Chapter 24 – Luna
Chapter Twenty-Four
Luna
We waited outside the construction site for our ride for a good ten minutes, and when they got there, Paco whammied them to ignore our appearances without a second thought.
I was proud of him and was going to tell him that, then thought better of it as we sat in the back of the car together in silence.
I didn’t ask where Paco’s ride was taking us, but I knew I’d assumed right when we got off the interchange, and it pulled into Jack’s apartment complex’s lot.
“He gave me keys. He just never wanted me over,” Paco said after we got out, pausing to rate and tip the driver like any other human, then he looked at me and made a sound, like something was in him that he needed to throw up.
I grabbed his hand again. “You know why, right?” I asked, pulling him along. “Because he loved you.”
“That’s true—but it’s not helping,” he said, squeezing my hand like it was attached to a life preserver.
“I know. Come on.”
He let us in, and I fed Sugar, while Paco just stood three steps past the doorway, stunned.
“I can’t do this,” he said, when I’d circled back to him.
I caught his face between my hands. “Yeah, you can. And you will. He’d have wanted that for you. And despite your recent behavior, I don’t think that you’d turn your back on him, even if he’s gone.”
I watched fifty different emotions ride the man’s face, one by one by one. “How come you’re so good at this?” he asked as tears started to fill his eyes again.
“Because while Jack was my friend, we weren’t in love, like you were. And because I’ve done this before.” I let go of him and then stepped back. “Go shower, Paco. Everything’s better after a shower—and—when’s the last time you ate?”
I watched him run his hands through his hair, looking so much like Jack in that one moment that it hurt me. “The prior night.”
“Okay. You’ve got a little bit of time then.
I’ll line someone up for you this evening while you’re down—you don’t want to go through all this on an empty stomach.
” I went around behind him and softly pushed him toward the hall.
He took the hint, and walked that way mechanically, before looking back.
“Why’re you being nice to me?”
“Why’re you still here?” I teased, but when he didn’t smile I told him the truth. “I don’t know what else to do.”
“Me either,” he agreed, then ducked into the bathroom, and a minute later I heard the water running.
I went into Jack’s room and stole sweatpants and a T-shirt from him, then cranked up the heat. The bills here weren’t in my name, and after standing in a thin dress in the rain for so long, I was cold down to my bones.
It was obvious that my next ploy was going to have to be to somehow make Paco change me, but I found the thought of negotiating that exhausting as I began to make myself a PB&J. I grabbed a beer from Jack’s fridge to take with me back to the couch.
So what if I did die?
Like . . . what the hell had I been fighting so hard to stay alive for?
I felt like I’d come to some strange moment of peace with my fate—right before I learned I’d been fucked by a fallen angel—and I wanted to reside there. To try on being comfortable with inevitability for a change.
I leaned over, popped the top off the beer with the edge of the coffee table like I was very sure Jack, were he here, would never let me do, and rocked back to put my feet up, still thinking about how nice it would be to just stop fucking fighting for an hour.
Sugar jumped up and ran her face against my knuckles, daring to get cold beer sweat on her whiskers for pets.
“You’re a good kitty,” I told her, stroking her awkwardly, listening to her throaty purr.
Cats didn’t really live for that long, did they?
And they still seemed happy.
By the time I was almost done with the beer, Paco emerged. He was wearing one of Jack’s robes, which I hoped he found comforting, and sometime during his shower he’d taken himself down a notch.
“I was such an asshole to him, Luna,” he said, circling through the kitchen to get a beer of his own, before joining me on the couch.
“Yeah, I know, I was there.” I reached mine over and toasted his, making the bottle necks clink.
“No, you don’t understand,” he went on. “It was like—ever since I woke up—I was just . . . discontent.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “It was unexpected. You hadn’t had a chance to process yet.”
He grunted. “Not really. When I was at that witch’s strip club—I knew I was going to die.”
I sucked my lower lip thoughtfully. “So . . . maybe you died angry and woke up angry. The circumstances of your death were certainly less than ideal.”
He frowned and shook his head, unable to let the matter go.
“It’s just so strange,” he said, talking to himself as he rocked back too.
“For the past week, like, practically since the moment I woke and after I fed, it’s felt like there’s just been this other voice inside me.
Telling me things—and making me think that they were true.
” Sugar came over to him for love next, and he scratched her gently behind an ear.
“Like that Jack took me for granted, or reminding me of everything I’ve lost, or asking me how it would even be possible for one guy to love another for eternity, and to just bail already, before I got hurt. ”
I leaned forward a little, suddenly curious. “And now?”
“Now . . . it’s just gone, and I’m left here,” he said, and then gave me a hurt look. “I didn’t even tell him I loved him, Luna. And I should have—I could have—he was shouting his love at me.”
I watched his fingers around the beer bottle turn white.
“Don’t break that,” I said, reaching out for him. “I don’t want to clean up glass.”
He set the bottle down and placed his head in his hands. “I don’t know what’s left for me now,” he said quietly, and I patted his back as stiffly as I’d petted Sugar.
“I won’t lie to you and tell you everything’s going to be okay. Shit’s fucked, no doubt. But there’ll be a tomorrow. And a day after that, and a day after that one, and you’ll figure out something.”
“How do you know?” he asked, looking over at me.
“Because you don’t really get a choice.” I finished off my beer. “So—no voices anymore?”
“No, but that could be because they’re drowned out by my terror of living for centuries solo,” he said with a snort. “Why?”
“I’m just wondering some things,” I said, playing the edge of the bottle against my lips like a lipstick.
I hadn’t heard from my Master since I’d been kidnapped, and whispering into confused vampire’s ears seemed entirely like him.
And if I hadn’t been blindsided by finding out what Nilesh was, and dealing with Paco, I might’ve already realized that.
“Like?” Paco pressed.
“Nothing you need to worry your pretty little head about.” I shook my head at him and made a show of stretching out on the couch. “Surely it’s almost dawn. Go curl up in Jack’s coffin, Paco. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
“Promise?” he asked, and any night prior to tonight I would’ve thirsted for a vampire to look at me like he was currently, all fragile and malleable, but right now all it did was smart.
“Yeah,” I swore, feigning exhaustion.
I waited ’til the sun was good and bright and Paco was very dead before I took my shower—then after that I raided Jack’s closet again, for shirts and a hoodie to go over my last clean black miniskirt, then rifled through Paco’s wallet, which he’d set out on Jack’s nightstand.
I liberated a credit card and all of his cash before cabbing back to the construction site.
There was a line of Faithful malingering at the perimeter, wearing construction worker vests, but I still recognized them—none of them had stooped backs from carrying shingles for a living.
So I walked over, and as two of them came to intercept me, I held up a hand. “Nuh-uh, do not try that shit with me. You don’t know who you’re dealing with,” I said, ducking myself under their tape line, to some flustered confusion.
And then Nilesh saw me. He was in the same clothing he’d had on a few hours ago, sans the suit jacket I’d stolen, and as he moved to standing, I strode right on up.
“I’ve decided to forgive you for some things—assuming you’re willing to tell me everything you know.”
The corners of his lips lifted up. “How generous of you.”
“Quite!” I agreed, and gave him a winning smile. “So what the fuck are you all still doing here, and do you have any leads?”
“To?” he asked me.
“Wherever Jack is right now. Because it’s clear to me that I was bait—the Rojo told me they were doing a ritual—and when I went through my stuff at Jack’s apartment, I found out my nightblade was gone, so I’m pretty sure you assholes have it.”
“How perceptive of you,” he said, and he actually did seem amused—with me or at me, I couldn’t quite tell. “Did you want to go get breakfast?” he asked, and when I didn’t respond quickly enough, added, “It’d be just as easy to tell you things over coffee.”
I put my hands into the hoodie’s central pouch. “Only if it’s someplace we can walk to. I don’t want anyone seeing me in one of your cars, ruining all my cred.”
“All our cars have tinted windows,” he countered, then made a show of looking at a watch. “And it’s nine in the morning. None of your kind is awake, usually.”
I frowned, then relented. “Fine,” I huffed, and he went back into a zipped-up tent to get himself keys.
“So how’s he taking it?” Nilesh asked, after we were both in a sedan that had as many screens as a Star Trek set. I sat primly among them, trying not to smudge them with my knees, feeling vastly out of place.
I knew he was talking about Paco. “Not well. But what did you expect?” I said, and shrugged.
“You didn’t tell him about your theory that Jack was still alive?”
I shook my head. “If I had, he’d still be out there, digging.”
Nilesh mistook my tense posture for chill, and turned on a heated seat for me at the next stoplight. Being “pure” apparently paid pretty well.
And I bet they all had health insurance.