“I don’t like the idea of people hanging pictures of my life on their living room walls.”
“These aren’t available for purchase,” the salesman said hurriedly. “This is our showroom.” He pointed to several signs that said not for sale spaced every few feet between the displays. I hadn’t even noticed them.
I glanced at Jimmy, but he’d moved to the back window, where he appeared fascinated beyond all understanding with the view of the alley behind the gallery.
“You thought they were here because of the colorization?” the man asked.
“Not exactly,” I said.
Anyone with a heart could see that the difference in the portraits stemmed from a difference in the photographer. He’d cared about his other subjects, but this one—
This one he’d loved.
CHAPTER 25
A final image hung to the right of the door. Taken only a few months ago at the dairy farm where Jimmy had once worked, it showed me asleep on a cot in the tack room. The setting sun cast through the windows above, bathing me in soft, pale light.
The glaring absence of any photos since told a tale that shattered my heart, even though I’d suspected the truth for a while now. Jimmy’s love was gone. Too bad mine wasn’t.
I vacated the gallery as fast as I could, leaving Jimmy behind. Once outside I retraced my path to the hotel. My stomach was pitching too violently to even think about coffee.
Discovering Jimmy’s love for me portrayed so vividly for the world was upsetting enough. Realizing that love was gone was like losing him again the way I had at eighteen.
“Lizzy!”
Jimmy chased me down the sidewalk. There was no point in trying to outrun him. In human form we had the same powers. And shifting into a phoenix in the middle of the day in the center of the street wasn’t something I was willing to do, even to get away from him.
I let Jimmy catch up, and we walked a few blocks in silence before he spoke. “I’m sorry. I knew some of the pictures were in New Orleans and one of the shows—”
“Whoa.” I stopped, pulling him to the side. “There are more of those out there?”
“I—uh—needed money. I haven’t been able to work as much as I used to with all the—” He waved one long-fingered hand.
“Chaos?” I supplied. “Death? Destruction? Murder? Rape?”
“I would have said something about the New Orleans gallery before we left,” he murmured.
“Really?”
He glanced up at the blistering sun. “Maybe. I don’t know. I didn’t come here for that.”
“Why did you come here?”
His gaze met mine. “You know why.”
“Because Ruthie told you to, and you always do what Ruthie says.”
Something flickered in his eyes, something angry, something violent. “Don’t you?”
“Yeah.” I began walking toward the hotel again. “I don’t know what else to do.”
My quiet admission deflated him, and he fell in step beside me. We remained silent until we reached my room again. I took the single chair near a small table in the corner.
Jimmy sat on the bed. “Did you find the skinwalker you went looking for?”
“I did.”
“I’ll assume he helped you raise Sawyer, who then sent you here.”
“No,” I said. “According to Sani, Sawyer’s between worlds.”
“How did that happen?” Before I could answer, understanding dawned in Sanducci’s eyes. “You helped him.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Lizzy, you’ve never done anything you didn’t want to do in your entire life.”
“You’re wrong,” I said. “And you of all people should know it.”
Jimmy cursed softly.
Just as Jimmy had done things he had never shared with me, I’d done things I’d never shared with him. When you’re eight years old with nowhere to go and nothing to eat it’s surprising what you’ll agree to.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” he murmured.
“You think?”
He ignored my jab, probably because it came out sounding less like sarcasm and more like a serious question from the child I’d once been—scared to death but determined to let no one know it.
“You didn’t want to kill Sawyer,” he continued.
Surprise knocked all the words right out of me. Jimmy had been referring not to my childhood but to Sawyer. I had to take a few seconds to switch gears. When I did, I told him the truth.
“I wanted to kill Sawyer more than I ever wanted to do anything in my life.”
His face, which had been etched with shock and concern, smoothed out. “That was the demon, Lizzy, not you.”
“The blood was on my hands.” It had also been on my feet, my face, pretty much everywhere.
“When the demon’s driving, you aren’t really you.”
“I know that here.” I pointed to my head. “But here?” I laid my hand over my heart. “If good is stronger than evil, if love is stronger than hate, if I’m any kind of leader, I should have been able to stop myself.”
“Lizzy.” Jimmy shook his head.
I held up my hand like a crossing guard. “I realize that’s foolish. I know I had to do it. But still his death haunts me.”
Jimmy sighed. “Probably always will.”
Because I was hoping to find a way to end my eternal guilt, I didn’t answer. Jimmy would never go for it. He’d do everything he could to stop me from getting Sawyer back. So I wouldn’t tell him.
I wasn’t going to lie. Not that I wasn’t capable of it. But in this case, I didn’t have to. A half-truth would do the trick.
“Sawyer’s past the point of raising his ghost,” I said. “I tried. Sani tried. No dice.”
“Oh, well.” Jimmy shrugged. “Tough break.”
“Yeah. But Sani did give me a tip on something else.”
“What’s that?”
“The Book of Samyaza.”
Jimmy rolled his eyes. “Again with the book. Have you forgotten that no one’s ever seen the thing?”
“We will.”
He tilted his head. “When?”
“As soon as you help me steal it.”
“I don’t think it’s a very bright idea to steal Satan’s instruction booklet.”
“I think it’s the best idea I’ve had in months.”
“You sure about that?”
I wasn’t sure about anything—except that we had to get that book.
“This skinwalker,” Jimmy said. “How did he know Sawyer?”
“Sani trained him.”
“How is it that I’ve never heard of the guy then? Where has he been? Why isn’t he helping us?”
“He’s a little . . . trapped on the mountain.” Or he had been. I didn’t think it was advisable to admit that I’d set him free.
Jimmy lifted a brow. “Sawyer cursed him.”
“I’m sure he deserved it.”
“Unfortunately, most people tend to get pissy when they’re cursed, regardless of what they did to deserve it. You think Sani gave you good intel?”
I hadn’t thought. I’d just believed. And since I’d had the dream, vision, whatever about Jimmy hanging from that wall—
I turned away so he wouldn’t see my face, clasped my fingers together so he wouldn’t see my hands shake. I could stop all that, but I had to have Sawyer’s help, and no one, not even Sanducci, was going to prevent me from getting it.
“This Nephilim is keeping the Book of Samyaza safe for the Antichrist,” I said. “If we walk away, if we let the Prince of 666 possess it, he’ll be—”
“Invincible. I know.” Jimmy bit his lip, thinking.
I kept my mouth shut. Sanducci would come around to my point of view. Because as many arguments as there were against taking the book, the only truth that mattered was this: We could not allow the Nephilim to keep it.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll help you, but only if we do the plenus luna malum spell f
irst.”
My eyes widened. Plenus luna malum translated to “full moon evil”—a sex spell that confined evil beneath the moon. In other words, every month when the full moon rose Jimmy and I would be unable to control our vampire tendencies because we would have pushed all that violence into the single night when the moon grew round.
I fingered my collar. Once the spell was performed I could take the thing off because every other night of the month I’d be normal. Almost.
At first glance, the spell seemed like an excellent idea. However, upon further examination, the difficulties were apparent. If our vampires were only accessible one night a month, then any big bad getting its jollies from stomping on Tokyo would just keep stomping until the full moon rose and Jimmy and I were strong enough to kill it.
Also, when the vampire was confined to a single night it became stronger and more vicious, and when it was released the only way to control it was with powerful magic. The kind of magic only a few beings possessed—like Sawyer and me. If I was batshit at the time and Sawyer was dead, we were going to have problems.
Another very good reason for raising him.
“Why should we perform the spell before we steal the book?” I asked. “We might need the extra push of a badass vampire to get it.”
“We can handle things.”
“Still, it might be better to wait until we have the book before we confine our demons.” Just in case.
“We should not get anywhere near the Book of Samyaza with demons inside us. Who knows what a manuscript dictated by Satan might do to them.”
I didn’t like the images that tumbled through my brain at his words. We didn’t know. We might touch the cover and suddenly be compelled to remove our controls and join the other side. If the Nephilim owned Jimmy and me, plus that book, the world was more screwed than usual.
“You’ve been begging to reconfine your vampire since I let it out, but Ruthie said no,” I pointed out. “What changed her mind?”
Jimmy didn’t answer.
“You never asked her.” He shrugged. “She isn’t going to like it.”
“I thought you were in charge now.”
“I thought I was, too,” I muttered. But every day I discovered how delusional that thought was.
“If you want that book,” Jimmy said, “then we do the spell.”
“You’d really let the Nephilim keep it if I don’t agree?”
He looked me straight in the eye. “I really would.”
He seemed serious, but there was only one way to find out for sure. Quick as a March wind, I brushed my hand along his, and got a flash of him and Summer rolling across the sheets naked. I snatched my fingers back.
“You did that on purpose,” I accused.
“Stay out of my head. I’ve got a helluva lot of stuff in there you don’t want to see.”
Of that I had no doubt.
“Fine,” I snapped. “I agree. But there’s just one problem. I don’t know the plenus luna malum spell.”
Jimmy’s lips curved. “I do.”
“How did you—?” I began, and then I knew. “Summer.” She’d do anything he asked.
But Jimmy was shaking his head. “She didn’t tell me, I—” He shrugged and pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket. “—figured I might need it later and wrote it down.”
“Why didn’t you just tell her to do you again,” I muttered.
“I’m having trust issues. Call me silly, but I’d prefer not to let the soul-selling fairy perform an encore of sexual magic on me.”
“When do we do this?”
“Beneath the moon.” Jimmy glanced at the window. Sun poured through the glass like honey. “Tonight.”
“Okay.” I was suddenly uneasy. This was a sex spell. Jimmy and I hadn’t had sex since—
My mind shied away from those memories. We’d been having a lot of vamp sex lately. Extremely good, but also violent. Blood and lust, pain and desire were, for a vampire, all rolled together so tightly as to be indistinguishable.
“After we—” I began, but I couldn’t finish. “You know. Then we’ll deal with Mait.”
Jimmy stilled. “Mait? The sosye?”
“Huh?”
“The wizard,” he translated. “Haitian?”
“Yes. I thought he was a sorcerer.”
“Sorcerer.” Jimmy flipped one hand palm up. “Wizard.” He flipped it palm down. “Same difference.”
“You know him?” I asked.
“He’s the one who got away.”
“From what?”
“Me,” he snapped.
“That happens?”
“Har-har.”
“Well, you did say he was the one. You didn’t go after him? Hunt him down like a dog. Devote your life. Become obsessed. Never give up, never give in.”
“Fuck you,” Jimmy said.
“We’ll get to that.”
He winced, and I almost felt bad. Then he opened his mouth . . . and I felt worse. “It was the first year I was away from—”
Breaking off, he looked out the window, suddenly fascinated with the freckles of golden sunlight on the wrought-iron balcony.
“Ruthie,” I supplied. “The first year you were away from Ruthie.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I was in training.” He stopped, and it appeared that he was having a hard time going on, so I helped him again. Training for DKs and seers meant—
“Sawyer.”
Jimmy had never admitted outright that he’d trained with Sawyer, though I’d gotten hints of it from things he’d said. I wasn’t sure what had happened between them, but whatever it had been there remained an unrelenting animosity that I’d never been able to get to the bottom of with either one.
“You were in training with Sawyer,” I pressed.
Jimmy cleared his throat. “You know how that was.” This time I winced. For me, training with Sawyer had been a bizarre combination of hand-to-hand combat, magic, and sex. I didn’t think Jimmy’s had been similar, but if it had that would explain why Jimmy never stopped wanting him dead.
“Constant running, swimming, jumping, fighting,” Jimmy continued. “Very little food. No sleep. And weird stuff happening all the time.”
I nodded, my chest feeling less strangled when he didn’t mention seduction, sex, or worse.
“He said I was ready, and he sent me after a sosye.”
“Mait,” I murmured. “What happened?”
“Guy kicked my ass and left me for dead.”
“If he meant for you to be dead, you would be.”
“He didn’t know what I was.”
In other words Mait had killed Jimmy once, and for a dhampir once is not enough.
“How do you kill a sosye?” I asked.
“Charmed dagger through the left eye.”
“Ew.” Still—“Doesn’t seem that difficult.”
“You wanna try it?”
I was probably going to have to.
“You’ll have better luck than me,” Jimmy continued.
“Why’s that?”
“Magic. You’ve got it.”
“So does Mait. He had no trouble shoving what magic I tried right back in my face. I might possess the power, but I don’t possess a clue of how to use it.”
“That’s okay.”
“No,” I said. “It really isn’t.” I’d killed for this power. I should at least be able to do something beyond smacking people without even touching them. Although that was handy.
“There’s a charm that will protect you,” Jimmy said.
“From the protection demon?”
“I’ve been studying ways to take this guy out for years. I know what I’m doing.”
I guess he had been obsessed, and that obsession made Jimmy the best choice to help with Mait. Which was probably why Ruthie had sent him.
“I always wondered if Sawyer wanted Mait to get away,” Jimmy mused.
“Why would he want that?”
“Who knows with him.”
“I’m a DK. I’m supposed to follow the instructions of my seer without question. Dicking around will get innocent people killed.”
“What if Mait was a test of your abilities? Sawyer couldn’t exactly let the guy die if he was helping train federation members.”
“Nephilim who help?” Jimmy snorted. “Since when?”
“I don’t know. But Mait didn’t kill you. There’s gotta be a reason. Just like there’s a reason Sawyer didn’t tell you all you needed to know.”
“Besides him wanting me dead?”
“He didn’t even know you yet.” Not that knowing Sanducci ever prevented anyone from wanting him dead.
“He knew enough.”
I wondered what that meant, but knew better than to ask.
“I still think Mait was a training test. He was probably a friend of Sawyer’s.”
“A Nephilim friend of Sawyer’s who’s now protecting evil’s version of The Idiot’s Guide to the Apocalypse.” Jimmy scratched his chin, which had taken on a bluish tinge from at least two days’ growth of beard. “Strangely enough, that’s an explanation I can get behind. I was never quite certain Sawyer wasn’t playing both sides of this war.”
I hadn’t been, either, until he’d died for us.
But I was never going to convince Jimmy that Sawyer was anything other than an enigma, so I wasn’t going to try.
“What do you know about sosyes?” I asked.
“Haitian wizards,” Jimmy said. “They command night demons, which are—”
“Creepy shadow birds that fly right through you and peck your insides raw.”
“You’ve met.”
“Oh, yeah. How the hell do we kill them?”
“Mait dies, they do.”
“Otherwise?”
“They don’t.”
“Of course not,” I muttered. “Go on.”
“A sosye is part witch and part loa, a voodoo god.”
“If he’s Nephilim he’s part demon,” I pointed out.
“In the old days, people had to have a word they used to refer to those beings with supernatural powers. Sometimes they called them gods. In Mait’s case, his father was Kalfu, ruler of the night spirits.”
Chaos Bites Page 19
