Adair cried out as the water burned off his illusion, his still-human-looking hands coming up to cover his face and hide it from view.
Nita grabbed the desk chair and smashed it over his head while he was still stunned, and he went down across the ground.
She’d lit everything she could in the room before he arrived, lights, candles, anything that generated heat, until it felt like a sauna. Bad for the dead bodies, but worse for Adair.
She took another tub of hot water and poured it over him as he lay on the floor, and this time, he screamed, his cries of pain rising into the air and mingling with the smoke from all the candles and steam from the boiling water. He choked, as though trying to beg her to stop, but the words couldn’t come out from between the cage of his jagged teeth.
His body started to melt too, his clothes first, and Nita was disconcerted to realize even those were fake, built from the same mucus-y substance that created the human illusion of the rest of him. The scalded mucus pooled on the floor around him, sloughed from his skin and leaving his body bare.
Since he was crouched on the floor, it was hard for Nita to get a sense of the shape of his body, but he did have two arms and two legs, though there was a lot of webbing between them. His body was thick, and his arms set closer to the main part of the body than on a human. Probably an adaption for the cold.
“Stop!” he screamed as Nita hefted another bucket of boiling water.
“Stop?” Nita hissed, and poured the water on him while he screamed. “You fucking sold me out!”
Adair’s voice trembled with rage, and his words were distorted by his teeth. “Oh, did trouble find you at my store? My store, where you said you definitely wouldn’t bring problems? I recall you saying you just wanted to hide out—then you got on the news for murdering people. Didn’t you promise me no police? And look who I got raided by.”
Nita gritted her teeth. “So, this was vengeance?”
Adair coughed and tried to lift himself from the floor, but failed. “I don’t do vengeance, Nita. It’s stupid and pointless, and if you fuck it up, it just makes more problems.”
Nita flinched, feeling the truth of that in her encounters with Fabricio.
“I’m a businessman, Nita. I do what I do to stay alive. I helped you, even when it wasn’t in my best interests. You put me in danger, over and over. You were going to keep doing it, you didn’t learn,” he gasped, voice hoarse, and a sticky film covered his yellow eyes. “So I took action.”
“I gave you INHUP agent names as payment.” Nita’s voice was tight. “This wasn’t about danger, you just knew I’d run out of names.”
Adair curled on the floor, chest heaving. On his neck, gills fluttered softly. Nita would love to dissect him and see how his body was adapted to breathe with both gills and through his mouth.
“Those names of corrupt INHUP members? At least half are dead, and the other half I knew.” He choked softly. “I knew from the start it was unlikely you would give me anything useful.”
Nita frowned. “Then why did you let me stay?”
He snorted, nostril holes flaring, spines on his neck rattling, and Nita had a sudden image of him as a dragon. A weak, small, wingless dragon. “I felt sorry for you.”
Nita flinched.
“You’re lying,” she said, more because she wanted him to be than because she believed he was. The idea that he had helped her out of pity hurt too much. “You’re just trying to manipulate me into not killing you.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
Nita wrinkled her nose as his black scales began to flake and a strange green ooze coated the floor. He wriggled toward her, and Nita leapt back, pulling out Henry’s gun. Adair froze, his scales shining.
They stayed that way for a moment, Nita with her gun at the ready, Adair on the floor, watching her with reptilian eyes. Nita’s gaze kept being drawn to his teeth, massive and long and viciously sharp.
Downstairs, the door of the pawnshop slammed, and Nita jerked.
She waved the gun barrel at Adair. “Who’s coming?”
Footsteps barreled up the stairs.
Adair sighed. “The only other person who has a key to the shop. Who I texted after I got the—presumably fake—call that the shop was flooding from a hole in the roof.”
The door smashed open, and Diana stood there. Her long hair was down, and her shirt inside out. She stared at the scene in front of her, taking in Nita, the gun, and the monster on the floor.
“Adair?” she asked, hesitantly stepping toward the kelpie.
He curled away from her, trying to hide his face, like he didn’t want her to see him that way. “Yes.”
Her mouth set in a firm line, and she turned to Nita. “Put the gun down.”
Nita’s hand tightened on the handle. “He betrayed me. I nearly died.”
Diana moved forward slowly and stood between them. “I said, put the gun down, Nita. If you want to kill Adair, you’ll have to go through me.”
Nita swallowed, chest tight. “He’s a monster. Why are you protecting him?”
“Why did I protect you when he wanted to throw you out?” Diana asked. “Because it was the right thing to do.” Her jaw clenched. “And you’re far more of a monster than he is.”
Nita raised an eyebrow and looked at Adair. “Have you seen him?”
“I judge by actions, not appearance.” Her voice was cold.
Nita didn’t respond.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Diana said, voice steady. “You’re going to lower that gun. I’m going to shove Adair under a cold shower until he’s not a toothy fish anymore. He’s going to thank me and not”—she glanced over her shoulder—“make any stupid jokes about murdering me in the basement lake, because I’ll beat him up.” She turned her gaze back to Nita. “And you’re going to leave.”
Nita looked at Adair. He’d sold her out, but he’d also helped her. He’d let her stay, given her information, even when there was nothing in it for him. And he was right. She’d been a pretty awful guest.
Nita lowered the gun, anger melting away as quickly as Adair’s fake skin had under heat, leaving only emptiness behind.
“All right.” She met Adair’s slitted eyes. “We’re even now. I don’t want to hear of you coming after me.”
Adair glared at her, eyes yellow but still recognizably his. “Believe me, Nita, I don’t care a whit about you. I told you—I don’t do vengeance. Ever. It makes you stupid, and it exposes you to threats you don’t need.”
Nita looked away. She hated it when he was right.
His voice was soft. “And most of the time, you’re going after people for the wrong reason, or without knowing the whole story.”
Nita put her gun away and glared. “I didn’t forget what you said about Fabricio’s motives, if that’s what you’re trying to say.”
He just looked at her, completely and fully inhuman, and said, “No, that’s just what you decided to hear.”
Diana pursed her lips. “Enough. Go, Nita.”
She turned her back on Nita and grabbed Adair’s arms and hauled them over her shoulders, so that terrible toothy, throat ripping mouth was right next to her face. Diana didn’t seem to notice how close her cheek was to those teeth, or perhaps she just didn’t care.