“You look like my dog.”
I squinted one eye at Nick “Cujo” Jones. He didn’t have a dog.
“After it died,” he added with a snort and then wheeled his wheelchair down his hall.
I followed, my head stuffed with cotton and my gut as fragile as a sacrificial virgin.
“I didn’t think you folks got hangovers?” Cujo said from farther down the hall, inside his kitchen.
I wasn’t hungover—hangovers were for lightweights. What I was feeling was more like halfway dead. Any further and I’d be back in the underworld.
“Takes some doing.” My voice sounded as dry and broken as my insides.
Cujo’s ground-floor apartment smelled of incense and marijuana. The incense was for deterring unwanted spirits, and the marijuana, that was for medicinal purposes—probably. I walked by dusty, decades-old framed photos of younger Cujo all buttoned up in his NYPD uniform, his cap tucked under his arm, and his smile fresh and bright. He’d been on the job for a few years before he had the misfortune of wandering into the crossfire between two bickering gods. He’d lived, but he would never walk again. After seeing enough of the impossible, he’d decided to start digging into the supernatural while he recovered, and a year later, he came to me, cash in his pocket and hungry for revenge. I’d declined, telling him he was better off forgetting it, but he hadn’t forgotten. He’d tried to hire me countless times since, and somewhere along the line, I’d started asking him for favors. Fifteen years on, he had yet to cash in his favors, but he would.
“Must have been a rough job?” Cujo asked in that gruff, no-bullshit tone of his. He’d filled out since his recruit photos. His dark hair was peppered with gray, and the years had weathered his face, drawing deep lines around his eyes and mouth. Age ate at some people, whittling them away, but not Cujo. The years had honed him into a hard-ass.
“Demons and dead bodies I can deal with. It’s the ex-wife who did me in.”
“Ah.” He whirled his chair next to the kitchen table and leaned back. “What you got for me?”
I handed over the picture Bast had left with me, the one I’d dumped in the trash and then fished out again before passing out at my desk. “Nineteen. Pregnant. Lives in Queens.”
Cujo took the picture, ran his critical gaze over it, and scratched at his whiskered chin. When he looked up, he clearly had a question on his lips.
“Don’t say it,” I suggested.
He shrugged. “Uh-huh. It’s probably the light.”
“No, really. Don’t.”
He tilted the photo side-on. “Maybe it’s the camera angle or a lens flare caught in her eyes, made them glow a little?”
To keep my mind busy and my thoughts off the girl’s uncanny likeness, I searched Cujo’s cupboard, found a glass, and filled it from the faucet. All the while, Cujo’s gaze rode my back like a devil on my shoulder.
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“I need to know if she is nineteen and if she’s showing any signs of—”
“Magic, hoodoo, spooky shit?” Cujo had a knack for reducing the terrifying into a joke. He took it all, the truth about the gods and their many beasts, in his stride.
“Just do some digging. See what you can find out about her.”
“Right-oh,” he said with too much enthusiasm.
I gulped down the water, waited to see if it would reappear anytime soon, and then turned to face Cujo’s crafted expression of innocence. “Keep this quiet. If anyone discovers—”
“That you couldn’t keep it in your pants?”
“Bastard.” A grin broke out across my lips.
Cujo arched an eyebrow. “Are there any more little Aces running around out there you want me to look for while I’m at it?”
“Gods, I hope not. One is enough.”
“Nobody ever teach you about protection in the underworld?”
I spluttered a laugh. Where I came from, traditional laws of nature did not apply. “It’s more complicated than that.”
He leaned back in his chair, wrestling his smile under control. “It’s been a while, but I seem to remember the whole process was pretty straightforward.”
“My ex-wife is a cat in her spare time. Insert Tab A into Slot B doesn’t cut it when you’re screwing gods.”
He let loose his chuckle. “I should have known. Nothing is ever simple around you.” He looked again at the picture. “Pretty. Must be her mother’s influence.”
“Ha, ha.”
“What god did she annoy to get lumped with you as her dad?”
“Possible dad,” I corrected and cringed. “What, you don’t think I’m parent material?”
“Oh, sure.” He crossed his arms over his chest, but that glint in his eye told me he wasn’t done. “It’s not like I’m constantly keeping your ugly mug off police records. Then there’s the weird shit that follows you. Put it this way: I wouldn’t want Chantal within five square miles of you.”
There was no chance of that. Chantal, Cujo’s teenage daughter, looked at me like she’d seen my soul, knew exactly what I was made of, and was distinctly unimpressed. Most people had attuned survival instincts that kept them out of my path. But Chantal wasn’t most people, and confrontation was her middle name. The first time we’d met, she’d asked me if I used my looks to manipulate and warned me that if I tried any of that shit with her, she’d set Cujo on me. I couldn’t blame her. As far as she knew, I was in my late twenties, early thirties and an inexplicable “family friend.” The type of “friend” her father wouldn’t talk about. She didn’t trust my vagueness. Never had. Never would. At least her instincts were accurate there. Outside of the Egyptian pantheon, Chantal was right up there on my “avoid at all costs” list.
Cujo had a point. I wasn’t father material. “I’m hoping the girl has nothing to do with me.”
He shot me a look, something like, “Keep telling yourself that,” and said, “I’ll run the girl through the NYPD systems and let you know what I find. That’s what got you wasted, huh?”
“That”—my insides twisted—“and Osiris’s summons.”
Cujo’s smile died a slow death and his cheeks lost some of their ruddy color. It took a lot to pale Cujo. “Shit.” He shook his head. “Man, it’s been a few years since the last time?”
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “I wish I could do more for yah.”
“I appreciate the thought.”
There was nothing Cujo, or anyone, could do. When the god of the underworld whipped up a curse, he didn’t leave loopholes or wiggle room. I’d spent a few hundred years searching for one. Now I just lived with it, like I had to live with Shukra’s putrid soul bound to mine.
“There’s some whiskey under the sink,” Cujo offered. “If you want some Dutch courage.”
“Thanks, but my insides won’t survive. Might take you up on a drink once I’m done with him though.”
Facing Osiris drunk would only make a bad situation worse. I wouldn’t be able to keep my mouth shut and would probably end up with another curse strangling my already battered soul.
Cujo’s smile turned sympathetic. “At least he can’t kill you, right?”
Somehow, I smiled, and not for the first time, I secretly wished Osiris had.