by Tricia Owens
"Someone named Christian did this to you," I told him as we walked. "Do you know him?"
Vale stopped in his tracks, pulling Melanie and me up short, too.
"Christian did this?" Vale rubbed at his forehead as if a headache was building. "That doesn't make sense."
"Who is he to you?" Melanie asked.
"A friend." But Vale sounded as though he were currently questioning that status thanks to our revelation.
"You sure about that?" I said, just to get a reaction out of him.
"He's my best friend," Vale said fiercely, dropping his hand to glare at me. "He would never have done this to me."
Best friend? That put a new twist on things.
"Lili—my friend you met back there—said Christian smelled of brimstone."
"How would she know that?"
I pulled out my phone. "She sensed it from this. Christian inputted his phone number."
He snatched it from my hand so quickly I realized that had he wanted to hurt me, he could have done so at any time. It sobered me. He might have been helpless while he was trapped, but he wasn't helpless now.
"What is this?" he asked after he'd pulled up Christian's entry.
I made a face, unable to stop myself. "Well, I thought he was giving me his number—"
"It's a code," Vale cut me off.
"Numerology!" Melanie blurted. She gave me a sheepish-looking smile. "I was sort of thinking it might be that but I was afraid to say anything in case it sounded dumb."
"Dork, you should have said something." I was excited now. "What does it mean?" I asked Vale.
"It's not numerology," he muttered. "I need to use this."
I watched him close out the phone book. "You're not going to text Europe are you? Because my plan won't cover that."
He accessed the browser and the search engine. "Christian's hobby is writing cipher codes. He uses it to write insulting Facebook posts without offending the person he's insulting."
I only just stopped myself from laughing. Maybe I was giving Christian an unfairly bad rap.
"He might have written this for me," Vale went on. "But if he did, he would've made it simple enough for me to figure out." He glanced up from beneath his fringe and shot me a crooked smile. "I'll still need help."
I nodded, being cool, not letting him know my heart was beating a million miles a minute thanks to that little smile. Melanie elbowed me, though, and smirked. She could see right through me.
"Here we go." Melanie and I crowded around Vale as he accessed a website called Cyber Sleuthing. There was a form field consisting of two text boxes. You entered text in one side and it came out encrypted in the other. And vice versa, which was the function we needed. "Each number represents a letter in the alphabet."
Melanie scrunched up her nose. "What do you mean? I don't get it."
"The number one equals the letter A. Two equals the letter B and so on," I explained. "But obviously you have to try a couple of variants when you've got two numbers together that could form letters both separately and together, like this one and a four, which could also be fourteen."
Vale nodded, already punching in numbers and clicking the 'encrypt' button. A bunch of gibberish appeared in the second box. He tried another variant and this one worked.
"Diana," Melanie read aloud. "Why would he encrypt that?"
"He must have thought someone might follow him to you," Vale said. "Diana is his mother's name."
"Your best friend's mother cursed you? Yikes, some friend," I said.
"Or he's telling me that she'll be able to help me."
Vale ran a hand across his eyes. I noticed that his fingers trembled. It worried me. Liliana's magick would keep him from reverting to his gargoyle form until sunrise, but would he be able to hold off the demon for that long? Signs weren't looking so hot.
"Why don't you try calling him?" I suggested.
He pursed his lips, as if inwardly berating himself for not thinking of that first. I knew exactly how he felt. But like me, he found no success when he dialed the number from memory.
"His phone is off or is out of range, which makes no sense." He handed me mine back. "Something's wrong."
This was turning into a mystery, and I wasn't a big fan of them. They tended to make me feel stupid.
"Do you know where he lives?" I asked, because I had to admit: I was curious to see what kind of pool a water fey in Las Vegas rocked. I pictured a waterpark that sported an underwater Atlantis and a family of dolphins that Christian addressed individually by name.
"Yes. I'll need your car." Vale held out his hand for the keys, his expression stern.
I was just barely able to contain my laughter.
"Look, you're not going to ditch us after all we've gone through to try to help you. If Christian left his message with me, that meant he expected me to free you. He wanted me to get involved." I thought about that for a second. "Why would he think to bring you to me? He doesn't even know me."
"He knows of your family," Vale muttered, glancing away.
"Ah." Just like Vale, who knew about my parents' accident. "That's...interesting."
"You have an interesting family."
"I'll have to take your word for it," I said, a bit testily.
"I'm not letting you get more involved in this, Moody." He glared at me with those dark eyes of his. They were potent, those eyes, but unfortunately for him I'd built up a resistance to pretty boys like him.
"Sorry," I told him, "but I get killed on self-employment taxes every year, which means you must not be the boss of me. If this Diana woman—or Christian, for that matter—turns out to be less than happy to see you, you're going to need us."
"A monkey shifter and a sorceress who wields a deadly dragon." He sounded anything but thrilled.
"Against a merman and his mom," I retorted.
Something like amusement softened his gaze. "He's not a merman."
"Close enough."
Shaking his head, he said, "You're pretty tough."
"Of course I am. I used to wait tables."
I had to look away when he began to smile, which left me looking at some shady guys who were standing at a street corner, staring at us.
"We were attacked," I blurted. Liliana's and Vale's appearances had made me forget about the fight in the alley. "Those two guys knew we were bringing you here. How do they fit into this?"
"And they were warlocks," Vale added darkly, "which means someone from our community sent them. It wouldn't have been Christian or his mother, so someone else is involved. Someone who's likely responsible for what was done to me. Christian encrypted his message because of them."
"We need to go." We'd been lollygagging like we had all the time in the world and didn't have magickal goons ready to pounce on us. Only when we were back in Melanie's car did I feel safer. I turned in my seat.
"First, tell Melanie how to get to Christian's place."
Vale didn't look too pleased by my ordering him around, but he obligingly gave her an address which she punched into her phone's GPS.
As we pulled off Industrial Road and onto the 95 freeway, I said to Vale, "The obvious question is: do you have any enemies?"
His sliver of a smile hinted at stories best untold. "I'm a gargoyle. I doubt I'm universally appreciated."
Recalling what Orlaton had warned us about gargoyles normally being inhabited by demons, I could understand why.
"Anyone specific come to mind?" I pressed.
Vale looked away out the side window. I watched the pulse beat in the strong curve of his neck. I found it interesting that he had stubble. For some reason I couldn't picture a gargoyle with a beard.
"I've had run-ins with a fringe group that claims they work in the best interests of all shifting creatures...as long as you aren't a cold-blooded one with three forms." He met my gaze again. "But I dealt with them. They're no longer a threat to me."
That could be interpreted in a variety of ways, but of course I pictured all t
he worst and most violent options. Maybe I was completely off-base. Maybe Vale had merely arranged for a restraining order.
And maybe Lucky was actually a dragonfly.
"But someone obviously doesn't like you," Melanie insisted as she glanced in the rearview mirror at him. "I mean, you say you have no idea who could want to do this to you, but possessing someone with a demon sounds like too much hard work to waste on a stranger. You have to have an enemy somewhere. You just have to!"
Vale narrowed his eyes at her. He didn't like what she'd said, which meant what she'd said was probably true. He did have enemies that he didn't want to talk about.
"We're all on the same team here, right?" I asked, uneasy. My gut told me someone was toying with the idea of becoming a free agent.
Vale settled slowly against the backseat, all suppressed energy. His restraint was impressive for someone racing against time to exorcise a demon before the sun came up.
"We're on the same team, Moody. I give you my word that I don't know who did this to me."
"Not even a guess?"
He shook his head while a muscle jumped in his jaw.
"Then maybe you weren't the intended target," I mused aloud, trying to recall the plots of the most recent thriller movies I'd seen. "Do you have a brother who's up to no good?"
"I have a brother. He's not the type to get into trouble."
Twin? I wanted to ask, but only because my mind immediately jumped there like the perv I was.
"Is your girlfriend the daughter of a mob boss?" I asked with a grin.
Pretty sure Vale saw right through that. At least, that's what the twitch of his mouth suggested.
"No, Moody," he said quietly. "I don't have a girlfriend."
I nodded, all casual, like I'd just checked the option off on a mental list and wasn't inwardly doing a fist pump.
"Do you have a boyfriend who's the son of a mob boss?" he asked me.
The car accelerated, making me clutch my seat for balance. When the speed leveled again, I glared at Melanie.
She laughed breathlessly. "Oops! Ha ha! My foot slipped. I wasn't eavesdropping or anything, either."
Actually, I was glad for her goofiness because it broke the tension between me and Vale.
"Nope, no boyfriend," I told him off-handedly. "A pity, too, because I could really use a bouncer named Vinny in my shop every so often."
Vale arched a brow. "Vinny Bag o' Doughnuts?"
"Who else?"
He nodded. "I've heard good things."
Do not jump into the backseat with him, Anne. Do not.
I made myself turn around in my seat and face forward.
As we continued driving north in silence, following the instructions on Melanie's phone, I didn't relax and take a nap. I tried to figure out who could have known that a) Vale was possessed by a demon and b) he could be found by locating me.
The list was pretty short—comprised solely of my friends—which threatened to make me completely paranoid and mistrustful of both my judgment and the people I knew.
Except that I refused to allow that to happen. I trusted my friends. They were the only family I had these days and more importantly, they were family I had chosen. None of them would have betrayed me, and even if they had—impossible, but for the sake of debate, let's say they had: who would they have betrayed me to?
Celestina and Lev had no dealings with anyone besides gullible tourists, and a bribe would offend them, especially Lev. Orlaton wouldn't sell me out simply because he'd find the offer of money insulting and threats to be annoying. And my bestie Melanie was with me here in the thick of it. So how had Vale's whereabouts leaked out to the bad guys?
A touch to my side nearly made me jump out of my seat.
"Sorry," Vale said, though his lips twitched suspiciously. He pointed at my burned clothes. "I just noticed your injury. I didn't know you were hurt back there."
There was guilt in his voice and I appreciated it, not that I needed it. I wasn't doing any of this for the thanks.
"I was cooked to a perfect medium well, but Lili healed me just fine." I pulled the gaping hole in my shirt wider to show him my unmarred skin and then belatedly realized I was giving him a great shot of my stomach and the underside of my bra. I yanked the hole closed again.
"You're incredibly powerful," he said after a moment. He added in a lowered voice that Melanie wouldn't hear, "I watched you from the shadows."
I shivered, not from dread or fear, but because his words affected me as a woman. Instinctively I wanted to resist him because he was good-looking and I'd had my fill of hot guys who thought they ruled the world.
But Vale wasn't like them and he wasn't an easy hook-up. In his own way he was dangerous like me. Gargoyles weren't large but they were strong. They could fly and they had those nasty claws and teeth. He'd also hinted at having secrets and a volatile past.
Did I want to attract the attention of someone like him? Someone who could not only break my heart but my body?
Or was I reading him completely wrong, which, unfortunately, wouldn't be the first time I'd thought a guy was interested in me when he wasn't? Hello, Christian, anyone? There was a very real chance Vale was only using me just as Christian had, or was trying to manipulate me as Orlaton had warned.
So I said cautiously, "I may look cool when I use my sorcery, but you and I know the truth: we're both vying for Least Popular Magickal Being in the Las Vegas Valley. So far I'm leading in the polls, but you may catch up soon."
"When I said those things to you about your dragon and your family...it wasn't out of disapproval, Moody." Vale averted his gaze. "I agree with you: we're two of a kind. We're both mistrusted through no fault of our own. I know exactly how you feel. I share your frustration."
His words lured me to him. I didn't believe in soul mates, but wasn't this the sort of connection that everyone rhapsodized about? Someone who truly got you?
I shifted in my seat, a little embarrassed, a little pleased. "My name's Anne, you know. Don't you think it's kind of weird that you call me by my last name?"
He looked up at me. His expression was intent. "I don't think it's weird at all. I like calling you Moody. It's mine."
I grew warm and fuzzy. It's mine.
Focus.
Right. Fantasizing was all well and good, but there was a time and place for it. Probably I should focus on making sure Vale didn't remain possessed by a demon. A third wheel would be a real downer if we began dating.
I opened my mouth to say something flippant that would diffuse the impact of what he'd just said, but he spoke before I could.
"I'm glad to have you at my back, Moody." He lightly touched my shoulder. "You're better than Vinny any day."
He sat back and lapsed into silence while I tried not to obsess over how warm his fingers had felt on my skin. Beside me, Melanie vibrated in her seat. I refused to look at her. If I had to be tortured, so did she.
After following the 95 north through the desert past Nellis Air Force Base, the GPS guided us to turn east along the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. I hadn't known paved roads existed east of the Speedway, but Melanie followed directions deep into the shadow of the Muddy Mountains.
Time seemed to fly faster the farther we drove from the city. Though the sky outside the windows remained dark, I was convinced that sunrise would begin at any minute. I was sweating it by the time we pulled into a brand new but also abandoned-looking tract neighborhood called Mountain Oasis.
The lack of cars on the streets or in the driveways and the dismal front yards (turned out a rock garden could look noticeably unkempt) all contributed to the sense that everyone here had packed up and bailed out of Dodge. It gave me an uncomfortable feeling in my chest that grew stronger as we drove.
"You feel that?" Melanie murmured unhappily.
I rubbed my chest. "I thought it was only me."
"No, way. It's magick! Someone's driven out all the residents. I think we're feeling the residue of an old spell. What an ick
y feeling, yeah? Like I ate too much, too fast."
Vale sat forward to lean between our seats. "It's Diana's work. She cast it as soon as she and Christian moved here, though she's insisted to us that she didn't." Vale closed his eyes and rubbed at his temples. "She's very protective of him."
"Then why is she letting him live in a desert when he's a water fey?" I asked, genuinely mystified.
Shades of amusement touched his voice. "Because it's the perfect hiding place for a being that everyone knows craves the water."
It made sense but it also led to more questions.
"Who are they hiding from?"
"I'm not sure it's anyone specific," Vale said evasively. "Diana is just an over-protective mother, as the lack of neighbors can attest."
Despite my attraction to him, I didn't believe him. Was it because his answers were too blasé? Was it because he was a gargoyle and everyone's negative attitude toward the species had rubbed off on me?
I didn't like mistrusting him, but I wasn't stupid. I couldn't let a pretty face distract me from the warnings I heard in my head.
"Is Diana a water fey, too?" I asked.
"No, a witch. Christian's father was a water fey but he died after a run-in with a group of fishermen in Punta Arenas, in Argentina. That's where they lived before moving here."
"I didn't know Argentinians could have red hair."
"Obviously they're not from there. Christian's father moved them there for some work. He piloted cruise ships that docked at the port there. After his death, Diana became extremely possessive of Christian. He's all she has left now."
Though moving to Las Vegas from Argentina seemed extreme, it would certainly be the last place I'd look for a water fey.
I wondered about the overly protective mother bit, though. What did a 'run-in' with fishermen really mean? Had they hooked Christian's father like a fish and he'd died from the injuries? Or was there a malicious angle to the story that explained the behavior of the mom?
After two years of running Moonlight Pawn and listening to the sob stories of my customers as they tried to convince me to pay them more for their items, I'd come to learn something: magickal beings were shady.