Books by Maggie Shayne (223 page)

"Salem. You?"

She blinked. If Alicia were here, she would say it was a sign. No such thing as coincidence, she would insist.

Synchronicity didn't happen by chance. She'd been doing too much reading about magic and Wicca lately, Amber had decided. Still, there was some part of her that agreed with her friend's logic.

"Salem," she said softly. "That's a long walk, even for a vampire."

"Too far to sustain any sort of speed," he said, nodding.

"You, um…want to ride with me?"

"Are you kidding? I'd pay to ride with you." He licked his lips, lowered his head. "If I wasn't broke, I mean."

"It's okay. I don't need money."

"Kind of guessed that from the car you're driving." He looked past her at the car. "You must be rolling in it."

"My parents are. It was a gift from my father."

He smiled at her. "Spoiled, then, are you?"

She smiled back at him. "Rotten."

"Must be nice."

"You wanna drive it?"

He sent her an astonished look. "Really?"

"It's the least I can do after running you over." She tossed him the keys, and he caught them. He seemed to forget about his limp as he walked to the driver's door and got in. She got in the passenger side, fastened her seat belt. He ignored his own.

"You're actually… nice, aren't you, Alby?"

"I try to be. Why, aren't you?"

"No," he said, shifting the car into gear, straightening it out and then stomping the accelerator. "No, I don't think anyone who knows me would call me nice."

He shifted, pressed the gas pedal down until the engine roared, shifted again. The car flew through the night in the way she guessed it was designed to do. She'd never driven it that way in her life. The car came to life under his expert touch, seemed almost to sit up and purr in response to being driven so hard.

She was a little bit jealous.

Reaching forward, she hit the play button on her CD and was surprised as hell when Edge began singing along.

He drove like an expert, faster than she would have done herself, but so professionally that it didn't make her nervous at all. He exuded confidence. And danger.

And yet she wasn't afraid of him, even though she probably should have been. Especially given the dream. But that was kind of the point of letting him ride along, wasn't it? To find out what the hell that dream meant, what it was that tied this man to her psyche and her subconscious.

After the song ended, Edge reached out to turn the CD player off and glanced her way. "So why is it you're heading for Salem? Vacation?"

"I wish. No, a friend of mine is sick."

"A mortal friend, then?"

She nodded. "Yes. A very good one."

He frowned a little, looking her way often, as if he enjoyed it. "It's unusual, a vampire having good friends who are mortals."

"I'm not a vampire," she told him. "And most people would describe me as somewhat unusual." She tilted her head, studying him in profile. He had the bone structure of a work of art, she thought. Broad, angular jawline and cheekbones to die for.

"What?" he asked, looking at her. "I have someone in my teeth?"

She smiled at the joke. "So you don't have any mortal friends?" she asked, just to change the subject from her reasons for staring at him.

"Mortal or otherwise."

She blinked. "You don't have friends at all, is that what you mean?"

"That's what I mean."

"Don't you get… lonely?"

"Depends on how you define loneliness, love. Do I get to wishing I had a group of well-meaning busybodies prying into my shadows and meddling in my life? Not on your life. Do I wish I had a pile of others depending on me to take care of them? No way in hell. Been there, done that. It's far too much responsibility for any sane person to take on. I'm not up to the task, anyway. Do I sometimes crave a body besides my own in my bed? You bet I do. But that's easily remedied. And friendship doesn't have to enter into it."

She didn't imagine he'd ever had too much trouble finding willing women to share his bed. The man was hot. And just enough of a bad boy to whet any female's appetite.

"Do you ever… just wish for someone to talk to? Someone who gave a damn what you had to say?"

He tilted his head. "Is that the kind of friends you have? The kind who listen and give a damn what you have to say?"

She smiled. "Sure. But they're also the kind who pry into my shadows and meddle in my life. I think it's tough to get the one without the other."

"I think you're right there." He sighed. "You have lots of them? Friends, I mean."

"Mmm. Friends, family. Guardians and protectors. Mostly vampires, but some mortals, too." She looked at him and suddenly smiled. "Hell, I have so many I can afford to share them with you."

"Whoa, no thank you. I don't need them." He studied her face for a moment before turning his gaze back to the road. "Doesn't look as if it's been doing you much good. Not lately, at least."

"What do you mean?"

"You've been crying tonight."

She ought to be used to the sharp observations of vampires, she supposed. The talent shouldn't surprise her. And yet he had taken her off guard. "The sick friend?" he asked. She nodded.

"What's wrong with him, exactly?" Blinking, she frowned at him. "How do you know it's a him?" She'd erected a shield around her thoughts from the instant she'd realized he was a vampire and able to read them. So he couldn't be picking things up from her mind.

"Rarely see a pretty woman crying over a girl. This fellow in Salem—your lover?"

She smiled broadly. "No. More like a beloved older brother. He saved my life once."

"Did he really? An ordinary mortal?"

"Will is probably the farthest thing from ordinary you'll ever come across. He was a colonel in the Army. Special Forces. Captured in the desert, tortured until he escaped, and he never told them a thing."

He lifted his brows, turning slowly to face her as she spoke. "Are you
sure
you're not in love with him?"

"I'm sure."

"Not even sleeping with him?"

"Never."

"Never?"

"I meant I would never sleep with Willem."

"Oh." He grinned at her. "I thought you meant you were a virgin."

She turned her head toward the window. "You're getting a
little
personal for someone I only met an hour ago, Edge."

"You let me drive your car. I figure that puts us on intimate terms."

"You figure wrong."

"So are you, then?"

She frowned at him.

"A virgin?"

"Why do you care?"

"Curious, is all."

"Well, I'm not going to satisfy that curiosity. So stop asking."

"Mysterious, aren't you? I like that." He reached across the seat, trailed a forefinger down her cheek, making her shiver. "I like a lot of things about you, Alby." She lowered her eyes, tried not to let her face turn red or her heart start racing, because he would hear it. But God, his touch sent a thrill through her, right to her bones.

"You never answered my question." She swung her eyes to him, shocked he was still asking.

"About your friend, I meant. Will. What's wrong with him?"

"Oh." She let her anger fade. "Cancer.'' "Terminal?"

She shrugged. "That's what they're saying. But I'm not ready to give up on him just yet"

"Really?"

She nodded.

"I don't suppose… no, never mind."

"No, go on. What were you going to say?"

He slanted his eyes toward her. When he looked at her, she could feel them touching her, and this time they slid from her face down to her neck, over her chest and hips and legs, all the way to the floor. "It's just, well, you must have different—powers, for want of a better word—than the rest of us. Is healing fatal diseases one of them?"

"I don't think so."

He frowned at her, and she knew what he was asking. "I don't know everything about myself, Edge. It's not like there's ever been anyone like me before, anyone I could ask."

"Surely you've tested them. Are you immortal?"

"I think so."

"But you age like a mortal?''

"Used to."

"Used to?"

She pursed her lips and said nothing.

He slid a hand over hers, where it rested on her leg. "Poor lamb, you're rather lost, aren't you? In spite of all your friends and their meddling?"

"I'm perfectly fine."

"No, you're not. You don't even know who you are. Or who you want to be."

She met his eyes. He held her gaze, smiled gently, and looked like a fallen angel. "Stick with me for a while, Alby. I'll help you find yourself."

She frowned, amazed at how her body responded to the touch of his hand, surprised that she let him turn her hand in his own, lace his fingers with hers. He had to draw his attention to the road again, but he kept on holding her hand.

"How?" she asked. "You don't even know me."

"I'd like to, though. I'd like to explore every part of you, inside and out. And while I'm at it, you might as well do the same. Who knows what discoveries you might make?"

When he looked at her again, his eyes made it clear that she had not misunderstood him. He'd meant for his words to sound as sexual as they had. To rub over her senses like velvet over satin. Like his finger over the very center of her palm.

"It'll be daylight soon," he told her. "We should find a place—a dark, private place, where the sun can't touch me."

She had never been so turned on in her life, she thought wildly. "I know just the place. Pull over, right up here."

With a smug half smile, he pulled the car off onto the shoulder of the road. Amber reached to the dashboard and hit the trunk release button, then got out while he was frowning at her. She went to the rear of the car, looked into the open trunk and waited for him to join her there.

He glanced at her, then at the trunk. "Not very romantic, love. And not a lot of room for… movement."

"Then I suggest you lie still."

She'd moved around behind him while he spoke, and as she delivered her reply, she pressed both hands to his back and shoved hard.

He flipped right into the trunk, taken off guard by the sudden attack, and even as he rolled onto his back with a shocked expression on his face, she looked at the lid, flicked her eyes downward. It slammed closed.

He swore, a stream of profanity issuing from beyond the trunk.

"You deserved worse. You ever hear of manners, Edge? You were way out of line."

"You were loving every minute of it." He hit the trunk, a halfhearted punch that didn't even dent it. "Open it up or I'll kick your pretty car full of holes."

"You do that, you'll be walking the rest of the way to Salem. It's twenty minutes to sunrise. Just be still and go to sleep. When you wake, we'll be in Salem."

"Spoiled, evil little… "

"Watch it, Edge, or you'll wake to find yourself dumped on the roadside in a nice sunny spot around noon."

He was still muttering under his breath when she walked to the driver's door and got behind the wheel.

As soon as the sun was fully up, Amber found a place to pull off and took a much needed nap. She supposed her exhaustion was more emotional than physical. The shock of learning about Will's condition, the grief. And then to literally run into the man she'd been dreaming about for a year… She was overwhelmed. She told herself she only needed a nap; an hour would be plenty.

The dream came again.

She lay in a bed, and Edge came slowly toward her. He held a box in his hands, and his eyes were locked with hers. Her stomach was roiling in the dream, her heart bursting with a mingling of emotions too powerful to bear. Passionate feelings that all revolved around the man—and whatever was in the box he held. She couldn't look away from his face, or from the tear that welled in his eye and spilled over to roll slowly down his beautiful cheek. He knelt, lowering the box so that she could look inside.

Don't look
! her mind screamed.
It's death he brings you! It's death
!

Amber woke suddenly, sitting up so fast she banged her elbow on the car door. Slowly she shook herself free of the paralyzing fear the dream had left in its wake. God, what did it mean? Was she making a huge mistake by having anything to do with him?

Sighing, wondering if she would have the willpower to send him packing even if she decided it was the best thing to do, she looked at her watch, then blinked and looked again. It was after 11:00 a.m. She'd slept for more than five hours.

Hell.

She started the car and pulled it into motion again. After two hours, she stopped for a veggie sub and a bathroom break, freshening up in the rest room and wishing for a shower. Then she drove straight through. Still, the sun was sinking behind her when she finally pulled onto the winding country road that led from Salem to Salem Harbor and followed its meandering path to the house on Harbor Rock. Sarafina and Will had bought the place five years ago, and Amber had been there several times but still hadn't managed to memorize the driving directions. She supposed that meant a photographic memory was not among her special abilities. Cross one more off the list of things to wonder about, she thought.

The house was modern, a giant log structure at the tip of a peninsula surrounded by boulders and sea foam. Its windows were large and looked out on the sea. No one would ever suspect a vampire lived there with her mortal lover. Her all too mortal lover.

Amber pulled the car to a stop, shut off the engine and sat there for a long moment, staring at the rich wood tones of the house, trying to get a handle on her emotions. Her mother was right; she shouldn't show up grieving. Will was alive. Surrounding him in tears wasn't going to help him, and it would do nothing for Sarafina, either. She closed her eyes, called up the toughest part of herself, focused on control.

A loud thump from the back of the car jolted her right out of her meditation. "It's night again, and yet I find myself still locked in a suffocating trunk."

She lowered her head, shook it slowly.

"Alby, are you out there?''
Thump, thump
.

Pursing her lips, she reached out and hit the trunk release. It flew open, and she felt the car move as Edge climbed out. Amber opened her door and got out, turned and found herself face-to-face with him, nose to chin.

"That wasn't very nice, you know."

She smiled. "I was trying to make a point."

"I got the point," he said.

"Did you?"

He nodded. "Yeah. You're one of those girls who's into making men beg."

Her jaw dropped. "You're deluded."

"
I'm
deluded? Come on, Alby, you're as into me as I am into you. Admit it."

She pursed her lips and searched for patience. "You're attractive enough, I suppose. That's not what I would call being 'into' you, though. I don't even know you."

He leaned closer, his eyes fixed on her lips. "You're saying this magnetism between us is purely physical, then?"

She blinked. "You're putting words into my mouth."

He looked at her mouth. "I'd like to—"

"Don't even."

He smiled at her, that dimple digging into his cheek and making her go soft and tingly all over. "All right, I'm coming on like a rutting buck, I suppose. I'm not used to dealing with sheltered virgins, is the thing."

"I never said I was—"

He held up a hand to stop her speaking, then glanced at the house. "So this is where your friends live?"

She nodded.

"I should take off." He turned to walk away.

"I'm sure they wouldn't mind… my bringing a guest."

He west still, his back to her. Don't worry, Alby. I'm not walking away for good. I'll come around again, once I get settled in."

"You're so full of yourself, you know that?"

"Yeah. You play your cards right, you might get to be full of me, too." She aimed a foot at his backside, but he felt it coming and dodged it, then turned to face her. "Violent little thing, aren't you?"

"You seem to bring it out in me."

He let his heated gaze move down her body. "You knocked me into that trunk like a vampire. Just how strong are you?"

"Stronger than you think."

"Stronger than me?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. Why?"

"Just wondering if you're going to kick my ass for kissing you."

"But you didn't—"

She gasped as he snapped an arm around her waist, tugged her hard against him and, cradling the back of her head with his other hand, captured her mouth with his. He kissed her with his mouth open, moving it over her lips and drawing on them. And just when she let her body relax against his, let her jaw relax so her mouth fell open, just as she wished he would use his tongue and keep on kissing her for a long, long time, he released her and lifted his head away. He sent her a wink, then turned and walked back along the driveway toward the road.

He didn't look back. She stood there watching him out of sight, the sea wind blowing cool and damp over her heated skin.

"
What
," Rhiannon asked, "was that?"

Sighing, turning to face her unofficial aunt, Amber said. •'That was Edge." She slid a look at Rhiannon.

She stood there, her long, jet-black hair dancing in the sea wind, arms crossed over her chest, stern faced. "What kind of a name is 'Edge'?"

"A fitting one, I think. Where's Pandora? I don't see her."

Her attempt at changing the subject was a lame one, and she knew it. Her aunt's pet panther was nowhere in sight, and would have been had she been with Rhiannon.

"She's getting old. Long trips do her very little good these days. She stayed behind at Wind Ridge, with Eric, Tarn and Roland. And she thanks you for naming your little shop in her honor. Now, if we could get back to the subject at hand?"

"Will?"

"Edge," she said flatly. "Just what is going on between you and this character, Amber Lily?"

"It's too soon to tell, Rhiannon. But he'd better not turn up dead before I have a chance to decide."

Rhiannon smiled then, picking up on Amber's teasing tone. "Then you'd better decide soon. Having kissed my niece right under my nose, he might not have much time." She opened her arms, and Amber went to her, hugged her gently. "How are you, darling? I've missed you. It's been months."

"I thought I was fine, until I heard the news about Will."

Rhiannon thinned her lips. "He's out right now. Yet another appointment with yet another doctor."

"And Tina?"

"Said she needed a few moments alone, so I drew her a steaming, scented bath and told her I was going for a walk along the beach. I knew you were close, and I wanted a chance to speak to you alone before you saw her."

"How's she doing with all this?"

"Amazingly well," Rhiannon said. "Too well. It worries me."

Amber licked her lips, lowered her eyes.

Rhiannon drew a breath, clasped Amber's arm. "There's no need to shield your thoughts from me, Amber, I've been consumed with the same notion."

"I don't know what you mean."

"You know exactly what I mean."

Amber pursed her lips, lowered her head.

"Did you bring the notebooks?"

Frowning, Amber brought her head up fast. "What notebooks?"

"Oh, please, child, we have no time for this. Stiles's notebooks. The ones your parents think are locked up in their safe. You took them, of course."

"How do you know that?"

"It's what I would have done," Rhiannon said.

Amber sighed. Dammit, her aunt knew her far too well. "Yes, I took them, but that doesn't mean we'll find any answers in their pages. God knows I've looked, but so far—"

A blood chilling shriek cut the night, and stopped Amber in midsentence. Even as the two women tore free of the shock and raced toward the house, there was a crash and a howl. "Gods. 'Fina," Rhiannon whispered, pouring on more speed, until she simply vanished in a blur of black.

Amber ran at a closer to mortal pace. She hadn't been there in some time, and she didn't want to collide with anything on the way.

When she arrived in the house, she hurried up the stairs and into a bathroom, the door of which stood wide. Sarafina stood in the room's center, dripping wet, naked except for the white towel she held to her chest. The glass topped vanity was shattered; makeup and hair products lay everywhere.

"Tina, honey? What happened?"

Rhiannon, who'd already sized up the situation and vanished from the room, appeared beside Amber, a thick terry bathrobe in her arms. "Let's get her out of here before she cuts herself to ribbons," she said, and she moved to Sarafina, her feet crushing glass on the way. "Stay still, Tina. Don't move."

Sarafina was shaking, staring but not seeing either of them. As Rhiannon tried to slip the plush robe onto one arm, Tina jerked away with a strangled cry, then sank to her knees amid the broken glass, tipping her head back and moaning like a wounded animal.

"By the Gods," Rhiannon whispered.

Tears sprang to Amber's eyes, and her throat closed tight, but she swallowed the urge to break down and cry, and instead joined Rhiannon. They crouched on either side of Sarafina, each of them pulling one of the woman's arms around her shoulder, sliding their free arms beneath her thighs. The towel fell away as they lifted her straight up, doing their best to avoid the glass, and carried her out of the bathroom while she dissolved in uncontrollable tears and racking sobs. They lowered her onto a large canopy bed swathed in sheer black curtains. Amber glimpsed blood but wasn't sure of its source.

"See to her. I'll take care of the mess," Rhiannon said. She retrieved the robe, which had fallen to the floor halfway between the bathroom and the bed, and tossed it to Amber. Then she returned to the bathroom.

Amber slid onto the bed beside the woman, sliding the soft robe easily onto her. Sarafina didn't fight. She wept, her entire body jerking as the flood of emotion battered her like a storm.

"It's all right, Tina. It's going to be all right." She pulled the robe together in front, letting the bottom half drape over Sarafina's long legs, loosely tying the sash, then leaning close to brash black curls from tear-wet
cheeks. "It's okay to cry," she whispered. "You're not
made of stone." She blinked back her own tears, but fighting them was nearly impossible.

Tina's face pulled into a painfully twisted mask. "H-h-he can't… I can't do this. I can't—"

"I know. I know." Amber embraced her quaking shoulders, pulled her gently close and found it surreal to be comforting one of the two toughest, strongest women she had ever known. The other one was in the bathroom, and if Amber's senses were on target, she was weeping, as well.

"It's too cruel," Sarafina whispered. "It's too cruel. How can he be taken from me? How?''

"I don't know."

Sarafina shivered, pulling free of Amber's arms to lie down, curled on one side in the fetal position, her back to Amber. "I knew I should never have let myself love him."

"You know you don't mean that." Amber closed her eyes and told herself this was exactly why she would never lose herself to a man this way. Never.

"Everyone I love leaves me. My mother died giving me birth. My sister hated me for that, all my life. My first love, Andre, plotted against me and turned the entire clan against me. Bartrone, my sire, walked into the sunlight one dawn." Her shoulders stilled from their trembling. "For the first time, I understand what drove him to that."

"Don't talk that way, 'Fina. You have to be strong."

"I'm tired of being strong. I'm so… so very tired." She sniffed. "If Willem must die—"

"Willem isn't dead yet, woman." It was Rhiannon's voice, stern and harsh. She'd apparently finished with her work and now stood in the bedroom. "If it is his fate to go,
then you'll have time enough for hysterics when it's
over. In the meantime, don't be so quick to give up on him."

Sarafina rolled onto her back, glaring at Rhiannon. "The doctors say there's no hope."

"Mortal doctors. Humans. Fools. What do they know about us? About our kind? We can do things they've never dreamed, Sarafina. We're gods compared to them."

"Will's not a god. He's not one of us. He's just a man."

"He's far from that, and you know it." Rhiannon came closer, pulling something from the deep pocket of her silk skirt, a glass vial with a cork in the top. "Drink this."

"What is it?"

Rhiannon pulled the cork free. "A modified version of that delightful tranquilizer DPI invented to use on us. Eric's been toying with it. It has many uses for our kind. Helps with pain. It'll make you sleep."

"I don't want to sleep. I want to be with Willem when he gets back."

"He'll be hours yet. You'll be awake by then, I promise."

Rhiannon pushed the vial to Sarafina's lips, and she swallowed the contents and made a face. She licked her lips and met Amber's eyes. "It's good to see you."

"It's good to be here."

"I'm sorry about—all of that."

"Don't be. I'd have torn the house apart in your place by now."

She blinked slowly. "It's not as if I didn't know the risks. Risk—that's not even right. When an immortal falls in love with a mortal, the outcome is certain." She looked at Rhiannon. "It's not as if I wasn't warned."