This Side of the Grave (#5 Night Huntress)

of all things, would Marie ask me if I knew how Gregor got out? She knew I didn’t know how he’d slipped Mencheres’s prison. No one knew, not
even Mencheres. Plus, that was the last thing I’d care about, being crazed from the connection to the dead that I’d absorbed from her . . .
“Holy shit!” I burst out, shooting upward so fast that the couch flipped over from my momentum.
Bones was on his feet, gaze darting around and a knife already in his grip. I waved that away with an almost feverish swipe of my hand, stomping
over hard enough that I should have left dents in the floor.
“Gregor.” I seized Bones by the shoulders, barely noticing that his eyebrows shot up at that name. “He escaped from Mencheres’s prison,
something no one should’ve been able to do with how smart and powerful granddaddy pharaoh is, right? But Gregor got away, leaving no sign how
he did it. Don’t you see? We thought he must’ve hatched a clever getaway plan himself, but the fucker didn’t do a thing!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mencheres and Kira exchange a concerned glance with Bones.
“Kitten,” he said, in the same tone I’d heard Bones use on trauma victims when he thought they were only a harsh syllable away from a complete
mental breakdown. “You’re upset over everything that’s happened recently. It’s natural to fixate on something from the past when the present feels
overwhelming—”
That made me laugh with a maniacal sort of amusement, causing his brow to furrow even more.
“Luv, perhaps—” he tried again.
“No one can hide from death,” I cut him off, deep satisfaction filling me as the last piece of the puzzle fell into place. Marie said that, but I hadn’t
pondered it as promised. For the past several days, I’d been too numb with grief to think about anything but losing Don. Before that, I was busy
chasing my tail trying to find leads on Apollyon, plus also trying to mute my new connection with ghosts—and still being so pissed at Marie for what
she’d done.
No one, not even our kind, she’d stressed. Death travels the world and passes through even the thickest walls we protect ourselves with . . .
When you truly understand what it means, you’ll know how to defeat Apollyon . . . God, she’d given me all the pieces. I just hadn’t put them together.
“Marie said that before she sicced those Remnants on you and blackmailed me into drinking her blood,” I went on, my voice rising. “I thought she
was just threatening me in a cryptic way—you know how she loves to be all freaky and mysterious—but she was trying to help us.”
Gregor hadn’t gotten himself out of Mencheres’s prison. Marie had found him by using the one thing that no one could hide from: ghosts. She
probably used Remnants to break him out; not even Mencheres’s guards could have protected themselves against those. Marie might have hated
Gregor, but her loyalty wouldn’t allow her to abandon her sire.
It fit with her ruthless practicality as well. Marie had wanted to be free from Gregor. That wouldn’t happen as long as he was imprisoned, and
Marie had admitted she knew why Mencheres locked him up. So with letting Gregor out—and him coming straight for me—Marie knew Bones
would try to kill him. He hadn’t, but I’d done it, accomplishing her objective for her, all without her being in direct violation of her oath to her sire.
The devil’s in the details, I’d told that ghoul at the drive-in. Yes it was, and the clever voodoo queen appeared to be a master at details. The same
loyalty that wouldn’t let Marie kill Gregor herself also wouldn’t let her ally herself against her fellow ghouls in a brewing war, but yet again, Marie had
found a way around that. She’d forced me to drink her blood, giving me the same power she had. Helping us against Apollyon in a way that couldn’t
be traced back to her, considering how we’d been sure to keep quiet about what occurred between Marie and me in the cemetery.
“God, that woman’s a hell of a lot more devious than I gave her credit for!” I exclaimed.
Bones glanced behind me, with just the barest inclination of his head. I walked away from him, muttering, “Don’t worry. You don’t need to have
Mencheres break out the invisible straitjacket again. I haven’t gone crazy. I just didn’t understand until now.”
He still looked like he was debating having Mencheres lay the power whammy on me, so I sat down by Kira in a very deliberate manner, folding
my hands in my lap. There. Didn’t I look calm and sane?
“Apollyon is as good as caught,” I said, meeting his concerned brown gaze with a purpose that felt like it radiated through me. “He just doesn’t
know it yet.”
Chapter Thirty-four
All the garlic and weed’s gone?” I asked Bones as he came in the front door. Aside from the garlic, it occurred to me that I sounded like a teen
trying to clean up from a big party before her parents got home.
“Far away,” Bones replied. “Took it flying and then dropped it in a lake. It’ll sink, or some lucky sod will have a grand day fishing.”
I’d already scrubbed myself enough to take off a layer of skin, let alone all remaining stench from the herbs, and thrown out my clothes that had
touched them. I was as ready as I was going to get.
“All right,” I said, looking at Bones, Mencheres, and Kira. “Time to raise the dead.”
I went onto our wraparound front porch, staring up at the sky to try and clear my head. The stars really were much brighter out in the country as