Demonkeepers

Nightkeeper magic had been through the slave mark.

Glancing at his forearm, he suppressed a shudder at the thought that he could just as easily be part Xibalban. Regardless, the library spell was Nightkeeper magic, suggesting that he could access either light or dark magic. “But how the hell am I supposed to do that?”

A mildly irritated beep-beep from his left warned him that he’d better concentrate on driving; he’d gotten so caught up in his thought process that he’d wandered into the fast lane. A pickup truck zoomed past going a solid ninety, and pulled away, leaving him alone to wander the lanes. Startled from his mull- and-ponder, Lucius realized that he’d gotten farther than he’d thought; the city and suburbs were gone, leaving him on a long, straight stretch of highway with not much to see in all directions. It was also later than he’d realized; the orange sun was dying behind scrub-covered, rolling hill silhouettes. A few more miles down the road, when he passed a small sign for lodging, he pulled off the highway and followed three more arrowed signs that claimed to be leading him to the Weeping Willow Inn. It was farther off the highway than he really wanted to be, but just as he was getting ready to turn back, he saw the turnoff leading to the inn.

The place had probably been a working ranch in the past; the driveway wound through the middle of sparsely covered grassland. Lucius didn’t see any livestock, though, and the lane was marked off with neat split- rail fencing rather than the more common barbed wire or electric used for working rangeland. That and the relative newness of the signage kept him from turning around, thinking the place would probably be way too sketchy for an overnight. Then he topped a low hill, got a look at the Weeping Willow Inn, and let the Jeep roll to a stop, not because the inn was sketchy at all, but because it wasn’t.

Nestled in a small, scrub- furred valley, a half dozen bunkhouselike cottages were scattered behind a main ranch house that was fronted by a wide, welcoming porch. In the fading light, he saw that all of the buildings were done in earth-toned clapboards and rough-cut wood, and dressed up with fanciful touches of gingerbread molding that gave the buildings a distinctively feminine air. Window boxes and whiskey barrels bloomed with flowers, and stones marked winding paths from each cottage to the main house, which a discreet sign identified as both the office and the kitchen. Two vehicles sat in a fenced-off parking area: a dusty SUV with a cargo clamshell strapped to its roof, and a pickup with WEEPING WILLOW INN painted on the side. So there’s probably room for us , he thought wryly.

More, he liked the cottage idea. He’d dealt with the high-rise hotel the night before, but even leaving the balcony door open to its screen hadn’t totally taken away his sense of being boxed in. He’d sleep better in a place like this.

In fact, the inn was pretty much perfect . . . if he’d been planning a honeymoon. It was way more intimate than he’d been expecting, though. The generic hotel room they’d stayed in the prior night had been a way station. This was more like a spot for lovers. The man he’d been before would’ve rocked a place like this, buying into the kitsch in the hopes that the ambience would make up for his own shortcomings. The man he’d grown into since leaving UT told himself to do a one-eighty and find a Motel 6. A woman couldn’t possibly misinterpret a Motel 6.

At the sound of a soft sigh, he looked over at Jade. She’d tucked her other hand beneath her cheek and was trying to snuggle into the hard foam seat, her neck crooking in a position that had to be getting uncomfortable. She’s tired , he told himself. Not to mention that he was tired too, or at least sick of driving. He wanted some downtime, some space to reset his brain. And the pretty little cottages made him think of Skywatch.

“Fine. The Weeping Willow Inn it is.” He eased his foot off the brake and let the Jeep coast down the hill toward the parking area. As he did so, he was aware of a low-grade churning of nerves, one warning him that he was making a mistake. He ignored it, though. He had enough troubles already; he didn’t need to borrow more.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Jade awakened warm and rested, tucked into a sinfully soft bed that smelled faintly of minty sage. She was feeling deliciously loose and proud of herself, and that latter emotion was so unusual for her, she took a moment to track the pride to its source. Memory came flooding back in a flash: She’d found her magic through a kiss, and she’d had to give only part of herself to get it. More, she’d proved her second theory correct: She couldn’t touch the magic unless she was emotionally available. It wasn’t a comfortable discovery for a woman who’d spent years teaching others—and herself—how to self-

protect, but there it was. What was it that Scarred-Jaguar was supposed to have said time and again?

Sacrifice isn’t supposed to be easy . Well, this one wasn’t, but she thought she could learn to live with it, so long as she kept a firm grip on reality.

Remembering another aspect of her present reality, she shifted under the bedcovers, reaching a hand to reassure herself that she was still wearing Anna’s skull effigy. She wasn’t looking forward to telling Strike what had happened, but she really didn’t want to follow it up by admitting she’d lost the irreplaceable pendant. She went still when she found she was wearing only her bra. No shirt . . . and no pendant.

“Don’t freak,” Lucius’s now- familiar raspy voice said. “It’s on the nightstand.”

Exhaling a long, relieved breath, she opened her eyes to mock-glare at him. “Way to give me heart failure.” Then her eyes widened as she caught her first glimpse of their surroundings.

She had assumed he would’ve checked them into another no-tell motel while she’d been sleeping off her postmagic crash, but the rough- finished wood beams and pristine white plaster of the bedroom she found herself in were a far cry from the average offering of a highwayside chain. The sky was the blue-black of nightfall, visible through a pair of French doors and framed by gauzy white curtains that were repeated in the filmy swags that roped the huge canopy bed. A bedside lamp was on, sending soft light through a cut-glass dome to gleam on the yellow quartz skull, which sat safely on the nightstand, its chain neatly coiled beside it. The bedclothes were white; the whole room was white, except where splashes of violet and navy blue were picked out in framed watercolors on the walls and boxy accent pillows on the long couch along one wall. An open door offered a glimpse into a bathroom done in navy tile with violet edging and pristine white towels, with a Jacuzzi-jet tub big enough for two.

Lucius stood in a wood-framed doorway; beyond him she glimpsed a sitting area of natural wood and emerald green, but it was only a glimpse before her eyes locked onto him. Arms folded, he leaned against the door frame, watching her with a familiar intensity that sent shimmers of heat washing through her in an instant, and took her straight back to the kiss they had shared in Rabbit’s sublet. That might have been hours ago, but as their eyes met it might have been no more than a few minutes. She was instantly back there, with need coursing through her body alongside a poignant ache beneath her heart.

His gesture encompassed the room. “Not bad, huh?”

“Nicer than last night’s generica America, by a long shot.” It was a room made for romance. For love. It had probably been his only non-truck-stop option for a hundred miles, she told herself. The choice had been expediency, not seduction. Unfortunately, she had started the evening already halfway seduced, though that had been her own doing—and the magic.

“We’re at an inn called the Weeping Willow,” he said by way of explanation. “Willow is our proprietress. The weeping, I gather, occurred when her fiance died in Vietnam. Her parents both passed soon after, leaving her family money from oil rights, along with the ranch, which she turned into an inn because she likes having the occasional guest.” He paused, the corners of his mouth kicking upward. “Or so I learned after I made the mistake of commenting to the lady checking me in that there aren’t many weeping willows out in west Texas.”

“Ah,” Jade said, matching his smile. “I take it the lady behind the desk was Willow?”

“Got it in one. It’s just her, a road- tripping family in the cottage closest to the house, and us out here on the edge of it all.” His gesture encompassed what she imagined was a whole lot of nothingness in the night beyond the French doors. “And yes, I set the motion detectors around our perimeter and made it clear to Willow that she shouldn’t come knocking.”

Jade’s brain hadn’t yet gotten around to worrying about security. She was still stuck on the bedroom