I smiled wanly, still watching my uncle as the barista tried to flirt with him.
“Trust has nothing to do with it, Nick,” I said. “I wanted him to help me with the training stuff. You know… the Black stuff. The stuff I can’t learn from you or Angel.”
“Oh.” Genuine surprise reached Nick’s voice. “Jesus, Miri. That’s what you’ve been doing out there? Battle training with Uncle Charles?”
“Part of what I’ve been doing, yes.” Watching my uncle walk back towards me, I shrugged. “Most of what I’ve been doing, if you want the truth.”
Accepting the large coffee from my uncle with a nod and a smile, I took a sip and winced at how sweet it was. Charles must have gotten me a mocha. That, or he loaded the foam with chocolate sprinkles for some reason.
At Nick’s continued silence, I frowned.
“When have you ever known me to just lie around on a beach, Nick? I only accepted this crazy offer of Black’s to come out here, live on his private resort for a few weeks and navel-gaze, because I needed time away from San Francisco.” I gritted my teeth. “…and New York.”
“And him,” Nick added.
Biting my lip, I nodded, almost to myself.
“And him,” I agreed.
I took another sip of coffee, which was definitely a mocha after the second taste, and sweeter than any coffee drink I’d had in months. It hit me that I used to drink mochas now and then, maybe one or two a month, and I’d stopped entirely in the last eight or so months.
It hadn’t been because of the calories.
Remembering what Black told me about how that vampire, Brick, doped me in my own office in San Francisco, putting tranquilizers in a mocha from my favorite coffee shop and giving it to my assistant to give to me, I bit my tongue hard enough to draw blood.
Black had erased that whole experience from my mind, using his seer abilities.
Even so, enough of it must have stayed with me that I’d shunned mochas in the time since.
Fighting another violent swell of fury, I exhaled sharply, unable to help it that time.
“It’ll be fine,” I said, talking to myself as much as Nick. “I’m going there to work. I don’t even have to see him. Right?”
“Miri.” Nick sighed. “Are you up for this? Really? You still seem pretty… off.”
At my silence, he fell silent briefly, too.
Once more, I felt his worry through the line, not only for me, but for Black.
Exhaling again, he said, “I really did screw up with this. I had no idea, I swear to God, when I told Black––”
“Nick. Stop. Just stop, okay? I heard you. You didn’t know there were vampires out there. Black didn’t know there were vampires out there. You thought he could use the distraction. He thought he could use the distraction. I get it, okay? I really do. I’m not mad at you for hooking him up with the New Mexico job.”
Grimacing a little as I took another sip of coffee, I shrugged.
“Of course,” I muttered under my breath. “No one put a gun to his head and forced him to stay out there, once he knew.”
“Miri––”
“Don’t defend him, Naoko.” I gritted my teeth. “Please. Just let me bitch about my husband. My estranged, manipulative, liar of a husband… who screwed with my mind, erased my memories and gaslighted me about it for weeks… only to nearly get himself killed. Which, incidentally, would have killed me too, given that we share a bond that means he takes me with him if he decides to commit suicide by psychopathic vampire.”
Nick didn’t answer.
I felt him more or less agree with me, though.
I also happened to know Nick would never put up with this crap from any girlfriend of his. He hated liars. He would never forgive someone messing with his mind, or his memories.
Then again, Nick had never been married.
He’d also never shared a life-bond with someone––a life bond that more or less tied you to that person for life, no matter what they did or didn’t do to you. It wasn’t exactly the kind of thing that made it easy to break up with someone, not in a way that actually meant something. It also made “do not cross” lines in the relationship more or less meaningless, at least in terms of the threat of actually cutting them out of your life.
Just thinking about any of this made my head hurt, though.
It also brought a sharp pain to my heart, dense enough that my breath caught, closing my eyes longer than a blink.
I didn’t want to “break up” with Black.
I didn’t know what I wanted to do with him honestly, apart from maybe put his head through a plate glass window. I knew once I actually saw him, there was a good chance I’d want to yell at him. I’d probably want to break things for a few hours, then yell at him some more.
I’d already done that, though––the yelling and breaking things part, at least.
It hadn’t made me feel better.
It hadn’t made me feel better at all.
I didn’t realize how long I’d been quiet on the phone until Nick spoke up, his voice verging on cautious.
“Are you really going to avoid him the whole time you’re there?”
Sighing, I shook my head, trying to clear it of Black.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe?”
“You should probably talk to him,” Nick said, his voice still cautious. “He’s not doing that well. Without you, I mean.”
My jaw hardened, hurting my teeth.
“Nick. Are you seriously guilting me right now, about how that son of a bitch is doing without me? Like it’s somehow my responsibility, after what he––”
“No!” Nick blurted. “No… Miri. I’m not. I’m not blaming you for anything, or guilting you, or anything. I’m just saying… he’s not. Doing well, I mean. That’s part of the reason I talked him into taking the New Mexico job.”
Biting my lip, I tried not to ask. I really tried.
In the end, I clenched my jaw and asked anyway.
“What do you mean he’s not doing well?” I said. “In what way? What does that mean?”
Nick sighed. I could practically feel him regretting he’d said anything.
“He’s just… you know. Black. Only more volatile. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was depressed.”
Hearing my silence, I felt him try to shrug off his own words.
“Look, whatever his deal is, he was starting to show too much. Even more than New York. Enough that Dex and Kiko were starting to worry. They each called me at different times, asking if I knew anything about the two of you. They both said he wasn’t sleeping. That he was coming into the office at weird hours, holding training sessions at weird hours, yelling at people and firing them for no reason. He was fighting with clients. Drinking too much… you know. He yelled at a few reporters. You must have seen that on the news––”
“No,” I cut in, my voice cold. “I’ve been avoiding the news, Nick.”
“Well, it wasn’t a big deal. It’s just the showing thing, like I said. He’s not exactly stable right now, and he gets kind of hair-trigger. In a way that brings out his more, you know, eccentric qualities.” He paused, and I practically saw him shrug. “I figured it was safer to get him out of the city for a while. Away from… you know… regular people.”
Nodding, I exhaled again, forcing myself to relax.
“That makes sense,” I admitted.
“Also, the guy out there in New Mexico, Red’s father-in-law, he’s an old friend of Black’s. He’s the one who wanted Black out there. He hunted down Black, not me… I guess he saw him in the news or something. Red only called me when he realized I knew him.”
His voice still casual, Nick added,
“I thought maybe that would be good for him. To spend time with a friend, you know? The old man seemed genuinely excited to see Black… had nothing but warm things to say about him. Talked about how close they were in Vietnam, how Black saved his life more than once. I figured maybe it would be goo
d, you know? Give him someone he might talk to? I didn’t say much… about you, I mean.”
“But you said something?” I said, irritated again, in spite of myself.
Nick sighed.
“Miri, I was trying to help Black. I wasn’t sure if he’d say anything to the guy without some nudging, so yeah, when the guy asked how Black was, I gave him a head’s up that he’s having marital problems. That’s not about you. That’s about Black. And like it or not, you forced me to give a damn about the son of a bitch––”
I held up a hand, already shaking my head.
“Forget it, Nick,” I said. “I understand. And you’re right. That makes sense.” Hesitating, I bit my lip. “Thanks,” I added stiffly. “That was kind of you.”
There was another silence between us.
Then Nick smiled through the line.
“I think Angel’s been missing you, too. She practically squealed when I told her you’d be in Albuquerque tomorrow.”
I snorted, unable to help smiling.
“Angel? Squealing?” I said.
“I’ll deny it if you tell her I said that… but yes. She and Cowboy are going to meet you at the airport. I gave them your flight number and the time already.” There was a pause where he likely checked his watch. “Speaking of which. Aren’t you boarding soon?”
I glanced at Charles.
Once he caught my eye, he tapped his own watch, motioning with his head for me to follow him towards the gate. He stood right by the opening to one of the moving walkways, clearly trying to give me some privacy as I finished up my phone call.
“Yes.” I sighed, nodding to Charles as I hoisted my purse higher on my shoulder, adjusting the phone against my ear before I grabbed the handle of my carry-on bag and began dragging it towards him. “We’re heading that way now.”
“We?”
“Charles is taking the first leg of the flight with me. To San Francisco. He’s switching at SFO for a chartered flight to New York. Then to Europe.”
“Ah. I see.” Nick paused, then his voice grew serious. “Don’t worry, Miri. Really. I have a feeling Black’s going to be on his best behavior.” Grunting a laugh, as if thinking about his own words, he added, “Honestly? I suspect he won’t go near you. Not unless you specifically tell him he can… or he gets too drunk some night and loses his head.”
I grunted back, rolling my eyes.
My grunt held considerably less humor than Nick’s.
Fielding a curious look from my uncle, I tried to ignore the interest in his stare.
From his expression, Charles Andrey Vasiliev––as his Russian passport described him, a.k.a. “Lucky Lucifer,” as he was known by most intelligence agencies, as well as organized crime syndicates on multiple continents––clearly picked up on at least part of what Nick and I were talking about.
Being seer, and a highly-trained one at that, Uncle Charles picked up on a lot of things, I was learning. Over the past few weeks I’d spent in Hawaii with him, learning sight work and various forms of psychic warfare from him, I’d increasingly noticed just how much Uncle Charles picked up, and how often he didn’t let on what he knew.
Ignoring the question in his leaf-green eyes, I focused back on Nick when his voice rose in the phone.
“Really, Miri,” Nick said. “Don’t worry. He won’t be at the airport. He won’t be at that crazy fancy hotel or resort or whatever it is he just bought in downtown Santa Fe, either. Cowboy said he already called and told them to have someone pick up the Jeep he rented out in the desert tomorrow morning. According to Cowboy, Black didn’t say anything about going back to Santa Fe himself right away.”
Pausing, Nick added,
“I really think Black’ll give you space. I also think you should talk to him, like I said… but if you’re worried about seeing him right away, don’t be. I suspect he’ll hide out on that Navajo reservation until you tell him otherwise.”
Clenching my jaw, I nodded, but fought another swell of pain and anger in my chest.
Sipping at the mocha, which was still making me grimace, probably from the memory of my last mocha in San Francisco, I forced myself to breathe, to think about Nick’s words.
As I did, my jaw hardened more.
“I hope so,” I said, giving my uncle a dark look when I caught him watching me again. “For the sake of Black living through the next few days, I truly hope so, Naoko.”
“IS SHE THERE yet?” he said. “Has her plane landed?”
“No,” Angel said, sighing. “And yes. Her plane landed, Black. Calm down. We’re waiting by baggage claim. I’m assuming she’s de-planing along with the rest of her flight.”
“She should be one of the first ones off, though, right?” The frown in his voice grew more prominent. “Jesus. She didn’t ride coach, did she?”
Angel snorted. “You say that as if it were the equivalent of her strolling through dark alleys in a negligee, Black.”
“Isn’t it?” he retorted.
Angel rolled her eyes, still scanning through faces of people emerging through the glass doors of the arrival gates. “I’m sure if she rode coach, she survived the horrors of mixing with commoners just fine, Quentin,” she said. “Most of us manage just fine, you know, behaving like normal fucking people––”
Her eyes lit on a familiar face then, and she broke out in a grin.
“Oop! Gotta go! She’s here!”
“Wait. How does she look? Does she look okay? How is––”
Angel was already hitting the hang-up button.
Clicking her screen off altogether, she rolled her eyes briefly at Cowboy, who chuckled as she stuffed the phone back in her purse. Then, a wide grin stealing back over her face, she walked with long strides towards a woman in a dark green blouse, black jeans and black boots, who gripped the handle of a carry-on bag in one hand, looking around at the crowd, her brow faintly furrowed as she scanned faces.
“Miri!” Angel shouted, waving. “Hey, Miriam! Here!”
Miri turned, looking at her.
She looked tired, Angel immediately noticed, like she hadn’t slept at all.
Those stunning hazel eyes met her gaze, a tentative smile touching her lips despite the stunned, exhausted look on her face. Her eyes moved to Cowboy next, who was coming up behind her. Angel saw her friend take in Cowboy’s face just long enough to identify him, then slide past him, as if looking for someone else.
For the briefest instant, Angel saw disappointment in her friend’s eyes.
In that same instant, it occurred to Angel who Miri was looking for.
Something about the sadness that lived there, even if it was gone before Angel got in hugging distance, made Angel wince.
When she reached her, however, she didn’t let any of that reach her own expression.
Enveloping her friend in a hug, she beamed at her once she’d let her go, gripping her arms.
“Damn, girl. You are tan.”
Meeting her gaze, Miri burst out in a laugh.
“SO WHAT DO we know?” I said.
Fighting to focus my eyes through how tired I was, I sipped the giant Americano Angel got me at the airport, squinting through the tinted glass of the SUV at the desert landscape outside. Leaning back in the leather front seat, I exhaled in a sigh.
“So far, I mean?” I added, glancing at Angel. “…about these ‘weird’ vampires of Black’s?”
Angel looked over from the driver’s seat.
She’d been in the process of handing a paper parking stub to a woman working one of the booths at the gate of the short-term parking lot. A number came up on the digital display in the woman’s window and Angel passed her a ten dollar bill.
Pulling out of the lot and aiming the SUV towards the signs pointing for the highway, she shrugged, glancing over her shoulder at Cowboy, who sat in the back seat.
I followed her gaze, looking at the man with the dirty-blond hair, who looked a bit more cleaned-up and polished than I remembered him from before. He st
ill had a face roughed by beard scruff and uneven hair, but the beard looked shorter and cleaner, and his hair looked like it had been cut recently, and by someone who knew what they were doing.
He still dressed pretty much the same though, wearing a jean jacket over a black T-shirt and faded blue jeans. Black cowboy boots poked out the bottom of his pant legs, and from the bulge on the left side of his jacket, I strongly suspected he was carrying.
Smiling at both of us, he sat up, leaning on the edges of our seats to better talk to us and poking his head forward over the cupholders between me and Angel.
“He sent us a few cloth samples,” Cowboy said, aiming a wry smile at Angel, then back at me. “Part of that vampire’s clothes, I think. The one he killed.”
Angel added, “There’s more, too. Things I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have heard about, since you were already in the air by the time we found out this morning.” She glanced over at me as she merged onto the freeway. “Things that happened after you talked to Black last night.”
“What… things?” I said, wary.
Angel proceeded to tell me about a bizarre encounter Black and his friend Manny had that same night I’d talked to him, after the incident at the jail and probably not long before I got on the plane. She described the Navajo man showing up with all the vampires, bringing a group of pet wolves and making vague threats. She said he’d claimed he wanted “his” vampire back from the Navajo Nation police––presumably the one Black had already killed.
I could only stare at her as she spoke.
When she finished describing everything Black told her, about what the man said, what he’d looked like, and what he’d done, I looked between her and Cowboy, wondering if they were pulling my leg.
“What the fuck?” I said. “Who was that guy? The wolf guy?”
Cowboy shrugged, looking between me and Angel.
“Black’s friend Manny knew him, apparently. Called him ‘Wolf.’ Said everyone knows him on the rez, on account of him being some kind of radical, who wants to claim the homeland back from all the palefaces.” Cowboy gave me a half smile. “Black says the guy spent a few years out in the desert on his own, doing peyote and moonflowers on some kind of spiritual quest.”
Black To Dust: A Quentin Black Paranormal Mystery (Quentin Black Mystery Book 7) Page 10
