“Jacko.” Derrick lifted his arm, his hand settling on Quinn’s chest but not remaining still. “I think I was hallucinating at the end. You got shot. You were dying.” His voice hitched and tears shimmered in his eyes. “And then Tall Dark and Predatory picked you up and threw you into the bay.”
“I think that’s our cue to leave,” Eamon said, tugging Etain to her feet.
Outside the bedroom, she said, “Anton gave me a name. It’d be better to ask Sean to run with it.”
“You’re done with this, Etain,” Eamon said.
It’d be easy to play the promise card. To point out she’d be foresworn. Instead she moved in to him, tracing lips firmed into an arrogant, lordly line.
“I have to see this through. I have to finish it. That’s who I am. Becoming Elf didn’t make me any more or less than what I was as a human. It didn’t suddenly separate me from the world I’ve lived in all my life.”
“Etain—”
She pressed firmly. “Together. We do this together, with a little help from our friends.”
“Sounds like a rock song,” Cathal said at her back. “But I’m in. And afterward maybe we can stay in bed for the next week.”
Eamon resisted. His will silently battling theirs. More form than substance given Etain’s determination and the respect that had grown along with his love for her.
It very nearly amused him, how simple he’d thought their courtship would be. How easily he’d thought to bend her while not bending himself. “Your plan?”
“Unchanged since this began, except now we go at it from a different direction, from the top down to a crewmember I can touch just long enough to get something useful for Detective Ordones.”
She hesitated, old habits clinging until she shed them, giving him the full truth. “The Dragon can follow my ink. It…she…can see through the killer’s eyes, enough to get a location but not necessarily an identification. I’d rather have that going in.”
And he knew what she meant by going in. “It’ll require a concession.”
“Yes.”
A muscle spasmed in his cheek, resistance radiating off him like the rays of a dark sun, but he said, “I trust you to handle it.”
She brushed her lips against his, heart singing. Eamon’s hand tangling in her hair held her as he deepened the kiss in a promise of what they’d share after this was behind them. When they parted, she gave Cathal the name Anton had given her.
He made the call.
“What’s up?” Sean asked.
“There’s a name for you to run, specifically to see if there’s a connection to any of the guys wearing Etain’s art.”
“Hold on.”
Cathal heard Sean crossing the deck, then the sound of a computer waking up. Key taps followed, Sean logging in to a law enforcement database in all likelihood. “Let me have it.”
“Street name Cyco. Last name Chalino.”
Sean’s low whistle seconds later said there’d been an immediate hit. “This is one bad dude. I’m shooting you a picture now.”
“Shit,” Cathal said. “This is the guy in the Jag.”
“Responsible for the excitement at your place after I talked to you last?”
“Yes.”
“Says here he’s wanted in the United States for murder, a home invasion with a body count of three. Escaped to Mexico where he’s believed to have done work for one of the cartels. Got caught there and tossed into jail but Mexico wouldn’t extradite since he’s facing the death penalty in Texas and the Texans don’t back down. Escaped prison five months ago, but here’s cause to tie him to the slaughter in Oakland. He’s suspected of doing the same in Mexico. Twenty-five dead when he and his crew raided a whorehouse and drug distribution house run by a rival cartel.”
“Known associates?”
“Getting there.” Keystrokes followed, then a, “Damn. His cousin in Roberto
“Looks like he’s back, with a traveling buddy.”
“Then I’d say they’ve got a pretty tight support network. I ran Spooky’s name past my snitches as well as the cops I reached out to. No hint of him being back in the area. Not going to be easy finding him or his cousin.”
“I think we have what we need. Go ahead and send the bill.” Better all the way around if Sean didn’t discover Lucky’s associates were now missing too.
“You’re passing the information on to the cops?”
“Yes.”
“Consider me done then.”
Cathal hung up. Etain said, “Roberto was a friend, not just someone I knew. We used to hang out at Vontae’s house together. He wasn’t a gangbanger then, didn’t have a street name, but there was a certain inevitability. I can see it now. He was obsessed with cred and respect.”
She touched a place above her heart. “He idolized his uncle. I did a memorial tat of him. Later someone told me the guy was involved with one of the cartels and was killed during an ambush of newly sworn-in Mexican police officers.”
Eamon’s tight expression mirrored the hard knot in Cathal’s gut. Even knowing Liam would shadow her, he didn’t like the thought of her being around guys who had so little regard for human life.
He voiced what Eamon was no doubt thinking, “Spooky’s wanted. Give Ordones his location, it might be enough. There’s a good chance they’d get Cyco too. Your obligation to Anton would be met.”
“Even if that’s true, Spooky and Cyco won’t give up the others, and without the guns, there’d be no hard evidence linking any of them to the bar hit. That’s assuming the police act immediately. And if Cyco isn’t with them when the police swoop, he’ll be in the wind and probably out of Eamon’s territory, making it a lot harder to put the deal I made with Anton behind us.”
He knew she was right, had known it when he proposed the easy, less risky course of action. Christ, he just wanted this done. “Eamon?”
“She’s correct. My territory doesn’t extend into Southern California nor beyond the Northern borders of this state, and even then it’s not all inclusive.”
“Let’s get it over with then.” It should be safe enough, though he caught himself rubbing his forearm when he saw the quicksilver flash of pain in Eamon’s eyes.
Fuck. Maybe when this was done they could approach Cage and bargain for access to the information he claimed to have about the
“Ready?” he asked Etain.
“As I’ll ever be.” She sat in the hallway, back to the wall, and closed her eyes.
Before Eamon, she hadn’t spent much time contemplating magic, though if she had, she would have drawn from the stories she’d read and assumed practicing it required some type of circle, possibly with salt, and probably with candles.
It seemed anticlimactic, lacking in ceremony to simply reach out mentally, to imagine herself walking the path of the sigil starting from the point where it touched the ink on her wrists then moving forward, twined gold and green beneath her feet becoming less prominent as sunshine filtered through the dark, ancient trees of a primordial forest smelling of rich loam and magic.
She followed the trail to the lake and the emerald green Dragon waiting there. “You expected me.”
“You know what I want.”
“And the cost?”
Flame accompanied amusement, a fiery snort.
