A flicker of suspicion crossed Harry’s face. It tasted like garlic dust against Cash’s lips, barely there. It was creepier than Kohary’s emptiness somehow. At least the Left Hand of the Prodigium wassupposedto be disturbing and uncomfortable. Harry narrowed his eyes.
“That’s… convenient,” he said.
Cash snorted. “Sure. It’s great. I get to run around all day trying to get my ex to smile at me and her drunk grandmother to stay where she’s put. For the ‘exposure.’”
He’d dealt with enough people who thought he should turn up for free—because they were friends, for a cut of the profits when their documentary made a splash, or someone had forgotten to budget to reshoot scenes—that the annoyance in his voice sounded real. Harry had too, obviously, as his expression softened into amused sympathy.
“Well, you’re getting a free meal out of it,” he joked dryly. The humor lasted long enough for Cash to roll his eyes in agreement, and then Harry turned serious again. “If I’m wrong—”
“Yana gets some very oddly shot scenes for her wedding video,” Cash said. “Maybe she won’t ask me to take her pregnancy-announcement photos.”
“And if I’m right, it could be dangerous.”
Cash shrugged. “I was supposed to be in Louisiana this weekend, tracking a loup garou around the oil refineries on the Mississippi,” he said. “Last year I filmed theDamned by Bloodsplatter-rite doc up in Alaska. Just because I’m not chasing after a gig on 12:28 doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m doing. If you keep me in the loop, if you assure me you won’t take any risks with Yana’s life, I’ll get the footage you want.”
“And get paid?” Harry asked, raising his eyebrow.
“It’s my job,” Cash said. “And I don’t need to keep you sweet to impress my boyfriend. Or my kid. Just the going rate. Or I warn Arkadynow.”
Harry grimaced. He tapped his fingers on the Formica table as he considered his options. There weren’t many, not with that final condition.
“Okay,” he said. “Deal. You’re on the payroll. I need to go into the city tomorrow. My source said there’s some sort of secret meeting going on in a warehouse. Abigail is going with me. So you get to keep an eye on the fiancé, make sure nothing spooks him. If it looks like something is going to happen—anyone is going to be hurt or corrupted—call the police. I meant it, no story—not even this one—is worth someone’s life.”
He pushed his chair back from the table, metal legs loud on the tiles, and left without a word. Cash watched him go and tried to work out if he was being played.
Harry’s source had broken the Prodigium’s Cardinal Rule with malice aforethought. He’d thrown some of the monster-world’s movers and shakers—the Worm, the Black Witch—under the wheels of the papal-documentary train. Yet he hadn’t told himYanawas the monster too, not even hinted at it.
Tomorrow was the start of the wedding festivities. The Hunt would start at midnight. Anyone who knew the Worm’s private movements would know that. They’d also know that Yana, as the ranking monster in the couple, would lead the chase.
So why send Harry on a wild goose chase into Roanoke? He might find a few goblins, monsters with so much human in them they didn’t have a breed or a name, or a werewolf itchy in his skin during the crescent moon. The real monsters—the ones with meat in their teeth and bones that rattled—would be here. Or tucked away, sulking over mimosas so they couldimplythey were here after the fact.
The answer seemed obvious, of course. Despite Arkady’s protests, one of the Abascals was behind this. No one else would care—or dare—to try and protect the family.
Or at least, that was the interpretation the Prodigium would jump to. Before they did, Cash needed to find a better one. He might not be an Abascal—by name or blood—but the only people in the world he cared about were.
Shit.
He took Harry’s cup with him when he left.
Chapter Twelve
CASH PAUSEDin the doorway of his room, the stolen cup held loosely in one hand and his foot braced against the heavy door to hold it open. The clothes were laid out on his bed in a creepy approximation of movement, tucked and folded so it looked as if their original owner had turned to dust midstep.
Appropriate.
Cash had worn it before. The last time, the first time, had been to Arkady’s wedding. He hadn’t expected anything, except for Arkady to take one look at him at the entrance to the Chapel and throw Madeline and the alliance over. Cash hadn’t planned much past that point, which turned out to be a good thing. Arkady had looked at him once, then ignored him for the rest of the feast.
It had felt like he’d crumbled away, only it had been word by word, not merciful and all at once.
The clothes were in the garbage when he left.
“I was pretty once,” bag of bones wheezed from overhead. The unexpected interruption made Cash twitch. He stepped to the side and looked up. An ear on a string of sinew dangled through the plaster. It twitched and tried to be a mouth, the lobe curled like a tongue, as bag of bones talked. “Or ugly? Some or the other. Hard to tell from what he left me. He took all my bits to make his suit. He could have left me some….”
The ear twitched and crumpled as the ghost complained. Cash ignored it as he yanked the wardrobe open and stashed the cup inside his bag, under a couple of old T-shirts. It could wait.
“Monsters aren’t big on leftovers,” he told the ghost.
It made a thin bagpipe drone of sound and reeled the ear back up into the crawlspace. For something that knew it was dead most of the time, the reminder of how it happened always upset it. Most ghosts didn’t remember. They were angry, but they didn’t remember why. Once they did, they kind of lost their…colère de vivre. Not much point to anything when you were just the nail clipping of a dead thing.
