Kelly Meding - As Lie the Dead

“You still there?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Wyatt said, tone softer. “Look, we’re waiting on some information. When I get it, I’ll pass it along, okay? I just can’t come back in right now.”

“We?”

“Okay?”

“Yeah … okay.”

He hung up without further discussion and pocketed the phone. I let out a breath, glad she wasn’t pursuing the tongue slip. Not that Wyatt couldn’t have handled it. White lies were easy. I made a left one block past the bridge, the motel looming in the distance.

“Something tells me,” Wyatt said, “the Blood kill didn’t set this off.”

“I’d believe it if he were higher up in the Family,” I said. “But not mid-level, and not with the guy orchestrating all of this being human himself. Plus, I have no reason to doubt Isleen’s word that the Bloods are pretty well satisfied with the status quo.”

“So much for that lead.”

The All-Nite Inn was a few steps up from the last couple of motels I’d stayed in—clean parking lot, no graffiti on the walls or bars on the windows, modern paint choices. It was two levels, with a single balcony connecting all of the rooms, accessible at intervals by internal stairwells. It wasn’t a by-the-hour kind of place, but it was still a far cry from the Hilton.

Jenner’s room was number 224. I parked as close to our stairwell as I could, backing in just in case we had to make a quick getaway. With no luggage except my canvas tote of belongings, we probably looked like a couple sneaking in for an illicit rendezvous.

I put my bag on the floor near the bed and spun in a slow circle. It had a single king-sized bed and sensibly colored linens, polished fake walnut furniture, an acceptably understated painting on the wall, and modern electronics. Nothing kitschy or outdated. The mini-fridge looked new, and the tiny bottles of shampoo and lotion were from a decent retail chain. Not a bad place for a hideout.

Or whatever Jenner really used it for.

The bathroom was the type with the counter and mirror inside. I did my business, then checked my appearance. More color had come back to my cheeks, but even tied up, my hair looked like a dead animal had been glued to my head. Definitely needed a good shampoo. Or a fast chop with sharp scissors.

When I emerged, Wyatt was perched on the far corner of the bed, staring at the wall and seeming lost in thought.

“This is probably a terrible idea,” I said.

He snapped his head toward me, eyebrows arched. “Why?”

“Lately, motels seem to herald my imminent demise.”

For several seconds, he just stared dumbly. Then the joke sank in, and he cracked a smile. “That’s really not funny, Evy.”

“Then why are you trying hard to not laugh?”

His smile widened, and amusement made his eyes sparkle. “I remember something more pleasant than imminent death from our last motel stay.”

My stomach flipped. I remembered that night, too—slightly out of focus and fuzzy from the distance of death and time. Our only time together before my death. The way he’d held me. The brush of his mouth on my skin. I had craved sensation that night—one last electrifying moment before it was all ripped away, as though I’d known I was about to experience the worst agony of my life and would have to see Wyatt break as I lay dying.

A moment in time I both treasured and regretted.

“Evy, I’m sorry.”

I blinked. “For what?”

“For whatever I said that made you look so sad.”

“Wyatt, don’t.” I sat next to him, letting the squishy mattress sink under my weight. I was weary of the constant battle between my emotions and my memories. Between the things I wanted and the things lodged firmly in my subconscious that kept me from them. I was sick to death of fighting with myself.

“I shouldn’t have joked about that night,” he said.

“I think you’ve earned the right to be honest with me.”

He turned his hand palm up. I threaded my fingers around his and held tight. “And I think you have, too,” he said.

“This isn’t me being honest?”

Shifting to face me more directly, he reached for my other hand and I let him take it. “Evy, I think if you were being truly honest right now, you’d be beating me into a bloody pulp. Or screaming obscenities out of sheer frustration. Maybe both.”

I searched his face for hints of teasing. A glimmer of self-deprecation that belied the honesty I sensed in his words. I found none. Why the hell did I think I could run around and prevent a citywide Dreg meltdown when I couldn’t even sort out my own feelings? Or my relationship with my … what? I couldn’t even put a label on what Wyatt was to me. More than a boyfriend, less than a lover. A best friend I’d die for in a second, and someone I’d rather punch in the face than be gut-wrenchingly honest with. The confusing dichotomy had me tied in knots.

Four years of professional give-and-take between Hunter and Handler had been complicated by one moment of weakness on my old self’s part—the culmination of immediate grief impacted by two months of behavioral changes and undefined tension between us. Add to it the physical attraction to Wyatt from a woman who’d been so lonely and depressed that she’d given up and killed herself rather than deal with life. Season it all with the fact that every wound I’d ever inflicted on a Dreg—deserving or not—had been paid back in spades by a goblin Queen and her horny henchman. Then roll it all up in my own bruised, orphaned psyche, and I was a psychiatrist’s wet dream.

“I don’t blame you” was poised on the tip of my tongue. But if I was being honest, I did blame him. Not for anything that had led up to my death but for everything that had happened since. For waking up alone and frozen on a morgue table, for dragging Alex Forrester into my life and getting him killed, for the battle at Olsmill that left six Hunters dead. And especially for the goddamned quiver I felt in my belly when he smiled at me; the way just holding his hand calmed me down, and the constant, warm memory of his kisses. All things I wanted to feel over and over again.

I’d been running around in a constant state of agitation ever since my resurrection, solving one problem after another. The closest Wyatt and I had come to figuring us out was four days ago in First Break. Surrounded by the peace and serenity of the Fair Ones and sure of our protection from everything hunting us, we’d finally been honest with each other. Or as honest as we’d been able when I was still only borrowing Chalice and I was convinced one or both of us would be dead in a day.

But now? We’d both survived that battle, only to be thrust headlong into a new fight—one that had been boiling beneath the surface for longer than we’d anticipated, with no downtime to think about us. Waiting for Phin’s phone call, we had time. And now that I had it, I wanted to do anything except think about us. Or me. All I wanted to think about was the next mission.

It was a hell of a lot easier to handle.

“I don’t want to beat you up, Wyatt,” I said, forcing a smile. “You’re less useful when you’re bleeding and unconscious.”

His eyes narrowed. “Will you be serious, please?”

“I am being serious!” I launched off the bed and stalked to the other side of the room, rounding to face him when I reached the door. “Getting pissed at you doesn’t help. Hell, getting pissed at me doesn’t even help, and quite frankly? The only fucking person I want to be pissed at right now is this Call asshole, because he’s the one creating all our problems.”

“Call isn’t the one affecting us, Evy.”

“Oh no? Without the Park Place tangent he led me on, I probably would have found the information I needed in time to save Rufus from the Assembly, and maybe even have had time for a daylong nap that didn’t come as a result of two broken legs and chemical inhalation.”