When Villains Rise (Market of Monsters #3) - Rebecca Schaeffer Page 0,27
with murderous kelpies.
INHUP was as much Nita’s enemy as the black market.
She made a new plan.
She’d been planning to use the information she got from Tácunan Law to destroy the black market hunting her. But there was no reason she couldn’t use it against INHUP too. Adair had said their higher-ups would have blackmailable information in there.
Nita stood under the bright sunlight and looked up, a wild, angry smile crossing her face.
She was going to destroy everyone who’d done her wrong. The black market would grovel at her feet.
And she would annihilate INHUP.
Twelve
NITA WAS ALMOST BACK to the subway station when she pulled out her phone and texted Kovit: you done?
The response came a minute later. Yes. Waiting for you in the cafe across the street from the station.
Nita pocketed her phone and headed back, trying not to become swamped by the hugeness of her plans. Destroy INHUP. It would be a feat that the world would never forget.
If she could pull it off. That was one hell of an if.
She let out a breath. Nita was the girl who had destroyed el Mercado de la Muerte, burned it right to the ground. She was the person who had evaded the black market’s capture, who’d killed everyone that had tried to take her down.
INHUP was just one more thing she was going to destroy in her quest for the life she wanted.
She turned back onto the street with the subway station and immediately noticed the café Kovit had mentioned. It had a little teapot-shaped sign, and the facade was painted the pale blue of a baby shower. It looked like the kind of place little old ladies went to coo over small children and gossip over scones.
The inside proved Nita’s intuition right. It looked like the living room of an old woman’s house, all doilies and teapots on shelves. Cute tables with flower-patterned tablecloths and framed pictures on the wall of cats.
The whole place was packed with people. Wall to wall, they stood around, lined up for the counter. A petit East Asian girl with a high ponytail offered samples, and in the corner, a news team was packing up their cameras while a Sikh reporter chatted with an older white woman who was probably the owner.
Ads blared that this was the fourth-anniversary bake sale, and people who took selfies with the promotional banner and the cookies they bought would get a ten percent discount.
Kovit was at a table with a pink tablecloth with red hearts patterned on it, and Nita tried not to laugh at the incongruous sight of him sitting there, casually picking blood from underneath his fingernails.
He raised his head when he saw her and vacated the table, gesturing for her to follow him to the back. Nita squeezed through the crowd, trying to avoid touching people, and headed upstairs, where it was much more sparsely populated. No news crews, no crowds. Nita’s shoulders relaxed.
He sat down at a table, and she sat down across from him.
“So, how’d it go?” she asked.
He smiled at her, free and happy and gentle, and for a moment he did look like he belonged in the happy, cozy teashop full of cute things. He looked, not younger, but more naive. The cruelty and hunger were washed from his face as the memory of the happy child he must have been pushed through his older features.
“It went well.” He swallowed and looked down at the tablecloth. “It was really good to see her.”
Nita felt a weird pang of jealousy. She’d occasionally imagined having a sibling, someone else in her life so that she wasn’t always isolated in her dissection room or alone with her terrifying mother. Someone to talk to.
But as soon as the emotion came, it passed. Because the reality of having a sibling felt far too complex. Nita didn’t want any of Kovit’s anxieties about his sister not loving him or accepting him, his fear of judgment, or his pining for what could have been.
No, Nita was just fine on her own.
“I’m glad,” she whispered, and she was. Because Kovit seemed animated again, alive in a way that she’d been scared he wouldn’t be after what happened with Henry.
He ran a hand through his hair and gave her a self-deprecating smile. “I mean, it was awkward too. Ten years apart has changed us both. And it’s not like I could talk about . . . you know.”
“Yeah.” She didn’t imagine his sister would take Kovit’s previous profession well.