Heart and Soul by Jackie May (reading list .TXT) 📗

there’s no telling how close we’ll get, because I got no brakes when it comes to you.”

Hillerman whirls on him with a death stare. Russo stops, and even though he’s two steps below her, their faces are nearly level with each other. He meets her dagger eyes with an easy calm. “No disrespect intended. What I meant to say is, what should I call you?”

Her voice is ice cold. “You shouldn’t.”

I cringe, but for some reason mysterious to me, Russo responds to her rejection with a serene smile. When Hillerman stomps inside, he follows her.

“Your partner has a death wish,” I say to Jay.

He’s grinning. “You have no idea. He wouldn’t shut up about her all morning.”

“Really? C’mon…for her?”

“I’m telling you, I’ve never seen him like this. I think he might be…”

“Shut up, he is not.”

He looks deep into my eyes. “You think I don’t know what it looks like?”

His emerald eyes twinkle through his pain, like the last rays of an afternoon sun lighting the bottoms of storm clouds. Shimmering snowflakes drift between our faces. Some of them melt right there in the heat of our breath. I raise to my tiptoes and kiss him. “You sure you’re all right?”

He grunts. “Don’t worry, it feels much worse than it looks. I…” He stops short.

“What?”

“The car bomb was close, Shayne. I mean, just a few feet away.”

“I don’t understand. Then how are you…”

“How am I still here? Because of Nick Gorgeous. He was working the scene for the Agency. He saw guys running away from the car, knew something was up. He threw himself in front of me just in time. You know Gorgeous. For him, this was nothing. He barely felt it.”

Okay, scratch that part about me being able to protect Jay better than Nick Gorgeous. If I had jumped in front of that bomb, both Jay and I would be dead. A heaviness falls over us.

“I thanked him, of course,” Jay continues. “But he seemed…I don’t know, annoyed.”

“Well, yeah, he’d just been blown up.”

“Maybe. Or maybe he agrees with everyone else in the underworld, except you, and wishes I’d just go back to the kids’ table already.”

He starts us up the stairs. I pull away. “You go on. I have to call in.”

I don’t call in. I decide to text instead. At first, I start in with a long-winded gush full of superlatives. I don’t like it. Doesn’t sound right to me. But saying thank you to Nick Gorgeous is not me, so how’s it supposed to sound? I delete the long message. Maybe for me, being brief is like the ultimate superlative. So I send: Gorgeous…I owe you.

And, naturally, my rare moment of genuine emotional communication is met with a slap in the face.

Nick: Take my advice, Shayne. Cut him loose, and now. Send him as far from Detroit as possible.

I stare at the phone, not caring that snowflakes are melting on the screen. After those tantalizing blinking dots, a final note pops in.

Nick: For both your sakes.

I want to throw the phone as far as I can. I want to crush it to bits and stomp on it. I quickly peck out an entire line of middle finger emojis.

I don’t send it. After working with him these last few months, I’ve learned that Nick is not nearly as gruff as he pretends to be. He’s not trying to bust my chops. He’s only trying to help, in his tough-love way. Silence would be the mature response.

Meh. I go ahead and send the middle fingers.

The Old Wayne County building is a hundred and twenty years old. Although some fancy investment company spent millions restoring it a few years ago, the building is still vacant. There’s definitely no secret masquerade going on. We walk empty corridors of marble and stone, our voices booming.

“It looks the part,” Jay says. “Marble columns and steps out front. That old government building look—what did he call it, Shayne?”

“Shit, don’t ask me.”

“Neoclassic,” Hillerman says. “But there’s not really a dome on the roof. It’s a tower.”

Russo’s deep voice sounds godlike in these marble chambers. “And no Latin inscriptions.”

“I’m telling you, I know every major building in this city,” I say. “Me and Hillerman already checked half a dozen others. This one’s as close as it gets to the description.”

Hillerman holds her thumb and forefinger up, a few inches apart. “The invitation is the size of a business card. The building couldn’t have had much detail. More like a logo. Could be it’s not literal at all.”

Brenner leans against a marble column. “Like maybe it just stands for something?”

“Power,” Russo guesses. “Or government. The ruling class. Extreme wealth.”

I trade looks with Jay and Hillerman. Russo just perfectly described the sorcerer community. Makes sense for a secret society of necromancers to use such a symbol.

Hillerman sounds grim when she says, “Could be the Latin inscription is the key.”

“Great, the one thing our snitch couldn’t remember,” I say. “We’re right back to square one.” I look around for something to kick, but the building is empty. Not even a wastebasket. I pull one of my Converses off and chuck it down the hall. “We have to go back to Arael and press him harder. Squeeze the hell out of him.”

“If he doesn’t remember, he doesn’t remember,” Hillerman says quietly.

Her calmness pisses me off. “Then, what? We just never go outside again? Hide behind magic wards forever? Get used to worrying that every time we step out the front door, somebody’s going to try to blow up my boyfriend?”

Jay corrects me. “Fiancé.”

A full-on canine growl escapes my throat. Tearing my other shoe off, I send it spiraling at the wall next to his head. “And you! Why didn’t you notice those guys parking right behind you? We know East Side likes car bombs. They pulled that shit on us last time. Be smarter!”

He folds his arms. “Are you done?”

The shock of Jay being snarky with me sends my irritation through the roof—I feel my fox raging to