Page 30 of Secondhand Soul

I let out a startled, possibly hysterical laugh, and we brush knuckles.

“I won’t tell anyone. If I had a baby and someone— Well, look, Rhea and Manny are gonna have a baby one day. They told me I’m the big brother. From the second they said that, I pictured this tiny little thing, and the thought of someone hurting it—they’d be pulp. A little pile of goo.”

I nod. “I respect that,” I say, clearing my throat to see if I can persuade my voice to work again.

“So.” Lazarus breathes out. “Not too many people know exactly how I got away from the situation in California. This place, Pine Ridge, it’s heavily protected by magic to keep the bad supernatural beings out—and bad humans, too, probably. The men you were running from—the men we’re running from—they probably can’t even find us. Can’t find this place.”

Oh, that’s so not true.

But I nod.

His gray hands open and shut like a book. “That chapter of our lives is in the past. That’s something Manny tells me, even though he doesn’t know the full picture. I’m sure he can guess a few things.” His eyes drift away, then back, fixing on mine. “Close that chapter, Victoria, all right? Not the part about loving your daughter, not missing her. Just about avenging her.”

“Avenging,” I croak. “That’s... That’s a nice way to put it.” I wonder if anyone else but him would understand that’s how it felt.

“That’s the way it was,” Lazarus says firmly, a flash of fangs in my direction. “You keep my secret, and I’ll keep yours.”

I nod eagerly, and I want to believe my story. I want to believe it ends there, that I killed Frank, ran, someone chased me, and I fought back. That life starts over. That life changes, sometimes for the better.

“Sounds good.” I smile.

When Lazarus leaves in a little while, my duffel bag and necessities by my feet, the offer to stay and help me move around if needed still in the air, I sit and think about what I’ve done.

I told a half-truth.

I agreed to live a lie—a prettier, happier lie where I don’t kill, and neither does he.

I agreed to live a lie that’s going to come true.

Oh, it might last for a couple of weeks. Even a month.

But if I don’t kill Lazarus, then Pazcuso really will send someone after me, and I really will have to run and hide.

Maybe his goons won’t find me here, I muse. Lazarus said that this place is protected from bad things.

But he got in.

And I got in.

And we’re both killers. I came here, right to the edge of his sanctuary, gun ready.

But you didn’t kill him. Didn’t shoot.

Does that mean that something “magical” knows I’m not truly bad if I’ve only ever killed bad things? Did it stop me from hurting Lazarus?

I wince and try to rise from my chair.

It’s a painful failure that leaves me gasping and half-crawling to the bathroom.

Or does it just mean that all of this is bullshit, and the only thing keeping either of us on a leash is the desire to survive?

Chapter Eleven: Lazarus

“Lazarus?”

Victoria’s voice is breathless in my ear.

My hand drifts to my cock, still hard from a dream that I had where Victoria was making those same kind of noises. My name spilling out in little gasps and sighs.