Vengeful (Villains #2)(89)

“And by the time I’m thirty,” she’d said, “everyone I know will be dead. Except for Eli.”

Eli. The way Sydney said that name, as if she was afraid that speaking it too loud would somehow summon him.

“What about you?” she’d asked June with sudden curiosity. “Do you age?”

June had hesitated. She’d glimpsed the shape that hung in the back of her wardrobe, the one she never took out. It hung so perfectly still, beneath its film of disuse, but there was no denying.

“I do.”

Now, June watched as Sydney sank into a patio chair, head bowed over her phone even as she put her feet up on that giant black dog, who didn’t seem to mind at all.

A few seconds later, June’s cell gave a soft ping.

Syd: Are you still in Merit?

She tipped her head up to savor the warm blue sky, and then lied.

June: Yeah. It’s raining. I hope the weather’s nicer there.

The front door across the street swung open, and a wraith of a man stepped out, shielding his eyes from the sun. It had been three years since June had seen Victor Vale. He didn’t look well. His face was a rock worn with deep hollows. And the way he moved—as if he were a length of cord, strung so tight that any force might snap it.

He hurts people, Sydney had said.

But June had been watching for days, and aside from the way strangers bent out of his path, she hadn’t seen him use his power once. He didn’t look that strong.

He’s sick. It’s my fault.

Victor started down the block. June stubbed out her cigarette and followed, merging with a small group of pedestrians as it passed. With each intersection, strangers peeled away, but others joined, and all the while June kept Victor in her sights. He moved like a ghost through the city, slipping out of its bright heart and into seedier parts, before arriving in a district known as the Brickworks.

Four warehouses, squat brick buildings like pillars, or compass points, framed the blocks that made up the Brickworks, and between them, a network of bars, betting shops, strip clubs, and darker fare.

You didn’t need a line or a fence to find the place where good neighborhoods gave way to bad ones. June had lived in enough of both to know by feel. The shift from new steel to old stone. Double-glazed windows to spidering glass. The polish worn off, and never repainted. Curbs glittering with the remains of the last broken bottle.

The Brickworks didn’t even pretend to be respectable.

Few places could exude that much trouble in the middle of the day, and given the sheer number of illicit businesses, June guessed the local police were getting a cut to look the other way. By the time she stepped across the proverbial tracks, she’d shifted into an old biker, all gristle and bone and tattooed sleeves.

It wasn’t the first time Victor’s wanderings had led him—and by extension June—to this corner of the city. He was obviously looking for someone. But the tangle of buildings and the broad daylight made it hard to follow too closely. June fell back, and when Victor’s pale head vanished through a door at the back of a bar, she changed tactics, returned to the street and circled until she found a half-rusted ladder hanging from a structurally unstable fire escape.

June hauled herself up onto the nearest warehouse roof, boots skimming the tar as, somewhere nearby, a door crashed open. She crossed the roof in time to see a man go crashing backward into a stack of empty crates, muttering curses.

Victor came into view a few seconds later. The man on the ground got up and started toward Victor, only to buckle, as if he’d been struck.

Victor’s cool voice wafted up like smoke.

“I will ask you one more time . . .”

The man said something, the words low and unintelligible from June’s position on the roof. But Victor clearly heard him. With a single, upward flick of his hand, the man was forced up to his feet, and Victor shot him in the head.

The silencer muffled the violence of the gun’s retort, but not its impact. Blood sprayed across the bricks, and the man fell lifeless to the ground. A second later, something seemed to fall in Victor, too. His poise, so tightly held, began to fray, and he swayed a little on his feet before slumping back against the opposite wall. He ran a hand through his light hair, and let his head tip back against the brick as he looked up.

June lunged backward, breath held, waiting for some sign that he’d seen her. But Victor’s gaze had been miles away. She heard his footsteps, slow and even, and by the time she chanced another look over the rooftop edge, he had disappeared around the corner.

*

JUNE found him again, at the edge of the Brickworks, followed half a block behind as she dialed Marcella’s number.

She hesitated before she hit Call, not because she had any lingering doubts, but simply because the words would carry weight, consequence, and not just for Victor. Putting him in EON’s path meant endangering Sydney, too.

But June would be there. She’d keep her girl safe.

The phone rang once, and then Marcella answered. “Well?”

June studied the man in black. “His name is Victor Vale.”

“That was fast,” said Marcella. “And you’re sure he’s the one they’re looking for?”

“Positive,” said June.

“And his power?”

“Pain,” said June.

She could hear Marcella’s smile. “Interesting. Is he alone?”