Hand of the God Read online

  Except when I used the glamour method, it usually looked like the dead body woke up from being dead and started talking.

  I wasn’t sure Abe was ready for that — but he had seen magic before. It was impossible to spend much time around me and not witness at least a little magic. So, I figured I’d leave the decision up to him.

  “About my thing,” I said, stopping across the autopsy table from him. I’d finally told him that I was the DeathSpeaker not too long ago, but we still both referred to it as ‘my thing.’ It was too weird to discuss frankly with the man who was practically my dad. “I can do it two ways. The first one is just him talking in my head, and me telling you what he says.” I wouldn’t mention that the first way was painful. If he’d rather not see the freaky trick, I could put up with a headache and a bloody nose. “The second way lets you see and hear him, and you can talk to him too.”

  Abe raised an eyebrow. “I’m sensing a ‘but’ with that second way.”

  “Yeah, there’s a ‘but.’” I smirked. “It’s gonna look like I brought him back to life. I can’t actually do that, it’s just an illusion. But it’s … a little disturbing.”

  “Huh. It sure as hell sounds disturbing.” He looked at the body and sighed. “Well, in for a penny, right?” he said. “Let’s go with door number two.”

  “Okay. This shouldn’t take long.”

  I touched the dead man’s shoulder and closed my eyes. It was easier to get things started when I had direct contact with the remains, though I could do it without. “Jack,” I said. “You in there?”

  I felt a tug in my head, and heard a male voice. What’s going on?

  “Tell you in a minute.” I moved back and focused on projecting his soul onto the body, pushing it gently from my head. This one was easier than some, because he wasn’t trying to resist me. Most of the dead people I talked to did not want to respond.

  That was because they couldn’t lie to me, and they had to answer my questions. Bad guys didn’t like being interrogated while they were hooked up to an anti-lying device.

  The pale corpse of Jack took on a little color. His eyes opened with a gasp and he sat up on the table, blinking around in confusion. “Where am I?” he said, and turned toward me. “Um … who are you?”

  Abe made a small, distressed sound and stumbled back from the table, crossing himself.

  “Didn’t know you were Catholic, Abe,” I said as I held back a laugh.

  He swallowed hard. “I’m not. Doesn’t hurt to be on the safe side, though.”

  “Right.” I turned to Jack and smiled. “You don’t know me, but I’m a friend of your brother’s,” I said. “I work with him, sort of.”

  “You know Robbie?” Frown lines crinkled his brow, and he glanced over at Abe. “You’re his captain, aren’t you? Captain Strauss. I’ve seen you in your office sometimes when Robbie and I have lunch. Are … are you dead, too?”

  “Er, no. Not dead,” Abe said, a hand going to the back of his neck. “I’m sorry for your … uh, you. Being shot and all.”

  Jack smiled a bit. “Well, you didn’t shoot me.”

  “That’s why we’re here,” I said, deciding I didn’t need to explain the whole DeathSpeaker thing to this guy. He seemed to accept that he was dead and also here, talking to his brother’s captain, and that was fine with me. It saved time. “We’d like to know who did shoot you, if you don’t mind telling us.”

  The dead man took on a somber expression. “It was Boyd Pearson.”

  “Shit,” Abe said under his breath. “You sure about that?”

  “I’m sure.”

  I frowned. “Who’s Boyd Pearson?”

  “He’s a serial criminal my brother’s been chasing, who’s robbed at least six stores and killed two convenience store clerks a few years ago,” Jack said, and then blinked and cocked his head. “Why did I say all that?”

  “Sorry. That was my fault,” I said. I’d asked him a question, and he’d been compelled to answer. “Tell you what, I’ll just let Abe do the talking.”

  “Uh, yeah,” Abe said slowly, giving me a strange look. “It was definitely Pearson, huh?” he said to Jack. “Do you happen to know if there’s any way we can prove that?”

  Jack thought for a minute. “He has my wallet with my ID in it, and my blood all over it,” he said eventually. “It was in my breast pocket, and he took it after he shot me. Stuck it in his jacket — dirty brown leather bomber with black trim. Does that help?”

  “Yes, it does,” Abe said. “If we can get that wallet, or even the jacket, I think we can charge him and make it stick. Thanks, Jack.”

  “Oh, no. Robbie …” The dead man’s face fell. “He’s going to blame himself for this when he finds out it was Pearson, because of that thing with the warrant. That son of a bitch should’ve been in prison years ago — but Robbie isn’t the one who screwed it up, even though he thinks he did. Please, tell my brother it’s not his fault.”

  Abe grimaced and gave a nod. “Yeah. I’ll tell him.”

  “Thank you.”

  I waited until I was sure Abe didn’t have any more questions. “Okay, I think we can let you go now,” I said, being careful not to ask him anything else myself. “Thanks for the help.”

  “No problem,” he said. “Um, where am I going?”

  “Back to wherever you were, I guess.” I still didn’t know exactly what happened to people — or Fae, or anyone else — after they died, but I knew there was something out there. “And it won’t hurt or anything,” I added, in case he was worried.

  “All right. Good to know,” he said. “Nice to meet you, Captain. And … whoever you are.”

  I laughed. “Gideon,” I said. “And likewise.”

  As I pulled his soul back into my head and released it, the ‘body’ closed his eyes and laid back on the table. There was a soft sigh as the color drained back out of the corpse and Jack returned to the other side of whatever.

  “Okay. Disturbing is not the word I’d have used,” Abe said, his gaze riveted to the body. “Maybe next time tell me it’s goddamn terrifying. Man, how do you even get used to doing something like that?”

  I shrugged. “Not really used to it, tell you the truth. It’s just a thing I have to do sometimes,” I said. “How about we get out of here?”

  “Right behind you.”

  Abe breathed a sigh of relief when we were back in the corridor, headed for the elevator. “I think I might have nightmares about that shit,” he muttered. “But it was worth it. Thanks for doing that. Maybe now we can finally put Pearson where he belongs, and Hawkins can have a little closure. When he stops blaming himself.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” I felt pretty awful for Robbie. Even though he’d know who killed his brother now, that knowledge would put him in a hell of a situation.

  We got back to the elevator, and Abe hit the up button. “Didn’t you say you had a date tonight?” he asked.

  “Not a date, exactly. I guess it’s kind of … a super-date?” A smile tugged at my lips, because I was actually looking forward to the rest of today. And especially tonight. “Calla’s got this whole itinerary planned,” I said. “We’re going to pretend we’re tourists, go out and see the sights and eat the food and spend the whole day not being our jobs, for once.”

  Abe nudged me. “And what are you spending the whole night doing?”

  “Er, you know. Things,” I said as I coughed and looked away.

  “Right. Those things.” He grinned. “You know, I’m actually happy for you. She seems like a good thing in your life, and you could really use more of those. I’m just wondering…”

  My brow lifted. “Wondering what?”

  “When you’re going to introduce her to the old man,” he said. “You know, officially.”

  I sputtered a laugh. “Don’t I have to propose to her first, or something?” I said. “You’re right, though. The three of us should get together sometime. Matter of fact, I’ll ask her about it tonight.”

  “Be
tter make it early, before you take her back to your place,” he said with a wink. “I doubt you two are gonna do much talking once you get there.”

  He was probably right. And after years of semi-abstinence, I planned to enjoy the hell out of every minute.

  Chapter 2

  I should’ve been pleasantly exhausted that night. I had a beautiful woman in my bed — hell, this was probably the first time I actually possessed a bed of my own to have a woman in. And after a full day together, we’d done an extravagant amount of what couples do in bed.

  But I couldn’t even keep my eyes closed, much less fall asleep.

  It was going on midnight when I peeled off the blanket and got up carefully, trying not to wake Calla. She’d ended up on the window side of the bed, and the going-on-full moon behind the drawn curtain gave just enough light to show her in profile. Her closed eyes twitched with slight movement and her lips curled up in a tiny smile, as if she were having a good dream.

  I hoped she was. The things she’d been through in the past few months were enough to give anyone nightmares. She’d even been dead for a while — and that hadn’t been the worst of it. She remembered dying … and she also remembered the awful things her other self had done while she was dead. She wouldn’t talk to me about it, claimed that she was okay now. I wasn’t so sure about that.

  But I wasn’t in a position to push her into talking. I kept plenty of my own secrets from her, including what really happened last month when Milus Dei shanghaied us at sea. I’d told her a version of the truth, but I left out a few big things. The biggest one being that I actually had the Scrolls of Gideon — even though I couldn’t exactly read them. Yet. Most of the stuff on them was written in strange symbols I didn’t recognize.

  Calla Frost hadn’t always been on our side. In fact, she still technically worked for Milus Dei, even though she was using her position to spy on those bastards. Still, the reason I didn’t tell her about what I’d found under the ocean wasn’t exactly that I didn’t trust her.

  I just couldn’t risk letting Milus Dei get their hands on the Scrolls. So if she didn’t know about it, they couldn’t torture it out of her.

  When Calla didn’t stir, I crossed the bedroom to the master bath and closed the door gently before I turned the light on. Maybe a hot shower would relax me enough to get to sleep. I stretched and glanced in the mirror, somehow managing not to recoil at the eyeful of ugly that looked back. Dressed only in boxers, with my hair alternately spiked out and matted to my head, I looked like I’d come out on the losing end of a fight with a wood chipper. At least the tattoos helped to downplay some of the scarring, but nothing could hide all of it.

  I still had no idea how Calla could look at this and not run from the room. Or demand a blindfold.

  Shaking my head, I rolled my shoulders and padded toward the shower. I’d either manage to relax, or I’d end up refreshed and wide awake in the middle of the night, which was nothing new. But at least my hair wouldn’t look so awful.

  Just as I pulled back the shower curtain, I heard a faint noise from downstairs. A series of quick beeps, familiar tones — someone had deactivated the alarm system. The one we’d installed mostly to keep Lady Tethys from waltzing in whenever she felt like it. I listened and thought I made out scraping metal, and after a minute, the click of the deadbolt on the front door. Which had to be my brain filling in sounds that were supposed to follow the alarm beeping, because I couldn’t have heard that from here. And besides, it was probably Taeral or Sadie coming back from the convenience store on the corner, or something.

  Except my gut told me otherwise.

  I ducked my head under the sink tap, letting the cold water shock me fully awake, then rubbed a towel over my hair and moved to grab a shirt from the bedroom. Calla stirred slightly as I pulled it on, and her eyes half-opened. “Gideon?” she murmured. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I just …”

  While I debated whether to share my suspicion that someone had broken into the house, there was another noise from downstairs. A dull thud.

  Calla bolted upright. “What was that?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.” I was already halfway to the door, trying to tell myself there could be plenty of other explanations for the sounds. The most likely one was Taeral. I wouldn’t have noticed if he’d gone out earlier, and he could be coming back drunk.

  Honestly, I was hoping for the break-in. I’d rather deal with a burglar, or even a deadly enemy trying to kill us all, than my brother fully wasted. He’d fallen pretty damned hard when we came back from Tethys’s little errand, and though he’d finally managed to climb out of the bottle once more, he was still on shaky ground.

  Not that I blamed him for getting drunk once in a while. But it worried Sadie. Also, he could be a little more … brusque than usual when he really got blitzed. And by brusque I meant violently angry — though he’d never hurt any of us.

  The only one he ever hurt was himself.

  “I’m going with you.”

  Calla’s voice from right behind me made me jump. I glanced around and saw her already dressed, her gun in hand. I hadn’t even noticed her bringing the weapon into the bedroom.

  “Okay, but it’s probably just Taeral,” I said as I opened the door. “So if it is, don’t shoot him. You’ll piss him off.”

  She didn’t seem to think that was funny.

  We headed downstairs at a fast creep. Didn’t see anyone in the front hall or the living room. The door was closed and the alarm deactivated, so I knew I hadn’t imagined the sound, and whoever it was couldn’t have gotten past us on the stairs.

  Just then I heard the fridge open in the kitchen, and the faint clink of a glass bottle.

  Calla and I shared a look, and I sighed and headed for the kitchen. She was already putting her gun away as she followed me. Confronting drunk Taeral was pretty much the last thing I wanted to do, right below having a sandblaster facial or taking a nice swim in boiling acid. But it was probably better for me to do it than Sadie, because she’d tear his head off. Possibly literally.

  The kitchen light was off, but the refrigerator was still open. And in front of it, staring inside, was a figure who looked like he was trying to cosplay a Ghostbuster — dressed in a green canvas jumpsuit with a holstered spray nozzle attached to a backpack, and huge goggles strapped to his face. He held a bottle of beer from the fridge in one hand, and unless Taeral had managed to shrink a couple of feet, he definitely wasn’t my brother.

  In fact, I had no idea who the hell he was.

  I cleared my throat, and the guy whipped around fast and yanked the nozzle off the pack. He plunged the trigger and shot a stream of clear liquid across the room, hitting me right in the face with it.

  “Drop the weapon!” Calla shouted.

  I knew she must’ve drawn her gun, but I didn’t look at her. I was busy frantically trying to block the stream of mystery fluid, which had already gone up my nose and in my mouth. The stuff was lukewarm, and it tasted like … garlic?

  “Oh, shit. Gideon?” the figure said, releasing the spray nozzle to let it clatter to the floor. Damned if that voice didn’t sound familiar. But in such a bizarre context, there was no way I could place it. “Sorry about that,” he went on as he reached up to remove the goggles. “It’s just spiked holy water. Been having a lot of trouble with vampires lately. Er … holy water doesn’t bother fairies, does it?”

  I blinked, and my jaw dropped as I finally recognized his face.

  “Chester?”

  Chapter 3

  Chester Rigby was nuts. Harmless, and an electronic and mechanical genius — which must’ve been how he got through the alarm system — but crazy in a specific way. He knew a lot more about the Others than the average human, though he had some strange ideas about them. Like, for example, he believed mermaids were nice, helpful creatures. Even though I knew from recent personal experience that they were inhuman flesh-eating predators.

  He was also co
nvinced that Milus Dei were aliens trying to infiltrate the world and create unstoppable armies to wipe us out. But hey, at least he was half right about that.

  I introduced him to Calla and led the way to the living room, because I didn’t want to interrogate him standing in the kitchen and I needed a few minutes to get over the shock of finding him there. Chester helped himself to the rest of the six-pack of bottles from the fridge and carried it with him.

  When I turned the light on and gestured into the room, he gave a low, appreciative whistle. “Nice digs,” he said. “Hell of a step up from your last place.”

  Okay, that bothered me. “Chester, you’ve never been to the Castle … wait, have you?” I asked, suddenly worried he’d broken in there too — only I hadn’t known it. What I did know was that I’d never given him my address. The previous one, or this one.

  And I probably didn’t want to know how he found out.

  “The Castle. You mean that dump you stayed in before here?” he said as he crossed the room slowly and looked around before dropping into one of the easy chairs by the fireplace. “Nah, never went there. I checked it out on satellite, though. Place was falling apart. I’m glad you moved.” He emptied the first beer he’d started in the kitchen and cracked open a fresh one.

  Calla and I both stared at him as he raised the bottle to his lips. He caught the looks, frowned and lowered the beer slowly. “This isn’t a normal thing to do, is it?” he said.

  “Uh, no. Breaking into my house in the middle of the night and helping yourself to whatever’s in the fridge is not normal.”

  “Right. I knew that.” He gave an awkward half-cough. “The thing is, I couldn’t—”

  He broke off when we all heard someone thundering down the stairs. It wasn’t loud enough to be Grygg, so I hoped him and Eli were still asleep. Explaining the golem and the talking rat to Chester would not be easy.