Chapter 12
Darsh leapt off the bed, cursing in Romani.
My heart thudded in my throat, but I kept my voice light. “I have a slightly longer life expectancy than most.”
He crouched down next to me, his fingers hovering over my skin. “May I?”
I nodded, barely feeling his featherlight touch. “See,” I said with a shaky laugh. “If I can be brave and out my most vulnerable self, you can too.”
“Very sneaky of you.” He dropped back onto the mattress next to me. “I’m glad you came to me for your disguise because those scales and your normal hair color would wash you right out.”
I’d have shown my crimson hair but wasn’t sure how that magic feature would interact with the bleach.
My relief swam down to my toes. Along with some indignation. “It’s actually crimson in my half-shedim form.”
“Like the sweater Ezra knitted for you?” He pressed his hand to his heart with a wounded look. “I take it Sach knows too?”
I lost my shedim features, human in appearance once more. “For the last month. And don’t take it personally. It took me a couple of decades to work up the courage to come out to her.”
He gasped. “Is Michael?—”
“No.”
“Holy crap! That’s even better. She slept with a shedim?!” He fell back against the bed, one arm thrown across his face. “I’m slain. Truly.”
Since the melodrama involved in learning exactly which shedim my mother had slept with (shudder) might finish Darsh off, I saved the news of Delacroix for another day. “You can’t tell anyone. That includes no taunting Michael. You get away with a lot of shit with her, Darsh, but teasing her about this is off-limits. It wasn’t easy for her raising a half-demon kid, especially as a single mom.”
Darsh moved his arm away from his face. “I can’t tell Silas? It seems unfair for him to be left out of the loop.”
“Such concern for your houseguest,” I teased.
He shot me the finger.
“I’m working up to it, okay?”
“Okay.” He nudged me. “What was the woman’s name?”
“What woman?”
“The vampire who outlived her child.”
“I don’t know. Cherry helped me shake off the magic before I heard the name.” I rubbed my arms. “Good thing too. I would have been lost to it, otherwise.”
“Who’s Cherry?”
I blushed. “No one.”
He sat up and booped the end of my nose. “That is absolutely not the case.”
I sighed. “Cherry Bomb, the Brimstone Baroness. My shedim side.”
“I love a woman who refers to herself in the third person. And with a divine name no less.”
I always liked him , Cherry purred lazily.
“So the Baroness helped save you, but you’re back at square one.”
“Not exactly. The supplicant was there because she’d been chosen by someone called the Ashbishop.”
Darsh went very still.
I turned to face him. “I take it that extreme reaction isn’t due to how stupid that name sounds.”
My friend stared into the distance, his voice thin and quiet. “I was turned at a time and in a place where the odds of my survival were slim. I didn’t have the strength or violent urges of others like me, so I took a different route for survival, staying under the radar for decades while I slowly built an armor out of information. I made sure to stay in the shadows and not attract attention, and after more than a century, my reputation was formidable. Sometime in the mid-1800s, I was invited to the Copper Hell. Patrin…” His voice cracked but he notched up his chin. “Patrin had been changed by the same paragon who made me.”
I’d never heard such contempt from him.
“Even though my brother was also a vampire and almost as old as I was, I’d protected him as best I could, allowing him to retain the innocence he’d had in life. Maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe then…” He shook his head wearily. “Patrin wasn’t usually stubborn, but when he wanted something, especially from me, he always managed to talk me into it.”
“He wanted to go to the Copper Hell?”
“Big-time. He swore he’d be happy with a single visit, but when he got there, well…” He touched his wrist cuff. “I tried to stop him, but I wasn’t his keeper. Patrin made friends there and I convinced myself it was a good thing. He’d always preferred human company and, well.” Darsh shrugged. “You know how that story always ended. It was better for him to have other vampire friends instead of being dependent on me as his one constant companion.”
“Charming as you are,” I said.
“Right? One of his friends introduced him to a powerful vampire who brought Patrin into his crew.”
“At the Hell?”
“No. This vampire didn’t gamble.” His gaze went unfocused for a minute, then he shook his head. “Patrin disappeared into his new life, and I didn’t see him or hear from him again until he was arrested for stealing from an Authority member.”
I wrung my hands together. “He got caught, didn’t he?”
“The only thing that kept him from being immediately staked was that they wanted his boss’s name. I begged him to hand it over, but when he didn’t, I took matters into my own hands.”
“You found out the name?”
“I wish. No, I negotiated hard, saying it was Patrin’s first strike and he’d return what he stole. Besides, I had something far more useful. Years of information about various vamp players. The Authority said they’d take my information, but they’d also take me. For one hundred years. Take it or leave it.”
“Darsh—” I reached for him but at his flinch, dropped my hand, and schooled my voice into a matter-of-fact tone. “What happened to Patrin?”
“I saved him. Pointless really,” he said blithely. “Whoever he was working for killed him anyway for betraying him by returning the stolen property.”
I exhaled slowly at the tragic outcome. “You were never tempted to cut and run?”
“I’d made a deal and I intended to honor it.”
“Honor or penance?”
“Does it matter? I played spy for the Maccabees for years. One of my jobs about ten years back had me cross paths with Michael. She was the first operative to know my situation yet judge me on my merits, and when the job was over, I stayed in Vancouver.”
“You never found out who killed Patrin?” My gut was as twisted as my fingers.
“I did.” He smiled sadly.
I exhaled hard.
“But I never found the Ashbishop. Eventually I heard he was dead, but if that rumor was untrue and he’s back and gunning for vamp invincibility?” He clenched his hands into fists.
I closed my eyes briefly. Reopening Darsh’s wound was cruel, but letting the Ashbishop roam unchecked was unthinkable.
Darsh gnawed the inside of his cheek. “I’ve never told anyone else the full story.”
“I won’t share it, but that’s a lot of grief to have been carrying on your own.”
“As is being a half shedim in this world, but sometimes the grief is easier than the words.”
I inclined my head. Touché.
“You need to be very, very careful.”
“Got it.” I held out my right hand. “For now I have to concentrate on my undercover investigation, and for that, I’ll have to remove my Maccabee ring.” I tugged gently on the band, hoping it would get stuck on my knuckle like it had before. It slid over the joint and I stopped, the ring still on my finger.
“Does it help your decision that the magic inside is corrupted?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse. It’s been this talisman, the physical manifestation of my tikkun olam vow.” I ran my thumb over it. “I didn’t even take it off when I visited the Crypt, but I can’t stay undercover with it on.”
“You could get it glamored,” Darsh suggested.
“Sharnaz is on vacation for three weeks.” The Maccabee glamorer was using up their banked holiday time for a trip to Thailand.
Besides, I was also hunting the shedim who Chandra worked with to break the wards on the prison locks and, as firsthand experience taught me, demons could strip glamors.
“Michael isn’t too pleased with me right now. She’s not going to approve the cost of bringing a glamorer in from another chapter on a time-sensitive basis.” I steeled my shoulders. “The ring is not my vow.”
I slid it off my index finger and was immediately assaulted by the itchy, uncomfortable sensation that I’d lost something. I tamped down my strong desire to put the ring back on and stuffed it into my pocket.
A timer went off on Darsh’s phone and he checked one of the foils on my hair. “Time to make you beautiful.”
“Beautiful in a different way from my normal beauty,” I corrected.
Darsh wrinkled his nose, heading out of his room for the bathroom. “Since you’re in a delicate state right now, yes.”
I followed him into the hallway and down the first stair. “You suck.”
“Kidding. But Avi? We’re going to set some ground rules.”
“For what?”
“Touching my boyfriend.” He froze, his eyes wide, then he fled back into his bedroom and slammed the door.
“No take-backsies!” I screeched, flinging the door open and pouncing on him. “You said the words!”
He pushed me off. “I regret them already.”
Silas skidded into the doorway, startling Darsh and me. Damn his vamp hearing and stealthy stair climbing. “Making unilateral decisions, Rapunzel?”
“Like I’m not stating the obvious, cowpoke.” Darsh stood up.
“Do I get a say in this?” Silas cocked his head.
Darsh’s nonchalant “Knock yourself out” would have landed better were his gaze not locked warily on to the other vampire.
Sachie thundered up the stairs, poking her head out from behind Silas and scanning our faces. “What happened?”
“Darsh just declared Silas was his boyfriend,” I said.
“Did he? Heh.”
Silas looked down at Sachie. “I haven’t said yes yet.”
She elbowed him in the back. “Rude.”
Darsh gave a ghost of a smile. “It is rather. Maybe I should rescind.”
“No!” Sachie, I, and most importantly, Silas, exclaimed.
“Fine,” Darsh huffed.
“Now that that’s settled.” Sachie squeezed past the huge vamp blocking her way. “What’s next?”
“We’re setting rules for acceptable touching,” Darsh said firmly.
“For you and Silas?” she said, frowning.
“For Avi and me,” Silas said. “What counts as acceptable touching?” He held out his hand.
I scrambled off the bed and over to his side. “Clear communication is important in relationships.”
“Is this allowed?” Silas pressed his hand against the small of my back.
I shivered.
Darsh narrowed his eyes.
“What about this?” Silas clasped my hand in his, running his thumb over my skin.
“Oooh,” I moaned.
Sach snapped her fingers. “Brush her hair off her neck so you can murmur in her ear.”
I nodded eagerly. “Oh yeah. That.”
Darsh crossed his arms. “You three are hilarious.”
“Just understanding the rules, boyfriend,” Silas drawled.
Sachie bounced on her heels. “He might have to kiss her.”
“True.” I closed my eyes and tipped my face up.
Instead of Silas’s lips (which I never expected to feel), I got a hand pushing my face away. I snapped my lids open and blinked at Darsh’s palm, held up mere inches from me like a stop sign.
He glared at all three of us, then spun and walked out of the room, his middle finger held up.
“Wait!” I scrambled after him. “You need to rinse out the bleach. This is chemical warfare!”
His voice floated back from the stairs. “Taunt the beauty expert at your peril. See where that gets you for your big date with Ezra.”
“He’s totally making my hair fall out,” I said.
Sach nodded. “At minimum.”
I poked Silas’s rock-solid arm. “Why don’t you get grief?”
He smiled smugly. “Because I’m the boyfriend.”