Indigo let herself slide to the floor and sit with her back pressed against the door. She took a few moments to catch her breath. Her heart rate gradually slowed to normal, and at last she didn’t feel like a scared rabbit.
“Thanks,” she said finally. “I don’t know what changed your mind about me, and I hope you’re not going to pick up the job they started.”
Selene laughed. “If I’d wanted you dead, I would have let them wear you out before I took over. It would have saved me some trouble.”
“I guess you’ll tell me why you helped.”
“If you’ll tell me why you pulled such a foolish move, coming back here.”
Indigo didn’t even try to deny that she shouldn’t have revisited the Edwards house. “I wanted to question him. He says his kids were kidnapped, and I want to know if that’s true or if he’s keeping them hidden from Rafe Bogdani. Their mother promised Rafe he could sacrifice them.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes, I wanted to retrieve some keys.”
“What do these keys unlock?”
“I don’t know. But I figure if Charlotte Edwards had them, the keys must open something interesting.”
Selene thought for a moment, her expression unreadable. “You and I need to go somewhere and have a heart-to-heart,” she said finally.
“About this?” Indigo waved her hand at the corpses.
“Not our problem, are they?”
“I guess not.” Indigo felt better immediately. Exhausted, she accepted Selene’s hand to rise from the floor.
“So go get these keys. And then we’ll find a safe place to have a conversation. You need to tell me what happened in New York today, and I need to explain why I helped you. It’s a story you’ll find interesting, I promise you.”
13
They had to keep moving. Selene wanted a safe place to sit and talk, but Nora knew that the moment she paused, she’d be out for the count. She was beyond exhausted, both physically and mentally, and she felt hopelessly carried along on a tsunami of events, borne aloft by chaos and conflict. At present she was barely swimming with the flow. If she paused to catch her breath, she would be subsumed and drowned.
Blotted from existence, just like Shelby.
I’m in control, she thought in Indigo’s voice. I’m steering things from here on in. As long as she kept believing that, maybe she could keep the exhaustion and desperation at bay.
Of course, she wasn’t the only one listening to those thoughts. She felt him there, deep and dark, and Damastes’s sly confidence chipped away at her resolve.
“So talk,” Nora said.
“We need to find somewhere safe,” Selene said. “There’s too much to say, too much for you to learn.”
“Nowhere’s safe. Does any of this look safe to you?” They’d left the Edwards place ten minutes earlier and were now walking along a New York street, cars parked at the curb, others passing on the road, pedestrians strolling alone or chatting in groups. Nora hoped that Selene saw the same dangers she did—the windows, the parked cars, the alleys, the countless places that could hide people who wished them harm.
The memories of blood on the sidewalk. The echoes of screams, long lost beneath the sounds of the everyday, yet still reverberating through these concrete canyons for those willing to listen long and hard enough.
“No,” Selene said. “Not safe.”
“So we keep moving. There are places I have to go.”
“Bogdani’s apartment?”
Nora had found the keys she sought in the Edwards house and pocketed them. “Soon. But not yet.”
“Good. You need to be much stronger before you face him. You need to control the thing you have inside you.”
Control? Nora’s surprised thought was in harmony with the same word whispered by Damastes.
“There are ways and means,” Selene said. “There’s more going on here than you know.”
“Tell me about it,” Nora quipped.
“More than it knows, too.”
For a moment Nora thought she meant Indigo, and she felt a moment of sharp anger at this strange woman who’d intruded into her life. But when she glanced sidelong at Selene, Nora saw a strange look in the woman’s eyes. She was staring through Nora’s eyes, deeper, seeking something darker. Seeking Damastes.
“Can you really help me?” Nora asked, hardly daring to hope.
“I think so. There’s more information we need about the ritual when you were … infected, and how such a thing could happen. I know plenty about the murder god’s nature.”
Liar, Damastes drawled.
“If we discover everything about what was done to you, I believe I can help you combat it.”
Witch.
“But you have to let me help you, Nora.”
Bitch!
“I will let you,” Nora said, enjoying that Damastes sounded rattled. It seeded a newfound confidence in her. “But it will have to be on my terms.”
“So what’s first?”
“First, I need to settle something from the past. Something that might also help you help me. Sam’s been working on this for me, and hopefully soon I’ll be able to start looking for some answers.” Nora checked her phone screen, but there were still no texts. She couldn’t let it worry her, not yet. Trapped as he was in the hospital, it might take Sam longer than normal to track down the information she needed.
“The names from the list,” Selene said. “Yes, good. That will help us both.”
Nora felt an unexpected rush of confidence and well-being, one of those clear, bright moments that always came as a surprise and rarely lasted long enough. It was doubly surprising that it should sweep over her now, and she glanced again at the woman who had first fought her, then fought with her.
Witch, Damastes said, his voice tinged with humor this time.
“But the very first thing is coffee. I’m asleep on my feet.” Nora nodded at a coffee shop at the corner. “Best in town.”
“I don’t drink coffee.”
“Freak.” Nora walked into the coffee shop ahead of Selene, breathing in deeply and enjoying the warm, heady aromas of freshly ground beans. How could someone not drink coffee and still function like a normal person? It would be like not breathing.
Damastes started to say something. She felt him draw breath, even though he didn’t breathe. She sensed him gathering his words, preparing to speak, and she paused by the coffee counter, hands fisted, eyes staring straight through the barista as the young man asked what he could get her.
She tried her best—
I’m going to kill her with your hands, and you’ll feel the meat of her as I tear her apart.
—but Damastes was too strong. His words broke through, their presence heavy and dark, warm, intimate.
“Miss?” the man asked again.
“Double espresso,” she said, breathing hard. “No … triple.”
“Need a pick-me-up, eh?”
“More than you know.”
While her coffee was being made, she looked at Selene standing outside on the sidewalk. Nora needed this stranger’s help more than anything else. If only Selene could deliver on her promises.