Keepers & Killers (The Alchemy Series) (4 page)

"You are getting room service out here?" Cormac asked once the door shut. He walked over and lifted the lid to see what food I had.

"I am technically in the casino, aren't I?" I watched him place the lid back over the dish as he walked back to the kitchenette.

He let out a deep laugh. "Got any anything to drink other than this jug of wine?" He leaned down
and looked in the lower cabinet.

"That
's pre-move. The good stuff is behind the paper towels, top right. You have quite a wine cellar here."

"Any scotch?"

"No. None of my guests drink that."

"Are you always going to be so prickly?"

"Must be the company." I sat on the couch and pulled my legs up underneath me, watching his large frame move around my tiny home, completely out of place. His clothing probably cost more than my entire trailer, with the exception of the Monet painting.

"What did you want to talk about?" I asked,
eager to get the discussion over with and him out of my haven.

He moved out of the kitchen area
, empty handed. For the first time, I realized how small my living room was. "If we were on speaking terms, I would've informed you that I don't want you going anywhere near Senator Core. I've already got him under surveillance."

"And we know how well your surveillance works," I said as I reminded him of another time his men had lost Tracker
, the Wolf who had started the problem with the wormholes and tried to shut down The Lacard portal. He'd also had some unknown connection to the senator.  I'd inadvertently killed Tracker in the mountain collapse.

"I
'm meeting with Vitor tonight," he continued, as he ignored my jab. "Would you like to be there?"

Once Vitor had been cleared of any participation in interfering with the wormholes,
he and Cormac had formed a tentative truce again. No one on this side of the hole, as we liked to call it, had actually seen Vitor. All correspondence had gone through messengers. But a subject like the senator was too sensitive to discuss through messaging.

Did I want to be there? Hell yes! He knew it, too. So what was the
price?

"Yes, there
's a catch," he answered before I asked.

"Which is?"

"You're smart and tough. You're also determined to be involved; it would be much easier if we weren't at odds. I'm holding out an olive branch." He leaned his hip against my counter, crossing his ankles in a relaxed posture, like my answer wasn't that important.

"What about my trailer? I want it moved back." I countered
, picking at my fries, feigning equal indifference.

"Can
't do it. They've already moved another into its spot," he shrugged his shoulders.

"Which I
'm sure you had nothing to do with." I waved my fry accusingly at him before I ate it.

"It
's done. Does it matter?"

It did, but I wanted to hear what info Vitor would have
, so I simply nodded. "Fine. Truce. What time?"

"I
'll come get you at eleven tonight."

I stood to get up and his large body followed me into the paneled hallway. My hallway barely accommodated me, so to say it was a tight squeeze was an understatement.

"Why are you following me? Aren't we done?" I turned and asked. I preferred the hallway to my bedroom to find out what else he wanted.

I pressed myself as close to the wall as I could and was still only a hair
's breadth away from him. "No more solo trips. We are either in this together or we aren't, and trust me, you want to be on my team." It was a statement, not a question.

"Great, now back up. You
're getting awfully close for a guy that has a girlfriend." I stood still, and waited for him to retreat now that he'd said his piece.

"I don
't have a girlfriend," his eyes were intent on mine.

"Does Lacey know that? Maybe you should make it clear to her
, because I think that's where she's heading." His scent surrounded me and did funny things to my senses.

He leaned his forearm on the wall next to me. "There is nothing between Lacey and I. If I wanted Lacey, I would have had her, but that
's none of your business."

"Hmmm, it appears you do have some boundaries after all. But, it is my business, she
's my friend. If you don't want a relationship with her, then at minimum you are screwing with her emotions. That's not cool." I stared back at him and refused to give up any ground.

He
came a hair closer and I could feel his body graze mine. "Since you want to get personal, if she's such a close friend, how come you never told her anything that happened with us?" he asked in a voice that was slightly deeper.

"Because nothing of importance happened." Just because it
comes to mind every time I see him, that doesn't mean anything.

He
placed a flat hand on the other side of my head as he leaned in. My breath held and stopped as he moved closer and then his mouth passed by mine and moved toward my ear. "You ran pretty hard from nothing." His breath sent shivers down my spine. I took a ragged breath in as he pushed off the wall and left.

Chapter Four

"Where are we going?" We
'd been driving for twenty minutes, into the middle of the desert, in a two seat Ferrari. I was on Cormac proximity overload. And why was it so goddamn sexy watching a guy drive a stick shift? Didn't matter, the last thing I wanted was to be sitting there like Lacey, all doe eyed. Nope, not for me. It was probably some kind of crazy Alchemist pheromones he was throwing off, giving me a contact high.

"His estate. Would you rather have the windows down? I can turn off the air," he asked as I angled my face toward the crack in the window like a dog
, searching for ,fresh air.

"No," I answered. It probably wouldn
't help anyway. We'd been driving for a while in nothing but blackness. "Why all the way out here? Didn't he come through the portal in the casino? Wouldn't that have been easier?" I readjusted myself in the soft leather seat, angled away from him.

"He came over through one of the other portals. He felt more comfortable on his territory and I didn
't care either way." He toyed with the radio and flipped through a quick succession of channels until he stopped on Desert Rose by Sting.

"How many other wormholes do you have going on?" I asked as the melody filled the car.

"A few. Since they've got to be spaced out, I can't manage all of them personally." He turned right off the main road. "We're here."

The driveway was the only one I
'd seen for miles and it was so long it could've been mistaken for a road if it hadn't been marked as a private entrance. Lights pointed upward and lit the Willow Acacia trees that lined the drive all the way to the house.

"No gates?" I asked, thinking that this place would have state of the art security, gates at the least.

"They don't need them. I know Vitor seems civilized, but not all of his brethren are quite so refined. The Fae have other ways of keeping out unwanted guests."

We finally pulled into the circular drive. A lighted fountain spewed water in the center of the paver driveway of the sprawling ranch house with a Spanish tiled roof and stucco façade. It was massive
, spreading out before us in both directions.

"This place looks fit for royalty." I looked at the lead paned windows and the ornate entrance.

"Vitor is a prince on his planet."

"Really?" I couldn
't decide whether I thought that was cool or pretentious. "Is anybody going to come out?" A prince should have some sort of staff, you would think.

"No. It
's not their way. To the Fae, greeting doesn't happen until you enter their domain. If one did come out, it wouldn't be in welcome. Allowing you to come to them is considered proper etiquette." He left the car sitting in the drive, walked up the steps to the front door and went to open it.

I stored that little nugget away. Fae come out… run for the hills.

I climbed the couple of stairs to the large double doors and hesitated as I watched Cormac stroll in. He paused at the open door and waited for me, his eyes telling me not to worry, he had my back. We had beef, Cormac and I, but the same thing that kept me on at the casino pushed at me now. There was a connection there that I'd never had with anyone else. Maybe it was because he knew me for what I was. There was nothing to hide with him. I'd never had that. Ever. And as long as he wasn't the one trying to kill me, I didn't think he'd let anyone else do it either. And that was a good thing? What the hell was wrong with me?

I turned my head back to eye up the distance to the car, wondering if he left the keys inside
, when his hand wrapped around mine and pulled me in. "Chill out! I was coming." I hate when I feel like he is herding me. Pushy man.

I
snatched my hand away as I followed him down a terra cotta tiled hallway into a great room. The entire house was decorated in a southwestern style. Glass doors overlooked a lighted pool with a waterfall set into the corner. But it was the people that my eyes came to rest on. Vitor stood off to the side, not far from the doors, looking as refined as ever. An older, aristocratic woman sat on one of the two couches that faced each other. Her grey hair was pulled into a chignon, showing off Tahitian pearls at her neck. A forty something year old man sat across from her, dressed similarly to Vitor, in khakis and a polo shirt.

"It
's nice to see you, Jo," Vitor greeted me and nodded to Cormac.

To say the moment was awkward would
've been like saying Smallpox had been a minor bug. I smiled over at the other people in the room, to help break the tension. You knew things were bad when I was trying to be the socially correct one.

Vitor introduced the woman on the couch as his mother, Iselda, and the gentleman as his cousin, Philip.

"Come, I'd love to show Jo the grounds a little," Vitor said. Cormac and I followed him out onto the back patio area and he shut the doors behind us. "I've heard whispers of what you want to discuss. I'd prefer to keep this private. My mother doesn't like the unrest she's been feeling in our people," Vitor explained as the three of us made our way around the pool. Lights illuminated flowerbeds in the darkness, and it took my mind back to another evening on a rooftop.

The three of us walked a bit further down a paver pathway, with me in the center. Every time either of them moved, I made sure to realign myself back in the center. It wasn
't that I thought Cormac would try to have a go at Vitor, I just wasn't sure he wouldn't. Even though Vitor had been cleared of any wrongdoing, these two were far from cordial.

"Any word on Hammond?" Vitor asked.

"No," I replied. Hammond, my father, had been crushed in a cave after I had exploded a wormhole. I'd known him for less than an hour before I'd inadvertently buried him alive. He'd been working for the opposition, which made it complicated. His possible death still roiled my emotions.

"Do you have…" Vitor started to speak.

"Drop the subject," Cormac said in a peremptory tone from behind me, and cut off his words.

Vitor eyed Cormac and I could see he was weighing his actions. I didn
't think he would have a chance in hell of taking on Cormac, no matter how much he'd like to. Cormac was larger but it wasn't a size thing; I didn't know what kind of fairy tricks Vitor might have, but that still didn't change my mind. It was more of a civilized, or uncivilized thing. Uncivilized might sound bad but not in a fight. Civilized was great for teas and dinner parties. If my life is on the line, I want someone who doesn't hold back. When you're staring down death, nothing's off limits.

"Vitor, do you have any idea who, or what,
Core is?" I asked before this situation devolved into a wasted trip to the desert.

As soon as Vitor broke eye contact with Cormac, I knew it was back under control, at least for the moment.

"No. His human records, as I'm sure you know, have him born to a normal family from the suburbs of Vegas. Obviously he's not. I've seen him from a distance, a handful of times, but I thought he was one of Tracker's wolves initially." He spoke mostly to me.

"Couldn
't you tell he wasn't a wolf?" I hadn't known but couldn't the Fae sense these things?

"No, I never got that close to him. Is he a large problem?" he asked, worry in his voice.

"He might be," Cormac answered. I guess he didn't care if Vitor considered him part of the conversation or not. "Jo had a little run in with him not long ago."

"What happened?"

I knew Vitor had a soft spot for me, but I didn't realize how much until that second; the concern I heard in those words shocked me.