of dead things smeared all over me and it was too disgusting to leave there, so we ended up washing under the icy tap. Quinton had pulled the old couch up as close to the stove as he could and we snuggled naked together in the blankets to warm up. Quinton curled himself around me and his body seemed to burn my deeply chilled skin. It would have been much more erotic if I hadn’t been shaking so hard.
My hearing was still full of low buzzing that made everything sound distant and crackly, like an old radio with a bad antenna, but it was improving slowly. I filled him in on what I’d been pursuing since I had arrived at Blood Lake and what had come hunting us.
“Why haven’t the cops shown up about the shooting?” I stuttered between chattering teeth.
“Maybe no one heard it,” Quinton suggested. “You said there aren’t many people up here this time of year.”
“No, but there
“And most of them probably don’t want the local sheriffs to come around and interrupt whatever magical nastiness they’re up to.”
I frowned over that and wondered who’d been at the door that had cast golden light onto the lake.
“How did they know we were here?” Quinton asked.
“Who?”
“The zombies. You haven’t stayed here before and you said Newman only gave you the key Monday. You didn’t use the place last night or the night before, so how did Costigan know to send the corpse brigade over here to attack you?”
“That’s a good question. I’ll have to ask the Newmans that tomorrow. I was given the impression they didn’t talk—at least not civilly—to Costigan, who seems to be in charge of the zombies around here. I need to talk to him, too. I haven’t done anything to attract his ire, that I know of—we’ve never even met.”
“Yeah, but you did tell the ley weaver that Costigan couldn’t be trusted, and that might have gotten back to him. And I don’t suppose Willow and her pet demon are the most honorable spell-flingers in the area, either.”
“More than you might imagine.” I paused, thinking, and feeling a little less like a human Popsicle. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“You said you had to make a deal with the FBI to get their help. What did they want you to do?”
“Oh . . . I can’t really discuss it.”
“Will they be coming back for more? Are you stuck on their hook?”
“No. Part of the reason I cut my hair—well, it’s a little complicated, but I wanted them to think I’m not a good risk. The FBI doesn’t use the same kind of people as other agencies. They’re really cops at heart and they have less tolerance for rogues and lunatics than, say . . . the CIA does. It doesn’t mean my dad won’t come after me, but I think I’m done with the Feebs.”
“Your dad—he wouldn’t turn you in to the NSA, would he?”
Quinton snorted. “No. It wouldn’t suit his agenda. I’m an embarrassment that could ruin his career at this point. He’s just as glad to have me stay missing.”
“Do you despise him?”
“Not really. I just know I can only trust him to do what’s best for his career at any given moment. No person is ever going to come ahead of his job. I think that’s what made my mother leave him. She said it was the general stuff—the secrets, the tension, the absences—but I always had the impression there was a specific incident that broke them apart. Mom wasn’t an angel, either. She had affairs and she ran her life as if the rest of us weren’t important most of the time. Not that she made bad, selfish decisions all the time; she just didn’t feel the need to discuss them first. She looked after my sister and me all r—”
I shook my head and turned in his arms to put my hand over his mouth. “You have a sister? You’ve never mentioned that before.”
He shrugged and chafed my upper arms, ostensibly to keep me warm, but I thought he just wanted a moment to think before he answered. “She’s in Europe, somewhere.”
“Just ‘somewhere’?”
“I know where, but it’s not important. She’s married and has kids—none of the family business for her. I think she still writes to my mom and calls her, but she’s making her own life without the rest of us and it’s probably safer to leave it that way.”
That I understood. I also sensed that her decision had hurt Quinton in some way that he didn’t want to discuss. I let it slide and leaned against him. “You never told me Solis knew who you really are.”
He kissed my temple. “Nope. He swore to tell no one, and that included you.”
“So . . . should I start calling you by your real name, now that you’re in from the cold?”
Quinton laughed. “What, as if I were someone out of a John le Carré novel? You do, and I shall be forced to take drastic measures.”
“Oh? How drastic?”
“Like this,” he said, and swooped his head down to blow a loud raspberry against my belly.
I squealed and wriggled around in the blanket as he tickled me and made more ridiculous noises against my skin. It was silly and it hurt a bit from the pulling of my scars and unevenly healed muscles, but I was more than just warm now and I sure as hell wasn’t going to complain.
In a few minutes he stopped tickling and began stroking and kissing my skin instead. It felt strange without the soft rasp of his beard and the silky trailing of his hair, but the heat of his mouth and tongue still wrung a gasp of pleasure from me. He moved lower, sliding his hands and lips down between my legs.
He licked and nibbled, his fingers sliding over moisture, then pushing deep. I put my hands on his head to pull him into me and was frustrated by his short hair. I felt him chuckle against my hot, wet flesh, and the sensation made me moan. He continued, without remorse, building a scalding tension in my body with every touch, driving me tighter, higher, until it burst apart, pushing outward on my cry of ecstatic release.
Liquid and hard, he slid up and into me as I was still gasping. He groaned and buried his face in my neck, biting lightly as he thrust and then licking where he’d bitten. He nipped at my earlobe and then pressed his lips against my ear. “I love you.”
I shuddered under him, arching into his movement, and turned my head, capturing his mouth with mine. I didn’t need to hear what I knew. I loved the feel of him, the touch and the taste and the depth of his motion inside me, drawing me tight again. I only wanted to feel, without words, to come with him in that breaking, crystal instant.
He gave me my way, making love with only the conversation of our bodies and the upward-spiraling cadence of our gasps and moans, the depth and speed of his thrust and my response. I felt the tension in his body snapping as he groaned and shuddered. A wave of awesome sensation burst into me, like a million sparks dancing over my skin, igniting something that burned across us both. I clenched my eyes shut against the brightness of it through the Grey as I shattered and came with him, feeling our energy twine together, blazing into a circle encompassing us alone and illuminating the world within, then fading softly, slowly. . . .
He laid his head against the crook of my neck once again, breathing deeply, slowing, until his body eased and he slid over to lie beside me. I watched him and smiled until he fell asleep. Then I laid my head down and stared into the dark, feeling his contentment and my own anxiety winding over me. How could I feel warm and fuzzy while I also felt like a lying bitch? I didn’t know how I was going to protect him, or how I was going to live up to him. What Quinton feared most, what he had given up his freedom and anonymity for, was all too possible. When my father’s ghost had gone, he’d taken away the thing that made me nearly immortal: my deepest kinship with the Grey, the growing inhumanity that had enabled me to hear the song of the energy, to change the structure of the grid and kill a god. That was gone and I had lied to Quinton: I was no longer bulletproof; I could die as easily as anyone and leave him forever.
We got up while the sun was still low and went out to search for the yellow silk banishment and see how much mess the creeping dead had left behind. We had no luck with the missing spell, and I guessed it had probably been carried off by a bird that was now living in the silkiest yellow nest in the world. The remains of the zombies weren’t very identifiable except that most weren’t human. The stink of decomposition had already attracted scavengers that had done a good job of carrying bits away and spreading the rest around. It was a pain in the ass to scrape up the glop and parts left behind and bury them, but at least none of these dead would be
