Chapter 12
MISERY
Bronte
“What’s in the box, monsieur? Booze? Drugs? Random body parts?”
“Technically?” I tuck the package into the crook of my arm and swipe my ID badge from the dash. “All three.”
Poppy’s eyebrows elevate as she tugs off her helmet and sets it on the seat of her sleek silver Kawasaki Ninja parked in the empty lot beside my car outside the medical examiner’s office. “That’s…cryptic.”
I snicker. “Were you going to say creepy?”
“No.”
“Lie.”
“I’m not lying.”
“Mm. Another lie.”
Her arms cross, her brow flatlining. “What makes you think I’m lying?”
I greedily take the invitation to drink her in.
The setting October sun gilds her silhouette like an ethereal aura, and I’m reminded of why she’s been living in my mind like a fever dream for weeks.
Her bittersweet scent is still lodged in my nostrils from the night we made our bargain.
Her fear, too, is still seared behind my eyelids.
For weeks, rage has been coursing through my veins. Rage at myself, for aiming a loaded gun at her head. For giving her a reason to fear me. If anyone deserves to be skinned alive and slapped onto Pride and Prejudice, it’s me.
Poppy isn’t the cold-blooded killing machine I first thought her to be.
She’s a person, with friends she loves and an entire city she’s trying to protect.
She isn’t a villain or a vigilante destined for evil.
She’s playing the cards she was dealt to the best of her ability while ensuring her world of shadows doesn’t eclipse the rest of us.
Since that night, cold regret has suffocated the hot wrath. Shame’s knife has sunk deep into my guts, tormenting me with the memory of those baby blues shining with terror in the face of death.
“Your voice goes up an octave at the end,” I drawl as I step past her. “It’s impressive, actually, for anyone to be so bad at lying.”
With an impressively dramatic eyeroll, Poppy sighs. “Why are we here, Bronte? Your message was incredibly cryptic.”
Well, she’s pissed.
Très bien. I’d rather her ire than her terror.
My grin drops as reality banishes the surreal haze I seem to lose myself in around her. “You’ll see. Did Emi kill the cams?”
She checks her phone and nods. “We have fifteen minutes.”
“Waste not,” I say, heading for the back entrance.
Poppy watches with curiosity as I swipe my badge to unlock the door then pans her gaze over the empty and lightless office, following as I lead us toward the descending stairs. When I drop off the box at Quinn’s station in the forensics lab, she lobs me a quizzical look.
“Payment for a friend’s favor.”
I offer no other explanation as I lead her to the morgue. The rebound book is, after all, for Quinn’s help in investigating Poppy. Her breath clouds in the frigid air as she surveys the stainless steel autopsy tables, the wall of cold lockers.
“Creepy.”
“Truth.” I chuckle at her vitriolic lour. “Well, that’s a face.”
“Ten minutes.” She taps her wrist. “Waste. Not.”
Finding my penlight, I fit on a pair of medical gloves and unlatch the locker I’ve been dreading reopening. “Venez ici.” She cocks a bemused brow, and I sigh. Her vampire books must not have taught her much French beyond the basics. “Come here.”
Poppy obeys as I pull out the slab, studying the sheet concealing the corpse beneath. “Who is it?”
I toe a rolling stool toward her. “Sit.”
“I’m not a dog, fuck you very much.”
“S’il te pla?t, Petit Diable. Sit your royal ass down.”
“What does that mean? ‘Petit Diable.’”
“Little Devil.”
A scoff. “Hilarious.”
“Merci.” I point my penlight at the stool. “Now.”
Poppy plops down, grumbling, “Yes, Master,” like a dejected Igor.
Angels save me.
I peel the cloth back, exposing the ashen flesh of a young woman with bright green hair. All emotion drains from Poppy’s face. Her throat bobs, hands wringing in her lap.
“Jett…” She examines the post-organ removal sutures criss-crossing up the cadaver’s chest. “What happened?”
I pull the sheet farther down, revealing the pentagram carved into the woman’s abdomen.
Poppy’s eyes are as dim as a sunless sea. “When?”
“Today—around noon.”
Those baby blues lift to me, a frostbitten fire burning within them. “Tell me everything you know.”
As I lean against my car now parked beside Poppy’s motorcycle outside Beelzebub’s and breathe in cherry smoke, Poppy inhales a sapphire cocktail from her vape and exhales pale blue mist up at the stars. It smells like her sweet, nostalgic scent of cotton candy.
“Bax is going to lose his shit,” she says, “when I tell him that not only is Jett dead, but she was found in a fucking dumpster. That girl was like a sister to him.”
“Your people are searching the city’s cams,” I remind her. The street chemist’s death, while grim, is a death that no one with a badge aside from Scull will care to investigate. “It shouldn’t take long for them to find the killer.”
“I know. I’m just tired of this guessing game.”
“You’re certain it’s not another rogue Volkov?”
“At this point, I’m not certain of anything.”
That’s it, no further explanation.
“Now who’s being cryptic?” I tease, earning her middle finger. “What’s happened since we last spoke?”
Poppy eyes me sidelong. “You don’t have to do this.”
“This…?”
“This.” She gestures between us. “Pretend you care.”
“Am I that transparent?”
“Bronte,” she huffs, rubbing her temple. “The only thing you care about is our bargain.”
That should be the case, but it’s not. I genuinely want to know what’s been the cause of those sleepless bruises beneath her lashes. I don’t blame her for not trusting my intentions, though. I did have a gun aimed at her head last time we crossed paths.
I wouldn’t trust me, either.
That knife of humility lodged in my innards digs deeper. I welcome the pain along with misery’s familiar company.
“Believe what you want, Petit Diable. Either way, I’m here until this”—I lift my dying cigar—“burns out. So, you can either open your pretty little mouth and talk. Or stand here and brood decades from your rapidly dwindling youth. Your choice.”
Poppy swings a slow glare toward me. “No wonder you get along so well with the dead.”
“Why? Because they aren’t as easily offended as the living?”
“No. Because they aren’t alive to know how abominable you are.”
I shrug, wisps of gray smoke wafting from my nostrils. “Truth.”
For a moment, I think she’ll yank on her helmet and peel away. But she doesn’t. She remains rooted, straddling the bike and staring at the stars with a dose of longing. Like she wishes she could escape to any other world, no matter how far.
“Have you ever seen a cat play with a mouse, monsieur?”
“Oui. Sadistic hellions until they get bored and eat their entertainment.”
“Since the seventeenth century, my family has been the cat. For the first time in centuries, we are the mouse struggling beneath the paw.” She leans her arms on the handlebars of her motorcycle and blows out a heavy sigh that ruffles her sharp fringe.
“Poaching our people was only the beginning. They’ve since moved to sabotaging our operations.
The cams around every targeted location are tampered with exactly when shit goes south.
Day after day, it’s been disaster after disaster. ”
“Have you tried setting them up? Staging a coup and slaying the snake once it slithers in?”
“Of course I’ve tried to trick the bastard. You think I’d be bitching about it now if any of the attempts had been successful?”
“Easy, Petit Diable. Only trying to help.”
Blue smoke seeps from her sigh. “I know.”
“Sounds like you have a mole, though.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
“And Dante said I need to get laid,” I mumble, crushing the cigar beneath my boot.
Her arctic gaze snaps up. “The fuck did you just say?”
“I said, what is that?” I deflect, lifting a hand to trail my fingers through the cloud of cyan smoke. “Smells nice.”
A beat of silence passes. Her left eye twitches.
Then she cranes her neck and guffaws at the sky. It’s a laugh befitting someone who belongs in a straightjacket. By the angels, it’s so goddamn beautiful.
A corner of my mouth tugs up despite my best efforts to keep it down. “What’s so funny?”
“The—B-Bax—it’s—” She sputters through cackles that sound like crows fighting over a fresh carcass. “Fairy Farts! It’s Fairy Farts, and you think it smells nice!”
Makes zero sense to me. A chuckle still escapes from listening to her ridiculous laugh and seeing her luminescent smile brighter than any star.
Then her pocket buzzes. And that bright beam burns like a wick, melting her mouth into a sober line as she lifts her phone with a slight tremor in her hands.
Clarity strikes me like a bullet to the chest, leaving me breathless.
She never asked for this life, this hand of spades.
Her father dealt them to her. I’d wager every last penny to the Bourbon name he never asked if she wanted to keep her hearts instead.
He just took them away, robbing her of every dream she ever had.
Because of him, she will never have a normal life.
I immediately want to pulverize whoever is on the other end of that text. Especially if it’s Alexander Morgenstern.
Eyes wide, Poppy breathes, “Kuso.”
“What?” I bark, not bothering to sound pleasant.
She tosses the phone to me. “Notice anything familiar?”
I play the clip featuring a hooded man tossing Jett, dead and bloody, into the alleyway dumpster she was found in. He’s tall and lean, his physique similar to the assassin stored in my studio. “A Volkov?”
She nods. “Malakai.”
I toss the phone back to her. “Looks like you found your mole.”
Poppy grins, and it’s the most infernal expression I’ve ever seen on a woman. “Cats eat moles, don’t they?”
My own smile mirrors hers. Her wickedness is contagious, her allure all-consuming. Even if she didn’t choose this life, she’s certainly embraced the silver linings. Her passion is punishing the corrupt, in which we have in common. “Enjoy your meal, Petit Diable.”
“Oh, I assure you, monsieur. I intend to savor every last bite.”