Page 63 of Saint of the Shadows

Computers malfunctioning or not, the door was locked that night. Of this, she was sure. Everything in her had fought to bust open that door, to break open those windows. Her everything wasn’t good enough. She was unable to stop them. That memory she’d carry like a jagged scar. “The door was locked.”

He shook the empty bottle in his hand. “Do you got any more of these? I could stick around. Pick your brain for leads. Or find a radioactive spider to bomb and nail in a cabinet.”

Marisol eyed the orange and purple sky outside her window. The sun was setting. Night. Night meant Vincent. “No. Those were my last.” Her failure felt like it wedged the fissure in her ribs wide. She failed to help Annie and blamed Vincent for it. She picked at the label on her bottle.

“They collected her phone as evidence. I could tell them to unlock and check it. Follow that lead if they haven’t already.” Tobias stretched and headed for the door. “If you need anything, call me.”

She stopped picking the label and attempted a slight turn of her mouth. “Tobias?” She verged on saying it—the truth.

His hand lingered over the dead bolt.

I thought you were him.“I never really thanked you for all you’ve done.”

He turned his head back. His crooked smile cut into his laugh lines. “My pleasure.” He flicked the dead bolt and turned the doorknob. “I find it funny that you think all this weird stuff that’s been happening lately stems from a zombie rat rather than the obvious.”

“What’s that?”

“Our friend. I saw him early this morning. He told me you left the safe house, and he needed help keeping an eye out for you. Oh, and his gloves? Had blood all over them.”

Marisol squinted. “I’m not following.”

“You say magic serum. I’m sayin’—disappearing Izzy? Ripping up the Mob and the Bratva?” Tobias opened the door. “Maybe our friend’s getting to be a little too extra for the city.” He stepped one foot in the hallway. “Alas, if I see him tonight, I’ll send him right over to collect the zombie rat.”

The door closed behind him. She ripped the label clean off. Annie may have let the Bloodsucker in, but their mouse misadventure hadn’t changed the truth: Vincent was always dangerous.

21

Sálvame

Throughout the evening, the fridge was a source of terror. Marisol jumped at every rattle and hum, even when it was just the ice maker or the ambient noise of the working appliance. Her heart and imagination could suffer only so many more tremors before either would kill her, not to mention that the duct tape she used was off-brand and would only hold a cannibal super-mouse for so long. But getting the man capable enough to handle such a thing required poking a wound that hadn’t quite formed a scab. How would she survive making contact with a bad case of the feels? Why, reference pages from herI’m the Assholeplaybook.

Play one, ask Vincent to come over for mouse storage, initiate a phone call to her sister Nicole, and say something upsetting like, “Is there really a difference between Windows and Linux?” Vincent would arrive right as Nicole was in the middle of losing her shit, and all Marisol would have to do is signal to the freezer and gesture apologeticallyabout really needing to take the call. Mouse would be out of her hands, and she’d barely have to utter anything to him. But Vincent was the ultimate bullshit artist and would see right through the ruse.

Which might mean she’d have to opt for playbook page two: Leave necessary item outside the apartment and give the rejected paramour a short window of time to collect it. Hey, if you want that snarling rodent your DNA created, you have 15 minutes to get it off the curb before some unhoused person places it in their shopping cart. No fuss, but that plan risked the muss of an unhinged lab experiment wandering the city streets. Not just a lab experiment, a bit of Annie and a key to bringing her murderer to justice. Marisol had to try something different, crazy even. To accomplish that, she had to become a new kind of asshole. Luckily, she had a good role model to take after.

She perched at the top of her building’s water tower, wearing the canvas jacket she borrowed. She gripped the tower’s spire with one gloved hand and adjusted her domino mask with the other. Flicking up her hoodie, she summoned forth her smooth-as-silk alter ego, the one that could confront the Patron Saint without becoming a blubbering idiot. But she still was not-so-smooth, as Marisol had busted out the knee of her jeans climbing the tower. She hit the commlink button at her wrist to call for Vincent. For rabid mouse storage and nothing more.

A burst of glowing blue veins beamed from her fire escape. Vincent already waited for her outside her apartment’s window, probably after visiting Tobias to learn about the mouse. As soon as she rubbed her cross pendant, she leaped to the railing. She swung and slid down the tower’s scaffolding, soundless—no scraping of flesh or screeching of rubber against metal.

She landed on the balls of her feet. Hiding in the recesses of darkness, he remained still. He hadn’t noticed her. She clicked her tongue and shout-whispered, “Vicente.”

He swaggered toward her. His cape whipped in the breeze behind him.

She popped up straight, hands on her hips. “I got something getting freezer burn that might interest you. Annie synthesized a serum based on your DNA and tested it on her mouse. It eliminated its tumors, but it had a weird side effect of turning it into a superpowered, deathless killer. Sound familiar?”

He nodded and huffed. Frozen breath swirled around his face.

“But you’re not a vicious killer. You’re different. A good man?” Her muscles tightened as she awaited the answer. But which part was the question—good or man?

His downcast gaze flickered up, meeting hers. “I try to be.”

The answer wasn’t reassuring, but it was pure Vincent, living along the blurred edge between asanctuary and a trap. She wanted to dwell on that edge too. So much that even under a layer of armor, her nipples furled tight.

Remember: nothing more. She rolled her shoulders and averted her eyes, returning to perform as the tough badass extraordinaire. “Based on the security measures, Annie had to have known the Bloodsucker to let him into her lab. The night he killed her, she injected him with the serum. I’m guessing, from the mouse’s antics and the latest news, we are facing a criminal mastermind who is closer to us than we realize. And he can now meet your magic superstrength with his own lab-created superstrength.”

She shifted her weight to one side and dropped an arm. “I relayed important information. What’s next? Wait for you to turn around before I disappear into the night? Isn’t that what you do?”

“Sometimes.” He turned to jump off the rooftop’s edge.

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