To Dance with the Devil

33

I was late for breakfast. I’d been right. The authorities wanted their questions answered. Rizzoli had shown up somewhere along the way, so while the powers that be were insistent about getting information, they were pleasant and polite about it. I overheard one or two interesting bits of information while I was waiting around. Warden Davis had vanished from the prison, and his magic signature was one of the four at the other site.

The authorities weren’t happy with me. They were even less happy with John. But the evidence was clear. The other guys had demons and spawn, and in the middle of the desert were two dead mages who were supposed to be locked up in maximum security on the upper floors of the Needle.

We’d saved the day. Again.

So eventually they cut me loose. The first thing I did was telepathically contact Queen Lopaka—my cell phone, like everyone else’s, had been confiscated, both to contain the leaking of information to the Internet and as evidence of what happened. At my request, my aunt agreed to call King Dahlmar and to apply her own political pressure, along with the King’s, to help John Creede.

Since I didn’t have a car, I caught a ride with Bruno. He agreed to drop me off at the restaurant, but he wouldn’t be staying. He was headed to UCLA Medical Center, where they’d taken his mom for treatment. Matty had flown there with her—as a fellow patient. He’d overstrained his magic and they wanted to keep him for observation.

We didn’t talk much on the drive. We both had a lot on our minds, and it wasn’t far from the Needle to Irma’s.

I knew Bruno was thinking of his mother and his brother, and worrying about John. They’d been rivals for my affection, but they were also friends. If there was anything Bruno could do to help the other man out of his legal difficulties, I knew he’d do it.

My thoughts were about the guys who got away and what that might mean for my future. I was glad to set that aside when I got out of the car at Irma’s and joined my friends for a victory celebration.

Emma and Kevin exchanged meaningful looks, but I ignored them, the same way Kevin ignored the adoring looks Michelle was casting his direction. She was young, she was smitten. I didn’t worry about him doing anything inappropriate.

Michelle tore her gaze away from Kevin long enough to meet my eyes. “Ms. Graves, I want to thank you. Your quick thinking saved me. I’d be dead if you hadn’t had Kevin do what he did.” She was so earnest, it was ridiculous. She was only a few years younger than me, but somehow she managed to make me feel ancient.

“It’s not going to be easy.”

“No, of course not.” She smiled when she said it, flashing white teeth and deep dimples. “But Kevin’s agreed to mentor me until I get full control of my beast.”

I turned to him, one eyebrow raised in inquiry. He ignored me in favor of taking a big bite of rare steak, juices dripping from his fork onto the plate. Then again, maybe that was an answer.

I finished before everyone else. There hadn’t been a lot of suitable food choices on the menu, and I wanted to get on the road. Kevin came up as I was paying the bill. He walked me out to the parking lot to wait as the mechanic brought out my SUV but didn’t say anything until he was sure we were alone.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“No,” I admitted. “But I will be.”

He stared at me for a long moment. “Yeah, you will. You’ve changed, you know, these past couple of years. You’ve grown up. Before the vampire bite, you’d never have been able to make the hard choices.”

“It sucks.”

“Yeah, it does.” His gaze locked with mine, his expression more serious than I’d ever seen it. “Emma tells me that two of the warlocks survived. And that they escaped.”

I didn’t want to think about that right now. I knew I needed to, but I just didn’t have the heart for it. I knew he could hear it in my voice when I said, “So they tell me.”

“Do you want me to track them?”

Once upon a time Kevin had been a field operative for the Company. His specialty was hunting “hard targets,” the worst of the worst. He was offering to do that again, for me, despite the fact that his PTSD was severe enough to require an assistance dog. He’d do it, too.

I stared at him, dumbfounded. Was it friendship that prompted the offer? Or was it something else? My gran had told me that men will fulfill a siren’s needs, even to their doom. Chris had flown me into the middle of a war zone and jumped out of that helicopter because I needed backup. Kevin was offering to do for me what he’d done for the Company. Maybe out of friendship. Then again, maybe not. My vampire side had intensified after being left on the beach. Had my siren side been affected as well? I couldn’t know without checking with my great-aunt, or maybe El Jefe, Kevin’s father, Warren. But I knew one thing for certain: I was a siren. Influencing men was something I could do—but only if I let myself.

“No, I don’t think so. Not this time.”

He shook his head sadly and his shaggy blond hair fell slightly over his blue eyes. It was a boyish look, but his words weren’t boyish. They were deadly serious. “You screwed up their plans, Celia. You. Nobody else. They’re not going to forget or forgive.”

He was right. I knew it. That Davis and the other man had gotten away was most likely going to bite me in the ass hard somewhere down the line. But it didn’t matter. Kevin was my friend. I was not sending him up against these people. Not now. Not ever. There had to be another way to stop them. I would just have to find it.

I climbed into the cab of the SUV, feeling old and tired. My whole body hurt. Worse, my heart ached. So much had happened in the past few days. I needed some time alone to think and absorb it all. I rolled down the window to ask Kevin one last question.

“Are you really going to mentor Michelle?”

He grimaced. “It’s traditional. If you turn someone, you’re responsible for training her until she can control herself. When she’s ready, I’ll introduce her to a friend of mine who’s the leader of a pack.” He could tell from the expression on my face how I was feeling. “Don’t feel bad. It’s all right. I don’t mind. You made the right choice.”

If I had, then why did I feel so crappy about it?

“You’re just tired. Go home. Get some rest.”

“Maybe you’re right.” I turned the key in the ignition and the truck’s engine roared to life. “Good-bye, Kevin.”

“Good-bye. Be careful driving home.”

“I will.”

He stood in the parking lot watching as I drove away.

I thought about Jack Finn. I’d let him live. Had it been a mistake? Maybe. I didn’t know. I’d done it because I’d thought I needed to, but he was a bad man, a killer who was probably only slightly better than his father had been. I thought about Connor Finn. We’d had quite the dance, he and I. I lived, he died, but his ghost was out there, a powerful, violent shade. There is only so much harm a ghost could do, but I’d no doubt he’d manage every bit of it given the chance. And there wasn’t one damned thing I could do about it.

Thinking of ghosts brought memories of my sister. I missed Ivy. On the drive home, it really hit me. Usually during a long drive she’d provide the air-conditioning, mess with the radio, and draw hearts in frost on the driver’s-side window. That would never happen again. She might be better off. I wasn’t sure I was.

I turned on the radio, determined not to wallow in self-pity anymore. We’d won, damn it. Michelle was alive. The prison wards were back up. The bad guys’ plans were foiled. We’d won. I hit the search button. The first channel it found was a disco station. The classic notes of Donna Summer’s “I Will Survive” blasted out of the speakers.

It made me laugh. There were tears in my eyes, but the laughter was real, too. Turning up the volume, I sang along, belting out the words I’d learned from listening to the punk version. After that I felt better, enough better that I had a brainstorm. I hit the button to make a couple of hands-free calls, first to Dawna and then Emma.

“Celia, I just left the restaurant,” Emma said. “I’m on my way to visit Matty in the hospital. What’s up?”

“You’re moving to Seattle, right? With your husband.”

If it was possible to hear someone blush, I did. There was a short, embarrassed pause. “You caught that, huh.”

“Yup. What happened to all that pre-Cana stuff the Catholics do?”

“Since Matty was going to be risking death to work the magic, the bishop gave us a dispensation. He married us himself yesterday morning.”

“Congratulations! That’s awesome.” It was. I was so happy for the two of them. They were perfect together.

“Yeah, well, we haven’t told his mom yet.”

My happiness stuttered a little. Isabella has very strong opinions about big church weddings; I knew that from my previous engagement to Bruno.

“Fingers crossed it will be all right.”

“You betcha.”

“Is that why you called?”

“Yes and no. I had an idea.” I was smiling so big I was pretty sure she could hear it in my voice.

“Oh?”

“We’d have to clear the zoning, but what do you think about Dawna and me putting our offices in your place?”

“I think that would be wonderful! And I’m going to be the one who springs for our time at the spa with Dawna. No arguments.”

“And here I thought that trip would be a good engagement present.”

“Nope. You’ll have to find something else. This one’s on me.”