“Uh-huh.”
“So Jonas needs to know who or what or where, and expects me to tell him.” I threw my chocolate-stained hands up. “Somehow. See how that works?”
“No.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
“So you’re sittin’ here, eating candy.”
“Chocolate.”
“And that’s different?”
“Candy is candy. Chocolate is therapy.”
“Got plans for this afternoon?”
“Eating more chocolate.”
Marco just shook his head. “You shouldn’t let that old guy get to you. He’s nuts.”
“Yeah.” I was kind of coming around to Marco’s way of thinking.
“Where’d he go off to, anyway?”
“Home.” Or wherever he went when he wasn’t blowing my mind.
“And the mage?”
“Same.” At least, Pritkin had said he was going to his room. I chose to believe him, because if I shifted down there and didn’t find him resting, I was going to lose it. And I was close enough anyway.
“Well, I’m going to bed,” Marco announced, placing massive hands on the table and levering himself to his feet. He didn’t need the help, even in the middle of the day, but vamps like to play martyr when they have to be up past sunrise.
“I thought you went an hour ago.”
“Wanted to wait till everyone cleared out.”
I rolled my eyes. Yeah. Because Jonas or Pritkin might suddenly decide to take a cleaver to my head.
He ruffled my hair and left. I found a coconut cream hiding in the second layer and sucked out the ooey-gooey innards. Things were looking up.
And Marco was probably right about not paying too much attention to Jonas. The guy told me one minute that he knew visions couldn’t be made to order, and then the next he asked for exactly that. I was supposed to hand him Artemis on a silver platter with nothing, absolutely nothing, to go on except a name that might not even be hers.
I’d tried to explain how unlikely that was. Like really, really unlikely. Like not-going-to-happen unlikely. But all he’d done was tell me that he was sure I’d come up with something.
Yeah, right.
To find someone, I’d need at least a photo, preferably something she’d owned and touched, or, even better, a trip to her last known place of residence. And even then, I wasn’t a damn hound dog. I might get a flash of something; I might not. But under the circumstances—
No. Just no. Even assuming Artemis actually existed, even assuming she was a person and not a metaphor, even assuming Jonas hadn’t made up this whole crazy thing in that brilliant but cracked head of his, the answer would still be no. There were no photos, nothing she’d personally owned, and she hadn’t been at her last known place of residence for something like three thousand years.
Not that I wasn’t going to try, because what the hell. But my track record for made-to-order visions wasn’t great. Actually, my track record for made-to-order visions was zero, but Jonas had looked so hopeful, I hadn’t wanted to tell him that.
He’d find out soon enough.
I sighed and sat back, hearing my own chair creak. Probably not a good sign. Probably should lay off the creams, not that there were any left.
I scrubbed my face with my palms, feeling a little light-headed from all the sugar. Maybe ordering some real food might be smart, after all. The phone was on the counter, all of five feet away, but it seemed really far for some reason. I sighed again and followed Marco’s example, putting my hands on the table to lever myself up—
And went in the other direction instead.
The room spun wildly, my legs collapsed underneath me and I dropped like a stone. Something shot overhead as I hit the tile, and a loud crack reverberated around the kitchen. I looked up, dizzy and confused and wondering why there was a knife bisecting the back of my chair.
I stared for a split second at the shiny, shiny blade, which was still quivering, slinging little shards of light around the room. And then I shifted.
Or I tried. But the woozy feeling that had sent me to the floor made it hard to concentrate, and when I finally did feel the familiar swoop catching me, it stuttered and jerked and wobbled and fractured. And the next thing I knew, I was kneeling by the fridge, staring at a familiar pair of glossy black shoes.
The vamps should have told him, I thought vaguely; they were totally the wrong color for the season.
And then one of them kicked me in the head.
It hurt like a bitch, despite the fact that I’d dodged at the last second and it only clipped my ear. I grabbed the fridge door and swung it open, hard, just as three more enchanted knives ripped through the flimsy material. Stainless steel, my ass.
I’d have been dead, but I was on my knees and the knives burst through overhead, shattering plastic and breaking condiments, before slamming into something behind me. I couldn’t see—literally—because I’d just gotten a face full of pickle juice. I blinked it away to find that the knives had also exploded some hot sauce, forever ruining my blouse, which concerned me less than the eyes peering at me through the lacerated fridge door.
They had been my would-be date’s best feature, a soft, melting, cornflower blue that had looked a little girlie for a war mage. That wasn’t so much a problem now. I stared into something cold and black and boiling, and then I threw the rest of the hot sauce at them and scrambled away on all fours.
The mage screamed and it was nothing human, but a high-pitched, keening cry of pure rage. The eyes had been a big clue, but that sealed it. Whatever had possessed me before must have hitched a ride in a new body, obviously with the idea of finishing what it had started.
Awesome.
I scrambled for cover behind the table, eyes burning, head spinning and fingers fumbling for the little pouch Pritkin had made for me—only to remember that I didn’t have it anymore. Goddamned Niall! If I lived, I was going to send him back to the desert—this time the freaking
I jerked open a cabinet door and crawled inside.
It wasn’t as crazy as it sounds. I had to find something made of iron and I had to do it quick. It was either that or use the only weapon I had on me, and while I’d killed when I had no other choice, it had never been some poor schmuck who nobody had bothered to tell that dating me was a hazardous occupation.
I really didn’t want to send him back to Jonas in a body bag. I really, really didn’t. Even when knives started slamming through the cabinets and ricocheting back and forth in the small space like BBs in a jar. They also let in slivers of light that glinted off pots and pans and colanders and bowls, all nice, modern, worthless stainless without an iron skillet in the bunch.
And then a knife bisected a water line under the sink, spewing me in the face.
I was only blinded for a second, but it was long enough for a hand to reach in and jerk me out—by the hair. It hurt bad enough to bring tears to my eyes, but it also left me with an opportunity. Fucking
The sudden loss of his handhold caused the mage to stumble. And then my foot in his ass caused him to sprawl on the floor. And then I stepped on his shoulders and heard his face smack against the tile as I ran full out for the hall, screaming for Billy and my useless, useless bodyguards—
I didn’t make it.
Halfway there, a blast picked me up and sent me hurtling toward the far wall of the lounge. My feet left the floor, my head hit the wall and pain lanced through my skull. But that wasn’t the main problem. That would be the film of what felt like hard plastic flattening me against the dark red wallpaper like a bug under cellophane.
