“Who the fuck is this guy?” I whisper.
Alejandro hesitates. Actually hesitates. “Uh… you can call him Frank.”
There’s something he’s withholding. I can feel it.
“That it? Just Frank?”
“In some of the darker pits of hell, he’s known as Dr. Frankenstein,” Alejandro says lightly. “He has a thing for the dead.”
“Do I want to know?”
Then it hits me like a brick to the temple.
“You said Skippy was ‘too rank, even for your tastes.’” My gaze sweeps the room again. Heat rises up my neck. Then I look at the lampshades—and the heat drops to ice.
“Does he eat them?”
Shock. Revulsion. And a sudden existential fear that I might end up as part of a Chicago ramen bowl.
Alejandro chuckles, unslinging his rifle and pulling the strap of my backpack off my shoulder. “Always a quick study.”
“Well, it’s not hard when the lampshade has a fucking nipple on it.”
He squints. “Oh. So, it does.”
He opens the pack, pulls the arm out, and plops it onto the metal table in the middle of the room just as “Frank” returns, holding some kind of wand.
“First things first…” Frank mutters. “Gotta check for bugs.”
If I could’ve taken a picture of Saint’s face when I told her Frank was a cannibal, I would’ve framed it. Hung it somewhere classy. Maybe above a fireplace in a home I’ll never own. Her green eyes went dinner-plate wide, her mouth forming a perfect O of horror and profanity waiting to happen.
Worth it.
I roll my shoulder again, wincing. The bullet graze keeps pulling every time I move. I probably need stitches. Definitely need a shower. Preferably without a corpse nearby, but I’m a realist.
Frank starts with the arm, thank every saint in the sky he leaves it sealed in the plastic. Then he turns that oversized wand on me. I lift my arms like I’m at airport security, let him wave the device around until it gives a clear tone.
Then it’s Saint’s turn.
I expect nothing. She expects nothing.
So, when the wand emits the faintest beep, my head snaps toward her.
Frank waves again, zeroing in. Saint frowns. I frown harder.
Her Guild sigil.
A tattoo. The one every assassin gets after initiation.Their master key. Unlocks weapons caches, medical rooms, safe lodgings, transport hubs. All the places neutral or allied to the Guild. I had one too. Mine was burned off the day I became an exile.
“How is there a tracker in my sigil?” she asks.
“I’ve never heard of them doing this,” I tell her. And I haven’t. Not in all my years. Not even in the darkest corners of the Guild’s history.
“Explains why assassins showed up everywhere we were,” she mutters.
Frank starts backing away like she pulled a grenade out of her pocket. He sputters, waving his hands, yelling at her to get out of his basement lab.
“Cut it out or burn it off,” he shrieks. “Or leave. The Guild will keep tracking you. Then the assassins come. They’ll swarm this whole block. And if they find me?—”
