different, stronger. If he could figure out who she’d been and how her magic had worked . . . well, it’d be a hell of a benefit come the zero date, if nothing else. As would gaining possession of the artifacts bearing the demon prophecies, he reminded himself, forcing himself back on task when a part of him wanted to just stand there and absorb the weird energy within the tea shop.
Wait a minute . . . energy?
The buzz was new since before, he realized on a spurt of adrenaline. Something had changed in the air. Damning himself for daydreaming when he should’ve been paying attention, he tensed and cast his senses outward, trying to pinpoint the alteration and its source. It wasn’t magic, precisely. He didn’t know exactly what it was, but he liked the way it feathered across his skin and curled inside his chest, and the way everything tightened and lit up, as though he’d inhaled the promise of sex along with air.
“It’s okay,” he said softly, somehow knowing it was the girl with the worked-over face. “I won’t hurt you.”
“Yes, you will, but you won’t mean to,” came the whispered answer. The sound seemed to come from all around him, and the lamp suddenly cut out, plunging the room into darkness lit only from the neon out on the street.
Rabbit heard movement and the rustle of clothing, and knew she was waiting to see what he would do next. Showing off, he held out his hand, palm up, and whispered the word that was burned into his soul and woven into the fibers of his being:
A red-gold flame flared to life, warming his palm and lighting the room.
A shadow moved over by the first row of bookcases, and the girl stepped into the bloodred light.
She wasn’t smiling, but her eyes were clear and unafraid as they met his. “Nice trick.”
The red firelight faded the bruise to a faint smudge and sharpened the contrast between her pale complexion and her straight black hair, dark lips, and dark blue eyes. She was wearing low-rider jeans and a tight hoodie that’d been cropped off just above her waistband to show a strip of flat stomach and a starburst tattoo centered on her navel. She was lean hipped, slight, and tough-looking. And, Rabbit realized with a start, she was gorgeous. Somehow he’d missed that earlier, or maybe he’d gotten it but hadn’t quite grasped the actual degree of her hotness. He’d been mostly focused on the shiner and the slump of her shoulders, the whipped-dog air he knew all too well from back in high school, when he’d been the daily target of three of the biggest bullies in town. He’d recognized the victim in her because like knew like. Now, though, she was straight shouldered, with her chin up and her eyes assessing, as though she were measuring him, trying to figure him out. She didn’t look put off by the magic, but didn’t look impressed, which meant that either she’d seen real magic before, or she’d seen so much of the fake stuff that she was automatically assuming the fireball was an illusion.
Rabbit had been prepared for the victim. He wasn’t so ready for the girl who faced him now, unafraid. He was even less ready when she withdrew the carved obsidian knife from the back pocket of her hip-hugging jeans and balanced the blade on her palm. “You want this?”
Power sang in the air and made him think about being a hero, about proving that he wasn’t as much of a fuckup as everyone thought. He nodded, his throat going dry. “Yeah. I want it.”
She nodded, and her expression firmed. “Take me with you, and you can have whatever you want.”
Nate hung on to the door handle in the backseat as their cabbie—a twentysomething who was thrilled with his “follow that car” fare—gleefully chased the dark sedan carrying Mistress Truth along the twisty streets of the Quarter. Eventually the sedan pulled up in front of the closed, locked entrance of an aboveground cemetery. Nate and Alexis’s driver parked a block over and down, looking sorry that the ride was over.
“Let me guess,” Alexis muttered. “She picked the location.”
“She doesn’t seem the sort to miss the opportunity for some drama,” Nate agreed as he paid the driver, adding a twenty so the guy would wait.
They got out of the cab and worked their way back, making like tourists by holding hands and gawking at the carved marble pillars and ornate iron grillwork of the fence surrounding the cemetery, even though it was late and the area wasn’t exactly a primo stop on the haunted walking tours.
As they neared the cemetery the sedan rolled past, heading back uptown.
“Think it’s headed out to get our Xibalban?” Nate said, more thinking aloud than really asking.
“He can ’port,” Alexis said with a bit of
Nate would’ve argued that Strike didn’t ’port everywhere he wanted to go, but didn’t bother because he didn’t want to buy into the fight. And yeah, he knew damn well it wasn’t really a fight that was looking to spark between them, not this close to the eclipse. The electricity that pulsed on the night air was way more sex than anger, or maybe a mix of the two. Part of him was annoyed that his body had no problem buying into the destined-mates thing. The rest of him didn’t give a crap about that, just wanted her against him, underneath him. And she was feeling it too. He could see it in the pink blush that crept up her long throat and high-boned cheeks when he caught her looking, and when they brushed up against each other as they walked, still holding hands.
“It’s a one-way trip,” she said, and it took him a few seconds to realize she wasn’t talking about the two of them; she was talking about Mistress Truth and the limo, and she had a point. The sedan’s departure suggested that whoever hired it didn’t expect the wannabe witch to need a ride home.
“Come on.” He sped up, and they came into sight of the cemetery entrance just as the witch’s purple- jacketed figure disappeared through the arched gateway.
Nate and Alexis followed. The cemetery gate opened onto a main drag paved in pressed white gravel, with offshoots leading away at right angles, intersected by narrower pathways running parallel to the main drag, creating a regular gridwork of roads crisscrossing around straight rows of monuments and elevated crypts, all built well above normal flood height. There’d no doubt been some serious posthurricane rebuilding necessary, but in the moonlit darkness Nate saw no sign of the destruction or repairs. The cemetery looked secure in the silence. Peaceful. For now, anyway.
“There she goes,” he said as their quarry stopped at an angel-topped crypt, fiddled with the lock for a moment, and then stepped inside. “Wonder if that’s the family home?”
“I think—” Alexis broke off as the air suddenly rang with the rattle of foreign magic, and they heard the pop of displaced air from up ahead. “Come on!”
Nate wanted to grab her and shove her in a crypt until it was all over, but she wasn’t his to protect, and she was a good jump ahead of him. Adrenaline flared and he started after her, pulling the nine-
millimeter he’d checked with his luggage and hoped he wouldn’t need. “Wait up,” he hissed. “Wait for—” But they were already too late. A dark shadow passed through the crypt entrance well ahead of them. A second later the witch screamed, the sound high and terrified, followed by a masculine roar of anger, then another scream, cutting off to a gurgling rattle.
“Shit!” Nate put his head down and ran, pushing past Alexis and barreling into the crypt.
The big redhead had the witch up against the back wall of the crypt, holding her off her feet by her throat. He had a stone knife in his other hand, its tip against her temple.
It was a stone knife, yes, and it was Mayan. Maybe even Nightkeeper. But it wasn’t
The witch had switched blades, Nate realized, and the big guy was pissed. “Drop it!” he ordered, leveling the nine-millimeter. “These are jade tipped.” He didn’t fire, though, because ricochet would be a bitch in the stone chamber.
The witch’s eyes locked onto him, relief warring with terror as her mouth pulled back in a voiceless plea for help. The enemy mage ignored the threat and dug the knife in a little, until a drop of blood welled and tracked down Mistress Truth’s temple. “Where’s the real knife? Back at the shop?”
She shook her head wildly, then nodded, spraying tears, spittle, and terror.
“Drop her now!” Nate shouted, sidestepping so he had half a prayer of nailing the redhead without killing the witch too.
The mage looked at him, disgusted. “For fuck’s sake, you could’ve taken the damn thing earlier.
That’s always been the problem with you people. Too many fucking rules.”
Magic clapped, brown smoke detonated, and mage and witch disappeared. Nate stood for a second, stunned. There had been no rattle of gathering magic, no pop of displaced air, yet his gut told him that they hadn’t
