“Don’t look at me,” Iskander said.
“Maddy,” Harsh said. “Don’t let them do anything stupid.”
“I make no promises,” she said.
While Harsh went off, Maddy walked to Paisley and stuck out her hand. “I’m Maddy Winters. Nikodemus speaks very highly of you.”
Paisley didn’t want to shake hands but she did. “Paisley Nichols. Nice to meet you, too.”
“How did you and Iskander meet?” She was being pleasant, but Paisley couldn’t help thinking there was a note of something else in her words and in the way Maddy looked her up and down. Obviously, she thought Paisley was yet another in Iskander’s parade of women.
She pasted on a big smile. “He’s my landlord.”
Iskander draped an arm around Maddy’s shoulder, and the witch’s arm slipped lower until only her thumb in his belt loop kept her hand from ending up on his ass. “I thought you knew. Rasmus scourged her apartment. She lives with me now.”
Maddy twisted to look at Iskander. “She lives with you?”
“Yeah,” Iskander said. Maddy disengaged from their embrace, and Iskander didn’t seem to notice the look she gave him. Or the long and thoughtful look she gave Paisley.
“What have you two done?” Maddy said softly.
Iskander was oblivious. “We need to talk about our boy Rasmus Kessler tonight.”
Harsh returned with the knife and a stack of plates, so Paisley didn’t hear the rest of Iskander’s conversation with Maddy. Harsh, she found, knew enough about the serious business of cake cutting to have brought a bowl of hot water and a towel.
“Bless you, Harsh.”
“My pleasure.”
She busied herself cutting square slices of cake. Harsh stayed next to her, moving plates of cake out of her way while she dipped the knife in the warm water and dried it off before she cut the next series of slices. The whole time, she was aware of Iskander and Maddy standing together. Close together.
Everything clicked into place. Of course. Iskander had been to bed with Maddy. She knew it. Absolutely knew it.
“They seem very friendly,” she said to Harsh.
“Maddy and Iskander?”
“Yes.” The knife hit the bottom of the cake plate with a thunk.
“He does some work for her from time to time.”
Ka-chink. “Work.” Ka-thunk. “How long did they date?” she asked as calmly as she could.
“I don’t think they did.” Harsh laughed. “But then Iskander doesn’t date so much as commit serial sex. Maddy’s too good for him.”
She stopped cutting cake. “With all due respect,” she said in a low voice, “that is bullshit.” She lifted the knife between them, pointing it at Harsh. “Iskander is my friend. He is kind and caring and generous, so don’t you dare go around saying he’s not good enough for someone.”
Harsh lifted his hands. “My apologies.”
“Apology accepted.” She kept cutting slices until Harsh wrapped his fingers around her elbow.
“Put away the knife, Paisley, and let me introduce you around before the meeting gets going.”
She shot a glance in Iskander’s direction. He was still talking to Maddy. The beautiful, very sexy, very-interested-in-him Maddy Winters.
Harsh said, “It’s her business to know what’s going on with the magekind in this territory. She’s going to be interested in you, too.”
“Isn’t that just lovely?”
He walked her away from the table and started introducing her around. At least meeting the others was a distraction. She was shaking hands with yet another demon when a chill went through the room. It hit her, too. Just about everyone turned toward the main door.
A tall—most of these guys were tall—man with brown hair and light brown eyes came in with his arm draped around a woman so beautiful Paisley was in love with her herself. The two made a stunning couple. He was as gorgeous as the woman with him. “Wow,” she whispered.
A strange thing happened, which she noticed because of where she was standing. First, the guy with brown hair, who was almost too adorably cute and had obviously dressed down for the party, paid no attention whatsoever to the fifteen or so men who faced him and touched their fingers to their foreheads as he passed.
He zeroed in on Maddy like he had some kind of radar. His hand, which was on the beautiful woman’s shoulder, slid down to her waist, bringing her in tight. Maddy, who up to now had been keeping a more polite distance from Iskander—not that Paisley was keeping track—took one look at the guy and plastered herself against Iskander. Iskander looked like he’d been bitten by a rattlesnake.
The couple headed straight for Harsh. The man kept his arm around his companion’s waist. When they stopped, she shook her long black hair over her shoulder and smiled. “Harsh, nice to see you. As ever.”
Harsh pressed his fingers to his bowed forehead as the others had done. “Kynan,” he said. “And, Emily. A pleasure to see you, too.”
Kynan nodded like it was nothing to be greeted so formally. Then he looked straight at Paisley and said, “You’re the new girl Nikodemus is so worked up about.”
“Kynan,” Harsh said, “this is Paisley Nichols.” He drew in a breath and put a hand on her elbow again, as if he thought she needed to be steadied. From the corner of her eye, she saw Iskander striding toward them. “Paisley,” Harsh went on in a smooth voice, “this is Kynan Aijan and Emily dit Menart.”
Paisley stuck out her hand. “Paisley.” She forced a grin. “The new girl. Nice to meet you, sir.”
The man’s eyes pierced her. He looked young, early twenties at best, but his eyes were a million years old. He stared at her, and she gazed back, taking in the ripped jeans and faded T-shirt and the eyes that belonged to a much older man, and her stomach curled up. Not in a good way. He swiped his thumb across her forehead like he was removing a smudge. While he did that, his eyes connected with hers, and for a minute she lost all sense of where she was in space. If Harsh hadn’t been holding on to her, she would have fallen over.
She blinked a few times before things came back into focus, and even then not all at once. First, she became aware of the warmth of someone’s fingers on the back of her arm, then the music playing and the sound of muted conversation. Kynan’s eyes continued to bore into her. They were more gold than bronze, she thought.
“My friend, leave her alone.”
“Iskander,” Kynan said in a voice that sent shivers of cold up and down her spine, “what the hell were you thinking?”
“None of your goddamned business.”
That was Iskander speaking. His arm steadying her. He didn’t sound like his usual cheerful self. She looked up and saw that wasn’t his usual cheerful expression, either. Maddy was beside him, though not touching him any longer. If looks could kill, Kynan would be a puddle on the floor. “And you will not interfere.”
Another chill went through the room as Nikodemus strolled in. Carson went to his side. The room fell silent. Everyone bowed, even Kynan, fingers pressed to their foreheads. “Oh, good,” he said. “You’re all here.” He looked around and waited a beat. “There’s a mage coming in the next five minutes. A representative of the Russian Federation. Paisley, if he’s a screamer, and I think he will be, you do your thing. I have a fucking point to make with the Russians.”
CHAPTER 30
The Palace Hotel, San Francisco
His thoughts came into focus with a snap. There was no time for the breathless disorder that came with finding himself alone in his mind. He could not recall his name or where, precisely, he might be, but he was bone certain that if he had five minutes alone, he’d be lucky. Luck had not been with him lately. She would come. Fen. And he would lose even this moment of control.
He searched the pockets of his suit and found a cell phone and wallet intact. This was not his home but a hotel suite, an expensive one he gathered, since he was standing in a living room from which he could see through to the bedroom. Details registered
in his mind with the speed of a desert tortoise. He found seven hundred dollars in hundreds and fifties in the wallet as well as three credit cards and a California state driver’s license, all of them issued to someone named Rasmus Kessler. The license was inside a clear plastic sleeve. Kessler was an organ donor, he noted.
He found the bathroom and compared himself to the license photo. The face that gazed at him from the mirror was thinner than the one in the photo, and that man’s hair was not braided as his was, but other than that, he appeared to be Rasmus Kessler.
The red beads worked into the dozens of braids clicked softly. The sound sparked a memory. The beads were rubies and they helped him somehow… The fragment of recollection dissolved.
There was, he noticed, a slip of paper tucked into the back of the sleeve that held the driver’s license. He took it out and unfolded it to find a phone number written on it with the phrase Nikodemus must be warned scrawled underneath. The word must had been underlined several times, at least once hard enough to make a hole in the paper.
Warned of what?
He took out the cell phone and saw there was no list of recent calls and no phone numbers in the contacts. Whoever had used the phone last had wiped the device of any personal information. An interesting level of paranoia. Or wise. Very wise.
Rasmus dialed the number on the scrap of paper. His pulse raced while he listened to the ringing on the other end. Had he done this before? He strode out of the bathroom and into the living room just as a woman answered on the other end.
“Alexandrine speaking.”
His breath caught. He grabbed a padded leatherette binder from one of the tables near the sofa. The name of the hotel was embossed on the front. Palace Hotel. Underneath that, in smaller letters, was the location. San Francisco.
He still could not connect the name Rasmus Kessler to himself, though that had to be his name. In the same way, he knew he lived across the bay in Berkeley only because of the address on the license. Chasing down those thoughts did no good. His mind refused to offer up anything else. No assurance of his name. No memories of his house.
“Hello?” the woman said. “You still there?”
His skin prickled. Her voice was familiar, but there was nothing more beyond his certainty that he had at least spoken to her before. Words jammed in his throat. “Nikodemus must be warned.”
“About what?” the woman said.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I do not know.”
“Do you need help?”
“Yes.”
“We can do that.”
Someone in the hall outside the door laughed. The locking mechanism emitted a mechanized buzz. Fen. “It’s her,” he said to the woman on the phone. “If she discovers that I’ve called you, she will do worse than kill me.”
“Who is this, and where can we find you?
“Rasmus Kessler. I am at the Palace Hotel.”
There was dead silence on the other end. “Well, fuck you, Daddy.”
The response made no sense to him, and there was no time to figure it out. “I do not know what room I am in. You must warn Nikodemus.”
Rasmus pressed the RESET button on the phone so that Fen wouldn’t find out who he’d called. At least not from the phone. He dropped it into his pocket as the suite’s door swung open.
CHAPTER 31
Broadway and Baker, San Francisco
Turned out the mage arrived in fewer than five minutes. Paisley felt the reaction thirty seconds before he appeared, and her reaction lagged behind most of others by a bit. Iskander moved closer to her as a florid man in a very expensive suit walked in with six men behind him. A screamer. She flinched and steeled herself against clapping her hands over her ears. The six men were magehelds. All six wore suits and all six had their hair buzzed short.
Iskander put a hand on her shoulder. Having him close helped. Everyone in the room tensed except Harsh, who went to the table and gathered a plate of desserts, which he presented to the man with a nod and a greeting. “Yevgeny. Welcome.”
The Russian accepted the plate without acknowledging Harsh. He gave a tight nod to Nikodemus. “Warlord.” He spoke with a strong accent. “Please accept greetings from Bratislava Demitrova.”
Nikodemus crossed his arms over his chest. “Yevgeny. I thought I made myself clear to both of you about who I’d accept as a representative in my territory. Was there a misunderstanding?”
Yevgeny handed his plate to one of the men with him and said something in Russian. The man took the fork and sampled everything on the plate. “These are dangerous times, Warlord. What you asked is not possible. To give up anything such as you ask.” He lifted both hands. “Unthinkable.”
“I don’t give a shit what you can or can’t think about. I made myself clear.”
Yevgeny smiled and clasped his hands in front of his crotch. His magehelds moved in closer.
“Magekind in my territory cannot keep magic they killed to get. End of story. You shouldn’t be here,” Nikodemus said.
“If you kill me, Bratislava will not take it kindly.”
Kynan, Harsh, and Xia moved closer to Nikodemus. There was enough magic in the room to make the air crackle. “We don’t take kindly to being murdered.”
“There will be war.” Yevgeny took a step back. “No one wants that.”
Nikodemus smiled. “I don’t need to kill you. I just need to send you home with only the magic you were born with.”
The Russian glanced at his magehelds. The screaming coming from him got louder, slicing through Paisley like a blade. The mageheld holding the plate of food put it down on a nearby table.
At her side, Iskander put a hand on her lower back. Paisley’s heart about galloped out of her chest. This wasn’t like the other times she’d done this. There hadn’t been magehelds involved or a mage who knew what was going to happen to him.
“Give up the magic you stole, or it will be taken from you.”
Yevgeny smiled engagingly. It was easy to imagine sitting down to drinks with him. His eyes were pretty, as blue as the sky and darkly lashed, with a sleepy look belied by the awareness there. “My answer is no.”
“Paisley.” Nikodemus gestured.
She swallowed once, hard, and walked toward Yevgeny and his magehelds. Iskander went with her. His body was loose, his hands swinging free at his sides. He was pulling magic, and it raised gooseflesh on her skin. Iskander wasn’t the only one pulling, either.
“You swore your fiends would not attack me.”
Nikodemus waved a hand in dismissal. “Bratislava knew my terms. She should not have sent you without you complying.”
“An impasse, then.” He kept a nervous eye on Iskander. “Can we not agree that she was wrong and have our discussion? There is much she wished me to bring up to you, Warlord.”
“No.”
Yevgeny looked Paisley up and down. The screams echoing in her head drowned out her fear. “Pretty girl. I will regret if she comes to harm.”
“His job is to protect her, Yevgeny,” Nikodemus said, hooking his thumb in Iskander’s direction. “With his life, so be careful what you do when she’s done.”
When she was close enough, Paisley lifted a hand. One of the magehelds reached to block her. Iskander’s arm shot out and gripped the mageheld’s wrist. “Touch her,” he said in a low voice as he pushed away the mageheld’s arm, “and you will die.”
The inside of her head filled with shrieks, and it was killing her to hear that horrible sound without cease. She lifted her hand again. The same mageheld moved to intercept her. Iskander’s body became a blur. She didn’t see how the mageheld died; she just felt it happen. In the space between her heartbeats, she touched Yevgeny’s chest. Agonized screams rushed toward her, through her, like a hurricane. She yanked back.
Yevgeny shrieked.
She fell back at the same time two of the Russian’s magehelds lunged for her. Iskander was there, impossibly fast. The two went down, and she was aware they weren’t movin
g and that the Russian was still screaming. The other three stood, eyes wide, uncertain what to do.
She opened her fingers and the screaming in her head stopped. Blessed silence. At last.
On the floor, Yevgeny groaned, hands over his chest. He spoke in Russian again, and then in English. “Kill them all.”
Out of nowhere, one of the men who’d been standing by Nikodemus appeared by the Russians. Durian, she thought his name was. The assassin. Magic poured from him. Iskander moved again, a blur of red mist blossoming in the air. Her hair blew in a desert wind, whipping around her face, blinding her and a booming sound echoed through her body. When she could see again, Durian was on one knee, his fingers pressed to his forehead, and Carson was stepping away from one of the magehelds.
Paisley blinked and tried to make sense of what had happened. Yevgeny was still on the floor, hands to his chest and breathing hard. Two magehelds were still alive, but they felt different to her. Both them were in various stages of some kind of convulsive collapse. She shivered, even though her skin felt hot.
The warlord approached Yevgeny, radiating enough power to heat the air around him. “I never make threats,” he said. The Russian muttered something and Nikodemus shook his head. “Not here. Not in my house. Your magic won’t work here.” He leaned over the Russian. “I told Bratislava what would happen if she sent someone like you. Go home without your goddamned slaves and without our blood on your soul, and you make sure everyone you meet understands the terms I’m offering. Clear?”
Yevgeny growled.
“Harsh, see our Russian friend to the door, would you? Get him a cab if he needs one to get to his hotel. Xia and Alexandrine, go with him and sever any magehelds he left outside.”
Harsh nodded. “Warlord.”
Holding hands, Xia and the tall blond woman followed Harsh and Yevgeny out.
In the ensuing silence, Durian turned to Paisley. “I didn’t believe such a thing was possible. What you did to the mage.” He touched three fingers to his forehead. “Thank you.”
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