Page 20 of Ride or Die (The Body Shop #5)

He didn’t know the half of it. Considering I had a mad scientist for a father, I really was lucky to be intact. Had I lingered, his natural curiosity, and the desire to make copious research notes for next time, if there was one, might have seen me back here missing more than a couple of toes.

“I’m sorry.” I reached out a hand, solidifying them both enough to grasp my fingers. “We’re all here?”

“All here.” Vi finally loosened her hold. “All safe and sound.”

“Get your man to the crypt,” Rollo said from his lean against the wall. “I set extra protections in there.”

Protections for me. Not Kierce. I read the truth, and the sympathy, of that on his face.

Still, as often as we butted heads, I was grateful he put in the effort to keep me safe.

A chime rang out, announcing another arrival, and my siblings tumbled out the elevator doors.

As much as I wanted to embrace them, I had to get Kierce settled first so I could go stash Dinorah.

“I don’t mind.” He read my mulish glare, his own eyes glassy, and kissed my forehead. “Anything to keep you safe.”

“Looks like you got your answer.” Matty broke out in a grin. “Kierce seems like Kierce to me.”

Furrowing his brow, he glanced between us, “What answer?”

“Frankie is worried that Dis Pater programmed you to love her,” Josie said helpfully. “That if she can free you from him, you won’t care about her anymore. But, from where I’m standing, I smell love in the air.”

“Frankie,” Kierce whispered with such gentleness that my eyes stung. “Even thinking that, you came for me.”

“I’ll always come for you,” I promised him and willed him to believe me.

“As your brother, I didn’t need to hear that.” Matty turned green. “I threw up in my mouth a little.”

“If you weren’t so pervy, you wouldn’t have these problems.” Josie thumped his ear. “It was romantic.”

“Me? Pervy?” He gawked at her. “Pot, meet Kettle.”

While they devolved into bickering, I linked fingers with Kierce and guided him to the crypt.

I helped him inside and lost the battle as tears slid down my cheek.

Someone, probably Vi or Jean-Claude, had placed a twin-sized inflatable mattress on the floor.

The pillow would likely get tossed, since Kierce remained as suspicious of them as ever, but the bright sheets and plush blanket made the space almost homey.

As I helped him into bed, his head toward the door, I spotted the cat bed on the built-in stone bench.

“Where’s Badb?” I called over my shoulder while tucking in Kierce. “I see her bed is ready.”

Shockingly, she hadn’t been the first one in the elevator to greet us. Well, greet Kierce. She had priorities. I bet she was in a snit too, since she had been kept from him.

“We had to cage her to keep her from following the others into Abaddon, and even after we set her free in the house, she has refused to forgive us.” Vi blew out a sigh. “I’ll see if Jean-Claude can talk to her.”

“Hey.” I knelt at Kierce’s head and raked my fingers through his soft hair as his eyes pinched shut. “I need to talk to Pedro and Pascal about our plan.”

“The bullet is doing the trick.” He turned his clammy cheek into my palm.

“Don’t involve the Suarezes except as a last resort.

They’ve already done so much for Matty. I won’t ask them to do more unless I become a risk.

If that happens, use any weapon at your disposal.

” His silvery gaze slid past my shoulder. “ Any weapon.”

Dinorah.

That was what he meant. I parted my lips, about to ask if he recognized the blade, but I couldn’t risk that question while a stranger lurked in the garage.

He could simply mean for me to feel free to stab him with any pointy object.

Or he might assume if I stole it from Ithas that it was powerful. I would have to question him later.

“Let’s monitor your condition and see how it goes, okay?”

He made a low sound in his throat, and his eyes drifted closed on a long sigh.

The rescue mission had taken a toll on him. The way I had climbed on him probably didn’t help. Pain was forcing him into his not-exactly-sleep state, and I wouldn’t begrudge him the relief he found there.

“I’ll watch over him for you, mija .” Pedro drifted over my head, into the crypt. “Go talk to your mother.”

With reluctance to face what came next, I exited the crypt and rejoined the others in the garage.

“You don’t have to think of me as your mother,” the woman who birthed me muttered in my general direction, proving I made the right call to wait for privacy to discuss the sword with Kierce if her hearing was that keen. “Just call me Lucia.”

Unsure if I should be offended she didn’t want me thinking of her as my mother or relieved I didn’t have to fake it, I let the comment slide off my back. “Okay, Lucia.” I jolted as it hit me. “You can see spirits.”

“I’m a quarter necromancer. The ability to see spirits is my only undead gift.

” She scuffed her dusty boot on the concrete.

“I’m also a quarter fae. That’s where the portals come in.

Both of those are on my mother’s side. My father was a warg.

That makes me half warg too, but I can’t shift anything except my fingernails and toenails.

” She grew her fingernails into claws. “Still a nifty trick, though. Comes in handy more often than you might think.” She wiggled her toes in her shoes.

“The toenail bit, well, it’s just weird. ”

That was a whole lot of unsolicited family history, and I would never remember it without notes.

I had too much else cluttering my brain to make room for this info-dump, and I wasn’t sure I wanted this taking up permanent space in my head when I had already learned a ton of stomach-churning facts from Ithas.

No response made it past my lips, and Vi stepped into the breach.

“Let’s take this upstairs, and I’ll have Jean-Claude bring coffee and some of that peach cobbler for y’all.” Vi ushered our group into the elevator then speared my siblings with a warning glare. “Then you two can have a moment alone.”

Neither of my siblings made any promises, which caused my lips to twitch in a smile.

The elevator ride up was awkward, stuffy, and convinced me that wherever Vi had found Lucia, she had no time to shower before she came to collect me. Which begged the question how Vi identified Lucia, let alone located her and convinced her to open a portal to Abaddon and retrieve me.

All questions I would have to ask the woman herself the second I finished this audience with Lucia.

Through it all, Anunit remained a comforting presence, if an intangible one, at my side.

As soon as the elevator doors rolled open, our group dispersed, leaving the living room available for Lucia and my use.

Once my siblings shuffled to their rooms, Rollo escorted Vi to his office. That left Jean-Claude to serve us the promised refreshments. Though he elected to go with ice-cold sweet tea and buttery toffee cookies, which didn’t hurt my feelings one bit.

“Holler if you need anything.” He kissed the top of my head. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

The look he cut Lucia warned her to be on her best behavior, and she nodded that she understood.

Comforted that I wouldn’t be alone, I squeezed his hand. “Thanks, Jean-Claude.”

To buy myself a few seconds to gather my nerve, I excused myself, promising Lucia to be right back even if the temptation to run grew stronger with every passing moment.

Anunit followed me, and I shut the door as quietly as possible.

I wanted to avoid my siblings thinking I had turned chicken and ambushing me over Lucia.

Slowly, I removed Dinorah before I cut myself a third butt cheek by sitting with it shoved down my pants. I placed it on the bed and was unsurprised when Anunit leapt up and curled around the blade.

Leaving her to mourn in peace, I returned to the living room and its claustrophobic atmosphere.

I would rather spoon Anunit than sit on the couch across from a birth mother I had never wanted to meet, one that Vi conjured out of thin air as far as I could tell. “How do you know Vi?”

Before I put my trust in her, even a spoonful, I needed to talk to Vi and learn how she had identified this woman and verified her credentials.

“Like I said, I met her an hour before I opened the portal to Abaddon.”

Perched on the edge of the sofa, she hung her hands between her widespread knees, her leg bouncing.

“How did she know who you were or how to find you?”

“No clue how she figured out I was your…” she made a vague gesture, “…but she’s been vetting me for a month.

I’m not an easy person to find, and those who know where to look got word to me someone was asking around about me.

” Her knee bounced higher. “From what I gathered, she started looking for your birth mother around the time you died. Which, congrats on making it back. Not an easy thing to do.”

“She never told me she was looking, let alone that she had found you.”

Crap. That must have been what Vi wanted to talk to me about before Ankou kidnapped me. She would have wanted to warn me, but there hadn’t been time.

“Guess she felt you might need someone like me in your corner if your father took a keener interest in you, which he did.” Leaning back, she smoothed her palms down her thighs.

“I doubt she would have jumped the gun if he hadn’t taken you.

I got the sense I was meant to be her ace in the hole.

But once Ithas had you, she initiated contact and paid for a retrieval. ”

“Vi paid you to save me?”

“Look at this from my perspective.” She bristled.

“I get summoned to meet with a client who I know has been sniffing around, which, fair enough. Folks get twitchy about paying fees as high as mine. They want guarantees I’m worth it, that I can do as advertised, and it’s common for them to ask around about me. ”