’s side.

  Thorn loomed over my seat with a worried frown. “Are you all right? It looked like—”

  “I’m fine,” I said quickly. “It has nothing to do with… with anything important. Please, let’s just get out of here.”

  Ruse took one look at me and shifted the van into drive, and I left yet another piece of my old life behind.

  Good riddance.

  15

  Sorsha

  Red and purple lights flashed in the old fortune teller booth. The mechanical figure with her cracked plastic cheeks and glittering turban jerked a little to the left, still running on some reserve power source in the fairgrounds.

  I popped in a quarter. “Who’ll they cast in my role when they make a movie out of this craziness?”

  The crone’s creaky voice was starting to outright sputter as she ran out of juice. “The answer lies in your hea-a-art.”

  I nodded sagely. “Okay, so an Eastwick-era Michelle Pfeiffer then.” Dye her hair red—it could work. We’d just need to invent time travel first.

  I readied another quarter. “Am I even going to survive to see that movie?”

  “All things are possible if you find the w-w-will inside yourself-f-f.”

  The fortune-teller was basically a Magic 8-ball with a face. Since my restless wandering had led me through the night to this part of the fairgrounds, she’d answered my previous questions with cryptic remarks like, “Your chances will rise with your spirits,” and “Sadly, my ancient eyes cannot see that far.” It was a good thing she only cost a quarter. And also that her owner had left the money collection panel open so I could retrieve my few quarters for repeated rounds.

  But maybe I didn’t want real answers. Maybe that was why I was interrogating her rather than getting some much-needed sleep. If I lay down with nothing to occupy myself, it’d give my worries a chance to really dig into my brain.

  Not that they weren’t jabbing plenty of spades into me as it was. As I pushed in one more quarter, my throat tightened just a bit. My next question came out in a rough murmur. “What am I?”

  “Seek with an op-p-pen mind, and the truth will become c-c-clear,” the fortune teller informed me.

  Another voice followed on the tail end of her response, low and sly. “But clearly you’re a tall drink of water up way past her bedtime.”

  My pulse skittered, but only for a second. I knew that voice. I folded my arms over my chest. “Very funny, Ruse.”

  The incubus sauntered from behind the booth wearing his typical smirk. “I didn’t mean to startle you. You’ve seemed disconcerted ever since we left the grocery store. I figured I’d make sure you hadn’t wandered off too far.” He cocked his head, taking me in, and of course at that exact moment a yawn I couldn’t hold back stretched my jaw. “And you should be in bed, shouldn’t you?”

  “With you there too, you’re suggesting?” I said, not totally against the idea.

  The brief tensing of Ruse’s features tied a knot in my stomach. He was against it, apparently. “I suspect you do need some actual rest at this point,” he said.

  “I suspect I’m not going to be able to get to sleep until I’m at least twice as exhausted as I currently am.”

  “Let’s see if we can’t tire you out some more then.” He eyed the crone in her plastic box. “This old gal doesn’t seem to be doing the trick. Come on.”

  I was already tired enough that I couldn’t be bothered to protest. We wandered across the vacant lots where various carnival rides had once stood until we reached a sort of plaster hill about ten feet high that must have supported some part of a track.

  “Mountain-climbing is good, solid work,” Ruse said, clambering halfway up the lumpy side and then offering his hand to me to help me. I waved it away and scrambled up to the top on my own.

  The peak had enough room for at least three people to sit side-by-side. One of the ride operators must have used it as a lounging spot before we’d discovered it—an open beer can was wedged into a notch at one side. I drew my knees up to my chest and peered out over the desolate fairgrounds in the thin glow of the moonlight.

  Ruse settled in next to me, leaving what felt like a careful space between us. Was he shunning all physical contact now? What was up with him these days?

  Or maybe the problem was me thinking the incubus had to still be into me after our intense but admittedly short entanglement.

  I resisted the urge to scoot closer to him, as good as it might have felt to have one of those well-toned arms around me. Which was the right choice, because a moment later, he said, “It has something to do with the man you saw in the store, doesn’t it? You knew him, and it wasn’t with happy memories.”

  Since he wasn’t touching me, he couldn�
��t feel how much my body tensed up at the question. I gazed determinedly at the city lights in the distance. “There were some happy ones,” I said finally. “A lot of them. At least, I thought they were happy at the time.”

  “Do you want to talk some more about that? Get it off your chest?”

  I didn’t really want to talk about Malachi any more than I’d wanted to see him, but it could be I didn’t have any more choice about the former than I’d had about the latter. As long as I held the thoughts in, they’d keep gnawing at me. It wasn’t as if Ruse was going to judge me for my failures in committed relationshipping.

  I shrugged, picking at the tab on the beer can. The sour smell of the stale alcohol fit my mood perfectly. “He’s the only serious boyfriend I’ve had. We were together for two and a half years, lived together for almost a year of that… Everything seemed to be going great. I was in love with him, thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with him. I hadn’t told him about the Fund stuff or Luna yet, but I figured we’d get there.”

  Ruse sprawled back on his elbows, watching me with a mild expression. “I sense a rather large ‘but’ coming this way, and not the sort I enjoy checking out.”

  I rolled my eyes at him, but my lips twitched at the joke. “Yeah. But.” The memory came back to me, so sharply it stole my voice and my breath. I braced myself, summoning all the detachment the years afterward had allowed me to cultivate.

  “One day I got home from the job I had back then, manning the cash register in an ice cream shop, and it was like… like he’d erased every trace of his presence from the apartment. All his clothes and books, his shower stuff, the armchair his dad gave us—gone. Oh, except that he’d bought all the dishes and silverware, but he was kind enough to leave me one plate with a knife and fork.” I grimaced.