The Given (24 page)

“Grif has a terrible sense of direction,” Kit said defensively, and felt the heat rush back into her cheeks. “Someone had to look out for him.”

“But it cost you to do so,” Nicole said softly.

It'd cost her more to be away from him. Kit looked away. Unfortunately, her eyes landed on Ray, prone where she'd felled him, and she shuddered.

Nicole followed the direction of her gaze. “He would have done it, you know. Killed you just like he killed your father.”

Yes. Kit had seen that . . . and she told herself that's why she'd fired. Not out of revenge for her dad, or for the havoc the deed had wreaked on the remainder of Kit's mind and life, but in self-defense. Right?

Swallowing hard, she inched forward and then propped herself on the coffee table before Nicole. Dead or not, Take or not, Ray could damn well wait while she talked with her best friend.

“You're still helping Shaw find his wife,” Nicole stated.

Kit frowned. Maybe it
was
time for them to go. “I want what's best for him” was all she said.

“Is that all?”

Kit sniffed. “I forgot what a pain in the ass you could be.”

“I mean, have you asked him lately?” Nicole went on, ignoring her. “Because like I said, I've been watching.”

“He's the one who's still looking for her,” Kit pointed out.

“Yes, but he's looking
over
you.” Nicole gave her a meaningful look, then feigned looking at a wristwatch before stepping behind the sofa and giving Ray a little kick. “Hey. Get up! We gotta go.”

Kit stood, too. “Nice bedside manner.”

“Learned it from Shaw,” Nic admitted, and surprised she was capable of it, Kit actually smiled. Nicole glanced back down at Ray. “The bastard's hiding in there. Even newly harvested souls know when they have to answer for their crimes.”

Kit's heart resumed an unnatural thud. She put a hand to her forehead. “I can't believe this is happening.”

Nicole just shrugged the magnificent wings at her back, causing the gold tips to flare as if lit. “What do you expect? That big lug gave you awareness. He handed you an apple of knowledge and you took a big ol' bite of it. Now you can't unknow it. That would require someone more prone to fantasy, and the Kit I knew and loved valued the truth above all else.”

“Still do,” Kit admitted, because it was what her father had taught her, what he'd died for, and what she had lived for ever since.

Don't just find the easy answer, Kitty-Cat! Find the truth!

“And
that's
why you can see me,” Nicole said, crossing her arms. “It's why you can see Grif for who he really is, too. The Pure actually love that about you, by the way.”

“You mean Grif's angelic asshole of a boss?” Scoffing, Kit shook her head. “He hates me.”

“He didn't understand you,” Nicole corrected, “but now he does. He's had to feel what it's like to be one of us. He's actually felt every ounce of your pain and sorrow. It's excruciating for a Pure.”

Kit was not going to feel sorry for that bombastic, judgmental, blackmailing Pure angel. “I don't care.”

“Is that why you won't allow yourself to feel good things anymore? You just don't care?”

Kit crossed her arms now. “You calling me on my shit, Nic?”

Nicole smiled and pointed at herself. “Bestie, remember?”

Yes, they were besties . . . and Kit wasn't just happy to see her, she was relieved to be with someone with whom she didn't have to feign strength.

“It's hard,” she finally said, chin wobbling.

Nic smiled. “Because it's worth it.”

“It hurts.”

“Because it's passion.”

“I'm afraid,” Kit finally admitted in the smallest voice yet.

“But feeling love, even losing it, is better than simply existing,” Nicole said, and shook her head as she frowned. “Take it from someone who doesn't have to worry about anything anymore, taking a risk is a gift. It means you still have a chance to build something great and new. You should throw yourself at that.”

Kit just stood there.

“I said throw yourself,” Nicole said wryly, and Kit laughed self-consciously. Nicole laughed, too, then straightened and took a step toward Ray. “I really do have to go. This ass-nozzle is starting the Fade, and it's my wings if he gets Lost.”

But Kit just stared at Nicole, and there was no room for thoughts of Ray or, momentarily, even Grif. This was it, she somehow knew. She wouldn't see Nicole again, not on this side of the life/death divide, and that reopened the wound that she thought time had healed. A million little memories and moments raced through Kit's mind: Nicole's love for potluck cookouts and swing-dancing, the way tears streamed down the apples of her cheeks when she really got to laughing, how their sides would hurt afterward, sometimes for hours.

Kit bit her lip, feeling tears well up, and wished she could hug her friend one last time, or that they could at least link arms as they had so often after a long night out, gazes turned toward the rising sun, making wishes upon the new day.

“Careful,” Nicole said, her star-speckled gaze now surging. She was remembering, too. “Father Francis is going to blame me if he feels all of
that
.”

Kit still didn't care. Her sorrow at Nic's violent, needless death struck her all over again, and as her heart swelled in her chest, she realized that was why God never let people see the loved ones who'd passed on after death. You'd never heal if the scab was continually ripped from the wound.

“I'm glad we get to say good-bye,” she choked out. “We didn't get to . . . the first time.”

“Yeah, sudden death due to multiple stab wounds and strangulation tends to interfere with the more heartfelt farewells.” Nicole laughed darkly at Kit's responding wince. “Don't worry about me, Kit, just . . . don't shut down. I know it's not easy, but I think I can deal with facing eternity on this side of things as long as I know that you still have your face turned toward the sun.”

Kit blew out a shaky breath and finally gave a matching nod, though she wasn't sure that would ever be the case again. She'd always valued knowledge and truth, but now it felt like she knew too much to ever be that blithely, or blindly, happy again.

“Go out the back,” Nicole told her, jerking her head at the far door. “I've messed with the cameras, so they'll never see you leave.”

Kit nodded, and Nicole just smiled and gave her a slow blink when she hesitated. Kit drank in the sight of her, committing this new-yet-old girlfriend to memory, then finally turned away. She'd just touched the handle when Nicole called out to her.

“Do you still love him?”

“I do,” Kit answered, and as soon as she said it, a weight seemed to lift from her chest. Her head felt lighter, too, almost dizzy, but she couldn't be sure that wasn't just shock settling in. Still, it felt good to admit. She turned, and they locked eyes one final time, and Kit grew momentarily lost in the stardust swirling in her friend's pupils. It was still startling, but somehow it made Nicole more beautiful than ever. “It's the truest thing I know,” she admitted.

Nicole smiled and her stardust gaze glinted. “Then throw yourself at that.”

Biting her lower lip, Kit tilted her head. “I love you, Nic. Always.”

“Of course you do. I'm your forever friend.” Nicole tossed her mussed hair, jerking her head at the door. “Now hurry. You have a life to get on with.”

And so Kit got on with it, leaving quickly and closing the door behind her on stardust and wings and a smile she would never forget.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A
fter Dennis left to get the car, Grif retraced his steps back to the tables where Larry and Eric waited. He thought about drugging them again, but decided against it when he looked into their gazes and saw the resignation there. They were defeated and knew it. All that was left was to bundle them up and roll them out.

Grif uncuffed the smaller Eric first, and then kept hold of Larry's arm as he straightened and jerked his head to the door. That's when he stumbled and swayed. It was a tossup as to who was more surprised, the men hemmed in by the tables or Grif, suddenly braced against them. He tried to shake his head of it, this fugue that hadn't so much crept up on him as it had sprung in an unexpected attack.

The two men needed no more encouragement than that.

Grif had time to turn his head, though it was in the wrong direction and all he caught was a glimpse of Eric's teeth—straight as railroad ties—before catching Larry's knuckles as well. The blow caught him square, he didn't even have time to back away, though his legs had already quit working in any case. They were ensnared in plasmic chains that only he could see, banded silver coils pulling tight, as if meant to tie him to the tracks. Two of the three tables toppled, pinning Grif to the ground, and then a chair thrown from overhead crashed into his skull.

A spear of light tore through his vision, either from the blow or the front door as Larry and Eric fled. All Grif saw after that were twilight grays rushing him as the blood in his borrowed flesh tingled, zinging through his limbs and pooling in his toes. The bar shimmered and lost its shape. Movement undulated from the corner of his eye, and Grif gasped as more plasma rushed him, a flood now.

Grif lost all control of his body then, his limbs shorting out like faulty electrical wires. His eyes were open, he was sure, yet they were also rolled far back into his battered skull. A thrumming reverberated around him, which he registered as his heartbeat, but even that knowledge couldn't touch him. Plasma soaked into his pores, sizzled in his brain, and burrowed between the folds of his mind to separate past from present like playing cards divided into two different piles.

Then it began to burn. Flames roared to life in his skull with a searing crackle, a crescendo that whipped down to fill his chest. It was as if he were centered in a fire, burning like a dry log, and just when he thought he would die of the anguish, his body temperature plummeted, and his veins hardened in an arctic freeze. The abruptness stole his breath . . . and whisked him away where plasma could no longer reach him.

And then he was
there
. Feet planted firmly on the Surface, he glanced around and saw that he was no longer in the bar but on a garden path, standing in a night that was quiet but for the soft chirping of crickets and a woman's tipsy laughter. He turned without willing it, as if a giant hand were swiveling him around on a platform.

When he stopped, Evie was beckoning to him and smiling as she reached for his hand. “Come on, Griffin.”

She pulled him forward.
Into the past.

The horseshoe-shaped courtyard of the Marquis Hotel and Casino was exactly the same, and so were they; young and comfortably entwined as they headed to their bungalow. The room had been comped by Sal DiMartino, he remembered. A thank-you for saving his niece. This time, however, Grif was also burdened with the knowledge that he was about to die.

Though Grif had recovered this particular memory before, he'd never experienced it with such remarkable clarity. The surrounding foliage shimmered with the green of a storm-laden rain forest, while the path before him was bone-white, sparking beneath the full moon, but both fell flat compared to the blinding white-blond hair of the woman in front of him—the one he'd loved and lost and sought for the whole of the last fifty years.

“Evie,” he said breathlessly.

She turned to face him fully this time. She had rose-petal lips and a dress that matched, and the lacquer on her fingers glinted in the cold light. With the hindsight of a Centurion, Grif tried to stop himself from continuing his death march, but for all his angelic powers, he couldn't change the past. Evie laughed and pulled him toward her, bumping his hip with hers and murmuring into his ear. He laughed just as he had the first time, though inside he was sobered with the dark knowledge that he would be dead within minutes.

Evie's heels click-clacked over the bright path, each step a rocket going off in his mind. “I have plans for you, Griffin, my dear.” Her eyes glinted with promise, and their wedding bands tapped gently together. He remembered this, too, because it'd been the last time he'd felt this band on his finger. It would disappear before he took his final breath.

“This is our night, Griffin,” she said, just as she had the first time. “All your attention of late has been on the DiMartino case, but now it's over. We won.”

“I think the real winners are the DiMartinos,” Grif said, yet he still glowed with her praise. He was pleased to have solved the case, and proud to have delivered Mary Margaret DiMartino into her mother's waiting arms.

“Oh, sure,” Evie said, as the intricate brick face of their bungalow came into view. “The Salernos won't be bothering them for some time . . . but I don't want to talk about the Salernos or the DiMartinos anymore. Tonight belongs to us.”

“You smell like lilacs,” Grif murmured, when she tucked her head beneath his chin, cuddling in tight as he shoved the key into the lock.

“And soon I'm going to smell like you.” She tilted her head up to kiss him as the door swung open, and they pushed into the room blindly. All over again—despite the passing of fifty years—he was hungry for her mouth, her tapered neck, those limbs, which twined and tangled with his own. They wrapped around his body, and he drove her up against the wall. He was thinking of taking her here, like this, hard like she sometimes liked it, and he didn't think she'd mind. Not given the way her hands were pulling him tightly against her sweet, smooth curves.

He was just wondering if he'd had too much to drink, and worrying that he might somehow be a disappointment to her, when a footstep fell behind him. He turned in time to catch a shadowed movement, a sliding darkness in the shape of a man; fast, certain . . . not a shadow at all.