Page 17 of Deathless
I dragged my eyes away and stared at the gravel instead. I had no business looking at him like that. I had no right to want what I wanted. My babushka always said Koschei's problem wasn't that he hid his soul. It was that he kept checking on it. I wasn't family. I wasn't even a friend, really. I was the reason this house was now a target.
Lorenzo eased himself down beside me on the wall, still favoring his injured side. "Thought you'd be inside. With all the food and family bonding."
"Not my family," I said. "Not my bonding."
He leaned back, wincing as the motion pulled at his stitches. "Eight's asleep. Has one hand under her pillow and those drawings Emilio's kid made her tucked under it too."
I raised an eyebrow. "You checked on her?"
"Someone had to. You were out here brooding, and Diego's busy being the prodigal son returned."
I let that slide. Lorenzo wasn't wrong. "She sleeping okay?"
"Like a baby assassin." His smile was quick and sharp. "Kid's got good instincts. Better than most adults I know."
We sat in silence for a moment, the wake unfolding through the open door. Inside, someone had started up the guitar again, a different tune this time, something that made feet stomp and hands clap. Diego had been pulled into a circle of men passing a bottle around, each taking a shot before handing it to the next.
"You trust them?" Lorenzo asked after a while. "These people?"
I considered the question. Trust wasn't a switch you flipped. It was a dial you turned up slowly, notch by notch, and mine had been stuck at zero for most of my adult life. "I trust Diego," I said finally. "That's enough."
"Is it?" Lorenzo kept his eyes on the house, scanning windows, doorways, the thin curtains that moved with each breeze. "Because that looked like a pretty divided room in there when he asked for sanctuary."
"Danior's going to be a problem," Lorenzo continued. "Guy like that doesn't just let things go."
I crushed my cigarette under my boot. "Diego says he's a politician."
That earned a short, dry laugh from me. "You sure you were just a Ferryman? You've got the personality of a fixer."
"I'm many things. A fixer is not one of them."
He shifted on the wall, stretching his bad leg. "Uh-huh. Just like Eight's not just some kid, and Diego's not just some—"
"Watch it," I warned, but there was no heat behind it.
Lorenzo raised his hands in mock surrender. "All I'm saying is, there's history here that we're walking into blind. These people have grievances and alliances going back generations. And we're the outsiders they're being asked to die for."
I looked back at the open door. Diego had stepped out of the circle.
"He shouldn't have asked for sanctuary," I said quietly. "It was too much."
"You think?" Lorenzo's voice was neutral, but the question underneath it carried weight.
"I know." I lit another cigarette, cupping my hand against the wind. "We should have kept moving. Found somewhere remote. Somewhere the Pantheon wouldn't think to look."
"There's nowhere the Pantheon won't look."
He was right. The Pantheon had resources, reach, and all the time in the world. They collected grudges the way some people collected stamps, meticulously and with an eye toward completion. They'd burned cities to find targets before. A small town in rural Spain wouldn't even slow them down.
He looked back at the house. "You think they'll send someone soon?"
"They already have."
He stiffened beside me, one hand drifting to his side where I knew he kept a blade. "How do you know?"
"Because I would have." I flicked ash onto the gravel. "They'll have someone on us right now. Probably had eyes on us since the funeral. They're just waiting for the right moment."
Lorenzo scanned the hills, the narrow streets, the rooftops. He had sharp eyes, but he wouldn't spot anything. The Pantheon didn't make those kinds of mistakes.
