TEN
W hy hasn’t the Lord Master come after me yet? It’s been two weeks.” When Barrons stepped into the bookstore Monday evening, an hour earlier than was his usual custom, I voiced the worry that had been on my mind all day.
It was raining again. Unlike the streets, the customers had dried up. Despite the lack of patrons, I felt guilty about having closed early more often than not since I’d started my new job, and was determined not to lock the doors this evening until seven o’clock on the dot. I’d been staying busy restocking shelves and dusting displays.
“I suspect, Ms. Lane,” he said, closing the door behind him, “our reprieve is a matter of convenience. Note the ‘our’ in that sentence, in case you were foolhardily considering striking out on your own again.”
He was never going to let me forget that I would have died that day I’d gone off into the Dark Zone by myself, if he hadn’t come after me. I didn’t care. He could dig at me all he wanted to. His heavy-handedness was beginning to roll off me. “Convenience?” It was certainly convenient for me, but I didn’t think that was what Barrons meant.
“His. He’s probably occupied with something else at the moment. If, when he disappeared through his portal, he went to Faery, time moves differently there.”
“That’s what V’lane said.” I emptied the cash drawer, counted the bills into stacks, then began punching in numbers on an adding machine. The store wasn’t computerized, which made bookkeeping a real pain in the neck.
He gave me a look. “The two of you are getting downright chatty, aren’t you, Ms. Lane? When did you last see him? What else did he tell you?”
“I’m asking the questions tonight.” One day I was going to write a book: How to Dictate to a Dictator and Evade an Evader, subtitled How to Handle Jericho Barrons.
He snorted. “If an illusion of control comforts you, Ms. Lane, by all means, cling to it.”
“Jackass.” I gave him a look modeled on his own.
He laughed, and I stared, then blinked and looked away. I finished rubber-banding the cash, put it in a leather pouch, and punched the final numbers in, running the day’s total. For a moment there he hadn’t looked dark, forbidding, and cold, but dark, forbidding, and…warm. In fact, when he’d laughed he’d looked…well…kind of hot.
I grimaced. Obviously I’d eaten something bad for lunch. I inked the day’s earnings into the ledger, tucked the pouch into a safe behind me, then skirted the counter, and flipped the sign on the door. I waved to Inspector Jayne as I locked the door. I saw no point in pretending he wasn’t there. I hoped he was wet, cold, and bored to tears. I certainly hadn’t needed the reminder of O’Duffy’s death staring me in the face all day.
“What about Mallucé?” I asked. “Is he definitely dead?” I’d been so busy worrying about the enemies I was seeing on a regular basis that I hadn’t gotten around to worrying about the ones I hadn’t seen in a while.
Mallucé—born John Johnstone, Jr., to a wealthy British financier—had conveniently lost both his parents in a hit-and-run car accident that had never been resolved to the insurance company’s satisfaction, and gained a nearly billion-dollar fortune at the same time, all at the tender age of twenty-four. He’d promptly divested himself of his redundant name, assumed the singular Mallucé, and reentered society as one of the recently undead. That had been eight or nine years ago. Since then, he’d acquired a worldwide cult following of true believers who traveled in droves to the south-side Goth mansion where the citron-eyed, steampunk vamp held court.
Whether or not he was really a vampire—Barrons didn’t seem to believe it—was anyone’s guess. All I knew for sure was that he was something more than human. Icy pale, tall with the slim, muscled body of a dancer, I’d watched him fling a nearly seven-foot, massively bulked bodyguard across the room, to his death, with a single backhanded blow. I still wasn’t sure how I’d survived the blow I’d taken that day in the Dark Zone, after I’d stabbed him with my spear.
“There was a memorial service at his compound last week,” Barrons replied.
Yes! This was what I’d been waiting for, his worshippers to mourn him! “So, he’s dead.” I encouraged him to say the words. Despite how certain his news made me, I wanted Barrons’ verbal confirmation that there was one less bad guy out there after me now.
He said nothing.
“Oh, why won’t you just say it? If you hold a memorial service for someone who’s undead then he must be no longer ‘un,’ which means he’s dead. Right? Otherwise they would have held a creepy welcome-back-to-life service, not a weepy we’ll-always-remember-you service.”
“I told you, Ms. Lane, never believe anything’s dead—”
“—I know, I know, until you’ve ‘burned it, poked around in its ashes, and then waited a day or two to see if anything rises from them,’ I shot back at him dryly, with a roll of my eyes. According to Barrons, some things couldn’t be killed. He’d strongly hinted that vampires fell into that category. Obviously Barrons hadn’t read Vampires for Dummies. According to the VFD’s authors, who’d allegedly interviewed hundreds of undead in their quest for the truth even dummies could follow (Mallucé was so famous they’d devoted an entire chapter to him), vampires were easily staked and tidily dispatched and subject to all kinds of worldly limitations and afflictions.
“His solicitor was at the auction, Ms. Lane, bidding heavily on several items, including the amulet.”
My hopes went flat as a tire on nails. “He’s alive?”
“It would be unwise to speculate. It could be that someone else is pursuing his interests, using his name and representatives as a front. Perhaps the Lord Master has assumed control of Mallucé’s finances and following. There would be little to stop him.”
That was a frightening thought. Whatever fanatic worshippers Mallucé had managed to acquire, I had no doubt the Lord Master could increase tenfold. Though I’d seen him only once, his face was permanently etched in my memory, in fine detail. I’d studied the photos that had been taken of him and my sister in and around Dublin, for hours. He was inhumanly beautiful, like a Fae, but not Fae. My sidhe-seer take on him had been as confused as my take on Mallucé. Human…but…not quite human.
Of one thing I was certain: On a charisma scale of one to ten, my sister’s ex-boyfriend was an eleven. Mallucé’s followers wouldn’t stand a chance. They’d fall on their knees, supplicant in a heartbeat. The night I’d stolen the OOP that Mallucé had been hiding from the Lord Master, I’d seen enough of his groupies to know they were so desperate for something to live for that they’d die to get it. That was more oxymoronic than jumbo shrimp in my book. Not to mention just plain moronic.
“Go put these on.” Barrons tossed a parcel at me.
I regarded it warily. Barrons’ clothing choices were never simpatico with mine. He and I could walk into the same store and shop all day, and by the end of it, I still wouldn’t have gotten around to selecting the one outfit that would have been his first choice. He goes for stark versus accessorized, dark over bright, jewel tone instead of pastel, carnal over flirty. I rarely recognize myself when he dresses me. Deep inside I’m still my daddy’s rainbow and pink girl.
“Let me guess,” I said dryly, “it’s black?”
He shrugged.
“Tight?”
He laughed. That was twice in one night. Barrons rarely laughed. I narrowed my eyes. “What’s with you?” I asked suspiciously.
“What do you mean, Ms. Lane?” He stepped closer. Too close. Was he looking at my breasts again? I could feel the heat of his big body, along with the energy that always seemed to roll off him, that strange electrical current that bristled, omnipresent beneath his golden skin. There was something different about him tonight. Control was Barrons’ middle name. Why then was I getting this feeling of…wildness…of an emotion I couldn’t identify but was surely kin to violence. And there was something more…
If he’d been any other man and I’d been any other girl, I’d have called the narrowing of his heavy-lidded dark eyes lust. But he was Barrons and I was Mac, and a blossoming of lust was about as likely as orchids blooming in Antarctica.
“I’ll just go change.” I turned away.
He caught my arm, and I glanced back. Backlit by wall sconces, he didn’t look like Barrons at all. Light glanced off the sharp planes and shadowed the angles of his face, merging his bones together into a fierce, brutal mask. Though he was looking directly at me, it was with a thousand-yard stare and if he was seeing me at all, it was not a me I knew. To dispel the profound tension of the moment, I said, “Where are we going tonight, Jericho?”
He shook himself, as if stirring from a dream. “Jericho? Are you kidding me, Ms. Lane?”
I cleared my throat. “I meant Barrons and you know it,” I said crossly. I had no idea why I’d just called him by his first name. The one time I’d tried to elevate our bizarre relationship, for lack of a better word, to a first-name basis—in my defense he’d just saved my life and I was narcotized by gratitude and nearly unconscious at the time—he’d mocked and flatly refused me. “Forget it,” I said stiffly. “Let go of my arm, Barrons. I’ll be ready in twenty minutes.”
His gaze dropped, skimmed my breasts.
I pulled away.
If he’d been any other man and I’d been any other girl, I’d have said Barrons was looking for some action tonight. Maybe, despite the age difference, he and Fiona had been lovers and now that she was gone, he was getting horny. That was a scary thought. One that proved more recalcitrant than I’d have liked when I tried to shove it from my mind.