Vicki Pettersson - Cheat the Grave

But in these hours before morning, the street front was empty, the silence broken only by a car whizzing by on the interstate. I had a cab drop me across the street at a modest shopping center housing a hopeful independent coffee shop, a doomed independent bookstore, and a thriving nail salon. After the cab left, I crossed the street, circled the building once out of habit, then tried the giant iron gate at the nursery’s back. The green paint was peeling from the cold bars in strips, and though the gate was closed and chained, its padlock hung free. I unwrapped the chain, dropped it to the ground, and entered.

The bulk of the nursery sat in darkness and shadows, the damp and greenery making it even cooler than the surrounding night air. I didn’t try to hide-an agent’s hearing was as good as their sight-and it would have been hard to slip in unnoticed anyway. Gravel crunched like beetle backs with every step. Yet it was still a good place to meet. The rioting scents of competing flowers and fauna masked errant emotions, and the green netting draped above like an oversized mosquito net held it all in.

I followed the main trail to the front of the building where the cashier’s stand and dark office were locked tight. Squinting, and whirling around myself, I then took a smaller path through the annuals, the section putting on a bright, brave face despite the scarce winter showing. Then, from a nearby stand of Italian cypress…

“A bit petite, isn’t she?”

A second cypress answered. “ I thought she’d be larger than life.”

“Nah. Just in the manuals.”

The cypress shifted. “How can you look taller in a comic book?”

I leaned closer. “Hello?”

“It’s because she’s not a real superhero,” the first cypress explained. “She just plays one on TV.”

Snickers rose, and I crossed my arms. “Can you guys please stop talking about me like I’m not here?”

There was silence, then shuffling, before two men appeared. The first was bald, and had eyes like black opals and skin to match. He was the more wiry of the two, and his partner was as bright as he was dark. So blond, in fact, he damned near glowed next to his counterpart. Together, they were an eclipse.

“Sorry,” said opal eyes. “We thought you’d be taller.”

It was the same thing Caine had said. I glanced down at the cleavage busting from my business suit. “Yeah, it’s my height that people usually comment on first.”

“Heard you were a smartass.”

I shrugged. Better than a dumb one.

“I don’t care what she looks like,” announced cypress, the bright. “Or if she’s smart. I can still smell it on her.”

“Leave her be.” Tripp emerged then, an unlit cigarette hanging from his lips, hat drawn low.

I resisted the urge to smell myself, and angled toward him. “Well, it’s been a long day and I had to wait for your call under a loading dock.”

“It took time to secure this place first,” Tripp explained, but the second cypress was still inching my way.

“Not that,” he said, his voice deep, but oddly warbling. “The Light .”

He said it like I had leprosy.

“Fletcher is right. You still smell like one of them.”

I looked at Tripp meaningfully. “You’re all Shadows?”

“Former,” he said, knowing exactly how I felt about that. “This is Fletcher. That’s Milo.”

Milo raised his chin. “Like you’re a former agent of Light.”

“Discards, then.” I glanced at the two men, not a bit like each other…but not like me either. And not like Caine, born independent. These men had been raised in a Shadow troop, and if Las Vegas’s, then they were old enough to have once worked for the Tulpa.

Shaking my head, I turned back to the gate.

Tripp caught up, closing the expanse between us in one step. “Where ya think you’re going?”

“I don’t know.” But I wasn’t bedding down with Shadows. I kept walking.

“Ain’t nowhere Mackie can’t find you.”

I said nothing.

“And Warren won’t help.” He pulled the strange cigarette from his lips, licked them, replaced it. I shuddered, remembering how the smoke felt pressed against my pores. “If he even knew you were talking with us, he’d kill you himself. That’s truth.”

Hastening my pace, I reached into my pocket for the phone Warren had given me. I had a brief, insane urge to dial his number to ask him. Hey, Warren. If I took up with a splinter group of rogue agents, would you slay me on sight? Oh, they’re all Shadows too, but they told me that no longer counts. I laughed, humorlessly, imagining his response.

“So would the Tulpa,” Tripp continued, easily keeping pace.

“And Mackie and Helen-and still every Shadow agent in this city.” I halted and pointed back at the ones watching me. They’d held back, but I knew they could hear my every word. “So many ways and people to kill me. Why should I give them the pleasure?”

“They’re not the ones swingin’ at you.”

I angled a hard glare at Fletcher and Milo, then glanced at the mesh roof obscuring the winter sky. I felt like one of the plants trapped beneath that net, caught someplace unnatural, and likely to wind up in the hands of someone who would treat me carelessly.

“Skamar said she’d help,” I said, but the promise sounded hollow even to me. At some point Mackie would be too close to me, she’d be too far, and by the time she finished her death-dealings with the Tulpa, it would be too late.

And the other agents of Light? The ones I once counted as friends? Tekla had some sort of dealings with Caine, the Seer who’d just sacrificed himself for me, for relevance. She’d appeared in my dream, saying not everyone had abandoned me. But that was just a dream. It remained to be seen if she’d lift a finger for me in real life.

And what would Vanessa and Felix do, the couple that’d gradually become my closest new friends? Or Micah, who’d healed me more times than I could count? How about Gregor, who had a warden like Luna that was as protective of him as he was of her? Would their indifference to my mortality turn into aggression, just on Warren’s say-so?

Feeling unsteady, I leaned against a giant green machine called the Mulch Master. “You said before I could leave the city.” Maybe it was still an option.

Tripp said, “And go where? You got paranormal contacts elsewhere? Someone who knows how to deal with ol’

Sleepy Mac?”

“Do you?” I snapped back.

“Yup.” He spat something black and nasty into the green bin. I imagined it working like cement, binding the mulch together. “Why do you think we’re here?”

“You lie, Shadow.”

“I’m rogue ,” Tripp corrected. “A free agent, though I still know a brethren Shadow when I see one.”

“I’m Light.”

“Goodness and Light,” Tripp taunted, scattering ash.

I ignored his sarcasm. So he was here on someone else’s orders. Not to save the petite mortal girl from a magical blade. Fucking Shadows.

“Did you tell this someone about Mackie?” I asked. “His quest?” His blade.

Tripp nodded.

“And he’s still willing to side with me?”

“He’s been waiting to do so for years.”

Options bounced around my skull like superballs. Slowly, dreamlike, I pulled Warren’s phone from my pocket and stared at it, trying to anticipate a conversation that had me explaining about Sleepy Mac and asking for sanctuary. That was the one place, I knew, the man from Midheaven couldn’t go. Hidden underground, protected by a security system even the strongest of Shadows couldn’t breach, and located on the other side of reality, it was home to the agents of Light.