The Taken Read online

  “No, Schmidt will be there,” Kit muttered, staring past him at the bamboo entry. “I know it.”

  “Whatever,” Paul said, turning away. “Just dress appropriately. Chambers lavishes his woman with jewels. And tell Joe Friday over there that it’s black-tie only. If he’s got one.”

  And before Kit could form a retort, before he so much as mentioned Nicole’s name or death, Paul exited into the night in the exact way he’d exited their marriage. Glancing back only once to make sure she didn’t follow.

  Grif watched Kit talk with Paul, wondering how she’d ever gotten mixed up with a piker like that. He was a swaggering suntan. She was a mysterious moonbeam. Their marriage must have been a terrestrial collision.

  At least the rum was dulling his headache. As was Charis’s second rescue of him from that wildcat, Layla. Though Charis had told the other woman she needed to speak with him privately, and commandeered a low table in the lounge’s dimly lit corner, he still glanced over to make sure he was out of Layla’s sights before hunching over his weird tiki mug.

  “Don’t mind her,” Charis said, one hand rocking the baby in the seat next to her as she caught his look. “She’s a cougar. Or, if you’re being era-appropriate, a minx.”

  “And I bet she’s always era-appropriate.”

  “About the only thing I like about her,” Charis grudgingly admitted, leaning forward to tuck a blanket beneath her little girl’s chin. The baby immediately pulled it off. “Though she came into a bundle of money, so that helps.”

  “A little princess, huh?” he said, meaning Layla, not the pixie next to him.

  “Oh, no. She worked for it. Not yet out of her teens and she married a man well into his eighth decade.”

  Grif winced.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, rocking again. “He died within the year, and Layla’s not shy in talking about it.”

  “Doesn’t look shy about much,” Grif replied, and Charis laughed.

  Kit had been right. He liked her flighty hens. But Kit herself was too far away for his liking, too close to the front door. Grif had defied fate in saving her, and now anything could happen. If his gut was right, it would also happen fast. But Kit had asked for some space and he’d respect that.

  Didn’t mean he had to like it, though.

  Leaning back, Charis rested a hand on her belly. “Did you sense a bit of tension between her and Kit?”

  “Yeah. I got that.” He sipped some more. Rum . . . not his first choice, but it was strong. He could appreciate it for that alone.

  “Well, that’s why,” she said, jerking her head toward Pretty Paul. “Five years ago, when they were still hitched, and Layla’s lawyer was still wrangling with her deceased husband’s family over his estate, she saw that young Paul’s career was on an upswing. Also saw that he’d stopped doting on Kit the way he used to.” Her lined brows lowered, and her mouth twisted with the memory. “We all saw it. But Layla hit on him, thinking that if it was a billy girl he wanted, any billy would do.”

  “And Kit didn’t hit back?”

  “You clearly don’t know our Kit.” Charis shook her head, but the smile on her face now was warm. “She’s never as curious about what people do as why they do it. It’s the questions that intrigue her, the mystery. So she sat Layla down, bought her a drink, and ‘interviewed’ her about her behavior. Learned that despite a marriage that left her wealthier than all of us put together, Layla believed she was never given a fair shake in life.”

  “Who has?”

  “Said she had to work for everything she’s got.” Charis huffed, too.

  “Who hasn’t?”

  “And said she had to raise herself to be street-smart. Told Kit she has a ‘back-door’ education.”

  “What’s that?” Grif asked, sipping.

  “My guess? Something her first boyfriend talked her into.”

  Grif choked.

  Charis waited until he settled again, and continued with a smile. “Anyway, long story short, Paul didn’t want a billy, and he didn’t want Layla . . . but he also didn’t want Kit anymore, either.”

  “So what, he just walked out on her?” Grif squinted at Charis’s responding nod, then glanced again at the former couple. “And she can just give him a hug? Chat like nothing happened?”

  “That’s Kit,” Charis said. “She tries to see the best in people, even when they don’t deserve it.”

  “Are you hinting at something, Charis?”

  Charis leaned forward to check on her baby. The child’s eyes were drooping despite the decibels ricocheting in the air. She sat back. “It’s not a hint. Don’t mess with her.”

  Grif frowned. “I don’t mess with people.”

  “Don’t mess with this, either,” she said, waving around at the room, the people in it. “You were asking us earlier why we live the rockabilly lifestyle, but it’s not that hard to understand. Living nostalgically is just one more way to pretend that death isn’t going to happen to us. Don’t you see? Instead of deferring it with technology, or defying it with babies,” she nodded down at her child with a half-smile, “we celebrate the past, keep it alive by reliving the best of it.

  “But staying alive, being alive, is time mostly spent trying to stave off the Reaper. We work out, take our vitamins, keep looking for the fountain of youth. We choose lovers and careers based on who we want to be in the future, and where we want to go.”

  “You’re not guaranteed a future,” Grif pointed out.

  “The way Nic died proves that.” She looked at her baby and frowned, as if trying to read the future across the child’s soft, unlined brow. “You want to know the most horrifying thing about it? Her death wasn’t indicative at all of the way she lived. That violence just doesn’t fit with . . . all this.”

  Grif knew what she meant. You expected violence to touch only those who dealt in it. But when it claimed people like his Evie? Like Nicole and Kit? It meant that even if you sucked the marrow from life, your future could be snuffed out at someone else’s whim.

  “Kit lost the people closest to her at a young age, so she surrounds herself with things that make her feel alive, and yeah, that includes the past. You do, too.”

  Grif shook his head. “I don’t got much left from my past.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I meant you also make her feel alive. I can see it.”

  “Oh.” Grif shifted in his seat, face burning at her words. He looked at Kit, again wished her nearer, then cleared his throat. “So what about you? How do you cope with a cloudy future?”

  “I’m Mexican. Same as Fleur and Lil over there. So we were raised Catholic.” She pointed to herself. “Under the iron fists of Sister Mary Francis of the Immaculate Conception School. So whatever I do, I do it with unwavering discipline and relentless guilt.”

  Grif smiled, and clinked his tumbler against her sad-looking water glass. “I’m a product of St. Paul’s myself.”

  Charis sipped, smiling back. “When I was little, I even aspired to become a patron saint. I could recite the Mass verbatim, and Hail Mary myself into a coma. And I saw God everywhere.”

  Grif narrowed his eyes. “Really?”

  She nodded and leaned close. “We were actually pen pals. I’d write Him letters in Latin and leave them in my closet.”

  “Why the closet?”

  She shrugged. “Because He didn’t appear after I set my front yard’s bushes on fire, so I decided He was shy.”

  Grif laughed so deeply it stretched his lungs. He realized that despite his recently removed celestial state, this was the most overtly religious conversation he’d had in a long time. Charis shrugged, and resumed rocking her baby one-handed, the other hand draped over her belly.

  “Wanna hear a secret?” Charis lowered her voice and leaned close. “A few weeks ago I was dying of hunger. I mean, this little bean inside of me was taking all my energy and nutrients for itself, and I was feeling so hollow I thought I could eat my young.”

  “Ironic.”
>
  “I know, right?” Her eyes flared wide. “Anyway, I was eating a bag of Cheetos, the whole damned thing, mind you, and I saw a Cheeto that, I shit you not, looked exactly like Jesus Christ.”

  Grif stared at her.

  “With his head bowed in prayer.” She shrugged when Grif just kept staring. “But smaller. And cheesier.” She frowned. “And a snack food.”

  Grif signaled for another drink.

  “Anyway, the point is, I couldn’t eat it.” Charis shook her head like it surprised her. “I just couldn’t bite Jesus’s head off, you know?”

  He frowned. “So what’d you do with the Cheeto?”

  “Oh, I put it up on eBay. Someone might buy it as a relic.” She rocked her baby with a dismissive shrug before stilling suddenly, mistaking his silence for disapproval. “Hey, I’m not crazy, okay? If I don’t at least get enough to pay for shipping, I’m just going to feed it to my kid. She’ll eat anything.”

  They both looked down at the Savior-eating child. She was smacking her lips on air as she pacified herself to sleep.

  “Hey, can you stay with her for just a second? I really have to . . . you know.” She widened her eyes as she stood.

  Grif jerked back. “Oh, I don’t know. Me and kids—”

  “I’ll be just a sec, I swear.” And she waddled off before he could reply.

  Grif realized his head was beginning to pound again. He rubbed the base of his neck, thinking he’d just ignore the little thing. She was sleeping easy, anyway. Why rock a steady boat?

  “Cheers,” he whispered to the dozing child, before returning to his distant vigil over a woman celebrating the life of someone who was already dead.

  Charis took her damn time.

  Sipping some more rum, Grif stole another glance at her slumbering child. She looked vulnerable lying there, chubby-limbed, with mere tufts of golden hair giving the aspect of a plucked bird. Yet somehow all the promise of the human race was wrapped up in those fat, milky cheeks, and pretty bow mouth.

  Glancing at Kit, back at the bar and hugging Lil, Grif thought of what Charis said about the way Kit surrounded herself with the things that made her feel alive. He could see that. She was trying to recapture a time when things seemed simpler, more stable. He wished there was a way to tell her that even in the fifties nothing was really what it seemed.

  The thought sharpened in his mind to the point of discomfort. Instinctively he dropped his head, but the pain struck full-out then, stabbing his skull and severing his thoughts. The left side of his face tingled, and he squeezed his eyes shut. Biting back a cry, he clenched his head, arm brushing against the rocking car seat. The sleeping baby startled.

  “Shit.”

  The child’s cries syncopated with the pounding in Grif’s head and light sparked like fireworks behind his eyelids. So when the voice sounded next to him—“Hey, Shaw”—he didn’t even try to respond. Instead, he rocked himself and the baby.

  “Shh . . . don’t cry,” he said, not exactly sure which of them he was talking to.

  “Oh, I’m not the one who’s gonna be crying if you don’t pull it together. Sit up.”

  And the pounding miraculously ceased. Lifting his head, Grif realized no one had moved. The girls were still jawing at the bar. The band was still swinging like Jerry Lee was crooning. Charis was still busy in the can.

  But the baby was staring at him, eyes large, dark, and hard in the sweet cherub face. Grif leaned closer and the toothless mouth twisted. “Sarge?”

  “Who else?”

  The words sounded funny when gummed, but Grif didn’t laugh, and the blades between his shoulders pulsed, reminding him he lacked wings. “Is the kid going to remember any of this?”

  The child’s brows lowered so that she really did look like Sarge, though the voice was still undeveloped, making the angel channeling it sound like he’d sucked helium. “Relax. This’ll add ten years to her life and five hundred points to her SATs. Now what the hell are you still doing on the mud?”

  “I’m sorry,” Grif said lamely. “I couldn’t allow it. Craig’s a good woman, Sarge. She didn’t deserve to die that way.”

  “It’s not about deserving, Shaw.” The baby’s face hardened further. “And you haven’t changed anything. All you’ve done is prolong the inevitable. Every action she takes, every connection she makes with another person on the Surface is now something we have to work to unravel on this end. It’s not natural. She is not supposed to be there.”

  Grif glanced up. Kit was leaning against a carved post, rocking slightly to the upright bass. The thought punched through Grif’s brain: Yes, she is.

  He was the one who shouldn’t be here. He’d screwed up. And now a woman who lived in the past and dreamed of the future was going to die because of it.

  “Can I ask you something?” he said, peering into the seat. The baby grunted. “Am I really mortal again?”

  “Look down, Shaw,” the baby shot back. “You are wearing the—”

  “ ‘The sinful flesh.’ ” Grif nodded dismissively, but rolled his aching shoulder blades again. “Yeah, Anas told me. So I have free will again, right? I can make my own decisions as long as I possess mortal breath?”

  The baby’s eyes momentarily narrowed, and smoke roiled in their depths. “Don’t forget what else comes with that divine gift.”

  And another shock of burning pain seared the core of Grif’s brain. His eyes crossed and tears rolled down his cheeks, but then the pain flashed cold and was cauterized. Yet the first thing he saw when his vision returned was Kit. Talking to her girls. Gesturing animatedly. The brightest spot in a color-saturated room, and exactly what Grif needed to regain his focus.

  Eyes glued on her bittersweet smile, he waited for the pain to abate.

  “I have blunted the pain of mortality for you,” Sarge was saying. “Even now, while what little of your brain is tearing itself apart, I am shielding you from the worst of it. You’re not supposed to be alive, and that knowledge lives in every cell in your body. You know those times when you can’t catch your breath?”

  Grif gave a short nod.

  “Well, I’m the one who gives it back to you. You’d spend every moment gasping like a landed trout were it not for me. And you know the flashback you had upon landing on the Surface? That’s your memory awakening along with your senses. The longer you stay there, the worse those’ll get. But I’m the one who allows you to wake. I alone can keep another from coming your way.

  “Now if you want me to stop protecting you from these things, if you want to feel your mind tearing itself apart all the time, then by all means keep disobeying orders. But the only way to find true divine peace is by returning to the Everlast where those unfortunate human emotions are blunted. God is your balm and solace.” The baby’s eyes narrowed. “But you gotta go through me to get to Him.”

  “So if I let her die, I can return to the Everlast?”

  The infant gave a small nod. “If you walk out and leave her right now.”

  Grif’s gaze returned to Kit. “No incubation?”

  “No incubation.”

  So Grif could go back to the way things were before. Back to working on his guilt over Evie’s death in a place where he was safe, protected, and with his mind intact. He’d continue to assist people into the Everlast so they could heal from their stolen, unknowable futures, knowing that eventually every one of them would enter the Gates, and Paradise. To God. To their true home.

  The baby put a chubby fist to her lips, looking wise as she squinted up at Grif. “You can’t alter fate, Shaw. Katherine Craig is going to die. The best you can do now is help her cross into the Everlast.”

  Like he’d helped Nicole? Was that really the best he could do? “Listen, Sarge—”

  “No, you listen. Defy me again and I’ll send you dreams you’ll never forget. Keep defying me and I will send you a living nightmare. But leave now and all will be as is fated.”

  “Sarge—”

  “Walk out now, Shaw.�
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  Grif tried again, but the Pure was gone. The chubby limbs lost their dexterity, and with a blink, the eyes were once again as light as a robin’s egg.

  “Oh, look, she’s awake.” Charis returned, smiling, and lifted her baby with an exaggerated movement, rubbing her nose with her own. “Everything go okay?”

  “Sure,” he said quickly. “She’s, um, a smart one. Might want to aim for Yale. I think she’s got a shot.”

  The infant gurgled agreement, then dribbled spit from the corner of her mouth. Charis wiped it away with a readied cloth and gurgled right back. “That’s so sweet of you to keep Mr. Shaw company. But is my little Boo-Bear ready to go home? Ye-es . . . How about just one little dance first? A tiny swing around the room. Gotta show off your onesie . . . everyone loves black skulls and red cherries.

  “And,” she said, nodding her thanks to Grif, “Nic loved this one.”

  Whirling away, she held the child high over her other baby bump, still whispering lovely nonsense into the tiny ear. The baby, though, kept her wide eyes on Grif the whole way. She gave him a look that said he could change nothing. That he shouldn’t be there at all.

  It was a look that said leave while you can.

  Chapter Twelve

  Kit slept like her life depended on it. Even in the home of a former mobster, or perhaps because of it, she fell into a dream state that was a black hole for her thoughts and emotions. Nothing existed for twelve straight hours, and she actually awoke refreshed, and feeling for the first time since Nic’s death like it was okay to be breathing.

  Maybe that was because Nic had visited her in her dreams, saying she knew Kit would find out who did this to her, and that she really was in a better place.

  “Nothing made in China,” she told Kit, in a pretend whisper, then straightened with a smile. “Not here. Not in the Everlast.”

  Shaking her head at her own imagination, Kit took a long shower, dressed carefully in a gray pencil skirt and white blouse, and backcombed the hell out of her hair. By the time she sat down to a hearty breakfast of toast and eggs with Grif and Tony, she felt settled if not totally herself.