The man’s gaze moved to Dewdrop for the first time. “False bravado is only for the weak minded.”
Dewdrop looked at Tate with a disgusted expression. “Why do the people we run into keep getting weirder and weirder?”
“It’s our curse.”
“Your curse; not mine.”
She patted his shoulder. “It became ours the moment you and Night decided to stick to me like burrs no matter how much I protested.”
“My younger self was quite foolish,” Dewdrop lamented.
The stranger smiled at them. “How cute your companions have grown.”
Tate had had about enough of him. Exchanging carefully veiled threats and enigmatic statements weren’t what she was here for.
Strangely, Ilith was silent during the conversation. Normally, she would have already offered to eat the stranger.
Putting her thoughts in the back of her mind, Tate told Ryu, “I’ll leave him to you.”
Not waiting for a response, Tate left the others behind making her way toward the man who’d been singing earlier.
She stopped behind him. “Hello, Christopher. Did you miss me?”
FIFTEEN
Christopher’s humming stopped.
“Nice place you have here,” Tate said, focusing on the back of his head. “It really makes a guest feel welcome.”
Christopher stirred. “Tatum Allegra Winters. It’s been an eternity.”
“Not long enough,” Dewdrop grumbled from a short distance away.
At that, Christopher’s head turned slightly. “Still dragging around the dead weight, I see.”
Tate held up a hand as Dewdrop started forward. She shook her head at him. Christopher wanted a reaction. It was best they didn’t give him one. He wasn’t the most stable of individuals to begin with and she didn’t expect his time locked away from the sun in this damp hole had done anything to change that.
“I saw Peter,” Tate told his back, changing the subject.
Christopher went still for half a second as he stared at the wall. Unable to see his face, Tate couldn’t tell how he was reacting to the news. It left her with little choice but to test the water.
“Not going to ask where? And here I thought you were friends.”
That finally sparked a reaction as Christopher turned to face Tate. To her surprise, his brown eyes were calm. Serene even. There was no hint of the madness she was used to seeing. If it was anyone else, she’d be tempted to question whether he was ever mad in the first place.
But this was Christopher. The only thing more dangerous than his insanity was his intelligence. She wouldn’t put it past him to pretend at sanity to get her to lower her guard.
“I thought you said I was incapable of having friends. What was it you said again? Ah, that’s right, I had a distressing tendency to kill every one of my allies.”
That was what Tate had thought. The Christopher she knew was the consummate survivor, willing to sacrifice anyone or anything that got in the way of his larger goals. As the months dragged on and he kept his silence, she was beginning to question that assertion.
She knew the Lord Provost’s people had offered benefits if Christopher was willing to inform on Peter. Like being moved to better accommodations. Even perhaps being transferred from the Deeps to a secure house somewhere else. He’d still be a prisoner, but he’d be a prisoner in a velvet cage.
He hadn’t taken them up on any of those offers, instead choosing to suffer in this place. There were only two reasons Tate could think of for that. Either, Peter’s importance to Christopher’s plans was much more extensive than Tate previously suspected, or the Silva man meant something to Christopher.
Tate still hadn’t decided which was the more likely scenario.
“But enough of such boring topics. I hear you’ve finally come out of the dark. Congratulations. It must feel good not to hide anymore. To allow your true name to be bandied about.”
