Where it’s safer, I didn’t add.
“Yes,” Rans said. “Because that’s totally going to happen.”
I waved at the words as though they were buzzing insects, feeling suddenly and deeply exhausted, to the greatest extent I’d experienced since emerging from my turning.
“Hey, I had to try, all right?”
Rans’ expression was caught somewhere between irritation and overly theatrical despair. “For a generally intelligent person, you’re proving very difficult to train when it comes to the whole ‘not accepting help when you need it’ thing.”
I scowled at him. “We’ve already established that stubbornness is basically my only useful coping mechanism.”
He raised a sharp eyebrow. “Define useful,” he shot back.
I scowled harder. “Look. Forget I said anything. I suppose if I’m making the wrong decision and this ends up being a trap, you’ll fall over dead the moment the bad guys take me out, either way. And whose fault is that, hmm?”
Of course, the answer was, it was my fault. Because I’d been the one to run off after my father and leave Rans behind, despite the prospect of deadly danger awaiting me on Dhuinne. Because I’d refused to ask for help, he’d had to come save me at the cost of a soul-bond that would kill him one day.
Oh, the irony.
Fortunately for me, Rans had seven centuries of practice at postponing lovers’ tiffs until a time when there weren’t more important things to worry about. He only looked at me with a level blue gaze.
It seemed increasingly unlikely that I’d have a similar length of time to learn this important life skill, despite my newly undead status. Still, I could take a hint.
“Sorry,” I muttered, before turning to the cat-sidhe. “Okay, it looks like we’ll be needing that lift after all. Guthrie, at least this way we can save you some time messing with that bank account tomorrow. Shall we grab our things and get this over with?”
* * *
For someone who hated traveling via the medium of Fae magic, I seemed to end up doing a fair amount of it these days. Interestingly, the cat-sidhe’s magical aura didn’t prickle against my succubus nature nearly as much as Albigard’s, Caspian’s, and the rest of the Unseelie did. I wondered whether that was something inherent to the shape-shifter’s nature, or if something about me had altered when I became a vampire, or what.
I’d been... kind of a mess the first couple of times I’d met the strange, androgynous Fae. I had vague memories that being in the shape-shifter’s presence had felt different, even then. But, to be fair, I’d also been so weak from days of torture that I could barely stand up—so there was that.
At any rate, portaling to the site of the nearest ley line was less of an ordeal than I’d become accustomed to. Travel along the ley line itself? Yeah, that part still sucked donkey balls. But at least I didn’t feel like I was in imminent danger of puking the blood I’d drunk from Studmuffin and the Beach Boys all over my black leather boots. Maybe my gag reflex had gone the way of my heartbeat. I’d have to ask Rans later.
The Fae had shifted into cat form before transporting us, but once we arrived at our destination somewhere in the vicinity of St. Louis, another flash heralded the reappearance of the shape-shifter’s humanoid form.
“I will leave you now,” the sidhe said.
It was dark—it had been the wee hours of the morning on Antigua when we left, and we’d traveled across two or three time zones. Even so, I could see that our pixie-ish guide appeared uncharacteristically tense and watchful in the moonlight.
“You don’t want to see my father in person?” I asked, surprised. The Fae had seemed oddly attached to him, back on Dhuinne. Apparently they’d shared a history stretching back to Dad’s first stint in the Fae realm, as an infant exchanged for a Faerie changeling.
“Best not,” said the cat-sidhe. “Too complicated.”
“How did you learn of his return from Hell in the first place?” Rans asked, not bothering to hide the edge of suspicion coloring his voice.
And, damn, it should have occurred to me to ask that question right away. I didn’t think the cat-sidhe had any particular reason to betray us... but someone on the Fae’s side had obviously tracked us to the Caribbean. The fact that the shape-shifter had found us there with such ease was legitimately suspicious.
“I have connections in the human realm,” the Fae said, a bit defensively. “The one you met earlier happened to be watching the gate between Hell and Earth when your lover’s sire came through.”
The Neveah woman. That sort of made sense. If she were really as serious about stalking Nigellus as she seemed to be—and if she was additionally aware of the existence of the supernatural world—then watching the gate to Hell would be a logical avenue for her to pursue when trying to find him.
“What’s her deal, anyway?” I couldn’t help asking. “Is she some kind of demon groupie, or what?”
The Fae frowned. “Demon... groupie? I don’t know what that is, demonkin. And her motivations are her own. Was her information not useful to you?”
“That remains to be seen,” Rans muttered, sotto voce.
“Okay,” I said. “Forget it. We’d... uh... best get going now. I can tell Dad you said hi, if you’d like?”
The furrow in the Fae’s pale brow deepened, the shape-shifter’s head tilting curiously. “I did not say ‘hi.’”
“Right. Never mind.” I looked around. We were in a small clearing that might well have been the same one Albigard brought us to before transporting us to Haiti. A sizzling flash caught my peripheral vision, and I turned just in time to see a black-furred tail-tip disappear through the miniature portal, which snapped shut immediately afterward.
Guthrie was also staring at the afterimage left by the cat-sidhe’s departure.
“Huh. That was certainly... trippy,” he said. He reached into a pocket and pulled out his
