into the depths of the pawnshop.
Eleven
NITA LEFT THE PAWNSHOP, miraculously managing not to trip on anything or break anything. Outside, the sun shone blue and bright, the crisp spring air making her tug her sweater tighter. The scent of just-bloomed flowers and freshly cut grass mingled together with the garbage from a craft brewery just up the block and the pervasive odor of car exhaust.
Nita couldn’t trade with INHUP to eliminate the Dangerous Unnaturals List.
She let out her breath. Was she just supposed to let Kovit die? Give up?
What else was there to do? It wasn’t like she could stay here thinking of new plans forever. They had one week. And the whole black market was still after Nita, hunting for her to rip her apart and sell her body. It wasn’t like she could move freely.
She needed to go to Buenos Aires and steal Fabricio’s father’s information.
Once she did that, she’d have more options. Once she knew everything about everyone, once she had all the power that information could afford, once she could trade information like currency to eliminate the threat against herself, she’d find a way to buy Kovit off the list too.
Adair had said that Tácunan Law was full of information on higher-ups in INHUP. Surely she could use it to blackmail them to take Kovit’s name off the list?
Her hand made Y incisions with an invisible scalpel as she slowly walked back toward the subway stop, mind whirling. The fresh spring air blew her frizzy curls in the wind a little, and the bright sunlight made the brown of them seem almost orange.
Blackmail was always risky. Especially with INHUP, which could, for example, add her to the Dangerous Unnaturals List. Or put out an arrest warrant.
The black market could assassinate her in a dark alley at night. But in the light of day, there wasn’t as much they could do without the authorities getting too involved. She supposed they could pay off the authorities. So could Nita, in theory.
Once she had that information.
But INHUP was a problem. Would continue to be a problem. Not just the Dangerous Unnaturals List, which was questionable at best.
She used to be a fan of the list. She’d thought it was a good thing to make it legal to kill monsters without repercussions. No vampires getting off on legal technicalities or unicorns escaping murder charges for lack of sufficient evidence.
Of course, in practice, the list hadn’t worked that way. Her father’s killer should by all rights have been on the list, but he wasn’t. INHUP knew who and what Zebra-stripes was, and whether by blackmail or something else—something Nita intended to find out when she caught him—he still hadn’t gone up on the list. She couldn’t keep Kovit off the list, but her father’s murderer was going to get away.
She thought of Kovit, living with a sword of Damocles above his head his whole life, one wrong move away from being found and murdered by INHUP, whether he’d committed a crime or not. Adair’s words from yesterday haunted her. What if there hadn’t been a list? Would there be zannie doctors who could diagnose your pain instantly? Just because zannies could get their food from torture didn’t mean they had to. An emergency room would suffice. But they chose to. Kovit chose to hurt people.
Would he still if the list was gone?
She didn’t ask herself what could have been, because Kovit was right. Asking what-ifs about people stole their agency for the choices they made in this life. But what could be. That was another question. If the list went away and Kovit was absolved of any crimes he’d committed under it, what would he do? Would he continue to hurt people or would he walk within the lines of the law? If there were stakes, real stakes, real consequences for his actions, would he change?
She didn’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.
But as long as INHUP and its list were there, neither of them would ever find out. INHUP had destroyed Kovit’s life as surely as the mafia family he’d worked for had.
Her eyes hardened, and she thought about all the ways INHUP had ruined her own life. How they’d buried evidence about her father’s murderer. How someone in INHUP had sold her cell phone GPS location online and sent hundreds of black market hunters after her. This entire mess in Toronto was squarely INHUP’s fault. If INHUP hadn’t betrayed her, she wouldn’t be murdering people in mall bathrooms or making deals