Bitten in Two

We stared at one another, an island of silence surrounded by vividly dressed socializers, al headed anywhere but here. They didn’t mind our blockage. Walked around us without comment, like we’d become part of the around us without comment, like we’d become part of the city’s hardscape despite the fact that we stood in a stone-paved thoroughfare so narrow that even a couple of cyclists might brush shoulders if they weren’t careful how they passed each other.

Somebody accidental y bumped Cole, apologized in French, and that was al we needed to get us moving. Vayl led. Cole came next. I fol owed, feeling like I’d betrayed him without ever meaning to.

Raoul? Come on, give me something to cling to here.

Tell me Cole’s got somebody out there waiting. A woman who’ll make him look at me later and laugh.

I didn’t expect a reply. My Spirit Guide hated the feeling that he was on 24-7 Jaz-cal . But within a few minutes I felt the buzz of his presence, so big I clapped my hands over my ears and fought to clear my vision. And then his voice, like a boxing match announcer with his microphone maxed out in my head, said, COLE’S MATE IS CHOSEN. BUT

THEIR TIME IS STILL DISTANT.

Thanks. Oh, man, I can’t tell you what a relief—okay.

That’s something at least. I caught Cole’s gaze. As soon as he felt my eyes on him he stuck out his tongue, tinted red from his bubblegum.

I grinned as he pointed to Vayl. More information, he mouthed.

I nodded and said, “So, Lord Brancoveanu, you want to visit a Seer. That’s an excel ent idea, actual y. But, uh, we real y should go with you.” Which was what we were doing at the moment, of course. But Vayl could ditch us whenever he wanted, and we al knew that.

“Why?” he asked.

That’s an excellent question. Anybody have a clue?

Shit! Not one of my inner girls was up to the chal enge. In fact, most of them were stil out of breath from doing the Cole-wil -final y-get-his-girl jig.

Once again, my coworker and former recruit came to the rescue. “Considering what you said about Roldan wanting to change Helena, maybe she’d be safer in your care for the night.” Before Vayl could object again Cole added, “I’ve heard bad things about this Were. He has connections far beyond England. If he knows we left the country, he can trace us here. Wouldn’t we al be safer if we stayed together?”

Vayl pinched his bottom lip between his thumb and forefinger, a gesture I’d never seen before. Maybe he’d dropped it after he’d gotten the cane and could spin it between his hands instead. But he’d rejected it, along with me, the night he woke with most of his life missing.

He said, “Al right. We wil go back for her. But none of you are al owed into the Seer’s chambers while she reads for me. I must insist on privacy in this matter.”

“Oh, sure.” Cole nodded at me.

I raised my hands. “That’s your business,” I said.

“Good.” Vayl cleared his throat.

I waited. Then I prodded him. “Isn’t this where you apologize for threatening to strand me here earlier?” He glanced at me from the corners of his eyes. “Do you mean like I left you in the middle of Cornwal last autumn?”

“He’s done it before?” I murmured. “What a son of a bitch! And she came back? Why?”

His tone went al Dennis Mil er on me, so cutting I was surprised droplets of blood didn’t fly off my skin. “I do not understand why you continue to speak of yourself in the third person, madame. Have you suddenly discovered a familial link to King George?”

I clenched a fist and shook it under his nose. “I’l give you a familial link —”

Cole shoved my arm down. “Relax, woman. It’s 1777, remember? You don’t even get to vote yet.”

“Yeah! Because of pigheaded brutes like him!” I yel ed.

“If I am such a brute, why did you return to my service after our last dispute?” Vayl demanded, his voice closer to a roar than I’d ever heard it. I’d have screamed right back at him but for the note of desperation I heard threading under the anger, brightening his eyes to the color of flames.

I thought about it. Why would a woman who’d pissed off her employer enough that he’d abandoned—but not fired—

her, come trudging back to his door? She probably needed the work. And there was her husband’s job to consider.

Plus maybe she felt loyal to Helena. More likely it was a combination of al of those reasons plus a few others I could name. But there was only one that real y mattered.

I looked into the face of the man an old Italian housekeeper had stared at over two hundred years ago, and before thought could move me I was standing so close to him I could’ve felt his chest rise into mine if he’d chosen that moment to sigh. I looked down, momentarily fascinated by the sight of my slender white fingers, not hanging empty at my side, but instead wrapped around his broad, workingman’s hand.

I said, “Until this moment I never completely understood why my Granny May sat by my Gramps Lew in those last days of his life, when he couldn’t talk anymore and she knew he wouldn’t wake up. Why every single morning she rejoiced that he was stil there with her. To hold hands with.

It was enough for her. You know?”

That line between his brows—how can you love a man’s frown? But I saw it and was glad. It meant he was tuned in—to me. I went on. “Some people, yeah, you catch the first coach outta there and you never look back. But some…” I paused to lock on to his gaze. “You can somehow see past al the bul shit to a soul