“Ew!” I peeled it off and it glopped onto the concrete. I turned and looked at the remnants of a pizza. I looked over my shoulder at Connor, who was looking at my ass – and not in an “oh, sexy” kind of way. “Well?” I demanded.
“It’s a mess,” he said. “There’s sauce… and stuff.”
“Stuff?”
“You don’t want to know.”
I faced him. “Work your mojo,” I said, trying not to get hysterical about whatever was still clinging to my jeans. “New clothes. Hurry!”
He shook his head. “I’m a demon.”
“I’m aware,” I said. “Make with the magic.”
“My power is my own in hell, but it’s bound on the earthly plane.”
Remnants of Demon 101 floated in my mind. Demons were powerful creatures, very much so, but their nature was to destroy. In their own realm, it didn’t matter how they used their magic, but earth was the realm of the gods, and the majority of Pit dwellers’ magic worked best if bargains were made. Transport spells were different. Demons could pop anywhere they wanted.
The reminder was as painful as falling into a pit of rusty spikes: The whole time Connor had been with me in Broken Heart, he’d been dishonest, but had not used his powers. Unless I counted seduction (which I did). Yet this time, when I thought about what he’d done, I felt sadness more than fury, though I still had wisps of that, too.
“How long have you known about the prophecy? About my part in it? About your part in it?”
“When my mother told me,” he said. “A couple of weeks before I moved to Broken Heart to… see you. She took me to Astria.”
“And you just believed that girl?”
“I believed my mother. And yes, Astria, too.”
I strode to him. His nostrils flared, because I smelled like old food and rotting meat. Even though I knew I stank as if I’d just rolled out of a Dumpster, his reaction hurt my feelings. Embarrassment flooded my cheeks with phantom heat.
“It’s not fair,” I said, “to be dragged into a situation fraught with deceptions. You should’ve come to me and told me the deal. I would’ve helped you.”
Connor gave me a disbelieving look, and I felt cut by it. Then I wondered, Would I have helped? I didn’t like the idea that some whim of the universe had given me a role to play without my permission. I valued having choices, and mine had been taken from me.
“Lilith would’ve killed you without my protection. My father made her a sealed bargain that she would never harm me or mine.”
“Yeah. I get why, I do, but that doesn’t mean it was a forgivable act.”
He flinched, and because I was petty and mean, I thought, Good.
He looked away from me, a muscle ticking in his jaw. I heard a whisper in my mind: Do I mean nothing to her? Was Astria wrong?
“What else did Astria tell you?”
“It dinnae matter,” he said, his lips thinning. His resentful gaze burned through me. “Ye’re so uneducated about your gifts, Phoebe. It’s a wonder ye’ve survived as long as ye hae.”
For a second, his barb hit a nerve, and I reeled from the pain of it. Then I realized his accent had gone thick, which was an indication of high emotion, even when everything else about the man suggested he was as cold inside as an Oklahoma winter.
I put away my hurt and narrowed my gaze.
“Don’t change the subject.” I didn’t care about the fury whipping through Connor’s gaze or the way his hands fisted. “Well?”
“She said you would love me,” he said bitterly. “When none could. I’m half demon, Phoebe. What heart could love mine?”
For a moment, my throat was so dry, I couldn’t respond. Then I reached out, but he looked at me with such disgust that I dropped my hand.
“The others are waitin’. We have a girl to rescue.”
“We should call the police.”
“You really dinnae understand how this works, do you? Astria says we must do it. If we try to circumvent her vision, it goes badly for all of us. Most especially for Ella.”
“I don’t understand. Everyone’s always going on about how she’s never wrong.”
“She’s the strongest Vedere psychic ever born,” he said. His gaze drilled holes into me. “And she’s never wrong. If we dinnae rescue Ella, she will die in the dawn ceremony. Would you do any less for Danny?”
His question stopped me cold. I would do anything for my child, especially when it came to his well-being. And if it were my child, I’d do the exact same thing. But Danny was safe with his father in Florida, far away from the danger here. It occurred to me right then, in the suck-ass way that so many aha realizations so often did, that Danny would always be in danger because of what I was. Not just vampire, but demon hunter. With burdens that were mine alone to carry. Raising Danny in Broken Heart had been selfish. He was my baby boy, and I loved him more than I loved anything else on this earth.
“He’d have a normal life,” I whispered, “with Jackson.” Human parents. A life lived in the sunlight. Why had it taken me so long to realize that Danny would be better off with Jackson? How many lies had I told – had Broken Heart told – to keep our secrets? It suddenly made perfect sense: Danny should live with Jackson. Wasn’t he dating a kindergarten teacher? Maybe they’d marry, and then Danny would have a human mother, too. He was only four years old; his memories of me would fade.
I knew it was the right thing to do. When this was over, when it was all over, I’d give my son to his father. I’d walk away so Danny could have the life he deserved. Not living in the dark, not being raised by a vampire, not growing up with a warped sense of reality. Pain cobwebbed inside me, trapping me with silky tendrils of truth.
I looked at Connor, because I couldn’t stand to look inside myself anymore.
Connor’s gaze flickered, and I realized he was in my head with me. Even after I couldn’t give him the one thing Astria had promised. And oh, God, my heart ached with the idea that he’d done everything because he thought I would love him.
Love makes us do really stupid things, Phoebe. My mother liked to brush my hair at night and talk to me in whispers, sharing secrets. I was fifteen and my father had been dead a year. It was before Momma had gotten bad, waking up with nightmares, screaming at shadows. I was getting impatient with this ritual because I was, after all, growing up.
I’d told her I couldn’t wait to fall in love. And she smiled so sadly. “Love is a wonderful thing,” she said. “It makes you feel like you can fly, like you can conquer the whole world. It can give you everything, and take it all, too.”
Momma understood deeply the sacrifice love often asked for to honor its name, its cause. She’d been wounded by it in a way I never had, because I’d never fallen in love. Yes, I loved my child, but he was mine. I’d never had to take another, never had to conquer a heart and claim it.
And was that what Connor had done for me?
Love. And sacrifice.
“It’s not the time to make decisions about Danny,” he said softly. He cocked an eyebrow at me and crossed his arms. “You makin’ a bargain or not?”
“For what?” I asked dully. Then I blinked. “What?”
“I can’t just give the clothes to you. My powers are bound. Unless we make a bargain, I canna provide anything for you.”
I considered my clothing and the cloying stench. Bargain for clothes? Really? Still, I was mired in thoughts about Danny. I couldn’t help it. He’s better off, whispered my oh-so-helpful conscience; let him have the life he deserves. I wanted to wail. I loved him more than anything.
I’d been so selfish. I realized that now. I thought about the other children in Broken Heart. Most of them had both parents living in town. Or they were paranormal themselves. Patsy’s ex-husband, Sean, had passed away from liver cancer. Her son, Wilson, was twenty now, and training with Rand and Ralph to be a dragon handler.
But Danny was young, so young. He had a choice. One I had nearly taken from him because I didn’t want to give up being a mommy. He�
��d be the only child I’d ever have.
“Phoebe.” Connor pulled out a phone from his pocket. “Call your boy. Hear his voice. And stop worryin’ about whether or not you get to keep him. Love is not always about sacrifice.”
“Stay out of my head.” It was an automatic demand, and I didn’t think that I really meant it anymore. “It’s what? Three a.m.? I can’t call Jackson and ask to talk to my kid. If I did, he’d think something was wrong. Or that I was drunk.”
Connor sighed and put away the phone. “Then you call him before you go to sleep.”
“Yeah, okay. They’re early risers.”
I trembled inside, feeling as though my innards were cracking and flaking away. If I weren’t careful, I would crumble. I needed to be strong to get through the next couple of days.
“In exchange for my services, I want…” Connor paused.
“What?”
“Sex.”
Startled, I snapped my gaze to Connor’s. Scrymgeour was behind me, gnawing on the icky pizza, making growling sounds as if he were trying to kill it first.
“Excuse me?” I pretended to clean out my ears. “I thought you said you wanted sex.”
He grinned. “Just seein’ if you were payin’ attention. A kiss, fair Phoebe, for a set of clean clothes.”
“Fine,” I said.
He cupped my face and gently brushed his lips across mine. It was such a kind gesture, one I didn’t deserve when I’d been nothing but cruel. This is love, said my mother’s voice, because love never turns away.
Chapter 17
Connor looked at me with a terrible longing, and I felt a similar yearning unfurl within me. Oh, no. I’d hit the edge of the precipice, and if I wasn’t careful, I’d tip over. And fall. And fly.
Connor stepped back and aimed his fingers at me. Red magic weaved around me, and soon I was wearing another pair of clean black jeans. My top had changed to black as well, and my short-waisted jacket now had silver accents. My weapons were still well hidden.
“If the world were simple, lass,” said Connor softly, “and I had choices still, all I would want is you. No denyin’ that the prophecy is why I sought you, an’ I’m glad for it. I’m glad for you.”
The horror of what he said was that I knew it was true. It rang clear in his words, in his expression, and in my own fickle heart.
It broke me.
I turned blindly and strode away. He didn’t follow me, and I was relieved. I liked having my nervous breakdowns alone.
I didn’t want Connor to have an honest emotion, because then I would have to admit my own feelings, which weren’t all anger and loss and lust. There was tenderness, and understanding, and want, and… argh!
I thought of Danny, and of Connor. One I loved because he was my child, and the other… Oh, I couldn’t profess to love Connor. I wanted him. He made me ache in a way no other man ever had.
I didn’t know why my feelings were so intertwined, so confused. My father was long dead, and my mother had taken her life. Even Aunt Alice had passed away last spring, even though we hadn’t done much more than exchange Christmas cards since my mother died. Briefly, Jackson had been mine, and then finally I had a forever person, or so I had thought when my son was born.
I’d clung to him because he was mine. The one thing I would never have to give up or lose.
Had I been wrong, or what?
I walked down the sidewalk, past the diner with its tired green sign and sooty yellow building. I stopped at the end of the sidewalk, considering which way to cross. I leaned against the telephone pole, my gaze falling onto a crisp “Missing” poster. The girl in the photo was thirteen and had gone missing yesterday. She had long brown hair and thickly lashed blue eyes. She wore a billowy gold shirt in a style that seemed too old for her, and a sparkly butterfly barrette that seemed too young. In this photo, she was forever caught between what she’d been and what she would become.
It should’ve been no surprise that this was the face of Ella Marian Freeman. She’d last been seen outside her middle school. Somewhere between leaving school and the bus line, she’d disappeared.
Nowhere was safe.
Except maybe Disney World.
“Lass.”
I turned around, not exactly startled, since I knew Connor wouldn’t let me go far. “You’re like a demonic GPS.”
Connor stood behind me, hands in his pockets, his expression inscrutable. Scrymgeour sniffed the telephone pole, then lifted his leg and peed on it.
“Would it make a difference if I said to stay out of my head?”
“Not really,” he said. “You have a strong mind.”
“Or you have a weak will.” The moment I said the words I wanted to call them back. There wasn’t a weak thing about Connor, not his will, his body, or his attitude.
He surprised me by nodding. “I’m weak,” he admitted. “Especially around you.”
“Gee, thanks.”
He brushed his knuckles across my cheek. I couldn’t stand the gentleness of the gesture or the look in his eyes, like he’d just suffered a terrible loss.
I knew that kind of grief. And I couldn’t be party to his. I stepped back, and regretted it the instant I saw the hurt flicker in his gaze. Then he, too, backed up and looked at the empty street.
Our earlier conversation floated through my mind. If it were possible, I would gladly reclaim my humanity so that I could step into the world of light again with my son. But obviously, that wasn’t going to happen. Did I really want to turn my back on my new destiny? I wouldn’t let my selfishness lead to failing those I loved. Not again. Momma had slit her wrists. I refused to inflict suffering on others because I couldn’t handle what life had thrown at me. As Queen Patsy so often said: Put on your big girl panties and deal with it.
Connor was too damned stubborn to turn away from the path he’d chosen. Come hell or high water, he’d march along to the beat of Astria’s drum. A believer in fate, a follower of love. I didn’t have any faith, and he did.
“What the fuck are you guys doing?” Larsa marched up to us. “We don’t have time for a lovers’ quarrel. Astria says we gotta steal some ring thing from the Philbrook Museum of Art and give it to Ella. Goddamned prophets!”
For once, I felt a kinship with Larsa. Connor took my hand, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do, and we followed the irritated vampire into the diner.
———
As bossy as Larsa was, everyone deferred to Astria. She didn’t really take this for granted – not in an arrogant way, at least. She seemed to understand her purpose and spoke in a practical, this-is-just-the-way-it-is tone. Astria had no choice about her destiny, either, but she’d accepted that she was “the prophet.” I argued with myself that she’d been born and raised as a psychic, not yanked from a previous existence and told, “Hey, this is what the gods want, so just shut up and do it.”
I had been a single mother living and working in a small town. I’d also been killed and turned into the undead. But I was still single, still a mother, and still working in a small town. And I did demon cleanup whenever it was needed. I’d learned to fight, but not, apparently, in a way that would be entirely effective against demons, and hadn’t learned to use all my Family gifts. I hadn’t delved very far into them for no other reason than that I didn’t think I needed to. Maybe even this was a small rebellion against the life that had been chosen for me. I felt ashamed that I hadn’t bothered to learn more, to do more. The other hunters knew a lot more than I did, and that really chapped my hide.
I wondered why the hunters hadn’t found us again. Maybe they would.
“So which one of you stays with Astria?” asked Larsa.
I noticed that she was looking at Astria’s pile of chili fries with the same kind of longing that I was.
“If we were in Broken Heart, we could so eat that,” I muttered.
Larsa slid a look at me. “That’s true? About the pixie wish letting the undead eat again?”
“Oh, yeah.”
We both looked at the chili fries again.
“Anise stays,” said Astria, popping another fry into her mouth.
“Fine. Ren and I will go to the museum and pick up the ring,” said Larsa. “We’re on Fifty-first and Peoria. It’s down a few miles. The Knights Inn is closer. Connor, you and Phoebe go get Ella.” She tossed a look at me. “Think you can handle that, cupcake?”
“Sure, butter nips,” I said. “How about you?” She wasn’t offended. In fact, a smile darted across her lips. “Some people don’t think you have the skills, is all.”
“Well, some people think you don’t have the ability to shut up,” I said. “We all have our little flaws.”
Larsa grinned.
I’d never been in the Knights Inn before. It had been shut down for years. However, as a human, I’d gone to the Philbrook Museum of Art many times. It had once been one of my favorite places to visit, but never as a vampire with breaking and entering on her mind. Astria had said the ring was important to Ella, but didn’t really explain why.
I had also suggested that we contact Queen Patsy or even just Damian to bring in some help from Broken Heart. Everyone was against it, mostly because they didn’t know anyone there, or their intentions (my opinion didn’t count). Connor pointed out that the hunters had learned our location because they seemed to be in collusion with the council. I didn’t agree, but I didn’t have proof, either. Astria ended the debate by saying, “It is not time.” Everyone accepted this vague comment, and I had no choice but to do the same.
Astria also didn’t tell us why we had to get the ring tonight. I’d already asked about getting it later and making sure the girl got it after she was safe, but Astria was adamant. Also, I was the only one arguing with her.
“The less magic we use, the better,” said Larsa. “We don’t want the hunters showing up. Those guys are too uptight, especially Nicor. And they’re still pissed off we took their half of the talisman.”
“The inn’s a brisk walk for us,” said Connor.
“I’ll appropriate a car for me and Ren,” said Larsa. She looked delighted at the prospect of committing grand theft auto.
Come Hell or High Water Page 11