by Tanith Frost
“Does that mean you’ve come to offer me another happy coincidence?” I ask without much hope. “I could certainly use it, what with Lachlan and the zombies and all.”
He looks down at his feet. “An interesting development, but no. You said my name a few minutes ago. I heard. I had a moment free, so I came.”
I cross my arms. “I didn’t say your real name.”
“And I didn’t have to come. I was merely curious. Does it have to be more complicated than that?”
“I suspect it always is with you.”
“And how dull things would be otherwise.” He pauses to clear his throat. “The fact is that I’ve reached the limit of what I can do for you. We have rules among my kind. If we act in the mortal realm, it’s for a purpose. We have something to gain, or we’re compelled to do so by those who have power over us. We don’t do favours simply because… well, for whatever reason. I’ve been walking a fine line these past few weeks, risking the judgement of beings who might impose consequences on one of their own who did the sorts of things I’ve been doing for you.” He says judgements and consequences as I said brussels sprouts and lima beans when I was a kid. “Better to play in the shadows and leave more questions than evidence.”
I let out a little laugh. “You let someone else tell you what to do?”
“Believe it or not, I’m not the most powerful being in the universe. We all answer to someone.”
I feel as if he wanted to add for now. And I think I’m glad he didn’t.
“So you could have got in trouble for these things that you may or may not have done for me.”
“I could have.”
It doesn’t make sense. I won’t make the mistake of believing that I know Gideon or understand him, but I’m sure of one thing: he does nothing without good reason, and good reason for him means personal gain.
“Why would you do that?”
Gideon’s perfect features break into a grin, and my heart drops somewhere below my navel. It’s not fear, but the other effect he had on me before I knew we were on opposite teams in a game I didn’t fully understand.
He kissed me once. That was as far as it went, but it was enough to make turning him away one of the hardest things I’d ever done. And he said later that even if he had ulterior motives for wanting to keep me occupied that night, his desire for me was sincere.
“I suppose that hypothetical being might have wanted to stretch his wings,” he says, turning his green eyes toward the stars. “Clearing an innocent semi-mortal’s name might have been a way of celebrating his freedom after Viktor’s execution released him from past agreements.”
“One last fuck you to the guy who enslaved him,” I add.
“Precisely.”
Silence hangs heavy in the still air in this private, timeless bubble he’s created around us, thick with the things he’s not saying, that I don’t dare question him on. It’s there, though—the idea that he felt guilty about his part in what happened to me, that he knew he still hadn’t made things right. That there might be other, more personal reasons he’d want to help me.
“Balancing the scales,” I add, just to say something.
He shoots me a sharp look. I should have known that would be too much. Gideon doesn’t believe in guilt. Not officially, anyway.
“I’m grateful if you did any of that,” I say. “And it is nice to see you. I think.”
He smiles at that just a little. Our relationship, such as it is, hasn’t exactly been built on honesty or true friendship. I’m not sure it’s objectively good that he’s here, but I can’t say I want him to go.
“But that brings us back to my question.” I force myself to meet his gaze, fighting the temptation to let myself study the soft curves of his lips, ignoring my mind’s desire to imagine tangling my fingers in his thick, dark hair while…
No. Damn him.
“Why reveal yourself now if you’re not here to help me?”
“I didn’t say I couldn’t help you,” he says, sounding slightly exasperated. “I said I couldn’t do you any more favours. Given the fact that others may be watching, anything I do for you has to be official. Above board.”
“And officially, what could you do for me?”
“Given sufficient payment?” He looks out over the water where the waves remain motionless, their spray over the rocks caught mid-air. “Not as much as I could do for Viktor, unfortunately. The secrecy laws I follow are far stricter than yours and the consequences of breaking them potentially catastrophic. It would be difficult for me to intervene directly.”
“No blowing up Lachlan’s hideout? Smiting my enemies and their minions? Weather events of biblical proportions?”
“No. I took a risk when I agreed to appear in your courtroom—one I was happy to take, given my desire to see Viktor eliminated, but there were serious consequences.” His eyes look haunted, though only for a moment. “I won’t do it again. As I said, they’re watching. I can tempt, suggest, set things in motion.”
“That doesn’t seem like much.”
He laughs under his breath. “You’d be surprised how many humans it’s worked for if they were willing to pay the price. But your case would certainly be more difficult. Lachlan is aware of my involvement with Viktor. And either he knows how things ended in that courtroom, or he’s excessively cautious. His underground home is well protected from intrusion. I couldn’t keep track of you there unless you were outside.”
“So I can’t ask you to spy, then, if things escalate once their zombie plan fails.” I try to drag my fingers through my hair but find the strands frozen in wet clumps.
“In this case, no. Wouldn’t that have been simple?” He sounds casual, even amused, but when he turns back to me, the hard light of his eyes makes me take a step back. “I could be useful. You just need to be more creative. And specific. I don’t deal in please fix my problems.”
“Fine. Say I did come up with some way you could help, one that didn’t violate all of your rules. How did all those humans pay you? With their souls or something?”
I’m joking, but he nods.
“Gideon!”
“Relax, I don’t take it until they’re dead. No awkward zombie situations here.”
I shiver. “That wasn’t what I was worried about.”
“You shouldn’t be worried about them at all.”
Right. Priorities.
“I seem to be a little short on that particular currency at the moment,” I say. I want him to smile at that, anything to relieve the tension, but the intensity of his gaze only increases until I have to look away. It’s not that he’s so intimidating, though. It’s the power in him, pure void of unthinkable strength and resiliency. I fear him, but at the same time, I want him. I can’t help remembering every curve and hollow of the body I saw so much of that night in the motel—which I hadn’t realized had been seared so firmly onto my memory. His void power draws me in, tempting me with the understanding of how much more deeply I could connect with it—with him—through physical contact.
I squeeze my eyes closed. If I’m going to work with him, I can’t afford this weakness.
“I’d have to take another form of payment, then,” he says. If he’s noticed my discomfort, he’s either misjudged its cause or decided to overlook it. “I’d require something you value as much as a human should value its soul, though they rarely do.”
“What would you want?”
For a second, I feel as if he’s looking right through me. Then he turns away. “We’ll discuss that when you’re prepared to negotiate. You’re not ready.”
My throat tightens. Something I value… Something he doesn’t want to talk about until I’m desperate enough that it won’t scare me off? My first thought is my void power, but he’s got plenty of his own. Fire, then. The power that has made me what I am, and one that he himself doesn’t possess… yet.
An impossibly high price.
I blink hard and shake my head to clear it. “Those humans you m
entioned, the ones who sell their souls. Tell me honestly—is it a good deal for them?”
Gideon studies the toes of his boots for a few seconds before he answers. “Truthfully? They get exactly what they bargain for, as will you. They’re often satisfied with it for a time, but that’s rarely permanent.”
“Because they eventually understand what it’s costing them?”
“Because they never ask for the right thing. As I said, you have to be specific. If they ask for success, fame, money, revenge, or adoration, I’ll make it happen. By the time they realize that those things don’t fix their problems, it’s too late.”
“No refunds?”
He smiles at that. “No refunds. That’s not just my policy—think of it as more of a cosmic law. Balance must be maintained. If I’ve done what I promised, they must do the same. It would be the same with us.”
And unless I asked for exactly the right thing, I’d be just as disappointed as those humans.
“I can’t. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the offer, but—”
His laugh is colder than the winter night. “You make it sound like this is a kindness on my part. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t stand to gain a great deal from working with you in this way.”
The wind picks up, and the world around us resumes its movement. A shadow appears down the road, hurrying toward us, shoulders hunched against the wind. Its shape and posture are familiar enough that I identify Daniel within a few paces.
Shit. Daniel. And here I’ve been, halfway tempted to make an unorthodox but undoubtedly thrilling offer of payment for Gideon’s services. I have no idea whether I should feel guilty about that. Daniel knows my past, knows my tendencies and my weaknesses… but we’re together now. We said love. So what does that mean for the variety of pleasures that have kept my nights bearable these past few months?
“Nice chatting with you,” Gideon says, and turns and walks in the other direction.
“Wait.” I jog a few steps to catch up. “About Franklin—the human?”
“Poor Pastor Frank. Quite a shock for him, of course.”
“Right.” I glance back. Daniel will catch up in a minute, and I’ll have to hand that decision over to him. “Do you think he’ll keep quiet about all of this?”
“Possible, but perhaps unlikely.” Gideon stops and turns to me, a look of keen interest on his face. “Why?”
I close my eyes, and the image of a dead woman in a bathtub rises in the darkness. Suicide after memory alteration. But she was deeply involved with vampires before we stole her memories. Surely we couldn’t have the same effect on someone who knew nothing about our world before tonight… though I wouldn’t say Pastor Franklin seemed to possess the most stable emotional state to begin with. And that’s assuming we can alter his memories, that we don’t eliminate him entirely.
I can’t. I’ve got enough blood on my hands for tonight.
“Theoretically, what would it cost me to keep this out of vampire hands?” I ask, hoping that the charge for this small task will give me a hint of the true cost of something larger.
“I’ll take care of this for you,” Gideon whispers, his breath tickling my ear. “No charge for now.”
The skin on my shoulders prickles. “For now?”
“I’ll call it an investment. When you come to me later asking for my help, we’ll add this to what you owe me.”
“And if you do this for me and then I never ask for your help again?”
“Then I suppose my gamble won’t have paid off.” He doesn’t sound the least bit concerned.
My head hurts from clenching my teeth so hard. “Fine.”
“Excellent.” Gideon heads towards Franklin’s house, then glances back over his shoulder. “I’ll see you soon, Aviva.”
“Not likely,” I mutter once he’s out of earshot.
My skin crawls, but I shake it off.
It’s not as if I’ve sold my soul or anything.
11
Daniel catches up to me quickly. “Who was that?”
“That, believe it or not, was Gideon.”
Daniel squints after him, but it’s hard to see anything through the snow at this distance. “The angel?”
“Among other things.”
“What did he—” Daniel stops himself as he looks at me, taking his attention off the stranger for the first time. A snowflake lands on his eyelashes, and he blinks it away. “What happened after you hung up? Are you all right?”
Funny. I’m usually the one with all the questions.
“I’m fine.” It occurs to me that I could lie to him and further cover Franklin’s ass, but it feels wrong. If we’re a team, he deserves to know what’s going on. “I followed the noise and found another zombie approaching a human like he was going to attack. I took care of it. The body’s tucked under a wharf for Eric to pick up.”
“And the human?”
I try to read into Daniel’s tone, but I’m not catching any hint that he’s worried because I feel more for them than I should. Or I have in the past. Now I’m glad this human is safe from us, but I don’t think I’ll be upset if we have to clean things up later. Two thoughts, two approaches to the situation, but tonight they don’t seem to be in conflict.
“He won’t be a problem,” I tell him, turning away from Frankin’s house. Daniel falls into step beside me. “He was halfway drunk when I found him, and I helped him on the journey after I got him back to his house. Gideon is taking care of the rest, making sure he won’t talk.”
Daniel frowns. “You’re sure we can trust him on that?”
I remember Gideon’s eyes when I agreed to let him put it on my tab. There’s no way he’s going to screw me over on this one if he’s hoping I’ll come back to ask for something bigger and more costly.
“I’m sure.”
“Good enough, then.” He doesn’t sound entirely sure, but at least he seems to trust my judgement. “Though it might not be for the others. Padma will want to come back to finish the job her way.”
We head back toward the beach where the others will still be waiting, hoods up and heads down against the breeze. The police have come and gone, and all of the lights are off in the house.
“Did you tell anyone what I said on the phone?” I ask.
“Just that you heard something and went to investigate.”
“Okay. So what I heard was a zombie shrieking up the beach, and I took care of it. It took me a while to find it, and that’s why I was gone so long.”
Daniel’s lips tighten. I guess he doesn’t like the idea of being dishonest with everyone else. It must be better than telling them about Gideon, though, because he nods. “We’re almost finished up. We now have three from up here, but there should be room in the trunk for one more body.”
I remember the sick, rotting smell of the zombies and nearly gag.
It’s going to be a pleasant drive.
Evening hasn’t quite arrived, but I’m already awake when Daniel and Eric get back to the sparsely furnished house we’ve holed up in for the duration of the hunt.
They both looked fine when they left early this morning, after we stowed the four zombie bodies in the garage. Any negative effects of daylight serum didn’t show right away, and both vampires seemed energetic and eager to get going. They wore regular clothes, stepping out into the overcast morning with hats on, hoods up, and scarves obscuring most of their faces, but they carried higher-tech sun protection in duffel bags to ensure their safety later.
I suggested they throw pillowcases over their heads and borrow brassieres to go over their clothes so they could claim to be mummering if anyone stopped to ask them questions, but that just earned me an eye-roll from Daniel and a look from Eric that told me he wasn’t sure whether I was joking or crazy. I know for a fact they’re both familiar with the local tradition—images of people dressed up that way are everywhere at Christmas—so I wrote it off to them being old and humourless.
Or one of them pretending to be.
Eric clomps up the stairs without a word to Daniel or me, and a moment later, the shower starts. Daniel drags himself to the living room and collapses onto the faded floral couch.
There’s no one here to see as I seat myself and lift his feet gently onto my lap. “Find anything?”
“Not a damned sign of them. What a waste.” He opens one eye. “Did you sleep?”
“Sort of.”
In truth, I was too worried that they’d find something out there and need help, but no one would be awake to hear their call. I relied on magic to keep me awake and spent the day trying to get the balance right—ignoring the anxious feelings when the magic got too strong, focusing harder on drawing it near when I got groggy. It’s proved an impossible balance to achieve. My sensitivity is through the roof thanks to my brief time away from all traces of magic, and I spent the day awake but miserable, convinced that no news was bad news, unable to sit still, my thoughts racing and my stomach flipping at every noise outside.
I’d have been better off sleeping, but I’d never have forgiven myself for sending the two of them out without backup when I could conceivably have helped even without a dose of daylight serum.
“What’s the plan now?” I ask. “Sleep?”
He shakes his head. “I wish I could. This stuff leaves me jittery for a while after it wears off. I’d go out with you again tonight if staying awake wasn’t going to make me hungry sooner.”