The One We Feed Read Free Page B

against a pale green mural that looked like something
Egyptians would paint if they knew about circuit boards. I stared at it,
thinking it seemed like a visual metaphor of my life among this elite slayer
squad. Suddenly the romance of our little mission had faded.
    I thought back
on the mysterious girl, her battered, skinny body, her hollowed eyes, her suicidal
leap, and felt my chest clamp down. Arthur was right, a pox on his head. I was
still trying to save Eva, but that was impossible. Eva was dead and buried. This
shape-shifting girl was not my sister, and yet….
    “I know I’m
supposed to help her,” I whispered to myself. “I know I am.” But really, what
did I know? My visions were always vague, handed down to me by Future Lilith, an
arrogant wench who had already lived through whatever it was I was facing.
Screw immortality and all its sundry evolutionary gifts. It was beginning to
piss me off.
    Jinx was
checking his iPhone and rocking in place, already suffering from
cyber-withdrawal. “I mean seriously, what kind of answer is ‘Mu’? It’s how a
cow goes, not how you answer a question about the indivisibility of the soul!
Fuck Joshu. That jackoff can walk home down one of his non-roads, the asshat.”
    I blinked,
pulled back to my insane reality by his endless madness. Cuss words and Zen
koans. Speaking to these people felt like living with the Mad Hatter and Deepak
Chopra.
    Clean cup,
Namast é .
     
    “Will there be
anything in those files about that location?” I pinched my nose.
    Jinx scrolled
over some windows and nodded. “Yeah. Didn’t have an address. Apparently
everyone knows where it is because it’s not a full sanctuary. It’s kind of like
the Underground Railroad, you know? A place where any member of the Sangha can
come to be safe.”
    “ They need to be safe?” I gasped. It seemed to me like there should be a place where
other people could go to be safe from them. “Don’t they have abilities?”
    He made a
weird hissing sound. “Not everyone has abilities that help preserve their
immortality, Lily. Some of them can only tell if people are lying, remember?”
    I clenched my
fists.
    “You look
pretty stoppable to me, bitch.”
    The words
echoed in my head like one of Jinx’s tirades, and with just as much ire. It was
bad enough I had stabbed Ursula through the chest with her own knife, but did I
have to stand over her and gloat while she died? Even though she had been a
scary witch with a penchant for waving her victims’ secrets around in front of
a large group of salivating mortals, I still felt a twinge of guilt for it. Not
one of my finest moments.
    I should have
listened to Arthur.
    But if I had,
I would not have seen the depth of my sister’s knowledge or how threatened the
Sangha was by her. Indeed, I would not have known about the Sangha at all, if
not for Ursula’s last words. They had also been my first hint that Arthur was
not what he seemed.
    “That’s a low
blow, Jinx.”
    “At least it’s
not a sharp one.”
    “I’m one
second away from punching you.”
    His fingerless
black gloves rose in defeat. “Cool your heels, Balboa. I’m just saying they
might be on the lam since you moseyed into town.”
    “And how is it exactly that they know I’m in town?” I crossed my arms. It was a
fair question. I was unique among the immortal race in that no one seemed to be
able to use their gifts to predict my movements. So how was it possible that
the Sangha knew anything about what I was up to?
    He fluffed his
hair. The deep crimson reflected off his pale skin in a harsh, unflattering
blush.
    “I don’t know,
Lily, I’m not the oracle.”
    “So what
should we do?”
    “Go to the
mattresses.”
    I raised a
brow. “You want me to attack them?”
    “No, I want
you to gather more data on the psychic plain. Duh.” He dragged me to my feet. “Fuck,
you’re so violent. What kind of Buddhist are you?”
    “The kind that
believes that death is a beginning.” 
    He