Poison Fruit

by Jacqueline Carey

  There were words I should say, but I couldn’t think of what they were. I clutched my battered leather messenger bag to my chest. Cody had made it for me. Cody. I’d been angry at Cody.

  Why? It didn’t seem important now.

  I tried to string the evening’s events together in my mind. Yes, I’d been mad at Cody. I’d provoked Stefan, and Stefan had attacked me. Stefan had attacked me, and Cooper had rescued me.

  Oh, and there had been Rafe with the Taser, too. I hoped Stefan was okay. It hadn’t been his fault.

  “I’m sorry,” I said carefully, thinking, yes, those were the right words. “Thank you?”

  Cooper sighed. “Can you drive?”

  Drive? I looked around for my car.

  “Never mind.” He jerked open the passenger door. “Get inside.” Oh, right. I was leaning on my car. I got in obediently, looking up at Cooper. “I’ll call someone,” he said. “I’d drive you myself, but . . .” He glanced toward the bar. “It’s going to take some doing to restrain himself in a fit of ravening. Can you wait here like a good girl?”

  I could do that. “Yes.”

  “All right, then.” Cooper paused, his eyes gleaming in the light of the beer signs that adorned the Wheelhouse’s windows, filled with neon and regret. He looked older, much older, than the seventeen years he’d been when he was made Outcast. “And here I thought you and the big man would be good for each other.”

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated.

  “Stay here.” He closed the passenger door. “Wait.”

  Staring straight ahead, I waited.

  It was probably ten minutes later that Lurine’s sleek black Town Car glided into the parking lot and pulled into a space beside my Honda, though it could have been longer. It could have been an hour or hours. I wouldn’t have known the difference or cared. The here and now was all that mattered. There was some kind of ruckus going on inside the bar, but I didn’t care about that, either. Cooper had told me to wait, so I waited, clutching my bag in my lap.

  Lurine emerged from the back of the Town Car, opened the door opposite me, and slid into the driver’s seat, regarding me with a stony look. “I warned you about this, baby girl.”

  The hollowness inside me cracked open to admit a tendril of fear. Lurine had warned me about dating Stefan, and said . . . what? Oh, yes. She’d threatened to crush him to pieces if he hurt me in any way. She was capable of it, too.

  The tendril of fear put down roots. “Lurine.” I searched for words. “It’s not his fault. I provoked him.”

  She raised her brows at me. “Do you have any idea how many abused women have said those exact same words?”

  “I did, though.” It was important that I make Lurine understand. If I didn’t, she would hurt Stefan very, very badly. “I really did. Please. Don’t hurt him.” The words were coming better now. I managed to put a few more together. “Stefan doesn’t deserve to be punished for this,” I said. “I do.”

  Lurine drummed her fingernails on the steering wheel. “Stefan Ludovic is a six-hundred-year-old ghoul, Daisy,” she said in a cold voice. “I hold him responsible for his conduct. He ought to know the risks of messing with someone as young and volatile as you.”

  “He does.” I leaned back against the headrest. “Stefan’s been careful, very careful. What I did . . . it came out of nowhere. He was unprepared.”

  She hesitated. “You threw a tantrum at him?”

  “Yes.” I couldn’t remember why I’d done it—oh, wait, there had been Belphegor’s ill-timed outreach, too—but that was exactly what I’d done. I’d thrown a grown-up temper tantrum.

  One of the Wheelhouse’s windows shattered as a body was hurled through it. Lurine pursed her lips. “Looks like Mr. Ludovic is putting up a fight. All right, fine. I’ll lend them a hand with him and then drive you home.”

  “You won’t . . . squish him?” I asked in a faint voice. I’d seen her handiwork before.

  “No.” Lurine reached into her purse and donned a pair of oversize sunglasses, turning her darkened gaze my way. “For your sake, I’ll be gentle. Just this once.”

  The snaking tendril of fear growing inside me faded and gave way to a vague sense of relief. “Thank you.”

  As I watched from the relative safety of the car, Lurine proceeded to the porch of the Wheelhouse, where the ghoul who’d been flung through the window was just staggering upright. Shoving him before her, she entered the bar, the doorway offering a brief glimpse of a full-blown brawl.

  It got quiet fast.

  A few minutes later, Lurine exited alone. She had a word with her driver, then got back into my car, stowing her sunglasses. “Keys?”

  I managed to find them and hand them over. “Is everything . . . okay?”

  “It will be.” Lurine started the Honda. “There’s a panic room in the back for restraining ravening ghouls. Stefan will be fine once it passes.”

  “And you didn’t, um, have to hurt him?” I asked her. “You got him to enter it of his own will?”

  She pulled out of the parking lot. “Mm-hmm.”

  “How?”

  Lurine gave me a pointed look. “I told you I’d be gentle.”

  Oh, right. The lamia’s kiss. Yeah, if Lurine had given Stefan the full business, that would have been enough to render even a ravening ghoul docile with ecstasy long enough to persuade him to enter a panic room.

  Somewhere in the dim recesses of my mind, I was aware that I should have strong feelings about this whole situation—horror at Stefan’s attack; mortification that I’d provoked it; a complex mixture of gratitude and jealousy that my immortal former babysitter had subdued my immortal ravening lover with a kiss.

  Somewhere, anyway, but right now, all I felt was empty. And it wasn’t a good feeling.

  But I had no one to blame but myself.

  Forty-one

  Bit by bit, my emotional state returned to normal. Well, normal for me, anyway.

  It took days, though, and while the effects lasted, I definitely wasn’t myself. For better or worse, my emotions defined me. They were what made me me, and with a core part of myself missing, I was hollow and vague. I lost time, finding myself staring into space only to realize that the better part of an hour had passed. I couldn’t focus long enough to kindle a shield, let alone invoke an unobtrusibility spell, and I had to cancel a couple of practice sessions with the coven—not a good thing with the court date bearing down on us.

  At least the rumor mill hadn’t gotten hold of the incident. In a small town, that was almost a miracle, but the Outcast had their own reasons for not wanting anyone to know that their leader was out of commission, and apparently Lurine had decided to be discreet.

  It was actually a relief when my emotions began to trickle back to normal levels, including all the violent guilt and shame I deserved to feel.

  I rehearsed my apology to Stefan a hundred times, and picked up the phone more than once to leave a message on his voice mail. I didn’t, though. It seemed like the sort of thing that really had to be done in person.

  Instead, I called Cooper and asked him to let me know when Stefan was no longer ravening. He agreed to, although he didn’t sound pleased about it.

  I didn’t blame him. I mean, I’d seen Cooper ravening, but that had been because of an error in judgment on his part, not because some idiotic hell-spawn had pitched a temper tantrum.

  During my recovery, I thought a lot about that father and daughter that Cooper had drained, though. At least I’d walked into this with my eyes open. I’d known I was playing with fire. They hadn’t had a clue. And Cooper had drained them dry. He’d done it in the blink of an eye, and when it was done, neither one of them looked like they knew who or where they were.

  God, what was it like for them? I’d looked into the void, and I never, ever wanted to get that close again. Stefan had said they’d be fine in time, but Stefan had never been drained by a ravening ghoul. Maybe he didn’t understand that the void inside him was every bit as terrifyi
ng as the eternal void of nonbeing that the Outcast faced.

  Come to think of it, maybe those voids were one and the same. Either way, once seen, it couldn’t be unseen.

  Oh, I’d be okay . . . eventually. Wiser and warier, but I understood what had happened to me and I knew full well that I’d brought it on myself. Cooper’s victims had been innocent and ignorant. They’d had no idea what had happened to them or why, and there wasn’t any counseling out there in the mundane world for victims of an eldritch attack suffering from a supernatural form of post–traumatic stress disorder.

  No, just a smooth-tongued hell-spawn lawyer with an offer to join a class-action lawsuit.

  Too bad there was no way to prove how much worse things would have been that night if Cooper and the other Outcast hadn’t been there to help disperse the panic and control the crowd. As it was, there had been a number of fairly serious injuries and a couple of nonfatal cardiac incidents.

  By the time Cooper left me a voice mail saying that Stefan’s ravening had passed, it was a full two weeks later. And in case you’re wondering, yes, two weeks was a long time for that sort of thing.

  With profoundly mixed emotions, I went to see Stefan.

  I probably should have called or texted him in advance, but to be honest, I wasn’t sure he would want to see me. And to be equally honest, I wasn’t sure how I felt about him after his attack. Wary enough that I didn’t want to meet him alone just yet, anyway. But the one thing I was sure of was that I owed him a huge apology for acting like . . . well, a stupid, stupid girl, which is why I screwed up my courage and paid a visit to the Wheelhouse.

  It felt like I was returning to the scene of a crime. Hedging my bets, I paused on the front porch, murmured the unobtrusibility invocation and willed my aura to disperse before slipping into the bar.

  It was the first real test of my hard-won ability since my emotional strength and focus had returned. Entering into a nest of ghouls may have been a little ambitious for my first outing, but the truth was, I didn’t feel like dealing with Cooper’s disapproval, and I needed to know I could do this. A courthouse in the heart of mundane territory was going to be a lot riskier.

  Oddly enough, the fact that it worked settled my nerves, at least for a moment. Seeing Cooper’s disinterested gaze pass over me without recognition gave me the last ounce of courage I needed to drift unnoticed to the back of the bar.

  The door to Stefan’s office was open. He was seated behind his desk, head bent over some paperwork, looking surprisingly . . . well, not ordinary, but more like a hard-core bar owner who would threaten a beer distributor for ripping him off than a terrifying immortal predator intent on draining my emotions to the last drop.

  Then Stefan lifted his head, sensing my presence. His ice-blue eyes narrowed and my heart felt like it skipped a beat. Apparently, an unobtrusibility spell couldn’t mask the bond between us.

  I let it go, regrouping my energies in case I needed to kindle a shield and dropping one hand to dauda-dagr’s hilt. “I’m sorry,” I said in a rush, needing to get the words out before he spoke. “Stefan, I’m so fucking sorry.”

  For a long moment, he didn’t say anything. The hollows of his eyes looked bruised, but his gaze was steady as he regarded me inexpressively. My heart thudded hard in my chest, and I wondered if we’d gone past a point of no return, and what that made us now. Enemies? Adversaries?

  And then, against all odds, Stefan laughed, pushing his chair back from his desk. “Daisy Johanssen,” he said, his voice husky. “You have . . . what is it they say in the Westerns? One hell of a wallop.”

  I stared at him. “You’re not mad? You can laugh about it?”

  He shrugged. “What would you have me do?” One corner of his mouth lifted in a half smile, a dimple forming there. “We’ve done our worst to each other, Daisy, and we are still standing.”

  A vast sense of relief filled me, my heart soaring. I gave a breathless laugh at the sheer unexpectedness of it, and realized in that instant that I was at least a little bit in love with Stefan Ludovic.

  “Close the door and come here,” he ordered me, and I did. Stefan pulled me onto his lap. “You were not the only one at fault. I pushed you. I lectured instead of listening. I knew what you were feeling. I should have known better.”

  “I shouldn’t have come in the first place,” I said. “Not in that state.”

  “True.” His lips brushed my shoulder. “I believe it is fair to say that we have both learned a lesson.”

  “It wasn’t just you that pushed me,” I said. “It was my father, too. That last thing I said . . . it was to him.”

  Stefan’s body tensed beneath me. “He . . . spoke to you?”

  “Um, yeah,” I said apologetically. This wasn’t a conversation we’d had yet, not after the whole hell-spawn hunter revelation. “It happens sometimes, mostly when I’m on the verge of losing my temper.”

  “I see.” Stefan cocked his head at me. “What does your father say to you at such times?”

  “Oh, you know.” I didn’t feel entirely comfortable talking about it. Not sitting on Stefan’s lap, anyway. “Just the usual temptation scenario. All that you desire could be yours, you have but to ask, yadda, yadda, yadda. I said no,” I added with a touch of indignation. “I will always say no.”

  “And your father’s offer is what prompted you to hurl your emotions at me?” he inquired.

  I squirmed on his lap, my tail wriggling. “Pretty much. Well, that and a stupid fit of pique.”

  Stefan slid one hand over my lower back, stilling me. “Next time, I will listen to you.”

  “Next time, I won’t ask you to,” I said. “I’ll handle it on my own. I was just . . .” I didn’t finish the thought. “It was stupid.”

  “You were upset, Daisy. You should be able to come to me at such times. And if you hadn’t caught me unprepared, I would not have been sent ravening.” He stroked my hair. “Do you wish to discuss why you were upset?”

  I shook my head. No, I didn’t want to discuss my feelings for Cody with Stefan. “Isn’t it enough that I’m here?”

  “One day you may have to make a more . . . definitive . . . choice,” Stefan said. “But for now, yes.” His hands rested on my waist, careful not to touch dauda-dagr’s hilt, and there was a rare hint of vulnerability in his expression. “I was not sure you would ever wish to see me again, having seen me in that state.”

  I slid my arms around his neck and kissed him. “I don’t scare away that easily,” I whispered against his lips. “Although you came close. I think we both owe Cooper a big debt.”

  Holding me firmly in place, Stefan returned my kiss. “Perhaps you’ll find a way to give him his heart’s desire someday,” he murmured. “To be free from the shackles of immortality and grow to full adulthood.”

  I pulled back a little. “Do you believe it’s possible?”

  “No,” Stefan said with regret. “It was a wishful thought. I would that it were so, but I have been Outcast for many centuries. Over the course of ages, I have come to believe that there is no force on this side of the Inviolate Wall capable of freeing us. Until such time as God in his heaven takes notice of us and relents, the Outcast are bound to our fates.”

  “Maybe Janek Król is persuading him as we speak,” I suggested.

  It won a faint smile from him. “I hope so. I would like it to be true, not least of all because it would give meaning to my friend Janek’s long suffering.”

  “I hope so, too.” I contemplated Stefan. “You said it was Cooper’s heart’s desire. Is it yours, too?”

  His pupils dilated, then steadied. “Yes.”

  There was a lot unsaid in that simple “yes.” I sighed, leaning my forehead against his and closing my eyes.

  It would be nice to have a lover I didn’t have to worry about turning into a ravening monster, a lover in whose arms I could safely sleep, a lover with whom I could contemplate a future.

  But we were what we were, Stefan and I.
/>   “I should go,” I murmured. “You probably have a lot of work to do.”

  “Yes.”

  He didn’t move, though, and neither did I, not for a long moment. “We’re okay?” I asked at length. “You and me?”

  “Yes, Daisy.” Stefan shifted me off his lap, and both of us stood. “Somewhat to my surprise, you and I are okay.” Okay was another one of those words that sounded incongruous coming from his mouth, making me smile. He raised an eyebrow at me. “What is it?”

  “Nothing.” I shook my head. “Oh, and by the way? It’s pack a wallop. Not have a wallop.”

  Stefan laughed softly, tossing back his hair. His eyes gleamed. Leaning over, he kissed me, his lips lingering on mine. “Well, then, you pack a very large wallop.”

  Yep, still hot.

  And still dangerous.

  Forty-two

  The trial date arrived with unnerving speed. It seemed as though the New Year had barely started when the lawsuit was upon us.

  Local media had picked up on the precedent-setting case, thanks in part to the involvement of Lurine’s celebrity lawyer, Robert Diaz, and there was nightly coverage on all the networks.

  Unfortunately, that gave Daniel Dufreyne a chance to make his case in the court of public opinion, as well as to the jury, and oh, did he. The sole piece of good news was that his powers of persuasion only worked in person. Dufreyne’s televised sound bites reviling Pemkowet’s tri-community governments for the decision to knowingly lure unsuspecting tourists into a deadly situation didn’t translate into infernal influence in living rooms across west Michigan.

  It worked on the reporters, though. Coverage turned hostile right out of the gate. I felt sorry for Robert Diaz. In addition to providing counsel to the Pemkowet legal defense team, he’d appointed himself their spokesperson, assuming that his media savvy would prove an invaluable asset.