Three Days to Dead

Chapter 12

53:25

Hitching a ride across town is not recommended, unless you know you can fight off a potential attacker. Confident in my knowledge of fighting skills—although not so confident in my ability to get Chalice’s body to do what I needed—I accepted the first ride I received and made it back to Parkside East in less than thirty minutes.

No little girls followed me into the elevator. The entire building seemed deserted in the middle of the day. As I fished Chalice’s keys out of my borrowed pants, my hands began to shake. I had no particular reason for nerves, but I also had no reason to think Alex Forrester was even home. This could very well turn into a gigantic waste of time.

I turned the key, but the dead bolt was not secured. I wrapped tentative fingers around the doorknob, but it was yanked out of my hand. I took a startled step backward. Alex stood in the open doorway, his wide blue eyes drilling holes into me. I squirmed under the intensity of his stare as relief, anger, and confusion—all meant for someone else—flashed across his face.

His lips twitched, but he seemed incapable of speaking, so I helped him out. “I said I’d come back.”

He nodded, his attention dropping to my bandaged arm, and then lower to my blood-soaked shoe. He frowned. “You’re hurt, Chal.”

“It’s just a flesh wound,” I said, shrugging one shoulder. “Can I come in?”

“Of course.”

I stepped around him, pausing in the entry long enough to take off the dirty sneakers. No sense in tracking blood and gunk all over the carpet. He closed the door and walked across the living room, right into the bathroom. For the briefest moment, I thought of Wyatt, of sending him stalking into the bathroom that morning after a careless comment.

Alex returned a moment later with a white first aid kit. “Sit down and let me take a look at that.”

I perched on the very edge of the sofa. It wasn’t my home, not really. I didn’t know this place, even though evidence of Chalice was all over the room, in the dé-cor and the photographs and the titles of the romantic comedies that lined one shelf near the television.

Alex sat down on the coffee table, directly across from me, and opened up the kit. He removed several bottles, a package of gauze, and a roll of white medical tape—precise movements that betrayed practice. I presented my ankle to him. His hands were cool, almost cold, the fingertips gently callused. He turned my foot to get a better view.

Lips pursed, he stared at the wound. “Weird,” he muttered.

Don’t let him know it’s from a gunshot. “What’s weird?”

“The blood on your shoe is fresh, but the wound’s already healing.” He reached for a cotton ball and soaked it in alcohol. “What’s going on, Chalice?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?”

“You’re lucky it didn’t get infected.” He cleaned the dried blood from my skin. The alcohol was cold; my leg tingled. He tossed the cotton and took out a bottle of antibiotic ointment. With a second cotton ball, he spread some over the cleaned area. “Where have you been?”

“Taking care of things that needed attention.”

“When you didn’t come home last night, I thought I’d imagined you. So I called the morgue, and they said one of their lab techs was under sedation after she almost autopsied a living person.” He exhaled sharply and reached for a gauze pad. “How could I have missed that? Some med student I am.”

I felt an odd instinct to protect him from the truth, but to also give him the benefit of knowing he hadn’t missed anything. He was second-guessing his medical skills, but not because he’d missed anything; because of magic. “If it helps,” I said, pretty certain it wouldn’t, “a handful of E.R. doctors and a coroner all missed it, too.”

He paused in pressing a length of medical tape against the gauze pad. “Not that, Chal.” He met my gaze, and I almost fell into the depth of anguish I saw in them. “I meant your suicide attempt. How depressed you’d been about finals, and your stress at work. I was so busy with classes that I didn’t take the time to notice. You’re my best friend in the world, and half the time I couldn’t even see you.”

Oh great. Now I get to crush his spirit and tell him, “No, sorry, you did let your friend die.” I get to break him all over again.

He applied the tape, then reached for my left arm. I flinched and pulled away. More hurt flared in his eyes. I didn’t know how to explain why a healing dog bite resided where a knife gash should have been.

“Say something,” he demanded.

I blinked. “What would you like me to say, Alex?”

He stilled. Wrong answer, apparently. With careful, calculated movements, he stood up. Backed around the coffee table, toward an upholstered chair, unwilling to startle.

“Chalice, what was the last thing we did together the night before you cut your wrist?” His voice was hollow, almost afraid. He knew something was wrong. Instinct contradicted his senses, and he was smart enough to trust the former.

Now or never. I just hoped he took it well.

“I don’t know, Alex,” I said, still sitting, making no move to approach. “This is really hard to explain, but try to keep an open mind.” I took a deep breath. Exhaled. “I’m not Chalice.”

His lips puckered like he’d eaten a lemon. Hands braced on his hips, he said, “Sorry. What?”

“Look, you seem like a terrific guy and a very loyal friend, so I hate doing this to you. But Alex, Chalice did die. You found her and called an ambulance. She was pronounced dead and sent to the morgue. None of it was imagined, nothing was a mistake. Well, except the whole suicide thing, in my opinion, but who am I to judge her?”

He backed up a few more steps. The backs of his knees hit the chair. He sat down hard, never breaking eye contact. Something else began to cloud his expression. Something angry, almost sinister. “This isn’t funny,” he snapped.

“I know.”

“Look, I get that you were depressed, and I’m sorry for my part in what you did—”

“Christ, Alex, I didn’t kill myself, okay? My name isn’t Chalice Frost, and I am not your friend. I mean, I would like to be, but I’m not her.”

He nodded. “Near-death experiences change people….”

Okay, he was so not getting it. I dug under the tape binding my arm and ripped the old gauze away. The flesh was bumpy and angry red, but healing, with no signs of the suicide scar.

“Fine, doctor-in-training. Explain this.”

He gaped. “What did that?”

“Last night, an hour after I left here, I was attacked by a creature I hope you never meet in a dark alley. It was about seven feet tall when it stood upright, had sharp-ass teeth, and it took a chunk out of my arm. But since I’m just borrowing Chalice’s body for a limited time period, I started to heal. That’s why the other scar is gone, and why the wound on my ankle—a bullet graze I got less than an hour ago—is partially healed already.”

I leaned a little closer, still displaying my arm. “That’s what did that.”

Alex leaned back, deflated. His face went slack, pale. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Don’t do that.” I smiled, hoping to keep him calm. “If you get sick, then I’ll get sick, and pretty soon we’ll be barfing all over each other.”

The barest hint of a smile ghosted across his lips. “You don’t talk like her.”

“That’s because I’m not.”

“You’re wearing the necklace I gave her for Christmas last year.”

I touched the silver cross. “I can take it off.”

“No.” He leaned forward, scrubbed his hands across his face, up into his hair, and back down again. Rubbing the words in, getting them to stick. After a moment he stilled, with his chin resting in the palms of his hands.

“Okay, let’s pretend for a minute that you’re not really Chalice,” he said. “And that this isn’t some grief-induced hallucination. Who exactly are you?”

“The truth?”

“Yes.”

This would be interesting. “My name is Evangeline Stone. I have lived in the city my entire life, and for the last four years, I have been employed by a secret unit of the Metro Police Department as a Dreg Bounty Hunter.”

His eyebrows arched comically high. “A what hunter?”

“Dreg Hunter.”

“It that like slang for criminal?”

“It’s a derogatory catchall for the dozen or so species of creatures that secretly live here in the city. Mostly goblins, gremlins, trolls, gargoyles, vampires, and weres. My boss is called a Handler, and I work in a three-person Bounty Hunter squad called a Triad. We hunt rogue elements, carry out special warrants, try to keep some species from killing one another and wreaking havoc in the process, and dole out punishment when lines are crossed.

“My boss’s bosses are three anonymous, highranking police officers, who work in tandem with the Fey Council—that would be faeries, sprites, gnomes, pixies, and sylphs—to keep the peace and prevent the Dregs from killing everyone on the planet. Kind of like the Mafia, but shorter and with magic and pointy ears.”

I stopped. Alex stared. And stared. He blinked once. His jaw twitched. Water dripped from a faucet somewhere—the only sound in the room. He stood up, and I tensed, trying to anticipate his reaction. I expected a verbal attack, maybe even a physical one. Instead, he wandered into the kitchen, as though he’d just offered to retrieve refreshments. He went straight to the refrigerator, where he opened the door and ducked down.

A drawer squeaked. Bottles rattled. He stood straight, let the door slam shut, and twisted the cap off a bottle of beer. One, two, three, four long pulls. He held up the bottle, studying the label like he’d never seen it before today. Then he took one more deep swallow and returned to his chair, the bottle still in his hand.

“Well, either you’ve gone completely insane,” he said, sinking into the upholstery, “or I have.”

“We are both very much sane, Alex. Most people don’t know about the Dreg population. They’re good at staying out of sight, and we’re good at covering up after them. Remember the downtown blackout two years ago?”

“A power grid blew.”

I shook my head. “Gremlin revolt. They did it because the Council demanded work without proper compensation. So they demonstrated their power, which put pressure on the Council from several sides, including humans. One power failure can be explained, but not the entire city. The gremlins got what they wanted.”

“A gremlin labor strike?”

“Yep.”

He downed the rest of the beer and deposited the bottle on the coffee table with a clunk. Twin smudges of color darkened his cheeks. “Gremlins.” He turned the two-syllable word into four, testing its sound and texture. “Vampires are real?”

“Very real, but more Lost Boys than Bram Stoker, and it’s forbidden to turn humans. The change is actually a physical reaction to a parasite present in a vampire’s saliva and—never mind; that’s a long story. At any rate, bite survivors are considered inferior half-breeds, and are hard to control. Not human and never fully vampire.”

“Okay, that was way too much information.”

“You need to know this stuff, Alex.”

“Why?” He leapt to his feet and stormed to the other side of the living room. He planted himself in front of the patio doors, casting his shape into a back-lit shadow. “Why the hell did you come back here if you’re not Chalice? Why are you dragging me into this crazy fantasy world you live in?”

I stood up with measured movement, taking care to not startle him. My good humor and sympathy were quickly disappearing, replaced by frustration. “Because I need your help, Alex, and I don’t have anyone else I can trust.”

“What about your team?”

“They’re dead.”

“Your boss?”

My heartbeat quickened. “He’s why I need your help. He’s been captured.”

“By whom?”

“The people he used to work for.”

Alex tilted his head to the left. “Wait a minute; you said he worked for the police. He’s been captured by the cops? As in arrested?”

More complications. I blew hard through my teeth. “Yes and no. It’s more complicated than that.”

“I don’t see how. He was arrested for a reason, right? So does that make you the good guy or the bad guy in this little melodrama?”

“Depends on your point of view, I guess.” I launched into the rest of my story, starting with the setup at the train yards and ending with the night I was kidnapped. It was all I knew for certain, and I hoped it told him that I wasn’t the villain. But I certainly wasn’t an innocent bystander, either. There was no black and white in my situation. Only varying shades of gray.

Alex listened attentively, giving no hint of his inner thoughts. He remained quiet for a full minute after I finished. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s say I believe everything you’ve told me so far and that I don’t think you’re off your rocker. Here’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.”

“Why am I, Evy Stone, in Chalice Frost’s body?”

“Yeah, that would be the one.”

A completely reasonable question that I felt somehow compelled to answer. Not only because I needed his help, but because I felt connected to him, on some basic level that may have been a carryover from being in Chalice. They had been friends. I needed him to believe me.

“I don’t remember anything after five nights ago,” I said. “The night I set out to prove I’d been set up, I was kidnapped. I was taken to an abandoned train station and tortured for two and a half days, and I eventually died. I was dead for three days, until a dear friend paid a terrible price to bring me back. He traded for a Fey spell that required a freshly dead body for my soul to inhabit. Only something went wrong. I went into the wrong body and without my complete memory, and now I can’t remember what I was too afraid to tell him before I died. Until I remember what I’ve forgotten, I can’t clear us.”

“Why bother?”

I balled my fists. “Why bother what? Saving him?”

“No, I understand that. Why bother trying to clear yourselves in the first place when it’s easier just to run?”

Running had never been an option. Not even that first night, fresh from the deaths of Jesse and Ash and the unexpected betrayal of my former allies. “This is my life, Alex. It’s all I’ve known since I was a teenager. It never occurred to either of us to not fight this. Besides, there’s more at stake than just our lives. Although right now, saving Wyatt’s life is all I care about.” I walked toward Alex, and he didn’t flinch. “His name is Wyatt Truman. He was my Handler and my …” My what? Lover? Not exactly. I stopped an arm’s length away. Tears prickled my eyes. “I have to save him.”

Alex lifted his right arm. His fingers stopped inches from my face. I remained still, allowing him his exploration. Tentative fingertips traced the line of my jaw, from ear to chin. Proving I was real, that he wasn’t imagining it all. Touching the face of a woman he’d seen die. Knowing that a stranger lived in her shell and that the woman he cared about was never coming home. Was he convinced? Or simply contemplating escape?

His touch dropped to my shoulder, down my arm, until he finally grasped my hand. He squeezed it; I squeezed back.

“Evy, huh?” he said.

“Assuming you believe me and we’re not both crazy.”

He smiled.

Shadows darted past the patio doors, too fast to count. I yanked hard on Alex’s hand. He yelped and tripped and fell to the carpeted floor. I dropped to my knees and covered his head with my hands.

Above us, glass and wood exploded in a shower of tinkling shards.