“In my defense, you do make it easy.” It was hard to stay mad when he smiled at me like that.
We all started moving forward, and even the most crazed people moved out of our path when they saw us coming. The guys said the police had set up barricades around the perimeter of the rioting and bombing. Fate knew exactly which way to go to leave the area without the police or media seeing us.
Twenty minutes later, I stood in between Fate and a recently arrived Paddy. We stood on the outskirts of a larger group of onlookers, behind a police barricade. People from all over had amassed at the edge of the scene. Black plumes spread out into grey clouds before becoming a dingy horizon. Reporters questioned police officers about what was happening but only received “no comment” responses.
Lars had already left, offering to get Kitty situated. The other guys had insisted on helping. I kept forgetting they’d all worked with her and had probably missed her. Watching the four guys gather around her, wanting to care for her, was endearing. When they left, I knew she was in good hands.
“I think I just figured out who—or what—Malokin is,” Paddy said, turning to look at the two of us. “He’s Wrath.”
“Wrath, as in anger? Is that even a thing or position?” I asked.
Paddy nodded. “Theoretically, anything that has enough energy in the Universe can take form.”
When I thought back to the hotel room, it made sense. “When I was up there with him, he was trying to goad me into attacking him. I couldn’t understand what purpose it served.”
“He probably feeds off it,” Paddy said.
“But why let me go?” I asked. “He didn’t even try and kill me.” That might have been the most nerve-wracking question I had. What else was Malokin planning?
“He’s gone. For now, anyway,” Paddy said.
A stray wad of ash hit me square in the forehead, and I immediately looked for the Jinxes. They were further off to the side, and Bobby lifted his chin and nodded me over to where he was standing, away from the crowd. I obliged, still reeling from the latest revelation and embracing a reason to get some space.
Bobby’s eyes scanned the crowd I’d left by the barricade and lingered on Fate who, even though he hadn’t followed, was paying apt attention nonetheless.
“You know your loser?” He did a single nod of his head as he asked.
There wasn’t a doubt he was referring to Luke. “He’s not mine, but yes. What about him?”
He pulled a scrap of paper out of his back pocket and shoved it into my hand. I smoothed out the crumples and saw the address of the building Luke had occasionally used. One particular time would never leave my mind.
“He’s there.” His finger tapped the paper.
I looked at the three devious little faces that always seemed in mid-smirk. “How do you know?”
“We’ve got a tracker on his car,” Billy said. “Let’s just call it a bottle of Johnny Blue once a week and we’re even.”
They sold themselves short, but I didn’t tell them. I would’ve bought them a case every day for the chance to get my hands on Luke.
Bobby dug into the pocket of his hoodie and dug out a set of keys, which he thrust at me. “Here are your keys. If you call the guards for a door back, it’s parked at the old arcade.”
They were at the arcade, too? These guys were turning out to be worse than Malokin. “How did my car get there?” I looked at the keychain with a naked girl and looked back at him. “These aren’t mine.”
“I’m lending you my set. What, do you think we skateboard everywhere?” Bobby rolled his eyes and the other two laughed.
They had their own set of keys to my car? “You’re the reason I constantly have no gas? I thought I had a leak!”
“Hey, you can’t blame it all on us. That thing is a gas-guzzler. We can’t be filling it up all the time.”
I stuck the keys in my pocket before I spoke. “You aren’t getting these back. No more taking my Honda.”
“Sure, of course not,” Bobby said, taking and then patting my hand.
Shaking my head, I realized how stupid I was. “You have more sets, don’t you?”
They all shrugged and shook their heads as a murmur of, “No, of course not,” and “We wouldn’t do that,” spewed from their lying little lips.
It wasn’t important, right now. I knew where Luke was. I looked back over my shoulder and saw Paddy nod once. He already knew something was afoot. Fate was walking toward me.
“You had to expect that,” Bobby said. “You are his girlfriend.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Whatever.”
I walked a few feet away, with Fate heading toward me, and dug out my phone to call for a door.
Chapter 36
Your Turn
“He’s in there.” I stood on a hill above the building Luke had sometimes used. It wasn’t Malokin, but he would do. In some ways, I wanted Luke’s blood most of all. Malokin might have been the mastermind, but it had been Luke who had screwed with my body and mind on a daily basis.
“He’s mine,” I said to Fate, who stood beside me.
Doubt flashed across his face, and I didn’t have to ask why. “I know what I look like, but you need to trust me. I can handle this.”
“You’ve said that to me before.” His voice held no hint of teasing now.
His words stabbed deep into my psyche, and the self-doubt that plagued me returned. It felt like a condemnation, even though I didn’t think he’d said it with malicious intent.
His worries were justified. How could he feel confident when I was still trying to patch all the pieces that were once me back together? It was exactly why I had to be the one to take him down.
“This fight is mine. It has to be. He stole…” My mind flitted over how to describe what he’d taken, until it finally settled on the simplest explanation, and yet the most accurate. “Me. He stole me. Who I was; who I’d spent a lifetime becoming. I need this.”
He nodded in understanding, even though I knew he couldn’t possibly fathom what I was feeling. “I know you want him, but I can’t let him—”
“You aren’t going to have to.”
His eyes roved over me and landed on my left side, where I was resting all my weight to ease my knee, an older injury still plaguing me, made worse by dragging Kitty around. They then traveled to the rip in my shirt, and the bloody gouge peeking through, my newest addition.
“Even if I only had one last breath in my body, I could do this. You could tell me this was the moment you saw in your vision and I’d still go in there. He needs to die, and I need to be the one who kills him. Because if I don’t, I’m not sure I can get me back.”
He sighed as he turned to me. “Killing him isn’t going to do what you think.”
He believed what he was saying, but I didn’t want to. I was clinging to the idea that this would fix part of what had been broken.
He looked like he might give me a fight, but then he simply nodded.
“I’m going in alone.”
“You’ll have your space,” he said, not technically agreeing, but I could live with that. As long as Luke died by my hand, nothing else really mattered. I headed toward the building alone, just the way I wanted.
The room was dark when I opened the door. Luke sat at a desk, just staring at the wall. The door slammed closed behind me but he still didn’t turn around.
“Are you going to get to your feet, or sit there like a coward?” Anger and disgust dripped from my words.
He laughed, his voice bouncing off the walls. “Not at all. I’d prefer death to what would come at the hands of Malokin.” He got to his feet finally and turned. He slipped off his suit jacket and laid it over the chair he’d abandoned. His tie was tugged off and placed on top of it. “You couldn’t think I’d make it that easy.”
“Wouldn’t want you to. Where would be the fun in that?” I kneeled down and slid one of the knives I was carrying over to him, proving just how much I was looking for a true fight.
He picked it up with a look of disgust. “You’ll never learn.”
“To be like you and Malokin? No. I won’t.” I circled him, and he moved along with me.
He ran his fingers along the edge of the knife and smiled. “I told Malokin you weren’t for us.”