American Goth (24 page)

When Fran wasn’t next to me, people kept grabbing my rear end. Correction—men kept grabbing my rear. One particular guy I’d bumped into, or more accurately, was bumped into by on the way back from the bathroom was a bit more aggressive with his come-on.

“Nice ankh,” he said after he’d jostled me. He pointed at the charm that hung over my shirt with his glass.

I gave him a quick glance. He was pretty enough, several inches taller than me, with dark hair swept to one side and curving to his jaw, dark, dark eyes under full lashes that made his face look delicate. He wore the requisite black long-sleeve tee that hugged his frame and the single hoop earring that so many favored.
Kenny’s sort
, I thought as I gave him a brief nod in acknowledgment.

I turned to make my way through the press back to the group and he followed me through the crowd.

“You’re pretty, I’m pretty—let’s cut the bullshit and get out of here,” he said almost in my ear.

Startled he’d gotten so close so quickly, I almost stopped, but didn’t. “You’re not my type,” I told him and kept walking. I considered opening my awareness a bit, but decided against it. If I could see “them,” they could see me, and that…that’s what I was trying to avoid. In the meantime though, there everyone was, exactly where I’d left them.

“Oh, what, you’re straight? So we’ll get a girl too, if you want—I can do that, it’d be pretty hot.”

Later I’d realize that he, like Kenny, had thought I was a guy and I’d be happy about it for several reasons, not the least of which was that it meant my idea worked, but this had to stop and I turned to tell him exactly what he could do with his suggestion.

“Paolo—you made it!”

The smirk he surveyed me with changed to a friendly smile as we both looked over my shoulder. “Hannah.”

She stepped next to me and reached out to shake his hand. “I see you’ve met our bassist,” she said with a smile. “Since Graham’s sure he’s taking that singing gig with the Waves or whatever, Paolo will audition with us next Sunday,” she told me.

Well, that was certainly news, but I’d been schooled well enough not to let my surprise show.
Good for Graham
, I thought as Hannah officially introduced us. He’d said all along that was what he preferred; I was glad he’d gotten what he wanted.

“Ah,” Paolo said after the ritual exchange of names, “my apologies. I know band rules quite well.” He smiled as he shook my hand and was pleasant enough for the rest of the night.

I got nothing from him, not a read, not a pulse, just the faint flicker of energy that surrounded every human being; he was completely closed to me, not even the attraction or whatever it was he’d professed evident. I dismissed it as my being too closed, too guarded to get the usual read that the brief contact could have given me. But I should have known then not to trust him.

“That’s right,” Kenny said as he shook his hand next, “Ms. Anarchy here follows the no-touchy tradition.”

Paolo raised an eyebrow at the “Ms.” part and gave me a searching glance that I returned with a blank stare.

Someone told me, and I don’t remember if it was Paolo himself or Hannah, that he’d played guitar semiprofessionally for the last six years and that he was the son of the Brazilian ambassador to France, or his cultural attaché, or something like that.

It meant nothing to me. If he played well, great, if he didn’t…there were plenty of guitar players around, I was certain. Meanwhile, the music was too good, the dancing lively, and the combination blanketed out quite a bit of any other sense. Here and there, I’d catch the trace of hounds, the circling search, the occasional flash of triumph as they found potentials to play with. But there were also moments, the random send that I’d catch, not from Fran herself but nearby, the very edge of a dark cloud that would surround her. But when she’d catch my eye, she’d throw me an amazing smile, and it would all disappear.

When it really was way too late and time to leave, I finally managed to realize that Fran had perhaps had a bit more to drink than I had. That was her prerogative—she wasn’t under the same restrictions I was, or so I assumed.

“I think…you’re driving,” she said with a smile after we said our various good-byes and I retrieved our things from the coat check.

“Am I, now?” I drawled at her, and drawn by the bright sparkle in her eyes, the slight flush to her cheeks, I leaned over and kissed her. God, I loved kissing her, and I learned a few things in the embrace of her lips. The first was that any natural barrier she’d had seemed gone, her feelings were on the surface and perfectly readable, and I understood exactly why I’d been asked not to get drunk: Fran was wide open and vulnerable.

The other thing I learned was not only that she loved me, I knew that already, but that she held images of us, a future she was thinking about and—there, I saw it, the dark cloud edge and it reached over her and toward me.

That caught me cold. I hadn’t even come close to being recognized, and I was rather certain I’d left no aethyric trace, but my energy, the unique signature that marked me as an individual was bound to and threaded through Fran’s—and if she’d been read, it was inevitable that I’d been sensed as well. And once I was found—and I had some idea what kind of damage it might do to Fran to accomplish that—it was a direct line through me to Cort, to Elizabeth, to the yet-unknown others that were the Circle. It would take less than the half second of realization before whoever was doing the sending actually found me.

Not wanting to startle or scare her, I gently ended our kiss. It took no effort on my part to break the connecting reach, to bolster her barrier with mine, and it was the work of less than another five seconds to seek the source.

About fifteen feet away, a knot of about a dozen or so people tramped up the stairs, Kenny and Paolo within it. Somewhere in that crowd was an adept hound.

I didn’t have time to search further—I wanted Fran safely out of there—and besides, I’d caught a unique signature. I’d find whoever it was on the Astral and deal with it there.

As we rode home, Fran’s arms snugly around my waist and her head on my back with a warmth that reached through my coat and made me feel equally warm within, a sinking feeling filled me anyway. I knew I had made a huge mistake: I’d let myself forget this had to end.

*

The chill of the ride home had driven whatever effects the few beers Fran had had from her system, and once inside, upstairs and in our room, we went slowly, prolonging the exploration and the dance, to love with a tenderness that made me want to weep because I knew what we shared was rare and precious, and too soon it would be gone.

She was still so amazingly wide open to me, her love for me so clearly distinct from her love for Nina, a difference she laid bare before me as she let me see myself through her eyes. And I let her do the same, to see for herself what I saw, what I felt.

I held her in my arms so she could sleep with her head pillowed under my chin and it hit me so hard it made my head reel: of course I couldn’t love Fran “that way,” how could I? They were different people. I loved Fran
her
way, the way I was supposed to, distinctly and completely. She was my Frankie.

That shook me, shook me in so many ways. There was no one I could name that I loved who wasn’t gone. I cared, so very deeply cared, for Cort, for Elizabeth, but I hadn’t—I
couldn’t
—allow myself the luxury of more than that. I had more than allowed that here. I had done the thing I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do after my father had died; I had allowed grief to open the door for familiarity and comfort, and then not only permitted, but encouraged and welcomed it to become so much, so very much more. And now, having allowed it, I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t what it was, or deny what I felt, even if I couldn’t ever actually
tell
her.

I had been completely selfish in allowing it to happen—and at what cost? I wasn’t concerned that I could be read and tracked through Fran; I could take care of myself. What scared me all over again was that in using her to reach me—and that in and of itself
infuriated
me almost past the point of rationality—she could be, she
would
be hurt, and not in mere physical ways either. She’d be hunted on the Astral, haunted by dreams, her mind clouded, her heart used against her, to her own pain, to her own regret, and she didn’t deserve that, my golden champion didn’t deserve that.

Some of my thoughts and feelings undoubtedly translated to her as I held her even closer.

“Love you, Sammer,” she whispered and kissed the skin that lay beneath her lips, over my heart, and she tightened her hold a moment before falling peacefully back to sleep.

“I love you too,” I whispered into the waves and curls of the wheaten gold of her hair and kissed the top of her head. “God, Frankie, I love you so much—I just can’t keep you.”

I allowed myself a small scatter of tears before I swallowed them down. It was an indulgence I couldn’t afford: I had plans to make, things to learn, and little time to do it. First things first. I had to speak with my uncle in the morning—there were other things that had been left in storage back in the States, including my father’s footlocker; I wanted it. And I wanted to finally learn how and why my father had been killed, because I had more than the niggling suspicion it would hold clues for me.

I would spend however many hours or days it took to track that hound—fuck my work with Elizabeth for the day, this was more important. I wondered for half a moment if this was a test like so many other things had been, then decided it didn’t matter—I knew what I had to do.

I’d been very well trained, and while I might not have my full strength yet, I knew what to do and I knew I could do it. Oh, it wouldn’t be a full-on hunt, just a small one, small enough for me to find the hound, then trace it back to the Material. I was still furious over the attempted breach of Fran, and until that cooled or until matters warranted it, I would do nothing else. But I wanted a good look at the enemy because as above, so below, and if things had moved on this level, something else had already progressed even further on another. I knew enough to know that something major was headed my way; I needed to know where it would come from. And as for Fran, well, I’d talk with Elizabeth. I needed to know more about what she could and couldn’t do, then create both the shields and the distance that needed to be there, to keep her safe, or at least, as safe as I could.

I
hated
that, hated to think about it, hated knowing I had to do it, hated even more the hurt I would cause her and I felt something inside me tear and break just imagining it.

For a moment, I wondered if there was a choice, if perhaps I could share any of this with Fran, discuss it with her, but as her breath warmed my chest, I remembered how determined she had been when she’d been asked if she was ready, the fire in her eyes when she said she’d do whatever it took. It was the same fire that burned from her heart through her eyes when she looked at me, blazed from her when we touched…God, she loved me, and I knew just how much she loved me, but I loved her too, and I’d already risked her enough. Fran might be willing to go with me to hell, but there was no way in this world or any other that I would lead her there. There was no other choice.

This time, I did weep.

also ci·on:

A detached shoot or twig containing buds from a woody plant, used in grafting.

A descendant or heir.

“I’d like to know more about Fran’s training,” I announced casually at breakfast. “Last night a hound tried to track me through her—why hasn’t she been taught to block that?” I asked point blank as I reached for the salt.

“And I think it’s time I know whatever it is you haven’t told me about my Da,” I told my uncle, who gazed at me somberly. “That, and I want his footlocker sent here. Can we make that happen today?”

Fran stared in shock, Elizabeth in surprise, and my uncle nodded at me.

“We can do all of that.”

“Good.” I picked up my tea. “And I’m sorry,” I said to Elizabeth and to Fran, “you’ll have to excuse me from our plans today—there’s something I need to do.” I glanced over at my uncle. “Would you monitor?”

This time, he seemed surprised. “What do you want to do?”

I put my cup down and pushed my chair back. I took a moment to think about what I wanted to say as I stood. I said what I thought, I said what I felt. “I want to find the son of a bitch from last night, and I want to know what Old Jones has to do with my father.”

*

“This is
your
hunt,” Cort told me once we were in the study. “Handle it however you want.”

I nodded. There were any number of ways this could go wrong, from sheer ineptness on my part and failing to make even the slightest of transitions, to bringing something unpleasant back with me that didn’t belong here, or even creating a massive backflow of energy, of power, that would rebound through me and overload not only my own system, but that of every “sensitive” in the vicinity, blowing open gates that should remain closed. Not to mention the literal headaches.

I could accept that, the responsibility for it. I was absolutely certain of my ability to do this and to do it well, and before I did anything else, for the first time, I pulled off my shirt, then reached for the robe that was presented to me. I’d do this the way I was meant to: sky-clad.