A Taste of Love and Evil

by Barbara Monajem

  One spring weekend when Jack didn’t want to do his chores, he’d left the compound where the teachers lived, to take refuge amongst the pinions. Crouched on the cracked earth, he faded into warm, comfortable camo. He was half asleep in the sunshine when a hard, sharp hello rapped inside his head. Constantine Dufray lazed against a fencepost a few feet away.

  “Come on, Tallis,” the young Dufray said. “Drop the invisible act. I know you’re there.”

  Jack said nothing, did nothing. Always his first line of defense: stay quiet, blend, wait and see.

  “Nobody’s watching except me,” Constantine said, “and I’ve seen you do it a zillion times.” Constantine looked right at him, grinning amiably—unusual for Constantine—and in a way it was a relief. Jack shook off the camo and stood up.

  “Tell you what.” Constantine led the way up the hill, confident as always, sure Jack would follow. “You teach me how to disappear, and I’ll teach you how to scare the shit out of everybody.”

  “Why would I want to scare the shit out of anybody?” Jack asked.

  “You never know when it might come in handy.” Constantine moved silently but fast, and Jack hurried in his footsteps until they were halfway up the ridge, alone in the ponderosa pines.

  Thus began the intense, short-lived friendship that shaped Jack’s life. Then one day at the end of summer—and they’d both made progress imitating each other’s bizarre gifts, which made it all the weirder—Constantine didn’t show up. He didn’t show up when school began again, either, and nobody knew where he had gone. Either that or they wouldn’t say, and even eavesdropping didn’t reveal a thing.

  It simply was not possible. Constantine Dufray, however changed, couldn’t want Jack Tallis dead. He would bet his life on that. It looked like he might have to.

  That must be when this one-chance shit began, Jack decided. He’d long since forgiven Constantine—it wasn’t a boy’s fault if his family moved—but what with his father jet-setting around Europe with a string of vampires and his mother plodding through life on the Rez, Jack lost his expectations of people long before hitting his teens. Maybe some of them were worth the bother of a second chance, but he didn’t have the patience to find out. Since the fiasco with Titania and its aftermath, he didn’t even want to.

  But maybe he’d gone just a little overboard.

  If Rose didn’t care whether they had sex, why did she want to heal his wound? Jack raised his head and leaned back to see the sky. It was nothing like the night sky on the Rez, where the Milky Way hung above you in the clear, crisp darkness, and a hundred million stars testified to a magnificent infinity. Here in sleepless Bayou Gavotte, only a few faint glimmers won out against the city’s lights.

  The door to the stairway opened slowly. Rose came out and shut it behind her. Lithe and lovely, silhouetted against the deep purple sky, she drove every other thought from Jack’s mind.

  Maybe she heard him, although he was quiet and still. Doubtless he stank, since he hadn’t showered, but either way it didn’t take her long to zero in on him. “I couldn’t find your jacket, so I brought a blanket in case you were cold.”

  He was freezing, and he hadn’t even noticed. He let go of the camo. “Thanks.”

  “And a clean bandanna to tie up your wound.” She handed him the blanket and the bandanna, and immediately moved away along the parapet. She peered over the edge at the roof of the next building, then turned his way. “I know you came up here to get away from me, and I’ll leave again if you like.” Her voice, soft and sad, tentative and sweet, sucked him in. “But if you want to finish whatever you were saying when I kept interrupting, go ahead.”

  Jack said nothing. Stupidly clutching the blanket and bandanna, he huddled against the parapet, bedeviled and ensnared.

  “I promise to shut up until you finish.” She gave an unhappy little laugh. “I figure since I forced you to listen to me, the least I can do is hear you out.”

  Awkwardly, for his arm was giving him hell again, he tried to get the blanket around his shoulders.

  “I’ve gotten used to defending myself. Sometimes I can’t tell when I don’t need to, and I get carried away. Here, let me help…You’re still losing a little blood.”

  Jack swallowed. Just ask her.

  “I’d better go.” She drew away again, twisting her hands together. “I can’t just stand here while you bleed.”

  He gave in with a long, slow, utterly silent moan. “Then stop the bleeding. Please.”

  In an instant she was on her knees beside him, his arm cradled upon her breasts. He slumped against the parapet, ease seeping through him as she licked, then pleasure spreading delicate tendrils across his skin, through his innards, gut and brain and bones, causing the stirrings of an erection.

  “But you don’t owe me,” she said, with a long, smooth, delicious lick. “Haven’t you ever heard of paying it forward?” Another lick.

  “Mm-hmm.” The sweetness of her ministrations tormented him. He might feel obliged to accept her help—hell, he wanted to accept it, which was bizarre in itself—but he mustn’t let this go further.

  She gave his arm another shivery, luscious swipe of her tongue. Jesus.

  “So if owing is an issue, just pass it forward to one of your rescues.”

  “I already have too much to pay forward,” Jack murmured, squirming as his erection grew. “My father…endless money. My mother…endless patience. Me…? Never-ending pay-forward.”

  “You are so screwed up,” Rose said. “Helpfulness isn’t something you measure. If people do something nice for you, accept it. If you can do something nice for someone else, do it and don’t expect anything in return. Finished.”

  “Been there, considered that,” Jack said. “Doesn’t work.”

  Her hair, damp and fragrant, brushed his face. His good arm moved instinctively toward her hip—

  Crackcrackcrack. Knockknock! Oh, hell, that hurt. Like a jackhammer in his head. “Ow!”

  Rose pulled away. “Did I hurt you?”

  “No, no, it’s nothing to do with you.” Jack stood hurriedly, raising a barrier against the invasion as instinctively as when he was a child. A light went on in the dormer window of the Impractical Cat. “Thank you, Rose.”

  Constantine was back. He was supposed to be in Shreveport, partying after the concert with his adoring fans or maybe just sleeping it off, so something had gone wrong, something major. The rock star’s anguish crashed over Jack in waves and waves and waves.

  Not now. Not with Rose here.

  He didn’t want to believe Constantine would harm him—in fact, he bloody well didn’t believe it—but just in case his childhood friend had completely lost it, he needed Rose out of the way. He closed the distance between the two of them in a few quick strides and pulled her into the shadow of the stairwell wall.

  The light in the dormer above the Impractical Cat went out again. A second later, the casement swung outward. A tall, wide-shouldered man climbed onto the steep shingles and jumped down to the roof garden. He stumbled slightly as he landed, recovered himself, and straightened, but defeat hung about him like a dank, deadly cloak. He raised his arms to the sky, and a breeze, the herald of dawn, stepped up to toy with his long, dark hair.

  “Whoa,” Rose said. “That’s Constantine Dufray.”

  Rose leaned against the stairwell wall in the deep shadows next to the strangest man she had ever met, and watched the second strangest. Constantine probably wanted privacy, poor guy—being famous must suck—and he didn’t need to know they were watching. He launched into a sequence of Tai Chi.

  Jack didn’t look well. He didn’t smell right, either, but it wasn’t the body odor and dried blood nor the hint of garbage that clung to his jeans that perplexed Rose. Finally he spoke, though his eyes never left Constantine Dufray. “Just for the record, I’m not a voyeur. That hole’s been there since before I bought this place.”

  “I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions.”

  “You couldn
’t have known, and you were perfectly right about chameleons. We’re not all good guys; even my own father has been unscrupulous in ways I’m not proud of.” He blew out a long breath. “I wasn’t planning to sneak in and look at Juma’s stuff. I went to the Threshold and extracted some information about her and her grandmother from Stevie.”

  “Is that how you hurt your arm again?”

  He paused. Inclined his head.

  Rose caught the hesitation. “Something else happened?”

  He made a dismissive movement. “Nothing that matters. Clubs can be hazardous.”

  Now she felt even worse. “I’m sorry I sent you into danger, but I couldn’t betray her confidence.”

  A faint lift of the hand. “We each did what we had to.”

  She couldn’t help it; gratitude at his understanding overwhelmed her again. If only—Don’t go there. “That doesn’t explain why you smell a bit like garbage.”

  Jack muffled a laugh. “I must stink of a lot more than that, but I did spend some time behind a Dumpster.”

  “Your body odor doesn’t bother me. You have very sexy pheromones.” She put up a hand. “Don’t freak out. I’m not going to jump you. What did you find out about Juma?”

  “Not much. Her last name is Loveday-Smith, she comes from Destrierville—it’s near Monroe—and she keeps running away because her grandmother doesn’t want her to go to college.”

  Rose straightened. “That’s what she told me! It doesn’t make any sense.”

  He shifted a shoulder. “Gil will research the situation, fill in the blanks.”

  “But what do we do with her in the meantime? She’s terrified she’ll be found and dragged back home, and…I still can’t tell you exactly what she said. She didn’t expect me to believe her, but regardless of whether she told me the absolute truth, I’m sure she’s in danger, and I know she’s scared.”

  Jack nodded. “I’ve been giving it some thought, and with what we’ve seen and what Stevie told me, I’ve decided to try a friend in Baton Rouge. She’s a prof at LSU. She’s helped out before. She might be willing to take Juma for a while, give her the run of the library there, let her sit in on some classes.”

  “That’s a brilliant idea. Juma will love it, and nobody will have the remotest idea where she is.”

  The professor in Baton Rouge was doubtless a wonderful person, a woman Jack thought highly of. A safe and perfect environment for Juma, too, but…Don’t be selfish, Rose.

  For a while they said nothing, and she tried to take comfort from the poetry in motion on the rooftop across the way. Except that it wasn’t exactly poetry; he kept stopping and starting, as if he couldn’t get the moves right. “Constantine’s beautiful, isn’t he?” she remarked. “I suppose you wouldn’t notice that, being a guy.”

  Jack said nothing.

  “He’s an incredible performer, too.” Now she was babbling, but it had nothing to do with Constantine and everything to do with Jack. “I thought Juma said he was on tour.”

  Jack shrugged. “He was in Shreveport last night, but there are a couple of shows left. Maybe he wanted a night at home.”

  “He looks tired,” Rose noted. “You’re a fan? You follow his career?”

  Jack shifted. “You could say that.”

  “Beautiful but sad,” Rose mused. “People say such awful things about him.”

  “What if those things are true?”

  “Then it’s even sadder—but I refuse to pass judgment. He was kind to me.”

  Finally, Jack turned. His mouth twisted at one corner, but not enough for the dimple to show. “Come on, Rose. He wouldn’t have any reason to be ugly to you.”

  “If you mean to ask if he came on to me, no, he didn’t, although he knew right away that I was a vamp. He said my allure was red and warm and earthy, and he joked with me like he really understood, and gave me a brotherly hug, which was so sweet of him…” Ah, she wished she could tell Jack more of what was special about Constantine Dufray, but she wouldn’t blab about Constantine’s secrets any more than she would about Jack’s. “Underneath the scary vibes and the exterior cool, he’s not a happy guy.” She squared her shoulders. “I’d better get ready to go.”

  “Wait.” Now partly camouflaged against the dusty brick wall, Jack spoke as if from some great distance. “Before you leave, I need to ask a small favor.”

  Of me? “Anything,” Rose said recklessly. Hope bloomed vibrant, like last night’s camellia before she’d torn it to bits and thrown it away. He’d asked her to heal his wound. One thing might lead to another, and he might come to like her a little, and…

  But Jack shivered and receded even further into his camouflage, into himself. Rose couldn’t remember feeling so bereft. Certainly not when she’d cut herself adrift from home and family, such as they were. Not even after Lou, her lover and protector for years, was shot and killed.

  Jack said, “Gil doesn’t know about the camo thing.”

  “Oh.” So?

  Jack looked down at his feet. He seemed so tired, so faded, so withdrawn, and Rose longed to put her arms around him, to hold him, to buoy him up. But he didn’t want that. He didn’t want anything from her at all.

  Then it hit her. Jack not only didn’t want her in any way, shape or form; he hated having to ask for even the tiniest favor. He’d hated asking her for a ride, hated needing her help getting rid of the thugs and—in this case rightly so—with rescuing Linda Dell. It must have about killed him to ask her to heal his wound. At last she recognized the elusive smell: a huge, horrible unease, growing stronger every second. A harsh odor, not a pleasant one, not a compelling one, almost repulsive, because the favor he needed to ask of her now he hated even more. And still, like a fool, she wanted to reach out, to hold and touch and heal him, to show him that with her he was safe.

  His voice was so low, so weak, even she could barely hear him. “I figured you would assume he knew about the camo. Please don’t mention it when you pick up your package.”

  “No problem,” Rose said.

  “Thanks. And…” Jack’s voice drifted to nothing.

  “I won’t mention it to anybody.” Anger spiraled through her anew. God, she was tired of being angry. “You want to keep it secret, right?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Please.”

  “You should know by now—” She stopped midsentence and took a breath. She might be furious, she might be hurt beyond bearing, but she was not about to lose her temper again, nor control of her voice. “—that I can be trusted to keep a secret.”

  “I do know.” A long, long pause. “I owe you, Rose. I owe you big. I’ll add you to my tally of pay-forwards. You can count on that.”

  Oh, for God’s sake. Did he understand nothing? Childishness kicked in. “Good-bye forever.”

  Chapter Twelve

  She turned to go, but her cell phone rang. Who would call at just past six a.m.? She glanced at the unfamiliar number on the display and opened the phone. “Yes?”

  “Rose! At last, it’s just you and me.”

  Oh, shit. Titania.

  “We need to have a little talk.” A sneer with syrup on top.

  Rose didn’t bother keeping her voice civil. “I have no reason to speak to you, Titania. Your manipulation of Miles is disgusting.”

  Beside her, Jack burst out of camouflage to loom stark and harsh beside her, eyes cutting into her, fully intent. What was with this guy?

  Titania gave a dreadful trickle of laughter. “Jealousy won’t change a thing. That boss of yours is so hot for me I couldn’t get a minute to myself until he finally passed out.”

  “He’s not my boss anymore.” Rose stepped briskly around Jack and stalked onto the roof.

  “Damn it, Rose!” Jack hissed and followed. She ignored him.

  More horror-story laughter. “Poor, poor Miles. He’s very upset with you and not at all well. The stress of a failing business was already weakening him, and to top it off, you refused my generous offer.”

  “I didn
’t refuse it. I merely set terms by which to protect Miles.”

  “Offensive terms, Rose. How will you live with yourself, knowing you could have helped him rebuild his life but didn’t?”

  “He was doing fine until you came along.”

  A rancid chuckle dripped across the airwaves. “He’ll tell you an entirely different story. He’s completely over his boring, dead wife now. He’ll never get over me, of course, but the new tricks I’ve taught him will pay off for you.”

  Ick. Ick. Rose paced across the roof, Jack hovered, and against the backdrop of roofs and sky, Constantine stilled.

  Titania syruped on. “You’re too tall for a girl and totally ordinary, but he’ll take you back if I say so. He’ll even want to sleep with you, because after being my love slave he’ll need plenty. Not that you could ever satisfy him, but you’ll be better than nothing.”

  Rose swung around and paced again. “Are you planning on saying something interesting, or should I hang up right now?”

  Titania tsked. “You’re digging yourself deeper and deeper, Rose. You may have fooled Miles, but you can’t fool me. I know exactly what you’re up to and where you’re going. Your only hope is to accept my help.”

  Jack must have lost interest in eavesdropping, because he was watching Constantine now. Rose supposed she should be relieved. “I don’t want anything from you.”

  “How about forgiveness, Rose? I’m not a good person to cross.”

  “You’re not a good person at all.”

  Her voice was full of venom. “This is your last chance, Rose.”

  “This isn’t some stupid melodrama. You don’t scare me.” She slapped the phone shut.

  Half Jack’s mind absorbed Rose’s side of the phone conversation, while the other opened tentatively to Constantine Du-fray. While they watched, the rock star had sent a terrifying amount of rage into the dawn sky. Now, most of what Jack sensed was exhaustion.