“Kate?” he murmured. His eyes were barely open now. I placed my right hand on his cheek, enjoying the rasp of whiskers against my palm. I’d been so afraid at the theater. There’d been so much blood and he’d lost consciousness before they loaded him in the ambulance. And for the first time, I had to imagine a life without him as my partner.
“Yeah?” I said, leaning down to kiss his forehead.
“You love me?”
I froze. His eyes cracked open a slit, and he looked at me with dilated pupils.
He was hexed-out and vulnerable, but he was asking me to love him.
“Of course,” I said. “Of course I do.”
“Good,” he slurred. A smiled lifted the corners of his mouth. “I love me, too.”
I huffed out a laugh and kissed him again, this time on the cheek. “Night, Prince Charming.”
His hand went limp as he entered the underworld of magic-induced dreams. I rose from the bed and tried to ignore the ghost of guilt that clung to me as I walked toward the door.
I hadn’t been lying. I did love him.
He was my partner and my best friend.
I loved him. I did.
I reached for the handle but paused to look back. Even in his sleep, he looked intimidating, with his dark whiskers and hard jaw. Losing him would have fucked me up for a really long time.
Yeah, I loved him.
But that wasn’t really what he’d been asking. He didn’t just want me to love him. He wanted me to be in love with him.
But how could I be in love with someone who lied to me?
And how could I claim to be in love with someone when I lied to them, too?
Before those thoughts could sink their claws too far into me, I threw open the door and marched out.
My body slammed into an immovable obstacle.
“Oh!” I gasped. Hands gripped my arms to steady me. I looked up.
“Kate? Are you okay?”
My traitorous heart whispered: This one.
I gasped and pulled away. “Damn it, John.”
He loosened his hold but not enough to allow escape. “What’s wrong?”
I pushed his hands away and retreated into myself. “You just surprised me,” I snapped.
The warm, chypre scent of his cologne clung to me as tried to put space between us.
He nodded toward the door. “Is he okay?”
“He will be.”
He nodded and put his hands in his pockets. “Good, that’s good.”
“Don’t act like you care.”
“I’ve made no secret about not liking the guy, but I don’t want him dead.”
“Why not? Your life would be a lot easier.”
He was quiet for so long that I looked up at him to see what was taking so long. The fury on his face made me lose my breath. “I am not a monster, Kate. The last thing I want in this world is for anything to hurt you.”
And that’s when I knew. “Do you know why Yü Nü protected me?”
He blinked at the rapid change in topic and shifted uneasily in his expensive loafers. “Of course not.”
I raised a brow. “Liar.”
“I said I wasn’t a monster. I never claimed to be honest.” With that, he reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Take care of yourself, Kate.”
The tenderness in his tone stunned me. He turned to go, but before he reached the door, I said his name.
He stopped and turned. “Yes?”
“Thanks,” I said, “for, uh, helping Danny get into the Conservatory. And stuff.”
He waited a couple of beats too long to answer. “Of course.” A little unguarded smile lifted the corners of his mouth. He turned again.
“John?”
He stopped again with his brows raised.
“I’m sorry I pulled you into that mess. At the theater, I mean. I just didn’t know what else to do.”
“Don’t sweat it,” he said. “Turns out all those years cooking dirty pays off sometimes.”
“I guess so.” I’d never thought of it that way. “Anyway, I— Thanks.”
He held my gaze and smiled a smile that I felt all the way to my toes. “It’s always my pleasure, Detective.”
With that, he left, leaving me behind trying to sort through the cocktail of conflicting emotions his deeply spoken pleasure created in my midsection.
It was only once I was in the elevator and out of his sphere of influence that I realized I hadn’t asked him about the senator.
Chapter Thirty
A few weeks later, I parked on the street in front of City Hall and left the engine running. “I’ll just be a sec, okay?”
“Make it fast,” Danny said. “I don’t want to be late.”
I waved to acknowledge the request and jumped out of the Jeep. The sun was still rising over the river, and the scent of green algae rode the wind off the water. I sucked a deep breath in through my nose to try to enjoy the experience of Babylon before all the people woke up and ruined it.
The front steps of City Hall were pretty empty except for the usual winged loiterers. Luckily, the person I’d come to see was an early riser.
Sweet Ray sat about halfway up the stairs. He wore a purple fez that morning with a Sergeant Pepper jacket. When he saw me jogging up the steps toward him, he turned to say something to the pigeons at his feet. I couldn’t quite make it out except for the tone, which sounded pretty bitchy for six in the morning.
“What’s happening, Sweet Ray?” I said.
“Peewee doesn’t want to talk to you,” he said, keeping his eyes averted.
“I’m not here to talk to Peewee. I’m here to talk to you.”
His shoulders twitched in a halfhearted shrug. “What do I care?”
“Look,” I said, perching a foot on a higher step, “I know I left you hanging, but things have been pretty fucked-up the last few weeks.”
The last two weeks alone had been a blur. Morales had gotten out of the hospital and was home, but he had PT appointments several times a week. With him on medical leave, I’d been stuck with all the paperwork on our cases as well as pitching in with Shadi’s. On top of all that, there’d been a scramble to get Danny ready for camp. Without Baba pitching in, I don’t know how I would have juggled all of it.
Sweet Ray half-turned his head my direction. “We saw your picture in the paper. You looked like shit.”
I laughed out loud. “I bet.” I really owed Pen a new dress. I’d practically had to burn the other one.
“Did you really cook dirty for the Hierophant?”
I sobered. “Yeah.”
“Where’d you learn to do that?”
I waved my left hand. “I grew up in the Cauldron.”
He finally looked at me. “No shit? And now you’re a cop?”
“Decided life was better on the other side,” I said. Little had I known when I made that decision how much more complicated better would be. “Anyway, I got something for you.”
He perked up. “You hear that, Peewee? She brought me a present.”
The pigeons at his feet clucked and shuffled, clearly unimpressed.
I pulled the box from my jacket pocket. He looked at it for a moment, clearly not trusting that I wasn’t fucking with him.
“Are you for real with that?”
I shoved the Babylon Mobile box into his hand. “It’s nothing fancy. Just a burner. I put forty dollars on it, though. That should last you a little.”
His hand trembled and the corners of his eyes got suspiciously bright. “A cell-a-phone?” He said it with the reverence one might have for a sacred religious artifact. “For me?”
Suddenly fighting some moisture in my own eyes, I cleared my throat. “Well, you earned it, didn’t you? You gave me some good information. You and Peewee.”
He sat up straighter. “Mostly me, though.”
“Mostly you.” I watched him open the box and pulled out the simple flip phone. “I programmed my number in there. In case you ever see anything else I need to know about.”
He looked up from the phone. “You mean about Mr. Mayor?”
I hesitated, thinking about that day at the hospital. Volos had been off my radar for a few weeks, but I was pretty sure it was only a matter of time until he popped up again. “Sure,” I said finally, “or any coven stuff.”
“What if I run out of minutes?”
“I’ll refill it when you bring me something useful,” I said.
“All right.” He pursed his lips.
“Hey, Sweet Ray?”
“Yeah?”
“You know how you said the eclipse would be death?”
He nodded solemnly.
“I mean, I lived and all, but things were close there for a little bit.” I cleared my throat. “I guess I was wondering how you knew there’d be in trouble.”