“And what is everyone else seeing?” he asked.
She didn’t even glance at the few other people in the coffee shop. “My feet are firmly on the floor. I’m wearing black pumps. Boring black pumps. And your muscles are so tense.”
Her toes rubbed against his inner thighs. Biting back a groan, Marc caught one of her feet. Still cold, but to a Guardian, that wasn’t necessarily unpleasant. Not unpleasant at all.
“What are you doing, Radha?”
Making him pay for that long-ago hurt? A little friendly teasing? Something more?
He’d take anything she dished out, but he damn well wouldn’t respond until he knew what she wanted in return.
“I’m having fun.”
“Working me up?”
“Am I?” Her eyes began to glow, the gold flecks brightening, casting their own light. Not an illusion at all. A Guardian’s eyes did that when they were affected by a deep emotion. “Can a celibate warrior be worked up?”
By Radha? She could probably get a rise out of a stone.
“Marc.” It was a soft warning. “I’ll cover your eyes.”
She drew her foot back. Reluctantly, he let it slip from his grip—realizing that his eyes had begun to glow, too, but that she’d cast an illusion to conceal the green light.
Jackson set two frothy cappuccinos in front of them, swiveled a chair around, and straddled it. “So, agents. It’s my turn, huh?”
Word had obviously been getting around. Marc wasn’t surprised. But he did wonder what had been spreading. “So you know what we’re here for?”
“Somebody died, and you think it’s connected to Jason Ward. So you’re here hoping that someone remembers some little detail, like a stranger hanging around.” He rested his crossed forearms on the table, leaned in. “So, fire away. I can tell you now, I barely knew the guy.”
“But you met him a couple of times?”
“Not officially met, but I saw him. He never came in here, at least not while I was working, but he was in the bleachers at a few games. I was benched, so I had time to look at the crowd.”
“Was he at the homecoming game?”
Jackson’s eyes narrowed, as if looking backward. Slowly, he nodded. “Yeah. I remember him there. But I didn’t see him the rest of the night.”
“You knew Jason was Miklia’s brother?”
“Nah. Not then.”
“You knew him from the video store?”
Jackson shook his head. “That was closed by the time we moved here.”
Strange. Why recall one stranger in a crowd? “Why did you notice him, then? And remember him?”
As if uncertain, Jackson looked from Radha to Marc, before sighing. “All right. It’s not like this is a secret anyway, right? Everyone knows that Ward had those fangs made. Cosmetic dentistry or what-ever.”
That had been the explanation the coroner had given. “Yes.”
“Well, I saw him up in the stands once, cheering. I saw those teeth”—he glanced toward the counter where his mother stood, then leaned in and lowered his voice—“and it creeped me the fuck out. You know what I’m saying? The next game, he wasn’t there at first. Then, in the fourth quarter, he suddenly shows up and I thought he was the devil or something. Stupid shit my mom would slap me up the back of the head for. So when I heard about those teeth, that there was a real reason behind them, it was kind of a relief.” He sat back again. “I felt sorry for Miklia, though. That was rough for her. A stake through the heart—what is that?”
Probably the least efficient way to kill a vampire, so it was all about setting the scene, and the impact it would have on the family who found him. “That’s what we’re trying to find out. Did you see Miklia the night of the dance?”
“For homecoming? Yeah. They came in once, wearing those dresses. I think before they went to the dance, because they asked if I’d be there.”
“Did you go?”
“Nah. Dances aren’t my thing. I worked that night, just so that I had an excuse to get out of it.”
So far, then, Sam had been the last to see them. “You were friends with her then?”
“Not really.” The kid shrugged, but his emotions skittered about—a little uneasy.
“But you know her well now.”
“Nah, I wouldn’t say that. I see her a lot—she comes in here practically every night—but we don’t talk much.”
That uneasiness was still there, but Marc didn’t think the boy was lying to him. He glanced at Radha, saw the confusion creasing her brow.
Delicately, she said, “We were told that you were bumping uglies.”
“Truth?” Surprise and amusement sent Jackson rocking back with a laugh. “No, nothing like that. I don’t have time for that. Moving here, the injury—it set me back. But I’ve already got a postgraduate year at a prep school lined up back East, so I’ll have a chance to get in front of the recruiters again. I don’t have time for girls, especially not ones into the crazy shit they are. Who said that we hooked up?”
Crazy shit? Marc met Radha’s eyes. “We can’t divulge—”
Jackson waved it off. “Ah, it doesn’t matter. Maybe someone saw us together in the gym last fall, back when she was looking for advice about getting into fighting shape, building up her endurance.”
What the hell? “Fighting shape?”
He nodded. “That’s what she said. I was like, whatever. It’s all the same to me.”
“Was this before or after her brother died?”
“After,” he said immediately. “I mean, that was the only reason I agreed. I’ve got work here, correspondence classes, my own workouts, regular classes . . . I don’t have time to be a personal trainer. But she asked, and her freak brother had just died, so what the hell was I supposed to say? She and her friends are a little freaky, too, but at least they aren’t going to the dentist for fangs. Oh, bam!—I just got it. Did this other guy killed have fangs, too? Is that the connection?”
“Yes,” Marc said. He’d told the sheriff the same thing, so the lie would be consistent. But at last they were getting to the reason for Jackson’s uneasiness. “What do you mean, freaky?”
“Not the good kind of freaky, you know what I mean? No, they bring in all kinds of books, sit around here reading them.” He leaned forward, lowered his voice again. “And I’m not getting into their business, but after a while, I see a page here, a drawing there. It’s all demon shit. What is it called? Occult. Occult shit. They’ve been coming in for months, reading that stuff.”
How many months’ worth of reading would the city library have on their shelves? “All of it from that little library?”
“No, that old librarian there wouldn’t carry something like that. Check this. I went in there once to pick up The Lightning Thief for my little sis, and that old lady told me to be careful, that the Greek god stuff might lead to practicing voodoo—then she called my mom, in case I didn’t pass that warning along. The old lady got an earful then.” Jackson laughed, sat back again. “Nah, Miklia and the others have some volunteer thing worked out, and they use the library loan system. She told me that once when I asked how she could stand volunteering for the old bat—it’s just so that they have easy access to the books they want.”
“Do you overhear what they talk about here?”
“They don’t talk. They just text each other.”
Marc’s gaze shot to Radha’s face. Her grin appeared, widening to the edge of a laugh. He could barely stop his own.
“Seriously?” she asked.
“Yeah. I asked her if she thought the music in the shop was too loud for a conversation. She said, ‘You never know who is listening’—all serious and shit.” He rolled his eyes. “Anyway. If you want to stay and talk to them, they’ll probably be here around five thirty, just after the library closes. I should probably get back to work. There’s a rush that comes in right at five.”
It was almost that now. Marc didn’t have anything more for Jackson, not right now. He looked to Radha. She shook her
head.
“Thank you, Gregory,” Radha told him. “Good luck with the knee and the recruiters next year.”
“Thanks. If all goes right, in five years you’ll see me throwing in a championship bowl.”
“I hope it does.” She watched him walk back toward the counter, then looked back to Marc. “Some days, I really like people.”
“You don’t usually?” Marc didn’t believe that.
“Oh, I do. But there are some who make me wonder why the hell we’re doing this: always fighting, seeing our friends killed by demons, always seeing so much crap we can’t stop—and most of it stuff that humans do to each other. Not to mention outliving every human around us. And then someone comes along and you think: I’m going to get that bastard demon just so he can’t touch this one.”
“But that’s not your only reason.”
“It’s never my only reason,” she said. “But it feels good. Doesn’t it?”
Marc glanced at the front counter, where the kid was behind the cash register again, one eye on the television. “It does.”
Though she’d gotten her way, once again, she didn’t grin as he expected. Instead, her eyes filled.
Crying? Tension and uncertainty took a freezing grip on his gut. “Radha? You all right?”
She shook her head, pressed her lips together, and turned her face away. After a long moment, she looked back to him—tears gone.
Or were they? With her, it was impossible to know.
But her voice was even and light as she said, “So, what next? Do we wait for Miklia and friends to show?”
No point. They weren’t more likely to talk now than they had been before. At least, not until he had something concrete to approach them with. “What do you make of the physical training, the books?”
“Probably the same thing that you make of it,” she said. “Miklia and her friends saw something the night Jason was killed—they probably saw the demon who killed him. Now they fancy themselves demon hunters. Maybe for revenge, maybe some other reason. So thank goodness for the Rules, yes?”
Yes. Those same rules that forbade Guardians from harming or killing humans also applied to demons, but with harsher consequences. Any Guardian who hurt a human or impeded a human’s free will—even with an action as simple as shoving an unwilling human out of danger’s path—would have to decide whether to ascend to the afterlife or become human again. A Guardian could break the Rules and live, but every demon would be slain. After a demon broke the Rules, there was no escaping the Guardian Rosalia and the powerful vampire Deacon; psychically bound to the demon from the moment it hurt or killed a human, the pair would find and slay the demon within minutes.
Even in the unlikely event that the girls did track down the demon, it couldn’t hurt them. They probably wouldn’t be able to hurt it, either, but Marc cared less about the demon’s chances of surviving than the girls’.
He checked the sky. Ten minutes of daylight left. The vampires in the area would be waking up at sundown. “Let’s talk to Bronner. If these girls looked for information about demons, and if they knew Jason was a part of the community, they might have tried getting it from him or another vampire first.”
“And they might have mentioned what they saw.”
Marc nodded. “Something sent them looking in the right direction. Maybe it was Jason himself, maybe he mentioned demons or Guardians to them. But if they saw something, the questions they asked might give us an indication of what happened that night.”
“How far away is Bronner?”
“Halfway between here and the next town over.”
With a grin, Radha formed her wings. They arched behind her, the white tips sweeping the floor. “So we fly?”
He usually waited for dark. “You can cover mine, too?”
Her hand flew to her chest, as if she’d been wounded. “Your doubt kills me. Oh, Marc. I can make you feel like you’re wearing wings when you aren’t. Of course I can cover them.”
“All right, then.”
He rose from his chair. She did the same, albeit more slowly, and with a glint in her eyes that could have been dangerous or mischievous. She dabbed her forefinger against her cake plate and brought it to her lips, her smile forming beneath the tip.
“You should ask what else I can make you feel.”
She didn’t give him the chance. Her tongue swept across the pad of her finger—and he felt a warm lick against his. He tasted sweet coconut.
Need rushed through him, the ache of arousal. He stared at her, his fingers tightening on the back of the chair, using all of his control not to snap the wood in half—then crash through the table after her.
Her smile widened. “So?”
“It’s good cake,” he said.
Her laugh was light—and so sweet. He’d suffer through any teasing for it.
“No.” She came around the table, letting her fingers trail across the surface, her gold-tipped claw dragging out a long, rough note. “I meant to find out earlier, but we were interrupted. Can a celibate warrior be worked up? Now I’m coming over to see whether one can be.”
To touch him—in the middle of a busy coffee shop, and yet hidden from them all. His fingers clenched on the wood as she stopped beside him. Her gaze dropped to the front of his pants, and he heard the catch of her breath.
“So. They can.”
“I don’t know,” he said, voice rough.
Glowing again, her gaze lifted to his. He gritted his teeth to stifle his groan when she boldly cupped him through his trousers, then slid her palm up his hardened length.
“This is an illusion, too? I don’t think so, Marc.”
His head fell forward. Though everything in him strained toward her, he struggled against the urge to thrust into her hand. “No,” he managed. “I meant: I’m not a celibate warrior. I gave up that idea a while ago.”
Her fingers stilled. Her eyes brightened, shining fiercely gold. “Truly?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
With a grin and a sharp rasp of her claw up his rigid length, she turned for the door, orange scarves swirling around her indigo legs. Marc watched her go, hurting in the best—and worst—possible way.
Good. He had no idea what she meant by that.
He hoped to God he’d find out.
Good, because she’d hate to ask him to break his vows again. If that was where they were headed.
Radha didn’t know if they were, or if she should. She wanted to.
But a hundred and forty years had passed, and he was a different man than she’d known. All good, it seemed, but a few hours couldn’t really tell her. For all she knew, he might be shacked up with a vampire somewhere. He might be in love with someone. She might get hurt again. Or worse, throw herself at him, and discover that she’d been a fool.
Solid, unflappable—but under it all, he was just a man. And a man’s cock hardened when a woman fake-licked coconut icing from his finger. His arousal didn’t mean anything except that he was alive and possessed a healthy libido.
And even if he did want sex, that wasn’t all she wanted. Not anymore. She’d done the pleasure-for-pleasure’s-sake thing. It had been fun while it lasted. But she’d changed, too. Now she needed more . . . and it could never be just fun with Marc.
So rushing would be idiocy. And they were Guardians; they lived a long time. No need to rush anything.
Unfortunately, Radha knew that she was very, very bad at resisting something that she wanted.
At least searching for this demon provided a distraction. Bronner lived along one of the rural roads, and they followed it west, flying under the sliver of a moon. Gently rolling, snow-covered hills passed beneath them. In the distance, the Mississippi snaked southward. Pretty. When the bare trees dressed in their leaves for the summer and green covered the hills, it was probably gorgeous.
Maybe she’d have reason to come back again, and find out.
The vampire’s one-level house was situated among a small s
cattering of homes—mostly humans, Marc told her. Best not to let them see two winged people landing in Bronner’s backyard. To conceal their arrival, she concentrated on the illusion of complete invisibility: no sound, no evidence of their footsteps through the snow, no lingering scent of coconut from her mouth.
Another scent hit her almost immediately: blood. Not surprising, given that this was a vampire’s home and that they usually fed from each other just after waking—but, given that it smelled like human blood, disturbing.
And a moment later, another scent: human death.
Marc smelled it, too. His jaw tightened, gaze searching the windows of the house. “Can anyone see us?”
“No.”
He vanished his wings. A sword appeared in his left hand, called in from his cache of weapons. Radha brought her crossbow in from her own psychic storage. Their tips poisoned with hellhound venom, the crossbow bolts wouldn’t badly injure a demon, but the venom would paralyze one. It was a hell of a lot easier to decapitate a demon if it couldn’t run away.
They reached the back door. Marc cocked his head, listening for noises from inside.
“I’m concealing our voices, our footsteps,” she said. “And I’ll conceal the noise when you break open that door.”
He nodded, then glanced down at her feet. “Put your shoes on. Something that won’t leave a mark.”
“What?”
“If a human is dead, I have to call in the sheriff. They’ll look for prints. Unless your illusions can cover up real physical evidence, you can’t go in with bare feet.”
That made sense. In her own territory, she didn’t bother—but she also rarely worked with local law enforcement. This was Marc’s territory, though, so she’d follow his lead. A pair of flip-flops wouldn’t confine her toes. She hated shoes that did.
Marc picked the lock instead of breaking the door down. The scent of death intensified. Quietly, they slipped into a darkened mudroom, then a tiny, bare kitchen. A bucket of cleaning supplies sat on the counter. No plates, pans, or evidence of food. There never was in a vampire’s house. Marc’s psychic sweep pushed against her shields.
“Do you sense anyone?”
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