Bitten in Two

clothesline to take down her dry laundry. Vayl may be a little off-balance right now, but that hasn’t dumbed him down any. You know he didn’t leave without some idea of how he was going to succeed.

So do I have time to read this, or should we just go?

Give it a look. Granny May couldn’t hide the curiosity sparkling behind her bifocals. Maybe it’ll help.

I tore open the envelope. The thick paper felt like a ten-pound weight in my hand as I opened it.

My Dearest Jasmine,

I think that I shall not survive this evening.

Perhaps it is for the best. I chose this existence out of rage. But vengeance only carried me through its first year. And since then, no direction has restored to me that which I squandered on the day I became Vampere.

When I saw your lovely eyes, staring solemnly at me from your portrait, I felt as if I had known you since my soul’s creation. My only desire has been to set myself before you in the hope that you will see in me something for which I have given up looking. But it is not to be. Perhaps we will meet again when time has ended and you and I are no longer bound by any tie that love cannot break.

Yours,

Vayl

I want to cry. And hug this damn note like it’s my old teddy bear. But I don’t see anything in it that could help—

Read it again! demanded Granny May.

And that was when I saw that he’d signed it, not with the name he’d used in his old life, but with the one I’d always known him by. I sprang to my feet.

“He signed it Vayl!” I came out of the gazebo with the note high in my hand. “He signed it with his modern name!” Cole let me take his hands and even jump up and down with him a few times. Then he said, “I have no idea what that means.”

“The curse is beginning to break, I think because we keep hammering at it. And our Vayl is waving at us through the cracks. He wants us to find him tonight because he has no problem with women fighting alongside men. And he real y wants to survive. So we wil find more clues to where he’s gone and what he’s up to. We just have to look for them!”

Sterling, lounging on one of the padded chairs with one bare foot swinging over its arm, held up a finger. “And what do we do when we find him? We’re al about stealth, remember? What if Vayl and this mage are fighting in the middle of the street?”

“We improvise. We’re good at that, aren’t we, Cole?” Cole pul ed back his jacket so he could brush his hand down the rifle he held at his side. “We usual y figure out pretty quick where to point and shoot.”

“I’m prepared,” Bergman bragged. He looked over his shoulder. Seeing that Monique had chosen to give us privacy, he raised the sleeve of his baggy pul over.

“Miles!” I came forward to make sure I’d seen right.

“What are you doing with those rockets strapped to your wrist?”

He gave me that look. The one smart people save for stupid questions. “I’m a terrible shot with a gun. With these, al I have to do is look at what I want to hit and I can count on a bul ’s- eye.”

“You did read my report on the Patras mission? The last thing we need is for you to shoot somebody ful of miniature robots and have their head explode, like, two weeks later!”

Bergman shoved his hands into his hips so hard that if he’d been an eighty-year-old man he’d have dislocated them. “You are completely exaggerating!”

“Not by much!”

Cole jumped between us, massaging our shoulders like a boxing coach as he said, “Come on, guys, is this any way to start a rescue operation?” He looked at each of us until we shook our heads. “Good,” he said. “Now I suggest we kiss and make up. Jaz, you start with me, then we can work our way around the circle—ow!” He laughed, rubbing his chest where my punch had landed.

I said, “You’re supposed to be fal ing out of love with me, remember?”

“Already done,” he announced. “Remember? That was my goal for our NASA job. Which I aced. So any sex I have with you from this day forward wil be purely platonic. Even medicinal. You know, like California pot.” I narrowed my eyes. “Ah. So afterward you’re going to forget where you parked your car and experience a mounting craving for cocaine?”

He laughed again. “Exactly.”

Kyphas made a sound that landed somewhere between fingers-in-the-car-door and lioness-guarding- her-kil . It gave me chil s. Which pissed me off.

“Come on,” I said, looking at her but directing my words to the courtyard in general. “We’ve final y got a bankable reason to kick some ass.” I strode past the demon, purposely brushing her shoulder with mine. “Oh, and Kyphas?” I smiled into her flushed face. “Bring your li’l scarfy-thing.” With no other choice, she fel into line behind me, walking beside Cole with the watchful air of a bodyguard. Or jealous lover. Either way, the look he gave her said their time together was already running to the bottom of the hourglass.

I hid my smile by directing it at Bergman, making it encouraging. He’d rol ed his sleeve back down to cover his secret weapon, and now fol owed Kyphas at his safe-secret weapon, and now fol owed Kyphas at his safe-distance pace. Only because I was watching did I see him send Kyphas a glare that she responded to with a smirk. If she’d known my old roomie the way I did, she wouldn’t have been so happy to have pissed him off.