Page 9 of Saint of the Shadows

“Let me guess. You’re picking up extra shifts?”

“I am.”

“You’re hallucinating.”

Marisol’s skin tingled from the lingering memory. She rubbed her arms for warmth. To be warm and solid like him. “He was real.”

“Or he’s rich, radioactive, or alien.” There went Annie, committing a continental shift in conversation.

Failing to follow along, Marisol asked, “What?”

“Superheroes in the movies. They’re rich, radioactive, or alien.” Annie shrugged. “Which one is he?”

“I’d sooner believe in the latter two than the rich giving even the most constipated and tiniest of shits about Shadowhaven. Besides, our man’s middle class.” Marisol drew out the beat-up business card the detective gave her. She handed it to Annie.

“The crazy person gave you his business card?”

“I think so.” But after Marisol said it, she wasn’t so sure.

Annie read the card. “Detective Tobias Quinlan is your Patron Saint? Why would a detective play dress up?”

“Because there are too many rules to follow and too many boxes to check. Maybe by putting on a costume, he finally serves Justice.” Marisol plopped her empty cup loudly on the counter for emphasis. “My brother’s rotting up at the Hill because they can always scrounge up a case against the pawn but never the king.”

Although the state had charged Caz with at least one murder he had actually committed, the string of murders he confessed to was not his handiwork. He took the fall for the gang, so everyone else in the Shadows stayed clean. And the free birds were always Shadowhaven’s worst: sinister and powerful men who had the right family names to keep their dirty meat hooks jabbed into the city for over a century.

Despite the huge hole Caz’s absence had ripped into her family, nothing changed in the city. A new enforcer, who dirtied his hands with blood, took hisspot. That guy would inevitably be caught or killed himself, and the cycle repeated. The shitty ouroboros of it all tugged so hard that Marisol rested her elbows on her lap until her hair fell into her eyes.

Annie’s chair glided over the vinyl floor. She brushed the hair away from Marisol’s face. “You really think a mask makes a difference?”

Marisol lifted her head and attempted a pathetic smile. What did she have to lose?

Annie pushed her glasses to her nose and peered over the top of them. “Maybe I should wear one.” She laughed and handed back the card. “Call him. At least he’s not boring.”

Maybe Marisol would in a few days—to let the intensity from last night wane a bit. She wouldn’t want this Tobias Quinlan to believe that all it took was a mask and a quick-to-heal knife wound to bring out her clingy side.

Buzz!Annie’s cell phone rattled next to Marisol’s leg. She picked it up but noticed the message.

I need it. Give it to me now.

“Your phone. I didn’t mean to read it.” Marisol held it out. Annie turned red and snatched it from her.

Annie, a self-described asexual, exchanged embarrassing, saucy texts? Who was the messenger? The reincarnation of Rosalind Franklin? Marisol teased, “Who is she?”

Silence.

“They?”

No response again.

“He?!”

“It’s nothing.”

“What’d he do to get you to join the dark side? Whisper sweet nothings about the human genome? Show you his long, thick strand of DNA he isolated? Spit on your dry, neglected petri dish?”

“I minored in double entendres, and you’re grossing me out.”

“Are you sure you want to go to the ball with me? Your messenger doesn’t want to take you?”

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