Kelly Meding - Requiem for the Dead

She was right. And what if the Frosts managed to track down Leo Forrester, father of Chalice's dead roommate Alex? He was a kind man, but he was a recovering alcoholic and not a very good liar. He couldn't tell them that he didn't know who I was. I'd given him a condensed version of the truth about myself and his son's death before running him back out of town for his own safety.

"You could always dye your hair," Milo said. "And cut it. Make it harder for people to recognize you."

I nodded, even though the idea didn't appeal to me. Before I died, my hair had been short, thin and blond. Now it was long, thick and wavy brown, and it had taken some getting used to. But I was used to it. Not that it wasn't a pain to take care of on occasion, especially when I got blood in it. Maybe it was time to try a new look.

"Is hiding her truly the best option?" Marcus asked.

Milo frowned. "As opposed to what?"

"Having Stone contact the parents and put their minds at ease about their daughter's well-being."

Marcus's suggestion didn't surprise me; it also wasn't something I was comfortable with for a whole slew of reasons.

"Their daughter's dead," Milo retorted. There was a level of anger in his tone that caught my attention. He seemed genuinely annoyed, but I suspected it had more to do with Marcus himself, than with his words. The unusual tension between the pair was suddenly unmistakable.

"And yet her body is wandering the city still."

"So she should pretend to be their dead daughter? For how long? A day? A month? Ten years?"

"It was an alternative to hiding, Milo, that's all."

"Okay, so I've got options," I said. "Great, I'll consider them all while I keep my head down and try to not be noticed. Meanwhile, are there any developments with Riley and the challenge?"

"Not so far," Marcus replied.

Good news so far. "Are there any new goblin sightings we should know about?"

"None that have been reported," Astrid replied. Her cell phone rang. She glanced at the display, then put it to her ear. "Dane." Her eyes slid in my direction. "Yeah, hold on."

She held the phone out to me. "It's James Reilly. Said he's been trying to get you on your cell."

I tried to remember where I'd left—back pocket. I'd turned it off so it didn't interrupt my night with Wyatt. I took Astrid's phone. "This is Stone."

"You're a hard woman to reach sometimes," Reilly said. His normally even, conversational tone was tinged with annoyance. Had everyone woken up cranky today?

"Sorry about that. Extenuating circumstances."

Wyatt squeezed my hip.

"Indeed. Some information has fallen into my lap, Ms. Stone, and I thought it would be of some use to you and your colleagues."

"Depends on the info."

"It isn't about the Frost girl's parents, if that's what you're thinking. Although I imagine that's a complication you didn't expect."

I rolled my eyes. "Something tells me you expected it?"

"It had crossed my mind a few times when I was first looking for her and Alex Forrester. But no, I'm not calling about that. This has to do with some very sick, former allies of yours."

The vampires. I knew without him saying it. We'd been trying for weeks to get information on the condition of the vampires infected by an unknown virus that was slowly killing them. Isleen, Eleri, Quince, and others had been carted off by their Families and not seen since. I needed whatever he had.

Downside of working with Reilly: he hated giving information over the phone. "When and where?" I asked.

"Usual place. Be there in an hour."

"I can be there in half that."

"Terrific. I'll see you in an hour."

I handed the phone back to Astrid, then held up a hand before Wyatt could say anything. "You're not coming with me."

He lifted an eyebrow. "Why not?"

"Because you scare the hell out of him, and I really like him on my side."

"You're not going alone."

"I'll take Milo." No one objected. "Excellent. Let's go."

Fifteen minutes later, Milo eased our borrowed car out of the parking area and through the mall corridor that led outside. He'd beaten me to the car, so I didn't much care that he wanted to drive. It was more important that I take a few minutes to change into fresh clothes, twist my hair up, and hide it under a light blue bandana. It wasn't much of a disguise, but it was something. He'd likewise traded his sweat-shorts for a pair of jeans and looked less like he'd just rolled out of bed.

The usual meeting place was Sally's Coffee Shop. It was open twenty-four hours, was in the middle of Mercy's Lot, and Milo, Tybalt, and Felix had frequented it back during their Triad days. Reilly had an unhealthy obsession with the pancakes there—he was eating them every time I met him. But the coffee was good, and it was a difficult location to ambush.

It would take about fifteen minutes to get there, give or take traffic congestion, and I spent half the time silently staring at Milo from the corner of my eye. He looked pissed, wearing that same cloud of anger that had followed him around for a good month or so after Felix's infection. I hadn't requested his company so I could pick his brain, but the opportunity was just too good.

"Do me a favor today?" I said.

"What?"

"Whatever you're mad at Marcus about? Don't take it out on Reilly."

He glanced over at me, eyebrows furrowed and lips pressed tight, then back to the road. His hands tightened around the wheel. "I won't."

The fact that he hadn't denied he was pissed at Marcus startled me into a momentary silence. I'd never seen the pair not getting along, even from the first day they met on the Boot Camp battlefield. "Milo, you know I'm going to ask."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"If it's affecting quad dynamics, we need to talk about it. The four of us have to be able to work together."

"We can work together."

"Uh huh."

"Can you leave it alone for now?"

I stared out the window and left it alone for the time it took him to park two blocks down from Sally's in the first open space he could find. One he turned off the engine and palmed the keys, I asked, "What did you do?"

He shifted around in his seat, eyes wide, caught somewhere between stunned and angry. "What did I do? What the hell makes you think it was something I did?"

"It was something you did or he did, so I had a fifty-fifty shot of being right. Am I wrong, then?"

"Yes."

Now I was really confused. For all of his growling and bluster and bulk, Marcus had a gentle soul. He loved his sister Astrid, and he was fiercely loyal to both his Pride and his friends at the Watchtower. He was the kind of guy I wanted on my side, so what could he have—fuck. "Did he give you shit about being gay?"

Milo's eyebrows rose into his hairline. "Hell no. He didn't give me shit."

"But he knows?"

"Of course he knows."

Okay, that wasn't it, and good thing or I'd have knocked Marcus on his furry ass. I didn't know much about Milo's pre-Triad years, but I'd seen the scars on his back—they were the kind of scars you got from repeated beatings. I had seen them on my old Triad partner Jesse, and he'd once drunkenly admitted they were gifted to him by his stepfather's leather belt. Milo's heart had been broken when Felix died, and I was protective as hell of the friendship Milo and I had built since then.

Even if it was a friendship built solely on the present, with little visitation of the past, or pondering of the future.

"So what's with the hostility before?" I asked. "You looked like you didn't want Marcus within twenty feet of you."

"It wasn't hostility, exactly.

"It looked hostile."

"It was frustration and confusion."

"About?"

Milo let out a long breath. "Marcus he kissed me."