“I was joking.”
“You’re blushing, Delilah. It makes your freckles glow.”
“It does not!” Dee laughed. “Maybe a little.” She gestured around the room. “What I saw was this. You and me and a lot of sex.” She looked into her coffee cup. A pity it wasn’t tea with dregs of leaves to interpret. “I thought it was my imagination. I didn’t think I was given to visions. I was wrong.”
He smiled at her. It was gentle, understanding, wry. It warmed her heart, melted her worries away, gave her confidence. It teased a return smile from her, a warm connection with this—other half of her soul.
His smile disappeared almost instantly.
He took a deep breath and his pain stretched between them.
Dee wanted to take him in her arms, but she stayed where she was. “Tell me.”
“This is hard.”
“Suck it up, soldier.”
Jake scratched his ear. He started to speak a couple times, then finally looked her in the eye. “I’ve told you about my brothers. Melchor died in a fight with Clan Primes. He was defending what Levi did. Levi was wrong no matter how—”
“What did Levi do?”
“He killed a Reynard Clan female. We can’t afford to kill the mothers of our species. Levi never had any filters. He always did just what he wanted to do, and declared it was for the good of the Tribe even when it was his temper going out of control. It wasn’t for the good of the Tribe when what he did got us turned out and hunted down by Clans, Families, and Tribes. We were so screwed. You know that I turned myself in but the others died.”
“Giving you tremendous survivor’s guilt.”
“As you have noticed.”
“How does your family figure into your vision?”
“Melchor,” he said. “I thought I saw my brother Melchor. When I said he was dead, he told me that he wasn’t dead everywhere. And I’ve been seeing him, or almost seeing him, whenever I look into a mirror ever since. And sometime I think I hear Levi calling to me.” He folded his hands together on the tabletop. “Tell me, my dearest witch, what does your romantic premonition and my survivor’s guilt have to do with our assignment?”
“And let us not forget the earthquakes,” she added. And whatever else he’d seen that he still hadn’t decided to tell her. “All of it must come together somehow.”
“And oaks, water, and red rocks.”
“Mirrors.” She got up and walked to the room’s mirror. Something nagged at her. A conversation she ought to remember. Something she’d been reading when—
“I really wish you wouldn’t do that.”
She glanced toward Jake. “What am I doing?”
“Making me hot.”
“I’m just standing here.”
He stood and came toward her. “That’s all you have to do.”
“If we keep this up we’re never going to get back to work,” she told him. But Dee didn’t try to stop him when he picked her up and carried her back to the bed.
* * *
It must have been two hours later—there was no clock in the room and Dee found the winter sunlight even over the California desert hard to interpret.
“It was just after dawn when we went back to bed,” Jake told her. His voice was muffled, as his face was between her breasts. “Vampires have an exquisite sense of time. Self-preservation.”
“Of course you do, and of course it is.” She grasped his ears and moved his head so she could get up. He murmured a complaint, but followed her out of bed. “How long have we been incarcerated?” she asked.
“That I cannot tell you. I’ve been suffering from bonding madness.”
Dee tilted her head to one side. “I wonder if there was a Prime among the original Star Trek writers? Pon Farr?” she said to his puzzled look. “The Vulcan seven-year mating cycle from the Amok Time episode?”
Jake shook her head. “Never mind, McCoy. I have my head together now, and I know what time it is.”
“Do you think they’ll let us leave?”
“The Matri won’t want us to. She’ll want to be the one to make the decision about whether we’re mentally competent to vacate her hospitality.”
“We might not be mentally competent yet,” Dee said. “Not that we’re going to let that stop us, of course.”
“We can’t waste any more time. Not that this has been a waste of time,” Jake added quickly.
Dee laughed. “I’m with you. Let’s put the personal stuff aside until we get the op over with.”
They found everything needed in the way of clothing in a walk-in closet set up for multiple sizes and tastes.
“Vampires have this way of tearing each other’s clothes off,” Jake said. “A good hostess caters to her guests’ every need.”
Dee decided that her needs included jeans, a couple layers of shirts, and athletic shoes. When she was dressed, she felt much more like herself than she had in the blue dress and heels. She had no memory of what had happened to her party clothes, but possibly there had been ripping involved.
“Oh, yes,” Jake said. He’d opted for jeans and a black shirt. “Stop looking at me like that, McCoy,” he said. “Before there is more ripping involved. Are you ready?”
“Yes. But how do we get out of here?”
When they tried the bedroom door it wasn’t locked. There was a Prime seated across the hall. He looked up from an ereader and nodded pleasantly. Then he shook his head. Dee and Jake stepped back and closed the door.
They went to the patio door. It slid open and they walked out to the central courtyard. The fountain bubbled peacefully, the sun was warm, the breeze pleasant. There were guards scattered around the garden.
Dee and Jake clasped hands and walked to one of the benches by the fountain. They sat closely together and kissed and made out while each of them studied the lay of the land. They searched for weaknesses and escape routes.
“I think they have us covered,” Dee said, after she recovered from a particularly fiery kiss. “I’m going to drag you back to bed if this keeps up, Piper.”
“We may have no other choice,” he said.
“Don’t sound so hopeful. Focus.”
“Focusing.” Jake lifted his head. “I believe deliverance comes this way.”
Dee looked around, to see the teenage vampire girls she’d met at the party coming toward them. “Ariadne and Celeste? How can they help?”
“Wait and see.” He stood, and the teenagers stopped in front of them. “I bet you’re going shopping. Shouldn’t you be with your tutors?”
The girls giggled, and looked admiringly at Jake. Dee had a jealous moment she knew was downright ridiculous. Bonding stuff.
“We go to high school,” one of the girls said.
“Very modern. Then why aren’t you in school?”
“School’s out for the mortal Christmas holiday,” a girl said. “We are going shopping.”
“Can we come with?” Dee asked.
“You aren’t supposed to leave the Citadel until great-grandma says so.”
“Neither are we,” the other girl said.
The girls exchanged rebellious looks.
Then one of them fished car keys out of her purse. “Your SUV’s out front. We were going to borrow it.”
“I don’t suppose you could show us out the front door?” Dee suggested.
“The girls weren’t heading for the front door,” Jake said. “Were you?” They shook their heads. He moved closer to them, put a finger on one’s forehead. “Show me.” She dropped the keys into his palm. After a few moments of telepathic communication, he added, “Forget you showed me. Go play video games and stay out of trouble,” he told the girls. “Come on,” he said to Dee. “I know the secret escape route.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Eden was on the phone when the door opened, involved in the craziest conversation she’d ever had. The last people she expected to see came into the Bleythin Detective Agency office. She thought it was a good sign that Dee and
Jake were holding hands. But what the hell was Lady Juanita thinking, cutting the pair loose so soon? Not that Eden would ever question the wisdom of a vampire—HA!
“I’ll call you back,” she said, and hung up. She came around her desk to meet Dee and Jake in the middle of the room. “To what to do we owe the honor of—”
“We just came for our laptops,” Dee said.
“Our assignment can’t wait any longer,” Jake said.
Eden looked them over. The pair seemed lucid enough. And if Lady Juanita had judged them fit to leave, it wasn’t really any of her business to try to take care of them. But she couldn’t help herself. She mentally shouted for Laurent to speed up his drive back from the coffee shop and give her some help.
“Can I ask a favor before you take off?” she spoke quickly to Dee. “You mentioned being a physicist and I was just on the phone with a client who claimed that he witnessed some sort of crazy energy flux and—things—happened and he’s demanding I investigate it and I haven’t a clue what he’s talking about.”
“I thought this was a missing persons detective agency,” Jake said.
“And Daniel Corbett is missing,” Eden added. “It’s connected to this energy thing. Somehow.” The phone on the desk behind her began to ring again. “Please, Dee.”
The couple looked at each other.
Partners. Good sign, Eden thought.
“Go on,” Jake said. “I’ll look up some things while you’re gone.”
He kissed Dee’s cheek. Another good sign.
Dee looked at Eden. “Your friend Dan disappeared in a burst of energy?” She didn’t sound surprised or skeptical.
“I don’t know what happened yet,” Eden said.
“Then let’s go find out.”
* * *
Dee wasn’t sure if they were in a private residence or a small museum. It was a mansion set in a desert garden. The building did have a small parking lot, but no signs indicating anything public about the place. To one side of the wide entrance hall was an office. Beyond the hall could be glimpsed a room full of display cases. There were dogs wandering around the place, elegant sighthound breeds. She’d seen an Irish wolfhound weaving among the glass cases in the other room, a greyhound sleeping on its back next to a wall. A white and brindle-spotted whippet had tried to jump into her arms as soon as they walked through the entrance, and was still lingering by her side. These were hardly guard dogs for a museum.
On the way over all Eden had told her about Mr. Harrimun was that he was a collector. When Dee asked what he collected, Eden answered, “Everything.”
Most of the conversation on the drive centered around how she and Piper were getting along. Dee listened without rancor to Eden’s advice. After all, Eden was a mortal woman involved with a former Tribe vampire. There weren’t a lot of people with the situation Dee and Eden shared. And they still had more differences than similarities in Dee’s opinion. Maybe they could compare notes again when things were settled between her and Jake. She could only hope things would be settled in a good way. She longed to be with him, wanted him even as she stood here—
Dee gave her head a hard shake.
“Lost it there for a second, did you?” Eden asked.
“Looks like.”
A man came out of the office, trailed by a couple of Salukis. He was short, round, dressed in a finely tailored black suit. Of course, the dog hair on the black cloth ruined the effect, but Dee found herself liking this man who liked dogs, even before he said a word.
When he did, it was to look her over and say, “Craft?”
“Esoteric?” she asked back.
They both nodded, and smiled, while Eden looked back and forth between them. No explanations were given. They knew what they meant. Eden wisely decided not to ask.
“Tell us what happened, Mr. Harrimun,” Eden requested.
“And where,” Dee added.
Harrimun showed them into the display room. They crossed the shining black marble floor to one of the cases. This one was empty, the glass enclosure shattered.
“I swept up the glass,” he said. “I didn’t want the dogs to cut their feet.”
“I see,” Eden said.
Dee walked around the case, avoiding tripping over the clingy whippet as she did. She closed her eyes and made the circuit again. Balloon? Bubble? Interesting.
Familiar?
She turned to listen while Harrimun explained.
“That young man you sent was—more than a little on the aggressive side. I’ve heard many good things about Daniel Corbett’s abilities. I’ve been wanting to test them on my collection for a long time. But the young man who showed up was—just wrong.”
“In what way?” Eden asked.
“It was bad enough I had to wait days for him to put in an appearance, but when he finally stalked in he scared the dogs.”
“I’m sorry about that, Mr. Harrimun,” Eden said.
“When he disappeared he took Mischa with him. Mischa is a Borzoi. She went with him.”
“When he left the house?” Eden asked carefully.
“He certainly left the house, but he didn’t go by the door. My poor Mischa.”
Dee continued to listen, but she began touching the air, sensing energy currents. Although she supposed it looked like she was a mime feeling her way around an invisible box. Neither Eden or Harrimun commented on her behavior.
“All I wanted was for him to tell me the history of the Firebird Egg,” Harrimun said. “It has never been catalogued as one of the known Faberge enamel and jeweled egg-shaped boxes owned by Czar Nicolas Romanov of Russia, but I had high hopes of Corbett establishing historical links I could use to establish the egg’s provenance.” He opened a folder he carried and held up a color photo of a gaudy egg-shaped object on a gold stand. Rubies and diamonds surrounded the outlines of gold and red enamel birds with tails of flame. It was lovely, in an over-the-top way.
“It is magical, isn’t it?” the Esoteric asked the Craft practitioner.
Esoteric folk couldn’t use magic, but were drawn to it. They collected objects with magical connections. Craft and Esoteric folk frequently bought, sold, and borrowed things from each other. Sometimes terms like ‘theft’ and ‘black market’ came into the picture, but mostly the relationship was an honest one. If a witch wanted something safely stored it would go to an Esoteric. If an Esoteric needed an object exorcised they called on someone in the Craft. Dee, being from the ranks of Traveler witches, didn’t have much use for ritual magical objects.
“I can’t tell if it’s magical from a picture,” she answered. “But from the energy vibrating around this area, I’d say yes.”
She went back to concentrating on what the combination of witch and physicist were trying to tell her. The witch felt the energy, the physicist was beginning to make sense of it. It was the sort of information the physicist said was impossible, but the witch wasn’t putting up with any scientific narrow-mindedness right now. The witch knew that nothing was impossible; some things were simply nearly infinitely improbable.
“I can’t say that he stole the Egg. It was the Egg that stole Corbett,” Harrimun said.
“So—Daniel didn’t run off with the artifact and the dog?” Eden asked.
“The light took them,” Dee spoke up. The others stared at her. “Didn’t it? A bubble of light?”
“Tell me exactly what you saw, Mr. Harrimun,” Eden said.
“When Corbett stalked in here, Mischa and I followed. He knew precisely which case to go to. And the case popped open. It was locked. I had the key in my hand, but the glass opened as Corbett reached it. When he took the Firebird Egg in his hands he went into a trance. He spoke, but since I don’t understand Russian I have no idea what he said. Then he put the Egg back in its case, shut the door, and started to walk away. That’s when the case shattered and the Egg flew out of the case. He caught it—”
“And then a hole in the universe opened up and a bright light surrounded him and pulle
d him inside,” Dee said.
“And Mischa.” Harrimun sniffed. “Poor Mischa.”
“Now I know what the Wizard of Oxnard’s notes were about,” Dee said. She was so excited she wanted to shout. Thank the Goddess, something finally made sense!
“Who?” Eden and Harrimun asked.
Poor Daniel Corbett, though.
Still, Dee remembered something Sasha Corbett had told her that night she’d partied with the Corbett twins. Sasha said that her father was the world’s strangest vampire and her mother was the Tsarina of all the Russias. At the time, Dee thought that Sasha was bullshitting and drunk.
Now Dee thought Sasha had only been drunk.
“There’s nothing we can do for him,” Dee said. She recalled her premonition that their paths wouldn’t cross again when she met the temperish Daniel Corbett. She thought about the brilliant Corbett twins, Ana and Sasha, who specialized in keeping mortals from knowing about the supernatural world. “I’m sure Daniel will be fine. You probably won’t get your Egg back, though, Mr. Harrimun. And I’d stay out of the display room for a few days. I doubt anything else will happen, but better safe than transported out of our world. The ‘brane walls are very thin here.”
Dee hustled the others toward the display room door, herding dogs as well as people. She ignored questions, and being looked at like she was insane.
Once outside the building she told Eden, “I’ll explain what’s going on, but not until I can get Jake involved in the discussion.”
She really had to get back to her Jake, revelations or no revelations.
Had she just called him her Jake?
Chapter Thirty-Five
“Where’d your woman go?” Laurent asked the Prime sitting at what was normally his desk. “More importantly, where’s my woman?” He put down the tall cardboard container of coffee he’d brought Eden on her desk. He sighed. “People do come and go quickly around here.”
“It is a missing persons’ agency,” Piper pointed out. “Though I suppose you lot aren’t the ones who are supposed to go missing. Your bondmate and—mine—are investigating your friend Daniel—”
“He’s my cousin, actually.”
Primal Cravings Page 15
