The Good, The Bad, And The Undead

break her fast and take you completely. You being her shadow had an ironic twist I liked. She promised she would, but I knew she was lying. Even so, I didn't mind as long as she kept you and Kalamack apart.'

'But I'm not a ley line witch,' I said, keeping my voice soft so it wouldn't shake. I could have breathed the words and he would have heard. 'Why?'

He hadn't taken a breath since he stopped talking. The balls of his feet were pressed to the floor. His calves were tense. Almost, I thought, moving my fingers to the opening of my bag. He was almost ready. What was he waiting for?

'You are your father's daughter,' he said, the skin around his eyes tightening. 'Trent is his father's son. Apart you are annoying. Together …you have the potential to be a problem.'

My gaze went distant then sharpened as I met his eyes, knowing my face had taken on a horrified expression. The picture of my father and Trent's outside a yellow camp bus. Piscary had killed them. It had been Piscary.

Hard and strong, my blood pounded in my temples. My body demanded I do something, but I sat, knowing if I moved, he would move.

He shrugged, a calculated motion that pulled my eyes to a flash of amber skin beneath his robe. 'They were getting too close to solving the elven riddle,' he said, watching my reaction.

I kept my face impassive as he said Trent's most precious secret, telling him I, too, knew. Apparently it was the right thing to do.

'I'm not going to let you two pick up where they left off,' he added, prodding.

I said nothing, stomach roiling. Piscary had killed them. Trent's father and my dad had been friends. They had been working together. They had been working together against Piscary.

Piscary went very still. 'Has he sent you into the everafter yet?'

My gaze shot to his, fear in my gut. There it was. The question he wanted answered, the one he hid among others so I wouldn't know. As soon as I answered it, I'd be dead.

'I'm not in the habit of breaking my client confidentiality,' I said, my mouth dry.

His cool dispassion cracked as he took a breath. It was subtle, but there it was. 'He has. Did you find one?' he asked, catching himself before he could lean forward over the table. 'Was it sound enough to read?'

One? Read what? I said nothing, desperately wanting to hide my pulse pounding in my neck, but though his eyes were black, he wasn't interested in my blood. That was almost too frightening to believe. I didn't know how to answer. Would yes save my life or damn it?

Frowning, he studied me a long moment while I listened to my heart pound and sweat broke out on my arms. 'I can't interpret your silence,' he said, seeming irritated.

I took a breath.

Piscary moved.

The adrenaline hurt. I pushed myself from the table in a blind panic. My chair tipped over backward, with me still in it.

Piscary flung the table out of the way. It crashed aside, my untouched coffee making a fantastic pattern on the white carpet.

I scrabbled backward, my bare feet squeaking against the circle of tile. My fingers found the carpet and I clutched at it, rolling over and pulling myself forward.

A shriek escaped me as he yanked me up by my wrist. I clawed at him in panic. He took it all. Face dispassionate, he drew a fingernail across my right arm, follow the blue of a vein. Fire traced his nail as he opened my skin, then bliss. Silently, savagely, I fought to get free as he held me by my wrist, unmoving as a tree. My blood welled and I felt the bubble of insanity swell in me. Not again. I couldn't be ravaged by a vampire again!

He looked at my blood, then my eyes. Taking his free hand, he swiped it across my arm.

'No!' I screamed.

He let go of my wrist, and I fell to the carpet. Breath a harsh pant, I scrabbled backward. I found my feet, adrenaline pounding through me as I headed for the elevator.

Piscary jerked me back.

'You son of a bitch!' I screamed. 'Leave me alone!'

He gave my head a smack to make me see stars.

I crumpled. Panting, I lay at his feet as he stood above me, an amulet in his hand. He smeared my blood across it, and it glowed red. His hand was enveloped in a red haze as he nudged my fallen chair farther onto the surrounding carpet. I pulled my head up, seeing past my hair that the pattern on the tiled floor before us made a perfect circle. The circle of blue tile around the white stone was one piece of marble. It was a summoning circle.

'God help me,' I whispered, knowing what was going to happen when Piscary tossed the amulet to land dead center of the circle. I watched the ball of ever-after energy expand to form a protective bubble. My skin hummed with the power from another witch, kindled to life with my blood as Piscary prepared to call his demon.

Twenty-Eight

Piscary brought his hand to his mouth to lick away my remaining blood, recoiling. 'Holy water?' he said, his dispassionate face showing a glimmer of distaste. Taking his robe hem, he wiped my blood from him, leaving his palm showing only a mild redness. 'You need more than that to do more than annoy me. And don't flatter yourself. I wasn't going to bite you. I don't even like you, but you'd enjoy it. Instead, you will be dying slowly and in pain.'

'Bring it on…' I panted, slumped at his feet as my eyes remembered how to focus.

He moved that hated eight feet away, staying between the elevator and me. Carefully pronounced Latin came from him. I recognized some of the words from Nick's summoning. My pulse quickened and I looked frantically over the plush, spacious white room for anything. I was too far underground to tap into a ley line. Algaliarept was coming. Piscary was going to give me to it.

I froze as Piscary said its name. The taste of burnt amber coated my tongue, and a haze of ever-after red melted into existence within the summoning circle. 'Oh, look. A demon,' I whispered, dragging myself to the fallen table and pulling myself up. 'This just keeps getting better and better.'

Swaying, I watched as it swelled to grow into a six-foot-high figure. The ever-after red soaked inward, coalescing as an athletic, amber-skinned body dressed in a loincloth decorated with stones and colored ribbons. Algaliarept had bare muscular legs, an impossibly thin waist, and a magnificently sculptured chest that would make Schwarzenegger weep. And atop it was a jackal head, alive with pointing ears and a long savage muzzle.

My mouth dropped open and I looked from the vision of the Egyptian god of death to Piscary, seeing the vampire's features with new meaning. Piscary was Egyptian?

Piscary stiffened. 'I told you not to appear before me like that,' he said tightly.

The death mask grinned, fascinating in that it was alive and part of him. 'I forgot,' it drawled in an incredibly deep voice that seemed to set my insides resonating. A thin red tongue slipped past the jackal teeth to caress its muzzle. There was the clopping sound of teeth and lips.

My heart pounded, and as if hearing it, Algaliarept slowly turned to me. 'Rachel Mariana Morgan,' it said, its ears pricked. 'You are the little gadabout.'

'Shut up,' Piscary said, and Algaliarept's eyes narrowed to slits. 'What do you want for making her tell me what she knows about Kalamack's progress?'

'Six seconds with you outside your circle.' The sheer desire to kill Piscary in its voice was like ice down my back.

Piscary shook his head, his cool compassion unshaken. 'I'll give you her. I don't care what you do with her as long as she doesn't walk this side of the ley lines ever again. In return, you will make her tell me how far Trent Kalamack is in his research. Before you take her. Agreed?'

Not the ever-after. Not with Algaliarept.

Algaliarept's canine grin was pleased. 'Rachel Mariana Morgan as payment? Mmmm, I agree.' The Egyptian