Bitten in Two

by Jennifer Rardin

  “I can alter your prediction,” she said. “See what I know?” she drawled as I watched the blade approach my throat. “You can die now, even if you are Eldhayr. One short stroke and I can send you straight to hell.”

  “Yeah, I’ve only got one life left. But neither of us believes you could Pit me. Besides, I’ve already escaped once. Don’t think you could keep me there, even if you tricked me into dropping in temporarily.”

  My smile widened as I saw her eyes flash toward my white curl, winding among its red neighbors along the right side of my face, providing evidence that I hadn’t just filled her full of crap. Not that hell gets much in-and-out traffic, but those of us who do go in and then receive the touch of a family member come back with a memento that no brand of hair dye can disguise.

  She dropped the sword. Her smile gave her face a beauty-queen shine. She said, “I had to try. No offense?”

  I shrugged. “It’s who you are.”

  “You weren’t afraid I would cut you?”

  “You’ve already signed a contract agreeing not to hurt anyone in Vayl’s Trust. I know how demons are bound.”

  “You understand us, do you?”

  “It’s part of my job.”

  She smiled again, sisterly, like her next move might be to hug me. I shoved my other hand into my pocket in case she decided to follow through. Instead she jerked her head toward the chandelier and the light sputtered out, leaving us in almost total darkness. I yanked out my bolo, but it wasn’t necessary. All she did was lean forward and whisper, “Then you’ll appreciate why I set you up for this next bit.” She kissed me, peck, on the cheek, and ran up the stairs.

  I stood with my back against the stairway wall, its tiles so cool I could feel them through the thin material of my dress. That’s why I’m chilled, I told myself as Cole and Vayl walked out of the lounge and came to stand at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Berggia,” Vayl said, his smooth baritone more hesitant than I’d heard it the nearly ten months we’d worked together. “I did have a favor to ask of you now that your wife has gone up for the night.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Do you remember the first evening we arrived here?”

  Droll humor in Cole’s voice as he replied, “That’ll be tough to forget.”

  “Yes, you and Madame Berggia seemed quite confused at first. Of course, long periods of travel will do that to anyone. But then you insisted we play that game with the small portraits. Remember? You showed me several and asked me to respond if I recognized any of them.”

  I remembered. The panic. Near desperation. Bergman’s idea to show Vayl familiar photos, every face we could find online, from vampires he’d lived with in the Grecian Trust, to mass murderers he’d disposed of in the thirties, to members of our present crew.

  Cole said, “Yeah. Did you want to play the game again? Do you think—”

  “No.” Impatient. Almost like, Get with the program, dammit. In fact, I’d be ecstatic if you could read my mind so I wouldn’t have to say this out loud. Vayl rubbed the back of his neck. Stretched his shoulders. Finally blurted it out. “I am interested in meeting a woman.”

  I stopped breathing.

  Cole said, “Madame Berggia is making your appointment with the Seer in the morning—”

  “No!” Deep breath. “I want an entirely different sort of woman.” Long pause.

  Cole: “Oh.”

  Vayl: “One of the small paintings you showed me… I was captivated. I have been unable to turn my mind from her in these days since.”

  Me: You fucker. I’m going to kill you. Right here. Right now.

  Granny May: He doesn’t know about you yet. You’d be murdering an innocent man.

  Me: Like hell! Kyphas was right. I turned to go upstairs. Maybe I will just—

  Cole: “Which one was it?”

  Vayl: “I cannot remember her name. She was a green-eyed beauty with flaming red hair. You told me she was biding in Marrakech with her lover, a vampire named Vayl.”

  I shoved my palm against my mouth. Two fat tears tracked down my cheeks.

  Cole said, “Her name is Jasmine.” Bless him, he pronounced it just like Vayl would have.

  I turned back. My sverhamin stood on the balls of his feet, his entire body tight with anticipation. “Yes! Can you arrange a rendezvous?”

  “Sir.” Cole pushed his hands into his hair, pulled his palms down his face. “Although I’m fairly sure she’s unhappy with her current situation, uh, I don’t think a face-to-face is going to be that easy. Vayl is the jealous type.”

  “We shall start with a letter, then. I will dictate and you will pen and deliver it, yes?”

  Cole nodded, but slowly, like he couldn’t quite believe the conversation. “I guess I could.”

  “Excellent!” Vayl clapped him on the shoulder. Which was when I realized his next move would probably be to bound up the steps and rush to his room on the third floor, next to mine, where he could have the privacy he needed to write his fantasy girl a love letter.

  I grabbed my skirt, hiked it up to my thighs, and ran toward my room. My mouth was open the whole way, pulling in big breaths of air to fuel my race, pushing out gusts of silent laughter. Because 1777 Vayl wanted me too. Yeehaw!

  CHAPTER SIX

  Vayl never talked much about his childhood. But I always suspected it included lots of hand-me-downs and skipped meals. Because he’d reached the end of his second century with a well-developed appreciation for the finest clothes, food, and accommodations.

  I could see instances where spending extra dough got you better quality, but to me a room was pretty much just a place to crash unless you lost so many stars you began to see mold and bugs. Yeah, I appreciated my sunset-striped king-size with its wall-length headboard and the silk-cushioned bench at its foot. But Vayl would’ve wanted me to ooh and aah over my yellow and red bathroom (egad, was there no end to the tile?) and the metalwork decorating the windows and the door that led to my balcony. No dice. I saved that kind of reaction for, say, people who could eat entire lemons without puckering. Now, that’s impressive!

  For lack of a better place to put it, I’d set my trunk against the wall between the bench and the bathroom. I opened the lid, dug through a couple weeks’ worth of clothing, most of which Monique had sent out to be cleaned for me the day before. Vayl’s cane nestled between a pair of jeans and a pile of silky lingerie that threatened to depress me all over again. So I concentrated on the item that had been his companion so long that he’d added a metal tip to its base and then replaced that twice. Even if he hadn’t recognized me, he should’ve known his cane. But even it had gotten a REJECT stamp.

  Which was, maybe, why I spent time with it every day, curled up on the bench with the cane across my knees, my fingers trailing along the whole length of the black wooden sheath that held a sword Vayl had once wielded like it was part of his arm. Now I wasn’t sure he knew how. I turned the cane on my lap, watching the carved tigers spiral down its length while the blue gem at the top glittered in the light of my wall sconces.

  Maybe he’ll ask for it tomorrow, I told myself, as I had every night since we’d arrived. My new mantra. The one I repeated right before I called Cassandra.

  Who, once again, had nothing new to tell me. Except that she wanted to put Jack on the phone.

  “Cassandra, I’m not talking to a dog on the—”

  “Here he is!”

  I heard panting. Echoes of my conversation with E.J., only Jack had enough control of his slobbers that Cassandra wouldn’t need to decontaminate her mouthpiece when we hung up.

  “Uh, hello, Jack. This would be Jaz. Talking to you on the phone.” I dropped my forehead into my hands, knowing Cassandra could blackmail me until the end of time now. Because I would pay, yes, raid my savings regularly to make sure nobody ever heard about this. Even so, I said, “I don’t know how you dogs deal with disembodied voices. My guess? You’re wondering why I haven’t walked out of Cassandra’s bathroom
by now. Anyway, be a gentleman and do your business outside, okay, buddy? See you soon.”

  Cassandra said, “He’s smiling. Huh. I wonder why he’s checking out the toilet?”

  “No idea. So we’re still stuck on what happened to Vayl?”

  “I’m sorry, Jaz. I haven’t found any mention of this kind of memory loss in the Enkyklios or my books so far, so I don’t think it’s a natural occurrence for vampires.”

  “Yeah, Astral hasn’t come up with anything either.”

  Which sucked. Cassandra could research hundreds of supernatural sources. Astral, the wundercat Bergman had invented for me, also contained an Enkyklios, along with every government database I cared to access. Problem was, only a small number of vamps had ever made it into the records. Most of them lived highly secretive lives, and of those who’d shared info, none had experienced Vayl’s current malady.

  I took a deep breath. “All right, then. I’m bringing in Sterling.”

  Silence.

  “Cassandra?”

  “I’ve heard of him.”

  “Who hasn’t?”

  “Do you think—that is—maybe someone else would do just as well?”

  “We’ve worked together before.”

  “And how did that turn out?”

  I cleared my throat. “I believe the city was going to have that house torn down anyway—”

  “Jaz—”

  “He’s the best. Nobody else will do.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, uh, could you call him?”

  I didn’t actually hear her gulp. But the long pause led me to believe she went through a hard swallow or two before she said, “Me?”

  “Yeah. Well.” I pulled my poker chips out of my pocket. Set them down on the bench and began to shuffle them. When I’d calmed down enough to talk again I said, “The last time I saw him, he told me that if I ever spoke to him again he was going to turn my hair purple and put a permanent knot in my tongue. He’s good enough to pull that off, you know.”

  “What did you do?”

  I sighed. If she was going to be my emissary, maybe she should have some background. “It was about three months before I started working with Vayl. I was chasing down a mage who’d been hired by some lobbying group to give the first lady a disease. I can’t even remember the name of it now. But it was rare enough that the government wasn’t providing any research funding. They figured if the president’s wife came down with it, the money would come pouring in. I’d cornered the mage once, but when he nearly dropped a bank sign on me, Pete decided I needed some hocus-pocus in my back pocket.”

  “So he sent in Sterling.”

  “Who is, I kid you not, the most annoying man on earth. We’re only on the case for two weeks, but the entire time he never stops bitching about all the gigs he’s missing and how his band is probably just falling apart having to play with this dude from St. Louis. Like they’ve never heard of jazz in Missouri.”

  I shook my head, realized Cassandra couldn’t see me, and went on. “So we’re searching through this abandoned house in the worst neighborhood in D.C., where we’ve heard the mage has holed up. There’s trash everywhere. It stinks like rotten potatoes and I’m pretty sure rats are living inside the furniture, so at least Sterling’s wearing shoes this time out. But I can’t figure why he’s dressed the rest of himself like a house painter. If his T-shirt was any whiter it would glow, making him a prime target. This, of course, makes me realize my black-on-black ensemble has probably qualified us to star in the next series of Good vs. Evil videos on YouTube. But I’m not interested in becoming a cartoon. I just want to kill the mage and run before I catch whatever he’s got cooking for Mrs. President. However, Sterling’s not in the mood. He’s just had a call from his drummer, who’s enchanted with his St. Louis sit-in. Dumbass just can’t stop complimenting the guy whose name is, I kid you not, Doobie. We’re in the kitchen, I’ve got Grief off safety, and Sterling should be ready with a kickass spell. But instead he starts muttering the same old complaints.”

  “Fucking Doobie, stealing my gigs, no doubt fucking everything up.”

  “Hello?” I say. “Potential target behind the fridge. Or in the closet. And you don’t even have your wand ready!”

  He looks down at his empty hands. His fingers are long and pale. Great for weaving spells or playing the piano. I can’t imagine why his chosen instrument is the trumpet. “You can’t just carry wands around like cocked guns,” he says, frowning at me like I should have intimate knowledge of warlock lore. As if they don’t have it all guarded closer than nuclear material.

  “Why not?” I ask.

  “It’s dangerous, Chill.” That’s what he calls me, I think just to piss me off. He shakes his head to emphasize his point. His hair falls straight to his shoulders. It’s so black I’d suspect a bad dye job if he wasn’t a Power. He’s saved from utter geekdom by two factors. The hair sweeps directly back from his forehead, so there’s no part to reveal the freakish white of his skull. And he walks and talks with a rhythm that comes from somewhere deep underground, like he’s locked into the music of the earth itself.

  We move on to the dining room, which may contain a table, but we can’t be sure because all we see are moldy boxes packed with old newspapers. I think we’re back on track until he says, “If this assignment goes on for more than a couple of days I’m gonna have to split. I gotta get back to my band.”

  “Are you nuts?” I’m so mad I’m hissing. “We’re about to confront a disease-carrying mage and all you can think about is your stupid band? Would you like me to tell you what matters least to me right now? I mean even less than clipping my toenails? Your band. The fact that some dude named Doobie is getting his ass germs all over your chair. And that he’s probably playing better than you do.”

  “Where do you get off talking tunes?” he spits. “You don’t know shit about jazz. Hell, you’re not even black.”

  Anybody else might’ve laughed until they blew snot. But Matt and my Helsingers have only been dead for four months. I still feel like I’m walking around with no skin, just bleeding through my clothes like they should be bandages. So if you scratch me, I don’t bleed harder. I scream:

  “You’re not black either, you bigoted twat! You’re whiter than me, and I’m a pasty-ass redhead! All you do is sit around and whine about how you’d be better-looking if you were black, you’d get more dates if you were black, you’d be a better musician if you were black. Because you know that’s the one thing even the most powerful warlock on earth can’t change. So it’s the one excuse you can make that nobody can throw back in your face as your own failure. How about you shower more than twice a week? Shave some thorns off that ego of yours, and get some damn trumpet lessons? Work at it day and night the way you have your magic. Oh, wait, it actually matters to you whether you fail at music so you’re not going to put the sweat into it just in case it all comes to nothing. Right?”

  “Enough!” Sterling’s voice spikes in my ears, so full of venom and jagged edges that I cover them with my hands. Well, I try. Grief is still in my grip. Should I take aim?

  As I consider my options, he slaps the palms of his hands against the carved bone bracelets on the opposite wrists. He slides them off his fingers, and they seem to reach toward each other, as if they know they belong together. They link with a sound like searing steak.

  I have time to think, Oh shit, that’s his wand, before he raises the gnarled weapon and traces an intricate pattern in the air. As the wand buzzes and he chants, I charge.

  Warlocks don’t do much hand-to-hand fighting, and Sterling’s ego won’t admit that anyone like me would dare to attack in the face of his might. In a sense he’s right. No way would I shoot a fellow spy. But I sure as hell would head-butt him.

  Our skulls crack with the force of a couple of rams. For a couple of seconds everything goes gray.

  Cassandra stopped me with a gasp. “You head-butted Sterling Nicodemus? You. Head-butted? The most powerful w
arlock in the world?”

  “Well, that was before Paolo Grittoli died, so technically he was number two at the time. In retrospect, it was a stupid move, though. Too much risk for too little gain. But as I stood back and my eyes cleared, I gotta say I grinned when the blood gushed from the gash I’d opened up on his forehead. Within seconds it had blinded him. One point for me, right? But my lead disappeared when he hauled off and punched me. Not literally. Dude doesn’t have to. Just waves that wand of his and all the oomph he’s stored up goes zapping through his special little conduit. Looks like a damn blue claw coming at you.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I flew through a wall. It was a flimsy wall, which is why I’m still alive today. Luckily that put out the flames, so my clothes were only smoking when I got up and ran. He came after me, which led to a five-minute attack/escape/something-gets-blown-to-bits chase that finally caused the place to collapse. Unfortunately, the mage we’d been after had never been there in the first place, so we still had to neutralize him before we could ditch each other. We managed a temporary truce. Did the job. He threatened to rearrange my reflection and we went our separate ways.”

  I knew Cassandra was shaking her head because I could hear her earrings clicking together. “Does Vayl know about this?”

  “No.”

  Sigh. “All right. I’ll call him. But you have to promise to behave.”

  “Cassandra. I’m a totally different person now. It’ll be no problem. You can promise him that. And, you know, make a deal if you have to. Tell him I’ll buy him a new trumpet or something.”

  “You think he’s still that angry that he’s going to have to be bribed?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, Vayl did request his help when we went to Scotland and nothing came of it. At the time he thought the Oversight Committee was responsible. I never corrected him because we were finally going somewhere with our relationship, and the last thing I wanted to say was, ‘Oh, by the way, can I tell you about the time I was a complete ass to a sensitive artist?’”