“Here I am. What can I do for you, child?” The words were friendly, holding not the slightest edge of menace. She seemed genuinely pleased to see Maeve.
“Your shawl did something to me,” Maeve replied. “I don’t know what, but it was horrible. What you’re doing is evil.”
Pai laughed, returning to her spinning. It was a rich, earthy sound, that laugh. The laugh of a goddess.
Ryu moved ever closer to the edge of the hayloft.
“Oh, humans are so entertaining. I have missed you so.”
“It’s not funny. This is serious. I hurt my…my boyfriend, because of you.”
Pai looked up sharply at that. “That bloodsucker was no more your boyfriend than I am.” She carefully disentangled her hair from the spinning wheel, but still she stayed seated. “In fact, you hate him.”
“That’s a lie,” said Maeve. “I don’t hate him.”
Pai sat back, her arms crossing over her chest so that she looked stern and matronly. “You are the one who is lying, young miss. But you don’t have to…not with me. I can see into you, don’t you know that?”
Maeve faltered. Ryu took a few more steps toward the edge.
He was nearly there…
FOURTEEN
“What do you mean, you can see into me?” Maeve said, intent on keeping the Moiroi distracted.
“I mean that I know what you really want. What you need. And I gave it to you. That is my gift to humanity.”
“Gift? I attacked my partner.” Maeve’s head was beginning to hurt, her thoughts growing muzzy. “How is that a gift?”
Pai stood up from the spinning wheel, moving a few steps closer to Maeve. Maeve knew she should move, but it didn’t seem all that important to do so. She felt safe, suddenly.
Pai was now in front of Maeve, and she was unsure how the blonde woman had gotten there. Had she closed her eyes? Pai took Maeve’s hands in hers.
“I know humans, you see,” Pai explained, looking into Maeve’s eyes. Maeve saw eternity in that gaze. “I know how much people want things. How much they feel. How they yearn to accomplish their dreams and yet how much holds them back.”
“Accomplish their dreams,” Maeve repeated, falling into the depths of those eyes.
“But you can’t, can you?” Pai said, letting go of one of Maeve’s hands to stroke a finger down her cheek. “You are all so conflicted. So fraught. So needy for other things, so distracted by all the effluvia in your lives. That’s where I help. I take all of that away, so you can finally go after what you really want.”
Maeve forced herself to focus. That was wrong, wasn’t it? She hadn’t truly wanted to kill Ryu?
“No. That’s not what you do. You pervert our desires. I didn’t want to hurt him. I didn’t...”
“Of course you did,” Pai interrupted, placing her finger on Maeve’s lips. “You hate him. You hate all of them.”
Maeve saw something drop behind Pai, crouching for a moment before straightening. Ryu. Her partner. She kept her eyes on Pai, however.
“No,” Maeve said, “I don’t hate him.”
“But you do, child! I know you do! I can see you. I can see how much you hurt after your mother’s death. She was killed by just such a monster. You went into this line of work to hunt things like him, things…how do you say? That go bump in the night? You want to kill all of them, to make humanity safe. Instead you work with one of them. You have dinner together and act like they’re not murderers, when you know they are. You know they are!”
At this point Pai had both hands on Maeve’s jaw, holding her head still. Maeve was too confused to fight back, her vision swimming.
They had killed her mother. Left her an orphan. Taken away her childhood, her one chance at a happy life.
But that wasn’t Ryu, a tiny voice reminded her. She clung to that voice. It sounded like sanity in a brain racked with chaos.
“Ryu didn’t do any of that,” she said. “He’s not a monster. He could have gotten rid of me a hundred ways, but he didn’t. He’s my partner.”
Her voice was strong now. She shook off Pai’s hands, taking a step back but keeping her eyes on Pai. “I can trust him.”
“Well, I can’t,” Pai said, and suddenly her hair lashed behind her like an octopus tentacle, wrapping around Ryu’s throat. The baobhan sith had managed to creep right up behind Pai, but the Moiroi had never been fooled.
Ryu hung from Pai’s grasp, his face turning red as her hair tightened around his throat. His eyes watered, but still they latched on Maeve. She raised her gun and shot the Moiroi, point blank, ‘til Maeve was out of bullets.
Pai didn’t even bother to acknowledge the attack. Maeve threw the gun at the Moiroi, and it beaned off her head with considerable force. Pai didn’t blink. Maeve looked at Ryu helplessly.
“Her hair,” Ryu croaked, throwing Maeve the golden shears. They clattered at her feet and she bent to snatch them up.
“Right,” shouted Maeve, lunging at the strands holding Ryu. The golden sheers, charged with magic and sharper than any razor, cut through the bright hair like it was butter. Ryu dropped, suddenly able to breathe, the hair losing its preternatural life as it fell to the ground.
Pai shrieked, clutching at her head, but Maeve was tenacious. The golden scissors swooped again, shearing down the left side of the woman’s head. With each cut, Pai seemed to shrink, crouching down onto the ground.
“Keep going!” Ryu croaked again, raising a hand to his throat to use the dregs of his power to heal himself. “’Til she’s bald.”
Maeve did as she was told, Pai whimpering and shrinking. Maeve didn’t stop until the thing on the floor was a wizened old woman no bigger than a mature gnome, rather than the robust farmer’s wife who had greeted them the day before.
Finally, panting with the effort, Maeve put down the scissors. Pai sat, clutching her undulating waves of golden hair to her chest and sobbing.
“Sorry, Rapunzel,” Maeve said. “But it was time to let down that hair.”
FIFTEEN
Maeve stood near the closed door of the shop, eyeing Ryu’s various bags with trepidation. “Is that all of it?”
“According to the shopkeeper, it’s everything of Pai’s she had in stock.”
“You’re sure she’s not lying?”
Ryu frowned. “Why would she lie?”
“Because maybe she’s under the influence of magical yarn?”
A moment’s hesitation, then Ryu nodded. “Fine. I’ll glamour her.”
Ryu returned to the woman, speaking to her softly. She went from counting receipts—undoubtedly gleeful after they’d paid an arm and a leg for all her stock of enchanted knitwear—to staring up at Ryu in rapture.
She shook her head, and shook it again…and then nodded, reaching under the counter for what looked like a tea cozy done in a bright pink and purple chevron. Ryu held it up to Maeve, waving it at her, until he suddenly swayed on his feet, clutching the counter for balance.
“Hey!” Maeve called, trotting toward him. The shopkeeper blinked at both of them, shaking off the edge of the glamour. Maeve thanked her for the tea cozy and asked how much it was. Ryu held onto the counter as Maeve used the black credit card again before steering her partner out toward their rental car.
“Drop that in here,” Maeve said, holding wide open one of the shopping bags. Ryu did as he was told, then leaned on the car as she bundled the rest of the bags into the trunk.
“What’s up?” she asked when she was done, placing a hand on his forearm.
“I’m cashed,” he said, his face and lips pale. “Magically, that is.”
“Oh.” She thought hard as she opened the passenger side door for him. “Get in.”
He did so, settling back into his seat and shutting his eyes.
She got into the driver’s side, joking that he had to feel pretty miserable to not insist on driving. He smiled but didn’t say anything, another worrying sign.
“What can I do?” she asked, starting the car
and heading toward their hotel.
“It’s fine,” he said. “Really. I’m not going to die. I just can’t do anything magical again until I top up. And I have a bit of a headache.”
She gave him a side eye at a stoplight. “You’re turning green. That’s more than a bit of anything.”
He smiled. “I’ll be all right. I can feed when I get back to San Francisco.”
“We can’t leave ‘til tonight. We have to check the other shops, make sure Pai wasn’t dealing to someone else under the table. And we might need your glamour for that.”
They’d handed Pai over earlier to deputies of the Gold Court, who promised to get the Moiroi safely back to San Francisco. There she’d be locked up until the Monarchs decided what to do with her. Maeve doubted the humans Pai had killed would get any real justice, but at least humanity was safe from the Moiroi…for now.
At least once Maeve and Ryu made sure there was no more chevron- patterned knitwear being sold in Napa.
Ryu looked out the passenger window as Maeve drove. “I’m sure I can feed here, if I have to. I’ll nip out for a few hours…”
Maeve’s fists tightened on the steering wheel as she felt an irrational pulse of anger.
“You’ll do no such thing,” she blurted, wondering why in the hell she cared. Her next words were even more astonishing. “If you feed from anyone, you’ll feed from me.”
Ryu shot her a startled look. “Thank you for offering, but you don’t want that…”
Maeve took a deep breath. “I may not want it, but it’s what we’ll have to do. I’m your partner. I won’t have you wandering around, preying off other people when you’re weak.”
“Are you protecting me or protecting them?” he asked, his lips twisting in a wry smile.
“Both.” She pulled into the parking garage and headed toward the back. It was mostly empty, which was good. She parked in the emptiest place she could, shutting the car off but leaving the keys in the ignition.
“We’ll do it here,” she told him, holding her wrist to his mouth. “Bottoms up, and all that.”
He grabbed her hand. “Whoa, slow down. We’re in a parking garage. We do have a room…”
“I know,” she interrupted. How did he make her sound so prim? “But I’ve heard…I’ve heard that you people’s bites aren’t always painful.”
And our room has a very comfortable, very large bed, she thought, knowing she may as well have said it out loud. That thought lay between them, an invitation wanting to be opened.
He kept hold of her hand, his thumb tracing over her pulse at her wrist. “They’re not,” he said, staring down at her blue, blue veins. “Always painful, that is.” He moved his gaze from her wrist to meet her eyes. “But the bite that killed your mother…that was painful, wasn’t it?”
Maeve took a deep breath. She knew it was coming. Ryu wasn’t stupid, and they had to get this out of the way.
“Yes. It was very painful. She died screaming. But it wasn’t...it wasn’t a baobhan sith. I don’t know what killed her. Just something with teeth.”
“A lot of us have teeth,” he acknowledged. “Look, I really don’t expect you to do this, Maeve. And I don’t want you to, if it stirs up memories.”
“Those memories are always stirred. I set up my life so they would be, working for the Initiative and everything. That’s what I learned from Pai and her shawl. I’ve let myself be haunted and that has to end.”
“And you think my biting you…”
“Might help that, yes.”
“I still don’t know.”
“Hey,” she said, using the hand he held to grab a fistful of his shirt, pulling him toward her. “If my partner were hungry or thirsty, I’d get him food or water. If you were hurt, I’d do CPR. Instead, you’re supernatural, and you need some blood. Hell, if you were human and you got shot and we were compatible, I would donate my blood. It’s not that different.”
Of course, she knew it was different. Tubes and needles would separate them, in the case of a transfusion. This was far more intimate. And yet equally necessary, as much for her as for him.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he kept his eyes on hers as he lowered his mouth to her wrist. She let go of his shirt, turning her veins toward his mouth. She tensed, making a fist with that hand, but he moved his free hand to smooth out her fingers with a gentle touch. And when she felt his mouth close on her skin and his fangs sink deep, there was anything but pain.
“Oh my,” Maeve said, stifling a groan as a thrill like that of a dozen orgasms rolled up her spine. Then the pleasure dialed back to a faint buzzing rather than the lightning strike it had been. But the memory of that pleasure lingered in limbs gone heavy, in nipples that tingled and hardened, in panties gone damp. She’d shut her eyes at the first bite, but now she opened them to see his own eyes half-closed, heavy-lidded with pleasure. That sent another pulse of pleasure, one that had nothing to do with magic, flooding through her.
When Ryu finished, he licked her wrist, healing the wounds. Then he blew her skin dry, causing her to shiver. His kept his eyes on her wrist and his voice was rough when he spoke.
“Sorry about that. I didn’t want to hurt you and I used a little too much juice there, in the beginning.”
“It’s okay,” she said, praying she didn’t sound as breathless as she felt. “It certainly didn’t hurt or anything.”
“Good.” His thumb traced over her healed wrists, caressing her veins.
“Did that…did that help?”
He nodded. “Oh, yes. Your blood is surprisingly strong. Really quite strong.”
“Oh. Good.”
“And we’re okay?” he asked, still holding her hand but finally meeting her gaze.
“Yes,” she replied. “We’re okay. Partner.” She pulled her hand away, needing to dial down the tension in the car. “Now, on a scale of one to one hundred, how pissed off do you think the Gold Court Queens are going to be?”
“Really, really pissed,” Ryu said, laughing as he ran a hand through his tousled hair. “They probably knew what Pai was, even if they didn’t share that intel with their people. The Alfar tend to indulge anything ancient like that. And I’m sure they didn’t think I’d recognize Pai’s true nature and send for the shears.”
“How did you know what she was?”
“Coincidentally, we had a series of victims in Boston about thirty-five years ago that resembled those we saw at the Gold Court. One of my deputies, a very smart satyr named Caleb, threw out a Moiroi as a possible suspect. It turned out to be something else entirely, but that possibility stuck in my head.”
“Well, excellent work, partner. Speaking of which, we should get back to work. Let’s take the day to make sure there aren’t any more chevron-patterned scarves lying around waiting to ambush people. Then we can head back tonight to the Court to tell them the good news. We can get them signed up for the Initiative as soon as possible.” Maeve’s fingers twitched where they lay on the steering wheel, as if typing up imaginary forms. “I’m going to love filing that paperwork.”
Ryu pursed his lips, clearly speculating. “I have another idea. Let’s not check out, and spend the day shopping…for evil scarves, of course, and then hit some wineries tonight. We are in Napa.”
Maeve wanted to tell him no. But now she knew her refusal wasn’t about not trusting him, but about trusting herself around those golden eyes and that dark, tousled hair, not to mention those fangs that could literally make her swoon with pleasure at their touch.
And at his humor, his bravery, his kindness.
You are not falling for your partner. Your vampire partner, she told herself. And while “vampire” no longer held the sting it used to, “partner” had taken on a lot more weight. They really did work well together.
“Okay,” she said. “But let’s see if they have a second room, now that we’re not undercover. It’s not that I don’t trust you,” she said, hastily. “I just feel bad, making you sleep on the floor.”
<
br /> And I don’t trust myself.
“No problem,” he agreed. She almost wished he’d argued. “I’ll call about the room while you drive. We might as well start the shopping now, if you’re ready?”
“Absolutely.” She started the car, glancing over at him as he poked at his cell phone and talked with the hotel concierge. He looked happy and replete, and it made her feel funny to think that her blood was coursing through his body.
And thinking about Ryu’s body made her feel even funnier.
This is going to be complicated, she realized, almost wishing she could go back to hating him. At least that was simple.
But as Maeve pulled out of the parking garage and headed back toward the main street, she knew a thousand things still separated her from her partner. His long life, his magic, their working relationship, the fact they came from two different worlds. They would never be together, and fantasizing would only complicate things. She could appreciate him, enjoy his company and their working relationship, without pursuing anything else.
That was what she told herself as she drove them to their first destination. In fact, she was so busy rationalizing everything that she never saw how Ryu watched her. The look of hunger and appreciation and calculation…the intense gaze of a baobhan sith and a man for a woman he desired.
Maeve would have realized, then, that things were about to become very, very complicated, indeed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nicole D. Peeler writes urban fantasy for Orbit Books and, in her spare time, is an associate professor at Seton Hill University, where she co-directs their MFA in Writing Popular Fiction. Having recently finished the final book of her award-winning Jane True series, she is looking forward to the upcoming publication of Jinn and Juice, the first book in a series about a cursed jinni living in Pittsburgh. Nicole also lives in Pittsburgh, although she’s neither cursed nor a jinni. You can find out more about her at http://nicolepeeler.com.
The Ryu Morgue (A Jane True Short Story) (Trueniverse Book 2) Page 7
