The Given

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Grif and Kit had met Dr. Charles Ott the previous summer while working on a case involving a particularly brutal drug that caused the user’s skin to fall off—while they were still alive. Those were the first instances of the drug spotted in the United States, and solving the case had revived Dr. Ott’s flagging career. So he owed Kit and Grif, and told them as much, though Grif doubted the man had foreseen a five A.M. phone call in his future when he said it.

Still, a half hour later he met them outside the coroner’s office, giving them a sleepy wave hello, and a big yawn to the security guard inside. He scratched his head as he led them along the long, linoleum-lined hallway, which caused his bright red hair to sit up in spiky flames as they approached his lab.

“Yeah, I remember Barbara McCoy,” he said, turning to push into his office while facing them. “Still waiting to hear what her next of kin wants to do with her remains.”

Grif made an acknowledging sound in the back of his throat, which encouraged Ott to turn away, and Grif used the moment to glance at Kit. She’d told him what happened with Ray DiMartino, an accounting that had them both shaking again by the end of it. So Barbara’s next of kin might take up space on the slab next to her, but he wasn’t going to be calling Ott back anytime soon.

They followed Ott into the autopsy room, and to the wall of refrigeration units behind him. He studied the accompanying paperwork, then yanked open one of the doors without ceremony. Pulling out a long stainless-steel tray, he made sure the toe tag matched the paperwork, and then looked up at Kit. “You sure you’re ready for this?”

She was sheet-white and already trembling. Still, she just gritted her teeth and jerked her head at Grif. “He’s the one you need to worry about.”

Ott grinned. “Okay, then.”

And in a flourish befitting a world-class magician, he whisked the sheet from the body in one fell swoop.

It actually wasn’t as bad this time around. After all, they’d both seen Barbara’s body before, on the floor of her high-rise apartment, and this time there wasn’t the sight and smell of blood pooling around her, or the assault of gunpowder shocking the air. Still, there was very little left of the woman’s face, her skull a blasted crater of bone cutting into the remaining gray matter. Grif looked at Kit.

“Geez,” she said, putting a hand to her head. “I don’t feel so well.”

Though Grif was closer, Ott reached Kit’s side first. “Can I get you something? Do you want to sit down? Get some fresh air?”

“No, no. I’m sure I’ll be fine. It’s just that it’s so early and I’m not used to this.” She paused dramatically. “But . . .”

“Yes?” Eager, Ott leaned in too close to her face. Grif fought the urge to pull the man away by the scruff of his neck. He got a pass, Grif figured, because he probably didn’t have a whole lot of contact with the living.

“Maybe a soda would settle my stomach?” Kit pitched the statement high, ending it in a question.

As expected, Ott rushed to her rescue. “There’s a vending machine in the hall. I’ll be right back.”

Grif watched him scramble away, red hair bouncing behind him like a troll doll’s. “You gonna scratch him behind the ears when he gets back?”

“Think I should?” Kit smiled as she went to lock the door behind Ott, though they were both serious again by the time she returned to Grif’s side. “He’s not going to let us in again after this.”

“I don’t think we’re going to need him to in the next twenty-four hours,” Grif muttered, because after that he’d be gone, never to roam the Surface again. At least, not as Griffin Shaw.

“Grif—” Kit chided.

“I know. Don’t worry, I know.” He blew out a breath and refocused on the corpse.

“Just hurry up and do what you need to before he calls that guard.”

“No problem. I’m an ace with the newly dead.”

And he was thankful for whatever Sarge had done to Kit. If Sarge had gifted her with Divine Touch, then he didn’t have to worry about breaking one of the Pures’ ridiculous rules about what she was supposed to see. He also hadn’t forgotten about Zicaro, stuck somewhere out there with a known killer. They needed to move quickly.

So, bracing himself, he filled his lungs with a deep, rib-splitting breath, felt his angelic nature fire up—originating in the twin feathers tucked beneath his shoulder blades—and then blew all that power out at the corpse.

He had to admit, he enjoyed the way Kit jumped at the same time Barbara’s corpse did, or maybe it was just the way Kit clung to him when she did it, and though the white-hot flash of heat and light might have been too fast for her mortal eyes to detect, he knew she scented the smoke when she covered her mouth and nose with her hand.

“What is—?”

“Just sulfur,” Grif said, not taking his attention from the coalescing funnel. “Better known ’round these parts as brimstone.”

“But brimstone is bad, right? It’s hellfire, damnation, stuff like that?”

Grif shook his head. “Sulfur is an essential element for all living things. It acts as both fuel and a respiratory compound. And right now we need both. Watch.”

Much like plasma, the yellowish sulfur swirled as if searching for a target, and found it in the phantom shape of Barbara’s missing features. It coalesced there, twining about itself before drawing in more tightly, squeezing out the air molecules.

“Why, that’s—” Kit began to speak but faltered, now truly looking peaked. Grif took her by the elbow to steady her, and hoped the authority in his voice did the same.

“It’s bonding with the proteins left in her body, the amino acids, the keratin.”

Kit swallowed audibly beside him. “And keratin is present in skin. And hair.”

“Yes, and more importantly, Barbara’s face.”

Which meant Grif was finally going to be face-to-face—in a manner of speaking—with that face, and the woman who had hated him and Evie for more than fifty long years. The one who thought that Grif deserved to die horribly . . . and who’d probably had a hand in it as well.

Gritting his teeth, he watched the smoke continue to mold itself to the woman’s remains, the basic facial features forming first and lightening into an ashy tinge actually befitting death. Even the curls along the hairline popped in stylish relief, and those darkened slightly into a hue similar to Kit’s own deep shade. The visage that appeared would be the self-image that the woman saw in her mind’s eye, not the one she’d watched age over the years in the mirror. Therefore the smoky face solidifying before them was not settled into her seventies but looked like it could be anywhere from mid-twenties to mid-forties. Whenever, Grif thought, Barbara had felt most like herself.

The eyes were the last part of the face to settle, wispy lashes the finishing touch before the corpse gave an enormous twitch, fell still again . . . and then rose at the waist.

By this time, Kit was huddling behind Grif, a mewling sound slipping from her throat, which she choked off. She was shaking, squeezing his arm—and he was flexing—when she fell suddenly still, before shooting up to full attention behind him.

“That’s not Barbara McCoy.”

“It’s not?” Grif asked as the corpse turned its head to regard them, wisps of smoke trailing the movement.

“Oh, my God,” Grif said, feeling the blood drain from his face and likely turning just as white as the corpse they were facing. “It’s Gina Alessi.”

Mary Margaret’s nanny back in 1960, when Grif had been killed. The woman who’d sent the young girl out to play in the front yard the day she was abducted. The woman who’d come to see Sal DiMartino fourteen years ago, on the day Kit’s father was killed.

Kit’s fingers tightened around his arm. “But if this is Gina, then that means—”

“Barbara DiMartino is still alive.”

And, at that, the corpse in front of them hissed.

Doesn’t seem to be any love lost there,” Kit murmured against Grif’s left shoulder as Gina’s gritty form continued to glare. Kit was trying to be cool about the whole thing, but talking to the dead—animating them—was new to her. She was seeing things no human should, and now she knew why. She’d have nightmares about this for weeks.

However, Grif just shoved his hands in his pockets and took a step forward. “Are you Gina Alessi? Is Barbara McCoy your cousin?”

The corpse gave a slow nod, which would have been fine except that the sulfuric head undulated on her neck, causing Kit’s stomach to do the same. She swallowed hard as it rolled back into place . . . and she stayed tucked behind Grif.

There are times when one must be brave, she thought. And this isn’t one of them.

“Did she have something to do with your death?” Grif continued.

That rolling nod again.

“Why isn’t she talking?” Kit finally asked.

Grif shrugged. “No tongue.”

And the stench of rotten eggs hit Kit square in the face as the corpse opened its maw to reveal a gaping darkness. Now she knew she’d have nightmares. Kit closed her eyes, but opened them again when she felt the reverberation of Grif’s tapping foot through the sleeve she held clutched in her fist.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Where is memory located? I mean, what part of the brain?”

“Frontal lobe,” Kit said, and both of their gazes flew to the smoky mass that had been blasted away. “Why?”

“The sulfur can only approximate her visage, not replace it. That’s why she can’t talk. But if her memory were intact . . .” And it wasn’t.

“Episodic,” Kit interrupted.

“What?”

“Episodic memory. The stuff brimming with autobiography and emotion, which she still clearly feels.” Kit motioned to the angry corpse. “That’s stored in the temporal lobe, and that’s farther back.”

“Really?” Grif tilted his head at the sulfuric Gina, and said, “So, Gina. Do you think you can show us what happened?”

The smoky eyes narrowed.

Kit’s right eye took on a twitch, too. “What do you mean ‘show’?”

But Grif stayed focused on sulfuric Gina. “What if it means helping us capture Barbara . . . once and for all?”

And another blast of gaseous breath hit them as the corpse grinned.

“Hold on to me,” Grif told Kit as Gina’s head shifted, dust particles expanding when it took a deep breath.

“Are you kidding?” Kit breathed, and wrapped both arms around him, twining their fingers together. He was lucky she didn’t demand a piggyback.

“Don’t let go,” he warned, and she squeezed tighter.

The last thing Kit saw was the smoky section of Gina’s head splitting apart. It was as if a firecracker had gone off beneath a mound of sand, yet only a moment after the blast each dusty particle reversed and was funneled through the still-formed lips. Then the corpse blew all the sulfur—the protein and keratin and life that Grif had given her—back in their direction. The entire morgue instantly disappeared in a gritty, yellowed haze.

Kit wanted to cough, but there was no air to take in. Her lungs tightened, choking on matter never made for that soft pink tissue, and relief didn’t come. She felt entombed, unable to breathe, move, or even blink, and the heaviness of unconsciousness had already begun to settle over her when she felt a tingling in her flesh. Her body went white-hot as sulfur pricked at every pore, but then it dissolved atop her skin, sinking in and settling deep.

Then Kit blinked, and the smoke was gone.

In its place was a sprawling green lawn, a skid mark on an otherwise wide, pristine street before them . . . and the remnants of a scream curling through the air.

“Whose—” But Kit’s mouth wouldn’t work. The perspective shifted, a dash down the sloping lawn and view of the empty street dizzying Kit so that she realized it wasn’t her mouth at all.

We’re in Gina’s memory, remember? You’re seeing everything from her viewpoint.

Grif’s voice, connected through touch and massaging her brain, calmed Kit considerably. So she sent back a mental Okay, and settled in to watch.

The street spun, Gina turning around, and suddenly they were back on the lawn, lifting an old Cissy doll from the ground.

Mary Margaret’s kidnapping, Kit thought. And, panting hard, Gina began running for the house.

She burst through the giant, paneled oak doors, and the flash of a dark-haired woman was reflected in the hall mirror—late twenties, wide-eyed and gasping and with a heartbeat that shook in Kit’s own breast. Gina stared at herself in the mirror. “What have I done?”

The next flash of memory, a moment later, a second episode: Gina hitting her knees on a plush cream carpet at the feet of an elegant, sickly woman. The woman had been lounging in front of a large, crackling fire.

“Forgive me, Theresa . . .” Gina caught herself, the sob cutting off, as she clutched the hem of the woman’s nightgown. “I mean, Mrs. DiMartino. It’s my fault . . . they took her. They took . . . it was the wrong doll.”

A little doll will be waiting in the front yard . . .

Though obviously fatigued, with deep creases beneath each eye, hair graying at the temples, Theresa DiMartino straightened, took the doll Gina held out . . . and ran a forefinger over each diamond eye. Her gaze flew again to Gina; her eyes sparked with fire as well. “Where’s my third diamond?”

She may have looked weak, but her voice was strong, as if hardened in the fire next to her. Kit’s own throat constricted at the tone, and Gina was too frightened to respond at all. Instead, she pointed to the doll’s plastic belly. Theresa DiMartino lifted the gingham dress and, without hesitation, yanked one of the attached legs. Out tumbled the third precious gem, once a part of the necklace Sal had made for her using money stolen from his enemies.

The men who’d just retaliated by abducting her niece, Mary Margaret.

Without moving another muscle, Theresa turned her gaze, like an arrow, back up and through Gina Alessi. Kit felt it pierce her, too, as if Theresa could see all the way into the future and to Kit and Grif listening fifty years later.

“She’s behind this, isn’t she?”

Barbara. Gina shared the thought with Kit and Grif before mutely nodding.

Theresa looked at the doll, her long, thin fingers smoothing the dress down before her gaze slipped back up to the pink porcelain cheeks, rosy beneath the gleaming eyes. “My husband is going to kill you. You know that, right?”

Yes, Gina knew. Fear forked in her belly, spearing them all. “Oh, please, miss.”

Theresa roared. “You brought that viper into our home! She tried to seduce my husband—mine!—and you were lucky I didn’t send you into exile with her! And now”—Theresa was panting, chest heaving with her fury—“now you let her back in?”

“She saw the necklace in the paper.”

“And saw that I was sick, too,” Theresa spat, mouth drawn down, bitter.

“I— I thought that she was over . . .”

“Say it.”

Gina swallowed hard, swallowed bile. “I thought she was over Sal.”

Theresa closed her eyes, and then slumped with a heavy sigh. She turned away from Gina, the doll gone limp in her lap, and faced the roaring flames.

Gina begged, “She changed her name, she altered her appearance. I thought she was starting over—”

“You mean a new grift.”

“Yes.” Gina cast her gaze down, so that Kit and Grif watched her hands, white-knuckled, twining in her lap. “I thought she forgot all about you.”

“Women like her,” Theresa said without turning her head, “do not forget. And they certainly don’t forgive. I know because I am a woman like her.”

She did look at Gina now, her face awash in bitterness. “How do you think I knew that she was after my Sal five years ago? Nineteen years old, fresh-faced, peach-pretty. Yet that couldn’t hide the greed already lurking beneath. Some people are born with rotten cores and your cousin is one of them.” Theresa shook her head, slowly now, mouth curling into a sneer. “She could change her appearance a thousand times, and I’d always know exactly who she is.”

Theresa dropped back her head and stared at the ceiling. Gina tried to speak again, but was silenced with only the lift of Theresa’s hand. Her other hand fluttered atop her heart, but didn’t rest, as if she was afraid it’d break at the touch. Finally, she lifted her head. “Do you want to live, Gina?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re going to do exactly as I say. Your cousin thinks five years is a long time to hold a grudge, she thinks she has the patience to exact a thoughtful revenge, but I’m dying, darling. I have nothing to lose.” She held up the Cissy doll, and made its eyes blink, open and shut. Open and shut. Thousands of dollars of jewels winking in and out of sight. “And she hasn’t seen anything yet . . .”

And then the sulfur closed in again. Somewhere, where Kit and Grif were still standing in a twenty-first-century morgue, she tightened her hold around his arm. Don’t let go . . .

But when the smoke cleared, they were standing on another street corner, this one more modern, and facing a house that was even grander than the first. They watched through Gina’s gaze as a sleek black Mercedes backed from the drive, the platinum-white curls of an older woman sprouting above the driver’s seat as it sped away. The car was a late model, something that still sailed the streets today, so as Gina approached and knocked on the front door, Kit knew that a significant amount of time had passed.

It was confirmed when the door whipped open to reveal a man in his mid-forties, relatively handsome and obviously related to Sal DiMartino.

Oh, my God. It’s . . .

“Hello, Ray.” There was no mirror to reflect the passage of time on Gina, but her voice had grown creaky with age, and Ray’s responding scowl was mirror enough.

“Gina fucking Alessi.” Of course Ray would know exactly who she was. He was seven years old when her charge, his cousin, had been kidnapped from his front yard. Even a young child remembered an event like that.

“Can I come in?” She hurried on before he could slam the door. “I have a message for Sal.”

Ray, curious despite himself, tilted his head. “Who sent you?”

“Your mother.”

Ray scoffed and began to swing the door shut. “That bitch isn’t my mother.”

Gina stopped him cold without moving at all. “I mean your real mother. Theresa.”

And for just one moment, Ray DiMartino looked like the young boy Grif had once described. It was hope; it flared, odd and uncomfortable on the set face, and he erased it as quickly as possible. Kit would’ve cried for him if she could. Even knowing what he’d become, that he would one day try to kill her, she still felt sorry for the boy who’d ever feel hope for his mother. Then his expression hardened again, and he led Gina in to see his father.

Sal DiMartino was dying, no doubt about it. His arms and legs were scrawny, loose skin pooled around his chin, a testament to too much weight lost too fast, and the wingspan of his once-great shoulders had shrunk, making a physical mockery of his former strength. In contrast, it made Theresa’s illness look tame.

“Why are you here?” Sal asked Gina.

“I was supposed to stay away from you. Theresa made me swear to never go near you again. She said it was the price of my freedom and life. But it’s been thirty-seven years, Sal, and I can’t run anymore. I’m tired of hiding.” Gina steeled her spine and lifted her chin. “I want you to make her leave me alone.”

“Who?” Ray butted in, knowing he was missing something important, that there was subtext at play that he didn’t understand, but Gina and Sal only continued to stare at each other.

“And why would Barbara be after you?” Sal finally asked, voice souring over his wife’s name.

So he knew, thought Kit. He had at least some idea that the woman he’d married had her own dark secrets.

Huffing at that, Gina just threw something down on the table before him. Nobody moved. Sal stared at the lone diamond for almost a full minute before reaching out to pick it up. He leaned back, holding the diamond so close to his face that he almost looked like he was going to kiss it. Then he closed his eyes. “She still wants it all.”

“And only Theresa saw it,” Gina said.

“Wants what?” Ray asked, inching forward. “What did my mother see?”

“Stop talking, you damned fool!” Sal demanded, his voice suddenly rounding out with his old authority. Ray cringed.

“You knew all along,” Gina said to Sal.

“That Barbara set up Mary Margaret’s kidnapping? That she led my nephew, Tommy, to his death? That she pinned it all on that sap of a P.I., Griffin Shaw?”

Yes. He knew.

“And you still married her? You lived with her? All these years?”

“I was alive, but that’s different from living, isn’t it? And I can’t say that I did that, not really. Not after Theresa died. When she was gone . . . living was just another job.” He shook his head, deflating again. “But maybe I didn’t want to see what Barbara was all about. She stayed so long. She mourned the end of the good days with me. She stayed throughout my prison sentence. She stayed after I came home, crowded her space. Her house.”

“Because she still wants the other two,” Gina said without emotion.

Ray couldn’t hold his tongue anymore. He reached for the gem. “Wait, there are two more of these?”

“Don’t touch it, you idiot!” Sal’s voice thundered through the room, and for a moment Kit glimpsed the feared mafia don beneath the sagging meat suit, the criminal patriarch who had run this city like it was his own. He glared at Ray until the younger man backed away, and then turned that fierce gaze back on Gina. “I swear, he’s more her son than he is Theresa’s.”

Ray’s face fell slack in stricken surprise. Sal pushed into a seated position and turned away before Gina did, so he missed the way his son’s face hardened in hatred.

“Help me up,” Sal told Gina, and she did. When Kit and Grif next blinked, they were standing before a safe, which Sal opened with shaking fingers. A bank of security cameras displayed different parts of the house in black and white, and tilted angles. Ray was nowhere to be seen.

“I found this when I got back from the pen,” Sal said, handing Gina a slim, folded slip of paper. “It’s the birth certificate she used to change her name when Theresa ran her out of Vegas the first time. Tuck it away,” he said, before she could open it. “Use it as insurance.”

Then he reached in for something else. “And this . . . this is mine.”

Very carefully, he unfolded a thin, delicate slip of paper, then held it up to reveal a series of nonsensical lines. Tracing paper, Kit saw. Did they even make that anymore? Reaching down, he laid it atop the safe’s only other item, a map of the city and the surrounding terrain.

“Your drop zones,” Gina whispered, and her accompanying thought hurtled through Kit’s and Grif’s minds. Where all the bodies are buried. Sal smiled bitterly, then pointed to the largest circle, the darkest mark. “This is—”

A loud blast sounded, and Sal jerked back. His gaze narrowed as he caught sight of movement on the cameras above. Barbara was back. And she’d brought two cops with her.

Dad, Kit thought, seeing the fuzzy black-and-white images through Gina’s gaze. Oh, my God. Grif, it’s my dad. But then, in the past, Gina looked away. “She knows I’m here.”

Sal’s mouth thinned, his bushy brows drawing low. “Stay here in the safe box. I’ll take care of this.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Fulfill Theresa’s last wish,” he said, nodding down at the map, then back at the cameras. “Barbara will never see those diamonds.”

And he left. But Gina didn’t stay put. Instead, she grabbed the gem, the map, and the birth certificate—and ran, like she always had. Out of the safe box, through the kitchen, and out the back door. She glanced back only once, when she heard her name shouted from behind. Ray DiMartino was pointing her way, and one of the officers was squinting at her quizzically, then rushing to follow . . .

No, Kit implored her father, though the memory was already fading, sulfur again crowding in to obscure the past, but not before Kit saw the plasma swirling around her father’s ankles. Please don’t follow.

They came to in the morgue with the sound of pounding at the door. Sucking in a deep breath of air, Kit gasped, and then turned into Grif’s shoulder. The sulfur was gone, and Gina Alessi’s face had disappeared again, along with her memories.

Along with Kit’s father, who had died that same day.