CHAPTER SIX
Nate had never spent much one-on-one time with
Rabbit before. Not because he had anything major against the kid,
but more because he’d been spending most of his downtime wrestling
with the story line for VW6. He’d hung with
Rabbit as part of a group, sure, and shot a game or two of
nine-ball, but there’d always been other people around to blunt the
kid’s ’tude. Which was why, when Strike had told him the teen was
flying to New Orleans with him and Alexis, Nate hadn’t thought much
about it. Heck, he’d been relieved that there would be a buffer
between him and Alexis, a third wheel to keep him from doing
something really stupid, like acting on the edgy sense of
possessiveness that’d been riding him since the day before. He kept
telling himself it was a delayed reaction to having rescued her
from the enemy mage, and again when the statuette kicked her into
the barrier. He was bound to feel protective after that—it wasn’t
as if they could afford to lose any of the magi. It was only
natural that he’d want to keep her safe. It didn’t mean he wanted
to start up again with something that hadn’t fit right
before.
So he told himself to ignore the way his skin
kept tightening every time he came within a yard of her, and the
way the memories of the two of them together were suddenly too
close to the surface of his mind, far more so than they had been in
the months they’d been broken up. He swore he could taste her, and
feel her skin beneath his fingertips, feel the weight of her
breasts against his chest, and hear her cries as she came apart
around him.
It’s just the eclipse,
he told himself as he followed her onto the plane. Carlos had
warned him that his hormones would flare when the barrier thinned,
and eclipses were among the most powerful astrological events in
the Nightkeeper calendar. Sure, the lunar eclipse was still a few
days away, but damned if he couldn’t feel the hum of sex and magic
in his blood. It made him think of Alexis when he should’ve been
thinking about the mission ahead, made his nostrils flare when he
caught the light hint of her scent on the recirculated airplane
air, made his flesh tighten when she glanced back at him and he saw
the curve of her jaw, the soft swing of her hair. He wanted to find
someplace where it was just the two of them, wanted to bury himself
in her, lose himself with her—
And he so wasn’t going back there.
Focus, he told himself
fiercely. He needed to concentrate on the mission, on improving the
Nightkeepers’ score against the enemy mage. They were even: The
Nightkeepers had the Ixchel statuette, but the redhead had Edna
Hopkins’s artifact. If it took Nate, Alexis, and Rabbit traveling
together to make the score two to one, then so be it. They just had
to get the knife and get back. No problem, right?
By the time their plane landed in New Orleans
late that afternoon, though, he was seriously wishing he’d been
flying solo. Alexis was barely speaking to him, answering his
occasional questions with short, clipped monosyllables, and
spending the rest of the time studying the report Jade had prepared
on the knife, Mistress Truth, and the French Quarter. And Rabbit
was in full-on punk mode, with his hoodie pulled most of the way
over his face and his iPod buds jammed in his ears, making it clear
he’d rather be anywhere else, with anyone
else. He’d been pissy about being ordered out of Skywatch, which
didn’t make much sense to Nate, who would’ve thought the kid’d be
jonesing to see some action by now.
Deciding to ignore them both, Nate tossed his
carry-on bag in the trunk of the first cab he saw, and made a point
of sitting up front with the driver.
When he rattled off Mistress Truth’s address at
the outskirts of the French Quarter, though, the driver gave him a
funny look. “You sure about that?” the cabbie asked as he pulled
away from the curb and headed them into the stream of vehicles
exiting the airport.
Nate focused on the guy, noting the edge of a
tribal tattoo at his neck, partly hidden by his shirt. “Yeah. We’ve
got an appointment at the tea shop.”
The driver glanced over, and his voice was a
little too casual when he said, “If’n you want your leaves read,
you should go to my cousin’s place. She does palms too, and she’ll
give you a break if you tell her I sent you.”
Nate tensed. “What’s wrong with Mistress
Truth’s?”
The other man’s eyes slid away from his.
“Nothing. Just trying to give family some business.” He reached
over without looking, palmed his Motorola, and chirped home base to
announce the pickup and his destination, then turned up the dance
music on the radio in a clear signal that the convo was over.
Nate would’ve pressed, but from the set of the
driver’s jaw he figured he wouldn’t get far. Stubborn recognized
stubborn. He half turned back to look at Alexis, who lifted a
shoulder as if to say, What can we do? It
wasn’t like going to another tea shop was going to get them the
knife. It was Mistress Truth or bust.
They traveled the rest of the way in silence
broken only by the mindless syncopation coming from the radio,
until the driver rolled them to a stop in front of a jazz club.
“We’re here.”
Actually, they were more like four doors down,
Nate saw, and tried not to wonder why the driver didn’t want to
stop in front of the tea shop. If the guy was trying to give him
the creeps, he’d done a pretty good job.
Nate paid the tab and added a tip. When the
driver made change he included a card for his cousin’s place, but
didn’t say another word, just gave a two-fingered salute and pulled
back out into traffic.
“Smells funny.” Rabbit wrinkled his nose as he
looked around.
“Can’t argue that,” Nate said, staring after the
cab.
“You should’ve told him to wait,” Alexis said,
her tone carrying a distinct edge.
Nate ignored her snippiness. It didn’t seem to
be easing, which made him wonder whether it was more than delayed
shock. But even if it had something to do with her vision of the
day before, something to do with the two of them together, it
wasn’t like he could—or would—do anything to ease the tension for
either of them. So he shrugged and said, “Somehow I doubt he
would’ve waited, tip or no tip. Seemed like he was in a hurry to
get out of here.”
He took a long look around, trying to figure out
why. The narrow street was cracked and heaved in some places,
patched in others. Probably leftover hurricane damage, he figured,
which might also explain the funky odor Rabbit had mentioned, which
smelled like a cross between a bad air freshener and used sweat
socks. The block they’d come to looked like most of the others
they’d passed on the way: pieces of it old, pieces new, all of it
vaguely fake-seeming, as though the contractors had tried to slap a
gloss of cool over it, and missed. Mardi Gras had been a few days
earlier, and confetti edged the street, lone wisps of streamers and
colored dots that’d escaped the street sweepers lying now in the
gutter, their once-bright colors gone drab.
The exterior of the jazz bar was slicked with a
fresh coat of paint and sported a shiny new sign, but the next two
places down were boarded up. Beyond them was the tea shop, which
took up the corner of the block. The star-studded sign confirmed
the cabbie’s implication that the place might call itself a tea
shop, but the actual tea was ancillary to fortune-telling,
palmistry, and other supposed magical practices. The shop was
plain-fronted, with a facade that looked older than even those of
its abandoned neighbors. Instead of being shabby, though, it seemed
sturdy, as though the floodwaters had passed it by.
Or not, Nate thought,
mentally dope-slapping himself for buying into the mystique that’d
no doubt been painted on by the same contractors who’d done the
rest of the block.
“We going in or what?” Alexis asked, then moved
past him and headed for the store without waiting for an answer.
Rabbit slouched along in her wake, and when he looked back at Nate
he had a big old smirk on his face, like he was enjoying the
tension between them.
“Punk,” Nate muttered, and stalked after them
both, passing them and shouldering through the door to the tea shop
so he was the first one in. As he entered, he braced himself for
the smell of death or the sting of dark, twisted magic.
He didn’t get either. He got a tea shop.
It was bigger inside than it’d looked from the
street. Large glass display cases flanked the door and ran along a
central aisle, and chairs were grouped around small round tables
behind the counters, set up for readings. And tea, he supposed. He
could smell it in the air, an earthy mix of herbs that bore little
resemblance to the Lipton his social worker, Carol Rose, had
insisted he drink whenever they met.
That memory, though, hit hard when he smelled
the herbs. He’d been tough and mean, hardened by his experiences in
juvie, with defenses cemented in stone by what he’d seen and
done—and avoided doing—inside Greenville. But lucky for him, Carol
Rose had been tougher and meaner, and had refused to be scared off.
She’d been the making of him as a man, and damned if he couldn’t
see her face right there in front of him, when he knew full well
her pack-a-day habit had caught up with her six years
earlier.
“Hey.” Alexis tapped his shoulder. “You going to
stand there all day?”
“I—” He broke off, shaking his head as Carol
Rose’s image disappeared in a swirl of tea-scented leaves. Seeing
nobody in the small storefront, he stepped aside. “Yeah. Come
on.”
When the door swung shut behind her and Rabbit,
a bell chimed in the rear. The paneling at the front of the store
was light-toned wood, and the display cases were filled with
low-key arcana: decks of tarot cards, incense and burners, and
mass-produced voodoo dolls aimed at the tourist market. The big
windows at the front of the store let in the light, and the whole
effect was pleasant enough, if bland. Beyond that, though, the room
darkened to a maze of tall bookcases set at crazy angles to one
another. Nate couldn’t see the back wall, but the echoes told him
that there was nearly twice as much space in the darkness as in the
light.
The setup made the place feel like two entirely
different stores. The front was a safe zone, where tourists could
do their thing and come out feeling as though they’d scraped the
surface of the local occult community. The rear of the store was
where it was really at, though. No doubt about it.
“Stay here,” Nate said. “I’ll be right back.” He
headed toward the bookcases.
Half a second later Alexis and Rabbit followed.
Big surprise. He didn’t bother to order them to wait until he’d
checked things out, though, because he didn’t figure it’d work.
Besides, once he was past the first row of bookcases the light
dimmed significantly, and damned if it didn’t feel like the walls
closed in a notch. He knew it was probably an optical illusion or
the power of suggestion, but it made him think the three of them
were better off sticking together, just in case.
The first two rows of cases held the usual
assortment of woo-woo texts and themed day planners, exactly the
sort of tourist crap he would’ve expected. The next few contained
some legit-looking crystals and some crazy clay blobs. By the time
he passed the fifth row of cases and realized the store was way
bigger than he’d thought at first, he was into shrunken-head
territory, and gut instinct had him on alert. He didn’t feel power,
per se, but there was a definite sense of danger, though he wasn’t
sure if it was real or if he’d talked himself into it based on the
scenery.
Moving deeper into the gloom with the others
breathing down his neck, he paused when he caught a hint of motion
in his peripheral vision, there and gone so quickly he might’ve
missed it if he hadn’t been watching. “Mistress Truth?” he called
softly.
“Keep coming,” a deep, yet feminine voice
responded from up ahead, which meant she hadn’t been the source of
the motion he’d seen. Filing that, he did as he was told, passing
the last row of bookcases and stepping into a space that was at
once both open and deeply shadowed, and appeared empty.
“You want the knife.” One of the shadows moved,
taking on the form of a dark-haired woman wearing a hooded black
cape over a purple velour tracksuit. She was average height,
average weight, with regular features that weren’t particularly
noteworthy until he got to her eyes, which were dark and intense,
and sent a nasty twitch through his gut. Don’t
turn your back on this one, said his warrior’s mark, or his own
gut instincts. Maybe both.
“We brought cash,” he said, wanting the deal
done and them out of there. “Where’s the knife?”
“Here.” She withdrew the weapon from a pocket of
her robe, balanced it on her palm, and held it to the light.
At the sight of it, something inside Nate went
still. The ancient artifact was polished black obsidian, carved
from a single piece of stone. The blade was maybe nine inches long,
the haft slightly shorter, and carved with a repeating motif he
didn’t recognize, at least not consciously. Something inside him
recognized it, though, and the recognition brought a surge of
possessiveness. He had an obsessive, overwhelming urge to reach out
and grab the thing, but held himself back, remembering what’d
happened when Alexis touched the Ixchel statuette.
Even as he did so, a burn of satisfaction raced
through him. They’d gotten there in time. The Xibalban—or whatever
the hell he was—hadn’t beaten them to the knife.
“Looks good,” Alexis said, moving up to face the
self-proclaimed witch. “I believe we agreed on twenty grand?”
The corners of Mistress Truth’s mouth turned up.
“Technically you offered twenty and I said I’d think about
it.”
“You also agreed to give us right of first
refusal,” Alexis added pleasantly, but with a thread of steel in
the words.
“Did I?”
“You know you did.” Alexis’s voice went cool,
and Nate got a really bad feeling, really quick.
Mistress Truth lifted a shoulder. “Maybe that
was before I knew there was another interested party.”
Shit, Nate thought, and
would’ve moved forward if Alexis hadn’t waved him back. “We’ll
double the offer,” she said.
The older woman’s eyes glinted with avarice. “He
offered fifty.”
“Then we’ll give you a hundred,” Alexis retorted
without missing a beat. “Here and now, and let’s get it
done.”
Mistress Truth pursed her lips. “Let me think
about it.”
Which Nate knew really meant, Let me call the big redheaded guy for a
counteroffer, which so wasn’t an option—not because Nate cared
what they paid for the thing, but because he had no intention of
losing to Red again.
Which begged the question of why the other mage
wasn’t there already. He’d already shown that he could ’port. Why
hadn’t he just zapped in and grabbed the knife?
Well, he hadn’t, so that gave them an
opportunity they couldn’t afford to walk away from. Nate shifted to
his left, then caught Rabbit’s eye and gave the kid a little nod,
sending him a few steps to his right, so they were flanking the
wannabe witch.
He was just about to move in when Alexis said,
“My offer expires in two hours.” She turned away, headed back
toward the light. “Come on, guys.” She walked out, leaving the
room’s single exit wide-open.
Mistress Truth looked straight at Nate and
smirked. “You three should really get on the same page, you
know.”
Having lost the element of surprise—and not sure
he’d ever really had it—Nate followed Alexis out, with Rabbit at
his heels. Nate crowded close to her and hissed, “What the hell was
that?”
“It’s called a strategic retreat. And you’re not
the negotiator here.”
“Fuck negotiating,” he said succinctly. “We
should grab the knife, leave the cash, and get the hell out of
here.”
Her eyes went cool. “We don’t all have the same
set of flexible ethics as you, Nathan. And we can’t hold ourselves
out as the saviors of mankind if we run around acting like street
thugs.” She said the last very softly, letting him know that she
too knew they were being watched. But if she was sharp enough to
catch the furtive movement in the shadows, how could she not see
that they were setting themselves up for disaster by leaving
now?
Unless that was what she wanted to have
happen.
Suddenly convinced there was something else
going on here, something he wasn’t aware of, Nate growled, “Exactly
what the hell are you up to?”
“Later,” she said as they moved from the
bookcase labyrinth to the front of the store. She indicated the
door. “Let’s get out of here. This place gives me the
creeps.”
But when they hit the street, Rabbit wasn’t with
them. Nate cursed under his breath and was just about to go back in
when the kid came through the door with a strange look on his
face.
“What’s wrong?” Nate demanded.
Expression blanking, the teen shrugged.
“Nothing. I thought I saw . . . nothing. I’ll take first watch.” He
turned away, heading across the street to a nearby bakery as though
the only thing on his mind were chowing a couple of beignets, not
setting up a surveillance post that faced the tea shop.
Alexis watched him go. “Creepy kid,” she said
after a moment.
“Why?” Nate snapped, irritated. “Because he’s a
half-blood? Watch it, princess, your winikin’s showing.”
Her eyebrows climbed. “What’s up your
ass?”
You, he wanted to say.
The witch. The ersatz Xibalban. All of it.
The entire setup stank, just like Edna Hopkins’s cottage had. His
blood buzzed with anger, with impatience. He wanted that knife,
hated that they’d just walked away from it, and resented his
growing suspicion that Alexis had an agenda he hadn’t known about.
How the hell was he supposed to watch her back if he didn’t know
the whole plan? “You want to tell me what the hell’s going on
here?”
“It’s an experiment.” She paused, looking at him
out of the corner of her eye, gauging his response when she
whispered almost soundlessly, “Strike thinks Rabbit’s mother was
Xibalban. He wants to know if he reacts to the redhead’s
magic.”
Stifling his first response, which involved the
words fuck and me,
Nate snarled, “So this isn’t just a recovery mission; it’s a
science-fair project? Jesus, what kind of prioritization is that?
Strike’s off his rocker.”
“We need information,” she said, but avoided his
eyes.
Shit. This wasn’t the
king’s plan. It was hers, or maybe a bit of both. “What are you
doing, Alexis?” Nate kept his voice low, but reached out and took
her hand, feeling a buzz of contact that was a potent mix of sex,
magic, and memory. He hung on when she would’ve pulled away, and
said softly, “Talk to me.”
She lifted her chin. “Consider this an extended
job interview.”
“You’re not going to earn the king’s trust by
being stupid,” Nate said, letting go of her hand because he wanted
to keep holding on. “Think it through. We go back in there, steal
the knife, and bring it back to Skywatch. Mission accomplished.
What more could Strike ask?”
“That’s the sort of thought process that got you
thrown in jail, isn’t it?”
The universe went very still. “Don’t go
there.”
Something flickered in her eyes—regret, maybe,
or nerves—but it was quickly gone, leaving coolness behind.
“Sorry,” she said, sounding unrepentant. “The point is that I’m not
going to get what I want by doing the minimum. I have to prove that
I’m ready for more, that I’m ambitious and aggressive.”
“That sounds like something Izzy would
say.”
“I’m saying it,” she
replied evenly, but then her expression softened. “Look, I know you
want to follow your own path; I get that, and I’m not asking you to
buy into something you don’t believe in. But the thing is, I
do believe in fate and destiny, and I’d be
honored to follow my mother into an advisory position. I’d
appreciate it if you’d help me out.”
Translation: You owe me.
And the thing was, Nate realized, maybe he did. He’d slept with her
when the pretransition hornies had hit him hard, and he’d broken it
off when the urges waned. In reality there’d been more to it—a
whole shit-ton more—but she didn’t know that. All she knew was that
he’d used her when he’d needed to get his rocks off and dumped her
when the mating urge leveled out. So yeah, he probably did owe her.
And if the payback was him helping her impress the king by getting
both the knife and an idea of whether Rabbit’s magic reacted to the
redheaded mage, then so be it.
“Okay.” He nodded. “Fine. I’m in.” He still
thought it was a piss-poor idea. But he also knew her well enough
to figure she’d try it with or without his help. “Come on. I guess
we watch and wait.”
He headed for the coffee shop where Rabbit had
disappeared to, and he didn’t look back.
In the small café, Nate and Alexis sat together
at a table so small that their knees bumped beneath it, while
Rabbit sulked at a stool by the window, shoveling in calories at a
rate of about a thousand a minute, in the form of beignets, lemon
squares, and coffee-laced hot chocolate. All three of them had
decent views of the alley that ran around the back of Mistress
Truth’s shop, leading to the rear exit. If anyone came or went from
the tea shop, they’d see.
The waiting, Alexis soon found, was the hardest
part. Or rather, waiting with Nate was, because he was crowding
her, getting inside her space, under her skin. And he wasn’t even
trying to, damn him.
Her dream-vision of the two of them making love
in the underground temple had undone the four months’ worth of
forgive-and-forget she’d managed to build up since their
relationship ended. She wanted to scratch at him for dumping her,
for not remembering what her gut told her actually had happened between them in the stone chamber. At
the same time, she wanted to be skin-on-skin with him, wanted to
ride him, race him, roll with him like they’d done before, when
they’d packed more than her prior lifetime of sex into a couple of
short months that’d ended long before she was ready.
And she wanted, more than anything, to get a
grip on herself.
The writs said that what had happened before
would happen again, and boy, was that the truth. As hard as she’d
tried to do otherwise, she’d put herself right back where she’d
been too many times before—dealing with an ex on a daily basis and
having to pretend it was no big deal. Before, it’d been her
clients, wealthy men who had wanted her for her business acumen as
much as for her body, and had generally been bored with her body
long before they were finished with her stock tips. When she’d
broken up with Aaron after catching him below-decks on his yacht
with a bimbo twofer, she’d vowed to do better the next time.
Yeah, that worked, she
thought, glancing at Nate, only to find him looking back at her.
Their eyes connected, and the punch of remembered heat was tempered
with a twist of regret. Maybe it was the magic of the coming
eclipse, which was thinning the barrier and strengthening the
sexual pull that’d been there from the beginning. Or maybe it was
their close proximity, or the vision. Whatever the reason, even
though she and Nate were sitting still, unspeaking, she suddenly
felt naked beneath his gaze. Vulnerable.
Excited.
Damn it.
“There,” he said suddenly, leaning forward. “In
the shop. Something’s happening.”
They rose and moved to flank Rabbit’s vantage
point at the front of the coffee shop. There was motion inside
Mistress Truth’s place: blinds being drawn, and a pair of shadows
moving behind them, backlit by a glow of warm illumination that was
too steady to be candlelight, too dim to be the shop’s
fluorescents. The quick February dusk had fallen, showing the
figures clearly—one was Mistress Truth, the other far too small to
be the big redheaded man. “Two shadows,” Nate said. “The witch and
whoever else was in there watching us.”
Alexis shot him a quick look. She’d thought
she’d been imagining the sensation of being watched. Apparently
not.
“I saw her,” Rabbit said, “I think.” At Nate’s
look, he elaborated, “My age, maybe a year or two older. Thin, dark
hair, black eye.”
Alexis asked, “As in she had dark eyes, or she
had a shiner?”
“A shiner. Looked like someone clocked her
good.” The teen shifted on his stool, shrugging restlessly inside
his clothes.
Maybe the caffeine was catching up with him. Or
maybe it was something else, Alexis thought as she caught a buzz of
power off him, a whiff of smoke. Oh, hell,
she thought, looking past the teen and catching Nate’s eye. Her
stomach dropped when he nodded that he’d sensed it, too.
The kid was jacked in and jacked up, and far too
twitchy for his own good. Typically hair-trigger on a good day,
Rabbit was wired to blow. He must’ve been more excited than she’d
thought about the prospect of some action. Or else it really was
the caffeine—who the hell knew with his powers?
The king had ordered her to keep Rabbit safe
first and foremost. Learning more about his magic was secondary.
Which meant she so wasn’t putting him in front of the Xibalban now.
Not like this. The kid was a loose cannon leaking way more power
than he ought to be. Add that to the hormonal explosives that came
with being eighteen and having aY chromosome, and bad things could
happen way too easily.
“Hey.” Nate put a hand on the teen’s shoulder.
“Take a deep breath and chill.”
Rabbit practically exploded off the stool,
shooting backward and landing in a defensive crouch. “Don’t,” he said on a whistle of breath, “touch me.”
He stood there for a second, ribs heaving, then looked around and
went brick red when he realized he’d quickly become the center of
attention in the café, and a couple of big dudes in the coffee line
were looking like they were thinking about getting involved.
“We’re cool,” Nate said, holding both hands up
in a gesture of no harm, no foul.
“Yeah.” Rabbit sent the would-be Good Samaritans
a filthy look as he slouched back onto his stool. “Nothing to see
here.”
“Sorry for the commotion,” Alexis put in, and
waited until most everyone had gone back to their own business
before she glanced over at the teen. “You need to work on your
blocks if you’re pulling this much power already. The eclipse isn’t
for another forty-eight hours.”
“The witch is leaving,” Nate said quietly.
Alexis looked over in time to see Mistress Truth
hustling through the front door of the tea shop, wearing a big
purple jacket over the same purple tracksuit she’d had on earlier.
Bracing herself for a fight, Alexis said, “Rabbit, listen—”
“I think I should stay here,” he interrupted,
then swallowed hard. His voice was shaky, his color was off, and
heat crinkled in the air around him. “I’m not feeling so good. I’ll
wait here until you get back, maybe call Strike for a pickup if I
start feeling too shitty.”
Which so wasn’t what she’d been expecting. “I .
. . uh. Yeah. I think that’d be best.”
“We’ve got to go if we’re going,” Nate said as a
dark sedan pulled up in front of the tea shop and Mistress Truth
climbed in. “Unless you want to stay here with Rabbit?”
She ought to, she knew. She’d promised to keep
him safe. But Rabbit shook his head and waved her off. “Go. I’ll
keep out of trouble. Honest.”
As Nate headed out to the street and flagged a
cab,
Alexis wavered. Finally she said, “Okay. I’m
going to hold you to that.”
Telling herself it was the right call, she
bolted after Nate and jumped in the cab. As the vehicle headed
through the French Quarter in pursuit of the dark sedan, Nate
glanced at her. “You sure he’ll stay put?”
“Yeah. He promised.” Whatever she might think of
Rabbit, a Nightkeeper’s word was his bond.
It wasn’t until they were a good five minutes
down the road that she realized that Rabbit had said honest . . . but he hadn’t actually promised her a
damn thing.