Page 91 of Dead Beat

“What did I do?” she mimicked, drawing closer to him, the knife held out before her like a divining rod. “I survived. Without anyone to protect me or watch out for me. Without you.”

“This is forbidden. What you did—”

“Forbidden like not lying with a witch? Or some other puritan bullshit?” The room spun and she blinked back her dizziness. “Why not get a vasectomy? Why not just keep your dick in your pants? Too busy protecting your very special bloodline?”

Darlington slammed Huilca against the wall again. “Answer.”

“I … was young. Barely older than you. I … I was irresponsible.”

“So I get to bear the burden? I get to forfeit my life because you just had to get some Valley strange?”

“Alex, you have to understand. Death would be a blessing for you. Not everyone in our order holds to the old ways. If they learned you existed and what you can do—”

“What can I do? Spell it out.”

“Wheelwalker. Daughter of darkness, wakcha. No door is closed to you.”

“And that’s a problem why?”

“Because of this!” His eyes flicked to Darlington. “Because of him! Because if the wrong person gets hold of your gift, they can access the demonic anywhere.”

“You might have a point,” Alex said, thinking of Alban Reed, of Elliot Sandow, and of Marguerite Belbalm—had she been born an abomination too? Desdemona. Ill-starred one. She’d learned that in Girard’s lecture on Othello. You and me both, she’d thought. Alex was starting to feel woozy. But her wound didn’t hurt anymore. She wasn’t sure if that was bad or good.

“Maybe he has a point,” Dawes said. “Or maybe these priests and guardians just don’t like the idea of a woman having the power of their shaman, of someone who doesn’t just hold the door open but who walks through it herself.”

“We are guardians,” he insisted.

“You didn’t guard Alex,” Darlington said. “You left her to the wolves.” He paused. “Just like Lethe.”

Huilca kept his attention on Alex. “Whatever you believe, you must understand that your power makes you a target. You will be hunted for your gift. You will never be safe once people learn what you can do.”

Now Alex did laugh, and it sent a fresh wave of pain coursing through her. She thought she might throw up and that was going to be very embarrassing.

“I don’t know what safe is,” she said. “I never have. Maybe you could have taught me all about it. If you’d stuck around.”

She swallowed again and looked at her father. Whatever he saw in her face made him flinch.

She knew she was supposed to feel something for this man. After all, blood was blood. How many TV shows had she seen, how many books had she read where a character shrugged and said of the con man, the deadbeat, the killer: But he’s my dad? Maybe that should be important, but Alex felt nothing. She had been born of a fleeting moment between two happy idiots, high on weed and California sunshine and the glory of being young. Maybe her father had been trying to protect her by abandoning her mother and forcing her to forget him. Maybe he was just another loser who made a habit of dodging unpleasant outcomes. Alex was relieved to discover she didn’t much care.

“My mother can forgive anything,” she said. “It’s part of her whole way of moving through the world—be better than the person who wrongs you.”

“Mira has a beautiful soul. She always did. It’s what drew me to her.”

“But I’m not like her. I can hold a grudge until it squeals.” She cocked her head. “Maybe I got that from you.”

Hellfire was still racing over her body and Huilca tried to shrink away from it as she approached.

She jammed the knife into his shoulder. He screamed. Alex expected Dawes or Darlington to chastise her, but no one said a word.

“I can’t say that makes us even. But I do feel better,” she said with some surprise.

“Please,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.”

Like the trying was what mattered. The people who did the most damage barely had to try at all. Her eyes roved over his face. She had hungered after this for so long. To find the ghost of herself in someone the way she’d never been able to see herself in Mira. It wasn’t enough.

“Please,” he repeated.

“What do you want to do?” asked Darlington.