Bad Blood (9 page)

“No, ma’am.”

She nodded, looking dazed. “You wouldn’t hurt me?”

“I would take a bullet for you.”

“You’ve proven that, haven’t you?” She glanced at her hands. “You stay. Nothing changes. Nothing between us anyway.”

“Appreciate that.” Havoc didn’t sound like he fully believed what she said, and Creek didn’t blame him. How could the mayor not look at him differently now?

“You.” She tipped her head at Creek. “You get this comarré woman and this vampire here by tomorrow night at the latest. If you’re trying to pull something, you can consider yourself the main suspect in my daughter’s murder.” She stood up, brushing herself off. “With your record, I can put you in a holding cell so fast it’ll make your head spin. Am I clear?”

“Crystal.” No way in hell was he going back in and losing his position with the KM. That would mean losing Una’s tuition money. Not happening. “Getting the comarré here is not a problem.” Except Chrysabelle had refused to see him every time he’d been to her house. “Not a problem at all.”

After calming Mal down, Chrysabelle was about to return to Atticus’s side when Mortalis spoke. “If things are settled here, I have duties I should attend to. Atticus, if you need me, you know how to reach me. I assume you two can find your way out when you’re ready to go?”

They both nodded. As soon as Mortalis was gone,
Chrysabelle returned to Atticus’s side. “Are you being kept here against your will? We can get you out if—”

Atticus laughed, patting her hand. “I am here freely and quite happy.”

She shook her head. “How is that possible? I didn’t think signumists were allowed to leave the houses they worked for.”

His smile disappeared. “They aren’t. But now is not the time for my story. Tell me what brings you here.”

She launched into the explanation of what had happened at the Primoris Domus the last time she’d been there and everything that had led up to her signum being stripped. “What I need is for those signum to be restored so I can make one last trip to the Aurelian, get the information that will help me find my brother, and I’ll never bother anyone at that house again.” She hoped her voice conveyed the sincerity of her heart.

“No signumist working for any comarré house would put those marks back on your skin. It would be an unforgiveable action.”

Her heart dropped. Of course he would say that. He was a real signumist. She hadn’t counted on that, assuming Dominic’s man would be some self-trained hack doing his best.

“Fortunately for you,” Atticus continued, “I am past caring about unforgiveable actions. If you desire these signum to be replaced, it would be my honor to do the skin work. It has been many, many years since I have stitched gold into one such as you.” He shook his head slowly. “These mortals Dominic brings me. They are so weak. So unprepared for what must be endured.”

She exhaled. “Thank you, Atticus. You can’t know what this means to me. When can we do this?”

His hand reached out, seeking something. It landed on the cane at her side. “When this is no longer necessary and you have properly prepared your body and mind.”

“The cane is just a ruse. I don’t need it.”

“What?” A muscle in Mal’s forehead twitched. “Why would you pretend to be more injured than you are?”

She met his eyes only briefly. “I have my reasons.” She returned her attention to Atticus. “I can prepare myself in a day. Maybe less.”

“Is there scarring?”

She nodded then remembered he couldn’t see her. “Yes,” she said softly.

He raised his hands, splaying his fingers. “I need to examine it.”

Without looking at Mal, she stood, pulled her hair over her shoulder, then slipped her tunic off. Mal had seen her in her bra before, but she hadn’t planned on it happening again. Not like this anyway. Clutching her tunic to her chest, she turned her back to Atticus. Mal’s gaze might as well have been a ton of red-hot coals the way it burned her skin. She held her head a little higher, refusing to be ashamed of the damage Rennata had left on her body. To Mal’s credit, he said nothing save an almost inaudible curse, but she knew if she met his eyes, they’d be dead silver. He couldn’t be pleased about what he was seeing, knowing he’d been the cause.

Atticus stood behind her. She gasped as his cool fingertips found her back, tracing their way to her spine. His hands were thickly calloused like every signumist she’d known. The heat of their trade turned their skin leathery.
She knew when he’d begun to outline the scars because the sensation blurred into something more like pressure than true feeling. Perhaps the loss of feeling would make the new signum easier to bear.

“Hmm.” Atticus followed the wrinkled marks down the sides of her spine. “I’ll have to sand these scars first. They won’t take signum.”

“Sand them?”

“Smooth them out. Not a pleasant process, I’m afraid, but necessary.”

Her resolve wavered. She lifted her chin a little higher. “It will be fine.”

His hands left her and he sat. “Tomorrow, then, this same time. It will take me a little time to prepare the gold once you arrive, then we will begin. You will recover at home or here?”

“At home.” She tugged her tunic down. Getting home afterward was going to be unpleasant, but she couldn’t ask Dominic to use one of his suites. Things were tenuous enough. “Can’t you prepare the gold before I arrive?”

“Ah, yes, of course. I didn’t realize you had it with you.”

“I don’t.” This was not good. “I thought you’d have gold, actually. I can get some—that’s not an issue. I just wasn’t prepared.”

“I have gold,” Atticus assured her. “But what I use is common gold. The mortals I engrave are not true comarré. You know that. They never will be.” He shrugged. “Sacred gold would be wasted on them. But for your purposes, I assumed you’d want sacred gold as has been used for all your other signum.”

“I do. I guess. Is there a way to purify the gold you have?”

“Unfortunately, I do not have that capability. And without the proper gold, the signum won’t have the power to open the portals or access the Aurelian.”

She sighed and shook her head. “Where am I going to find sacred gold?”

Mal cleared his throat. “What about the ring?”

“What—” She looked up and the lack of expression on his face caught her attention. Only the pain in his eyes let her know he was still thinking about what he’d seen. She dropped her gaze to her hands. “Yes, I suppose that would do.” The ring of sorrows would certainly qualify as sacred gold. But that gold had its own power, and she had Mal’s blood in her veins now. Both made everything she was about to do much more risky.

Would the ring’s power manifest when laid into her skin? Would it react to the vampire blood she carried? That much power could kill her.

Or worse.

Y
ou failed, demon.” Aliza stared down the slightly crispy monster once again contained within Evie’s old aquarium. “A simple task and you failed.”

“Yeah,” Evie added, her left eyelid flitting up and down. “The house you made me is great, but I really wanted the guy.”

“The half-breed is Kubai Mata,” the demon snarled. “You tricked me.”

Aliza laughed. “We tricked you? That’s rich.”

“What’s a kubay mada?” Evie asked.

The demon bared his teeth at the words, then crouched down and began to flick his forked tongue over his oozing wounds.

“Tell us, demon,” Aliza said. “What is it?”

But the creature just hissed a string of curses and went back to tending its wounds.

She raised her hand to smack the side of the aquarium, then thought better of it. The pentagram that held him might be glued down, but the aquarium wasn’t in the best shape. No point tempting fate and getting themselves
killed, because there was no chance the demon would leave them alive if he got loose.

“Damn thing smells like road kill,” Aliza muttered. “Makes my whole house stink. Evie, light some of those candles.”

“Will do, Ma. Then I’m going to my place. I’m worn out.” She popped the lids off a few jar candles and lit them with a simple fire spell, one of the first Aliza had taught her. “There you go. I’ll see you tomorrow. We can send him out again then.”

“Sure thing. Night, Evie girl.” Aliza waited until the scrape of Evie’s kayak leaving the dock reached her ears. She picked up a spray bottle of holy water she kept handy since bringing the demon into the house and gave the creature a squirt.

It yowled and shot upright, foaming at the mouth and cursing in a language she didn’t understand. “Do that again and I will flay your skin from your bones.”

Aliza leaned as close as she dared to the foul thing. “You can’t find the ring, you can’t get the man my daughter wants… maybe I should just turn you into ash and call it a day.”

“Perhaps the Kubai Mata will find you and kill you first.”

“You’re just making crap up now. Guess that means you don’t know what the kubay thing is either. Dumbest demon I ever summoned.”

“The Kubai Mata is a great evil,” he spat. “Greater than anything you can imagine. Meant to destroy my kind. My children.” Fire danced in his eyes. He growled loudly, pounding his fists against the magic barrier that held him.

“Then you better hurry up and do what you’re told so
you can get free.” She squirted him again for good measure. With the sound of howling filling her living room, she went into the bedroom and closed the door. Through another door in her closet, she entered a small secret space not even Evie knew about.

Clearing the altar, she lit an oil lamp burner and laid out some new supplies—hawthorn, sulfur powder, the finely ground bones of a money cat. She added each to her mortar and pestle, then a few drops of her own blood and a pinch of earth. After muddling, she tipped the mortar’s contents into a silver bowl and placed it on the burner.

The flame blackened the metal and smoke rose in a thin trickle out of the dish. A shiver of anticipation brought goose bumps out on her skin. She smiled at her own cleverness. “Let me see through his eyes,” she whispered.

The smoke fanned out until it became an undulating screen. Images flickered in the smoke, the edges blurred and ragged. She reached out, smoothing the smoke with her hands. The images began to clear.

Dropping her hands, she sat back and watched what her power had wrought. A girl came into view, one Aliza had never seen before. Must be the ghosty one. Aliza frowned. Ghosts were pretty useless when it came to getting them under your control. Damn things did whatever they wanted.

Now, the one watching the ghost girl, Doc, the varcolai who’d brought Evie the drugs that had turned her to stone, he was going to come in handy. Aliza laughed, a dark sound that pleased her to the core of her witchy, black-magic soul.

Tucked against Doc’s side, Fi lay still and dreaming, the sheen of perspiration gleaming on her chest. She shimmered in and out of her ghost form, something she couldn’t control during sleep. The next time she went corporeal, he brushed a strand of soft brown hair off her cheek. She didn’t wake or shift, so he risked a kiss to her pale forehead.

Unlike his woman, sleep eluded him. Even after making love. Fine with him. He didn’t want to relive that damn dream again, but he couldn’t just lie here either, thinking about what it all might mean.

He crept out of their room and eased the door shut behind him, praying the whirring fan covered the door’s telltale squeak. He’d meant to oil that about three hundred days ago. Waiting several seconds, he listened, but there was no sound from Fi.

Only a few hours until dawn. The solars were depleted this late, leaving the narrow passages on the old abandoned freighter completely dark. He made his way by memory, catching a shadow here and there where a solar had a hint of power left in it.

The last door took him onto the ship’s main deck. The smell of salt water, oily refuse, and fish greeted him. The smell of home since Mal had found him and nursed him back to health. He stretched, the ache in his body matching the ache in his soul. He
needed
to run. Every night since he’d regained his ability to shift into his natural, animal form of a leopard, the urge to run had pressed on him like a junkie’s craving for a hit.

He chalked it up to the years he’d spent with no other outlet than the form of a house cat. Who wouldn’t want to run after that?