Ash to Embers (Courting Shadows) (9 page)

"You wish us to do you a favor," Royal said. "What is it?"

The demon's emerald gaze hovered in her general direction without the slightest hint of interest where he sat draped across the couch Xavier hadn't commandeered.

Like Xavier, he'd changed clothes. Unlike Xavier, who was understated in a pair of worn jeans and a fitted black knit shirt, Royal had donned a pair of gray slacks and a white button down that were made from obscenely luxurious materials and cut to hover around his musculature like a sixteen year old with a crush.

"I need you to assist a client of mine."

"A client of yours or a client belonging to Swift Retribution?" Royal clarified.

"The request is mine alone," Tian said. "As is the debt."

"More's the pity," came the demon's dry response.

Xavier shot his counterpart an undisguised dirty look. "Have a seat, angel. Tell us how we can help," he said, gesturing to the far end of his couch.

Tian gave him a hard look, "Don't be ironic."

Royal snorted in amusement.

"My client thinks his kid brother is possessed. He wants him exorcised," Tian said. She dropped into one of the sleek geometric chairs placed at artful right angles to both couches. Xavier's brows shot up and Royal's jaw cranked tight as a vise.

"What do you think?" Xavier asked. His tone had lost its amicable conversational nature.

"I think that demonic possession and most of the issues that display similar symptoms fall into the category of 'Not my fucking problem.'" She spotted her boots lined up next to the fireplace and went over to collect them.

"And yet you would trade the skill set at your disposal to request our involvement?" Xavier said.

"Lord love a female with a brain," Royal intoned. "We accept."

"Did you authorize the possession?" Tian asked, returning to the chair she'd camped out in and dragging on the boots.

"That's not your concern."

Tian quit with the over and under and stared at the demon. "It is if we're negotiating the terms of the outsource."

Royal laughed. "How old is this wayward sibling?" he asked, tonguing one of the platinum caps of his lower incisors. Tian went back to lacing her boots because the things took an eternity to get on comfortably.

"Seventeen."

Royal's good humor dissipated and he grunted noncommittally. Xavier shook his head and embroiled himself in a visual exchange with the demon on the far couch. Royal's flat expression flashed with a subtle malice. The bitter anticipation Tian understood all too well. It wasn't hard to predict the outcome of whatever non-convo they were having.

"Wasn't us," Xavier told her, after an excessive amount of time.

"Rest assured that if it turns out to be a demonic occurrence the situation will be rectified," Royal said.

Tian nodded. "And if it's not?"

He smiled beatifically and opened his mouth.

"If it's not we'll fix it," Xavier interrupted looking annoyed.

Royal rolled his eyes and adjusted the emerald cuff links at the edges of his sleeves. "Unless it happens to be a Fae issue." He draped his right arm along the back of the couch. "At which point I will happily relinquish responsibility and you can have your client back, though I'll still expect to be paid in full."

And there it was. A deal with the devil, laid out all nice and neat. Not for individual resale. Fine print to be added after purchase. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. Technically, it was the best she could have hoped for under the circumstances.

"Fine," Tian said. "Now tell me about the tracking spell my blood bought."

****

Sio jerked out of a dreamless sleep as the intuition of his impending destruction coursed in waves of adrenaline through muddied synapses. He was slick with panic sweat and the immobilizing weight on his chest extended to his arms, lending to the illusion that he'd been buried alive. Jesus Christ, he hadn't come to in the middle of a night terror since he'd hit puberty.

He forced his eyes open. It was the quickest way he could think of to reassure himself that he wasn't going to die. With the blackout curtains it was still dark, but the sight that greeted him made him recoil in shock. He jerked hard to the right, pitching himself and the fatal attraction female who'd been sitting on top of him off the bed. They hit the hardwood with a clatter and a flash of steel spun out away from her. The giant pair of scissors she'd been palming went flying, thudding against the baseboards of the far wall. Nothing Crayola about those bad boys.

"Tell me this is a coincidence too," he said.

Gray Dress huffed with enough outwardly expressed irritation that if she hadn't broken into his house Sio might have believed that he was the in the wrong.

"I never said it was a coincidence," she snapped. Her eyes darted around the room, coming back to rest on him with a glare. He quit inching toward the last place he remembered leaving his phone and froze.

"You need to leave."

"You should have called me."

Why bother when you show up anyway?

Sio stood up and traded the sheet, which hadn't done much to keep him modest, for a clean pair of gym shorts off his dresser. He slid them on, cursing the fact that he'd never seen the point in sleep wear. He sure as hell saw it now.

"How did you find out where I live?" he asked, trying to cajole his gray matter into getting with the program. It was sluggish and pouting after the unpleasant wakey-wakey. He still couldn't remember her name and he was beginning to think he was exhibiting signs of early onset Alzheimer's.

"That's all you care about isn't it?
What are you doing here? How do you know where I live?"
Her nostrils flared and her head snapped back as if it were only loosely connected to her neck. She was mocking him, though there was a streak of vulnerability that didn't fit given what little contact he'd had with her.

"What about me?" she continued, voice dropping to a whisper. "What about what I need? How do you think I feel right now?"

Sio was sorely tempted to hit escape and walk out, but the deep seated hurt under her cracking veneer and the nagging suspicion that she'd make sure there was nothing to come back to, left him stuck. This woman had issues, but they didn't stem from him.

"I honestly don't know," Sio said. He rubbed his face. His eyes burned from passing out in his contacts.

"And it doesn't matter, does it? I'm sorry, I must be, like, inconveniencing you." The outrage was a neon sign to mask an emotion that read more like fear. It flared until the shrilly expressed agitation had wiped out all traces of anything else.

His stomach churned. The whole incident came too close to a past he would do almost anything not to relive, a past he was still running from-if he'd ever stopped in the first place. This was precisely the reason he avoided attachment with his sexual partners to begin with. Hell if he didn't have some deep seated issues of his own, and he was
not
about to do this to himself...again.

"I'll walk you out," Sio said. He slipped on a pair of flip flops and grabbed his keys. The female in front of him dissolved into loud, hysterical, wracking sobs.

"You think this is funny, don't you?"

"No, I don't." He muscled his way through the fractured bits and pieces of his own personal nightmare and knelt down in front of her, motivated by the pang of sympathy bubbling near the back of his skull. Her head shot up when he got close, furious eyes locking into his a split second before she spat in his face.

"You're an egotistical prick."

Sio recoiled, wiping off his mug and fighting the urge to grab her and throw her crazy ass the fuck out of his apartment. He never goddamned learned, did he?

"Get out," he enunciated.

Still sitting in a sloppy pile on the floor, she yanked off a stiletto and flung it at his head. Her aim sucked. A cascade of tears smeared makeup all over her face. He ducked, and the overly bedazzled piece of shit flew past him with enough power behind it to take down a curtain and punch through the window leading to the street. He made a move toward his phone.

"You think I'm fat, don't you?" she wailed.

He froze. "Wha-"

"It's my breasts isn't it? They're too small." She shot to her feet, pacing the length of his studio on the one remaining stiletto.

"You look fine," he told her, "but your personality sucks."

"Liar!" she bellowed. "You're a fucking LIAR. I fucking hate you."

The sudden pressure in the room made his ears pop. He was hit hard by an invisible weight and thrown across the small space where he slammed against the far wall. Every light and electronic device in the place lit up like the fourth of July before exploding and filling the air with shrapnel from every direction.

"I can't say that I'm a fan of yours either," Sio said, shielding his eyes as his head made a forced return trip back into the brick behind him. He glanced to where the cell phone had been on his dresser. The wreckage that was left mocked his sudden and inexplicable inability to move.

"If you just loved me none of this would have had to happen, and I swear to God Sio, if you look at that phone one more time I'm going to go to the police myself and make you wish you'd never been born. Don't think for a second that I can't make them believe whatever I want-"

A loud pounding at the front of the apartment cut her off.

"What!?" she bellowed.

"S.F.P.D., open the door."

Gray Dress's eyes took on a cruel sheen. "Well, well," she said. "It looks like there are cops around when you need them after all."

Sio's vision warped. He shoved himself off the wall and fell in an indelicate heap against what was left of his entertainment center. He watched the female in front of him as she muttered in tongues and smoothed the disarray that was her dress, oblivious to the fact that her face was a mess. Given the unlikely turn of events, he had to wonder if his once small psychotic break had taken him on a field trip into 'Beautiful Mind' territory. She shot him a dark look and quit chanting. "Not one word."

Spine ridged and still wearing only one shoe, Gray Dress hobbled down the hall and out of view with the overly cautious motions of a drunk struggling to feign sober. A few seconds later Sio heard the door open.

"Can I help you officers?" she asked.

"We were in the area when we got a couple of calls about a domestic disturbance, ma'am."

Domestic disturbance. Sio winced. He was screwed, deeply and unflinchingly in the kind of trouble he wanted no part of. There was no way, given Gray Dress's state and the appearance of his apartment, that his happy ass wasn't going to jail.

"Oops, I think I had the TV up too loud," Gray Dress answered.

"Then you won't mind inviting us in," came a cool feminine response from the hallway.

"I'm a terrible housekeeper," Gray Dress sputtered.

"Fine by us. You should see the way my wife keeps house," the first voice volleyed.

"Umm.."

"Thanks."

The sound of thick soled work boots rasped with authority against the uncovered floors in the hall. They began moving, meanwhile, a soft murmuring took up at the front door, including a barrage of mundane questions that sounded like a stall tactic.

A short haired brunette rounded the corner and stopped. The formless layers of her uniform did nothing to obscure the fact that she'd been blessed with the kind of curves even a playboy centerfold would envy and she carried herself like she knew it. The name tape on the front of her tack vest read Donovan. Officer Donovan surveyed the carnage impassively until she spotted him in the far corner of the room tangled in a heap of the empty husks formerly known as his electronic devices. Sio shook his head, knowing what he was about to say was futile.

"I didn't do this," he told her.

She walked over to him, and given the fact that she was around 5'6" and he was stooped about a foot, they were almost eye to eye. Hers were blue, so pale they were glacial. Her assessment was thorough and while she appraised him with those cold hard cop eyes, he noted that they were oddly complementary to the pale sloping curves of a lightly freckled face which toed the line between cute and beautiful.

"You don't even know what 'this' is," Officer Donovan said.

****

"Dousing Rod my ass," Tian said under her breath. She'd been driving aimlessly through the fog-blanketed streets of San Francisco, visualizing the Sidhe Chalice for the better part of sixteen hours and had nothing except a headache to show for her persistence. The dawn had come and gone without burning through the wet haze of the city streets. Dusk was encroaching in the same way, not readily apparent, but looming none the less. She could feel the outstretched tendrils of its embrace in the hollow ache of her chest and the gritty burn of exhaustion plaguing her eyes. What she did not feel, however, was any sign of life from the sigils in her wrists.

She'd been fixating for so long, that when the first telltale itch actually did surface, she wrote the sensation off as wishful thinking. It wasn't. The nuisance persisted, becoming so uncomfortable that she nearly planted herself into the back of a parked car in an effort to pinpoint the source of the aggravation. Tian dumped her Ducati at the curb when the feeling began to fade and took off at a dead sprint. She followed the echo in her flesh, barreling across Market like a chipmunk with a death wish through the thick of the city's rush hour traffic.

She was almost clear when she was hit by a swerving five speed. The wire mesh basket on the front of the bike punched through an inconvenient gap between a couple of ribs and got cozy with her spleen. The flailing cyclist was launched like a projectile over the top of the handle bars. Tian grabbed the front of his jacket mid-flight and yanked. He gasped, wrapping himself like a fucking koala around the basket lodged in her torso dragging her along in his wake. Her balance went to hell and she hit the pavement, rolling to a crouch. The sigils in her wrists went nuclear the second they came in contact with the ground.