Flesh Circus

Yeah, that’s why you can’t touch me anymore. That’s why you flinch whenever I get a little frisky. “Okay. When you want to talk about it, fine.” The small room was lined with bookshelves, and even the dust in here vibrated with secrecy. Ordinary people wouldn’t even see the door we’d just ducked through. Though precious few people came in here; this place was kept afloat because of the hunter’s library. Hutch got a stipend and dispensation for when he occasionally went breaking a few electronic-surveillance laws in service to whatever case I was working at the time; I got a research library and an extra pair of eyes to go digging through dusty tomes whenever the end of the world drew too nigh.

“We never have time.” Did he actually sound sulky?

Jesus. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Do I sound like I’m kidding?” He let out a sharp sigh. “Work comes first. I know. I just have to talk to you sometime.”

“So talk to me.” I pushed aside the conference table, a big wooden thing suspiciously clean and neat now that Hutch was out of town and I hadn’t been bothering him to look things up for me. Saul bent down and lent his strength, even though I was already handling it. The legs scraped across cheap industrial carpet, and it fetched up against one of the overloaded bookcases. A copy of Luvrie

Nobody knows you like your own. Luvrie

Fortunately, Hutch sca

However, I don’t want to touch the damn book if I don’t have to. I know too fucking much about the Sorrows to want that.

I snagged the loop of denim sewn into the carpet and yanked up the cutout square. The concrete underneath was smooth and featureless, its expanse broken only by a recessed iron ring. I grabbed the ring, set my legs, and let out a breath while heaving up.

A hellbreed-strong right fist helps when you have to lift a concrete slab. But you still have to lift with your legs, not your back. Ergonomics for hunters—a bad back is a liability. Saul kept out of the way—there wasn’t enough room for him to help.

I keyed the code into the climate-control pad and slid the glass panel aside. A few items Galina keeps for me; I learned my lesson when that Sorrows bitch stole Mikhail’s talisman and rifled all his personal stuff. But the papers are here. All the salvageable vitals on the hunters of my lineage, down from the first and second Jack Karmas. Before the first Jack, we don’t know anything.

This isn’t the kind of career that lends itself to leaving evidence in the historical record. The day world, the real world, doesn’t want to know. Hunters sometimes rely on sheer outrageousness to slide by u

Emerson Sloane’s files were very thin. The big Santa Luz fire of 1938 had eaten most of the records he’d left, one way or another. A bare triple-handful of manila folders labeled in a round Palmer script, some with notations in Mikhail’s broad firm hand with its Cyrillic notations followed by English translations.

I flipped through them. About twenty had no co

I gave my pager a cursory glance. It was the Badger. Maybe she had something for me.

“Do you still want me?” The words just burst out of Saul and hung in midair.

It was like being punched in the gut. I sucked in dust and paper-laden air. The dead quiet of the bookstore closed around the sound, and my hands went nerveless for about half a second. I almost dropped the files.

“Of course I do,” I told the hole in the floor. “I always have. What the fuck?”

“My family’s gone.” It was a simple statement of fact. “My mother’s dead. Billy Ironside killed my sister. My mother’s sisters are… well, I’m not theirs. They have their own cubs. If I didn’t have a mate, it’d be different. But…”

“But there’s me. And I’m not a Were.” There it was, half the dysfunction in our relationship laid out in plain words. The other half didn’t need to be spoken. I’m tainted. I’ve got a hellbreed mark on my wrist and a serious rage problem. I’m not a nice person, Saul. I’m not even a good person, despite your thinking so. I’m a hunter. End of story.

“I don’t care what you are,” he answered quietly. “You need me, Jill. You’d kill yourself over this if someone wasn’t reminding you…”

“Reminding me of what?” I flipped through the first file, sca

Five little words. “That you’re worth a damn.”

Mikhail was the only man who ever thought I was worth a damn, I’d told him once.

Not the only one, he’d told me later. Tit for tat, we were even, except we weren’t.

We would never be even. Not while I was still breathing. Only it wasn’t the kind of debt you could repay, or even anything that could be called a debt at all.

I didn’t know what it was, except maybe love. Or something so huge it could swallow me, something that terrified me when I thought he might not want me anymore. Mischa thought I was worth plucking out of a snowdrift and training, but he left me behind. I wasn’t worth enough for him to stay. And that little voice inside my head, buried under a hunter’s iron.

You’re not worth anything. You’re ugly. Too ugly for anyone to love. Even my mother, the bitch, had said so.

And, I mean, come on. Just look at the man. Even gaunt and grieving, he was Native American calendar beefcake, broad-shouldered and dark-eyed.

Who wouldn’t want him? Who wouldn’t feel their breath catch every time he looked their way?

The third file fell open under my numb fingers. I blinked back hot water and what felt like rocks in my eyes. The little tingle of intuition ran up my arms and exploded under my breastbone. A puzzle piece fell into place with a click so loud I was surprised it didn’t knock over a few books.

“Holy shit,” I breathed.

There, clipped to the inside of a folder probably older than I was, a singed, faded black-and-white photo glared at me. Saul approached, but I kept staring.

The jaw was the same. So was the blond hair, the sculpted lips, and the straight thick eyebrows. And the glint of gold around the teeth. And the bad skin, but underneath that…

All this time I’d thought she was just an ugly woman. Fu

My Were bent down, and his warmth touched my back. “Huh.” The faint ghost of zombie clinging to us both faded under the good smell of him, male and fur. “Is it Zamba’s brother?”

“I think it’s Zamba.” I moved my hand so he could see what Sloane had written on the mat, the fountain pen marks digging hurriedly into the yellowing fibers.

Arthur Gregory, missing, presumed dead. I flipped the file closed. “Jesus.”

“Huh. She didn’t smell male.”

“It can’t just be a coincidence.” I handed him the file and leaned forward, jammed the others back in vaguely where they went. “Right under my goddamn nose all the goddamn time. I hate that.”