“Kinky ropes?”
“Eh, you can search it on the internet later. We have more pressing matters to talk about, don’t we, pookie?”
“Pookie?What the fuck are you on?”
“What I’m on is you trying to kill my friend here. I’d like the general why you’d do it, who sent you, ya know, all the usual procedural stuff,” Cherry said with a shrug, pulling her phone out and flicking through apps until she clicked on a digital notebook. I guessed even psychics needed a little help with their memory. Fair enough.
“What? Who said anything about killing anyone? I was just tryin’ to rob the place.”
That seemed pretty unlikely, and my suspicions were confirmed when Cherry leaned forward andboopedthe man on the tip of his strong, slightly crooked nose. “If I tell you I’m a psychic and just about the last person you wanna lie to, will that help us skip all the rigmarole of you pretending you’re not an assassin?” She paused, looking above the man’s head as if she was seeing something the rest of us couldn’t. “Huh, and a pretty novice one at that.”
“Novice!” he spat. “Who you callin’ a novice?”
“You, because you are one. Way too many rookie mistakes, ya know? But really, that works out well for you.”
The man’s gaze flicked to the rest of us, and while I was still catching up with everything that had just happened, I had enough wherewithal to really glare him down like he deserved.
It was hard to wrap my head around the fact that I was looking at someone who’d just tried to kill my brother. While what had happened at our house with Luther and our father seemed impossibly professional, meticulous, and even unsolvable, this was the complete opposite.
“How so?”
“Because if you were an elite assassin with a line of bodies as long as the sea is wide, we wouldn’t be able to help you work out a deal with the cops. But, since you’re all fresh as a daisy, I’m sure we can put a good word in, maybe get you off on a robbery charge.”
The assassin glanced from one face to another. Strange how Cherry talking to him made him seem real, like an actual person, rather than a boogeyman.
But if he was indeed a novice, then how was he connected to the murder of my father and older brother? Things weren’t adding up.
“And why would you do that?”
“Well, we wouldn’t, at least not right now. But if you were to just answer a few questions, help us figure out a few things, then we can pull some strings. Right, Paul? Chris?”
“Right,” I answered quickly.
“Uh, right,” Chris answered after a beat.
“What about me?” Jackson objected.
Cherry batted her eyes at him. “Would you like me to pretend that you would be the one talking to the cops or just save time acknowledging that you’re going to be waist-deep in some sort of shifter-affecting spirit once we’re done here?”
“Ah, good point, and if I may say, good idea.”
I would have groaned, but I withheld it for the sake of the assassin. Or rather, for the sake of the illusion that we were all functional adults. Somehow, I didn’t think the guy was buying it.
“Why would you do that?”
“Because we’re looking for a much bigger fish to fry than you,” Cherry said, her flippancy suddenly turning down to zero as her voice dropped into a lower register. She leaned forward again, but this time there was no booping, no joking. “Look, you’re in the wrong line of business, and you’ve made some very bad decisions to get here. But I’m not going to pretend that I haven’t made bad decisions in my life either.
“This was your first real gig, wasn’t it? The thing that was finally going to get you out of the financial hole you’ve found yourself in, or maybe even born into. You’ve killed before, yes,but it was for survival, when your hand was forced and whoever was on the other end of your actions left you with no choice.”
I couldn’t help but stare at her. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen her do this, yet it was just as striking. The way she listed out deeply personal things so matter-of-factly was as unnerving as it was awe-inspiring.
“But you have a choice now. You’ll probably have to serve a little time—consequences of your actions, after all. However, this doesn’t have to define you. Once you’re out, we can set you up with an opportunity where you can provide for yourself and live comfortably without having to take another life or risk your safety for money. Whether that’s college, or a trade, or another line of work, the VanMarches have the connections to help you.
“But first, you have to choose to help us. We won’t force you. You can clam up right now, probably serve a whole lot of time. When you get out, you can try to return to the life, but you’ll find yourself outpaced by youngsters a decade fresher than you, who had all that time outside the slammer to train and get bigger contracts than you could ever dream of.”
Cherry leaned back, allowing the silence to drag on for longer than was comfortable. “So, what will it be? And before you answer, I should warn you that if you lie to me even once, the deal’s off.”
“I…” The assassin paused for an even longer amount of time, and even though I considered myself a patient man, I had an urge to throttle him. I pushed it down. This wasn’t the time to lose my self-control. “I want a healer.”