Eighth Grave After Dark

“What the fuck is in New York?”

The kid shrugged as everyone once again turned toward me askance.

“I don’t understand,” Gemma said.

“Neither do I.” Swopes was getting angry. The unknown did that to humans.

“She’s only been gone an hour,” Gemma said. “How could she possibly have gotten to New York in an hour?”

But the Daeva knew. He’d stilled the minute the kid said it.

I stepped to him, anger coursing through my veins like liquid fire. “Why are you surprised, slave? This is your fault.”

He stood and stepped toe-to-toe with me. In all honesty, the fact that he looked like a kid meant nothing. He was centuries older than I and had been the deadliest Daeva in hell. On any other day, if he got really lucky, if the planets aligned and the tides shifted the gravity of the earth a centimeter to the left, he might have a snowball’s chance of kicking my ass. Today was not that day.

He seemed to have something to say, so I fought the urge to break his neck outright.

He leaned in until I could see the minute details of his irises. “You’d been evicted, fuckhead. Daddy had taken over your digs and was about to kill your daughter. What would you have had me do?”

“Not that,” I said, trying to suppress my natural inclination to rip apart first and ask questions later. He’d done the unthinkable. He’d told Dutch her name. Her celestial name. And now all that power coursing through her veins would be almost uncontrollable, as she’d proved with her trip northeast.

Swopes had moved closer to the Daeva and me, knowing what we were capable of.

A slow grin spread across the Daeva’s face. “Afraid she’ll figure out exactly what you are, what you’ve done, and leave your insignificant ass?”

The thought of a fight caused a spike of adrenaline. A welcome spike. “The only thing I’m afraid of is how much I’m going to enjoy burying your body tonight.”

“You’re nothing more than primordial ooze that slithered up from the basement, and she’s a fucking god.”

“A god?” Gemma asked, her voice thick with emotion. “Is that metaphorical?”

But the Daeva wasn’t finished digging his own grave. I gave him all the time he needed. Handed him a shovel.

“Why would you ever believe yourself worthy of her?”

“There are innocent people in this room,” Swopes said.

“Reyes,” Cookie said. She’d stepped closer. Placed a hand on my arm. Looked up at me with those gorgeous blue eyes of hers. “Please, find her.”

After a long and tense moment, I swallowed back my anger—and my sudden thirst for Daeva blood. She was right. We needed to find out what was happening with Dutch, not start a war.

“There’s something else,” the kid said.

I glared in impatience.

“I think she’s lost her memory.”

The Daeva, anger still surging through him, grabbed his dirty T-shirt. “What do you mean, you think?”

The kid pushed him. “Get off me, pendejo.” He brushed his shirt, as though that would help, before continuing. “I mean she doesn’t remember who she is. But, I don’t know, maybe she remembers other things.”

Quentin, who could see the kid as well as I could, was telling Amber what he could understand. Going by his signs, he’d pretty much nailed it.

Amber stood and walked to me. “Is that right?” she asked. “Charley has lost her memory?”

“What?” Now it was Gemma’s turn to place a hand on my arm. “Reyes?”

I shook her off and grabbed my jacket from the back of a chair. “I’ll find her.”

“Wait,” Gemma said. She sank into a seat at the table and spoke between sobs. “We need a plan. You can’t just go up to her and force her to come home. If she doesn’t know who you are, you could do more damage than good.”

“I won’t force her to do anything.” I started for the door when the Daeva decided to press his luck again.

“Listen to her first,” he said. He’d grabbed hold of my forearm, and the seething anger I’d felt before came back ten times stronger.

But Robert was beside me, too. “Please, Reyes,” he said. “Gemma is very good at what she does.”

After another long and tense moment, I’d calmed down long enough to sit at the table and listen to Dutch’s sister go on and on about Dutch’s psyche. About how fragile it had to be at that moment with everything she’d gone through. And now she vanished before our eyes only to end up somewhere in New York with no memory.

“She must have suffered a psychotic break, Reyes. We need to give her time to recover.”

“I’m not leaving her up there alone,” I said, making sure my tone spoke volumes on the subject.

“I’m not saying that.” She blew her nose and then continued. “I’m just saying, we need to reveal her past to her slowly, to let her try to find her way back on her own.”

“So, what’s your plan?” Robert asked her.

She thought a moment, then glanced at him. “How much vacation time do you have saved up?”

“As much as I need.”

She smiled. “Okay, here’s what we do.”

We got as much information from the kid as we could about where Dutch was and who she was with; then Gemma laid out a viable plan for us. One that involved most of us going to New York. Amber and Quentin had school, so they would stay back, but the rest of us were headed to the Northeast. I chartered a plane. We would leave in seven hours. Not soon enough, in my opinion, but the others had to make arrangements.