Promises to Keep (8 page)

He closed his eyes. What should he be? Kitten? Squirrels and bats slept well, too.

Jay couldn’t find the energy to shift his mental state to anything other than “bed-bound,
injured human-shaped person.”

And so as such, he drifted back to sleep.

Not here again
.

The brambles and branches menaced, grabbing at him with their needlelike fingers.
As he struggled to focus, to become something that would be safe in this hell, the
world around him went soft, like a video blurring out of focus.

This is just an echo
, he thought. He was in his
own
mind. That meant he could control it, explore it. Understand it.

He slipped through the brambles like a shadow, drawing no attention, and at last found
himself outside a tall black fence with iron ravens on the top. He should have been
able to see through the gaps in the fence, but there was nothing but darkness.

He walked the length of the fence, trying to find an opening, but there were no corners
or gates, no matter how far he walked. He turned around, but instead of the forest,
the fence was behind him as well. No matter how he turned, he faced cold iron, blocking
his way.

He woke to find Xeke sitting in the chair by his bed, reading a celebrity gossip magazine
dedicated to the most ludicrous lies imaginable. Xeke didn’t give the tabloids a lot
of credit for accuracy, but they certainly were entertaining.

Oh, good. Jay’s empathy was starting to come back.

“Good to see you awake,” Xeke said. “I was surprised when my secretary passed on your
message.”

“You have a secretary?”

“I have several.”

“I can’t remember the name of the town where Kendra’s gala and your apartment were,”
Jay said. “Or how I got back.”

“How odd,” Xeke said, in a tone that made it clear it wasn’t odd at all.

His mind told Jay why. The town was spelled. Not all of it; normal humans lived in
enough of the town that it would be terribly awkward if they couldn’t remember how
to get home or to work or how to give people directions to visit them. But crossing
certain boundaries would trigger the spell, which was powerful.

“You seem like an interesting guy,” Xeke said, “but I’m surprised it didn’t give you
even a moment’s pause that I would willingly bring a hunter to a place where I routinely
work and sleep. You were on your best behavior at Kendra’s, and I know we’re safe
here in SingleEarth, but I don’t know where you draw your lines.”

Fair enough.

“So the spell is to keep people from finding your homes?”

“More or less,” Xeke answered. There was a lot more to
that “more or less,” but Xeke’s mind skipped over it, not forming the images clearly
enough for Jay to pick them out. “So tell me: Should I be flattered you were looking
for me, or nervous?”

Oh, right. He had a reason for wanting to find Xeke.

“I went into the woods, behind your apartment.”

The words triggered
something
in Xeke, but again, Jay couldn’t focus well enough to pick up on all of it. There
was something about an arrangement. Politics, and a disgust of politics. Walking a
tightrope.

“Did you have a nice walk?” Xeke asked.

“I found a woman, a shapeshifter, unconscious,” Jay answered. “She still hasn’t woken.
We’re not sure what’s wrong with her. The doctors here think that maybe if—”

“You want to stop talking now,” Xeke interrupted, with a spike of nervousness.

“Could you look at her, and let me know if—”

“I’m leaving.”

“But—”

“Call me if you’re interested in a night out on the town,” Xeke said. “I’ll leave
my phone number at the front desk. But I’m not having this conversation with you.”
With that, he disappeared, too wary to even take the time to leave his number in person.

Jay scowled. He didn’t like mysteries. He
really
didn’t like it when people kept things from him.

He had never had an adolescent’s panic over what other people were thinking, or whether
they were thinking of him, or that sheer certainty that
everyone
was thinking about him
all the time that most young teens had. No, from the start he had known when they
lied; when they were pretending to be macho while scared; when it wasn’t
quite
true when a mother said, “No, of course I’m not mad,” when her young child accidentally
broke an heirloom piece of china; and when people weren’t thinking of him at all,
even when they were in the middle of a conversation with him.

He understood. Everyone needed little lies to get them through the day, false courage
to make them find real courage, and false comfort when something couldn’t be repaired.
Their minds were so complicated and their lives so intense that who could blame them
that most of the time they weren’t thinking about anything but themselves?

People were fascinating to Jay, but they weren’t mysteries. That was why Xeke had
fled. For some reason, he needed to be a mystery.

Jay could spend lazy hours as a cat basking in the sun, or as a lizard on a rock,
or as a sparrow singing for the pure joy of the day. Others of his line used their
empathy to become powerful healers of the body and mind, or to help them mediate conflict.
Those who chose to go into human businesses made staggering amounts of money as psychotherapists,
lawyers, marriage counselors, or industrial psychologists.

Jay had chosen the path of a hunter because whether he was a songbird or a kitten
or a koi in a pool, there was one thing that could always pull him back: the challenge
of a hunt.

He had been challenged, and like a bloodhound, he was now committed to this mystery.
Damn you, Xeke
.

F
IRST, HE HAD
to get out of bed. He had recovered enough of his power that he could start focusing
it on healing his wounds. Whatever foreign magic had kept Caryn from healing him while
he was unconscious gave him no problems now.

He stood, and again sought the kitchen. He needed protein to make up for the power
burned, and the blood lost.

Leftover fried chicken was a good start. He ate it cold, enjoying the grease, the
crunch of the skin, and the softness of the meat beneath. He carried a leg bone with
him as he walked through the parking lot to get a not-blood-covered shirt from the
car. He also hoped he could find the directions he had used the night before.

Unfortunately, he would still have to backtrack all the way
to the highway, and then follow the directions the bloodbond had given him, in order
to figure out where Kendra’s Heathen Holiday had been—and from there, Xeke’s apartment
and the strange forest.

It was a reasonable plan.

First, he wrote the directions onto a piece of SingleEarth stationery and left that
next to the unconscious shapeshifter, with a note saying,
This is near where I found her. Some kind of memory spell alters the ability to recall
where it is. I will call if I find it again
.

He had to hold on to the doorjamb for a minute as a dizzy spell took him.

It was probably too soon to hunt, but he didn’t need to fight anything yet. He could
just go back to the party.

He would need to get dressed up again first, wouldn’t he? Hmm.

Jeremy looked confused when Jay stepped in on him in the middle of his last intake
for the day and asked, “Do you have an extra tuxedo I could borrow?”

“I’m a little busy, Jay.” He had to finish up with this patient, then change, pick
up Caryn, and get to the much-dreaded gathering at his parents’ house.

“So am I,” Jay retorted. “And I need formal wear, quickly.” He wanted to get there
before midnight so he would be able to get a sense of how things were going and where
he was, and then get out before the Devil’s Hour. He couldn’t afford to lose any more
blood.

Jeremy apologized to his patient and pulled out his wallet.
He handed Jay a business card and said, “This is where we’re getting our tuxes for
the wedding.”

Good enough. “Do you need the card back?”

“I have extras.”

Great. Jay called as soon as he was back in the parking lot. Thankfully, Nikolas had
forced him to be measured for the tux he had worn the first night at Kendra’s gala,
so he was able to give the store the exact size he needed. They had a few styles available
for rental that evening and offered to have them ready for him to try on and choose
from when he arrived at the store.

Wonderful service. No wonder Jeremy and Caryn were using them.

Within an hour, he had a tuxedo and was ready to return to a fabulous Christmas party
filled with psychotic vampire artists who might or might not want to eat him come
midnight.

The directions he had been given used landmarks instead of street names, and seemed
to suggest going in circles. Nevertheless, Jay followed them to the letter, and once
again traveled up the half-mile-long private driveway that led to Kendra’s manor.
Each window held a real flickering candle, and the trees out front sparkled with silver-blue
lights. The front yard was decorated with elaborately carved white marble reindeer
in various poses of grazing and leaping.

Before Jay passed through the entryway, he mentally reviewed his plan: walk in, get
the lay of the land, establish clearly where he was, and
write that information down
. Meanwhile, he would try to find out why there was such a powerful spell on the area,
and how great a range it covered. SingleEarth had some
of the most powerful localized spells he knew of, but none of them approached the
strength necessary to mess with his mind the way this one had.

As expected, Kendra’s gala was still in full swing when he arrived shortly after ten.
As much as he could without crashing his car, he had focused on his power and sense
of magic along the way there, but he hadn’t sensed anything that would indicate crossing
the boundary of a spell.

Perhaps the spell itself wasn’t around the town or the houses but around the
woods
? It might have bled out a bit to protect the houses closest to it.

If the spell didn’t protect the vampires’ dwelling areas specifically, then it might
protect something hidden in that forest. He could check that out after he did some
reconnaissance.

“Oh, you’re back!” Brina exclaimed as soon as she saw him.

If he hadn’t recognized the jewel tone of her mind, Jay never would have guessed that
this was the same woman who had madly destroyed a series of paintings with her bare
hands and nails an evening prior.

Dressed in an emerald-green gown with a plunging neckline and layers of soft skirts,
Brina was resplendent. Her black hair shone, highlights reflecting all the colors
around her, like a raven’s feathers. It had been styled into an elaborate cascade
of ringlets, pinned half up with mother-of-pearl combs and otherwise falling around
her face and teasingly brushing the bare cream-colored skin of her shoulders.

Jay’s mouth went dry, and for a moment every word and thought went out of his head.

She smiled and held out a hand gloved in white lace. He took it and kissed the back.

Her smile felt good, like sunshine.

He tried to remind himself that this woman was nuts, but part of that madness was
a beautiful purity of thought. When she smiled, she emitted perfect joy. There was
still sorrow like a quiet, deep pool in her mind, but she was determined to rise above
it.

He wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her forever, protect her and cherish
her and sculpt her and … These were not entirely his thoughts.

He didn’t fight them, though. He had enough self-preservation not to sell himself
into slavery or let her damage him, so he might as well enjoy her presence.

“I wish I knew how to dance,” he said aloud. “If I did, I would ask you to join me.”

“Sweetheart,” she purred in response.

Don’t forget why you’re here
, he reminded himself.

He debated broaching the subject of the shapeshifter with her, but something warned
him off. Brina obviously didn’t like focusing on anyone besides Brina.

He still wanted to dance with her.

“Brina, exactly the lady I was looking for.”

The voice that cut between them was connected to a mind that instantly made Jay’s
proverbial hackles rise. There was something dark and calculating about it.

“Oh … you came,” Brina answered, turning with a strong dash of irritation and a feigned
smile.

The new vampire wasn’t an artist, but there was something artistic about his spiderweb
of a mind. Where Brina’s mind put out waves of color and emotion, this one’s mind
was tightly woven, designed to be studied and approached, until Jay feared he would
find himself ensnared.

Despite the distaste reverberating in her mind, Brina greeted the newcomer warmly,
stepping forward to put herself into his embrace. He kissed her cheeks before moving
back. “I have your portrait,” she said. “It’s in the gallery now. I do hope you don’t
need it until after the holiday is over? It’s—one of my best works this year, and
I would hate to take it off display so soon.”