Free Bloodshot by Cherie Priest Page A

was … digging around.” More truth. I was practically telling the truth! Look at me, a veritable choir girl.
    “What were you
looking for
?” He tagged along behind me, and Pepper tagged along behind him.
    I led them Pied-Piper-style into the stairwell and up to the second floor, where they live. I said, “That’s none of your goddamn business, and you know it. What are the rules? Do I need to make a list of rules again? I know you thought they were insulting, but you’re almost a man now. It’s about time you learned how to take an insult from a woman.”
    I was mostly being flippant, but I got a bit mean because if I could piss him off, I could distract him from the original subject.
    “You’re a bitch,” he spit. I told you he was obnoxious.
    “So go find another landlord, you little shit. Speaking of which, how are the accommodations holding up, my darling illegal tenants?”
    “They suck,” he complained.
    “They don’t suck,” Pepper argued. “They’re fine. Everything’s fine, like you said.”
    “Good to hear, baby. Heat’s still running all right?”
    “No,” Domino groused. “It’s freezing downstairs.”
    “But it’s warm enough on
this
floor, right?” I asked.
    “Yeah, it’s okay,” he sullenly confessed.
    “Then I don’t care about the rest of the place. I can see that the power’s still working, though I owe you a new lightbulb,” I noted. The heat didn’t work anywhere else in the building, by my own design. For one thing, heating that monster of a place was fucking expensive. For another, I kept my least interesting stuff on the second floor, so the less time they spent wandering the other levels, the better. If there weren’t so much of it, I’d just haul it all down to the basement and trust that they wouldn’t touch it, but it’s so hideously damp that nothing will keep. I already have to run half a dozen dehumidifiers upstairs to keep the contents from moldering into oblivion. That’s where the rest of the power bill goes.
    I put my hands on my hips and looked around, trying to see what—if anything—Trevor had disturbed. I didn’t see anything opened or tampered with, and then I remembered that there was a short, beady-eyed witness standing right behind me.
    “Peps, what did our uninvited guest seem most interested in?”
    She shrugged and said, “I don’t know. He was just looking around. And climbing around. He could climb real good.”
    “Yes he could,” I agreed. I hadn’t seen him do anything special,but he hadn’t made it to the machinery rail by teleporting. “I wonder what he wanted.”
    “You didn’t ask him?” Domino said, naked skepticism dripping off his words.
    “He wasn’t very forthcoming,” I murmured.
    Pepper asked, “What does that mean?”
    “It means I asked, but he wouldn’t tell me. Listen, hang on, would you? Let me go get another lightbulb. I’ll swipe one from downstairs.” I trotted back down there, removed the bulb, then returned, pushing a crate underneath the contractor’s cage with the long orange cord. I crawled on top of the crate and screwed the bulb into the groove. It came on, searing my eyes with the suddenness of its glare.
    I looked away, and then back at the room underneath me.
    Off in the corner, a mattress was lying on the floor, covered with a gorgeous silk and feather-down duvet that was intended for use on my bed, only it never made it there. I’d bought it in India a couple of years before; I’d been indulging in some retail therapy in an attempt to unwind from a difficult case when I spied the blood-red bedding with pretty, understated swaths of gold threadwork. I bought it, boxed it up with some other goodies for yours truly, and shipped it back to the States to the storage facility via a museum contact of mine.
    That museum contact is another story. I’ll get around to telling it later; I’m wandering far enough off topic as it is.
    Anyway, I got home to Seattle and went looking for my