12
Logan
Istare at my sleeping girl. I’ve been staring at her most of the night, incapable of sleep. It’s hard to believe my ghost girl is really here. I’m scared to close my eyes, scared that if I do, she’ll vanish into thin air.
I can’t lose her again.
But fear creeps up my chest, clawing at my throat, as I think of how she aimed that rocket gun at me. It was the look in her eyes that terrified me—the look that said she had no idea who I was.
And what if she had managed to denotate it? It was true, what I told Piper. She has every right to shoot me. But if she’d shot me with that bazooka, she’d have killed our daughter too.
The old rhythm echoes in my mind.
If your wife and child were stuck in a burning building, who would you save?
I have no fucking idea.
And then there’s Jane.
I sigh, leaning back against the headboard, my hand reaching out to stroke my girl’s face. Then I grab my phone and send a message to the person I guess I’ll always turn to. No matter how much of an asshole he is.
Logan: Hey.
Damien: Hey, fuckface. How’s the ghost?
I chuckle to myself in disbelief. I have no idea how he does it. How he just knows everything. Especially after these past two years, when I’d been so convinced he’d checked out of pretty much everything.
Logan: Not a ghost anymore. She’s sleeping beside me. It wasn’t a trap after all.
Damien: Hmm.
I stare at the three letters, wondering what the hell they mean. But I’m too tired to wonder long. Too tired, and happy, and scared.
Damien: How’s the skin? Did they manage to reattach it to your body?
I shake my head in confusion.
Logan: Did the doctor talk to you?
Damien: Everyone talks to me. Everyone talks, period. Be careful. And don’t worry about Jane.
I sit up, my heart racing.
Logan: Who’s Jane? How do you know about Jane?!
Damien: Fine.
Logan: Fine?
Damien: I’ll call you.
At once the phone lights up, and I see his name flash on the screen. It buzzes in my hand, loud enough that Lia turns and moans under the covers.
I hesitate, staring at her and then at the phone. I don’t want to wake her. But I can’t bear to leave her, even for a minute.
At last, though, curiosity gets the best of me. I stand up, scan the room for any weapons, make sure the window is locked, and then creep out into the living room that separates the two bedrooms in the Airbnb Piper found for us.
I sit down on the couch. I didn’t answer in time and the ringing has stopped, but Damien doesn’t let that deter him. Moments later, my phone buzzes again.
“Yeah?”
“Long time no see.”
“Not that long.” I sag back on the couch, keeping my eyes glued to the door. “It would have been shorter if you didn’t spend all your time with your mouth on your girl’s—”
“Behave, Logan,” he says, his voice cold.
“How’s pregnancy treating Seraphina?”
“Don’t you want to know about Jane?”
I sigh. Maybe I am delaying learning the truth. No matter what I told Lia, I’m not sure I can handle it. Especially now that I’ve really started to understand the full effects of Memoril.
If she’s been like that, or worse, for all these years, then how the hell did she get pregnant?
Who did it to her?
I’m not sure I can deal with another Carmelo Moretti. It was hard. Too hard. I know it’s selfish, when my first thought should be about Lia’s pain, but there’s only so much I can handle. So many bones in my body to break.
“Okay,” I say after a beat. “Tell me about Jane. Who is she?”
“No fucking clue.”
“Oh my god.” I stand up, ready to hurl the phone across the room. “You can’t do that to me, Damien. How would you feel if I fucked with you like that about Seraphina? Huh?”
“Hey.”
“Seriously, Damien. I’ve had enough. I’m exhausted. Lia’s memory is fucked up, she nearly killed me with a bazooka, and—”
“Woah, woah, woah.” Any humor in Damien’s voice is gone. “She did what now?”
“How the hell do you know about the skin and Jane, but not about the bazooka? Didn’t the doctor tell you?”
“What doctor? Of course not.” Damien pauses again as I frown, confused. But I guess he’s always had a way of finding out about things.
“Listen, Logan,” he continues, “if she’s pulling that kind of shit…”
“It’s fine,” I cut in. “Everything’s fine. Don’t worry, Damien. I’ve got it under control.”
“I am worried. That Memoril is powerful stuff. I was talking to Campbell about it. It’s super fucking potent. If she’s violent, it’s only going to get worse.”
“No.” I swallow my rising anxiety. “She’s off of it now. Her dad’s been injecting her for eighteen years, but she killed him.” I can’t keep the thrill of pride from my voice. “She killed him all by herself, and…”
“And where did she leave the body? You got rid of it, right?”
Oops. “I kind of had other things on my mind. We left him there, but it doesn’t matter. If the police bother us…”
“I’m not worried about the police, obviously. I’m sure you can handle them.”
“Okay, then. What are you worried about?”
“The Puicin Gang.”
“The what now?”
“The Puicin Gang.”
I let out a few curse words. “Yeah, I heard you the first time, Damien. What the hell is that?”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t seen a gang of bikers around. Masked bikers. I know you have.”
“Well, yeah,” I admit. “I didn’t know they were called the Pu—whatever.”
“The Puicin Gang. How the hell are you being chased by a gang and you don’t bother to learn the first thing about them?”
I press my head against the wall, squeezing my eyes shut. “As I said, I kind of had other shit to deal with. Shit like…”
“Like your ghost girl’s pussy. Yeah, I get that.”
Anger swells in my chest. “Fuck, Damien, if I spoke about Seraphina that way—”
“You probably wouldn’t live long. I know. The difference is, your girl is Lia, and my girl is Seraphina. And you’re Logan, and I’m…”
“A fucking asshole.” I wish I could punch my fist into a wall, but I don’t want to wake the girls. I do my best to breathe deeply.
“I probably wouldn’t kill you that soon though,” says Damien.
“I’d maybe just shave a few years off your life.
Okay, fine, man. No talking about our girls’ pussies.
I’m just messing with you, you know. Half the time I’m messing with you.
Three quarters of the time, even. Still, when you’re in trouble, you call me, don’t you? ”
“No, I don’t,” I say through gritted teeth. “You call me.”
“Right. Whereas when I’m in trouble, I find out about the Puicin Gang.”
“Fine.” I try to focus on what’s important, instead of on the anger still boiling in my veins. “So tell me about the Puicin Gang.”
“Okay. Are you sitting down?”
I head back toward the couch, wincing as my raw torso chafes against my bandage. “Yeah. I’m listening.”
“So, about the Puicin Gang…”
“Yeah?”
“Well, here’s the thing.”
“Oh my fucking god.” The expression Damien was once very fond of gives me serious déjà-vu. “What thing?”
“The thing is, I have no idea.”
“What?”
“I have no fucking idea what the Puicin Gang is, Logan. All I know is they’re a gang of bikers wearing masks who’ve been trying to kill Lia’s dad. And who, because you didn’t take the trouble to hide his body, know he’s dead now, and have transferred their lethal attention to her.”
I groan, resting the back of my head against the pillow behind me. “Yeah. I think I know they’re after her, seeing as we’ve been running from them, you fucking idiot. Is that why you pulled me away from…”
“...Your girl’s pus—” He begins, before interrupting himself. “I mean, your girl’s cunt.”
“That still fucking counts, Damien.”
“Right. Anyway…” He blows out a breath. “I don’t know much, except they’re baby-killers.”
I sit up straight. “What the fuck?”
“I mean, no. That might be a little intense. They killed one baby. Doesn’t make them baby-killers. When you use that kind of qualifier, it can sound like they make a habit of it.”
“Damien…” I rub a hand over my throbbing temple. “Are you telling me they killed Jane?”
“Yeah. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Oh… fuck.”
Damien pauses, and when he speaks again, his voice is warmer. “Does that mean, Logan, that you’ve heard about Jane?”
“Yeah.” I massage the bridge of my nose. “Yeah, I have.”
“I’ve been trying to figure out who she is.
Or was. There’s some connection there with Lia’s dad.
I’m not sure what. But you know, we just finished building that new college on the outskirts of Astley.
They were just digging the foundations of the very last building when they found a set of tiny bones, belonging to a child. ”
“Oh, god…”
“All they found, apart from the skeleton, was a bracelet with the name Jane on it and an insignia of some kind. I spent months looking into it… well, okay. I did a reverse Google search, and found out about the Puicin Gang.”
“Yeah?” I hiss, when he pauses yet again.
“After that, Google couldn’t really help, but I did figure out through some of my guys that at some point, Emilio Cabello was involved with them. Oh, and I forgot to tell you the most interesting thing.”
“What?” I sit up, somehow hoping that the most interesting thing involves Jane somehow… not being dead.
“They chop off feet. That’s their thing. If you see a corpse without any feet, you can be pretty sure it’s the Puicin Gang.”
“Oh.” I huff out an exasperated breath. “I don’t really care, Damien. I mean, that’s far from being the most interesting thing. What’s their connection to Jane?”
“I’m not really sure,” he admits. “I started tracing their movements. And I noticed that eighteen years ago, a number of them came to the United States. Some of them have remained here, and recently, they’ve been growing more powerful.
And maybe we shouldn’t have been trying so hard to kill every last one of our mobster friends, because now, a number of them have joined the Puicin Gang, probably hoping for protection.
But anyway, back to the subject at hand.
When the first members of the Puicin Gang made the trip to America, eighteen years ago, they brought over a baby named Jane. ”
“They brought over... Jane.” His words send ice hurtling through my heart.
“Yeah. And she was definitely alive when they passed the border. Whatever happened, happened in the States.”
“Right.” My voice comes out very choked. “And you said it was eighteen years ago?”
“Mhm hmm.”
Fuck!
I bolt up, my heart racing.
“I take it you know who Jane is,” starts Damien, his voice more hesitant than I think I’ve ever heard it.
“Yeah.” I swallow with difficulty, a whole new sense of loss making my chest ache. “Yeah. She was my daughter, Damien.”