The Lost (Celestial Blues, Book 2) - By Vicki Pettersson Page 0,84

calloused hands. She shivered, and though he didn’t think she was feigning it, he still lifted one leg gently and crossed her legs for her. Yulyia immediately pushed into a sitting position. The dog squealed next to her. She ignored it.

Grif said, “Your beauty is not the problem. The problem is that touching you would be exactly like touching Marco Baptista. You both lurk in murky places. You both feed on other living beings. You both live like animals.”

“Look around, Shaw. Do I abide in filth like that man?”

No. If possessions were the barometer, she couldn’t be more different from Baptista.

He pointed at her chest, at where her heart was supposed to be. “I meant in there. You might be settled, sweetheart, you might be a survivor and a realist, and a leader of men who long for the good old commie days, but your heart is one of the ugliest things I’ve ever seen.”

And the emptiness he sensed surrounding her suddenly made sense. There was a phosphorous gap around her etheric body not because she was clean, but because she was lifeless. Plasma didn’t gather around someone who was already dead, and that’s what Yulyia was inside.

Yulyia didn’t strike at him, not like a viper or even a woman just scorned. But she did immediately stop the car. Grif had expected that, but he still sighed as he was dumped back in the early evening heat. It was a residential neighborhood, and in this city they all looked the same. He’d been hoping to get kicked out closer to the center of town.

“Good-bye, Mr. Shaw,” Yulyia said coolly. He held out a hand, but Yulyia just gave him a closed-mouthed smile from beneath the brim of his beeping fedora. It was one of the most chilling looks he’d ever seen. “Don’t forget to keep looking forward.”

Then the window lifted, and she was gone.

Chapter Nineteen

Hello again.”

It was here. Scratch had found her again, and was in her aunt’s body. The drugs, Kit realized, and her breath caught like a trapped dove in her chest. It made no move to reach her, but Kit felt herself begin to shake. There was no angel under the bed this time. No ally biding his time to sneak up on Scratch from behind. This time Kit was truly alone.

And Scratch knew it. Its eyes gleamed, crusting her aunt’s normally direct gaze with the same sickly-sooted stare that Kit had seen in Jeannie. It was blasphemous to see someone she loved defiled in such a way, so Kit’s reaction was almost involuntary as she picked up the hospital’s plastic pitcher of water and threw it on her aunt’s face. Marin—or Scratch inside—sputtered. Her aunt’s head dropped, and the shocked expression was blotted away, along with the water, by the thin sheet. After a moment, Scratch came up smiling widely. “Nice try, dear, but you’d have to drown me in your tears to get rid of me now.”

For the first time in almost as long as she could remember, Kit didn’t know what to say or do. This was Grif’s domain, not hers. She wanted to run, but she couldn’t leave Marin with this . . . thing in her body.

“You know, from this perspective, you look just like your mother.”

The jab, meant to push at old wounds, was exactly what Kit needed to collect herself. “You don’t know my mother.”

“Ah, but I do, even if it is only through Marin’s dusty memories. And might I take this opportunity to add . . . it’s fascinating to be privy to the secrets people will keep. Even from those they love.”

The Third feed off negative emotion, and if you reveal even the slightest hint of it, Scratch won’t hesitate to use it against you.

Remembering, Kit said, “I’m not interested in knowing anything Marin doesn’t want to share with me herself.”

“Suit yourself,” Scratch said, its smile oily. “Her cancer’s still in remission, by the way. She beat it back, and now she’s tougher than ever. She’s always had a hard time of it, though. It wasn’t easy for her with Shirley as a sister, you know.”

“Get out of her mind,” Kit said evenly.

But it was too late. Scratch had access to Marin’s innermost thoughts, and because Kit had given it her tears, it knew her dark worries as well.

“You couldn’t possibly remember this,” it continued, breaking up its syllables like footsteps over fall leaves, “but Marin and your mother fought like junkyard dogs. For sisters, they couldn’t have