Bloodstone d-3

by Nancy Holzner

  “Have you? Told her, I mean.”

  Her wet hand gripped my wrist. “What will she do if she finds out?”

  I curled my fingers around hers and gave a little squeeze. “It’ll be okay, sweetie. I promise.” I picked up a dish towel and dried both our hands. She nodded, but doubt furrowed her forehead.

  “Dishwasher loaded,” I announced. “How about some hot chocolate? That helps me sleep sometimes.”

  “Okay.” Maria sat down again at the table.

  I put two mugs of milk into the microwave. As they heated, I got the coffeemaker started.

  “You look weird in a dress,” Maria observed.

  Yeah, I could agree with that. Felt weird, too, not to be in my usual jeans. “That’s because I don’t have cool pajamas like yours.”

  Maria looked down at her pajamas, blue flannel covered with yellow peace signs, and grinned. “Mom would freak if you wore pajamas to a dinner party.”

  “You’re right, she would. But at least I’d be comfortable.”

  Maria laughed. I stirred in the cocoa and carried the two mugs to the table. She took hers in both hands and sipped, then sipped again. She put down the mug and wiped off a cocoa mustache with the back of her hand.

  “So tell me about these dreams of yours,” I said.

  Maria drank more cocoa. “They start off normal—you know, just dreams. But then they change.” She wriggled in her chair, sitting up straighter. “Like, I had this one where I was walking down the hall at school, except all of a sudden I realized I was underwater, swimming. It scared me because I thought I’d drown. I kept thinking, ‘I need air. I need to breathe.’ But then I realized I was breathing. I could breathe the water.” Her eyes went wide with amazement as she remembered how that felt. “After that, it got fun. Except I was worried I couldn’t open my locker because I didn’t have any hands. Just fins. And then I laughed at myself because I thought, ‘Silly. Why would a fish need a locker?’ The laughing made lots of bubbles.” Amusement lit her eyes but dimmed at once to worry. “Do you have dreams like that?”

  “Sure. When I was your age, I had them all the time. Swimming, running—but on four legs, right?—burrowing, flying . . .”

  Maria leaned toward me. “Flying dreams are the best. It’s like, suddenly I’m up the air and I’m flying. And then somehow I realize I always could; I just didn’t know it before. It’s great. I can go anywhere I want. And part of me thinks, ‘Why do I even bother to walk?’”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean. It’s like—”

  The kitchen door swung open. “How’s that coffee coming?” Gwen stopped and stared at the two of us. From the heat that rose in my cheeks—and from the way Gwen watched us through narrowed eyes like we were conspirators plotting an assassination—I knew we looked way guiltier than a girl and her aunt sharing some cocoa.

  “What are you doing up, young lady?” Gwen asked Maria.

  “Um, I . . .” Maria’s round eyes implored me for help.

  “She came downstairs for hot chocolate,” I said. “It sounded like a good idea, so I made us each a mug. She helped me load the dishwasher, too.”

  “Well, you get back to bed now, Maria. I’ll be up in a few minutes to tuck you in. Again.”

  “Okay. Night, Mom. Night, Aunt Vicky.” Maria gave Gwen and then me a peck on the cheek. She fled up the back stairs.

  I put the empty mugs in the dishwasher and got a carton of half-and-half from the fridge.

  “So, what were you two talking about?” Gwen took the half-and-half and poured it into a cream pitcher, which she set on a tray. The tension was back in her shoulders, and her hand shook. That was Gwen. When upset, make things even more perfect.

  “Oh, you know . . .” I so didn’t want to get between my sister and her daughter on this issue. Maria should confide in Gwen about the dreams, yes. But not until she felt ready.

  “She’s having dreams, isn’t she? Preshifting dreams.”

  “They’re just dreams, Gwen. She said she had a couple of odd dreams lately—flying, swimming, stuff like that. Norms get those, too. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

  “But it might.” Gwen’s biggest fear was that her daughter would become a shapeshifter. That was a big part of why she’d married a norm; she’d hoped human DNA would make her children something other than Cerddorion, something closer to “normal.” But as Maria grew, so did Gwen’s fears. It didn’t help matters that a crazy scientist with an ambition to map the shapeshifter genome had tried last fall to kidnap Maria and use her as a lab animal. I’d brought Maria home, but Gwen’s protective instincts had kicked into overdrive. Yet she couldn’t protect Maria from herself. She couldn’t shield the girl from her own nature—whatever that turned out to be.

  “We’ll have to wait and see,” I said. “There’s no point in worrying yourself sick about it now.”

  “We’ll talk about this later.” Gwen’s tone made the words sound like a threat.

  I held open the door as she carried the coffee tray into the dining room. She’d forgotten the tiramisu. But it didn’t matter. The evening was over. Not even Kane could pull Gwen back from whatever dark place she’d gone in her worries about Maria, in her anger and hurt that Maria had chosen to talk to me—not Gwen—about what she was going through. Within fifteen minutes, we were saying good night.

  4

  “THAT WENT PRETTY WELL,” I SAID AS WE PULLED OUT OF Gwen’s driveway and headed back to Boston.

  “Are you kidding? If that had been a trial, and the jury was starting its deliberations—like your sister and her husband are doing in their living room right now—do you know what I’d be doing? I’d be pacing the hallways, chewing my nails until they bled and trying to figure out how to tell my client we were going to lose.”

  “Oh, come on. It wasn’t that bad. Okay, there were a couple of tense moments. But Gwen likes you. She gave me the secret signal.”

  He scowled like he thought I was teasing him. “I wish you’d told me not to mention your aunt.”

  “I should have. I’m sorry about that.”

  But even if I hadn’t been distracted on the drive out here, I might have neglected to bring up the issue. In my mind, Mab’s household and Gwen’s family existed in such completely separate spheres that I probably wouldn’t have thought to warn Kane. Of course, without that warning from me, he’d think bringing up family would be a natural icebreaker. He’d probably expected that saying he liked Mab would win him points with my sister, not send him three giant steps back.

  “What happened between them?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, exactly.” The animosity had started nearly twenty years ago. “When Gwen was thirteen, she went to Wales for her first summer of demon-fighter training. Or that’s what was supposed to happen—she was home within a month. When I asked her why she came back, she burst into tears and told me to leave her alone. She never said what went wrong. But whenever anyone mentioned Mab’s name, Gwen would shout, ‘I hate her,’ and run out of the room.”

  Gwen’s rejection of Mab had changed our family. No more Christmas visits to Maenllyd, Mab’s manor house in north Wales. Gwen flat-out refused to go. And all those summers I spent in Wales, Gwen never once asked about Mab or acknowledged that I’d been away. She hadn’t invited Mab to her wedding; she hadn’t sent announcements when her children were born. Because of Gwen, Mab hadn’t attended my father’s funeral.

  “Do you think the training was too tough for Gwen? Your aunt isn’t exactly a softie.”

  I shook my head. “It was more than that. Mab wouldn’t speak of the incident, either.” I’d asked her about it when I began my apprenticeship. “She told me it was none of my business. That I was there to focus on my own training. She said so in a way that made me think it would be a bad idea to ask a second time.” Mab never said she hated Gwen; she never talked about her at all. Whatever had happened, it erased each of them from the other’s world.

  “Families can get so complicated,”
Kane said. “It’s easier being a lone wolf.”

  “Oh, yes? Should I stay at my place tonight, then, and let you do your lone-wolf thing at yours?”

  He gave me a sidelong look, and then made a sharp right into the empty parking lot of a closed mini-mall. He stopped, turned to me, put his hands behind my head, and pulled me to him for a kiss. All the tension, all the pent-up frustration of the evening, was transformed into the urgent pressure of his lips against mine. A thrill went through me. The kiss deepened, making my heart pound. Then Kane sighed and rested his forehead against mine, his hand stroking the back of my neck.

  “I said easier, not better.”

  Whichever. Right now it all felt pretty damn good. I tilted up my face to kiss him again when his cell phone rang.

  He groaned. He pulled out his phone and checked the number. “Damn. I’m sorry, Vicky. I should take this call.” He ran a finger along my lips as he pressed a button and put the phone to his ear. “Alexander Kane.” He listened for a couple of seconds. His finger stopped moving on my mouth. “Hold on.” He muted the phone and turned to me.

  “It’s about Juliet. She’s in Goon Squad custody.”

  My heart lurched. The Goons had Juliet? At least she was safe from the Old Ones. But she was being held by the cops who police Deadtown—and that wasn’t good news.

  The Old Ones weren’t the only ones looking for Juliet. She was also wanted for questioning in connection with that Supreme Court justice’s murder, the one that had derailed Kane’s paranormal rights case. Witnesses had seen Juliet in Washington on the night Justice Frederickson was killed. But what the cops didn’t know—or wouldn’t believe—was that the Old Ones had been there, too. Kane had seen them. Three Old Ones had tried to prevent him from reaching his werewolf retreat that night, the first night of a full moon, and force him to change in the middle of the city. They’d almost succeeded, too.

  When Justice Frederickson’s body was found, her throat ripped out, Kane was initially the prime suspect. But the D.C. cops hadn’t been able to charge him because of his airtight alibi: Just before moonrise, he’d made it to a werewolf safe room at the National Zoo, where he remained locked in until dawn. Kane was convinced the Old Ones had murdered Frederickson and tried to frame him for it—and that Juliet was somehow involved.

  Had Juliet admitted her involvement? Was that the reason for this phone call? I couldn’t believe it.

  I listened, but I couldn’t make much sense of Kane’s onesided conversation. When he ended the call, I asked what was going on. “When did the Goons pick up Juliet? Where?”

  “They didn’t. She turned herself in three days ago. Said she needed protective custody.”

  The Old Ones. They must have been closing in on her.

  “But why did the Goons call you?” Unlike humans, paranormals had no right to legal counsel. We weren’t guaranteed a phone call, either. The cops could legally hold Juliet indefinitely, without ever telling anyone she was in custody. There had to be a reason they were calling now.

  “Juliet says she’ll cooperate fully if she can talk to a lawyer first. She asked for me.” He turned in his seat and put a hand on my arm. I didn’t like the look in his eyes. “You realize it’s impossible for me to represent her.”

  “What do you mean? Of course you have to.”

  “Vicky, somebody murdered a Supreme Court justice and tried to pin it on me. Juliet was involved. I can’t imagine a bigger conflict of interest.”

  “She didn’t frame you. I know she didn’t.”

  “You can’t say that. I know she’s your friend, but you haven’t even heard from her in, what, six weeks or longer.”

  I hadn’t told anyone about Juliet’s postcards, not even Kane. It was like she was confiding in me, and they were too secret and too urgent to share.

  “So you’re just abandoning her to the mercy of the norms? That doesn’t sound like you.”

  “That’s not like me.” His glance reproved me for thinking otherwise. “Did you hear me mention Betsy Blythe? That was a referral. Betsy is a terrific defense lawyer. She’s a human who has a decent track record in paranormal cases. In fact, let me give her a call now.”

  He placed the call, waited several seconds, and glanced at me. “Voice mail,” he said. At the beep, he said, “Hi, Betsy. It’s Kane. I gave your name to the JHP”—JHP was short for Joint Human-Paranormal Task Force, the Goon Squad’s official designation—“as a referral for a vampire they’re holding. Her name is Juliet Capulet, and she’s wanted for questioning in connection with the murder of Justice Frederickson down in D.C. She says she’ll cooperate after she’s spoken to a lawyer, so they’re allowing her access. She asked for me, but for obvious reasons I can’t take her on as a client. Of course, I immediately thought of you. If you could meet with her, I’d really appreciate it. I’ll touch base with you in the morning, but call any time if you have questions. Thanks, Betsy.”

  He put his phone away and took my hand. “All right? Betsy’s top-notch, Vicky. Juliet will have competent counsel. I promise.”

  “She asked for you.”

  “It’s the best I can do.”

  I pulled my hand away. It sat in my lap, clenched into a fist. When I spoke, my voice sounded tight. “You won’t help her, even for my sake?”

  “It’s not a matter of ‘won’t.’ It’s ‘can’t.’ I cannot represent Juliet when there’s a cloud over our relationship.” He put a finger under my chin and turned my face toward him. His gray eyes were sincere. “If I did, it wouldn’t be fair to her.”

  He was right, damn it. But that didn’t mean I had to like it. I jerked my head away and stared out the side window.

  Kane laid a hand on my shoulder. He pressed my arm. I didn’t turn. After a moment, he sighed and started the car. We pulled out of the parking lot and back onto Route 9.

  My chest felt tight as I watched the wood-framed houses of Newton go by. Most of them were dark, their norm inhabitants asleep. Maybe they were having flying dreams. Maybe they dreamed they were being chased by monsters like the two who drove silently past in a late-model BMW. Whatever. They were lucky. They weren’t sitting alone in some Goon Squad cell waiting for a lawyer who wasn’t coming. I turned in my seat. “I want to see her, Kane.”

  “All right.” He nodded. “I’ll tell Betsy to try to get you on the list of approved visitors.”

  “No, I want to see her now. Tonight. I want you to drop me off at the Goon Squad’s holding facility.”

  We stopped at a red light. He looked at me as though I’d just told him I wanted to run the Boston Marathon route in my dress and high-heeled boots. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “I’m not asking your permission.”

  A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Okay, you’re not asking my permission. And you won’t let me talk you out of it, either.”

  “Just drop me off.”

  “They won’t let you in.” The light turned green, and we crossed the intersection.

  “I’ve got to try. You say you can’t represent Juliet because she’s mixed up with the Old Ones. That’s exactly why I need to talk to her. She might know where Pryce is.”

  It was my best argument. Kane knew what Pryce had tried to do to me, and it bothered him that my demi-demon “cousin” was still out there. No one knew where Pryce was or why the Old Ones had taken him—except maybe Juliet.

  “All right.” The words were more growl than agreement. And I didn’t really care whether or not he dropped me off—we both knew I’d try to see Juliet tonight, wherever I got out of the car. Yet his willingness meant something, an acknowledgment of my friend’s importance to me. Perhaps even an acknowledgment that I could be right about her.

  I needed to make sure Juliet was okay. I needed to find out what she knew about Pryce and the Old Ones. I needed to find out what had happened that night in Washington. There were lots of reasons I needed to talk to Juliet. And they couldn’t wait until my name showed up on some officially approved lis
t.

  5

  KANE PULLED THE BMW OVER JUST BEFORE THE CHECKPOINT out of human-controlled Boston. “Mind if I let you off here? I want to stop by the office and pick up some papers, and I don’t think they’d let me back through.” He nodded toward the checkpoint, where a bored guard paged through a comic book. Spider-Man. I could see the cover from here. With the code-red restrictions in place, there wasn’t much traffic between Deadtown and the rest of the city. Kane’s office was on the norms’ side of the barrier, near Government Center. But since it was past eleven, well outside norm business hours, the guard might insist he stay put.

  “Sure. I’ll go through the walk-up booth.” There was only one open tonight. “We’re practically on the Goon Squad’s doorstep, anyway.” The first building in the New Combat Zone, the block between the checkpoints into Deadtown and the rest of the city, was my goal: a nondescript concrete structure that served as the Goon Squad’s headquarters and detention center.

  “Thanks for dropping me off here,” I said.

  Kane put a hand on my leg. His fingers toyed with the hem of my dress. “This isn’t how I’d imagined tonight ending.”

  “The night’s not over yet.” I leaned over and kissed him. “I’ll see you back at your place.”

  He put an arm around me and pulled me to him. As we kissed again, longer, his fingers caressed my neck, bringing up shivers.

  “I’ll be waiting,” he whispered.

  It was my damn high-heeled boots that made me stagger a little on my way to the walk-up booth.

  The guard barely glanced at my ID before he swiped it. The norms don’t care who’s leaving their part of town half as much as they care who’s entering it.

  I went into the Goon Squad building. The main activity—headquarters and offices—was upstairs. The holding facility was deep in the soundproofed basement. I clacked down the stairs in my boots and pulled open the glass door at the bottom.