Dirty Little Misery (Miss Misery) (12 page)

Lost in this new train of thought, I forgot about why I’d left Lucen’s in the first place until I made it back to his apartment. Two glasses of wine sat on the kitchen table, and I heard noises from the living room that suggested he was coaxing Sweetpea into his cage. Sighing, I sat and helped myself to one of the wineglasses. Damned if I didn’t need it.

Lucen entered the room a moment later and hung up the harness he used to exercise his dragon. “I’m sorry, little siren. I didn’t expect you’d be back until later, and I thought I could deal with Caroline before you got in.”

I pushed the glass away. “See, part of the problem is the whole ‘deal with her’ thing. She’s a person.”

“Fine. Pardon the euphemism. I thought I could fuck her before you got in. Does that actually make you feel better? Because I doubt it.”

“It’s not like I don’t know what you were doing.”

He sat across from me. “I’m not sure you do, or can. I was feeding an addict so she can feed me.”

“I get it.”

Lucen ran his fingers through his hair. “Superficially, yes. But I’m not sure you truly can get it. It’s not a shortcoming on your part. It’s just a reality of you being human.”

I kept my face neutral, but something inside me flinched. Lucen clearly noticed from the way his brow furrowed, but I wasn’t about to explain. “You’re right, fine. Maybe I can’t. It is what it is, and we don’t need to talk about it again.”

“Are you sure? Because the silence that’s been going on the past few days doesn’t feel healthy.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t have anything new to say.” Not yet. I picked up my wine but suddenly felt too tired to drink it. I just wanted to curl up in bed.

Lucen got up at last and pulled stray strands of hair out of my face. His touch felt so good, and I wished it didn’t. “How did the meeting with Steph’s hacker friend go?”

“Fine, I guess.” I filled him in on my day, glossing over everything with the Gryphons but dwelling on what happened with the furies. The only part I left out was Mace-head’s insinuation that he and Raj knew what I’d done to Red-eye.

Lucen frowned. “It’s not surprising Raj would be interested in you, but I don’t like it.”

“Me neither, and I don’t get it. I’d think his interest would extend only so far as it meant my death.”

“True.” Lucen went to top off my glass, but I put my hand over it. “Furies are weird.”

“Yeah, I know. Are they also powerful enough to breach a maximum-security prison and get to Victor?”

Lucen fell back into his chair, shaking his head. “No idea. I’m sure they’re positioned to try, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be successful. You still determined to talk to him?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure how. I’ve been denied.”

“You’ve been denied by the Gryphons.” He smiled slyly. “I had a thought, and I have someone who owes me a favor.”

I raised my head. “What are you talking about?”

“Just because pred prisoners are locked up separately from human prisoners doesn’t mean it isn’t to our advantage to have people throughout the system. Let me make a call tonight and see if I can’t get you granted an interview.”

“Really? You can do this?”

He reached out and took my hands. “Personally, no. But what I can’t do myself, I know people who can.”

In spite of my frustrations, I smiled. Lucen’s touch and probably the wine were relaxing me. I might be able to sleep in his bed tonight without thinking about purple-thong Caroline.

He peered deeply into my face. “Say it.”

“You’re amazing.”

Lucen kissed my knuckles. “I know.”

He opened my hands, kissed my palms, then my wrists, and I shivered. Some guys were very hard to stay angry at.

Chapter Twelve

I wasn’t sure who Lucen called after I went to bed, and I wasn’t sure what strings his friend pulled, but I was sure I was happier that way. When I got up the next morning, he whispered, “Good luck” at me then fell back asleep. I discovered what that was about when I went downstairs.

On the kitchen table was a note, a student ID and his car key. I turned the key around in my hand while I read his message. I could have ridden my Dragon’sWing down to South Walpole, but according to Lucen, the forecast called for severe thunderstorms. He must have known how much everything was bothering me and was trying to atone.

I skimmed the note a second time while I made coffee, beginning to wonder how the Gryphons managed to operate at all given the various and many unethical ways preds used their addicts. I’d always been vaguely aware of how many addicts abounded in the world, but only recently was I learning how strategic some preds were about whom they addicted. Sure, many—possibly most—addicts were nobodies, the equivalent of one-dollar bills in pred currency. But even a one-dollar bill could be useful when you needed to get something from a vending machine.

After I finished, I took the ID to the guestroom where I’d stored my belongings and got out one of my jars of an extremely potent magic. There were disguise charms, and then there were
disguise
charms. This stuff wasn’t the—relatively—cheap spells you could buy at your average charm shop. This was a glamour that could fool your mother and as such was highly regulated. Or it was if it was obtained legally.

A harpy named Lei, who was a master charm maker, had concocted it for me while I was in hiding during the Victor fiasco, and I’d ended up only needing a small amount of the spell. Lucky me got to keep the rest as it was keyed to my body and thus no good for anyone else.

I took a dollop of the gloop onto my fingers and began working it through my hair—the easy part first. Fifteen minutes later, I no longer resembled myself but one Jennifer Coleman, a law student interning at the firm providing Victor’s defense. I had her short, sleek blonde hair, most of her nose and her full lips. Comparing myself to the ID, I figured I was passable. Who ever had a decent ID photo taken anyway?

I poked my head into Lucen’s bedroom before I left. “Thank you.”

He yawned, appraising my handiwork. “Not bad. Hope you find out something juicy.”

“Me too.”

It felt like forever navigating my way out of the city, or maybe it was nerves. I fiddled with Lucen’s stereo until I found something good then cranked the volume.

Victor was being held at Walpole State, and the note Lucen had left for me had me down for an appointment with him at eleven. That was going to be tough.

By the time I arrived, it was thirty minutes past. I got out, wondering if I should have put on something more professional than jeans to play at being Jennifer, but it was too late to worry about such small details. I signed in, was given a set of instructions and was eventually led beyond security checkpoints to a private visiting room.

“You sure you want to talk to this creep?” the guard asked. “No offense, but you look like the type he went after.”

I tucked a strand of my fake blonde hair behind my ear. “Victor favored brunettes, but thanks for the concern. I need him to answer a few questions for the bosses.”

The guard snorted, clearly not convinced it was appropriate for Cohn, Donaldson and Kleinfeld to have sent a young intern to do a hardened defense attorney’s work. “Suit yourself, and remember the rules.”

“Got ’em.” I took out a pen and notepad, the only props I’d been able to scrounge on such short notice.

A minute or two later, a door at the other end of the room opened, and two guards escorted Victor in. He had his hands and ankles bound, but it wasn’t his restraints that caught my attention. It was his face.

In the days since his capture, Victor appeared to have aged about ten years. His skin was pale and lined, shadows circled his eyes and he twitched as he walked. There had always been something about him that looked off and creeped me out, even in photos. Now there was a recovering addict’s withdrawal added to his unhealthy appearance.

Victor’s eyes, however, were alert. They drilled into me, and no matter how good my disguise, no matter what he’d been told, I could tell he knew who I was. How was that possible?

The guards ran over the instructions with him, then one nodded at me. “Someone will be watching from the window. You need us, you wave.”

I nodded back.

The door shut, and Victor smiled. “Hi, Jennifer.” His voice was raspier than I remembered, probably a withdrawal symptom, but I could remember him saying “Hi, Jessica” with the same lilting tone.

A chill slithered down my back, and I struggled to maintain my indifferent attitude. Considering his condition, I didn’t know how strong Victor’s ability to sense my emotions was, but I’d rather him not be aware of what I was feeling.

“Hi, Vicki. How’s withdrawal?”

He chuckled, but only briefly. His laughter became a cough, became a moan, and he rubbed his hands across his arms. Scratches and abrasions covered his visible skin. He looked like he’d gotten into a fight with a dragon and lost. That was another symptom of the withdrawal. Addict magic itched as it left your veins. “That’s an impressive spell. You look so different.”

“Yeah, it is impressive. How did you know it’s me?”

Victor clamped his lips tightly together.

“Come on, can you sense me? Am I different?” Lucen and Devon had both indicated at various points that they could pick me out of a crowd—or from beneath a disguise charm—as if I gave off some kind of emotional fingerprint. Such a skill was one of many pred abilities I lacked. It would be interesting to know if Victor had it.

But Victor defied me. He tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling as though bored.

Fine. Cataloguing Victor’s skills wasn’t why I was really here. Time to get down to business. “I know how proud you are of your pred-like talent. How much do you know about it?”

Victor narrowed his glassy eyes, still refusing to look at me. “My head hurts. What you did was so mean to me.”

“What? Stop you from killing me? Yeah, I’m awful. Can you answer my question?”

“I can answer any question,
Jennifer
.”

“Then do it.”

He stopped craning his neck. “Maybe I don’t want to. You wouldn’t play with me when I gave you the chance. Why should I play with you now?”

I took a deep breath. Locked up or free. Addict or not. Either way, he made me want to smack my head against something hard. “I thought you’d want to talk about your gift.”

Victor winced. “The real lawyers already made me talk about it to the Gryphons. I get headaches. It hurts. That damn Nelson Gryphon says withdrawal hurts more because I have magical blood.”

“If you’re expecting sympathy, you’ve got the wrong woman.”

“Of course I’m not expecting sympathy.” Victor leaned forward sharply, color rushing to his face. “You like pain too.”

I tapped my pen against my temple. “I can’t feed off your physical pain. Can you feed off mine?”

“No. But you can tell I hurt. It’s mental pain. So sweet. It’s my favorite.”

“I’m in a prison. Half the people here are miserable, as you must know. Your anguish isn’t sticking out. Sorry. You’re not that special.”

He sat back. “We’re special. Very special. Two of a kind.”

“Actually, I’m not so sure.” I set the pen down, pausing until I had his full attention. “I have reason to believe we might be five of a kind.”

Victor shook his head slowly, then closed his eyes. More pain, I assumed. Or nausea. “There’s no one else like us.”

“You sure? Maybe you couldn’t answer my question earlier because you don’t know much about your gift, after all. Were you ever in Philadelphia?”

“Philadelphia?” From his tone and the taste of cheap butterscotch candy in my mouth, I knew I’d confused him. “What’s in Philadelphia?”

“You? Once? Am I right?”

Victor whined like a creaky hinge. “Yes, once. A long time ago.” He dragged his nails across his bare arms.

“Why? When? Were you ever enrolled at one of the Gryphon Academies?”

He continued to scratch, and I swore he was stalling just to piss me off. If Victor had gone to an Academy, that made three us with names in the Gryphon files who’d gone through the pre-training. And if Victor had been in Philadelphia at a Gryphon special summer institute, that made two of us. Possibly—probably—all of us.

I didn’t know what that meant, but it had to mean something.

“Vicki?”

“Fine, yes. I went to the New York Academy. They invited me to a summer camp in Philadelphia one year because my gift was so strong. This bothers you. I can taste it. Why do you care? No one else does.”

I swallowed. “It doesn’t bother me. It intrigues me. Do you remember anything about when you were there? What you did? The year?”

My experience at the institute was a blur. I remembered arriving, leaving, attending a few activities. But I’d gotten sick and spent a lot of time in the infirmary. My specific memories of that period had more holes than Swiss cheese.

“I don’t know what year,” Victor said at long last. “I was fifteen or sixteen. Do the math. I don’t remember much. I went there. It must have been boring.”

I froze. “You don’t remember much?”

“Stop already. I don’t know. I think I got sick. Why are you bugging me?”

“Wait, you got sick?” Just like I got sick? “Victor, focus. This is important.”

He tilted his head back again, eyes closed. “It’s not. I don’t want to think. I’m done, Jessica. My head hurts.” Victor waved to a guard.

“Damn it. Don’t you care?” Oh, brilliant. I was asking a psychopath if he cared. I rephrased. “Don’t you want to find out more about yourself?”

Victor didn’t answer, and I got up as the guards came in to take him away. I couldn’t believe this. I was so close I could almost grasp the answers in my sweaty hands. I wanted to shake Victor until he released them.

“That’s all you’ve got? That’s it?”

He grinned at me as the guards led him out of the room. “Bye,
Jennifer
.”

I was going to scream, and what was worse was that Victor was feeding off my anger. Bastard.

“You all right?” asked the guard who’d brought me in.

I must have looked as upset as I felt, and I took a second to compose myself. “Yeah, fine. Thanks.”

“Time you got out of here.” He opened the door into the hallway. “Get you some sunlight. Nothing good comes of talking to crazies like Aubrey.”

Likely not, but sometimes something useful did. Regardless of his whiny defiance, Victor had confirmed one detail I’d wanted to know and given me something new to ponder. He’d been in Philadelphia, and like me, he’d gotten sick and didn’t remember much. Though it made no sense, it was too much of a coincidence to write off.

If only I could talk to him more when he was feeling cooperative. Maybe after he finished going through withdrawal. Assuming he lived that long.

Back at the car, I got out my phone, recalling I had a reason to talk to Bridget.

“This is Agent Nelson.”

I stuck Lucen’s key in the ignition. “Bridget, it’s Jess. Last night I ran into a fury, and he made a rather cryptic threat on Victor Aubrey’s life. I thought I should pass it on.”

“What were you doing talking to a fury?”

Lucen’s car was black, making it hellishly hot inside. I picked at my clingy shirt. “I’ve been pounding the streets of Shadowtown, searching for leads on the case I’m working on.”

“Oh, yeah. The Newton one.” I heard her say, “One minute” to someone, then she returned to the phone. “We’ve gotten a lot of threats on Aubrey’s life. He’s well protected.”

“Unlike all the vigilantes out there, the furies have a credible reason for wanting him dead. Do they have the means to carry it out?”

“Jess, he’s in a supermax prison. No one is getting in or out unless they’re allowed. Not even the furies. Besides all the mundane security, Walpole State has anti-magic security too. I appreciate the info about the furies though, and will make a note to be extra careful when he’s transferred to the courthouse.”

I caught my reflection in the window, or rather Jennifer Coleman’s reflection. Anti-magic security, huh? Yeah, that had worked great at keeping
me
from doing anything shady.

I really hoped Bridget knew what she was talking about.