Dawnkeepers

She nodded. “So why not call him directly?”

“He disappeared last summer while doing fieldwork in the highlands. At this point he’s presumed dead.”

Desiree’s expression sharpened. “And you think you can get his notes from the daughter?”

“I think it’s a good place to start,” Lucius answered, not willing to tell the Dragon Lady that he couldn’t explain why; he just knew he had to see Sasha. When he’d heard her voice on the phone, something had shifted inside him. He didn’t know why or what it meant. He knew only that he had to find her, had to see her.

Desiree said nothing, simply opened her center desk drawer, pulled out a black plastic square, and slid it across the desk toward him. “Then go.”

He stared at the credit card, at his own name imprinted on it. “Since when does the university hand out no- limit AmEx cards?”

“It’s drawn on one of my private grants,” she replied, in a voice that said, Don’t ask.

Apprehension shivered through Lucius. The part of him he recognized as himself knew he should stand up, walk away, and never look back. But that darker part of him, the part that said nobody had ever given him a major break before, that he deserved this one now, told him to take the card and book the flight.

A thin whine started up in his ears, making his jaw hurt, and the world went a little fuzzy around the edges. What was he supposed to be worrying about? Oh, right. Betraying Anna by accepting Desiree’s offer of some grant money. But really, could Anna honestly object to his taking on a side project? It wasn’t as though she’d been using him lately. Anna hadn’t been doing much of anything in the way of research ever since Neenee took off. And, come to think of it, that lack of academic production probably hadn’t helped his thesis defense any.

When he came right down to it, Desiree’s offer might be his best chance of cutting his losses and moving on—a logic that felt both right and wrong, depending on which part of himself he listened to.

“I’ll do it.” He picked up the card and balanced it on his palm for a moment, then closed his fingers.

On some level, a level far away from the man he’d once been, he was unsurprised to feel the plastic slice into his scarred palm, bringing blood to the surface. Not pausing to tend to the cut, he held out his bleeding hand to Desiree. “You can count on me.”

When she shook his hand, the silver cuff she habitually wore on her right wrist slipped back, and he saw the edge of a bloodred tattoo that looked oddly familiar.

CHAPTER SIX

Nate had never spent much one-on-one time with Rabbit before. Not because he had anything major against the kid, but more because he’d been spending most of his downtime wrestling with the story line for VW6. He’d hung with Rabbit as part of a group, sure, and shot a game or two of nine- ball, but there’d always been other people around to blunt the kid’s ’tude. Which was why, when Strike had told him the teen was flying to New Orleans with him and Alexis, Nate hadn’t thought much about it.

Heck, he’d been relieved that there would be a buffer between him and Alexis, a third wheel to keep him from doing something really stupid, like acting on the edgy sense of possessiveness that’d been riding him since the day before. He kept telling himself it was a delayed reaction to having rescued her from the enemy mage, and again when the statuette kicked her into the barrier. He was bound to feel protective after that—it wasn’t as if they could afford to lose any of the magi. It was only natural that he’d want to keep her safe. It didn’t mean he wanted to start up again with something that hadn’t fit right before.

So he told himself to ignore the way his skin kept tightening every time he came within a yard of her, and the way the memories of the two of them together were suddenly too close to the surface of his mind, far more so than they had been in the months they’d been broken up. He swore he could taste her, and feel her skin beneath his fingertips, feel the weight of her breasts against his chest, and hear her cries as she came apart around him.

It’s just the eclipse, he told himself as he followed her onto the plane. Carlos had warned him that his hormones would flare when the barrier thinned, and eclipses were among the most powerful astrological events in the Nightkeeper calendar. Sure, the lunar eclipse was still a few days away, but damned if he couldn’t feel the hum of sex and magic in his blood. It made him think of Alexis when he should’ve been thinking about the mission ahead, made his nostrils flare when he caught the light hint of her scent on the recirculated airplane air, made his flesh tighten when she glanced back at him and he saw the curve of her jaw, the soft swing of her hair. He wanted to find someplace where it was just the two of them, wanted to bury himself in her, lose himself with her—

And he so wasn’t going back there.

Focus, he told himself fiercely. He needed to concentrate on the mission, on improving the Nightkeepers’ score against the enemy mage. They were even: The Nightkeepers had the Ixchel statuette, but the redhead had Edna Hopkins’s artifact. If it took Nate, Alexis, and Rabbit traveling together to make the score two to one, then so be it. They just had to get the knife and get back. No problem, right?

By the time their plane landed in New Orleans late that afternoon, though, he was seriously wishing he’d been flying solo. Alexis was barely speaking to him, answering his occasional questions with short, clipped monosyllables, and spending the rest of the time studying the report Jade had prepared on the knife, Mistress Truth, and the French Quarter. And Rabbit was in full-on punk mode, with his hoodie pulled most of the way over his face and his iPod buds jammed in his ears, making it clear he’d rather be anywhere else, with any one else. He’d been pissy about being ordered out of Skywatch, which didn’t make much sense to Nate, who would’ve thought the kid’d be jonesing to see some action by now.

Deciding to ignore them both, Nate tossed his carry-on bag in the trunk of the first cab he saw, and made a point of sitting up front with the driver.

When he rattled off Mistress Truth’s address at the outskirts of the French Quarter, though, the driver gave him a funny look. “You sure about that?” the cabbie asked as he pulled away from the curb and headed them into the stream of vehicles exiting the airport.

Nate focused on the guy, noting the edge of a tribal tattoo at his neck, partly hidden by his shirt.

“Yeah. We’ve got an appointment at the tea shop.”

The driver glanced over, and his voice was a little too casual when he said, “If’n you want your leaves read, you should go to my cousin’s place. She does palms too, and she’ll give you a break if you tell her I sent you.”

Nate tensed. “What’s wrong with Mistress Truth’s?”

The other man’s eyes slid away from his. “Nothing. Just trying to give family some business.” He reached over without looking, palmed his Motorola, and chirped home base to announce the pickup and his destination, then turned up the dance music on the radio in a clear signal that the convo was over.

Nate would’ve pressed, but from the set of the driver’s jaw he figured he wouldn’t get far. Stubborn recognized stubborn. He half turned back to look at Alexis, who lifted a shoulder as if to say, What can we do? It wasn’t like going to another tea shop was going to get them the knife. It was Mistress Truth or bust.

They traveled the rest of the way in silence broken only by the mindless syncopation coming from the radio, until the driver rolled them to a stop in front of a jazz club. “We’re here.”

Actually, they were more like four doors down, Nate saw, and tried not to wonder why the driver didn’t want to stop in front of the tea shop. If the guy was trying to give him the creeps, he’d done a pretty good job.

Nate paid the tab and added a tip. When the driver made change he included a card for his cousin’s place, but didn’t say another word, just gave a two-fingered salute and pulled back out into traffic.

“Smells funny.” Rabbit wrinkled his nose as he looked around.

“Can’t argue that,” Nate said, staring after the cab.

“You should’ve told him to wait,” Alexis said, her tone carrying a distinct edge.

Nate ignored her snippiness. It didn’t seem to be easing, which made him wonder whether it was more