by J. Kenner
“And to think I tipped you.” I bent over and unstrapped the thigh holster. Then I pulled up the leg of my jeans, restrapped the contraption to my calf, and worked the denim back over the knife. A tight fit, and a very obvious bulge, but not so bad that it ruined the haute couture gestalt of my outfit. Whatever the hell that means.
“Not exactly what I had in mind.”
“Well, I figure you have a choice,” I said. “You let me in so I can dance and make merry. Or I go home, drown my sorrows in a beer from my refrigerator, and in my desolation at being rejected, drunk-dial the police and report the unsavory goings-on behind those doors. Because I’m pretty sure that unsavory is happening back there. Honestly, I wouldn’t want in otherwise.”
He stepped aside.
“Good boy,” I said, bestowing him a quick pat on the cheek as I brushed past and into the deafening roar of the club’s interior. Club being a loose term, of course, because these kinds of clubs changed geographical location almost nightly. But the place served my purpose—crowded, dark, boisterous, and too damn loud to even think.
I was tired of thinking.
The music pounded in my chest as I stepped through the inner door, though I suppose music is a loose term, too, considering the volume was too loud to hear anything but the bass beat. As far as I could tell, the song was meant to be enjoyed through vibrations in the air, as if those of us in the club were bats or something.
I considered the metaphor and decided it wasn’t that far off the mark. I’d become nocturnal by default.
“Lily,” I whispered, “you’re a mess.”
A bald man with a tattooed scalp shot me a curious glance. I ignored him and crossed to the makeshift bar of plywood and beer crates. I ordered a double shot of tequila and endured the bartender telling me they didn’t have alcohol. “I’m not the cops,” I said, then slammed back the drink he passed me. Easy enough, and because I figured good karma shouldn’t be wasted, I ordered another, then took it with me as I wound my way through the crowd to the ladies’ room, a haven of makeup, hair spray, and the most foulmouthed gossip you’ve ever heard.
Two overly coiffed sorority princesses stood next to a girl with a purple Mohawk and a pierced lip. All three turned and looked at me. I, in turn, looked at the sink, then aimed myself in that same direction. I plunked my drink down on the counter and proceeded to scrub the last remnants of blood off my hands, arms, and coat. Then I reached in front of Bitsy for a paper towel.
“Fight with the boyfriend,” I said, conjuring a sweet smile, a not-too-difficult feat considering whose face I was wearing. In fact, anyone looking at the reflection in the mirror would probably assume I’d come in with Bitsy and Ditsy. Even after the night I’d had, Alice still looked cute and perky. Considering my old body used to develop bags under the eyes if I stayed up past nine thirty, I had to admit my new skin held some definite upsides.
The downsides I discovered once I emerged from the ladies’ room. Not fewer than seven men hit on me as I made my way back across the dance floor, and one of them actually reached out and grabbed my ass. I don’t think I broke his nose, but he slid back into the crowd so fast after I belted him that I can’t be sure.
I slid into the mass of people, arms high, my breasts pressed against the thin material of my tank top. Colored lights swept the floor, sweaty bodies moving in rhythm all around me, hips and fingers touching as we all moved in one delicious, sensual beat.
A lean man in a purple shirt slid in close to me, and I grabbed the waistband of his jeans and tugged him closer. A warm, sexy power was filling me, and I needed to explore it, to test it, to use it. I smiled at him and realized he was enthralled, which gave me a nice little rush.
His arm hooked around my waist and his hips pressed against mine as we gyrated in time to the music, a sensual bump-and-grind that only vaguely resembled dancing.
I closed my eyes as he slid his hands up from my waist, coming close to my breasts, teasing me, setting my body on fire, and taking my thoughts away from the specifics of my life to the pure, physical pleasure of touch.
And so help me, I wanted that. Wanted to be lost inside my head, even if only for a moment. I didn’t want this man, didn’t know him or care about him. Another face loomed in the back of my mind, but that was one of the images I pushed away, clinging instead to the safety of anonymity.
Whatever I wanted, this man would have to do; and if I could only quit thinking, maybe I could lose myself for a few minutes in his touch.
We moved in a mindless pattern of heat and desire, his touch fueling my need for release, but I wasn’t desperate enough to go there with this man. It was enough to feel the power over him, a power I didn’t understand, but that nonetheless consumed me.
I wanted it, though—wanted a touch so intimate it would truly shut my mind down, make all my thoughts and fears and doubts go away.
I wanted it, and it both terrified and fascinated me that the man who so dominated my thoughts—the man who tweaked my lust—was a man I couldn’t have. A man I told myself I didn’t want.
And, dammit, a man now striding toward me across the dance floor, the ocean of bodies parting in front of him as if he were Moses parting the Red Sea.
Deacon.
My heart stuttered in my chest. I told myself I should fear him, should at the very least be wary of him.
Instead, I simply wanted him.
“She’s mine,” he said, pushing my partner aside with little more than a glance. His arms slid around me, his hands on my lower back pulling me close as my body tingled from the electric storm surrounding this force of nature.
“I’m not yours,” I protested, but I stayed in his arms nonetheless, tempting fate and testing the limits to my newfound sensual allure, not to mention my self-control.
He took his hand from my back long enough to hook a finger under my chin and tilt my head up. “Maybe not,” he said with a cocky grin. “But you want to be.”
18
“The hell I do,” I protested, pushing him away even as I wanted to sink deeper into his embrace. Because he was right. I wanted him. I wanted to see him squirm beneath me, and right at the moment I didn’t care if he was squirming beneath my thighs or at the point of my blade.
I simply wanted. Low and visceral and desperate.
I gave him a shove, wanting to get my head together even more than I wanted to stoke my libido. “Go.”
He pulled me closer, his embrace firm and demanding. “I like it here.”
“Dammit, Deacon . . . ” But he wasn’t listening. The music was of the bump-and-grind variety, and even though the place practically vibrated with the beat, he held me by the hips and moved in a slow, sensual dance, and damn my ever-loving soul, right then I didn’t care that he was a demon. Didn’t care that he might have played me, set me up.
All I cared about was making that connection again—that full-body, all-over tingling lust that had washed through me the first time he’d held me in his arms.
I sighed, remembering the longing and the sensual desperation.
And then I tensed, remembering the fear, the darkness, and the bloodied rage.
I gave him another hard shove.
“No.” This time, I did break free. Gasping, I stepped back, eyeing him warily as the drunken ravers gyrated nearby. I had to keep my head on. I had to, because if I couldn’t think, I couldn’t figure him out.
The dim light cast the hard planes of his face in shadows. He watched me, his eyes hard and assessing. “Planning on running away again?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said, the feel of my knife against my shin comforting me.
The corner of his mouth lifted ever so slightly, and his gaze raked over me. “Good. I’d hate to think I scared you off again.”
I bristled. “Excuse me? You don’t scare me.”
“No?” Those harsh planes shifted into something resembling a smile, and damned if his eyes didn’t twinkle. “I could have sworn that’s why you ran so fast
. Because of what you saw. What we both saw.”
I flinched, realizing for the first time that he’d seen it, too. He hadn’t merely felt me poking around in there. He’d seen what I’d seen, knew what I knew.
I didn’t know much about weird psychic visions, but my impression was that they usually weren’t shared. That this one had been didn’t make me feel better. If anything, the knowledge made me even antsier.
And antsier still when he stepped closer to press his hand on my shoulders and bend his mouth to my ear. “Which part of the vision scared you more? The dark, bloody horror? Or the two of us, entwined and naked?”
“None of it scared me,” I lied.
“No?” He leaned back enough so that I could see his face. His expression was harsh, unreadable, but anger seemed to roll off him in waves, and I had the feeling it was held in check only by the strength of his formidable will. “Then why did you run?”
“I didn’t run,” I lied.
“Of course you didn’t.”
“I was working,” I said firmly, and a bit too loud. “I had to get back to work.”
“Which raises the question of why you went into my head in the first place. You broke a promise to me, Alice, and an important one. Don’t think I’ll take that lightly.”
I cocked my head, sensing more than just anger in his tone. This wasn’t about a broken promise; it was about the revelation. And damned if I didn’t understand why he was pissed. If I had that man’s psyche, I’d want people to stay the hell out of it, too.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it. “I didn’t mean to. It just happened. I wasn’t trying to turn it on. I swear.”
He searched my face, and I let him, knowing with absolute certainty that he’d find nothing but the truth there.
“Anyone else gets in my head like that, and they’d be dead by now,” he said, his voice matter-of-fact.
I lifted my chin defiantly. “Then why am I alive?”
He smiled in answer, then traced the line of my jaw with his fingertip. The simple promise in his touch shot straight through me, making my skin tingle and hum with both memory and anticipation. The need was ramping up again inside me, my body seeming to pulse with the lights of the club, desire so close to the surface I feared it would overcome me.
“It scared you,” he said. “What you saw.”
“I don’t scare easy,” I said, moving closer to him, proving to myself just how easy it was. How easily I could control this new power I’d found within myself.
“Is that a fact?”
I only smiled in answer, my fingertips tracing his shoulder, lightly stroking his arm. Closer still, the light burning inside me. That thrall. That trick. That sweet surrender I’d watched in the boy’s face as he danced with me. I’d brought him in, caught him in a spell.
And I could do the same thing to Deacon.
And the power of that realization only fueled the fire inside me.
His head turned so that he could watch as my fingertip lightly grazed the soft skin of his forearm. “What does scare you?”
I lifted myself up on my toes, leaned in so that my breasts brushed his chest, nipples hard under the thin layer of my tank top. I placed my mouth close to his ear and breathed in the scent of bourbon mixed with mint. “You,” I whispered, my voice little more than air.
“You should be scared,” he answered, and the truth of that declaration shot all the way through me. Except it didn’t scare me. It excited me. Made me want to push limits and test boundaries.
Apparently, all I’d needed in order to really feel alive was to die.
I pressed in closer and pitched my voice low. I was playing with fire, but until I got burned, I wasn’t sure I could stop. “Does that mean you’re dangerous?”
He stroked my hair, my head fitting into the palm of his hand. “You weren’t scared of me last week. So you tell me, Alice. What’s changed? And don’t say the vision, because you stood me up long before that.”
What’s changed? Wasn’t that the question—and I stepped back, the spell evaporating as reality circled around me. A reality in which Alice was dead, Deacon was a demon, and the mystery of Alice’s death loomed over me.
“Alice?”
“Nothing’s changed,” I said, trying to figure out how to play this.
“Interesting.”
I looked at his face, but he was giving nothing away. “What?”
“You told me twice you needed to talk—begged me to meet you, to be on time, to not forget—and then you stood me up.”
“Last week I didn’t—”
“What?”
I drew in a breath, quickly considering my options, and deciding to go with the big bomb. “Last week I didn’t know you were a demon.”
His eyes narrowed, but otherwise he showed no reaction. Almost imperceptibly, he moved closer, his body generating an electric reaction between us. “Didn’t you?” he asked, the question confusing me. If Alice had known the truth about Deacon, then not only had I completely blown my cover, I’d also stumbled across the burning question of the century: What was pretty-in-pink Alice doing hanging around with demons? And had her less-than-savory acquaintances somehow gotten her killed?
“Does knowing what I am bother you?”
I looked into his eyes, the memory of everything I’d seen within him washing over me. The vile blackness. The raw fury.
I shivered. And then I caught myself, remembering what I was. “No,” I said firmly. “Doesn’t bother me at all.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “Should I be worried?”
I cocked my head, my brow furrowed.
“Because of your new career,” he said. “You’re going into the demon-hunting business, right?”
I tilted my head up. “That’s right.”
His head moved in, and he nuzzled my neck, my hair, his proximity sending little flutters and sparks ricocheting through me.
“Their scent is on you,” he said.
Something hitched inside me, and I answered through a thick throat. “What?”
“You’ve killed tonight,” he said. “Demon.” He sniffed again, breathing in deep of the scent of me. “And there is blood on you as well.”
He leaned back, looking at me with a question in his eyes that bordered on accusation.
“I didn’t hurt her,” I said. “I was trying to save her.”
“Of course,” he said. “It was, after all, the demon you were hunting. Not the girl.”
“What do you want?” I said. Because right then, although I’d thought I wanted to lose myself in lust, I was more interested in him going away. Because with him that close to me, I really couldn’t think.
“I want answers, Alice.”
“I don’t know the question.”
“Then let me spell it out for you. You’ve changed. And trust me when I say I’m going to find out why.”
“No, I—”
His finger moved to my lips, and I had to fight the urge to draw him in and suckle. “I didn’t feel this way about the Alice who asked for my help, and I’ll admit that bothered me. Made me think I’d been wrong about the whole thing.”
I blinked. What whole thing?
“But the Alice in the alley?” he continued. “The Alice who let me watch while she slid into my head? The woman who got naked with me in a shared vision? She’s the woman I’ve craved. She’s the woman I want. And trust me when I say that I will have her.”
I tried to say something, but the fact that my body was melting pretty much prevented speech. Instead, all I managed was a breathy little noise.
His lips brushed my ear, his breath hot against my skin. “So tell me, Alice. Tell me what happened to you.”
A whisper of fear skittered down my spine. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“One way or another, I’m going to find out.” He leaned back, his gaze riding hard over me before he turned to leave. He stopped once, then turned to look back. “And I take my promises
very, very seriously.”
19
He knew.
Somehow, Deacon knew I wasn’t really Alice.
I took a deep breath of the cool night air, far cleaner than the miasma of smoke and drugs and body odor I’d inhaled in the rave. The air not only cleaned out my sinuses, it cleared my thoughts. He didn’t know. Not for certain. He was suspicious, yes, but that was entirely different from knowing. And even if he did have questions, I doubted that the possibility I’d hijacked Alice’s body would pop to the front of his mind.
My long stride ate up the sidewalk as I turned it over and over and over in my mind, making myself dizzy with the permutations, making myself sick with speculation.
No question, Deacon was a threat. An unknown commodity I’d have to watch. A wildcard about whom I needed to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible.
Unfortunately, the thought of following him home and playing Nancy Drew had come too late. As a result, I was stuck with more mundane methods of research. I might not be a girl detective, but I did have the basic skills that come manifest with my age group: I could Google with the best of them. A skill that was thwarted as soon as I returned to Alice’s apartment and saw absolutely no evidence of a computer.
Frustrating at first, but then I remembered the pink leather bag I’d seen in the back of her closet as I’d been digging for waitress attire. Sure enough, the bag was one of those fancy, girly laptop cases, and snug inside was a shiny white MacBook.
As I set the computer up on the kitchen table, I wondered vaguely if she’d been packing to go somewhere before she died. Surely most people kept their computers out and running, loath to be more than a minute away from e-mail or instant messages.
Feeling more than a little voyeuristic, I plugged it in and powered it up, reminding myself as I did so that I had a perfect right to poke around in there. Technically, the computer was mine now.
As the machine went through its startup routine, I pushed the button on Alice’s nearby answering machine. She’d left a cheery outgoing message which, thankfully, included her phone number, and I made a point to memorize it. Then I listened as the digitized voice announced that she had three new messages.