Page 41 of Midnight Auto Parts

“Badb has found another vehicle,” Kierce said into the quiet.

“The driver?”

“The car is empty.”

“Thank God.” I dropped a pin on this location and sent it to Carter. “Let’s go.”

As much as I wanted to poke around, I couldn’t with my stomach so tender. I didn’t want to vomit on an active crime scene and ruin any evidence that might help us pinpoint what had done this. I was a chicken for rushing away with the first excuse I could find clutched tight in both hands, but I didn’t care.

The carnage wasn’t the problem. I was a necromancer. I had seen and done worse. No. Blood, meat, and bone didn’t bother me. Selfish fear for my own skin coated my spine with cold sweat. I was terrified that I had done it again, enabled someone to hijack a loaner that I had failed in my duty to protect.

And, if I bungled that, how much more of my life would come tumbling down? How could I provide for my family if claims of gross negligence ruined my reputation, forcing me to shut down my side of the business? Demigodhood was nice and all, but it didn’t pay the bills.

Once we cleared the thicket, saliva quit flooding my mouth, and I could swallow again. “You’ve seen this kind of thing a lot, haven’t you?”

The scene had affected him, but there was a certain grave acceptance in his posture and expression that told me this was merely the latest in a never-ending line of deaths he had been called upon to witness.

“Death has been my life for as long as I can remember.”

“Dis Pater could probably help with that.”

“This doesn’t have to be your fight, Frankie.” His voice rang hollow. “But he has made it mine.”

“When Tameka and Keshawn disappeared with my loaner, it became my task.” I hadn’t wanted to get in bed with the 514 again, but here I was, fluffing my pillow. “They weren’t with the truck. Keshawn might still be alive.” I longed to practice my primal scream. “Camaro was meant to return to her family at the end of her contract. I don’t want to explain to her mother how I let a soul hijack her daughter’s body and then lost it in the woods the next state over.”

Business troubles from the dybbuk consuming my clients’ souls was bad enough, but I couldn’t do my job without loaners. If word got around that I was losing bodies to runaway clients, I would either have an overflow of repos who didn’t fear the consequences, or I would never book another lease. And I wouldn’t deserve to either if I couldn’t temper the effects of my actions.

“Besides.” I touched his arm. “You’ve done this alone for long enough, don’t you think?”

His next step faltered, and he caught himself with a palm against a nearby tree.

“What better way to learn my powers,” I reasoned, “than by receiving on-the-job training?”

“You’re the daughter of a god. These tasks are beneath you.”

“I’m not afraid of getting my hands dirty.” I forced myself to breathe. “I have to accept the changes within me. And I will. I’ll try, anyway. But I’m never going to be Dis Pater. I’m not going to have minions I keep in cages or dispatch on missions I’m too lazy to oversee for myself.”

“You’re young.” He sounded infinitely sad. “Your views might change over time.”

“I hate to tell you this, but Matty is in a similar boat to me. After his body dies, he’s essentially immortal. Just trapped on the dream plane. A dryad can live as long as the tree they bond to, but there’s precedence for dryads slipping into a new tree before the old one dies.” Necromancers tended to live for around five centuries, so Matty and I had always worried about leaving Josie behind. “She’s not fully dryad either. There’s no predicting her lifespan.” I wouldn’t quit until I found a way to keep us all together. “That means there will always be someone there to tell me when I have my head up my ass. Siblings aren’t afraid to point out your failures, weaknesses, mistakes, if you have food stuck in your teeth, or much of anything. I think it’s safe to say that I’ll enter my eternity with a boot print on my butt.”

“When you look into that future filled with your loved ones, do you see me?”

A breath caught in my throat, the unexpected question tilting the ground beneath my feet before the world righted itself again. “There’s room in the big picture for you, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Content with that response, he didn’t press for more details, and I was glad. I had no idea what today, or tomorrow, wouldbring. I couldn’t promise either to anyone until I got my situation under control. And if my sister killed me for dying, then I would be really and truly dead and the future wouldn’t matter either way.

Damn it.

Even in the comfort of my own mind, I feared my sister’s wrath more than beginning this new life.

Matty had always known his physical body would decline over time until only his soul remained, and the downside to his immortal half-life were the restrictions placed on him. We could visit him in our dreams, though. I would take that in a heartbeat over never seeing him or hearing his laugh again.

But I figured I would live a few hundred years, doing the necromancy thing, and then die.

Instead of a new five-year plan, I had to think bigger. More like five decades or five centuries.

“Good.” He took my hand, brought it to his lips, and kissed my knuckles. “I’m glad.”

---