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Whenever I’m near him—he looks like one of the good guys. Well. Acts like one.

I’m only okay in this job, with myself, because I think I’m an exterminator. Pest control. I take out the vermin. People who save your life and bring you a foil-wrapped plate with enough food for three meals on it aren’t vermin.

“You feeling better? How’s your head?”

“Much better,” I say with a wan smile.

Lazarus hauls over a chair from the kitchen/eating area and sits across from me, staring intensely.

I suddenly wonder just how bad I look. Some stupid forgotten instinct makes me smooth my hair, and I hear myself saying, “I must look like shit, huh?”

“No.” His hard face goes soft in surprise. “You look— Well, you have some bruises. And you look kinda pale.”

“That’s just me. I’m always pale.” I shrug. “You’d think for a California girl, I’d be tan or baby-oil-baked copper, but I was a waitress at a nightclub for a long time, so I slept during the day and worked from six at night until two in the morning for months. I guess I’m nocturnal.”

Why is it so easy to talk to him?

Lazarus nods. “Near Creek Valley?”

“God, no.” I let the words pop out too fast. Yes, I was there. Or near enough. I went between Los Angeles and the little hideaway hotels on the outskirts. “But sometimes I ended up there—long story.” Los Angeles is the organized crime capital of the country, and Creek Valley, which looks nice enough if you zoom past it on the interstate, is where the mobsters who want to level up go to get new ways to make people’s lives miserable. A curse for an enemy.

A creature like Lazarus.

Lazarus sits back, and the chair creaks. “So you know what I am, and you know what that place is. When I pulled you out of that hole, you said you were getting away from a bad situation and wanted to clear your head. By walking in a graveyard. You’re going to have to excuse me if my brain cells kick in a little late—they’re secondhand, you know, just like the rest of me.”

The smile that flits across his face is pure wickedness—and it looks good on him. The kind of wickedness that mocks itself, because it knows what it looks like.

It’s not the same kind of smile I’ve seen on my other “clients,” let me put it that way.

“Why are you really here?” he asks, voice light.

Adrenaline spikes. Fear spikes.

A light voice stopped fooling me right before the first slap.

Both die out when I see him look anxious.

My mouth starts moving before my brain can decide if I’m clever or stupid.

“I was a mobster’s mistress. I didn’t want to be. I was afraid to say no because I knew what he was,” I confess, and I’m shocked to hear that I’m telling a true story. I just don’t know at what point the lies and truth are going to butt heads. “I... I got pregnant. I wanted to stop seeing him. I had morning sickness that was kicking my ass, and I was still working—I was looking for a way to get out. To stop. I wanted to make a better life for her. And...” I close my eyes, hoping not to see it, but I can still see it like I’m standing over the scene, unable to look away. “He hurt me. Pushed me down the stairs, and I lost her. I lost my little girl. I call her a girl, but she was so tiny, and there was so much blood, and I—”

“Oh, ohhhhh. Oh, holy shit, Victoria, I am an ass. A horrible, bad man.” Lazarus is in front of me, kneeling, his wide body humbled at my knees as he holds my hands and peers up at me with his eyes starting to look glossy.

I don’t know how he did it. How he opened that rotten spot inside of me enough to make me let out that horrible memory. Tears fall down my cheeks.

I’m still talking, cold fingers slipping through surprisingly warm gray ones. “I felt like I died. My plans died. I... Do you mind if I skip some things?” I ask, voice hoarse, blinking away things I try not to let myself feel.

Trying not to realize that this man—this monster—is the first one to comfort me for the loss of my baby girl. To apologize that it happened, even though he had nothing to do with it?

The men I’m killing tend to apologize, too. They want me to stop the pain, but they don’t mind inflicting it, and I draw a thousand sorries out of them if I have time, cold, and detached, out in the deserts where muffled screams are mistaken for animal screeches, and every little cut is a memory I’m trying to slice away.

I shudder, and muscles twinge and refuse to play nice.

“There was some very messed up stuff,” I conclude.

“You don’t have to tell me. It’s none of my business, but... Well. I pissed off some dangerous men in California—men cut from the same piece of cloth as your shitty mobster boyfriend. I wouldn’t be surprised if they finally figured out where I was. They built a monster, as you can see, and they expected me to behave like one. To kill for them, and I didn’t. I cut a path out of the Los Angeles area and the CrossRealms with my bare hands, but I haven’t left a trail of bodies in my wake. I think that’s why they haven’t come after me yet. They’re looking for carnage that I didn’t create. That, and this is Pine Ridge. It’s protected as fuck by good magic users, especially in the fall, when darkness takes more real estate. Oh, and before you panic, I’m not what they made me to be. I don’t rip things apart. I fix them. Well, engines. Transmissions. Part of me must’ve been a mechanic, I think, or a genius, even, because I learn fast,” he reassures with a smile that’s gone from sinister to breathtakingly sweet in seconds.

“I drove here. From California. Just as far from it as I could get without crossing an ocean,” I admit, and it’s still the truth. “I didn’t know much about Pine Ridge, but I... It looked quiet. Picturesque. I stopped in front of the graveyard to stretch my legs, and I just started walking.”