More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Nita stepped forward, fist clenched, wanting nothing more than to smash his skull into the floor and dissect him while he lay dying, the way she should have done when her mother caught him the first time.
His eyes roved around at the walled-off garden, lingering on all the security cameras and INHUP agents. “You might get in trouble if they knew who your mother was.” Ah. There it was. The veiled threat. The reminder that he knew exactly who she was, and if he wanted to, he could destroy her chances of getting a plane ticket home from INHUP. Well, two could play at that game.
“Yes.” Nita loosened her grip and twirled the crushed flower. “And we’ll have to be careful about mentioning your father too.” He stiffened, whole body going rigid, eyes widening. Like a poorly oiled puppet, his head jerked to face her, and he whispered, “Pardon?” “Your father.” Nita tilted her head to one side as her fingers played along the petals. “Quite the bigwig, I hear. Knows all the monsters.” Fabricio swallowed and replied carefully, “Where did you hear about my father?” “The market I was sold in, of course.”
“I hear he runs one of the biggest law firms in the world. They specialize in shell corporations, tax evasion, and all sorts of other things for rich peo...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
I don’t want anything to do with him or his business. All it’s ever brought me is pain.” “And money. I hear someone of your standing lives quite well.” “I’d rather have my ear back.” Nita raised an eyebrow. “What does your ear have to do with your father?”
“Your mother was sending me back to my father, piece by piece, every time he refused a demand.”
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
So did she want to kill Fabricio? The boy who’d betrayed her and left her to that horror? Yes. She did.
“Matt murdered someone?” Kovit shrugged. “I mean, you didn’t think he was some saint, did you? He worked for the Family. He was friends with me.” Nita snorted. “I’m friends with you.” “Yes, and you’ve got a bigger body count than me and him combined.”
Kovit casually slid his knife under the skin of the man’s cheek, the blade sliding in flat and thin, so she could see the shape of it bulging out from under the skin. He pressed his other hand against the man’s throat to prevent his scream. “Resist, and I’ll skin your face,” Kovit hissed.
Kovit leaned forward and shoved his switchblade in the back of his neck. “You don’t know me.” Kovit’s voice was cold. It was an excellent strike. Very little blood, instant death from the spinal cord severing. Neat. Tidy. The kind of death Nita liked. Kovit really was good at what he did.
Nita repeated, “The basement.” “Yes.” The kelpie smiled. “I have a lovely underground pool there.”
Come to my underground murder chamber, until the kelpie doubled over in laughter. Nita scowled in understanding. The twat was playing a joke on them.
Nita turned to Kovit. “He did this to you, and you didn’t warn me?” “No, he invited us to chat over dinner, picked a beachside restaurant, and suggested we all go swimming together.” Kovit’s voice was deadpan. “It wasn’t funny then, either.” The kelpie continued laughing. “Oh, it was priceless. I still remember that moment of horror on your face. Your life flashing before your eyes. It was beautiful.”
“Agatha Washpenny.” He clicked his tongue. “Knew that one already.” Nita shrugged. “Not my problem. One name a day. That was the deal.” “So it was.”
“Oh, and you know the story of Bluebeard? Marries a lovely young lady, invites her into his home, says don’t open the basement door, she ignores him and finds a bunch of skeletons of his ex-wives?” “Yeah.” “Well, I’m Bluebeard, and I’m telling you upfront the basement is full of rotting skeletons so please don’t go down there unless you want to join them. In which case, you’re more than welcome! If you’re going to kill yourself anyways, best to donate your body to my food stores.”
Nita scrolled down to Fabricio’s message. Nita, I was deeply impacted by your words about INHUP and safety. It’s so nice that you’re thinking of me. I’ve been thinking of you too. And while I can’t see you in person right now, I know you’ll make many new friends everywhere you go—friendships just like ours. I’d bet money you’ll meet lots of new ones in Toronto. That. Little. Shit-weasel. He’d just all but confessed to sending all those people after her. Friendships like ours? And that line about money at the end—he was profiting off it. He was the one selling her location online.
Nita didn’t respond, because she was staring at Diana’s teeth. They were fake. A white retainer, like people used to sleep at night to prevent TMJ. But there was only one reason someone would be wearing something like that during the day—to hide their real teeth.
Nita blinked at her. “You’re a ghoul.” Diana stiffened and turned to Adair. “What did you tell them?” He held his hands up, palms out. “Nothing!” “It’s your mouth guard,” Nita clarified. “Oh.” Diana’s hand went up to her mouth and lowered. “I’ve been meaning to get a new one.” “I think it looks fine, Diana. They look like real teeth,” Adair chimed in. Diana sighed. “Then why could she tell they were fake at first glance?”
“Well, I see how you two came to connect. Did you bond over a murder victim you were both eating?” Adair laughed, but Diana stiffened. “I’m not a killer.” Kovit raised his eyebrows. “That meat comes from somewhere.” “It comes from Adair.” “Ah, I see, so Adair murders them so you don’t have to.” Diana flinched. “Adair doesn’t murder anyone for me.” But she didn’t sound certain. Adair smiled gently, in a way that made Nita quite certain he had murdered people to feed Diana and he was simply indulging her strange dislike of murder. “Of course, Diana. But let’s not talk about that.
made my lines.” “And this doesn’t cross them?” She met his eyes square on. “No.” His eyes were dark and worried.
Finally, he closed his eyes and clenched his jaw. Kovit jerked suddenly and spun to the man, swearing, even as the man emitted a moan that sounded more like a suppressed scream. Kovit grabbed the man’s jaw and tried to pry it open while Nita stood there staring. “What’s happening?” she asked. The man’s body jerked and spasmed and his eyes rolled toward Kovit, red-rimmed and scared. Blood bubbled from between his lips. Kovit finally managed to open the man’s mouth and a torrent of blood streamed out, a wash of red covering the bound man and spattering across Kovit. So much blood. “He bit his
...more
The tongue had an artery, and if you bit through it, it could kill you, albeit more slowly than if you cut the artery at your throat or your groin. Which was probably why the man had decided breathing in the blood and drowning himself in it was the better way to go.
Nita stood still. It was pointless to stop him from drowning when the blood loss would kill him soon anyway. Besides even if she could help him, she wouldn’t. She was going to kill him anyway. If he wanted to spare himself from whatever Kovit planned, she couldn’t really blame him.
Her fingers hovered over the username box until she finally typed in SCALPEL. Kovit looked over her shoulder as she wrote. “Your username is Scalpel?” Nita blinked and looked up. “Yes. And?” “It sounds like a supervillain name,” he commented.
Nita posted a review of the GPS link selling her phone’s location. You hunt me and I hunt you, in Peru or Canada. I will burn you down. She uploaded the pictures of the murdered people, with a screenshot of her online exchange with them selling her information to lure them in. When she finished, she closed the phone and took a deep breath. She’d killed people hunting her.
Nita might be bound, but there were things she could do. She toughened the flesh of her throat and numbed her mouth. Then she spat stomach acid on Gold.
She needed to know more about the wanted poster on her. Nita scrolled through the information, but instead of finding more details about herself, she found three stories about girls who’d been murdered or kidnapped today. They all looked like her.
According to the story, the wave of disappearances had started yesterday, shortly after Nita had come to Toronto. One girl was getting off the streetcar when her friends saw a dark sedan pull up and yank her in. One was a college girl who vanished from the bathroom of a coffee shop. And the last was only fourteen, stolen on her way to school.
The last two were taken after Nita had made her statement to the black market. The hunters hadn’t been discouraged at all. Adair was right.
Adair eyed her for a moment, then opened his mouth and put the entire ice cream cone in. He swallowed without chewing. His cheeks didn’t puff out, his face didn’t even change. Gold, Nita, and Diana all flinched when he ate it. There was something decidedly wrong about seeing it. He shouldn’t have been able to fit it in his mouth, and there was no evidence he had, except the swallow. It was the first time Nita had seen the flaws on the human part of his glamour—not the shifting, changing features, but the simple impossibility. Beneath that fake human face was something with a very large mouth.
...more
“My father was murdered recently.” A wry smile twisted her mouth. “Which I suppose you know, since you’ve been spying on me.” Adair gave a faux-innocent face as if to say, Who, me?
“It was the mention of knowing Fabricio’s location, wasn’t it?” “Yes.” “Ah, bad move on my part.”
“If you ask the wrong questions to the wrong people, sometimes the answers get locked away and the keys thrown in the ocean. It’s a delicate art.” She snorted. “You’re a kelpie. Since when has a key being thrown in an ocean been an impediment for you?” “It was a metaphor.” “So was mine.”
“What, specifically, do you want to know?” He laughed. “Trying to get out on a technicality?”
“Did you learn anything tailing Adair?” He shook his head. “Nothing. He just went to the beach, bought six ice cream cones. No, I’m not joking,” he clarified when he saw her face. “Six. Then he sat on the waterfront pier with his feet in the icy cold water eating them.” If Nita had ever needed more confirmation Adair wasn’t even remotely human on a biological level, that was it. Ice cream in icy cold water? No, that was him trying to lower his body temperature significantly. Whatever he was, he wasn’t a creature of the heat.
“All the same, I don’t like him knowing who our enemies are. He’s in this business for the money, and you can never trust people like that not to sell you out.” Kovit shook his head. “Nah, he’s in this business for the dead bodies and the information. The money is just enough for living, but I don’t think he cares too much about it.” Nita raised her eyebrows. “What do you mean?” “Adair almost always takes payment in information over money when he can. Have you noticed? He’s more concerned with staying abreast of what’s happening in the world than he is about almost anything else.”
When Nita was seven, a woman in Los Angeles had been accused of being a zannie. The Dangerous Unnaturals List was in its infancy, and this was the first test of it. It had been in the media enough, and everyone knew there were no consequences to killing a zannie. So they went zannie hunting. Problem was: the woman wasn’t a zannie. A jealous ex-boyfriend had posted the information online and Photoshopped the official INHUP notification on it.
Nita cleared her throat. “Why did you stop the video?” “Isn’t it obvious?” He turned to her, thick eyebrows pulled together. “I didn’t want you to see.” Nita returned his gaze, unblinking. “Are you ashamed?” “Not at all.” A hint of a smile crept back into his face. “I know what you are.” “I know.” He looked away. “But there’s a difference between knowing and seeing.”
For the first time, she let herself consider: was she just replacing one monster with another?
Girl you're right there with him
“You know, Nita, murder doesn’t solve every problem.” “But it will solve this one.”
People said that there were more good people than bad, but Nita actually thought there were more bad people than good—because all the people quietly doing nothing ended up supporting the bad people anyway.
“You poisoned me!” he cried. “You told me you’d stop at nothing until I was dead! I was trying to protect myself!” “Like you were trying to protect yourself when you sold me out to Reyes?” “Yes!” he yelled, then froze, eyes flicking back and forth and mouth turning down. “I mean, no.”
She wondered if Kovit had crushed the man’s voice box so she wouldn’t have to hear the screaming. It was considerate, in a horrible kind of way.
The caption below said TEEN MURDERED BY UNICORN IN MONTREAL. The screen showed a school photo of a smiling white girl with long blond hair. “Miss Lyon was found at four in the afternoon by a man walking his dog. Her eyes were open, and missing their irises, which prompted the man to call INHUP immediately.”
The eyes were the window to the soul, as the saying went, and anyone who lost their soul was missing their irises. It was the signature of a unicorn attack.
They looked like human men, and could steal a soul with a simple kiss, or in some cases, even a touch. They could only steal unstable souls, though, soul...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
However, if the soul was too established in the body, they needed to destabilize it before they could eat. So they would “mount” the youth and pierce them with their “horn.” Raping the victim usually caused sufficient trauma to destabilize the soul so that the unicorn could eat it.
“I don’t know any unicorns.” His mouth twisted in distaste for a moment. “That’s a lie. I met one once. It tried to eat me. I was unimpressed.” Nita snorted. “I met one too, when I was a kid. It also tried to eat me.”
“My sister,” he whispered, horror slowly overtaking his features. “My sister’s an INHUP agent.”
