“Bullshit,” the king’s deep voice said, faint with distance. “I had you beat until the last set of targets. And you cheated.”
Patience froze, her smile turning to an “O” of horror.
“Gods, could you be any more of a sore loser?” Leah’s voice was light and teasing as the two of them continued their long-standing debate over who rocked the gun range. “I took out one more target with half a clip fewer jade-tips. And you shot one of the good guys; that’s an automatic forfeit.”
“I still say she looks like a shifty bitch,” he said of one of the new false-alarm targets Michael had installed in an effort to train the warriors to avoid collateral damage.
“She’s eighty if she’s a day, and she’s using a walker.”
“Not anymore she’s not,” Strike said with dry satisfaction. “Bitch is dead.”
Leah’s laughter burbled, but Patience felt only dread at the happy sound. Oh, shit. What was she going to do? The hallway dead-ended at the royal suite; the only other doorway along it led to the royal winikin’s rooms. Both of the suites had exterior doors, but if she could hear the royal couple’s footsteps, they’d be able to hear a door shutting—the heavy panels weren’t quiet, and it’d be far worse to be caught trying to escape versus bluffing it through. Going invisible wasn’t an option because the other magi could see right through the illusion; the magic worked only on non-Nightkeepers. So it was bluff time.
You can do this , she told herself. You’ve prepared for this . She’d run through the scenario in her head a hundred times, thought of a dozen excuses for why she was in the royal wing univited. But as Strike and Leah rounded the corner and caught sight of her, their steps hesitating nearly in unison, her mind went completely and utterly blank.
“I’m—” Sorry, she stopped herself from saying, because that hadn’t been in any of the scripts. A hot flush climbed her cheeks and flop sweat spiked its way down her spine. “Uh—”
“Oh, good, there you are,” a new voice said from behind the royal couple. Patience boggled as Brandt rounded the corner, moving full steam ahead and looking purposeful. He nodded to her. “I was coming to tell you they weren’t still out at the gun range, but I see you found them.”
Leah sent Patience a sharp glance; Patience tried to replace the look of panic with one of purpose.
“Well, technically I’d say they found me.” She hoped to hell they couldn’t see her hands shaking.
Strike seemed to buy it. He refocused on Brandt. “You need us for something?”
“It’s just an idea I’ve been kicking around. Pretty preliminary stuff, but I wanted to get your take on it.” He nodded toward the royal suite. “Do you have a few minutes now?”
The king nodded. “Sure thing.”
The three of them moved past Patience, but then Brandt paused very near her, letting the others get ahead. As she stared up at him, he looked almost like a stranger, all hard eyed and angry . . . until he leaned in and brushed a kiss across her cheek and whispered, “One of these days you’ll start believing we’re on the same side.”
Then he straightened and walked away, motions stiff and angry. But instead of dismay at his anger, or the irritation she’d so often turned to recently, she felt warmth unfurl in her chest. And as she headed back toward their apartment with her phone clutched to her chest in an unconscious hug, she felt, for the first time in a long, long time, that maybe she wasn’t so far away from putting her family back together, after all.
Texas Lucius and Jade made a quick stop at a drive- through for calories, after which she dozed off in the passenger seat, recovering, Lucius assumed, from the scribe’s magic. When they’d left the sublet, he’d been strung tight and jonesing for the sex her kiss had promised, but it was probably better this way.
He’d been raw from the scene in Anna’s office and the knowledge that he was leaving his old life behind once and for all, making him more vulnerable to her than he’d wanted. He’d been shaken by the makeout session, loose kneed and knocked off-kilter by the intensity of his own response and the sudden, almost overwhelming urge to sweep her up, lose himself in her, promise her things he had no intention of promising.
That was the old Lucius, the one who’d charged headlong into flawed relationships, only to pancake hard. That wasn’t him. Not anymore. Still, though, the need for sex rode his blood. He would’ve liked to think it was magic, that he was close to breaking through whatever barrier kept him locked on the earth plane, but he knew it wasn’t the magic. It was Jade.
He kept glancing over at her as he drove. She was partway curled on her side facing him, with one hand under her cheek, the other fisted loosely in her lap. Her forearm marks were a dark contrast to her pale skin; he wanted to kiss her there, wanted to kiss her all over, until she felt desired. Cherished.
Let her sleep, he told himself. There’s time yet.
But how much time? They were down to less than four days to the solstice. If the Banol Kax managed to put Akhenaton into the sun god’s place, there was no telling what would happen. Would the pharaoh come after his ancient enemies once again? For all they knew, Skywatch would be a damned crater by the twenty-second, unless he found a way to get his ass back in the library to pull out the info they so badly needed. But, short of offering himself up for a soul sacrifice and hoping to hell his body would become the receptacle for a true Prophet, he didn’t know what he could do to help.
More, he and Jade were bringing back news of Anna’s defection, which was going to have ripples beyond the cow Strike was going to have. But at the same time, Lucius couldn’t help wondering whether Anna might not have a point. The Nightkeepers needed a super-Prophet but didn’t have one.
They needed Godkeepers, a seer, the library . . . hell, more manpower. None of those things seemed imminent. Some didn’t even seem possible.
“The magic has to be the answer, for my part of things, at least,” he said, thinking aloud as the miles unfolded beneath the Jeep’s off- road treads. “I’m human, so therefore shouldn’t have magic, but Cizin was attracted to me. There had to have been nastier dudes than me on campus, and they would’ve been an easier sell on the ajaw-makol possession. So why me?” It was tempting to think that there was some reason the demon had been able to reach through the barrier and influence him the way it had. Although the Nightkeepers guarded their bloodlines and had strict mores against producing half-bloods, the fact that those mores even existed suggested there had been some strays over the years. So he supposed it was possible he could have a Nightkeeper descendant way back . . . but that didn’t play, given that his only real connection to Nightkeeper magic had been through the slave mark.
Glancing at his forearm, he suppressed a shudder at the thought that he could just as easily be part Xibalban. Regardless, the library spell was Nightkeeper magic, suggesting that he could access either light or dark magic. “But how the hell am I supposed to do that?”
A mildly irritated beep-beep from his left warned him that he’d better concentrate on driving; he’d gotten so caught up in his thought process that he’d wandered into the fast lane. A pickup truck zoomed past going a solid ninety, and pulled away, leaving him alone to wander the lanes. Startled from his mull-and-ponder, Lucius realized that he’d gotten farther than he’d thought; the city and suburbs were gone, leaving him on a long, straight stretch of highway with not much to see in all directions. It was also later than he’d realized; the orange sun was dying behind scrub-covered, rolling hill silhouettes. A few more miles down the road, when he passed a small sign for lodging, he pulled off the highway and followed three more arrowed signs that claimed to be leading him to the Weeping Willow Inn. It was farther off the highway than he really wanted to be, but just as he was getting ready to turn back, he saw the turnoff leading to the inn.
The place had probably been a working ranch in the past; the driveway wound through the middle of sparsely covered grassland. Lucius didn’t see any livestock, though, and the lane was marked of
f with neat split-rail fencing rather than the more common barbed wire or electric used for working rangeland. That and the relative newness of the signage kept him from turning around, thinking the place would probably be way too sketchy for an overnight. Then he topped a low hill, got a look at the Weeping Willow Inn, and let the Jeep roll to a stop, not because the inn was sketchy at all, but because it wasn’t.
Nestled in a small, scrub- furred valley, a half dozen bunkhouselike cottages were scattered behind a main ranch house that was fronted by a wide, welcoming porch. In the fading light, he saw that all of the buildings were done in earth-toned clapboards and rough-cut wood, and dressed up with fanciful touches of gingerbread molding that gave the buildings a distinctively feminine air. Window boxes and whiskey barrels bloomed with flowers, and stones marked winding paths from each cottage to the main house, which a discreet sign identified as both the office and the kitchen. Two vehicles sat in a fenced-off parking area: a dusty SUV with a cargo clamshell strapped to its roof, and a pickup with WEEPING WILLOW INN painted on the side. So there’s probably room for us , he thought wryly.
More, he liked the cottage idea. He’d dealt with the high-rise hotel the night before, but even leaving the balcony door open to its screen hadn’t totally taken away his sense of being boxed in. He’d sleep better in a place like this.
In fact, the inn was pretty much perfect . . . if he’d been planning a honeymoon. It was way more intimate than he’d been expecting, though. The generic hotel room they’d stayed in the prior night had been a way station. This was more like a spot for lovers. The man he’d been before would’ve rocked a place like this, buying into the kitsch in the hopes that the ambience would make up for his own shortcomings. The man he’d grown into since leaving UT told himself to do a one-eighty and find a Motel 6. A woman couldn’t possibly misinterpret a Motel 6.
At the sound of a soft sigh, he looked over at Jade. She’d tucked her other hand beneath her cheek and was trying to snuggle into the hard foam seat, her neck crooking in a position that had to be getting uncomfortable. She’s tired , he told himself. Not to mention that he was tired too, or at least sick of driving. He wanted some downtime, some space to reset his brain. And the pretty little cottages made him think of Skywatch.
“Fine. The Weeping Willow Inn it is.” He eased his foot off the brake and let the Jeep coast down the hill toward the parking area. As he did so, he was aware of a low-grade churning of nerves, one warning him that he was making a mistake. He ignored it, though. He had enough troubles already; he didn’t need to borrow more.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Jade awakened warm and rested, tucked into a sinfully soft bed that smelled faintly of minty sage. She was feeling deliciously loose and proud of herself, and that latter emotion was so unusual for her, she took a moment to track the pride to its source. Memory came flooding back in a flash: She’d found her magic through a kiss, and she’d had to give only part of herself to get it. More, she’d proved her second theory correct: She couldn’t touch the magic unless she was emotionally available. It wasn’t a comfortable discovery for a woman who’d spent years teaching others—and herself—how to self-
protect, but there it was. What was it that Scarred-Jaguar was supposed to have said time and again?
Sacrifice isn’t supposed to be easy . Well, this one wasn’t, but she thought she could learn to live with it, so long as she kept a firm grip on reality.
Remembering another aspect of her present reality, she shifted under the bedcovers, reaching a hand to reassure herself that she was still wearing Anna’s skull effigy. She wasn’t looking forward to telling Strike what had happened, but she really didn’t want to follow it up by admitting she’d lost the irreplaceable pendant. She went still when she found she was wearing only her bra. No shirt . . . and no pendant.
“Don’t freak,” Lucius’s now- familiar raspy voice said. “It’s on the nightstand.”
Exhaling a long, relieved breath, she opened her eyes to mock-glare at him. “Way to give me heart failure.” Then her eyes widened as she caught her first glimpse of their surroundings.
She had assumed he would’ve checked them into another no-tell motel while she’d been sleeping off her postmagic crash, but the rough- finished wood beams and pristine white plaster of the bedroom she found herself in were a far cry from the average offering of a highwayside chain. The sky was the blue-black of nightfall, visible through a pair of French doors and framed by gauzy white curtains that were repeated in the filmy swags that roped the huge canopy bed. A bedside lamp was on, sending soft light through a cut-glass dome to gleam on the yellow quartz skull, which sat safely on the nightstand, its chain neatly coiled beside it. The bedclothes were white; the whole room was white, except where splashes of violet and navy blue were picked out in framed watercolors on the walls and boxy accent pillows on the long couch along one wall. An open door offered a glimpse into a bathroom done in navy tile with violet edging and pristine white towels, with a Jacuzzi-jet tub big enough for two.
Lucius stood in a wood-framed doorway; beyond him she glimpsed a sitting area of natural wood and emerald green, but it was only a glimpse before her eyes locked onto him. Arms folded, he leaned against the door frame, watching her with a familiar intensity that sent shimmers of heat washing through her in an instant, and took her straight back to the kiss they had shared in Rabbit’s sublet. That might have been hours ago, but as their eyes met it might have been no more than a few minutes. She was instantly back there, with need coursing through her body alongside a poignant ache beneath her heart.
His gesture encompassed the room. “Not bad, huh?”
“Nicer than last night’s generica America, by a long shot.” It was a room made for romance. For love. It had probably been his only non-truck-stop option for a hundred miles, she told herself. The choice had been expediency, not seduction. Unfortunately, she had started the evening already halfway seduced, though that had been her own doing—and the magic.
“We’re at an inn called the Weeping Willow,” he said by way of explanation. “Willow is our proprietress. The weeping, I gather, occurred when her fiancé died in Vietnam. Her parents both passed soon after, leaving her family money from oil rights, along with the ranch, which she turned into an inn because she likes having the occasional guest.” He paused, the corners of his mouth kicking upward. “Or so I learned after I made the mistake of commenting to the lady checking me in that there aren’t many weeping willows out in west Texas.”
“Ah,” Jade said, matching his smile. “I take it the lady behind the desk was Willow?”
“Got it in one. It’s just her, a road- tripping family in the cottage closest to the house, and us out here on the edge of it all.” His gesture encompassed what she imagined was a whole lot of nothingness in the night beyond the French doors. “And yes, I set the motion detectors around our perimeter and made it clear to Willow that she shouldn’t come knocking.”
Jade’s brain hadn’t yet gotten around to worrying about security. She was still stuck on the bedroom ambience and the man standing in her doorway. He’d showered and changed into a fresh tee and jeans; he was barefoot, his hair still slightly damp. She couldn’t decipher his expression, and badly wanted to. Although he was keeping the conversation light, there was nothing light in the hazel depths of his eyes or the hard, hungry set to his jaw.
“Well, then. Since you’ve taken care of the possibility of interruptions . . .” She let the comment trail off on a suggestive purr, acutely aware that she was wearing only her bra and panties beneath the bedclothes, which meant he’d already had his hands on her once that night. Her body tingled at the phantom memory, and in anticipation of what was to come. “I believe that earlier today, you voted for sooner rather than later?”
He hesitated longer than she would have expected. She said nothing, though, did nothing. Although she thought he was almost ready to embrace the magic, to open himself up to it and to her, she wasn’t going to trap
or trick him into it. Finally, he exhaled a long, shuddering breath, crossed to her in three strides, and eased onto the bed beside her. “I can’t not do this,” he said in an undertone rasp, and she got the feeling he wasn’t totally talking to her. “I want this. I want you.”
The scent of sage and mint intensified as he kissed her openmouthed, with the blatant possessiveness that had sparked between them back in Rabbit’s sublet. She kissed him back, helpless to do otherwise, but deep down inside her, panic kindled at the realization that she didn’t know the rules anymore.
Her heart shuddered in her chest. Be careful, she told herself. Be very careful. Because the man kissing her now wasn’t the Lucius she’d come to know over the past week. Or rather, he was, but he was also the Lucius she’d known before, the one who had been so much more open with himself, and with her. The man kissing her now was the man she’d been with in the archive, the one who had sparked feelings strong enough to frighten her and make her shut him down. Back then, she’d shoved him into the friends-with-benefits zone, afraid that he might tempt her into the trap she had seen so often in her practice, the love that caused an otherwise strong, capable woman to disintegrate when her lover turned on her, spurned her. He wouldn’t do that , she told herself. He’s different from the others.
He’s Lucius . But at the same time, she imagined Shandi’s voice—or was it the nahwal’s voice?—
cautioning, He’s just a man. He’ll distract you, weaken you, make you forget what’s important.
Which might be true . . . except that Jade was almost certain that this was the important part. She’d been wrong before when she’d said sex magic was about the act. It wasn’t about the sex, after all. It was all about finding the connection . . . and it was up to her to show Lucius how.
Drugged with desire, with the romance he’d brought her to, intentionally or not, she kicked free of the bedclothes and came back to him, pressing her near nudity to his fully clothed, fully aroused body.
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