Chapter 47
HUNT
Bronte
“Is it cruel to be eating pizza while surrounded by corpses?” Quinn wonders aloud as she eyes the morgue coolers.
“Of course not.” I scoff, happily clogging my arteries with another grease-ridden slice. “We’re hungry, and they’re dead. What’s so cruel about that?”
She chuckles, shrugging and devouring her own slice.
It’s been an easy healing journey for us, repairing our broken friendship from the roots.
She’s slowly getting over Scull’s ‘disappearance,’ though I’d be lying if I said I feel no shame every time she talks about him with a mournful tone.
As if, subconsciously, she knows he’s no longer alive.
“You look good, Bronte.” A serene smile tugs her lips up. “You’ve been practically glowing lately.”
“Sex will do that,” I drawl, washing the crust down with a thermos of cold black coffee that Poppy made for me before I fucked her in my car as payment.
Quinn quirks her lips in thought. “Does Poppy have any single friends?”
“None that aren’t felons.”
“I assumed as much.” She shrugs, sipping her can of sparkling water. “I’m starting to think that’s my type.”
“Fair enough. Give me your phone.” She does, and I add Poppy’s number to her contacts before sending Poppy a text with Quinn’s number. “There. Ask her yourself.”
“Right now?”
“If not now, then when?”
Quinn audibly gulps, dialing Poppy. My eyebrows scrunch when she leaves a message. Poppy should be at Beelzebub's with Emi, according to her text she sent less than an hour ago.
“Probably got caught up watching vampire anime,” I say lightheartedly as I try calling.
She doesn’t answer for me, either.
Heart surging into a gallop, I tap into the tracker app.
Poppy has yet to discover the device I slipped from her old jacket to her new one.
On the map grid, the pink dot blinks at a traffic light half a mile from Morgenstern Manor.
She moves at a hurried pace, taking the highway toward the city outskirts.
A single thought emerges: Leviathan has her.
Panic curdles my stomach, and I lurch to my feet as everything I consumed threatens to come back up. “Excusez-moi, ma chérie. Grease and coffee don’t mix well.”
Quinn nods, grimacing as I nearly sprint out the morgue. I pause halfway up the stairs, swallowing bile as I call Emi.
“Bronte? What’s—”
“Is Poppy with you?"
"No. I haven't even spoken with her today. Why?"
"I need eyes on her. Now.”
What I like most about Emi: she doesn’t ask questions. Seconds of listening to her bash her keyboard later, she reports, “Got her. She’s on her bike, heading north.”
My knees weaken with relief. Leviathan doesn’t have her.
But I feel my hackles rise. Why would she lie to me?
“Where is she going?”
“Let me load her maps. If we’re lucky, she’s using GPS…” Another grueling minute of listening to Emi’s frantic typing. “Huh, that’s odd.”
“Quickly losing my mind over here, mon amie.”
“Sorry! It’s just—she’s headed to St. Aurelius’s.”
“The cemetery?”
“The academy. There’s a masquerade tonight in celebration of the founder.”
Clarity blooms in my cranium. “Putain.”
“What?”
“Leviathan. She’s heard from them, and she’s going in alone.” I take the stairs two at a time, sending Quinn a half-assed apology text for abandoning the rest of my shift. “Watch her, Emi. Don’t let her out of your sight.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to finish what I started ten years ago and hunt the little devil down.”