by A. L. Tyler
She was fighting every gossiping instinct she had in the silence that followed.
She finally caved. “Oh my God, you have got to get your ass back here and see the video. This drunk guy was dared by his friends to streak from the Crazy A's down to the auto repair place while holding up a plunger with a flaming wad of newspaper in it—I think it was supposed to be an Olympic torch, but whatever—and this woman was driving and saw him, and her teenage son was sitting in the passenger seat recording it with his cell phone, and they drove behind him for seven blocks. And this guy is kind of flabby, and he's jiggling in the wind the whole time, and people in the other cars are rolling down their windows to cheer him on while he's waving. And then the cop car pulls up next to him and of course it's Samille—and oh my God! He's wearing this bumper sticker like a tramp stamp that says—”
"Uh huh." Disgusting. Who the hell was I kidding? I was totally watching that video during my next shift. "So, the address is 677 Basket Lane in Waybill."
"—right." I heard Marge tap away at her keyboard. “I suppose this is related to Samson Grift?”
I cringed. “The name associated with the property is Louis Irvine.”
Tap tap tap. “I will run a search on him as well.”
“And Marge? Don’t tell Nick.”
The tapping stopped. She dropped her voice low. “Janet. I don’t lie to vampires.”
“His blood is all humanely sourced,” I said quickly. “Thank you, Marge!”
“Janet! Jette!”
I hung up before she could protest again.
Turning to my computer, I hopped onto an open wifi and tried to log into the database, but the connection was maddeningly slow.
I sank down in my seat, knowing that I should start my drive home before I was missed. I had a vampire. And a cat.
After a full night of sleeping folded up in my own back seat, I wasn’t in the mood to drive right away.
I wished I was Nick. I envied his endless days. I wondered how he was getting on with Millie, but the image of her dressed in his shirt made me not want to think about either of them.
I opened up the pictures Nick had taken of George Roost’s apartment, shaking my head and scrolling through with dull eyes. I didn’t know why I hated Millie so much.
She had all the confidence and flirtatious manner I had never mastered and she was the unrepentant criminal I could never be.
Maybe she was right about me, and underneath everything we showed to the world, we were very much the same person. Someday I would be the criminal who screwed people over left and right to get what I wanted.
I wasn’t her, was I? One day earlier, I’d been preparing to kill a man.
I wiped a hand over my face and stared at Nick’s picture of the mantle, and all of George’s family photos, and remembered Millie’s story about her sister.
Her sister. My father. Millie had lost her parents to the Bleak, too.
I squinted at the photo, and then did a double take. I fumbled with my trackpad as I tried to scroll in and waited for the resolution to adjust, but I wasn’t wrong.
The woman in the picture was wearing a necklace with a large oval stone, exactly the same as the necklace that Millie had stolen from the bank. An oval surrounded by sparkling diamonds.
Millie had claimed the necklace was her mother’s.
The woman in the picture was George’s mother.
I hadn’t seen it before because Millie had been busy distracting me with her sob story before placing that exact picture face down on the mantle.
Damn it. I pulled my phone again and dialed Nick. Millie lied about the necklace. If all of this wasn’t about proving George had killed her sister by his possession of that necklace, we had no idea what her end game was.
“Warren.”
“Where’s Millie?” I demanded. I started my car and put Nick on speaker as I made for the highway.
“She’s under supervision at my place. I left her with a friend.” In my mind’s eye, I could see his eyes narrowing. “Why?”
“She lied about the necklace,” I said. “Cuff her. Now.”
“I got rid of them,” he growled. “You demanded it!”
I cringed. In a race between Nick and Millie, my money was on Nick—sure, she could walk through walls, but vampires redefined speed in the supernatural world. In a race between Millie and anyone else, well... “Do anything. Shoot her. She’s up to something.”
The phone went dead and my heart started to race. Wherever he was, Nick was frantically dialing his friend. I couldn’t believe he’d actually gotten rid of the cuffs. He loved those cuffs.
His return call came too fast. “Fuck. Fuck!”
“Nick?”
“My contact isn’t answering. How fast can you get here?”
I made a face, nearly taking out a sedan as I merged without looking. “An hour and a half. Maybe. I’m in Waybill.”
“What the hell are you doing in Waybill?”
“Well where the hell are you? Never mind—it’s a long story! Go find her! Without me! Go!”
Nick growled his discontent before hanging up. I drove like a bat out of hell.
Chapter 14
TO MY CREDIT, I DIDN’T set the steering wheel on fire. I did melt palm prints into the comfort grip cover before I swore out loud and pulled over.
“Shit!” I barely managed to flick the handle before kicking the car door open. My palms were glowing hot and I’d nearly turned myself into the speeding fireball. “Shit!”
Rush-hour traffic was building on the road behind me as I ran for the ditch off the side of the road. I plunged my hands into an inch of green water covering a foot of mud and my hands sizzled like hot pans thrust into cold dishwater.
The pain hit me like a ton of bricks. It felt like railroad spikes being driven into my arms and sounded like a hundred fiddles playing from a common sheet of music and suddenly dissolving into screeching, high-pitched chaotic notes. The smell of the boiling muck was horrific.
For the first time in a long time, I found myself counting through the pain. It came in waves, it went long, and it felt like daggers of ice and lava pushing their way out of my body. The fiddles went silent, one by one, but gods—there were so many of them, each one shrieking in protest.
Magic users were born with individualized capacity for magic. What you were born with, you could handle. Some were able to train for more, but it was a slow and deliberate process.
When I’d stolen an ancient cache of magic from the Bleak, I’d broken the laws of nature by absorbing much more than I was able to contain. It had been burning its way out of me for years.
I had narrowly escaped a burning episode that probably should have killed me once, and I knew I wouldn’t escape it again.
It was getting worse. I needed help.
I had to use the emergency blanket in my trunk to clean up after the mud. Then I sat in my driver’s seat, knowing that Millie was on the loose and Nick was pissed, and afraid that my mana burn would strike again.
So, I did the unthinkable. I fished the card from my bag, I dialed the number, and I listened to the line ring.
“Hello?” It sounded like I woke her up. I got some sick satisfaction out of it.
“Hi, this is Jette Driftwood—”
“Jette. Yes. What do you want?” Angel’s voice was calm and level.
I swallowed. My anxiety was making the magic prickle in my arms and ping like marbles dropped into a tin can. “I need your help. It’s getting worse.”
“Okay.” An edge of concern. “Well, what’s happening?”
I tried to steady my breathing. I held the phone further from my mouth. I didn’t want her to hear me panicking. Honesty and I weren’t great friends. “It already happened. I was driving, and I started to have a burn, and I had to pull over to—”
“No.” Her sharp tone caught me off guard. “What were you feeling?”
I twitched in anger. The stolen magic within me flared to life again and I lowered my window to
vent ice crystals from my fingers. I could hardly hear my voice over the refreshed screams of the fiddles, trying and failing to come together in harmony. “I was terrified.”
“Before the burn? Was someone attacking you?”
“No, I...” I shook my head. Before the burn. “I was driving. I was in a rush, and it just sort of snuck up on me. I wasn’t even thinking about it.”
“Okay,” Angel said smoothly. “And before that?”
I was hunting down a dangerous man I’ll probably murder out of revenge. “I’m... out of town, and I realized something about the case I’m working with Nick, and I’m not able to get there fast enough.”
“Out of town doing what?”
I frowned. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Goodbye, Jette.”
“No—no!” I hissed. “You have to help me. I almost set my car on fire!”
“That’s not my problem. It’s your problem. Call when you actually want help with your problem.”
“I did call. I’m admitting I need help. You have to help me.” My mind went back to the day that she’d put her hand on me, and the immediate relief it had provided. “You have to tell me what to do.”
“I don’t have to do anything.” Angel laughed, but she clearly wasn’t amused. “Honey, what do you think this is? I’m not a counselor. I’m not your damn AA sponsor. That’s not what this is.”
I was at a total loss. “Angel—”
“Bye.”
She hung up.
I stared at the clock on my dash as the traffic thickened around me. Two hours was probably closer to four now. I still wasn’t ready to drive.
And gods, did my hands hurt.
I HAULED ASS FROM WAYBILL to Fowl Gulch—or at least, I hauled ass when the magic allowed me to drive. When I used my key to get into Nick’s apartment, he was fuming.
A quick glance around the room showed that we were alone. Whoever he’d had watching Millie was already long gone.
“Waybill?” he demanded. He pulled a knife from the block in the kitchen and casually threw it into the wall next to him. It embedded with a thwack. “Waybill?!”
“I’m sorry! I was doing this thing for Marge, and she asked me to check on one of her exes because—”
“I don’t care.”
“Was anyone hurt?” I asked. “Why are you even here? You should be out chasing Millie!”
“Do you think I’d be here if there was anything to chase?!”
Silence filled the apartment.
“No one was hurt.” He turned and paced away. “I left her with Nathan Burr. He was passing through. I found him tied up on the kitchen floor.”
“Tied up?” I was bizarrely curious how Millie had managed that. I remembered Nathan Burr from Farrow and Joe’s wake; he was a big guy.
“Some sort of dogwood fiber threaded into a warded rope—It doesn’t matter.” He stopped. In one move too quick to see, he punched a hole in the wall. Splinters erupted with a sound like a gunshot.
I jumped. My pulse raced. Nick turned back, anger and regret in his eyes.
“She escaped,” I said. “And that’s not my fault.”
Maybe it was. I’d have to see how pissed he was after I told him the photograph of George’s mother wearing the necklace had been right under my nose.
“You’re a rookie,” he said, lip curling in rage. “I’m a professional. I had a bad feeling. I let her escape.”
“That’s why you’re angry.”
“Damn straight that’s why I’m angry!”
At least it wasn’t me.
Nick paced to a chair and threw himself into it. Slouched low, he wiped a hand over his face.
I hesitated and took the chair across from him. “What do we do now?”
The seething look in his eyes was pure predator. Blood, and lots of it—that’s what the vampire wanted to do now.
I was uncomfortably aware that my pulse was still racing.
But Nick’s self-control never failed to amaze me. “We still have George Roost. He’s missing. We can do another sweep of his apartment, and this time we know we’re looking for something related to Millie. What were you doing in Waybill?”
“Spying on Marge’s ex, because she thinks I’m a PI now... it’s a long story. And it’s pretty embarrassing for her—don’t ask.” I clutched my hands together as they started to blush and glow. “I’m really sorry I wasn’t here. And I’m sorry I missed the photograph. I should have known when she picked it up—”
He waved a dismissive hand and looked away. “It wasn’t your fault. It wouldn’t have made any difference, I think, if you were standing right next to me when she decided to make her move. I’m supposed to be training you. I should have checked the apartment myself.”
I flinched. His easy dismissal of my error almost made it worse. “You don’t have to handle me with kid gloves. I know I screwed this up.”
He got up, walked to the window, and stared out at the urban landscape that stretched out to the rocky foothills and the mountains beyond. “You didn’t. I knew you were distracted, and your distractions aren’t what caused this. It was me, allowing you to work. You’re doing the best you can under these circumstances. Don’t blame yourself.” He shook his head as he stared out at the mountains. “I should have trusted my gut. I knew she was up to something.”
I stared at my hands, wondering if he was ignoring the same feeling about me.
“You should stay here until we find her.” He kept his gaze fixed on the mountains.
“I have a cat,” I said lamely.
Nick walked back to the kitchen, putting on his jacket. “Of course. Unless you object, I’ll stay at your place. We don’t know what she’s planning and I’m not ignoring my gut. You’re worried about Alex Mordley. I don’t think it’s wise for you to be alone right now.”
Not good. I couldn’t find Grift or Irvine with Nick looking over my shoulder.
But his logic was sound. “Yeah. Of course. Thank you.”
Nick nodded and turned to the door. “Great. Let’s go. We need to see what we missed in Roost’s apartment.”
Gods, Millie’s right. I can’t stop lying to him. I stood up, taking a deep breath. “Nick!”
He stopped in the doorway as I walked over. I had to tell him. He needed to know that the Bleak didn’t have my allegiance, and in a way, that meant that he didn’t have it, either. I was going to find Grift’s history—whatever he’d left behind—and prove whether or not he’d framed my father. And if I couldn’t get the information that way, then maybe Louis Irvine would confess something. If Louis didn’t confess, I would keep looking. And one way or another, I was still going to break my father out of prison.
Nick looked down at me with his calm hazel eyes. I was standing inside the radius of his protections, and I could hear every healing potion and hex he kept hidden inside the pockets of his jacket ringing like tiny gongs and chimes. He always smelled just a little too clean—something I ascribed both to his fastidious nature and his vampirism.
And when he looked at me, even in the face of this fresh disaster, he smiled a little. Funny to think that this man, who I trusted more than anyone else I’d ever met, had admitted to killing for the organization I hated more than anything. “Driftwood?”
I froze under his gaze. “Robert.”
“Robert,” he repeated. He searched my face.
“I’m...” I took a sharp breath in. “I’m naming my cat Robert, but only if you think it’s... appropriate. Robert asked me to get a cat before he died. It was his one condition for giving me the house.”
He looked confused. Maybe a little suspicious.
I swallowed and stared right back at him, daring him to ask. I wanted him to accuse me. Victimizing the Bleak was one thing, but they didn’t own Nick. He worked for himself, and he had all the moral compass that they so sorely lacked.
I wanted to get away with it. I really did. But not at Nick’s expense.
Then he shrugged it off. “
He’d be honored. Let’s go.”
Millie was right. Fighting one’s nature was an uphill battle.
He held the door and we were in the hall before my senses returned, and then the moment had passed.
I followed him, fighting the magic that was started to ring alarm bells in my chest as I wondered who the hell he was to me. Freeing my father was my life’s work. Nick was some guy that I hadn’t even known for a full season who worked for the jailers.
And yet, every time I looked at Nick, I wanted to believe his way was the right way. If he could see me for who I really was, there was no doubt in my mind he would still call me a criminal.
Telling Nick what I was doing didn’t put me on his side or free my father. Really, telling him was only likely to land me in the same prison as my father, because questioning the Order of the Bleak—let alone defying them—amounted to treason. People had disappeared for less.
I wanted to tell him. I couldn’t. I was a compulsive liar and a criminal, just like Millie Corm.
The only difference was that Millie Corm was a great criminal who clearly had a plan. I was barely scraping by until the next time I got caught.
Nick pushed the elevator button. The doors closed. My white-knuckled fist erupted in flames.
Chapter 15
NICK SLAMMED HIMSELF against the far wall of the elevator. I rolled my eyes at his dramatics.
Granted, it was a larger-than-average fireball, and we were trapped in a small metal box together.
“Jette.”
“I’m aware!” I yelled over the hellish sounds of the screaming fiddles.
I gritted my teeth. Nick slammed his palm against the elevator door panel, hitting every button between us and the ground. I wasn’t sure how that was supposed to help.
“You need to talk to Angel!” he hissed.
“Now is really not the time!”
The elevator doors dinged open and Nick scooped me up. I held my arm away as he cradled me. He ran down the hall and kicked open a door, rushing me to the kitchen sink.
My hand sizzled and I gasped in pain as the magic pulsed out of me. The flames were burning through the water.