Sins of the Soul

She glanced back, and gave a dismissive shrug. “They’ll only come for me once you’re gone. I figure I stand a better chance with you watching my back than I do alone.”


“A valid point.” It was. He was only fooling himself if he thought that leaving her behind would save her. If Izanami wanted her, she’d find a way to have her. He knew that better than most, given that he was the thing Sutekh sent to collect those he wanted. “Trusting me to watch your back, pet?”

“Trusting myself to watch it if you don’t.”

Once downstairs, she poured food and water for Neko. Then she grabbed the phone and dialed. “Hey,” she said when someone answered, “it’s Naphré. Neko’s going to be here alone for a few days, maybe longer. I need to go out of town. Can you check on her?” A pause, then, “Thanks.”

“Friend?” he asked, annoyed by the surge of possessiveness that made him want to know the sex of that friend.

“My mother.”

He blinked, startled. He hadn’t thought her mother was alive. Somehow, he’d expected Naphré Kurata, Topworld assassin, to be an orphan, a loner.

“What?” she asked. His expression must have given him away.

“I have no idea why, but I assumed your mother was deceased.”

“You know what they say about assumptions…” She shrugged. “My mom took off when I was little.” She jerked her head toward the photo on the wall, the one with the smiling family, her smiling family. “Right after that picture was taken. My dad and my grandfather raised me. Then, one day, I…found her again. She’d made her choices. I made mine.” She shrugged. “By then, I was well on the path to what I am now. I figured I had no right to judge her.”

“You have a good relationship, then?”

She laughed, not with bitterness, but with genuine amusement. The sound slid through him like hot chocolate on a cold day. “I’m guessing it’s as good as you have with your dad.” She huffed another laugh at his expression. “Works that well for you, does it? Being son of the überlord of chaos?”

Then it was his turn to laugh, a startled burst of sound. “Peachy. Is that how you see your mother? As a lord, or rather, lady of chaos?”

“No. I see her as a woman who thought she was doing the right thing but made a horrible mistake. It cost her everything.” Sadness crept into her eyes, then flickered away. “But I understand the whole duty thing. She felt it was her obligation to—”

She cut herself off, obviously concerned that she was about to reveal too much. But he could fill in the blanks even if she didn’t say it. She was Otherkin, a Daughter of Aset. Which meant her mother was a Daughter of Aset. A member of the Asetian Guard? He was going to guess that the mother had chosen to honor that heritage while the daughter had chosen to turn her back on it. Why?

He was appalled that the answer mattered to him. He didn’t want to feel a damned thing for her, didn’t want her to matter. If he didn’t care, it wouldn’t hurt when he lost her.

When she didn’t elaborate, he prompted, “And that obligation was…?”

“I share, you share.” Slanting him a glance through her lashes, she asked, “You up for that, Alastor?”

No. No, he definitely was not, and that seemed to be the answer she expected because she didn’t wait for him to say it aloud. But just before she turned away, he thought he saw a flicker of disappointment.

She went to stand in front of the framed picture on the wall. Clearly, their moment of intimate revelation was over. She reached up and slid her fingers along the side, releasing a hidden catch. Then she pulled back one side of the frame, and it swung open like a door, revealing a niche in the wall about eight inches deep. There were several weapons anchored there. Guns. Knives. Shuriken. Nunchaku. A pair of tonfa—wooden batons with side handles that were used for both defense and attack.

“What’s that?” he asked as she reached for a different baton about seven inches long.

“Keibo,” she said. “A flick of the wrist and it extends to twenty-one inches. Good for confined spaces.”

She took it down, along with the tonfa. Then she took down two knives, a thick-handled one with short curved blade, and a second one with a longer blade and a finger hook.

“No guns?” He was interested in her choices. They were all close-contact weapons. But more than that, they were all useless. If she needed to fight in Izanami’s realm, then she was destined to lose, because they were Underworlders, dead but not dead, dead but immortal. Eternal. And she was only human.

“None of my weapons will be of significant value in Izanami’s realm,” she pointed out, surprising him as she said exactly what he’d been thinking.

“Then why bring them along?”