Angus and Bic were both standing by the couch, hovering. Sitting there was Faith, her hair wet and in a makeshift bun on top of her head. She looked rattled but okay. Maybe it hadn't been that bad.
"She took a shower after the message?" Lars asked, finding it peculiar.
"Yes. Let me tell you, that chick is a lot tougher than she looks," Cutty said, clearly impressed with her, although Lars wasn't sure where this new esteem had come from.
"Where's this message?" Lars asked while his eyes had a hard time moving from where Faith sat.
"Follow me," Cutty said, and Lars realized he'd taken a step toward Faith without even thinking about it.
He stopped in his tracks and then nodded to her. She returned the silent greeting with a smile. She might be putting up a good front for the guys but he was the only one who could hear her heart rate.
It was a leftover gift from his previous career as the Grim Reaper, when he used the sound to confirm the correct course of action. When a human was fated to die soon, there was a certain pattern to their heartbeat, a certain smell to their skin.
All the guys had their strong points but he was the only one who knew how upset she truly was, whether she let on or not.
Lars followed Cutty down the hall, thinking that they were heading to either his office or some other place for privacy.
"We were playing cards, but Faith didn't want to join in," Cutty explained as he walked. "Said she was too tired, but I think she just needed some alone time. When she went to her room, we all gave her space."
Cutty stopped in front of his guest room, one Lars had crashed in many times himself.
"It got delivered to her room? And you left the message in there?" Lars asked, thinking it was a strange action and so unlike Cutty.
Cutty took a deep breath before he answered, "I didn't have a choice."
Lars moved to open the door but Cutty put his hand up quickly to block him. "Try to keep it down when you see it," Cutty said.
Lars nodded. He was still buzzing at Cutty's need to give him a warning like that when he swung open the door.
On the ceiling, the words "You're Mine," were written in blood, blood that was still dripping down and forming puddles on the floor and bed.
Cutty's words made sense now, because he might have yelled in outrage if he hadn't been forewarned. The idea of some sick bastard doing this, right above her head while she lay there sleeping, made his muscles tense and his jaw clench. He crossed his arms in front of his chest to keep them from ripping into the ceiling and tearing the sheet rock down just to get rid of the sight of it.
"She woke up to this?" Lars eyed up the top pillow at the head of the bed. There was more blood on the edges than the center, where her head must have been. Her wet hair suddenly made sense. She'd been covered in blood.
"Yes."
Cutty and Lars both stepped into the room but stayed to the perimeter to avoid where the blood was still dripping.
Cutty stopped moving, his hands shoved in his pockets. "We were downstairs and there was this inhuman howl that made us all jump from our seats. We didn't know where to turn first, because it seemed to be coming from everywhere. Shattered the glasses we had on the table and busted my TV. And then we heard Faith's scream." Cutty waved his hand toward the ceiling. "You can figure that part out. We were lucky that the locals went home early, their wives nervous about them being out too late considering how ugly things are getting."
"Did she see anyone?" Lars asked, looking around the room.
"She said she woke up and it was there."
"How did they get in here? Don't you have this place protected?"
"They didn't get in. I don't know how that was managed." Cutty shook his head, clearly as befuddled as he was.
"You've always been sloppy with your wards." Lars shook his head, aggravated. "If you weren't, this wouldn't have happened."
"Not all of us have the same flair for the dark arts you do." Cutty moved back, closer to the door where he was less likely to get dripped upon, and leaned a palm against the wall. "Nor do I have the desire to learn."
"And Angus couldn't have? You're telling me all the time he spends here, he couldn't have done something to secure this place better?"
Cutty straightened and waved the hand he'd just had on the wall. "I thought it was secure. Do you think I wanted this?"
Cutty let out another long sigh, and Lars shook his head but dropped the issue.
"Can you tell anything about the blood?" Cutty asked.
Lars walked over to the tall dresser and an especially large puddle of blood and breathed in deeply. "Young human male, twenties. Healthy." One of the perks of being Death was that he had a heightened sensitivity to the smell of blood from all the exposure he'd had. He could roughly estimate the age and sex of the person whose blood he was smelling.
"Or he used to be. Probably dead now," Cutty said, looking around at the amount of blood present, just as Lars did. No single human could sustain this kind of loss and live.
"If you had heard that scream … " Cutty started shaking his head. "Lars, this isn't just business. Or gathering assets. This isn't anything like what happened with Karma, where she was wanted for solely what she could do. This feels personal."
"You think Malokin wants her?" Lars asked.
"I'm not so sure this was Malokin. He's cold and calculating. This feels too personal for him. I think it's someone else." Cutty rubbed a hand over his short-cropped hair as he tried to get a read on the situation. "Definitely someone high up, though."
Lars looked up at the ceiling again. "You think she was romantically involved with whoever it was?" Lars had a hard time picturing Faith with anyone that was involved with Malokin and then had to remind himself that he didn't know who Faith really was. He was being naive to think he did.
"If she was, she didn't want to be. That I'd guarantee." Cutty crossed his arms over his chest.
"Are you guessing or do you know? I understand that you like her but shoot it straight."
Cutty hesitated, as if he wished he could confirm it without having to lie. "I'm guessing."
"She was from Seattle," Lars said. "You still got connections over there?"
Cutty nodded. "I did. Not sure if I'll be able to get in touch with them right now, with the way things are."
"Try. See what you can dig up."
Cutty paused and then let out a barely audible uh huh. "I think you're wrong not to trust her."
"Just do it," Lars snapped, and then tried to soften his words. "It's not going to hurt anything to dig around."
"I know."
Lars looked at the bed again, covered in blood, and left before he snapped. Cutty followed him out and shut the door, but they didn't move any farther away, both knowing there was more to discuss before they rejoined the others.
Lars knew Faith couldn't continue to stay here. It would take several weeks at the minimum to get the wards in place to a standard where he'd feel comfortable. Fate's place was secure from the outside but there was still the Karma problem. There was only one option left he felt comfortable with, even though it had been something he'd been trying to avoid. "I'm going to take her to my place."
"That's not a bad idea. He'll never get past the sidewalk over there."
"After I get her home and settled, get hold of Fate. He should know about this too. Then you guys meet me at the shop in forty-five."
Cutty nodded.
Lars shook his head and hoped he wasn't making a huge mistake as he headed back toward the living room.
Chapter 11
Faith had been thrown off-kilter when she'd seen Lars walk in. Obviously, Cutty would have told him but she didn't think he'd be here tonight. When she'd watched him follow Cutty to the room she'd been sleeping in, she felt like she was going from off kilter to completely out of orbit.
What Keith had done looked bad, really bad. Maybe she should've told them everything from the beginning, but these guys didn't run long on trust. She'd been a hair away from getting booted out, or maybe even killed, with the way that guy, Fate, had been acting. The bloody love letter painted on the ceiling was damning and might be the final straw with them.
Stay calm, don't act like there's a problem and maybe they'd pretend everything was okay too. That was her plan, no matter how stupid it seemed at the moment.
She cut herself a little slack. It was a last minute plan. They'd come barging into her room while she had still been screaming her head off. She'd only had a minute or so of barely rational thinking in which to decide on how to proceed, and the screaming hadn't really gotten her off to a good start.