Page 61 of Dead Beat

Alex felt a hand close around her throat. The floor dropped away and she was standing in Linus Reiter’s gracious living room at Sweetwell, surrounded by candlelight and chinoiserie, the vases overflowing with clouds of white hydrangeas, plucked from his own garden, nourished by the bodies of the dead.

“Alex?”

“When did you last hear from Mercy?”

“What? Why?”

Lauren was staring at her, and Alex knew she had to find that normal girl, the mask that would allow her to pretend there was nothing wrong.

“I just … want to ask her about … class.”

“Are you okay? You look like you’re going to pass out.”

“I might,” Alex confessed. She sat down on the couch and put her head between her legs. “I skipped dinner.”

“You’ve never skipped a meal in your life.”

“Second dinner.”

She felt Lauren’s hand on her shoulder. “I have edibles or ginger ale? That’s me being nurturing.”

Even the gesture was enough to make Alex want to cry. People being kind always took her by surprise, put her on guard. The fix was in. First kindness, then the kick.

Reiter had Mercy. But how? The room and courtyard were heavily warded.

But not against familiars. Michelle Alameddine had sat in this very common room, chatting with Mercy and Alex, gathering information for Reiter, even as she’d tried to persuade Alex not to use the Gauntlet.

How he’d gotten her wasn’t the problem she needed to solve. What does Reiter want? If he only wanted to punish Alex, Mercy was dead, maybe already buried beneath the Sweetwell gardens. Pointlessly cruel, but Reiter was a demon, and it was stupid to try to ascribe human motives to him. He might just be bored and looking for sport. Or did he actually want something from Alex? If he was using Mercy as a bargaining chip, then there was still a chance she was alive and unharmed.

So what? demanded an angry voice in her head. Reiter wasn’t some two-bit dealer or smarmy professor overplaying his hand. He was a ruthless killer, and he was faster and stronger than Alex. She couldn’t beat him. She’d nearly died learning that.

It didn’t matter. She could sit here and have a cry or she could make a plan. She needed to get to Il Bastone.

Alex took a deep breath and got to her feet. “I have to go.”

“What is going on?” Lauren planted her hands on her hips. “You and Mercy are barely speaking and now you look like someone killed your dog and made you watch just because there’s a flower on our couch. I’m self-absorbed, not stupid, Alex.”

“I don’t know how to explain all of it. But … I got Mercy caught up in something that she can’t handle. Honestly, I’m not sure I can handle it. But I’m going to try.”

Lauren frowned at her. She was taller than Alex, built like an athlete. She shone with good health. She looked like a superhero, and my God, Alex wished she were hiding a cape in the closet. “That makes no sense.”

“I know.”

“You are deeply weird.”

Alex sighed. “I know that too.”

“Still a great roommate.”

Again Alex felt the ache of tears. “Thanks. I’ll be back soon. I hope.”

She marched down the stairs and back into the cold.

Nell Richmond, the redhead from St. Elmo, was standing in the courtyard. She was holding a bouquet of white hydrangeas.

23

When Alex was seventeen a fire had raged through the canyons north of the squat in Van Nuys. She’d watched the smoke spread in a black smear across the mountains, the smell no different from a campfire. But some primitive part of her mind had understood that sweet charred scent as a threat. It had made her want to grab a change of underwear and the keys to their banged-up Civic and drive all the way to the Pacific.