Reese wrinkled her nose. “Glad to hear it.”
There was motion at the corner of the screen, and Natalie—who was one of the two recent additions to the winikin and a former hotshot archaeologist in the outside world—came into view. She was bubbly, driven, and in many ways the opposite of her mate, JT. They made it work, though, with her softening his hard edges, him pushing her out of her comfort zone.
And Reese really needed to stop analyzing relationships.
“I had Sasha confirm the instructions,” Natalie said into the Webcam, “but call if you get stuck.”
Reese suffered a spasm of mild horror. “I have to cook?”
Natalie grinned. “If you can make tea, you can probably handle this one. The ingredients are pretty common. The black cohosh—aka black snakeroot—is native to the eastern part of the U.S. and probably would’ve been a high-value trade item back in the day, but you should be okay. If the health-food stores don’t have it, try a homeopath.”
Reese pulled up the e-mail on her phone, saw that she’d received the promised file, and nodded. “Okay. Guess I’m going shopping.”
But as she said her good-byes and shut down her laptop, she was very aware of a low-grade churn in her stomach and the feeling that she hadn’t asked Lucius exactly the right questions. She was missing something. And that was never a good sign.
The cashier at the natural food store sent Reese a funny look as she rang up her purchases: snakeroot, sage, maize, dried beans, measuring cups and spoons, and an industrial-strength coffee grinder. At first Reese thought the girl might have recognized the ingredients for the snake ritual . . . but when she got the same sort of look at the convenience store where she loaded up on Ho Hos and Diet Coke, she started to suspect they were looking at the tired rag that had formerly been her jacket. She had brought a couple of clean shirts and underwear on what she had anticipated would be a short trip to locate Dez, and her tough combat pants looked okay despite what they had been through in the past twenty-four hours. Her coat, though, was torn and tired, and looked like what it was: city gear that had been dragged through the mud.
“You’re rationalizing,” she said to herself, earning another leery look from the convenience store clerk. “Admit it. You want the leather.”
She had parked near an upscale store that seemed to cater to either biker bitches that had money, or high rollers who wanted to look like biker bitches. Maybe both. Regardless, the mannequin in the window was wearing a hell of a jacket. Cropped in the front and dipping longer in the back, it was sleek and deceptively simple, with a square collar, off-center zip, and subtle studs on the sleeves—the good kind that wouldn’t scratch the shit out of furniture or flesh.
Reese didn’t covet often or easily, but she was feeling it now. A piece of it was probably leftover adrenaline, another piece of nostalgia. But she was also cold, and would rather have her own coat than borrow Dez’s again. That had been far too . . . intimate. So, telling herself she would make it fast, she dumped her purchases in the car, stripped out of her bedraggled city coat and headed into the store.
“Can I help you find anything, ma’am?” The sales clerk had dark hair, decent body art, and a serious case of muffin top.
Reese pointed. “I want that.”
She got an up-and-down, and a cautious, “It’s handmade and one of a kind.”
“And?”
The clerk named a price that wasn’t nearly as bad as Reese had been expecting based on what it would’ve gone for in LA or Denver. Besides, Strike had said “unlimited expenses,” she thought with a grin, though it was doubtful she would turn in this particular receipt.
“Do you want to get it, or do you want me to?” she asked Muffin Top.
Five minutes later—and very conscious of the time, despite Lucius’s assurances that Dez would sleep it off even without the antidote—she slipped into what felt like a second skin. The lining was cool and slick, the cut somehow ruthlessly fitted without restricting her motion, and the longer tail at the back would cover her .38. Even better, it had hidden vents and a thin, high-tech insulation that—at least according to Muffin Top—would keep her comfortable in temperatures anywhere between frosted margarita and lightly toasted. Whatever that meant.
Reese handed over her backup plastic. “I won’t need a bag.”
As she drove back to the hotel with the windows cranked down so she wouldn’t sneeze her head off from the sage and other stuff, she couldn’t shake the slightly queasy feeling that she always got when she spent more than a couple of hundred dollars on something that wasn’t for work, wasn’t essential. It had been a long time since she’d been a street kid, but those neural pathways were set for life.
I thought you had outgrown the leather phase? asked an inner voice that wasn’t her own.
“The other one isn’t warm enough, and it looks like crap,” she retorted, then stopped when she realized she was arguing with herself. “Shit.”
She was an independent operator. She would wear what she damn well pleased, and come and go on her own schedule, and she wouldn’t let anyone make her feel guilty about it. But although that logic sounded good, she was still going around in her head when she got back to the hotel, making it a relief to shove those problems to the back of her mind and ignore them while she focused on the job at hand. And if a whisper at the back of her brain said that things with the Nightkeepers—and Dez—had stopped being a job and become something more, she ignored that, too.
When she opened the door to his room, overheated hotel air wafted out, prickling her pores. A trail of clothing started just past the bathroom: coat, then tank, then cargo pants, socks, and boots. Faint snores came from the bed, where a huge mound of spare blankets and comforters moved rhythmically, more a mountain of bedclothes than any recognizable human being. Despite Lucius’s reassurances, worry nagged as she hauled her purchases up from the car, using a side door so the desk clerk wouldn’t give her any “no cooking in the rooms” static.
Then she stripped off her new leather, plugged in the in-room coffeemaker, and got cooking. By late afternoon, she had a feeling that poor Mr. Coffee had brewed his last pot—the upper chamber was gunked up and there was some gnarly sludge burned to the bottom of the pot—but she had about a cup of mossy-smelling syrup that, when she tried it, actually didn’t taste all that bad. More, it made her head spin and sparked warm liquid shimmers low in her belly.
“Whoa. Potent stuff.” Weaving a little, she left her room and headed down the hall. She hesitated for a second at Dez’s door. Then she crossed her fingers, sent a small, wordless prayer to whatever higher power might be listening, and let herself into his room.
CHAPTER EIGHT
On one level, Dez knew he was dreaming, that his mind was rebooting as his body healed and his magic rebounded. On another level, though, he was twenty-one again, and more jittery than he’d expected to be as he pushed through the door to the pawnshop a couple of blocks down from his and Reese’s apartment.
He relaxed—some, anyway—when he saw he had timed it right: Thin-faced, cadaverous Zeke was leaning on the glass display counter and there was no sign of Afternoon Bob, who couldn’t keep a secret for shit.
“Hey.” Zeke grinned, showing a glinting gold incisor that narrowed to a point, tagging him as a former Cobra, one of the lucky few who had gotten out and been badass enough—and useful enough—to not wind up dead in the process. “Got something good for me?”
He had been on the receiving end of a couple of Dez’s recent jobs, which was pretty much glorified messengering of merchandise from point A to B, cash from B to A. Reese called it laundering—she had been getting tighter and tighter about that stuff alongside worrying about Hood’s getting out of jail. But the way Dez saw it, he had a plan for Hood, and the transfers weren’t hurting anybody—they were bringing high-value stuff into the neighborhood, and the jobs were low-risk for top-notch pay.
He shook his head, playing it casual. “I’m not selling today. I was
thinking about buying something.”
“Ah.” Zeke got his “I smell a profit” look. “Something like this?” He tapped the case under his scrawny elbows, where the higher-end jewelry lived. His finger landed right over the snake ring Reese had been drooling over the other week.
Dez had taken a good look at it, thinking he would find something similar—or, better yet, have it made—when the time came. But that had been before the storm. That was how he had started thinking of his life, as before or after the storm, because things had sure as shit changed for him that night. He hadn’t just kicked Keban’s ass, he had gotten a taste of the magic. Afterward, the dreams and restlessness had quit and he had started gaining the bulk of a Nightkeeper male, along with a warrior’s confidence and ambition. It was all part of the maturation process, he knew . . . but Reese didn’t want to believe it. She kept trying to reel him in and make him back into the guy he’d been before. Which so wasn’t happening.
He dipped into his pocket to touch the smooth, warm bit of carved stone he’d won from Keban, the one the winikin had said would help him reach his full magical potential. He hadn’t been able to work any of the spells yet, but he would do whatever it took to gain control of the lightning . . . and his first real taste of that power had come to him while he was kissing Reese.
Thus, the ring.
Zeke modeled it on his spindly index finger. “This is the one, right?”
“Yeah,” Dez said. “That’s the one.” He pulled out a fat wad of cash and handed it over. “This do it?” It wasn’t that far short of the ask. No point in negotiating when Zeke had seen the way she looked at it.
The pawnbroker boxed the ring up nice and handed it over, and Dez slipped it into his pocket, where it banged up against the statuette. “Keep your lips zipped on this one, okay?” He wasn’t sure how he was going to give it to her, or when. Or even what he really wanted it to mean, besides “I want to get laid.”
Zeke pantomimed a zipping motion, somehow managing to make it obscene. Dez just rolled his eyes and headed for the street.
The dream partway dissolved, leaving Dez swimming in the memory of the calculating bastard he had become under the star demon’s influence. He braced himself, knowing there was more—there always was when Anntah sent the dreams.
Sure enough, images started forming around him once more. Only this nightmare wasn’t anything like the others.
He was his present self, wearing army surplus and carrying an autopistol on one side, knife on the other, but as he stepped out onto the street, the neighborhood was the way it had been back then: grimy streets lined with jacked-up cars, dated stores, and minimal foot traffic, like now-Dez had been plugged into then-Dez’s world. He looked around, gut clenching. What the hell am I supposed to do now? he asked inwardly, but didn’t get jack from his spirit guide. So he started walking, heading toward the apartment he and Reese had shared, thinking that maybe he was supposed to find his younger self and kick some sense into—
He was caught flat-footed when luminous green flashed from the shadows of a nearby alley, and gunfire erupted.
Makol!
There were screams and scurries as the other street rats made themselves scarce. Dez, though, bared his teeth, pivoted and dove, putting himself behind a parked car as he pulled his pistol and snapped off a burst of return fire. Adrenaline surged through him; his warrior’s talent came on line, sharpening his focus and blunting everything but the fight.
The makol fanned out and took cover, still shooting—four big guys with filed-sharp teeth, wearing street clothes and a gang swagger, their eyes glowing eerie green. Then four more of the bastards came out of a second alley behind Dez’s position, getting the damned drop on him.
“Shit!” Throwing himself flat as they opened fire, he rolled, got to the back of the car and came up blasting.
He knocked down two of the green-eyed bastards, but didn’t dare break cover to finish them off. Bullets slammed into the car, bursting the windows and ricocheting. He nailed two more, but there were too damn many of them. Panic stirred at the realization that he wasn’t wearing an armband, couldn’t call for backup. Worse, the makol were spreading out, circling like nasty sharks.
When the air changed behind him, he spun, leading with his pistol. And froze, his heart thudding at the sight of amber-whiskey eyes and sleek, dark hair. “Reese.”
She nudged his gun away. “Didn’t mean to startle you. What, did you forget the plan? Sorry I’m late. Those guys took longer than I expected.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder where dark, greasy ash piles marked where she had already reduced four makol to dust.
As the remaining makol opened with a renewed barrage, she dropped back down beside him, pressing close, so they were touching from shoulder to hip. She was wearing full combat gear and packing extra clips, two of which she tucked in his belt as naturally as breathing. Like him, she was now-Reese in then-Reese’s milieu—her face honed here, softened there, her hair copper-streaked and sassy. But there were no shadows of hidden hurt in her eyes, none of the wariness that said she was just waiting for him to revert. More, when she bumped up against him, his body recognized hers with a soul-deep sense of rightness, a shimmer of connection that made him feel for a split second like they were sharing head-space, that he could see through her eyes and she through his.
Then she shifted away from him, lips thinning as she scanned the situation. “You ready to finish this?”
For a second he just stared as the realization hammered home: In the dream, they were the couple they could have been. He could dimly sense their history—how they had worked their way up and out, she as a cop, he as a real estate rainmaker. And how, when the call had come to reunite at Skywatch, there hadn’t been a question of her staying behind. She was his mate, and they were a team. He hadn’t spent a decade lost and alone, spiraling down into a black hell of his own creation. And he was free to love her, be with her, fight alongside her. Which was how he knew it was a dream.
The image wavered, but he reached for it, clung to it as his dream-self said, “Hell, yeah. Let’s do this,” and they came up firing as one.
Reese hesitated at Dez’s bedside, feeling hotter than the heated air in the room. Her head might be fuzzy with the effects of having tasted the syrup, but she was with-it enough to know that she was going to have to excavate him from the mountain of bedclothes in order to get the medicine into him.
And, yes, that was his underwear over there on the floor.
“You can do this,” she told herself. “It’s no big deal.” But the heavy throb of her pulse said otherwise.
As she pulled off a couple of layers of bedclothes, she wasn’t sure how much of the burn that suddenly fired in her blood was her inner teenager looking for closure and how much was a flat-out hormonal reaction to the man he had become—sleek, predatory, and dangerous. Then there was the magic—she had told herself it wouldn’t be a big deal, but it was. Her skin still tingled from the shield spell he’d used to save her life the day before, warning her that she hadn’t outgrown her rescue fantasies, after all.
“You know you can’t trust him,” she reminded herself.
He was lying on his side facing the door, angled diagonally across the bed, and he didn’t even twitch when she pulled back the sheet, baring his upper body. She didn’t let herself gasp—at least she didn’t think she did. The only thing she knew for sure was that she was staring at an acre or two of smooth golden skin stretched over a relief map of muscle and bone.
He. Was. Magnificent.
His face was fierce even in sleep, lines drawn between his brows as though he glared through closed eyelids. His mouth was a flat line, his jaw an aggressive jut below the long, hooked nose, wide-set eyes, and high cheekbones. Before, his lashes had been thick and full; now his eyelids were bare, turning him into something strange and primal. Back in the day, she had assumed he had started shaving his head to look tougher, and it had worked. Now, she wondered whether it had been a sign
of his magic waking up, an impulse he hadn’t fully understood at the time.
She touched his shoulder, intending to shake him, but then just let her fingers rest there. His skin was warm satin, his muscles living stone that poured across his wide shoulders and rippled down his abdomen to disappear beneath the sheet, temping her to picture the rest of him, muscle-etched, golden, and entirely smooth to the touch.
Reese, who waxed herself ruthlessly bare, felt a little envious . . . and a whole lot turned on, her insides gone molten, her skin dampening from more than the room’s near-tropical heat, and—And you’re stoned, she thought on a slow-moving churn of logic. Or high, or something. The antidote had put her in a major state. Her heart thudded and desire raced through her veins, making the past and future seem so much less important than that precise moment in time, and the way her skin looked against his as she touched him, stroking his shoulder, his arm, then trailing down to—
Bad idea. She pulled back, inhaling a shuddering breath that did nothing to calm the churn of heat and nerves. She should leave the syrup and go, get out while she could, clear her head. He could drink the damn stuff when he finally woke up. Except that Lucius didn’t know how long that would take; Keban was out there on the loose; another village had disappeared; the meteor shower was two days away, the solstice ten . . . and the Nightkeepers needed her help to get their Triad mage back and make sure he didn’t have a hidden agenda.
The heat amped a notch at the realization that she might be in over her head, out of her league, but she was doing something, damn it. She wasn’t just making phone calls and tracking down last knowns. The realization, like the leather jacket back in her room, made her feel more alive than she had since she stopped nabbing bail jumpers. Back then, she had been saving her own piece of the world; now she had a chance to help save the whole damn thing. The blood beat beneath her skin with a mix of nerves and euphoria, a cocktail she had once needed like a drug.
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