"A jury of your peers?"
"Where am I going to find twelve Witches possessed by Goddesses?"
When the bells over the door jingled, I held my breath. Could Special Agent Dominguez be back already with reinforcements?
William apparently had the same thought because he froze midreply and looked ready to squeeze himself into the cubby next to the cleaning supplies. We sat there motionless, staring meaningfully at each other like Butch and Sundance at their last stand in Bolivia.
"Hello? Garnet? Anyone?"
My shoulders relaxed their tension. It was Sebastian. "I'm here, hiding under the register with William."
"Right, of course," Sebastian said, sounding particularly British, which was funny, since he was Austrian. "Perfectly reasonable."
Brushing off my pants, I stood up. Sebastian looked dead sexy, as usual.
Sebastian wasn't a traditional vampire. He'd been made by an alchemical formula, so he had none of the usual troubles with sunshine. Weather affected him, but only just barely. There was a slight windburn blush along the sharp line of his cheekbones. Yet despite the forty-degree temperature and wet wind outside, Sebastian merely wore a thin, broken-in leather jacket and jeans. The jacket was unzipped to the navel and showed not only a crisp, white T-shirt, but also the hint of what lay beneath, which I happened to know was a smooth, hard plane of well-developed pectorals that tapered down to a slender waist, and well, more. A very nice more.
Noticing me, he smiled. Sebastian had one of those light-up-his-eyes, generous, infectious smiles—the kind that I always found myself grinning back to, even when, like now, I felt as though my universe was crashing down around my feet. Just seeing him looking at me like that steadied me a bit. I almost felt safe again.
"So, uh, are you ready to go, then?"
"Go?" I asked.
"Lunch?" Sebastian prompted. "Remember?"
I stared stupidly at Sebastian, still feeling shell-shocked and a bit woozy. I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was early, only ten a.m.
Sebastian followed my gaze. With an apologetic grin, he shrugged. "I felt a 'disturbance in the Force.' "
In other words, Lilith had alerted Sebastian that I might be in trouble. She was annoying that way. Lilith didn't live inside just me any more. Sebastian had partial custody thanks to the ridiculous amount of blood-and-magic bonding we did during the spell I cast to contain Lilith, fool the Vatican agents into thinking we were dead, and save Sebastian's life. Did I mention it had been a seriously ass-kickin' spell? One of the unintended consequences was that Sebastian and I were now linked forever on a deep level. We felt each other's distress. We experienced each other's pain.
And sex was beyond fantastic.
"The Force is real?" William's voice came out as a strange muffled echo from his hiding spot under the counter. "And vampires can feel it?"
"Oh, hello, William," Sebastian peered over the counter at William's long legs sticking out from the cramped cubby. "You really are under there."
"I'm hiding from the cops," he announced.
Sebastian looked to me for an explanation, but stopped when he saw my expression. "I hate to use the cliche, darling, but you look like you've seen a ghost."
I nodded. "Six of them, actually."
"Six?" William paused midspritz; he'd crawled out from his hiding space with a bottle in hand and automatically started cleaning up the mud on the counter. William was a nervous cleaner. "Lilith took out six Vatican agents at once? Wow. She must have made you into some kind of super ninja killer, Garnet. Fly on the wall and all that, man."
Both Sebastian and I gaped at him with open mouths. Me, because I couldn't believe William had managed to describe the worst night of my life in some kind of B movie context, and Sebastian because…
"Is he serious? Is he implying you killed six Vatican agents?" Sebastian asked. Sebastian didn't know about my past, about what Lilith had done. Oh, he had firsthand experience with the Order of Eustace and their mission to rid the world of all the practitioners of true magic—he had a couple of bodies of his own buried in his rose garden—but he hadn't, until two seconds ago, known I did too.
William glanced between Sebastian and I with a sheepish look. To me, he said, "You never told him?" To him, "You seriously didn't know?" Back to me, "Oh, shit, Garnet. I guess I figured…"
Yeah, you'd think I'd have gotten around to telling my boyfriend about the single most life-changing event in my life, except the thing was, I'd been so busy making sure that the agents didn't send Sebastian to his final grave that it just kind of slipped my mind, and, of course, then it became sort of awkward to slide into casual conversation.
More to the point, the whole event was my ugly secret. I barely let myself think about it.
"Not me," I insisted feebly. "I didn't kill anyone. Lilith did."
"Of course," Sebastian said somewhat dismissively, as if the distinction wasn't terribly important. "When?"
Which was an interesting question when you thought about it. My lover didn't look at my slender five-foot-something frame and say, "how," or even, "why." Well, he could guess why, and he knew about Lilith.
"Last Halloween. They attacked my coven."
Sebastian blinked. I couldn't quite read what he was thinking in his expression, but he seemed to be taking a moment to readjust his image of me, because then, in a measured tone, he said, "I see. Now their ghosts are haunting you?"
"Not ghosts. FBI," William supplied.
I tried to give William the "stop talking now" glare, but he'd turned to alphabetize a couple of books that had gotten misplaced by a customer.
Sebastian ran his fingers through his hair, which was not a good sign. We'd been dating five months now, and I knew that gesture. It meant I was giving him a headache. I'd seen this expression a lot.
"FBI," Sebastian repeated. He caught my gaze. Unearthly light reflected a starburst pattern in his chestnut-brown eyes. "Garnet, that's not good. If the law has come knocking, they've found a body."
I nodded. The worst part about all this is that I'd been warned months ago by my coconspirator and ex-lover, Daniel Parrish, that the FBI would be tracking me down eventually. He'd showed up in town… well, to declare his undying love for me, but also to inform me that a freak drought had dried up the lake where we'd dumped the bodies. At the time, I'd had bigger things on my mind, most notably the sudden appearance of a Vatican agent in town. When things settled down and no cops showed up right away, I forgot about it. Okay, I didn't want to think about it, and that was just as good as forgetting as far as I was concerned.
"A body is a very, very bad thing," Sebastian was saying almost to himself. "Never leave a body where they can find it. Never."
William make a choking sound.
It wasn't like Sebastian to talk so casually about disposing of corpses—especially in front of William, but he was a vampire after all. It didn't surprise me he had a little experience in this matter.
"Look," I said. "We did the best we could, given the circumstances. I mean, it was fairly clever of us to remember to put rocks in with the bodies so they wouldn't float to the surface."
Now William stared at me in horror. He took a few steps backward and pretended to rearrange the titles in the Feminism and Magical Theory section. His act would have been much more convincing had he put down the bottle of cleanser first. As it was, he continued to clutch it in one hand, while pulling books out with the other.
Sebastian stopped shaking his head and pinioned me with that intense gaze again. "We?"
"Dude," William said, apparently recovering from his initial shock. "That was the royal 'we.' As in Lilith."
Sebastian raised a skeptical eyebrow and turned to me for confirmation.
Actually, it was me and Parrish, but I was just as happy not to correct William. The last thing I wanted was for Sebastian to be reminded of Parrish. Sebastian hated him for various and sundry reasons, not the least of which being that he was my ex, and another vam
pire, and, well, more than a little bit of a bad boy with a tendency toward public displays of sex, violence, and blood sport. In fact, the last time Sebastian saw Parrish he'd tried to kill him, and nearly succeeded. That was the biggest reason why I continued to let Sebastian believe he'd run Parrish out of town.
Sebastian pulled his hair back again, only this time he glared pointedly at William. William, for his part, continued to organize books, oblivious to the vampire's venomous look. To me, Sebastian said, "About lunch, are you ready to go?"
Clearly, Sebastian wanted to get away and continue this discussion privately. "Sure."
* * * *
State Street is the main tourist destination of Madison. The stores catered both to UW students and to visitors, so they tended to be a strange combination of utilitarian and luxury items. The most successful stores had a bizarre intermarriage of both, like the boutiques selling Indian-print dresses for students and expensive beaded evening gowns for tourists. It was nearly Halloween, and a lot of the display windows reflected the season—apparently mummy mannequins also had a penchant for cheap, imported clothes.
As we passed one shop, a warm blast of air carried with it the smell of gourmet-flavored popcorn. My mouth watered at the scent of chili pepper and cheese.
Pigeons bobbed in meandering circles underneath nearly leafless maple trees. They erupted in flapping, cooing flight as we passed.
Sebastian and I continued a few blocks down State Street to Cecil's Deli. The building was set back from the street a short distance, making it even more a hole-in-the-wall than all the other narrow shops on the pedestrian mall.
The warm air inside smelled of pastrami and rye bread. Tables and booths crowded the tiny space, and most of them were filled with college students and their ubiquitous textbooks lying open beside them. Sebastian and I slid into an empty booth with smooth plastic seats and a vaguely sticky, red-and-white-checkered vinyl tablecloth.
A waitress unceremoniously handed us each a laminated menu and set down water in industrial-strength glasses so scuffed they had become opaque. The water tasted slightly metallic, but it was ice cold and delicious. I gulped mine down to the chipped ice.
My eyes flitted over the dense, hand-printed menu, but my mind was elsewhere. "What am I going to do?"
"I still can't believe Lilith was so sloppy as to leave an identifiable body."
I grimaced at my mostly empty water glass. "Lilith did the killing and left," I explained, after a glance around to see if anyone was listening. Most of the college kids had their ears plugged with iPods. As an extra precaution, I leaned in close and kept my voice low. "I was in charge of the afterward. It was my first homicide, okay? Disposing of bodies is hardly my area of expertise."
Sebastian chuckled darkly. "I suppose not. Still, it's almost a full year later, to the day. That's pretty good for a novice."
I suppose I shouldn't have felt slighted by being called an amateur murderer, but I did. "Hey! Those bodies would still be undiscovered if not for the drought."
"I'm sure they would have," Sebastian said in a tone I could have mistaken as condescending, except for the gentle hand that reach across the table to smooth my clenched fist. The warmth of his callused skin always surprised me. Sebastian had been made by magic, not blood, and his flesh didn't carry the chill of the grave.
The image of stone-cold corpses made me think about those Vatican assassins all wrapped in gardening tarp. Ugh, what a horrible mess. Death. Why was so much of my life about death?
What I really wanted at that moment was to lean across the table and give Sebastian a long, slow, life-affirming kiss. Touching him would make me feel more grounded, at center. I opened my mouth to ask him to come sit beside me so I could lean into his strength just a little.
Of course, that was the moment the waitress showed up. She was youngish, student age, athletic in a boxy sort of way, with pink streaks in her shaggy short blond hair and a triangle of the same color in her ear. If she overheard any of our conversation about bodies, she didn't give any indication as she deftly took down Sebastian's order for a Reuben and mine for a breakfast plate with eggs over easy. I watched her shuffle away, wondering at the jerkiness of her gait…
I sniffed at the air. "Do you smell grave dust?"
Sebastian shook his head. "Patchouli. Horrible stuff."
"Yeah, that could be it." My eyes followed our waitress as she made her slow, steady progress through a sea of dodging waitstaff.
Sebastian took a sip of his water. His eyes watched me with a curious expression, as if he were thinking very hard about something.
"What?" I snapped. I hadn't mean to, but being scrutinized when I was in the frame of a murder didn't sit well at the moment.
His voice was low and casual, as if we were discussing the price of tea in China. "You said something about rocks?"
I nodded, not really wanting to remember the exact details of dealing with the dead Vatican agents. The truth was Parrish did most of the actual handling of the corpses. I'd felt far too sick, too grief stricken, and far too wrung out, having been so recently possessed by a Goddess whose moniker was Mother of Demons.
Sebastian cleared his throat. "How on earth did you have the presence of mind to do that?"
I nearly laughed. I had been completely out of my mind that night, not in it.
"Ah," he said lightly. "I thought so."
"Thought so, what?"
"Parrish helped you, didn't he?"
"You sound jealous," I teased.
Sebastian's reply was to study the checked pattern of the tablecloth.
Before I could speak, the waitress returned to deposit a coffee mug in front of me, and a glass and a can of soda for Sebastian. On the table she placed silverware swaddled in a white paper napkins. Sebastian and I stared coolly at each other over her ministrations.
When she left, I whispered, "You are jealous."
He shrugged, rearranging the glass and plate slightly. "You know what they say, 'true friends help you bury the bodies.'"
"They say that?"
He peeked up at me through those thick, almost girlish lashes. "Well, at least some people do."
I snorted a short laugh. "Sounds like somebody's been hanging around the wrong people."
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I wished for an undo button. It might seem like an innocent remark to a casual observer, but the people Sebastian hung out with when he wasn't with me had been the crux of a number of arguments between us lately.
It wasn't that I disapproved of his friends, because the ones that I'd met I liked tremendously. Being originally from Austria and, I imagined, due in part to his obviously foreign accent, Sebastian tended to attract international and (to me, at least) exotic companions. Students studying abroad and expatriated professors used Sebastian's farm as an overflow youth hostel. I liked that. It meant there was always someone interesting around.
His friends weren't the problem.
It was the ghouls.
Ghouls are volunteer blood donors for vampires. Most of them are vamp groupies, addicted to the sting and the rush of the bite. It's a sexual thing, the bite. Thanks to the highly aphrodisiac quality of the act, the majority of vampires don't have to kill to feed. They just have to cultivate a string of willing victims, groupies, chew toys… competition.
I sipped my coffee to hide my wince. I knew what was coming.
Sebastian let out a sigh. "Oh, Christ, that again."
"I didn't mean anything by that, honestly." I said, but I doubted he'd believe me. It was my fault he wouldn't. After all, there had been plenty of times in the past months when I intended every jealous little poke.
"How else do you expect me to sate the hunger?" Sebastian asked.
I picked up my napkin roll and broke the brown paper seal, avoiding answering. What did I expect him to do, starve? I'd made it fairly clear early in our relationship that I wasn't especially comfortable with the idea of dating someone who considered me a food source
. So he only bit me during sex play, never taking more than a nibble, and only for fun. I was sporting one of his love bites on my inner thigh this morning actually, but it was hardly more than a scratch, a tease.
Even though Sebastian was an unusual sort of vampire, he still needed blood to survive. I denied him mine. A vampire has to hunt, I supposed.
Still, I didn't have to like knowing he had others.
"Garnet," he said, his baritone voice soft, like a caress. "You know those women aren't important to me."
"I really don't want to talk about this." That was no lie. I never knew quite how to feel when a man started telling me that the other women in his life weren't important. The feminist in me always had a strange desire to rally to these other women's defense. Besides, it always seemed like the kind of line he could be telling them when they asked after me. I shook my head, not quite willing to paint Sebastian in such a cold and calculating light. "Look, in the great scheme of things your ghouls just aren't that important to me right now."
He looked unconvinced.
It was my turn to let out an exasperated sigh. I reached a hand into the pocket of my pants and rubbed the cloth satchel full of herbs I kept there. It was an anti-jealousy charm I'd made shortly after I discovered I was emotionally linked to Sebastian through Lilith's blood bond. Inside was High John the Conqueror root for strength and rosemary for remembering the good times Sebastian and I have. I closed my eyes momentarily and tried to visualize dissipating the green haze of jealousy that surrounded me.
It didn't work.
For this relationship, I was practicing tolerance. Trying, anyway. The whole ghoul issue had broken up Parrish and me, and I didn't want a repeat performance. Besides, possessiveness was pure negativity, bad vibes. I didn't need that.
I had enough going on.
Speaking of which. "What am I going to do about Special Agent Dominguez?" I asked.
Food arrived. This time, when the waitress reached around me to put a large oval plate overflowing with eggs and hash browns on the table I swore I caught the scent of grave. I tried to look in her eyes for signs of life, but she kept them politely averted. As she placed the sandwich in front of Sebastian, I squinted at her aura.
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