Blacker than Black (39 page)

“Her death is
your
fault.” Jhez releases me and lunges toward the
lyche
. I get an arm around her, but she thrashes, and I have a difficult time trapping her against my body. “Why didn’t you tell us any of this to begin with?”

Garthelle snarls, lips in a feral twist, brow furrowed deep over his nose. “Because you’re both exactly what I accused you of being. Chi-thieves! And the best way to protect someone from a truth is with a truth.” He takes an aggressive step toward us, hands no longer hiding in his pockets. Instead his arms are spread wide, tension screaming from every inch of his lean form. I can feel his aura pulsing, vibrating with emotion, across the ten-foot span between us.

“Jhez, let’s go. Okay?” I whisper to her, desperate, dragging her toward the door.

“Your aunt knew the risks. She weighed the benefits against them and deemed it worth her life to keep you safe.”

Jhez leans back into me suddenly, pushing me toward the door, and I practically trip over my feet, and hers, trying to maintain that gap of safety between us and a suddenly hostile
lyche.
She reaches back, grabs my hips and shoves me, then turns away from Garthelle and yanks the door open, dragging me into the hall with her.

“I don’t give a fuck what else he has to say, Black. We are
so
out of here.”

Jhez paces the living room, arms folded across her chest. She stops in the middle of the room and stares at me, standing in the doorway to the kitchen. I grip the heavy wood lintel in my hands, bracing myself against the smooth grain for whatever is coming. We’ve made it back to our old flat, but she’s too upset to venture back to retrieve our stuff from the place the Monsieur of York provided us with.

Me, I’m too shaken up to think straight yet. Yeah, we needed some space. No doubt about that. I rub at my breastbone in a futile attempt to alleviate the pressure. The distance between
Dragulhaven
and the blue-light district is not insubstantial. Right now, I’m feeling every inch of it. I grip the lintel a little harder, trying to distract myself.
Just don’t think about it.
Drown out discomfort with pain. Yeah, pain. Leonard. The emotion flying between us, auras and limbs tangled in his bed. Fuck. Plenty of pain to do the trick, and I’m willing to try anything at this point.

Her eye twitches. Mouth tenses into a flat line. “I thought you agreed to take the pills Blue gave you.”

Except that. “They do more harm than good.” Such a change in sentiment. Not long ago, we had this same accusatory conversation, and she berated me for taking them. Gaia in a regeneration truck full of gutter sludge. She’s like a ping-pong ball with this. “You also asked me to stop. Remember?”

Her brow furrows. The mixture of anger and confusion isn’t a good one for her. “Tell me what you mean, more harm than good. Obviously
not
taking them gives him the greater advantage.”

“I have no desire to walk around unable to sense
lyche
, to see the flow of energies around me, the auras that are how we read others.”

She sighs. “It’s just . . . Damn it, we aren’t going to be able to lay low unless you do.”

I hunch my head in a reverse shrug, arms locked to hold myself up beneath the brunt of her mood. “I get that . . . but . . . It made me itchy twitchy, let me tell you.”

“Maybe there’s something else Blue can—”

“Right. With other side effects he doesn’t bother to mention because he thinks they won’t matter? Because they don’t translate over? He said he used this dampener himself, and it worked well. Blocked the music, he said.” Guess I should have asked what that meant, how it would translate over. He’s a brother to me, to both of us. I don’t think I can ever take another hypno-hit again without second-guessing. Without wondering what it will do to me. Not entirely his fault, but it’s enough to make me want to push for what he knows and hasn’t thought to share.

She resumes her pacing for all of two strides before she wheels back toward me. “So he thought it was harmless. Because it stopped him from hearing everyone? How did he not grasp the implications of that. Gaia help that man, because I am going to flay every inch of—”

“I get that he might not have realized what it would mean, and neither of us thought to ask. His foremost concern was my state of health, I’m sure,” I interject. The mental image her rant evokes is not a pleasant one, and I don’t want to entertain it further. “He said he’d shoot me up himself if I didn’t take them.”

“Yeah, I know. I was in full agreement with that tactic at the time.”

“Is it
possible
he didn’t know?”

She closes her eyes and tilts her head back. The stillness feels heavy enough to crush me. Exhaling a gusty sigh, Jhez collapses onto the couch in a slump. The tension bleeds from me in one surging flood, leaving me limp and hollow with relief. Only my grip on the lintel is keeping me upright.

“What are you proposing he was ignorant of? His own heritage, its similarity to ours?” She picks at the seam on the seat cushion, frowning. “That man always knows precisely what he’s doing.”

“What was he doing, then? Because I can’t see it. You saw how Garthelle looked. If I’d shot up again last night, instead of letting him tap me . . .”

She squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head. “I saw. He wouldn’t have been able to do what he did with Ardienne. Not at all. They would have seen him as weak. Defenseless.”

Effectively cut off from half his power. “And
lyche
are nothing if not predators.”

“The alternate series of events wouldn’t have played out well for us. Or Garthelle.” Ardienne—or Desmonde—would’ve done to him what he did to her. And then the two of us would’ve been standing in a nest of
lyche
, chi-thieves free for the taking. Flashes of Blue’s conversation about the feeding house come to mind, and a chill runs over my entire body.

 “Fantastic.” Jhez stares at me until I meet her gaze again. I voice the thoughts that I can all but hear bouncing around in her head. “So did Blue know what he was giving me? Or was he somehow . . . persuaded . . . to pump me full of something that would weaken the Monsieur of York?”

“Our sire’s in a position of power. Garthelle strongly suspects someone has a leash on him. Someone identified his greatest point of weakness and attempted to exploit it in order to divert the focus from Noire. This isn’t a bluff move. Soiphe’s death was very real, that’s evidence enough.”

 “No, definitely not a bluff. Someone doesn’t want to lose control of their puppet. The men who tried to grab us in the flat the other day? I’d say that’s evidence enough to support that.” I won’t soon forget the drawn, listless state Garthelle was in last night, despite the recent developments. “Misdirection? Or camouflage? Why go after Garthelle, unless he’s clearly a threat? Has the ability to upset the balance. Break the leash.” I release my death-grip on the lintel and perch on the back of the couch, crossing my ankles and swinging my legs. My heels make a soft
thump
against the leather upholstery. “But how would he predict who I’d go to for pharmaceuticals? And get to them before I did?”

“It smells particularly fecund, doesn’t it?” Jhez drawls. “I would venture that whoever has the squeeze on Noire has it on Blue as well. Wonder how many others.”

“We should get Blue over here.”

“To question him?”

I shrug and study her expression closely. “Perhaps. If need be.”

Jhez laughs, a soft sound with a keen edge of sarcasm. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?”

“In this case, they seem to be one and the same.”

“I haven’t had this much fun in
ages
.” Jhez pushes up off the couch and gestures to me with her head. “Let’s go. Time for the Bruise Brothers to collaborate again.”

Blue strolls up to me, head canted, eyes squinting against the glare of the slanting afternoon sun at my back. The wind whips down the street, invisible fingers grabbing at my clothes and hair, tangling them. His head is a pincushion of gelled spikes pointing out from his scalp in every feasible direction.

He opens his arms and wraps them around me, squeezing with a strength that’s marginally surprising from a person his size. “Black, my brother. You look delicious. Taking those drugs I gave you, yeah?”

“I took them.” The hedge comes smoothly, without the slightest twitch of guilt.

“What brings you out here?” His vivid eyes take in Jhez, an edge of wariness and confusion. To the casual observer, it might even pass for a casual inquiry. “Not that I’m not glad to see you. It’s just unexpected.”

I’ll bet it is. “We need your help with a little research for the investigation. How about a little side job as a consultant?”

He stiffens and releases me from his embrace to take a step back. “After what I told you, explaining how I feel about this . . . you still come to me?”

I shove my hands in the pockets of my trench coat and shrug. “You’re the best, Blue.” I want to believe he’s innocent in all this. Really, I do. With every fiber of my being. He’s been my brother in all but blood for how long? It’s difficult, verging on physically painful, to think he may have deliberately put me in harm’s way. For any reason. “And we’re not—uh.” On the verge of telling him that Garthelle is no longer directly involved, the words die in my mouth as an unmistakable limousine eases up to the curb beside us, belonging to none other than the Monsieur of York.

Garthelle is certainly letting his two cents on the matter be heard. Loud and clear,
lyche
. You want us back at the castle, right now. I want some answers. Perhaps even more than Garthelle does. And I can’t get them standing here on the street with trash blowing by and people strolling past and traffic honking and whizzing and humming and the general buzz of the metro and that ambient noise from the pervasive azure radiance of the structures surrounding us.

I didn’t realize how loud the street was until I escaped it for a short time. However temporary the relocation is, I have a profound appreciation for the distance it gives. Shame it won’t last.

Jhez shuffles her feet, impatient, hovering at my shoulder.

“We need to talk, Blue. And we can’t do it here.” The sobriety of her tone makes me stiffen. If she spooks him and he bolts, I will kill her, with no remorse whatsoever.

Well, that’s not entirely true. But I just might flay her like she wants to do to him.

He frowns at her, and I can tell he’s feeling her tone of voice like a blind man “seeing” someone’s face with their hands. Blue has mixed-up senses. He sees flavors and scents, tastes and smells colors. And whenever you touch him, he hears sounds. Sometimes, he writes down the notes of the music that echo through his head. I have one somewhere, a haunting duet of piano and violin from the day we first met.

Needless to say, few people take the time to wend their way through the convoluted labyrinth of logic that is Blue. And it’s very difficult to lie to him. The closer you stay to the truth, the better off you are. Or, at least the odds of success are higher.

“I feel you,” he says with a nod. His voice sounds strained. Coupled with the hunch of his shoulders, it’s readily apparent there’s something going on. He settles into the seat across from me and Jhez in the limo, gaze darting back and forth between us from behind wire-rimmed, rose-tinted glasses.

“Where’s the limo taking us?” he asks softly when neither of us speak. I scoot sideways until my shoulder brushes against Jhez. This feels so wrong. Garthelle hasn’t proven to be the ally I thought he was trying to be. Lying to us, all along, and yet we’re headed right back to him. Makes me furious just thinking about it. Why did he have us running in circles, wasting time, instead of giving us the information?

 “To someplace where we can chat without being interrupted.” Jhez smiles at him in an attempt to reassure, but I can still feel the edge of hostility radiating from her like a cutting gust of winter wind stealing the breath from your lungs.

Does Garthelle already
know
who’s holding the other end of Noire’s leash? Has it all just been a delay tactic? If so . . . what’s he waiting for?