by Harper Allen
“That I’m your and Tashie’s own personal bottle of Elmer’s,” I said, “keeping you stuck together? I guess I can live with that, although you could have chosen a more flattering image.”
“How about this image, then?” All lingering humor left her expression. “You’re the far-seeing gaze of the eagle. I’m beginning to think that whatever I was tuned into the night this all started, I got some valuable clues, including those cryptic references to our individual destinies. One of us will be the striking talons, and since striking talons can only mean Daughter of Lilith, I think that refers to Tash and you think it’ll be me. One will fly us into darkness. Again, maybe Tash…more likely me.” The turquoise of her gaze deepened. “I mean, sweetie, I’m the Crosse sister who can tie a cherry-stem with her tongue, as I believe I might have unwisely mentioned to Lance just before he tried to give me the undead version of a hickey. Even you don’t know all my naughty secrets, but believe me, I’ve flirted with the darkness more than once. However, we’re talking about you right now.” A thoughtful crease appeared between her eyebrows. “You’re the only one of the three of us who’s occasionally turned down a shopping orgy or a party to finish a book that had you hooked, and you never once had to hide your report card from Grammie like Tash and I did. One Darkheart or another has always been a keeper of the knowledge—the person who studies the ancient books and keeps everyone else on track. If that’s not you, then I don’t know who else it could—”
“Do I totally rock or what!” Tashya ran up to us, her face red but glowing. “I completely kicked ass on that balance beam and my stake-work’s getting better, too. I think Grandfather’s beginning to wonder if I’m the Daughter, not you, sis,” she informed Kat with satisfaction.
“Nothing could make me happier,” Kat answered. She saw Tash’s immediately suspicious expression. “Honestly, sweetie—the job’s yours if you want it. I liked my life just fine before working up a sweat became part of my daily routine. Besides, being in training means I’ve had to cut my cocktail consumption way back,” she said as she headed toward the balance beam.
“I’ve got two words for her.” Tashya turned to me. “Bitch and goddess. Did you hear what she just said? The job’s mine, like it’s last year’s skirt and she’s giving it to me!”
“Take a pill, brat. She didn’t mean it like that,” I said, but she wasn’t listening.
“Kat’s so used to always getting whatever she wants that the only way she can handle losing out to me is by pretending she doesn’t want this, when really she can’t stand that I might actually be the Daughter instead of her!” Her gaze narrowed on Kat, who, oblivious to the resentment she’d churned up, was executing a flawless backflip before throwing her stake through a cardboard vamp’s outlined heart.
“How do you think I feel? I haven’t even gradu ated to the balance beam yet,” I pointed out. “Besides, it’s not a contest.”
“Oh, it’s a contest,” she said fiercely, “and just because you’ve already lost doesn’t mean I intend to come in second. I bet if I ran into Zena today I could stake her, no problem. I guess everyone would know then who’s the Daughter and who’s not.”
For someone whom Kat saw as the glue who kept the three of us together, my reaction to Tashya’s outburst was a) insensitive and b) not too smart. “And how are you planning to pull this off—by swaggering into the Hot Box like a Wild West gunslinger?” I said with a roll of my eyes. “If you do, just remember, the sharp end’s supposed to go into a vamp’s heart, not its eye.” I gave her braid a careless tug. “You’re too wired over this, Tashie. I’m thinking of playing hookey from the rest of today’s training. How about you and I spend the afternoon at the mall looking at shoes and clothes? I need to swing by Starbucks, so we could finish up with lattes.” I shrugged. “It might not be a bad idea to start showing our faces around town again to prove we’ve put the infamous wedding fiasco behind us.”
For a moment I thought my last comment had persuaded her. She knew as well as I did that not everyone in Maplesburg—for not everyone, read Mandy Broyhill, the BI who’d thrown my lame bachelorette party, and her crowd—bought into the notion that I’d been left groomless at the altar and my sisters’ fiancés had disappeared because of presumed foul play. As Kat had wryly noted, after years of being occasional bitches ourselves, it was payback time for the Crosse triplets.
Tash’s set expression wavered. Then her scowl returned. “Is that what you and Kat were discussing while I was on the balance beam—how to distract me from my training so I don’t have a chance to beat her? Sorry, it’s not going to work. Grandfather Darkheart’s taking one of us out on a trial run tonight, and I’m going to make sure I’m the one he picks.” With that she stalked off.
I didn’t bother going after her. And for that little mistake I got a major karma smack down later that night…when I nearly lost my soul.
Chapter 9
You know how in horror movies there’s always a female who goes upstairs to investigate a noise? Never mind that half the movie’s cast have been slashed to death by some creepy killer, Little Miss Ditz sashays upstairs, usually in see-through night attire, to meet her doom. You know why? It’s simple, really. She does that because she’s Too Dumb to Live. I just hate those heroines…or I used to before I became one of them.
But I’ve left out a bunch of stuff, and while the missing pieces don’t excuse my TDTL actions, they might make them easier to understand.
After slipping out of the training session—Okay, not slipping, precisely: How it went was I walked up to Darkheart and said, “I blow at this. I’m going shopping,” and he nodded and said, “Da, is probably not bad idea. Pick me up some black bread if near grocery store, please.” After leaving Kat and Tash to their stake-hurling and balance-beam-leaping, I escaped to the bathroom to have a long, hot shower. Steam rose around me, my abused muscles began to relax, and the scent of rosemary-mint body wash filled the air. By the time I stepped out of the shower all thoughts of vamps, dire predictions and burdensome legacies had temporarily faded, to be replaced with the burning question of what to wear.
Which isn’t as shallow as it sounds. After all, it was the first time I’d ventured out in public since my wedding had come to a crashing halt with the non-appearance of my groom and the appearance of a homicide detective. I needed to look good, but not so good that I gave the impression of seeing my fiancé’s disappearance as an opportunity to haul out my most to-die-for outfit and cold-bloodedly start hunting for his replacement. Then again, I didn’t want to look like a jilted bride whose self-esteem had sunk so low she didn’t care what she wore and had probably started eating ice cream from the carton. Last but not least, whatever I chose had to look as if it was the first thing that had come to hand when I’d opened my closet, and I hadn’t spent any time angsting about my appearance at all. And that, ladies, is why God invented Juicy Couture French-terry track suits.
“The pink ones are too girly-girl,” I mused out loud as I padded down the hall in a towel. “The white set’s too ‘Hey, I’m still in bride-mode, folks!’ and the black set might give the impression I’ve started putting on misery weight and I’m trying to hide it.” I opened my bedroom door. “The lilac set? With a lime-green push-up bra showing at my half-unzipped cleavage? Sexy yet casual, appropriate for a shopping expedition, and if I run into Mandy and her posse it’s obvious that although I’ve gone through an unfortunate ordeal, I’m getting on with my life.”
As relieved as a Japanese poet who’d hit upon the perfect last syllable to complete a haiku, I opened the mirrored doors of my walk-in closet, letting my towel drop to the floor. The swinging doors caught the reflection of the man behind me.
“Let’s get a few things straight,” Mikhail said. “I don’t have the hots for you, I still say you got marked by Zena, and since you know I have to stay close to you, don’t blame me for the fact that you’re naked in front of me. You going with the lilac, or do I have ten more choices to suffer through?�
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I had a couple of options open to me: scream at him to get out while I grabbed my towel, which would have been humiliating, or act like I didn’t give a damn that I was standing in my birthday suit in full view of a man who’d been pissing me off since the moment we’d met. Since I’d had my fill of humiliation in the past few days—splinters in my butt, getting clocked by a senior citizen and hurling myself into walls are some examples that come readily to mind—I decided to hang on to my dignity for once.
“The lilac,” I said. “And I don’t blame you. Since we’re agreed that the two of us don’t ring each other’s bells, I didn’t think it would matter about the nude-in-front-of-you thing.”
I pulled open a lingerie drawer and selected my lime push-up and matching thong, leaving the bra draped over the drawer and stepping into the thong. From one of my closet’s shoe shelves I chose a pair of chartreuse Sergio Rossi stiletto sandals with straps that wrapped around my ankles. They normally wouldn’t have been my first choice for a day of shopping—I think I’ve mentioned that as much as I adore the way three-and-a-half-inch heels make a girl’s legs look like they go on forever, after a few hours of wearing them my feet are crying for mercy—but I was going for the big guns here.
“I’ve realized we have to come to an understanding,” I went on, presenting him with a view of my thong-bisected posterior as I bent over to criss-cross the soft leather straps around my ankles. “At first all I could think of was that you’d been foisted on me 24/7 and that it was a life sentence. Then I realized something,” I looked past my bare calf at him. From my position he was just a pair of jeans-clad legs, but I thought I could detect tension in those legs.
“What did you realize?”
Bingo. He was tense, I could hear it. I finished winding the straps around my ankles, determined not to let him miss out on any of the kinky bondage symbolism. With both shoes on, I was well aware that my legs had achieved the desired going-on-forever look and my elevated tush was as taut as an apple.
“It isn’t a life sentence,” I straightened up and reached for my bra. “Excuse me, I need the mirror.” Lime-green lace dangling from my finger, I brushed past him in my Playboy-worthy outfit of thong and heels. “I turn twenty-two in October.”
“I don’t get your point.” His voice had been reduced to a gravelly mutter. I notched the heat higher by slipping my arms through the bra’s straps and adjusting its cups to my breasts before fastening the back clasp and bending forward at the waist to get my girls safely settled.
“When I haven’t turned vamp by then, you’ll have to give up your hate-on for me, Darkheart won’t have to worry anymore, and he’ll teach me the words to say so that I can bind you to him again,” I said from my bent-over position as damp hair tumbled around my face. “Of course, October’s four months away, and at the present you do have a hate-on for me.” My breasts securely embraced by their lace demi-cups, I turned to Mikhail. “I’m right, no?” I asked. “You’ve got one major…hate-on for me right now, don’t you, Mikey-baby?”
I let my gaze stray south of his belt and saw what I’d hoped to see. He took a breath. “Something like that,” he said, his tone more even than I’d guessed it would be. “What kind of understanding do you propose we come to?”
I smiled sweetly at him. “What you should know first is that this was just a test, Mike. Instead of a shower, I could have taken a bubble bath, and instead of wrapping a towel around myself, I might have trusted to a few little bubbles here and there. I imagine the condition you’re in right now can’t be very comfortable as a permanent state.” I sighed sympathetically. “But I don’t want this to turn nasty, so here’s what I propose: you stop glaring at me all day long, stop growling under your breath at me, stop acting like you expect me to go all fang-girl at any minute. And my bedroom’s off-limits unless hell freezes over and I invite you in. In other words, play nice with me and I’ll play nice with you, because if you don’t I’ll vamp you every chance I get, Mikey-baby—and I don’t mean undead-vamp, I mean living, breathing female vamping. Deal?”
He started to growl, thought better of it, and nodded tightly. “Deal. But there’s one thing you should know, too.”
I’d won. I could afford to let him have the last word if that’s what he needed to keep his male ego from feeling completely annihilated. “What’s that?” I asked, reaching into my closet for my lilac French-terry hoodie and pants.
“The moment you turn vampire, all bets are off,” he said softly. “Oborotni are bound to humans…but when you’re no longer one, the contract between us is broken. And even though I react just like any other man to a sexy woman, vamp glamyr doesn’t work on me at all.” He turned to the door. “I’ll be waiting in the hall. And just for the record, sweetheart? Sweetest ass I’ve ever seen, bar none.”
As he walked out I found myself wishing I hadn’t let him get in the last word, after all.
For all those of you who hate shopping with a man—that would be about 99.9% of the female segment of the population—here’s something to make you feel better: shopping with a shape-shifting wolf is twenty times worse. From the minute we hit the Maplesburg Mall, Mikhail was in agony, his super-senses nearly suffering a meltdown from overload. I guess I’d be in agony too if I could hear a couple of hundred snatches of conversation going on all at once while at the same time smelling KFC chicken, Taco Bell burritos and Orange Julius smoothies from the food court, mixed with a passing parade of Dior’s Poison, JLo’s Glow and Versace’s Blue Jeans. Despite our confrontation in the bedroom, I felt sorry for him, so after six hours I cut my shopping expedition short, stopping only at Starbucks to get what I needed before heading home.
On the drive back he had his window rolled down. At one point he stuck his head out into the slipstream, looking happier than I’d ever seen him, but at my narrowed glance he immediately pulled it in and sat normally for the rest of the way. Since we’d made a deal not to say anything nasty to one another it was a silent drive, but I used the time to refine the plan I intended to try out as soon as we got home.
It wasn’t enough that there was an uneasy truce between us. Not feeling golden eyes continuously glowering at me was a relief, but I needed my space, and this afternoon had been a perfect example. At the Nordstroms’ Urban Decay display, I happily could have spent an hour trying out lip-stain shades on the back of my hand, but I’d caught Mikhail’s baffled expression as I pondered the merits of Bitten versus Spank and suddenly I’d felt totally shallow. The only upside to his presence were the Whoa!-check-him-out looks on the faces of other females, but even that didn’t make up for my lack of privacy.
I felt like Audrey Hepburn in that old movie where she’s a princess dying to break loose for a while. While I didn’t have a Gregory Peck to aid in my temporary escape, I had something better. I’m a pack rat when it comes to useless scraps of information. Somewhere along the way I’d come across the interesting but irrelevant fact that smugglers pack coffee around shipments of cocaine to baffle drug-sniffing dogs. In my current situation that snippet of knowledge was suddenly very relevant.
Or so I hoped. I sped into the house, dumping all but one of my parcels in the foyer and barely taking time to punch in the code that turned off the security alarm—Kat and Tash and Darkheart were out, it appeared. Halfway up the stairs I realized my breakneck speed might seem suspicious to Mikhail, who was right behind me as usual.
“My feet are killing me,” I explained over my shoulder. “All I want to do is get these shoes off, completely cover my poor crushed toes in lavender and peppermint foot cream and then lie back on some pillows and pig out on the chocolate-covered espresso beans I got at Starbucks. You want some?”
“No, thanks,” he said stiffly. He still hadn’t quite gotten the hang of casual conversation with me, but that didn’t bother me now. I smiled at him as I entered my bedroom.
“When I’m pampering myself, I don’t like to rush things. Why not go downstairs and make yourself something to e
at?”
“I’ll wait here.” He folded his arms and leaned against the hall wall. “Take all the time you want.”
A comment which, if I had been looking forward to some personal sloth-time, was guaranteed to have killed my anticipation stone-dead, I reflected as I closed the door. Since I hadn’t been lying about needing to rescue my feet, I took a moment to change into sneakers but as soon as I had, I lost no time in dumping the contents of the Starbucks bag onto my bed.
The chocolate-covered espresso beans were on top. I snatched them up, ripped open the flavor-seal package, and tossed one in my mouth. As soon as I bit into it my mouth was flooded with the heavenly taste of dark chocolate and rich coffee. I tossed another bean back, chewing on it the way Grammie had always taught us not to—with my mouth open.
“Mmmm,” I groaned out loud. “So delish. I could eat a million of these things.”
In theater parlance, I believe my little maneuver would be called “setting the stage.” Mikhail’s wolfey sense of smell would now be getting a massive hit of coffee aroma. In a second the coffee smell would start getting way stronger, but he’d simply put it down to my chocolate espresso beans. If I hadn’t prepared him, he might have begun wondering why all he could suddenly smell from my room was an obliterating scent of coffee.
I ripped open the first bag of Italian roast. Sneaking to the door, I poured it in a thick line along the rug. The second vacuum-packed bag was Sumatra blend. It joined the Italian roast by the crack under my bedroom door, and was topped up with a bag of French mocha. I backed away, gave a moan that I hoped suggested estatic chocolate-satiation, and crept to my window.
I’d left it open earlier. Now it was a simple matter to unlatch the screen, set it aside, and sling my leg over the sill. I paused, waiting for some reaction from the hall, but there was none. Mikey-baby’s hearing was good, as he’d inadvertently revealed to Kat and me today, but he relied on his canine sense of smell to tell him where I was at any given moment, and I’d just seriously screwed up his Megan-radar with my coffee ploy.
