Chapter 8
The stone wall dug into my ass, but I stayed put, chain-smoking Spanish cigarettes that tasted like dirt and staring at Diego through the open door.
The katana leaned against the stone beside me.
Inside, he moved through the crowd like he belonged there.
Every person in that room had a claim on him that I would never have.
I lit another cigarette off the dying ember of the previous one. It was my third, or maybe my fifth. I'd lost count. The nicotine didn't help my nerves, but it gave my hands something to do besides reach for a weapon.
Diego caught my eye through the doorway and smiled, that slow, easy smile that made me want to punch him in the mouth with my mouth.
Then he turned back to his cousin, slipping seamlessly into Spanish too rapid for me to follow.
He laughed at something she said, his head thrown back, throat exposed.
Trust like that would get you killed anywhere else in the world.
A gust of wind sent ash flying back toward my face. I closed my eyes against it, and when I opened them again, Diego accepted a glass from someone's grandmother, drinking something amber-colored that made him wince. The woman patted his cheek like he was still twelve years old.
I dragged my eyes away and stared at the gravel instead.
I had no business looking at him like that.
I had no right to want what I wanted. My babushka always said Koschei's problem wasn't that he hid his soul.
It was that he kept checking on it. I wasn't family.
I wasn't even a friend, really. I was the reason this house was now a target.
Lorenzo eased himself down beside me on the wall, still favoring his injured side. "Thought you'd be inside. With all the food and family bonding."
"Not my family," I said. "Not my bonding."
He leaned back, wincing as the motion pulled at his stitches. "Eight's asleep. Has one hand under her pillow and those drawings Emilio's kid made her tucked under it too."
I raised an eyebrow. "You checked on her?"
"Someone had to. You were out here brooding, and Diego's busy being the prodigal son returned."
I let that slide. Lorenzo wasn't wrong. "She sleeping okay?"
"Like a baby assassin." His smile was quick and sharp. "Kid's got good instincts. Better than most adults I know."
We sat in silence for a moment, the wake unfolding through the open door.
Inside, someone had started up the guitar again, a different tune this time, something that made feet stomp and hands clap.
Diego had been pulled into a circle of men passing a bottle around, each taking a shot before handing it to the next.
"You trust them?" Lorenzo asked after a while. "These people?"
I considered the question. Trust wasn't a switch you flipped. It was a dial you turned up slowly, notch by notch, and mine had been stuck at zero for most of my adult life. "I trust Diego," I said finally. "That's enough."
"Is it?" Lorenzo kept his eyes on the house, scanning windows, doorways, the thin curtains that moved with each breeze. "Because that looked like a pretty divided room in there when he asked for sanctuary."
"Danior's going to be a problem," Lorenzo continued. "Guy like that doesn't just let things go."
I crushed my cigarette under my boot. "Diego says he's a politician."
That earned a short, dry laugh from me. "You sure you were just a Ferryman? You've got the personality of a fixer."
"I'm many things. A fixer is not one of them."
He shifted on the wall, stretching his bad leg. "Uh-huh. Just like Eight's not just some kid, and Diego's not just some—"
"Watch it," I warned, but there was no heat behind it.
Lorenzo raised his hands in mock surrender. "All I'm saying is, there's history here that we're walking into blind. These people have grievances and alliances going back generations. And we're the outsiders they're being asked to die for."
I looked back at the open door. Diego had stepped out of the circle.
"He shouldn't have asked for sanctuary," I said quietly. "It was too much."
"You think?" Lorenzo's voice was neutral, but the question underneath it carried weight.
"I know." I lit another cigarette, cupping my hand against the wind. "We should have kept moving. Found somewhere remote. Somewhere the Pantheon wouldn't think to look."
"There's nowhere the Pantheon won't look."
He was right. The Pantheon had resources, reach, and all the time in the world. They collected grudges the way some people collected stamps, meticulously and with an eye toward completion. They'd burned cities to find targets before. A small town in rural Spain wouldn't even slow them down.
He looked back at the house. "You think they'll send someone soon?"
"They already have."
He stiffened beside me, one hand drifting to his side where I knew he kept a blade. "How do you know?"
"Because I would have." I flicked ash onto the gravel. "They'll have someone on us right now. Probably had eyes on us since the funeral. They're just waiting for the right moment."
Lorenzo scanned the hills, the narrow streets, the rooftops. He had sharp eyes, but he wouldn't spot anything. The Pantheon didn't make those kinds of mistakes.
"So, what's the plan?" he asked. "We can't stay here forever."
"Working on it." I wasn't, not really.
Inside, the guitar had stopped. Diego had moved away from the circle and stood talking to Amparo near the door, his back to us. She reached up and straightened his collar, a gesture so motherly it made something in my chest tighten.
"He cares about you," Lorenzo said quietly. "More than he should."
"I know." The cigarette had burned down to my fingers. I let it drop. "It's going to get him killed."
A distant rumble cut through the night insects and guitar music, and I tensed before I had fully processed the noise. "Get inside," I said. "Stay with Eight. Don't let her out of your sight."
Lorenzo paused for a fraction of a second. Then he nodded once and disappeared through the doorway.
The door behind me opened. I knew it was Diego without turning around. I could feel him there, sense the shift in the air when he stepped onto the gravel.
"Jasper," he said. "What is it?"
"Company," I said, my eyes still on the road. "The bad kind."
He sucked in a breath. Then he stepped up beside me, shoulder to shoulder, his arm warm against mine.
The bass hit first, so loud that the porch railing hummed under my palm.
Black SUVs rolled out of the dark, headlights cutting through the dust they kicked up.
Men hung out of the windows with rifles braced against the frames.
The music was American hip-hop, cranked past the point of melody into pure distortion, the kind of volume designed to announce that whatever was coming, it wasn't a conversation.
My hand found the katana before I'd decided to reach for it.
The lead vehicle slowed as it approached the house. The passenger leaned out of his window and spat on the ground in front of the porch.
"They're just testing us," Diego said, but the muscle in his jaw had tightened.
The door behind us opened again. Danior stepped onto the porch, his polished shoes crunching on the gravel. He'd removed his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves, revealing forearms corded with muscle that his tailoring usually disguised. He narrowed his eyes as he took in the convoy.
Diego clamped his hand around my wrist before I could move. "No," he said quietly. "That's not how we handle this. Not yet."
The convoy completed its first pass and turned at the end of the street, coming back for another round. The driver of the lead SUV gunned the engine, the roar echoing between the buildings.
"We should get the children to the back rooms," I said. "Away from windows."
"Already done," Danior replied. "We're not new at this."
The convoy revved engines and pulled away, heading up the hill toward the church.
From the porch, we could see the convoy forming a semicircle around the cemetery, headlights aimed at the graves.
Then came the sound of shattering glass, and through the gap between buildings I could see the colored shards of the stained-glass windows raining down, catching the flashlight beams as they fell.
Diego flinched. He gripped the porch railing until his knuckles went white. "Hijo de puta," he whispered.
One of the men at the cemetery shouted, waving his flashlight toward the fresh grave, the earth still loose and red in the beam of light. It was Emilio's final resting place.
The lead SUV's door opened, and a figure stepped out. Even at this distance, in the poor light, I recognized the theatricality of the movement, the custom white tracksuit luminous in the headlight beams, the way he paused to adjust his cuffs before walking toward the grave.
I muttered a curse in Russian. "Achilles. And that's Patroklos. Where one goes, the other follows."
"Who are they?" Danior asked, eyes fixed on the cemetery.
"The worst people you'll ever meet," I said flatly.
Achilles reached Emilio's grave. He circled it once, then stopped at the headstone and delivered a sharp kick that sent it toppling backward. The sound carried clearly in the night air, stone cracking against stone.
"Son of a bitch," Diego hissed, starting forward. I caught his arm and held him back.
"That's what they want," I said. "They're trying to draw you out."
Diego went rigid under my hand, every muscle coiled tight. He breathed shallow and fast. "That's my uncle's grave."
"I know." I kept my grip firm. "And if you go out there now, you'll be in one right next to him."
Achilles unzipped his tracksuit and urinated on the disturbed earth before he began shouting insults and slurs at the Romani in Russian, English, and Spanish.