Jennifer Rardin - [Jaz Parks 1] - Once Bitten, Twice Shy

Not a day goes by that I don't miss my Granny May. Mom, well to be honest, I'm kind of relieved she's gone. But her mother's passing still gets to me, even after three years. Sometimes I want to see her so badly it's a physical pain. Now I just wished she was here to prop me up, because damned if I didn't feel dizzy.

I watched Vayl watch Liliana approach us and totally failed to figure out how he felt about it. I, on the other hand, felt very clearly that the world had just begun to spin in the opposite direction. 'Your… late… wife?' I whispered.

Vayl nodded, just a slight jerk of his head. 'She died. Then she killed me. Ergo… late wife.'

That song started going through my head, the only words I remembered being the most pertinent at the moment. How bizarre, how bizarre.

Vayl's voice sounded robotic, a programmed conversational gambit offering no meaningful detail as he said, 'Whatever happens, Jasmine, do not take off Cirilai.' Who? Oh, duh, the ring.

Still basically clueless, I fell back on what Granny May used to call my 'spider sense.' (She was a big fan of Marvel Comics. Dave still has her collection.) She had meant my woman's intuition, and even without my newly honed senses to back it up, it thrummed like a newly strung web. The rate of thrum increased when Vayl added, 'Under no circumstance should you draw your gun.'

Grief, a comforting lump under my jacket, contained some Bergman-engineered options that would work beautifully on Liliana. And he didn't want me to pull it? Nuts! Vayl—

His look, foreign and glacial, silenced me. I suddenly felt outnumbered.

'This is not something we can escape through violence,' he said, thawing slightly as I searched his eyes.

'What about through the threat of violence?'

His lips twitched. 'One cannot encounter you without sensing that threat. Tonight it should be enough simply for them to know you are dangerous.'

I disagreed. I hated to question Vayl's commitment to me or to the Agency, but he'd just dropped a big old bomb on me. What else had he been hiding? Should I, God forbid, mark his name down next to Martha's on the suspect list?

I felt like I was looking at a portrait as I gazed into his empty eyes. I'd seen life in them plenty of times, but now I felt stupid to have assumed his life had anything in common with my own. He wasn't a monster. I'd seen enough in my time to recognize the difference. But he wasn't a man either. Could I ever really know, could I ever really trust someone so different from me and mine?

Vayl and I stood staring at each other, teetering at either end of a finely balanced lever. Should I step off? Would he?

'What are you thinking?' he asked.

'That you're up to no good.' I sighed. 'I hope Granny May was right.'

'About what?'

'About trusting my sp… my intuition.'

'Grannies are generally very wise in these matters.'

Yeah, but mine never met a vampire.

Liliana strode forward, clearly put out that we hadn't unrolled the red carpet for her dramatic entrance. I gave her a look meant to be blank.

'Your kitten is bristling,' Liliana told Vayl.

'I would not push her,' Vayl replied, leaning just slightly on his cane, 'many before you have found her to be more a tigress than a kitten.'

Whatever happened to 'Hey, how are you?' 'Long time, no see.' Apparently you don't have to observe the rules of etiquette when reuniting with a murderous spouse.

'How did you find me?' Vayl asked, his voice absolutely even. I took my eyes off the Bad Boys for just a moment to confirm what I had sensed shaking underneath that silken baritone. Yeah, it was there, in small movements most wouldn't notice. A lift of the shoulder. A jerk of the head. The hollowing of a cheek that said he was biting the inside of it. Vayl was fighting enormous rage, something so big that if he released it he might never get it all back in the box.

Oh boy. I'm in smartass mode and Vayl wants to break his ex's neck. If we don't play this right they'll be scraping parts of us off the bumpers of these cars for days.

Liliana flipped a chunk of her long, polyester hair back over one shoulder. 'These surroundings are rather… public, don't you think?' The smile she gave Vayl could've cured frostbite. 'Come into my car.' It wasn't a request.

Vayl's gaze cut her like an arctic wind. 'No.'

'You owe—'

'I owe you nothing.'

She moved so fast her arm was a blur. Vayl caught it just before her hand connected with his jaw.

'Back off, bitch,' I snarled. With no time to draw Grief, I'd resorted to my primary backup, a wrist sheath loaded with a syringe.

The needle was halfway into her hip before she could look down to see what was pinching.

A series of mechanical clacks drew my attention to Liliana's goons.