I swallow. “Rook, would you mind giving us some time as a crew tonight?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see his hurt expression.
“I guess I’m back to just a client, then?” he says under his breath.
Part of me wants to correct him, but the fact is heisjust a client. And a client that might be betraying us as we speak at that. I can’t have any softness in my heart for him right now.
I keep my eye trained on the codex as he gathers his things. He shuts the door behind him a little too forcefully. Nobody speaks until we hear his car leave the driveway. Then Tolliver turns to Ezra, his eyes briefly flicking toward me.
“Miracle Max gets people to the Afterlife, but they’re, like, onlykindathere. Like a reverse ghost. That’s what draws the hellhounds to them.”
Ezra nods. “With you so far.”
“But…” Tolliver gives me another quick glance. “There is a mist that gets you as close to death as you can get without actually dying. It puts you firmly, truly in the Afterlife.”
CJ’s head jerks up. “You finished Juliet?”
Tolliver nods. “No one can tell you’re not Dead.”
Poppy looks between Tolliver and me, confused. “This is incredible. This would change everything. Tolliver, why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you tell…everybody? You could be sipping cantaloupe coolers on a beach in Sausalito.”
Tolliver grimaces. “What?”
Poppy gestures broadly. “I’m just saying, you could have financed this job yourself on the money you would have made off Juliet.”
“Poppy’s right,” CJ says flatly, glaring in my direction. “Tolliver should have told us. Why didn’t he?”
Tolliver hesitates. “It’s…complicated.”
“When did you finish it?” Poppy asks.
CJ’s eyes narrow. “Last year,” they guess.
They can feel my panic, Tolliver’s guilt.
“So why didn’t you say anything?” Poppy asks.
Tolliver looks at me one last time, an apology in his eyes. Panic wells up in me and tears the words from my throat.
“Tolliver gave it to Dante, and that’s why he’s dead!”
The room goes silent.
Ezra clears his throat, shifting uncomfortably. Tolliver’s eyes are rimmed red, and the fact that he’snot correcting mebreaks something in me.
“But I took it first,” I confess in a strained whisper. “It’s my fault Dante’s dead.”
Twenty-Six
One Year Ago
I couldn’t believe it was happening. I, Elysia Fields, was making out with Tolliver Takao.
We’d been sitting on the cot in the basement, talking about the latest job, and he just leaned over and kissed me.
At first, it was gentle. Just the meeting of lips. And then his arms went around me and that was that. Before I knew it, we were horizontal, and his weight was kind of on top of me, one of his legs between mine, and there was tongue involved.
I don’t know how long we’d been kissing when he pulled back.
