Chapter Fourteen
John
Irise early, and my first waking thought is of Marcus. The memories of his taste and his touch and his scent are a torturous hair shirt on my heart. I’m weak and I want nothing more than to retreat to the Greenwood. And bring him with you, you old fool.
No one else is downstairs except Jen, who has set up a workspace of sorts in the front room. Four candles burn on the mahogany coffee table with a bowl of sage smoldering in the center, and rune stones are scattered around the bowl. When I say, “Good morning,” she barely responds.
“Sorry. I won’t bother you,” I murmur.
“You’re fine.” She glances at me, the dark circles under her eyes so pronounced I guess she’s been up all night. “About four a.m., we started getting hit with the equivalent of buckshot. As soon as I get one layer repaired, there’s another hit.”
“He’s determined to let us know he’s watching.”
“Pretty much.” She gives an asymmetric grimace, one side pulling lower than the other, likely because of the mask she wears. All the words in the world couldn’t have demonstrated de Lisle’s depravity as clearly as her single gesture.
“Can I do anything to help?”
Sonny slips through the door behind me. “I can watch the wards while Jen sleeps.”
I’d ask him how, except knowing Sonny, he studied with an alchemist or an accomplished warlock back in the seventeenth century. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”
“Aren’t you going to die or something?” Jen sneers at Sonny.
“Not until the dear Lord calls me from the darkness.” His tone is as flat as his expression. “You need the rest more than I do. Show me what I need to do.”
Jen gives him a long look before she relents. “Come here, then. I hope you learn quick.”
“Show me.”
I get as far as the door before I force myself to stop. “Jen?”
Sonny has joined her on the couch, and they both look at me, identical in their straight ponytails and bewildered expressions. “What’s up?” she asks.
“You’re very brave, and I appreciate the work you’re doing for us.”
She blinks a couple of times, her cheeks going pink. “Thanks.”
I want to say more, to tell her no one should be held against their will or forced to perform sexual acts. She must know that, so I simply nod and let them get back to work, hoping they don’t come to blows before Jen gets some rest.
More than anything I want to find the wildest place I can.
The house is too crowded, with too many thoughts and too much temptation.
Yet supposedly there are hidden cameras tracking our every move, so I can’t just walk down to the park.
I settle for a seat on the front porch, the gentle morning sun sneaking under the porch roof to warm my knees.
The light breeze relaxes me even though it carries the scent of exhaust fumes.
I’ve been out there some thirty minutes when the front door opens. Marcus steps onto the porch wearing a hooded sweatshirt, baggy shorts, and a pair of sunglasses. My thoughts tumble all over themselves, and all I can come up with is an inane, “You’re awake.”
Sunlight casts his shadow across the porch. “Sonny’s tied up for the next few hours so I figured one of us should be working.”
“Sonny woke you up?” I get annoyed on his behalf. “You were up late last night.” The words are out of my mouth before I remember that it was partly my fault.
He gives an embarrassed laugh. “Nah, Sonny didn’t wake me, and well, you were up late too.”
I don’t know what to say to that, and silence grows between us until I reach desperately for a subject change. “I don’t know what that shrub is called.” I point to a mound of green covered with red berries in the corner of the yard.
Marcus rubs his chin with the back of his hand. “I think that’s a toyon, a California holly. Might be wrong, though. I’m better with Pacific Northwest native plants.”
“Toyon. Thank you.” He must think I’m a fool. “I do wonder whether an average person knows the names of the trees. Mundane people are obviously cut off from the world of the supernatural, but in my experience, outside of the Greenwood, they’re cut off from the natural world as well.”
Rather than laugh in my face, he takes me seriously. “Most people are too worried about having enough to eat and a safe place to sleep. Trees are lower down on the list of priorities.”
His sincerity makes me smile. “How do you do it?”
He lifts his sunglasses, showing me that he’s not wearing his patch. The corner of his eye is creased with humor. The other side is in shadow. “Do what?”
“So easily prove that you are the wise one?”
Shaking his head, he drops the glasses back into place. “I hear Rob calling your name.”
His answer-that-isn’t-an-answer manages to lower the tension between us. Sure enough, Rob sticks his head out of the door. “There you are. If you want breakfast, get it now, then join me in Will’s room. We need to get ready.”
He leaves us, and I move toward the door.
“Come find me before you leave,” Marcus says.
“Why?”
He gives me a flirtatious grin. “So I can give you a kiss for luck.”
I duck inside to the sound of his laughter.
Cherie has left us a large tray of fresh muffins and coffee for breakfast. I set two of the muffins on one of her plain pottery plates, pour myself a mug of coffee, and, grateful to have something to do besides stare at the floor like a lovesick puppy, I follow Rob upstairs.
We go to a door at the far end of the hall.
Rob knocks twice, and Will answers, fluttering his fingers to invite us in.
It’s smaller than my bedroom, and most of the space is taken up by a large desk and a couple of chairs.
Whatever its more ordinary functions, the desk is covered with colored jars and pots and sprinkled liberally with glitter.
Will’s theater magic.
An hour or so later, Will is finished with Rob, who looks for all the world like a teenage girl. His hair is pulled back in a loose topknot, his skin is smoothed, the line of his jaw subtly altered and his Adam’s apple covered by an intricate throat tattoo.
“Thank you, my friend.” Rob examines himself in the mirror. Will has dressed him in a splashy pink tee shirt and baggy shorts that come to his knees. “I’m going to check in with Nasir while you two finish.”
As he ducks out of the room, Will admonishes, “Wear your darkest shades.” I must look skeptical because Will scowls at me. “Gonna take more than a little latex and some contour to disguise you.”
He goes to work giving me a beard, using spirit gum and hair that probably came from an innocent goat. “Now what to do,” he murmurs, running a thumb along my eyebrow. “I’d shave them, but—”
“No.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Instead of a razor, he uses putty to alter my cheekbones and thick makeup to change the shape of my brows.
By the time he declares me done, his combination of magic and technique means the man staring at me from the mirror looks very little like the face I’ve known.
“Thank you,” is all I can find to say, amazed by the transformation.
“Won’t thank me when you have to take all this shit off,” he snaps, turning his back to me and screwing the lids on jars, then stacking small, brightly colored packets. “Go on,” he says, glancing over his shoulder. “And stay safe.”
I get up slowly. “We will.” At least, I hope we will.
I leave without looking for Marcus first. I don’t want him to kiss this face.
We take Rob’s Toyota SUV to Prince’s house, and on the way there, we make a plan. Or rather, Rob plans.
“I’ll walk the property. Unless he’s done something since our last visit, it won’t be warded.”
“Prince will surely have some level of security.”
“Of course, but nothing that should trouble us today.”
“Makes sense.” I lie. Rob’s confidence doesn’t make all that much sense, and I have to swallow down a mix of doubt and fear. “And what should I do?”
He keeps his gaze on the road ahead of us. “I’d like you to let his security guards take you. Get inside somehow. Find the location of the damn diamond so we know where we’re going.”
I nod, weighing my response. We’re assuming that, while Prince is probably powerful enough to be awake for at least part of the day, most of his vampire children and other supernatural sycophants will retire while the sun is high, so he’ll need human guards, at least.
On our previous visit, I’d seen little evidence of anyone who might actually cause us trouble, and I’d learn a great deal during such captivity, knowledge we desperately need before we’re successful in our true goal.
Preventing Leander de Lisle from gaining true immortality.
Today’s task should be easy, which means it likely won’t be.
Many years of experience tells me de Lisle’s set-up is more dangerous than it appears.
I take a deep breath, weighing whether to agree to Rob’s plan.
We’re on a busy roadway and as we approach a red light, Rob slows the car to a stop.
I could get out here, and as long as Will’s magical makeup held, de Lisle wouldn’t be able to find me.
My fingers flex, ready to reach for the door.
As if aware of my quandary, Rob hums a melody we knew when we were much younger men, a tune that reminds me of who and what I am.
Long ago, I made a vow to the Virgin and a promise to Rob and if I back out on either, I’ll never be able to look at myself in the mirror.
Worse, I’d never be able to face Marcus again.
Silly of me. I’m too old to be trapped by my desire for a young man who smells like smoke and spice and who tastes like heat, and yet I stay in the car.
If Rob is aware that I haven’t yet answered him, he doesn’t let on. “All right,” I say finally.