So when she’d asked me to come out for dinner and casually added, “Oh, and bring Kane if you like,” the invitation seemed nothing short of miraculous.
“You’ll do fine,” I said. “Gwen is the world’s most gracious hostess.”
And Kane was the world’s most charming werewolf. It wasn’t just his good looks—silver hair, gray eyes, and a bestill-my-heart smile. It wasn’t just the coiled strength that radiated from his muscular body and gave grace to his movements. It was who he was, the way he combined the best of everything human—a passionate belief in justice, true concern for his fellow beings, an appreciation of the finer things—with the power and sensuality of his beast.
Hmm. An extended lust feast did sound tempting right now.
At the far end of the block, we reached the second checkpoint, the one into human-controlled Boston. Here, the guard was human, but his scowl made him look scarier than the zombie we’d just encountered. Again, we presented our IDs. I also passed over a sheaf of papers for the guard to inspect. Lately, restrictions had been tight on Deadtown residents who wanted to venture out of Boston’s paranormal-only section into the wider world. I’d spent half the morning filling out forms so we’d have the required permits to drive out to Needham for dinner.
The guard shuffled our papers, taking way longer than seemed necessary to rubber-stamp our permits. Everything was in order; I’d double-checked to make sure. But sometimes you got a jerk at the checkpoint. A lot of the norm border guards were card-carrying members of Humans First, a political action committee whose goal was to expel all paranormals from Massachusetts. If this bozo was one of that crowd, I’d bet he recognized Kane and was slowing us down on purpose. Kane’s white knuckles on the steering wheel showed that was his opinion, too.
I wanted to tell the jerk to hurry up, that we had places to go. But this guy could refuse to let us pass, for any reason or for no reason at all. So I waited and didn’t say anything.
Finally the guard returned our documents and raised the gate. Once we’d gone through, Kane blew out a long breath.
“Asshole,” he muttered.
I knew what he was thinking. Kane was trying to get a paranormal-rights case in front of the Supreme Court, to establish federal-level rights for PAs (short for “Paranormal Americans,” Kane’s preferred term for what everyone else called “monsters”). His case had been postponed when the court’s chief justice, Carol Frederickson, was murdered. But if the case went forward and Kane won—a big if, in my opinion—PAs could live anywhere. We could vote, travel, do anything the norms could do. Checkpoints like the ones in and out of Deadtown would be a thing of the past. And so would asshole border guards.
“It’s worse at night,” I said. “That’s when they put all the Humans First hardliners on duty.” I’d had no trouble crossing the border on my way to and from today’s job.
“It’s more than that,” Kane said. “Haven’t you listened to the news today?” He clicked on the radio.
A man’s voice was in the middle of relating the gory details of Boston’s latest murder. Of course I’d heard about that—everybody had. In the past three days, two bodies had been discovered in the South End. The first, sprawled in a park near Rutland Square among the just-blooming crocuses, had been bad—sliced up beyond recognition, with strange symbols carved into the victim’s flesh—but nobody freaked out too much. Boston’s a big city; murders happen. Then, less than forty-eight hours later, in the wee hours between last night and this morning, another victim was found a few blocks away. The second victim had been dumped in the middle of Harrison Avenue, not far from Boston Medical Center. The cops refused to say whether the killings were related, but no one had any doubts. A serial killer stalked Boston. Some reporter for the Herald had even come up with a nickname, based on leaked information that the killer used a curved blade, like a sickle: the South End Reaper.
The newscaster continued: “Boston Police commissioner Fred Hampson has put code-red restrictions in place on Designated Area 1, popularly called Deadtown.” Code red—no wonder that guard had taken so long with our papers. Code red meant zombies couldn’t leave Deadtown at all; no permits would be issued for them under any circumstances. And it tightened restrictions on the movements of other paranormals between dusk and dawn. I’d thought I was going for overkill on the forms I’d filled out this morning. Apparently, I’d done just the right amount.
The possibility of a serial killer worried me. Not because I expected the South End Reaper to jump out of the shadows, slashing at me with a curved blade. I could take care of myself in a knife fight. I patted the dagger sheathed inside my kneehigh boot, thought of the other two tucked in my purse. In my world, “be prepared” was more than just the Boy Scout motto. No, I was worried there might be a supernatural force driving this killer, a force darker and more deadly than anything the norms could imagine.
A month ago, a really nasty demi-demon named Pryce Maddox had attempted to lead demons out of their own plane to overrun the human world. Pryce called himself my cousin—a far-fetched claim—but even if we were related, he was a thoroughly rotten branch of the family tree. Believing that an ancient prophecy pointed to his own ascendancy over both the demon and the human realms, Pryce had busied himself freeing the Morfran, a spirit of insatiable, destructive hunger that’s the essence of all demons. My Cerddorion ancestors had imprisoned much of the Morfran deep underground in an old slate mine, binding it inside the stone. Pryce had discovered the spell to release it, and he believed various signs indicated the time was right for him to set the Morfran free. As the Morfran fed, demons would grow stronger—and the demon plane would no longer contain them.
Free-floating Morfran takes the form of monstrous crows that rip and tear at their victims with cruel beaks. Crows are carrion eaters, and Boston’s two thousand zombies looked like an all-you-can eat buffet to the ravenous Morfran. Pryce sent the spirit there to feed. At an open-air concert, to celebrate Paranormal Appreciation Day, the Morfran had attacked, killing nearly a dozen zombies before I managed to trap it again. Or most of it; some of the Morfran got away. And when the Morfran possesses a human, the spirit drives that person to kill—over and over and over.
If the South End Reaper was Morfran-possessed, could Pryce be behind it? The last time I’d seen my demi-demon “cousin,” he’d been lying on the ground, alive but little more than an empty shell. During our fight, I’d killed Pryce’s demon half, leaving his human form comatose. And then Pryce’s body had disappeared. The two human cops who’d been guarding him were dead, every drop of blood sucked from their bodies. It was how the Old Ones, those über-vampires my roommate Juliet feared, killed their prey.
It seemed clear the Old Ones had taken Pryce—but why? Demons and vampires didn’t get along. Even if the Old Ones could revive Pryce, what would they want with him? Pryce was thoroughly evil and cared for no one but himself. Besides his ambitions to subject the human world to demons, he’d tried three times to kill me—and that was to test whether I was “worthy” to be raped and forced to bear his child. Personally, I hoped the Old Ones had drained Pryce dry, as they’d done to those cops. I hoped I’d never see or hear of Pryce again. And I hoped the South End Reaper was just some run-of-the-mill psychopathic killer, with no ties to demi-demons, the Morfran, or the Old Ones.
But as we drove through the night, the voices on the radio edging toward hysteria, a quieter voice inside me whispered that any such hopes were utterly foolish.
3
GWEN GREETED ME AT HER FRONT DOOR WITH A WARM hug. Hints of Italian herbs underlay her expensive perfume. My throat got a lump as it hit me how much I’d missed her. It had been too long. The strength of her hug showed she thought so, too.
She stepped back and offered a hand to Kane, welcoming him. Nick, Gwen’s husband, repeated the routine—a hug for me, a handshake for Kane—and took our coats.
“Where are the kids?” I asked, stepping into the living room. As soon as I cleared the doorway M
aria, my eleven-year-old niece, rocketed over and threw her arms around me. I stroked her fine blonde hair and kissed the top of her head. She was getting so tall.
“I see you found Maria,” Gwen said. “The boys are already in bed.” The boys meant Zack, six, and Justin, who was two. “That’s why I invited you for a late dinner, so I could wrestle the little hooligans into bed and have a grown-up evening for a change.” She put a hand on Maria’s shoulder and drew her back a step. “And that’s why Maria is on her way to bed, too.”
“But Mom, I want to talk to Aunt Vicky.”
“We agreed you could say hello, and then you’d go to bed. No arguments. Remember?”
“Yeah.” Maria looked at the floor.
Kane came forward, holding out his hand. “Hi, Maria,” he said. “I’m Kane. Vicky’s told me lots about you.” He smiled. “All of it good.”
Maria squinted at him, giving him the once-over, as she shook his hand solemnly. “Are you Vicky’s boyfriend?”
He and I exchanged a glance, and his eyes were so full of warmth and light I melted a little inside.
“Yes,” we said together.
Maria nodded, and her serious expression morphed into a grin. “Okay.”
A timer dinged. Gwen looked toward the kitchen door. “ That’s the lasagna,” she said. “Upstairs now, Maria. I’ll come up in a minute to say good night. Then you can read for a bit, but lights out by nine, all right?”
“Okay, Mom.”
Gwen squeezed the girl’s shoulder and went into the kitchen.
Maria stood on tiptoe to plant a kiss on my cheek. “Come back soon, okay? When it’s not just for grown-ups.”
“I will. But you listen to your mom now.”
She nodded, said good night to Kane and her dad, and climbed the stairs.
“Who wants a drink?” Nick asked.
Nick poured me my usual club soda. Kane had a Scotch. (His werewolf metabolism would burn off that, plus any wine served with dinner, long before it was time to drive home.) Gwen returned and announced that dinner would be on the table in fifteen minutes.
Conversation flowed easily. Kane asked Nick about his work in a downtown Boston investment firm and talked knowledgeably with Gwen about the novel her book club was reading. Once we moved into the dining room, he admired the table and complimented the food. She caught my eye and touched her chin as she tucked her hair behind her right ear, a signal we’d developed in high school. It meant, “This guy’s a good one.”
Halfway through dinner, the conversation slowed down for a minute. During the pause, Kane turned to Gwen.
“I enjoyed meeting your aunt last month,” he said.
Gwen stiffened, but Kane didn’t notice.
Oh, no. Don’t bring up Mab. Not when everything was going so well. I tried to kick him under the table and missed.
“I don’t think—” I began, but he talked over me.
“Wales is such a beautiful country, and her home is magnificent. I know Vicky used to visit Mab every summer. Did you also spend a lot of time with your aunt when you were growing up?”
Gwen’s face was ghost white. She bit her lip, and I could almost hear her mentally count to ten. Very precisely, she laid her fork on the edge of her plate. “We do not mention that woman’s name in this house.”
Kane froze. Then he glanced at me, perplexed.
Damn it, I should’ve warned him. I’d been so caught up in thoughts of Pryce and the Morfran and the South End Reaper that it hadn’t occurred to me to tell Kane to leave Mab out of the conversation. My aunt had trained me as a demon fighter; I’d been her apprentice for seven years. She was tough and strict and rarely showed her emotions, but I loved her like a second mother. Kane had liked Mab, too, during his brief visit to Wales. He’d never have suspected how much my sister hated her.
There was no way I could explain it now.
Kane’s eyes darted back and forth between me and Gwen. Nick reached over and put his hand on Gwen’s, but my sister stared at her plate like she was trying to set it on fire with her eyes. The silence extended, then graduated to a whole new level of awkward. I flailed around for a safe topic.
“Gwen,” I said, reaching for the bread basket, “this bread is delicious. Did you get it from that new Italian bakery near the train station?”
She looked at the basket in my hand as if she’d never seen such a thing before, then blinked and nodded. “Yes, I did. And the tiramisu we’re having for dessert, too.”
“Ooh, yum. I love tiramisu,” I said, so heartily I almost peeked into the demon plane to see if any stray wisps of Gluttony clung to me. But of course Gluttony wasn’t the problem.
Nick came to the rescue—or tried to. “So,” he asked Kane, “do you think the Celtics are going to make it to the playoffs this year?”
Kane is a workaholic who doesn’t know the meaning of the phrase “spare time”—he’s too busy crusading for paranormal rights. It would never occur to him to go to a basketball game or other sporting event for fun. But sports sometimes tied in to his work, and he kept up enough to discuss whatever sport was in season when he was schmoozing with influential people. Just last week he’d taken a couple of congressmen to a Celtics game, courtside seats and everything.
Kane and Nick talked about basketball for several minutes. Nick was enthusiastic, certain the Celts would go all the way this year. Kane made some informed comments, but mostly he listened to Nick, who glowed with pleasure as he reeled off statistics.
Gwen, on the other hand, seemed to have lost her appetite, pushing food around her plate. Kane kept glancing her way. He wrapped up the conversation with Nick by inviting him to a game—courtside seats again—in a couple of weeks.
Whoa. Courtside seats. My brother-in-law rated as highly as a senator. That must mean Kane . . . My commitment-shy brain dug in its heels and refused to go down that path.
Kane turned to Gwen. “Do your kids like sports? Any budding basketball stars in the family?” Smart move, bringing Gwen back into the conversation by asking about her kids. It was a topic my sister and her husband could discuss for hours.
“Not basketball.” Gwen looked up slowly. “Not yet, anyway. Nick promised Zachary he’d teach him to shoot baskets when he gets a little taller. But Zack is only six, so he’s got quite a bit of growing to do.”
“He’s a pretty good shot with that kid-sized basketball hoop we got him,” Nick pointed out.
“Oh, and you should see him when Nick lifts him up and lets him shoot at the hoop over the garage.” The image made Gwen smile. “He’s so cute when you do that.” She turned back to Kane, her face softened with pride in her kids. “Zack and Maria both play soccer, although I think Maria is going to give up soccer for ballet. She’s crazy about dance. She says she still wants to play softball this spring, though. She’s a good shortstop.”
“She’s a terrific shortstop,” Nick corrected. “You would not believe this one play she made last season . . .” He launched into a description, Gwen jumping in here and there with more details.
Kane listened, asking the right questions in the right places. Soon, the stiffness had melted from Gwen’s shoulders and she was laughing and enjoying the conversation again. Crisis averted. No wonder Kane was so good at his job. He was a master at getting people to relax and open up.
In my peripheral vision, the kitchen door cracked open and Maria peered through. I pointed at Gwen to ask whether she wanted me to get her mom’s attention, but Maria’s eyes widened and she shook her head vigorously. She pointed at me, and then crooked her finger.
I stood and picked up my plate. Gwen pushed back her chair, but I put a hand on her shoulder. “You sit and talk,” I said. “I’ll clear the table. Everyone want coffee? I’ll get that started, too.”
“The tiramisu—”
“I’ll take care of it. You worked hard putting together a great dinner. I can handle dessert.”
Balancing the stack of dirty dishes, I shouldered open the swinging do
or into the kitchen. Maria sat at the table in her PJs. She slumped in her chair, one bare foot swinging back and forth.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi.” She glanced at me, then examined her hands.
“So what did you want to talk about?”
She shrugged and chewed at a thumbnail.
Okay. Maybe she didn’t know how to broach the topic, whatever it was. I’d let her get to it in her own time. I slid the plates onto Gwen’s spotless counter. “Aren’t you supposed to be in bed?”
“Yeah.”
“I think I hear a ‘but’ coming.”
“But . . .” A faint smile curled her lips, then faded away. “I couldn’t sleep.” She murmured her next words so softly I almost missed them. “I’m scared to.”
I turned on the water at the sink. “How about you rinse, and I’ll load the dishwasher?”
“Okay.” She got up and padded over to where I stood. Her small feet looked cold on the tile floor, so I moved over to make room on the rug in front of the sink. We worked for a minute or two in silence, Maria squinting at each plate with concentration.
“Bad dreams, huh?” I asked.
She gave half a nod, then shook her head. “Not bad. Some of them are good. But they’re weird.”
Now we were getting to it. “Weird how?”
“It’s like I’m not me anymore.” Worry clouded her face as she handed me a plate. “Mom said I should tell her if I have dreams like that.”
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