I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand. The oily film of Death magic smeared there along with blood. My blood.
“Better hurry up,” I whispered, “or you might not get the chance.”
I turned around, watched as Dash and Cody pulled Terric out of the car.
Davy was already walking to the house with Sunny in his arms.
Sunny shot me a dirty look. Help him, she said. Please.
I put my hand on the rope that tied her to me. Her eyes went wide with fear.
“I can’t break this.” I yanked on the rope and all it did was flex. “I’ve tried for years. I can’t free you.”
You freed me once, Eleanor said.
“Yeah, well, I did that by dying. So if you can kill me,” I said to Sunny, “do it.” I spread my arms wide.
She floated over to me. Stuck her hand in my chest, maybe looking for my heart.
Nothing. There was nothing there she could touch. And the longer her hand was in me, the more Death wanted to drink the rest of her down.
I licked my lips. “Hard to kill Death, love.”
She jerked her hand away. What are you?
“Not to be fucked with. So please, for all of our sakes, don’t. Just don’t.”
I turned and walked toward the house, ghosts on my heels.
Cody and Dash had managed to get Terric inside.
The house was nice enough—maybe someone’s vacation home. Fully furnished, clean but smelled cool and stale from disuse.
Cody and Dash took Terric down a hall to a bedroom and laid him on top of the bed. Davy had already settled Sunny on the couch in the living room.
He sat on the floor beside the couch, one hand holding her hand, and looked over at me as I walked in.
“Good to see you, Shame.” His voice was flat, his eyes yellowed and bloodshot. He looked like he’d just been scraped off the bottom of the devil’s shit kickers.
“I’m glad you’re alive, Davy,” I said. “We tried to stop Eli, stop Krogher, when they first grabbed you.”
“I was there. I remember.” Steady stare. That man used to be my friend. Not anymore. Not after what they’d done to him.
And what I’d done to Sunny.
“You shouldn’t have done it,” he said.
“What? Try to save you?”
“Bring her here. With you.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
Me, Sunny said. He’s talking about me.
I waited to see if Davy had heard her. He didn’t even blink, just gave me that dead man’s stare.
“Sunny?” I asked. “You’re right. I shouldn’t have. But you know her. She wouldn’t stay behind. She would have gone without me.”
“Did you kill her?” he asked.
I didn’t answer him. I couldn’t. There were no words in me for what had happened, for how I’d lost control and she’d paid for it with her life.
But he knew. He must know. He closed his eyes and bowed his head over her hand.
“Davy, I—”
“Shame?” Dash walked into the room. “You should be in here.”
I followed him down the hall to the bedroom. The door was open, but I didn’t walk in. I didn’t want to get too close to Terric. Didn’t want to kill him. Didn’t want to kill Dash or Cody or, hell, anyone else either.
“How’s he doing?” I asked.
Cody shrugged. “I think you know. He’s dying.”
“We pulled over like you asked,” Dash said. “We got him here. What’s the plan?”
“This is the plan,” I said. “I need to leave. As far as I can get from . . . all of you. I can’t be near him. I can’t be near any of you.”
Dash closed the distance and grabbed my coat. He walked me backward until my back was pressed against the hallway wall.
“You are his Soul Complement,” he said. “Leaving him is always the wrong choice. Using magic with him is always the right choice. Use magic and fix him.”
The heat of anger, pain, and fear rolling off Dash made the Death magic in me kick. Here was another life, burning bright for the taking. And my Bind spell was failing.
Death lashed out, slipped my control.
Damn it.
Shame, no! Both Sunny and Eleanor stepped in front of me. Stepped between Dash and me.
I hauled back on the magic but was too slow.
Dash jerked away, his hands instinctively rising to protect his head from the attack.
It was just a taste, the lightest lick of his life. Any other man would have dropped to his knees, but Dash stumbled backward, his hand reaching for the gun at his side.
“I am doing everything I can,” I said over the howl of magic raging in my mind. “But I am toxic. If I stay here I will kill Terric and all the rest of you with him. Don’t you understand me? Don’t you understand what I am? What I’ve always done to him? Death,” I said in case he wasn’t following. “Pain and death.”
Dash wiped at his face with his arm, as if trying to scrub off blood. But when I took a life, when Death magic drained a life down, there were no marks left behind on the living.
He hadn’t pulled the gun on me yet. Idiot. This was his chance, might be his only chance to put me down.
“If you walk out on him right now,” Dash said, “I will spend my life making you pay for that choice. Every damn second.”
I didn’t know what it was. Maybe just the tone of his voice. The fear and frustration. He knew Terric was slipping away. He knew I was about to lose him. He knew he was about to lose him too.
Dash wasn’t the kind of guy who harbored revenge fantasies. Just hearing that desperate promise—and there was no doubt in my mind he meant every word—brought everything into focus.
I got an upper hand on the magic in me—not just a Bind spell, I regained clarity—and shoved it down, down inside me, and threw the locks.
I broke out in a cold sweat. It was like coming up out of a swamp, sucking for air and sunlight. I was mostly just me again, no more puppet man, even though Death magic still twisted in my bones.
Shame? Eleanor said. Is that you in there?
“Yes,” I said. “Mostly me.”
Then while you are here, and sane, I want you to release us. Release Sunny and me. Now.
I glanced at Sunny, who had on her killing eyes.
If I released her soul to go back into that dead body, she’d be dead.
Everything suddenly looked clearer now that I had control over Death magic, so: win. But that didn’t mean things looked good.
We were holed up in a house with one dying man, a dead woman, and a spelled-up man who was not quite real and maybe not sane. We’d broken into a government holding cell, taken Davy and Terric out of it. We had killed. I’d killed.
We’d taken down their spell-carved drones.
There was no way Krogher was going to let us go. Ever. As a matter of fact, the ease of us getting into and out of that warehouse made no sense. Even if they hadn’t seen us coming, even with me walking around in my bubonic boots, we shouldn’t have pulled that off that easily.
I didn’t know why we weren’t currently being shot at.
“You need me to make my point a little sharper?” Dash asked.
Right, Dash. We’d been talking. Or arguing.
“No, I heard you,” I said. “Right now, this minute, I’m listening. Tell me what we need to do.”
He held one hand up, wiped his face again. “I don’t know, Shame. We got away, but if Krogher is as powerful as you say he is and has Eli under his thumb with those gate devices, we could have an entire damn army up our ass any minute.”