The Lost Files: Six's Legacy(6)

This other stranger is harder to figure, though. He’s dressed the part, more or less: wearing one of those Texas ties, with the dangly strands of black leather. And like the rest of the men here, he’s wearing boots.

But his clothes seem somehow out-of-date, and there’s something creepy about his thin black mustache: it looks straight at first glance, but the more I consider it, something about it just seems crooked.

“It’s impolite to stare.” Katarina, chiding me again.

“I wasn’t staring,” I lie. “I was looking, with interest.”

Katarina laughs. She’s laughed more in the past twenty-four hours than she has in months. This new Katrina is going to take some getting used to.

Not that I mind.

I stretch out luxuriantly on the hotel bed while Katarina showers in the bathroom. The sheets are cheap, polyester or rayon, but I’m so tired from the road they may as well be silk.

When Katarina first pulled the sheets down we found a live earwig under the pillow, which grossed her out but didn’t bother me.

“Kill it,” she begged, covering her eyes.

I refused. “It’s just an insect.”

“Kill it!” she begged.

Instead, I swept it off the bed and hopped into the cool sheets. “Nope,” I said stubbornly.

“Fine,” she said, and went to shower. She turned the faucets on, but stepped out of the bathroom again a moment later. “I worry—” she started.

“About what?” I asked.

“I worry that I haven’t trained you well.”

I rolled my eyes. “’Cause I won’t kill a bug?!”

“Yes. No, I mean, it’s what got me thinking. You need to learn to kill without hesitation. I haven’t even taught you to hunt rodents, let alone Mogadorians . . . you’ve never killed anything—”

Katarina paused, the water still running behind her. Thinking.

I could tell she was tired, lost in a thought. She gets like that sometimes, if we’ve been training too gruelingly. “Kat,” I said. “Go shower.”

She looked up, her reverie broken. She chuckled and closed the door behind her.

Waiting for her to finish, I turned on the TV from the bed. The previous tenant had left it on CNN and I’m greeted with the site of helicopter footage of the “event” in England. I watch only long enough to learn that both the press and English authorities are confused as to what exactly happened yesterday. I’m too tired to think about this; I’ll get the details later.

I shut off the TV and lay back on the bed, eager for sleep to take me.

Katarina steps out of the bathroom moments later, wearing a robe and brushing out her hair. I watch her through half-closed eyes.

There is a knock on the door.

Katarina drops her brush on the bureau.

“Who is it?” she asks.

“Manager, miss. I brought ya some fresh towels.”

I’m so annoyed by the interruption—I want to sleep, and it’s pretty obvious we don’t need fresh towels since we only just got to the room—that I propel myself right off the bed, barely thinking.

“We don’t need any,” I say, already swinging the door open.

I just have time to hear Katarina say, “Don’t—” before I see him, standing before me. The crooked mustache man.

The scream catches in my throat as he enters the room and shuts the door behind him.





CHAPTER SEVEN



I react without thinking, pushing him towards the door, but he flings me back easily, against the bed. I clutch my chest and realize with horror that my pendant is out from under my shirt. In plain view.

“Pretty necklace,” he growls, his eyes flashing with recognition.

If he had any doubt about who I am, it is long gone.

Katarina charges forward but he strikes her hard. She crashes against the TV set, smashing the screen with a bare elbow, and falls to the ground.

He pulls something from his waist—a long, thin blade—and raises it so quickly I don’t even have time to stand. I see only the flash of his blade as he swings it down—straight down, like a railroad spike—into my brain.

My head floods instantly with warmth and light.

This is what death feels like, I think.

But no. The pain doesn’t come.

I look up—how can I see? I think. I’m dead. But I do see, and realize that I’m covered, from head to toe, in hot red blood. The Crooked Mustache Man still has his arm outstretched, his mouth is still frozen in victory, but his skull has been split open, as if by a knife, and his blood is spilling out across my knees.

I hear Katarina wail—it’s such a primal noise that I can’t tell if it’s a cry of grief or a scream of relief—as the man, emptied of blood, turns quickly to dust, collapsing in on himself as an ashy heap.

Before I can take a breath, Katarina is up, shedding her robe and throwing on clothes, grabbing our bags.

“He died,” I say. “I didn’t.”

“Yes,” Katarina replies. She puts on a white blouse, which she instantly ruins with the blood from her elbow, shredded from the TV screen. She throws it out, blots the blood from her elbow with a towel, and puts on another shirt.

I feel like a child, speechless, immobile, covered in blood on the floor.