“I’ve got a cell phone in the Blazer,” Max answered, and went out to get it.
“What about him?” the detective asked, cocking a thumb in Max’s direction. “He have a key to this place?”
“No,” Kristina said, unable to keep a note of annoyance out of her voice. “Max is the original solid citizen.” She got up, filled a mug with water from the cooler, added a tea bag, and put the whole shebang into the microwave. Nausea roiled in her stomach and seared the back of her throat; maybe chamomile would soothe her nerves.
“Had to ask,” Walters said. “Not much more we can do here, today at least. We’ll write up a report and ask you to sign it. You probably should get somebody over to either replace that glass or board the place up.”
Protecting the rest of her merchandise was the least of Kristina’s worries. “Thank you,” she said. She didn’t exactly mean it, but that was the closest thing to sincerity she could manage at the moment.
Max returned as Walters and the others were leaving. “Daisy’s on her way,” he said. “While I was on the telephone, I called a friend of mine, a contractor. He’ll see what he can do about the door.”
Kristina had collected her tea from the microwave. She made her wobbly way back to the table and sat down. She used both hands to raise the cup to her lips, she was still shaking so badly.
“Do you want to tell me what you meant by that remark about the doorstop?” Max asked when they had both been silent for some time. The police were gone, and a cold draft blew in from outside. Both Max and Kristina were still wearing their coats.
She shook her head. “When Daisy gets here,” she promised. “I can’t stand to tell it twice.”
Max drew back the other chair and sat down across from her. “Daisy would be the woman who gave the Halloween party for the neighborhood kids. The one who keeps a white wolf for a pet and considers herself the wife of a vampire.” It might have been funny, so ludicrous was the situation, if it weren’t for the fact that an angry robber and rapist had been turned loose. Kristina couldn’t find it within herself to smile. “That’s her. She’s also a private investigator.”
“Figures,” Max said wryly. “Never let it be said that your friends and relations lead dull lives.”
Kristina managed a ghost of a grin. “Before she came to Seattle, Daisy was a homicide detective in Las Vegas. The word dull is not in her vocabulary.”
Max pushed his metal folding chair back on two legs, his arms folded, regarding Kristina in thoughtful silence for several seconds. “I’m almost afraid to ask this question,” he began. “But what can Ms. Chandler do that the police can’t? Isn’t she mortal, just like them?”
Kristina let out a long breath. She nodded. “Daisy is quite human. She’s also very, very good at what she does.”
“And she, like you, has some very powerful allies.”
“Yes,” Kristina replied. She was counting on Valerian and perhaps Dathan for some aid and advice, but she didn’t plan to bother either of her parents with the problem. Calder was doing important work of his own, and Maeve was occupied with the search for Gideon and Dimity.
“How about some more tea?” Max asked, seeing that Kristina’s cup was empty.
“Are you always such a nice guy?” Kristina countered, surrendering her mug. “I keep expecting to find out something awful about you.”
Max grinned as he dropped a tea bag into water and set the cup back in the microwave. “I leave dirty socks around sometimes,” he confessed. “And I’m a sore loser at racquetball.”
Kristina spread a hand over her upper chest in mock horror. “Oh, no.”
Max leaned down, while the oven whirred behind him, and kissed Kristina lightly on the mouth. “I’m a long way from perfect, okay?”
Suddenly Kristina felt the weight of the ages settle on her slender shoulders. “Maybe,” she admitted sorrowfully, “but there’s a definition in the dictionary for what you are. I’m something that doesn’t even have a name.”
The microwave bell chimed; Max took the tea out and set it down in front of Kristina and dropped back into his chair across from her before grasping her hand. “You’re a woman,” he insisted quietly. “Trust me. I know.”
A tear trickled down Kristina’s cheek; she dashed it away with the back of her hand. Before she could say anything, however, there was a stir at the front of the shop and the sound of a familiar voice.
“Kris?” Daisy called. “Are you in here?”
“Back here,” Kristina replied, rising shakily to her feet. Max followed her into the shop, where Daisy stood near the broken counter, surveying the damage.
“What happened?” she asked. She was wearing jeans, a turtleneck sweater, hiking boots, and a baseball cap, and her adopted son, Esteban, was perched on her hip. He, too, was bundled against the cold, and his enormous brown eyes were wide as he looked around.
Kristina shoved her hands into the pockets of her coat. Max stood beside her. “You know Max Kilcarragh, don’t you?” she asked, stalling.
Daisy nodded. “He came to the Halloween gig,” she answered. “Hi, Max. How are the kids?”
“Great,” Max replied with another grin. “How’s the wolf?”
It was a rhetorical question; no one expected a reply, and Daisy didn’t offer one. She was already prowling around the shop, looking at things, assessing the situation. Finally she turned to Kristina again. “Obviously the guy didn’t break in, he broke out. What the hell happened here?”
Kristina led the way to the settee and chairs on the other side of the shop, where she and Max had sat talking on another occasion. Daisy took one of the chairs, Esteban settling against her chest and pushing a thumb into his mouth, and Max sat down beside Kristina, on the settee.
Slowly, quietly, Kristina told her friends about the night she’d turned the unwelcome visitor into a doorstop. She admitted that Valerian had warned her that the spell could wear off, and that she had always meant to do something about the thing, but she’d procrastinated.
Now it was only too obvious that the brass monkey had come back to life, torn the shop apart, and left.
“He’d be scared to bother you again, wouldn’t he?” Max reasoned. His elbows were braced on his knees; he’d interlaced his lingers and rested his chin on extended thumbs.
Daisy sighed. “As a rule, these guys aren’t real smart. That’s one of the reasons they commit crimes—because they can’t work out the cause-and-effect equation—i.e., ‘If I knock off this convenience store, the cops are going to catch me if they can, and then I’ll end up in prison.’ They don’t think beyond what they want at the moment.” Kristina shivered. She hadn’t seen the last of her would-be assailant; he’d be back. And now her magic was so weak as to be almost nonexistent. Was she finally going to die, after a hundred and thirty years? And what if Max got in the thief’s way, trying to protect her?
She covered her face with both hands and groaned. “Valerian warned me. I should have listened!”
“It’s going to be okay,” Daisy said. She sounded so certain. Daisy was that kind of person; she never seemed to doubt anything. “First of all, I’m going to bring Barabbas over to keep you company for a while. You could use a pet anyway. And when Valerian—” She glanced briefly at Max, then went on. “When Valerian wakes up, I’ll ask him to find this guy.”
Max took Kristina’s hand and held it tightly between both his own. She felt strength and reassurance surge into her. She saw such love in his eyes that her heart ached with the effort to receive and contain it all.
“My folks could keep Bree and Eliette for a few more days—until this is resolved,” he said. “In the meantime, I’ll stay at your place. I don’t want you alone, even with a wolf to protect you.”
Kristina promptly vetoed the idea. “Not a chance, Max,” she said. “I won’t allow you to endanger yourself that way. Valerian will have some suggestions, and, besides, Barabbas is no ordinary wolf. He’ll be a perfectly adequate bodyguard as long as I n
eed one.”
Daisy nodded in agreement, but said nothing. There was new respect in her eyes as she looked at Max.
“What are my options here?” Max demanded. “Where this lame-brained plan is concerned, I mean?”
“You don’t have any,” Kristina said. “If you refuse to let me do this my way, then I’ll have no choice but to find this guy and confront him. I have to act, Max. I can’t sit around and wait.”
A look of horror dawned in Max’s handsome face. “You expect this bastard to come to your house,” he rasped.
“It won’t go that far,” Daisy interjected. But she was the only one who felt confident. She stood, easily lifting the now-sleeping child in her arms.
“How do you like motherhood?” Kristina asked, desperate to change the subject. Max’s friend, the contractor, had arrived. Max went to join him at the front of the shop, where the two men conferred about the broken door.
Daisy beamed and kissed the dark, silken hair on top of Esteban’s head. “I like it fine,” she answered. “Valerian is having fits, though—it upsets him that the little guy sleeps on the floor and hides food and stuff. You’d think in six hundred years he’d have learned some patience.”
“Not Valerian,” Kristina said, with a wan smile. She was anxious to see the vampire again, although she knew a heated lecture was inevitable. He had warned her, after all, about casting frivolous spells and failing to follow up on them. “What about your work as a PI? Are you going to give that up?”
Daisy shook her head. “I’ll be cutting back a little for a while, but I’m a career woman at heart,” she said. “We’ve hired a nanny, through one of those swanky agencies. She came from Brazil, so she speaks perfect Portuguese, as well as English, of course. And Valerian has given up his magic act in Vegas, at least for the time being.” She paused and grinned mischievously. “He’ll come as quite a shock to the PTA once Esteban starts school, won’t he?”
Kristina chuckled, grateful for a few moments of distraction from the new and difficult problem she faced. “I just hope the nanny can deal with your—er—unconventional lifestyle.” She thought of the loyal Mrs. Fullywub, who had worked for Kristina’s parents for many years, and been fully aware that her employers were vampires.
Daisy shrugged. “Given what we’re paying her, I doubt she’ll ask all that many questions. Besides, we’re not half as weird as some of the people you see on TV talk shows. Listen, I’ve got to go, but I’ll have Barabbas at your place before the sun goes down, I promise. And you can expect a visit from Valerian, too, of course.”
Kristina thanked her friend, and Daisy left.
Max introduced Kristina to the contractor, whose name was Jess Baker. Arrangements were made, and Jess prepared to board up the door, until it could be replaced with a new one the following day.
Back at Kristina’s house, Max insisted that she sit in the Blazer until he’d gone through the whole place, room by room and closet by closet, to make sure it was safe. Finally he came to the door and signaled that she could come in.
“Are you sure you won’t let me move in for a day or two?” he asked, helping her out of her coat.
“Positive,” she answered. “Max, we can’t keep seeing each other. It’s too dangerous—”
He put his arms around her and drew her very close. “Just try to get rid of me,” he replied, and kissed her.
Kristina lost herself, lost her troubles, in that sweet, brief contact. “Oh, Max,” she said when it was over. “I need you to hold me, to make love to me.”
“I think we can arrange that,” he answered gruffly. They went upstairs then, Kristina leading the way, returning to her room. The bed was still rumpled from their last encounter.
Slowly, garment by garment, savoring every moment, every stolen kiss, they undressed each other and lay together on the musk-scented sheets, having flung the covers to the floor. Beyond the windows snow fell, great, fat flakes swaying from side to side, taking their time.
Kristina was filled with a sense of peace, unwarranted as that was, for while Max was touching her, kissing her, holding her, there was no sorrow in the universe, no pain or treachery or vengeance.
“I love you,” she said on a breath as Max moved over her.
His body spoke eloquently, but he did not say the vital words, and even in her need, Kristina took note. And she grieved.
74
It was still snowing when nightfall came, and Valerian appeared soon after the earth had reached that crucial degree of turning, the white wolf at his heels. Max felt his hackles rise, but he wasn’t sure whether it was the animal that provoked this primitive response in him or the vampire. He suspected there wasn’t a whole lot of difference between the two of them—both were ferocious, both were cunning, both were wild, and, as hard as it was to admit, beautiful in a lethal sort of way.
There had been nothing particularly dramatic about their arrival, however—the vampire rang the front doorbell, and the wolf crouched at his heels. The animal’s silver-white pelt glistened with flakes of snow; Valerian, too, wore a dusting of the stuff, glimmering in his shaggy chestnut hair and on the shoulders of his expensively cut overcoat. Both the wolf and the vampire studied Max with a hungry glint in their eyes, as though ready to pounce.
He stepped back to admit them. “Kristina is in the living room,” he said, gesturing. He was sure Valerian knew the way, and that he had never bothered to ring the doorbell before. Popping in unannounced was more his style, according to Kristina.
The vampire stepped over the threshold and shed his coat in a graceful, shrugging motion, then handed the garment to Max, as though he were a footman or a butler. Amused rather than offended, and understandably fascinated, Max offered no protest.
The wolf, in the meantime, shook himself off in the middle of the entry way’s Persian rug, then trotted, puppylike, toward the living room. Valerian gave Max a long, assessing look, then followed the beast.
Max hung up the coat, next to his own ratty ski jacket, and went to join the party.
Valerian stood with his back to the living room fire, which Max had built to a comforting roar, warming his hands. Kristina rested on an elegant Victorian chaise, the pages of an ancient manuscript spread across her lap. The wolf had taken his place on the floor beside her, strange blue eyes watchful, muzzle resting on paws as white as the snow drifting past the windows.
Max bent over Kristina and kissed the top of her head. “You’re sure you don’t want me to stay,” he said. It wasn’t a question really, but a statement. He hated the thought of leaving her, but she’d already made her wishes more than clear.
She looked up at him, touched his lips and then his chin with one index finger. Hours had passed since they’d made love, showered together, and gotten dressed again, but he still felt the aftershocks of passion deep in his groin.
“I’m sure,” she said.
He met the vampire’s gaze, which was level and patently unfriendly, then looked down at Kristina again. “You’ll call if you need me?”
“I’ll call,” she promised, trying to smile. She was looking fragile again; Max wondered if their lovemaking had merely added to the strain of her other concerns, rather than lending comfort.
With a nod to Valerian, Max turned and left the room, collecting his coat and the gym bag containing his dirty clothes on the way out of the house. He sat in the Blazer for a long time before turning the key in the ignition, backing out of the driveway, and heading toward home.
“You’ve really done it this time,” Valerian said when the front door closed behind Max. The vampire’s nostrils were slightly flared, and Kristina knew he had had trouble containing his temper until they were alone.
Barabbas whimpered.
Kristina closed her eyes. She’d found the volumes she’d asked to borrow from Maeve’s personal library waiting on her desk, when she and Max had come downstairs after making love, and searched the pages for a spell that would get her out of this mess. “How do you mea
n?” she asked with exaggerated innocence, finally making herself meet Valerian’s furious glare. “By letting the doorstop come back to life, or by getting involved with Max Kilcarragh?”
“It’s obviously too late to do anything about your infatuation with that mortal, and, as you pointed out the last time we talked, it would be hypocritical of me to condemn you for loving a human being.” He paused, pacing along the edge of the hearth, striving hard to retain his composure. “Great Zeus, Kristina—I warned you about that damnable, silly spell, didn’t I? Have you tried to find this—this doorstop of yours?”
Kristina bit her lower lip and nodded. “No luck,” she said. She tapped the manuscript. “But I did come across an incantation that might turn him back into a brass monkey. At least for a little while, until we, or the police, can find him.”
Valerian stopped his pacing and arched one eyebrow in plain contempt. “The police? What would you say to them, Kristina? That you changed a man into a doorstop in a moment of pique and now it’s all come undone and he’s on the streets, looking to commit mayhem and maybe murder?”
She shrank against the back of the chaise, properly chagrined. “Can’t you find him?” she asked after a long, difficult silence and at a very heavy cost to her pride. “My powers are dwindling, but yours—”
He shook his head. “I have already tried. Something is veiling him from me—probably a warlock. And he may have powers of his own, this brass monkey of yours.”
“He was an ordinary mortal!” Kristina protested. It was too horrible to think of that ghoul using magic.
“I have summoned Dathan,” Valerian said, taking an exquisite pocket watch from his vest and flipping open the case. The soft, tinkling notes of a Mozart composition sprinkled the room, light as the evening snowfall. “If there are warlocks involved in this muddle, he’ll know about it.” In virtually the next instant Dathan materialized, clad in kidskin breeches, a ruffled shirt, and a waistcoat. The rather dashing outfit was completed by a pair of high, gleaming black boots.
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