Wicked Misery (Miss Misery) (6 page)

“Who are you?”

I heard him suck in a breath. A shadow moved around the corner then darted back behind the wall. “Finally,” the voice answered. “I knew you were here.”

“Yeah, congratulations. I got your note. That’s what happens when people leave notes for me. I show up. So who are you?”

“A nobody like you.”

“Way to flatter a girl you’re meeting for the first time. You know my name?”

“Yes, Jessica.”

Well, shit. “What’s yours?”

He laughed, and I shuddered. It was not a pleasant sound. “If you’re nice to me, I’ll tell you later.”

This was getting better by the second. “Are you a Gryphon?”

“Are you?”

Was he serious? The urge to bang my forehead into the gryphon’s muscular stone thigh was strong. “Look, you asked me to meet you here, so what do you want?”

A foot crossed the threshold of the corner. I shifted position, leaning against the gryphon’s legs and peeking beneath tail feathers for a better view. A black-clad leg followed the foot, and a second later his whole body appeared. There wasn’t much to note. Average height and build if I had to guess. The most important part—his face—was covered in a ski mask. That wasn’t promising. Though to be fair, a scarf covered mine, so I shouldn’t judge.

“I want to get to know you. I’ve never met another like me before. We’re rare and wonderful creatures. Aren’t you excited by the possibilities here?”

“Mildly curious. What do you mean
like me
?”

As he strode around the statue, I continued to creep along behind it so that the stone beast was always between us. My inability to taste his emotions made me want to scream.

“I mean we share a talent. A gift. A wonderful gift that means we’re not prey like the others of our race. Just the opposite—their fears and pain sustain us. They’re
our
prey. We’re like preds without the horns or the spikes.” He made a noise similar to a giggle.

I cringed. Okay, maybe it wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t sense him. He thought himself a predator? Nice. I had a feeling that if I could pry into his emotions, I’d be very disturbed about what I found. For reassurance, I patted the set of twin knives against my ribs.

“How did you find me or figure out who I was? Did a pred tell you?” My mind churned through all the preds who might know the Soul Swapper’s identity. Really, there weren’t many. A lot would know me by sight, but very few by name.

“A pred?” Note-writer snorted. “No, I figured this out all by myself.”

He sounded proud. The urge to bang my head against the stone grew stronger. “Good for you.”

“Thank you. I thought it quite special, but to be honest, it was mostly a lucky accident.”

“Oh?”

“That’s how fate works, you know.”

“I’m not big on fate. Tell me how you found me.” So it couldn’t happen again.

I craned my neck to look through the gap between the gryphon’s feet. Empty lawn. My heart double-timed it. Crap. Where had he gone?

“I told you—fate. Fate has great things in store for us. Why else could such rare creatures as ourselves come to be? Why else would it bring us together?” His voice was thinner, distant. He must have been searching for me inside the Tribute’s walls.

“I don’t know about you, but I was cursed.” I plucked one of the knives from its sheath. The tiny, nicely balanced handle rolled around in my hand, and the blade shone in the moonlight. I squatted and hid it between my legs, my eyes fixed on the Tribute’s doorway. “So now that you found me, what do you want?”

“To have fun. That’s why I came looking for you. I’ve had no one like myself to play with, and that sucks.” His voice changed tone again. Damn. He must have left the Tribute by some other door. This was getting annoying.

“What do you do for fun?”

“I particularly like the Meat Matches. Do you go?”

Figured. I held in a groan. “No.”

I had gone. Once. It wasn’t long after I’d turned eighteen, when my gift had first blossomed. Lucen had suggested I give it a try, and I—stupidly—had been curious enough to test the limits of my misery-sucking power.

Now, to be clear, the Meat Matches were illegal. Just witnessing them, never mind participating in or betting on them, was enough to land a person’s ass in jail. They were every cop’s and Gryphon’s nightmare.

And for a misery junkie like me, they were the equivalent of emotional crack. I couldn’t feed off the preds or their addicts, but the nonaddict humans who attended gave off enough rage and pain to reduce me to a spastic, bloody mess. Literally. Matches were not pretty. This wasn’t boxing or ultimate fighting or any normal kind of sport. This was no-holds-barred, beat-the-shit-out-of-your-opponent brawling.

Nonaddicts fought nonaddicts. Addicts fought addicts. And men and women fought their own gender. But that was about it for rules. Pretty much anything else went, and there was no guarantee that everyone lived. Lots of people didn’t, and the more horrifically they went down, the louder the furies and their addicts cheered.

In fact, it was about the time I saw some addict’s arm whoosh through the air that my gut couldn’t take it anymore. Powered by all that agony, I’d run the entire distance home. I hadn’t been able to stop shaking until I’d crumpled into a ball in the shower while hot water washed the blood off me. I’d never gone back.

I had no intention of doing so now. And though I couldn’t deny that being surrounded by so much fury and anguish was a head rush, the fact that Note-writer enjoyed the violence squicked me out.

I squeezed the knife handle tighter, sickened by the memories. Just because I relished the taste of agony didn’t mean I approved of violence. Totally different.

“We should go together sometime,” Note-writer said.

His voice was right behind me. I spun around, almost smacking my head against the gryphon’s wing. Luckily, I held the knife correctly in my hand, and I further adjusted my stance as I faced him. “I don’t like the Meat Matches. No thanks.”

His hands were clasped in front of his body, and he had no weapons on him. Brown eyes glanced between the blade and my covered face. “Why not?”

“I don’t like violence.” Said the woman holding a knife to the unarmed man. Hello, irony.

“That’s too bad. I’ve made some good money betting on them. What do you do for fun?”

Meet weirdos in the Common at midnight?
“Sports. Sports bars are okay. Hanging out outside Fenway after a Sox loss is better.” Hey, there was nothing illegal, immoral or even icky about that, and the buzz from thousands of disappointed fans was wonderful. Not to mention guilt free and not in violation of anyone’s privacy.

Nonetheless, Note-writer’s eyes seemed disappointed. He rested a hand near my boot. I flexed my foot and placed the tip of the knife by my heel.

“I never thought about that. I’m not into sports. There’s a Match coming up soon. You should come with me.”

“I told you—I don’t like violence.”

“Maybe you’ll change your mind by then.”

“Don’t count on it.”

He sighed. “I thought you’d be more fun, all things considered.”

“Sorry to disappoint. I’m not fun. No one who knows me thinks I’m fun.” Alas, when you got a buzz from other people’s unhappiness, it put a crick in your social life. I’d all but given up on dating, and Steph was the only person I hung out with regularly. Probably because she had as many issues as I did.

“That’s a shame.” Note-writer backed up, staring warily at the knife.

It crossed my mind that I could jump down there after him. I wouldn’t need a weapon to knock him to the ground, yank off his mask and search for a wallet. But it would take violence and I’d feel like an utter hypocrite. My only other option was to use my gift to magically seduce him, but even if the imp’s sting wore off in the next couple seconds, it would be of little use. If this guy was like me, and it sounded like he actually might be, he’d have more resistance to magic than the average human.

So I remained where I was, squatting in the gryphon’s shadow, wondering if my reluctance was a mistake. But after all, the worst thing this guy admitted to was discovering my identity by accident. Besides, a guy who enjoyed the Meat Matches was not a guy who’d turn me over to the Gryphons.

“I’ll call you later about the Matches,” creepy Note-writer said.

“You know my phone number?”

“No, but I know your name. I’m sure I can find it. Or you could give it to me.”

“Nope, I don’t give out my number to guys whose names I don’t know.”

He failed to take the hint, not that I’d planned on giving him my real number anyway. “You’re pretty psycho to be carrying around so many weapons, you know.”

I rested the knife’s blade against my chin. “Smart. I’m pretty smart.” Especially when such a creepy guy discovered my identity. Even creepier, he might not be the only one.

Chapter Five

Bridget was late. I’d scored us a tiny table by the coffee shop’s window, and leaned back in my seat to better observe the crowd. Gryphon headquarters loomed across the street, loomed being subjective. It was shorter and squatter than the buildings surrounding it, yet it gave off a kind of presence. Maybe it was the Doric columns or the enormous granite statues of the half-lion, half-eagle creatures. Maybe it was just knowing that Boston’s bureau of the magical FBI was contained within those walls, lots of people with power, both literal and political.

Lots of people who once rejected me for not being normal.

Lots more who wouldn’t want me roaming the streets if they knew what my gift gave me the ability to do.

I balled the paper from my sweetener packet into a hard nub and squeezed until my knuckles whitened.

The tall buildings surrounding us trapped the street in shadow this time of the morning. Combined with the coffee shop’s tinted windows, everything took on a dreary, gray hue. I wouldn’t have been surprised if half the people passing by were depressed. Mmm…sweet depression.

When the guy at the table nearby left, I reached over and grabbed his copy of the
Globe
. The front-page article on the serial murders contained nothing new, alas. No mention of addicts or anything else of that sort. The only interesting tidbit was a photo of the newest victim. She resembled the other three—twenties, average-to-slender build, brown hair. Good thing I wasn’t a vanity addict or I’d start worrying.

“Sorry I’m late.” Bridget startled me as she dumped a Gryphon-issued messenger bag on the chair across from me. “I’m going to grab something to drink. Be right back.”

She didn’t leave me any chance to acknowledge her. The line at the front of the shop wormed and wiggled as she joined it. A customer or two offered up their spots, but Bridget dutifully took her place at the end. I snorted into my latte. Gryphons—half the population feared them because they wielded magic, and the other half worshipped them for it. Personally, I’d yet to meet one sporting a halo.

Not that the name Angelic Order of the Gryphon had anything to do with some divine mission. Not these days anyway. During the Middle Ages, the Gryphons had started out as a religious order—priests with swords—and no women or infidels allowed. There was no pretense of law enforcement then, no attempt at preds and humans living in anything other than a state of perpetual war.

It wasn’t until the Gryphons signed the Accords with the magi that they were forced to acknowledge that women and non-Christians could wield magic. And that those groups had been doing so quite successfully, thank you, in their own villages and countries for hundreds of years without Gryphon interference.

Even then, Gryphons continued to act more like loose societies of warriors than the international magical law enforcement agency they were today. It wasn’t until the twentieth century, when the U.S., Britain and other democratic societies bent under pressure to acknowledge that preds deserved some basic rights, that the Gryphons had reorganized. The Accords had been amended, spelling out what constituted legal versus illegal uses of magic, granting preds the right to contract with humans for souls, and codifying the purpose, structure and legal reach of the Gryphons. Now, everyone had to at least pretend to play by laws.

These days, all magically gifted humans, which accounted for about one fiftieth of one percent of the population, were tagged by age six, regardless of religious affiliation. Those whose gift developed properly—that is, didn’t disappear around age eighteen—became Gryphons. No one knew why for sure. The predominant theory was that the first humans obtained their magic from the magi under the condition that they could only use that magic for humanity’s good. It made as much sense as anything since gifted children invariably wanted to be Gryphons when they grew up. Those whose gifts faded ended up being happy doing something else.

Me and my cursed gift were the exception.

“Finally!” Bridget flopped in her seat and pulled a clump of mousy brown hair out of her face. “You should try the vanilla green tea chai here. It’s fantastic.”

“Now you tell me.”

Bridget smiled, a gesture that never quite extended to her eyes. Dear, quiet, serious Bridget. She didn’t have much of a sense of humor, which was why she was my only friend from our days at the Academy whose company I could tolerate. Melanie, Julie, Kevin, all my happy friends? I’d cut them out of my life in one giant hack job the day I’d been kicked to the curb.