by Jane Kindred
“Ione, I know you don’t want to be bothered right now, but something’s happened.”
She paused in pulling on her yoga pants.
“I don’t like talking on a machine. Could you please call me? This is serious. I’m kind of freaking out over here.”
Images of Theia and Rhea lying mangled on the freeway like the bodies of their parents eleven years ago seized her, and Ione sucked in her breath as if someone had punched her in the gut. No. No, please. Don’t let it be one of the twins.
She grabbed the phone and hit Phoebe’s number on speed dial. Her sister picked up immediately.
“Phoebe, it’s me. What is it? What’s happened? Are they okay?”
“They?”
“The twins. You said something happened.”
“Oh, God, no. Nothing like that. They’re fine. I mean, as far as I know. I haven’t talked to them. I wanted to talk to you first.”
The pressure squeezing her heart and lungs eased. “What, then? You said it was serious.”
“I’ve been over at Rafe’s for a few days. We brought Puddleglum with us. Thank goodness.”
Ione rolled her eyes. Phoebe treated that cat like it was her baby.
“When I got home this afternoon, there was—someone left—something...on my porch.”
Ione’s stomach clenched. “A dead cat.”
“Damn. You, too?”
“At the temple this morning. There was a note.”
“Yeah, I got a note, too. ‘Righteousness will not dwell in an unclean temple.’ I don’t even know what that means.”
“Was it signed ‘Nemesis’?”
“Maybe. The handwriting was so stylized. I think it’s written in blood. I thought it said Genesis.” A rustling sound followed before Phoebe spoke again. “Yeah, I think that’s it, after all. Nemesis. Who’s Nemesis?”
Ione sighed. “I don’t know, but the note I got was a little more detailed. Nemesis laid out a disputation in ten theses explaining why my impure blood was polluting the Covent, promising to purify the temple.”
“Oh, hell. I’m sorry.”
“Whoever he or she is, I think Nemesis is working with Carter.”
Phoebe made a sharp noise of disapproval. “Goddamn him. I thought we were done with his sorry ass.”
“Whose sorry ass?” Rafe’s deep, baritone voice came from the background.
Phoebe snorted. “One guess, babe. I’m putting you on speaker, Di.” Only her sisters got to call her that. Anyone else would find themselves on the receiving end of a palm-heel strike to the sternum.
Rafe’s voice became clearer. “You think this is Hamilton’s doing?”
Ione shrugged at the phone. “Nemesis brought up the ‘Lilith gene.’ Who else knows about it besides us? You haven’t told anyone else, have you, Phoebe?”
“Oh, shoot. You know, I did take out that full-page, coming-out ad in the Sedona Demon Times. Should I not have done that?”
Ione was used to pretending her little sister hadn’t spoken. “Besides the five of us, Carter’s the only one who knows.” She sighed. Might as well tell them about the birds. “This wasn’t the first dead animal I was gifted with, either. I’ve been finding dead crows on my doorstep.”
“Crows.” The symbolism seemed significant to Phoebe.
“Why, does that mean something?”
“That’s one of Rafe’s naguals.”
This was news to Ione. “You have more than one nagual?”
Rafe cleared his throat as though Phoebe had mentioned something indelicate. “I transformed into a crow early in the quetzal’s awakening. I believe it was a subconscious response to Hamilton using his necromantic powers to become the coyote when he was appropriating the authority of Quetzalcoatl’s nemesis, Tezcatlipoca.”
Nemesis. There was that word again.
“It does seem like Hamilton’s MO.” Rafe paused. “Why were you at the temple on a Saturday morning?”
“They sent a Covent assayer to investigate me—sort of a magical insurance claim adjuster—and he was there, along with the entire coven, when we discovered the cat.”
“No.” Phoebe managed to give that one little monosyllabic word the weight of an entire sentence.
Rafe was subdued. “I’m so sorry about all this, Ione.”
“I suppose it was inevitable. And this is not your fault, Rafe. I just wish they’d sent an actual licensed investigator so we could find out how Carter’s doing this. If he’s communicating with someone on the outside, I don’t think we have a legal right to know.” She paused. “There must be some private investigators you work with through the Public Defender’s Office, Phoebe. Maybe there’s someone you can recommend?”
“Um, yeah, about that...”
“You might as well tell her, babe.”
Ione’s entire body went tense, like it used to when Phoebe’s high school would call to tell her legal guardian about her latest trip to the principal’s office. “Tell me what?”
“I don’t work for the PD’s office anymore. I quit my job to apprentice as a private investigator.”
Ione’s blood pressure shot through the roof. “You quit your job? You spent three years getting that law degree, Phoebe. Not to mention all the time you’ve spent putting in your dues. What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking practicing law while having shades jump in and out of me at random is never going to stop being a conflict of interest. Not to mention awkward in the courtroom.”
“Can’t you just forbid the shades to bother you?”
“That’s not exactly how it works. And I happen to like helping them. We’ve been over this a hundred times. I’m not giving it up. Even if I could keep them out, I won’t.”
“I didn’t mean you shouldn’t help at all. It’s just...you’re a really good lawyer, Phoebe.”
Phoebe was silent for a moment, as if Ione had shocked her. “You’ve never said that before.”
“You already know you’re good at it. Why do I have to tell you?”
Phoebe sighed. “Anyway, I can always return to practicing law if this doesn’t work out. But right now I’d say it’s damn lucky I have my investigator’s license, because I have access to the prison visitor and communication logs at the Florence State Prison.”
“Oh.” Ione smiled reluctantly. “I guess that is lucky, then.”
“I’ll take a drive down there and see what I can find out.”
“I’ve strengthened the protection spell around Phoebe and around the house,” Rafe reassured Ione before she could object. “I can come over and ward the perimeter at your place, too, if you like. My wards have a little extra kick these days with the quetzal magic.”
“Why not?” A little extra protection couldn’t hurt.
* * *
Dev was starting to think certain members of the Council had given him this assignment on purpose to smoke him out. Rumors had surrounded his mentor Simon’s death and Dev’s part in it. There was no question that something unnatural had attacked them both, but no one had quite been willing to say “demon.” At least not aloud. And now some anonymous person was making accusations about demon blood and cleansing the Covent—and Dev was right in the middle of it.
He tried to shake off the disturbing events of the day as he headed back to his hotel. Documenting the impressions he’d gathered from the day’s interviews—and the peculiar turn of events that had cut them short, he’d ended up staying at the temple much later than he’d planned.
The temple itself was a curious combination of enchanting and repelling. The temporal and spatial glamour around it to keep the general public from prying was exceptional. He hadn’t even noticed the property as he’d approached this morning—though he’d been mesmerized by the landscape, which he supposed was pa
rt of the magic the glamour merely needed to draw from—until the white neo-Gothic spires had risen from among the damp rocks looking utterly out of place.
Despite the incongruous beauty of it, he’d felt the unpleasant residue of necromancy hanging in the air about the temple as he’d followed the twisting road to the small courtyard at the center of the labyrinth. No amount of stark, unearthly white stone had been able to mask what seemed like an almost visible muddy-gray pall. He’d thought then it was the negative influence of the necromancer and his high-priestess girlfriend, but now that he’d met Ione, Dev wasn’t so sure. Perhaps the person who’d left the note and the dead cat had been hiding somewhere on the property at the time. That might have accounted for it.
But he was done thinking about those gruesome images for today. There was ordinary enchantment all around him. He’d thought the view spectacular this morning, but he’d been preoccupied with the case. Or maybe it was simply more stunning this direction. Light rain fell like an afterthought on the pillars and domes of rock lining the highway. Their fantastic orangey-red hues struck a breathtaking contrast with the cerulean sky melting into a blend of indigo and violet—like the juice of a pomegranate running into the horizon. It was as if he’d driven off the highway into the land of the Fae, otherworldly and impossibly beautiful in a way he couldn’t even articulate.
Much like his impression of Ione Carlisle.
Dev groaned. Best to nip that kind of thinking in the bud. She was the subject of his investigation and nothing more.
He tried to steer his thoughts toward a safer target—the image of Kylie driving away on her motorbike last night, leather pants supple against the shapely arse on the seat—the arse he’d let slip away because he hadn’t been adequately prepared. He’d had no business starting something with her in the first place when it came to that. He’d gone to the pub to experience the local color, playing tourist before he had to face the drudgery of his assignment. But, despite the fact that she hadn’t been his type, he couldn’t get over the odd intensity of his response to her.
He felt like he’d taken the tiniest bite of enchanted Turkish delight before losing sight of the sleigh on which the White Witch of Narnia had ridden away, only to realize he’d die without another taste of that unearthly sweet.
Dev laughed. That sugary metaphor was Kur’s influence for certain. “All right, you miserable sod. Let’s go look for the White Witch.” At least it would get his mind off Ione Carlisle.
Chapter 6
Ione had hit pay dirt. She rarely put on the glamour two nights in a row, as the magic could be both exhausting and addicting, but with Carter’s campaign against her escalating from petty harassment to disturbing threats, she was more determined than ever to find out who was helping him. Rafe had finished giving the wards around her place a final infusion of quetzal magic just before dusk, giving her just enough time to perform the glamour before heading to Bitters once more.
As soon as she’d arrived she’d struck up a conversation at the bar with an off-duty cop who bragged of connections with “certain important people in the community.” He’d promised to put Kylie in touch with “an interesting crowd” looking for fun girls like herself for the parties they hosted. The braggadocio, combined with his aggressively sexual behavior, seemed promising in terms of the sort of dirtball she was looking for. She’d even dropped a few names herself, mentioning how sad she’d been when her friends Barbie Fisher and Monique Hernandez—two of Carter’s unfortunate victims—had died this past summer.
As she flirted with him, however, a familiar deep vibration—like the hum of machinery buried miles underground, the beating heart of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis—struck Ione to the core. Without glancing up, she knew Dev Gideon had entered the club. Dammit. What was he doing here again? The answer, of course, was looking for Kylie. She had to admit, she’d probably made a hell of an impression.
“Fancy meeting you here.” The cultured British accent behind her sent a delicious shiver up her spine. Which was so not cool.
She turned, prepared to make some sort of smart remark about his natty, out-of-place suit, but the sight of the white T-shirt stretched over his pecs and tucked into a pair of jeans that drew her eyes straight to his crotch left her with her mouth hanging open.
Ione closed it carefully and let her gaze travel back up to his face and the amused luster in the golden-brown eyes. “I see you got into something a little more comfortable.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “I’d like to.” Damn, this boy learned fast. But Ione wasn’t going to succumb to her inappropriately pumping blood. This was the Covent’s assayer and, now that she knew it, she wasn’t about to let her pussy lead her around on a leash and do something foolish.
“Mind if I sit?”
Yes, you mind, dumbass. Do not encourage him. “Actually, I was just...” Her voice trailed off as she glanced at the seat to her left and saw that “Officer Paul” had moved on to hit on a group of giggling undergrads—probably drinking on fake IDs—at the next table. She wanted to jump up and tell them they were being creeped on by a predator, but they would only think she was trying to bad-mouth him because she was jealous that he’d switched his attention to them. And it would have blown any chance she had of getting closer to the ringleaders.
Dev had already slid onto the stool on her right, his arm so close to hers that little pulses of static electricity seemed to be flowing between them. And he smelled delicious. Without meaning to, she’d moved her arm closer.
“What are you drinking?”
For a moment she thought he’d said, “What are you thinking?” Which was a very good question.
Ione tamped down her runaway libido. “Water.”
“Keeping safety in mind, then?”
She swiveled on her stool and rested her elbow on the bar to study him. “Why? Did you come prepared to ride?” She groaned internally, her sensible self watching her speak as if it was just an observer. Her libido was threatening mutiny. This was not going to happen tonight.
Dev’s cocky smile widened into a grin. “Even brought my own helmet.”
“Is that a metaphor?” Why was she still talking?
“Do you want it to be?”
It was like she had a pulse in her pussy. Ione’s rational mind made one last, desperate attempt to rein herself in. She was going to regret this. It was one thing fooling around with some stranger in a parking lot. But this was someone she was absolutely guaranteed to see again, and not in a pleasant capacity. It wasn’t a matter of right or wrong, even. Just a matter of not being stupid. She absolutely could not do this.
Ione swung off the stool. “Well, let’s see how you sit a saddle, then, cowboy.” She was going to hell.
* * *
Dev gave Kylie’s waist the tiniest tug to set her hips squarely against his thighs as she started up the bike after he’d climbed on behind her. She’d been highly amused when he got the helmet from his rental. He hadn’t wanted to give her any opportunity to ride off and leave his arse in the dust again. He wasn’t averse to screwing in the backseat of an automobile, but it wasn’t his first choice, and he imagined it wasn’t hers, either. He’d been perfectly prepared to offer to drive to his hotel, but he’d been hoping she’d opt for her place.
He hadn’t been on a bike in years. Kur seemed quite taken with it. He could swear the little bastard was purring inside him. Lord knew, Dev felt like purring.
Kylie’s waist was warm against his palms as he held her lightly beneath her jacket while they sped through the now cloudless night. The stars were rather spectacular out here, unimpeded by bright city lights. No wonder Percival Lowell had built his observatory in the mountains near this desert. They were heading down the highway in the same direction as the temple, turning just a bit south of it onto a twisting road among the spectacular rock formations.
An
other half mile up into the hills, Kylie pulled into the driveway of a white, split-level stucco. The garage door opened, admitting them smoothly and closing automatically as Kylie came to a stop and shut off the engine. She took off her helmet, shaking out her blond waves, and Dev swung off the bike behind her and followed suit—sans hair swinging.
Kylie didn’t speak as they went through a side door into the interior, but before she opened the inner door, Dev curled his arm around her waist and stopped her in her tracks to kiss down the back of her neck. She tilted her head to the side, just a slight acknowledgment that gave him greater access, letting him work his way toward the front. He wrapped his arms around her from behind and unzipped the jacket as he traced his tongue along her jawline, slipping his hands inside the leather to cup her breasts.
Kylie leaned back against him with a soft moan that made his stiffening cock spring completely to attention. As tightly as he was holding her, there was no way for her to miss it.
She chuckled softly in her throat. “This is the laundry room, in case you hadn’t noticed. Do you maybe want to see the rest of the house or were you planning on bending me over the washing machine?”
He hadn’t been, but now that she’d mentioned it...
Kylie turned in his arms, blue eyes sparkling like the stars over the desert. “You got that helmet?”
Stupidly, he almost answered that he’d left it on the bike before realizing they were doing metaphor again. He grinned, unbuckling his belt and opening his trousers.
Kylie’s eyes were amused as he shifted his hands from his trousers to hers. “I take it that’s a yes?”
“Yes.” He kissed her as he yanked her belt from the loops, and she gasped into his mouth. He hadn’t meant to take the belt clean out, but there it was in his hands. He wrapped it lightly, teasingly, around her wrists as he let go of her mouth, giving her plenty of opportunity to slip her hands out. Instead she wove her fingers together, breath quickening as she held his gaze.