by Amber Benson
I knew the feeling. Daniel was a master at making me so mad I wanted to punch him.
“Whatcha want to talk about?” I asked finally, after we’d stood there kind of grinning at each other for a while. Whatever feelings my question called up inside Daniel, it made him instantly tense up, his jaw tightening like a screw.
“The Ender of Death, I mean, Marcel—”
“What about him?” I interrupted.
Daniel ran a hand through his hair, making the cowlick at the crown of his head stick up.
“Well, let’s just say I was really pleased to hear that Jarvis had taken some precautions.”
“What? You mean the bodyguards?”
Daniel nodded.
“And Runt, of course. She’s a better watchdog than any human bodyguard.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, looking across the yard where Runt was sprawled underneath the moonlit shadow of an Egyptian obelisk.
“What do you think hellhounds do, Cal?” Daniel said, scrunching his eyes together with curiosity.
“I don’t know,” I stammered. “They hang out in Hell … I don’t know. Tell me.”
Daniel laughed—and his entire face lit up.
“They’re the greatest guard dogs in the universe. Why else do you think the Devil had Cerberus guarding one of the Gates of Hell?”
I’d actually never stopped to think about it before, but what Daniel said made sense. Runt had been guarding me in some capacity or other from the very first day we met. Without her, I’d have been mincemeat many times over. She must’ve realized we were talking about her because she sat up and started thumping her tail.
“She’s a really great and powerful supernatural creature, Cal,” Daniel continued. “And she’s chosen to stay on Earth and look after you.”
There was something underneath what Daniel was saying, something I was in the dark about.
“What else could she be doing … if she weren’t, you know, looking after me like you just said?”
“She would be in Hell with her family, helping us clean the place up again after—” Daniel said, but I cut him off.
“You said she’d be with her family,” I blurted out. “Don’t you just mean her dad?”
Daniel looked at my quizzically.
“Runt has a whole family down in Hell—brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins. She’s part of a very large hellhound tribe.”
I was shocked. No one had ever told me that Runt came from a whole tribe of hellhounds, all of whom probably missed the crap out of her. I felt terrible. I’d unwittingly forced her into staying on Earth when, of course, she’d no doubt want to be back in Hell with her family if she’d been given her druthers.
“I had no idea,” I said, the positive vibe I’d been grooving on quickly dissipating. “No one ever said anything to me before.”
Daniel reached over and squeezed my arm—but it felt like an empty gesture, something you did when the other person was too wrapped up in themselves to see reality.
“She wants to be here with you,” he said.
I shrugged his hand away then took off his jacket and handed it back to him. He seemed confused by my abrupt mood change.
“Cal, what did I say?”
“Nothing.” I shrugged, my tone flat. “Go on with what you were saying about the Ender of Death.”
It took Daniel a moment to catch up.
“Uhm, well, I wanted you to understand the danger you were in,” he began.
“Already on it,” I replied. “Anything else?”
My moodiness made him uncomfortable. He started to shift back and forth on the balls of his feet nervously.
“As your diametric opposite, Marcel is at the zenith of his power for the next twenty-four hours,” he said, lowering his voice so only I could hear him. “That means he’s gonna come gunning for you while you’re at your weakest.”
“Everyone is at their weakest right now,” I mumbled.
“That’s true,” Daniel nodded. “Magic isn’t accessible and so the power that protects our immortality wanes, but I don’t think anyone here is as vulnerable as you are.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I shot back. My teeth were starting to chatter, but I clamped them together so he wouldn’t see how cold I was.
“You have a lot of enemies, Cal,” Daniel said, his tone hardening. “Whether you want to hear this or not, it’s true. There are a lot of people who would wish you dead.”
“Okay, this conversation is officially over,” I said, waving his words away.
“Cal—”
“Nope, I don’t want to hear any more,” I said, starting to walk away. “Runt, let’s go!”
Runt didn’t need to be told twice. She was beside me so fast I hardly had time to miss her.
“I’m not letting you walk by yourself,” Daniel said, catching up to us as we traipsed down the path, the darkness like a living, breathing creature all around us.
“Fine, do what you want,” I said then proceeded to ignore him.
We walked in silence for a few minutes, Runt’s panting and the crunch of gravel under my heels our only accompaniment. Suddenly, Daniel was grabbing my arm and yanking me back from the path and into the shadow of a neighboring hedge.
“What—” I tried to say, but Daniel put a finger to his lips, miming for me to be silent. When I’d calmed down enough that he trusted me to actually be quiet, he lifted his hand and pointed to a spot just beyond the hedge where two people stood, their identities hidden in the shadowy folds of the semidarkened statuary garden.
“Who are they?” I mouthed, but Daniel only shook his head and shrugged.
“Not sure,” he whispered.
We watched as the figures moved in closer to one another, their shadows starting to blend together until they weren’t two people anymore, but one.
“Are they …” I asked.
“Kissing, yes,” he whispered back at me, nodding.
Runt whined at our feet. She didn’t like us hiding in a hedge and spying on people, and I had to agree with her, it wasn’t the classiest way to spend an evening. I did feel a tad bit like a voyeur, staring out at the kissing couple from the privacy of a hedge, but the lure of being so close to Daniel held me in place.
Like everything that concerned Daniel, I was completely ambivalent. One minute I was so mad at him I could spit, the next I was trying to stand as close to him as humanly possible. God, it really wasn’t fair.
The hoot of an owl jerked the necking couple out of their embrace and they pulled away from each other with the abruptness of two people caught doing something illicit. It gave me the feeling that whoever they were, they weren’t supposed to be here under cover of darkness, making out with each other.
The owl hooted as it landed on a tree branch high above us, shaking the leaves so they allowed a ray of moonlight to pierce the inky night, revealing the identity of one of the shadowy figures. For a fleeting moment, I saw the bewildered visage of Alameda Jones as plain as day, her honeyed skin and flashing eyes unmistakable in the opalescent glow of the moonlight. She blinked as the tree shuddered once more and then the owl took off, the branch it had settled on snapping back into place and blocking the moonlit ray’s progress once more.
“Alameda Jones,” I mouthed to Daniel, who nodded his agreement. He’d seen her face, too.
But when I looked back again after the brief exchange, I saw that the couple had disappeared. If I hadn’t had Daniel and Runt there with me to verify what I’d just seen, I’d have thought it was a hallucination. No matter where I looked, there was no sign anyone had been standing there at all, let alone had had a secret assignation right in front of my eyes.
“Where’d they go?” I whispered to Daniel.
“Don’t know,” he said. “It’s like they vanished into thin air.”
We spent a few minutes trudging through the underbrush, looking for an escape route, but we found nothing—and it was strange to think no magic had b
een used to cover up their flight.
“I think we should get you back to your room,” Daniel said finally, after we’d exhausted all avenues. To my surprise, even Runt’s powerful sniffer hadn’t been able to trace their path.
“I wonder who her special friend is,” I said out loud as we picked our way back to the path, trying not to knock over any of the precariously perched marble busts that littered the statuary garden.
“Well, he was taller than her, so that leaves out Yum Cimil, Uriah Drood, and Fabian Lazarev,” Runt chimed in.
“Good use of deductive reasoning,” I said, giving her a quick pat on the head.
“It can’t be Daniel because he’s here with us,” she continued. “Oh, and it might’ve been a tall woman.”
The only tall women I could think of were Caoimhe—and Morrigan.
“Morrigan, maybe?” Daniel pitched in, thinking along the same lines. I smiled back at him just as the Moroccan elegance of Casa de la Luna rose ahead of us like a beacon.
“Well, this is our stop,” I offered as we stepped off the path and into the courtyard leading to our room.
“Thanks for talking to me, Cal,” Daniel said, all seriousness now. “I was really worried about you.”
“I’m fine,” I said as we crossed the courtyard, the darkness pushed far into the corners of the building by the bright outdoor lighting.
The other bodyguard was standing a few feet away from the door as we approached. He gave us a brief nod then went back to his original position: bodyguard statue.
“I’ll see ya later, alligator,” I said as I took my own key from the front pocket of my maid’s uniform and unlocked the door. Turning the knob, I eased the door open so Runt could pad inside ahead of me.
As the light from the open door hit Daniel, illuminating his wistful countenance, I felt my heart melt into mush inside my chest and the need to be close to him overwhelmed me. Sensing my mood, he stepped away from the doorway.
“I have to go.”
Giving me a slight wave, he swiveled on his heel and walked back out into the night. I looked over at the bodyguard, wondering what he’d made of our little good-bye, but I couldn’t read anything on the man’s face.
“Nice night,” I said, but the bodyguard merely nodded. I guess engaging in idle conversation with the gal you were supposed to be guarding wasn’t in the job description.
I sighed, looking out into the darkness, hoping to catch one last glimpse of Daniel, but he was gone—and I was alone again, left to wallow in my screwed-up relationship misery all by my lonesome.
I went back inside and shut the door, luxuriating in the warmth of the heated room. Runt was curled up on her bed, trying not to look curious about my talk with Daniel, but failing miserably.
“I’m so tired,” I yawned. “Let’s talk about Daniel in the morning.”
Runt’s tail started thumping against the comforter as I rummaged around in my carryall, pulling out some soft red cotton Paul Frank pajamas to wear to bed.
“He still likes you, you know,” Runt said, hopping off the bed and following me into the bathroom—and I knew I wasn’t going to get out of this interrogation so easily.
“Hey, I’m gonna take a bath—”
“You can talk while you bathe,” Runt said, as if that solved everything.
“Grr,” I growled, shutting the bathroom door behind us. “You’re a pain in the butt.”
Runt curled up in a ball on the bath mat and waited for me to dish.
“Well,” I said, taking off the maid’s uniform and folding it into a neat square that I placed on the back of the toilet. “He was worried about me…”
Runt snorted and banged her tail unhappily.
“I heard that part, Cal. What else did he say?”
I sighed, reaching into the tub and turning both taps on high. I waited for the water to get hot then I dropped the plug into the drain and stepped into the watery warmth. As I eased myself into the tub, pressing my back against the cool porcelain, I tried to get my bearings. What exactly had my conversation with Daniel meant?
“I think he might … miss me,” I said, my voice almost drowned out by the sound of the running water from the faucet.
“I think so, too.” Runt agreed. “He didn’t want to go. He wanted to stay and talk to you all night.”
I grinned, pleased Runt had gotten the same impression I had.
“But why didn’t he want to talk about Coy?” I said.
“I don’t know. Maybe he felt guilty about bringing her here for the Death Dinner.”
“He was probably banging her at the Masquerade Ball.” I sighed, lowering myself so only my eyes and nose were above the rising waterline.
“I don’t think so,” Runt said. “Daniel’s not like that.”
I wanted her to be right. I wanted him to be the kind of guy who eschewed group orgies in the middle of ancient French caves, but I wasn’t so sure. I reached up and grabbed the bottle of peach shampoo I’d left on the side of the tub with my other toiletries earlier in the evening and squirted some of it into my hand, lathering it into my hair.
“I think you just have to have a little faith, Callie,” Runt said as she laid her chin down on her outstretched paws. “Sometimes things have a way of working out—even when you least expect them to.”
I took a washcloth from the ledge of the soap dish and poured some body wash into its cottony folds, rubbing it together until it was a white foamy mess. As I lathered my body, I couldn’t help wishing Daniel were in the other room waiting for me.
Leave it to the hellhound pup to be the wisest person in the room, I thought wryly as I dunked my head under the water and disappeared into the soapy oblivion of my bath.
fourteen
Still wet from the bath, my body felt completely relaxed as I slid into the soft cotton pajamas I’d brought into the bathroom with me. I’d stayed in the tub far longer than I’d intended, not getting out until the water was tepid. Then I’d pulled the plug and watched the dirty liquid whirl down the drain as I wrapped my hair in the thick white bath towel I’d dried off with, and then padded over to the sink.
I’d been in the bathroom for such a long time that Runt had fallen asleep on the bath mat, the rise and fall of her breathing the only indication she was still among the living. I stepped over her and she whined in her sleep, but didn’t wake up, her eyes flicking back and forth underneath her eyelids. I plugged my hair dryer into the electrical socket and turned it on, the superheated air blowing a hole in the fog that coated the mirror so I saw half of my face in fuzzy reflection. I pulled the towel off my head, draping it over the towel rack to dry, then proceeded to burn my scalp with the blow-dryer.
“Crap!” I yelped, turning the dryer to low.
My yelp and the noise from the hair dryer finally woke Runt up and she yawned, squeaking as she stretched out across the floor.
“What time is it?” she asked over the drone of the dryer, raising herself onto her haunches and shaking her head, her ears flopping back and forth.
I had no idea what time it was. I assumed it was pretty late since the dinner hadn’t officially started at midnight like it was supposed to and it had gone on for what seemed like forever—but since I never wore a watch, anything I said would only be a guesstimate.
“Not sure,” I said, turning the hair dryer off and unplugging it even though my hair was still slightly damp. “I’ll go check.”
I opened the bathroom door, the steamy air eddying out in front of me, and took a step into the bedroom. I didn’t take another one. Instead, I froze where I stood, my hand wrapped around the bathroom doorknob, my body unable to move. It took me ten seconds to process what I was seeing and then ten more to actually get my mouth to start working again.
“Runt?” I whispered, my voice trembling. “We need to go get Jarvis.”
“What’s wrong, Cal?” Runt said, padding out of the bathroom. “It smells like blood—”
Damn right it smelled like blood�
�because there was a growing pool of the stuff seeping out of the beheaded corpse lying facedown and spread-eagled across our bedroom floor.
“Who is it?” Runt whispered, staying as close to me as she could, her tail between her legs.
I knew exactly who it was. I’d recognized the dress as soon as I’d come out of the bathroom. It was made of dark green sequins, and when I’d last seen it, it had barely covered the well-proportioned body wearing it. Even now, amid all the carnage, it was hanging off one supple shoulder, revealing a tanned chunk of shoulder blade and side boob.
