Angel Town by Lilith Saintcrow Page B

better. And a chance to sit down and think about some shit wouldn’t be bad either.
    “Good fucking deal.” Devi hauled herself up. “Wait a second, though.”
    Her hand came down and gripped my right wrist. I almost flinched, the motion controlling itself as she turned my hand palm up, the gun pointed off to the side. Theron had my other arm, and I was effectively trapped.
    But I suffered it. For a bare half second I wanted to twitch away, but my control reasserted itself. She was a hunter .
    I could trust her.
    She studied the gem in the streetlamp glow, blue eyes unblinking. “Huh. Where’d you get that?”
    “It was on me when I woke up.” I weighed it as she glanced up at me, decided to drop the other shoe. “In…in a grave.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Shallow. Out in the desert. Just off a railroad line. I caught a ride into town last night.” I shuddered. There was a diner, and a blue-eyed man who gave me my gun back. And Martin Pores, nice guy who pulled a vanishing act. “Almost got mugged. Then I went to Walmart.”
    Theron made a small sound. We both looked at him. His mouth was twitching. Another snorting half laugh escaped him, and one corner of Anya’s mouth twisted up.
    She sobered almost immediately. She eyed the trickle of hot blood easing down from my scalp. Head wounds are messy; this one had been caused by a bit of shrapnel, and it was still weeping a little. I’d probably have lost most of the pints I was carrying if not for the healing.
    Superhuman healing. As if I was still hellbreed-tainted. But the gem didn’t feel like Perry’s mark on me—the scarred lip-print, a hard little nugget of corruption working in toward the bone.
    This was something different. And I didn’t like the idea that she might be checking me for…what?
    Which just brought up the question of what the hell had happened, what had ended up with me in a shallow grave and a hole in my memory the size of the breathing city itself.
    Her free hand came up, and she smeared a little of the blood on my forehead. Rubbed it between her fingers, considering, and actually sniffed it. Examined her fingers in the warm electric glow from the bodega’s porch light. Racks of novenas in the window behind her rippled, and I blinked, swaying.
    “Devi?” Theron, carefully.
    “She’s clear. I don’t know how or why, but she’s clean.” Anya blew out between her lips, her bindi winking at me. This close, I could see that it was, indeed, a subdermal piercing. You’d think the prospect of getting hit in the face would’ve made her refrain, but I so wasn’t one to throw sartorial stones. “I suppose if you knew what’d happened to you, Kismet, you’d let me in on it?”
    “I have some memories,” I repeated. My eyebrows drew together as the hornet buzz returned, threading under the surface of my brain. “Fragments. I remember…I was on my way to the Monde to question Perry. Because…Saul. They had Saul.” And now I had a question of my own. “What are you checking me for, Devi?”
    “Great.” She said it like a curse, and let go of my wrist, wiping her bloody fingers on her leather pants.
    I seriously wanted a pair myself. My jeans were torn and flapping. Some of the pints I’d lost were a result of roadrash—you get to going faster than the average human, and you can erase a metric fuck ton of skin.
    “Devi?” Very carefully, each word calm and neutral. “What are you checking me for?”
    She shook her head, silver beads chiming. “Later. All right, Theron. You’re right. Let’s go. But then I’m taking her to Galina’s.”
    He nodded. “Come on, Jill. Someone wants to see you.”
    I took hold of my fraying temper. If Devi wanted to clue me in later, fine. I could trust her that far. “Great.” I didn’t have to work to sound sarcastic. “Is it someone else who wants to kill me?”
    “Oh, no.” He paused. “At least, I’m almost sure he doesn’t.” He seemed to find this hilarious, and snickered at his own