Living with the Dead

ADELE

Adele watched through the car windows as a stretcher carried Colm's body away.

Colm was dead. Thank the gods.

She put the car into drive and continued past the ambulance and the cruisers lining the road. Two officers glanced at her car as she drove by, then returned to their watch. As long as she didn't stop to gawk, they weren't interested in her.

Driving past hadn't been a step she'd wanted to take. Added risk. But she'd had to know. Adele had been remote-viewing Robyn when she'd run onto the roof and Adele had seen Colm jump.

If he wasn't dead, she prayed that he'd still be there, and she'd get to him first so she could put him out of his misery. Suffocation, she decided – it could be attributed to the fall. She couldn't take him, injured, back to the kumpania or she'd have to explain how he got that way.

On the drive, she'd cursed Colm. She'd trusted him and he'd betrayed her with his incompetence. After all she'd done for him.

But now, seeing that he was dead, she granted his memory a smidgen of grudging respect. He might have screwed up, but he'd realized his mistake and made the right choice, protecting her.

Still, she'd have to explain his death to the kumpania. As she drove, she crafted a few stories, rejecting each as casting too many droplets of blame her way. Before she passed the city limits, she realized the solution – the man at the bookstore.

It didn't matter that it had been thirteen years since she last saw him. His face was imprinted on her brain, invoking a wave of comforting warmth, a flare of icy rage and then, as if in afterthought, a tingle along her spine, the feeling of seeing not a man, but a phantom.

"You're certain it was him?" Niko asked, forefinger rubbing his chair arm.

They were in the meeting room, usually reserved for the phuri – a wood-paneled library with bookshelves, a bar and leather chairs, the Victorian atmosphere ruined by the hum of computers.

"Yes, I'm certain."

Neala leapt up, her shredded tissue fluttering to the floor. "I won't sit and listen to this. She killed my – "

"Neala…" Niko's voice was thick with reproach.

"I didn't kill Colm," Adele said. "He was like a brother to me. More than a brother. My husband-to-be, my future, my – "

"Oh, stuff it," Neala snapped. "Don't play the grieving lover if you can't even squeeze out a few tears, Adele."

"Can't you see I'm in shock? I almost died."

"Colm did die. But it's all about you. Nothing else penetrates that nasty little mind – "

"Neala!" Niko said. "That's enough. Adele didn't kill – "

"She was responsible for his death even if she didn't push him off that roof, which I'm still not convinced she didn't – "

"Neala…"

"And she now compounds it with this… this outrageous lie."

"Neala, I don't think Adele means – "

"She means to torment me, and in tormenting me to serve herself by deflecting attention from what she's done. And she's succeeding, isn't she?"

Niko turned to Adele. "You say you're certain it was him?"

"Is anyone even listening to me?" Neala said. "We know it wasn't him. You know for a fact that it could not have been him. He's dead. "

"Neala?" Niko said. "I think you should leave now."

Adele watched her carefully. Naturally, hearing he was still alive would come as a shock, but Neala seemed to be overdoing her outrage.

Neala stormed out muttering about fools and phantasms. Not like Neala to abandon a fight… Yet she couldn't seem to get away fast enough.

Niko waited until her footfalls faded, then turned to Adele.

"Yes," she said before he could ask again. "It was him."

"And he saw Colm? Recognized him?"

"I believe so."

"Did he see what happened to Colm?"

Adele considered lying and saying yes, but it wasn't just Neala scrutinizing her every twitch and inflection now. Niko didn't want to believe what she was saying – the kumpania had a vested interest in not believing it. Her answers here were more important than those regarding Colm's death.

"I don't know," she admitted.

Niko settled back in his chair, fingers templed. "We have to presume he did. And if he did, he'll be on his way here. We must be ready for him."