Page 130 of Amber Gambler

“Frankie.” The velvet glide of his voice caressed my senses. “You didn’t tell her.”

“That I’m dead?”

I hadn’t had a pulse in forty-eight hours.

Dis Pater told me if I cared so damn much about it to manifest myself one.

Dis Pater was kind of a dick.

My first clue? Him roasting me like a whole hog on a spit at the train shed to see if he was right about me not being an initiate or an acolyte. Lucky for me, he wasn’t wrong. I don’t think he cared either way.

“You’re not dead.”

As evidenced by the fact I was still alive-ish, one of my parents was—or had been—a god.

Either a death god conceived me or my divine parent had knocked up a necromancer.

I didn’t want to know. I didn’t care. I had no interest in finding one or both of them.

Especially if identifying my divine parent came with obligations like Kierce and Ankou shouldered for their gods. Besides, one of the promises us Marys made one another was we would never search out our birth parents.

“Dis Pater claimed I was already dying.” I wet my lips, which made them split. “That children born from a mortal union with a death god are terminal. Do you believe that? Do you think I would have died soon?”

That bright light I saw in the culvert? I think…it was me. This new me. Emerging. Or trying to anyway.

“Your blood had already turned, and your powers were fluctuating.”

As it happened, neither the fruit, nor the leaf had been to blame for my glitter plasma. It was all me.

“That’s not an answer.”

“Had your soul been mortal, you would have become like Ankou—like me—when you died.” His rueful smile hurt. “But your soul was never mortal. Only in death could you ascend to what you were meant to be.”

Too bad I had no idea what that was. “Do you think Ankou knew the truth?”

“Why would he feed you divine fruit if he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt you would rise?”

“That’s what worries me.”

Ankou had wanted me dead. No doubt about it. But he never gave a reason. And that bothered me.

A throat cleared behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder to find Leonard Collins standing in the road.

“Hey.” I twisted to face him. “How are things?”

With Harrow greasing the wheels from his hospital bed, Audrey had elected to return to foster care. Just not to the Houwaards. She also reenrolled in high school. I wished her the best on both fronts.

“Good.” He smoothed a hand down his shirt. “I just wanted to say thanks. Again. For everything.”

“I’m glad I could help.” I smiled at him, which hurt, but I meant it. “I’m glad Audrey is safe.”

“I heard about your problem while I was canvassing the graveyards for information.”

I had so many problems just now that I sat there, flipping through them, trying to figure out which one he meant.

“Your business? It’s been slow? After the ghost-eater case?”

Sweeping his arm out behind him, he drew my attention to more than a dozen spirits lined up outside of my office. A few I recognized from Bonaventure. A couple I had never met. “What is this?”

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