Page 14 of Secondhand Soul

“They’ve been trying to have a baby for a long time, but they’re, well, they’re like me. Only nicer. Better.” Lazarus throws an entire pan outside, just opens a window, and shoves it out. “I’ll take that out later.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. I think the problem is on her end. Parts exist, but they don’t seem to work with making new little lives. Fucking-God-playing-mad-scientist bastards. Oh, gee whiz, I’m gonna need a blowtorch to get this stuff off the bottom of the oven.”

My hand goes protectively to my still-flat stomach.

She’d be here by now. In my arms. We’d live in a little apartment. I’d bust my ass to keep her with me, keep affording her. Being a single mom would be ridiculous. But I would have done it. I would have left the CrossRealms, that’s for sure.

A little voice inside whispers, “You have. You are out of there now. You’re in a whole new world. The ‘burbs. The nice ones. Well. Except for Mr. Gray-and-Ripped over there.”

Mr. Gray-and-Ripped sheds his second shirt of the day, muttering about bleaching Hawaiian prints right out of the fabric along with the grease.

“But anyway, Rhea’s gonna be the best mom ever. And Manny will totally kill it as a dad. He’s the one who ‘sold it,’ Rhea says. He teared up over the ultrasound pictures. Big lug.”

“Ultrasound?”

“Adoption. They got matched with a birth mother and went to meet her.” Lazarus stops to smile wistfully. “Some little kid is gonna be so lucky.”

A lump shifts in my throat, and I swallow it down silently. You’re an assassin. He’s a target. He’s got a weakness—not a physical one. An emotional one. His “parents.”

I can’t fight him. Even bullets wouldn’t stop him. What the hell was I thinking, coming at him with a gun? I’m going to need to get close enough to him to exploit that soft underbelly—and then take a machete to his neck when he’s out cold.

I don’t actually know how to knock him out cold.

I think back to the horrible footage I was shown. Nothing slowed him down. He just kept struggling and straining to be free, taking apart anything in his way.

If I put his parents and this new little baby in his way, would he revert to that savage killer—or be still long enough for me to do what needs to be done?

Threatening an innocent couple, and maybe a brand new baby, isn’t something I can stomach.

But being ripped in half by Pascuzo or Lazarus isn’t okay, either.

I tell myself it’s a kill-or-be-killed situation.

“Well, this sure isn’t the cat’s pajamas. I wonder what heat-and-eat side dishes they might have at the grocery store?” Lazarus sighs and straightens up. “Uh, Victoria? Would you like to stay here in this secondhand smoke death trap or come to the store with me to see what we can find that I can’t ruin?”

I smile, and it isn’t an act. It’s a reflex that I didn’t mean to have, an escapee grin. “Maybe you could call the hostess and see what others are bringing before you go shopping? Or ask your mother?”

“Yeah... I could. Thanks, Vicky. Sorry, Victoria.”

I listen to Lazarus talk to his mom, but he doesn’t call her mom. He nods a lot, tests the stovetop burners, and mutters. “Do I peel them? Yams? And if they’re out? Okay. What? Yes, the girl is okay. I had to lend her your red sweater. The oven may not be ruined. I think I got to it just in time.”

“The main thing is that you and the girl in the red sweater are safe.” I hear Lazarus’ “mother” speak in passing, a soothing, reassuring voice that instantly makes me ache.

My mother and I had a huge falling out when I left school to be a waitress. She tried to reach out first, and I pushed her away. When I got pregnant, I called her and told her, and she was so happy. When I lost the baby, left “waitressing,” and started being sketchy about my hours, where I was, and what I was doing, I lost her, too. I told myself it was necessary. I had to keep her from being something Pazcuso could ever use as a bargaining chip.

The way I’m considering using Lazarus’ mother as a bargaining chip.

My stomach flips, and it’s not from the horrible smell that even all the fans, open windows, and crisp November air can’t fix.

You might just have reached the point where you can’t stand to do what you’re doing, huh, Victoria? The thing that tips the scales is the worst monster of them all.

That, and looking into his eyes and seeing yourself reflected there.

What have you become if he isn’t playing you, if he really is this strange patchwork of a man who saved your life and is frantically trying to salvage someone’s Thanksgiving side dish?

Are you trying to kill someone they made to be what you chose to become, someone who looks like he’s climbed out of the hell of being Death’s call girl? Or Death’s Chippendale dancer, in his case?