Heir of the Dog Black Dog (7 page)

Pinpoints of blood welled from the bite mark on my ankle, there and gone, but the pain lingered.

Shaw had taken the hint and stood waiting for me by the door. I walked gingerly to him, keeping an eye on Mai and her pointy teeth. She sank to her haunches with her ears pinned flush to her skull, growling.

I leaned my shoulder against the wall since the room kept shimmying. “How are you feeling?”

His fingers traced the curve of my cheek. “I should be asking you that.”

I gave him what I hoped was a pointed look.

His hand fell to his side. “Better.”

“Good.” I shrugged off the tingles from his caress. “I’m glad.”

The awkward kiss he pressed to my temple sent pleasant heat twisting through my chest.

“Night,” he murmured, lips brushing my ear.

He stepped into the hall, his gait loose and easy as the tension of the day melted away from him.

“Night,” I said to his retreating back. “Tomorrow we block out some time to work on our case, okay?”

A cold nose butted my ankle. Mai stared after Shaw through golden eyes until he stepped on the elevator, before trotting off toward my bedroom. I shut and locked the door then trudged after her.

Nothing had ever felt as good as my head hitting that pillow.

Chapter Twelve

I threw out my arm and knocked an empty water bottle off the nightstand while groping for my cellphone. A push of a button made the display flash and temporarily blinded me, but not before I saw it was three in the afternoon.

Bump. Bump. Bump.

My gaze speared the ceiling. Not again. Another round of knocks and bangs curled my lip. It wasn’t the new neighbor’s fault I worked nights or that I slept through primetime moving hours. But I was tired and stressed, and we had to coexist for the next year at least, so this had to stop. Now. Today.

Snuffling sounds reminded me for once I wasn’t alone in bed. I cracked a grin at the sight of Mai curled up at my feet, in human form, snoring, undisturbed by the racket overhead. Holding her fox shape exhausted her. Once she fell asleep, she often reverted to two legs.

Sliding out of bed, careful not to jostle Mai, I tiptoed into the living room. I gripped the doorknob, forcing my sleep-addled mind to consider for a moment what I was about to do might stir up more trouble than it was worth.

Moment over
.

Wearing a sleep-rumpled Pooh Bear shirt and matching shorts, sporting wildebeest hair and shielding the new neighbors from my morning breath—afternoon breath?—with my hand wouldn’t make the best impression, but I was past caring how I looked. Or smelled.

The elevator ride up to the third floor gave me even more time to reflect on the possible rashness of my impending confrontation.
Nope
. Still doing it. I had to beg a reprieve. A few hours, a little shuteye, then they could bumpty bump around all they wanted.

Each floor recycled the same numbers, so I walked a straight line to the apartment matching mine. My hand lifted as the door swung open, and instead of wishing him a good afternoon, I almost swallowed my tongue.

A man stood in the doorway. Fae by his scent. By his looks too. No one that gorgeous had an ounce of human blood in them. He was tall. I was five ten and had a view of his chin. Following the curve of his jaw, I slid my gaze across his high cheekbones to meet his eyes. They were black with silver rims around his irises. Infinite. I stared at him, and cold, heartless eternity stared back. I jerked my gaze away. Had to. Before it consumed me.

The rest of him was...not easier to look at...but I couldn’t stop gawking.

His hair was black as midnight and hung unbound to his waist. His flawless skin had a grayish cast, but not sickly. Nothing about him telegraphed weakness. He was almost monotonous. A study, not only in the black of his hair or the white of his lips, but in all the varying shades of gray.

He had answered the door wearing low-slung jeans in his bare feet. Even his toes fascinated me.

That I noticed his bare chest last surprised me almost as much as the ornate silver cuffs clamped around each of his biceps. Lean muscle rippled as he moved to cross his arms over the chest I had so openly admired. As my focus traveled down his torso, my gaze got hung up on his hipbones, on how low his pants hung, and the fact not a hint of elastic rode above the line of his faded jeans.

Boxers? Briefs? Commando? Never had I been more invested in a man’s choice of underwear.

The man in question cleared his throat.

The fire of a thousand suns burst across my face as I offered him my hand. “Hi.”

After a brief pause, he must have decided to allow me skin privileges, because he clasped my hand between his palms. His thumb rolled across my knuckles while the slightest corner of his lips curled.

“Hello,” he said, and his words rang through my bones.

An awkward moment passed while I debated how to get my hand back, if I even wanted it back. Some fae, especially older ones, had odd ideas about what such permissions meant. Too late to panic now. I had initiated contact. All the warnings hammered into my head flittered right out the window when I looked at him.

And his window was open. I saw it from here, once I tore my gaze from him and peered into his apartment. His empty apartment. Not one stick of furniture in sight. So what had made all the racket?

“I heard noises,” I finally managed. “I thought I would come up and...”

A mocking smile curved his lips. “Introduce yourself?”

“Yes.” I gave a test pull on my hand, and he released me.

He rubbed his fingers together as if savoring the sensation. “We’ve already met.”

“I think I would remember...” A flicker of connection locked my knees when all I wanted to do was turn and bolt.
His voice
. I should have recognized it. “You collected the Morrigan’s tithe from me.”

His black eyes gleamed. “I did indeed.”

Wishing I had my cell to call for backup, I demanded, “Who are you?”

“I am the Morrigan’s son.”

I drew up short. “Fae can’t lie.”

“Fae tell the truth so well it might as well be a lie,” he replied.

Tell me something I don’t know.

“Okay, for the sake of argument, let’s say you are Raven.” I humored him. “What do you want from me?”

“Come inside where we can talk.” He promised, “I won’t hurt you.”

I stared past him and shivered. “Was it just me, or did I hear an unspoken
you don’t have a choice
in there?”

Short of tossing me over his shoulder, nothing was getting me inside that apartment.

A wisp of amusement lightened his voice. “I bring news of your father.”

Except maybe that.

“That’s why you’ve been hanging around me?”

“It is a matter of some delicacy, perhaps not best discussed out in the open.” He pushed the door wider and lowered his hand. “Even empty halls have ears.”

“This isn’t a trick to lure me inside so you can reap my soul and leave my body for the crows?”

Oh wait. He was the crow.

“No.” His laughter rang with silky promise. “You are safe from harm with me.”

What I heard between the lines was that he wouldn’t personally hurt me, which wasn’t the same as protecting me, and it didn’t rule out him enticing me into his apartment so someone else could do it for him.

He must have understood my predicament. His first real smile knocked the air from my lungs.

“Thierry Thackeray, I, son of the Morrigan, sworn into service by the Unseelie House, swear that no harm will befall you by my hand or any other’s as long as you enjoy my hospitality.”

Tempted as I was to nibble, I still didn’t take his bait. His vow hinged on him being the Morrigan’s son. Twice now he claimed to be Raven. Fae were tricky, but there was zero wiggle room in his statement.

I am the Morrigan’s son
is a concrete statement of fact. Okay, so, following that logic, this guy must be Raven. How he got here or what his plans were I wouldn’t know unless I took him at his word and entered his apartment, which had Very Bad Idea written all over it.

I worried my thumbnail with my teeth. This lead might crack our case and fling open an even bigger one. A Faerie prince here? Without proper documentation? The magistrates would lay golden eggs when they found out.

“I vow I will return you to this spot, where you surrendered yourself into my most humble care, unmolested, under identical conditions to the ones from which you left. Do these terms please you?”

Raven offered his hand again, and this time I sucked in a sharp breath and took it.

He guided me over the threshold into his empty living room and shut the door behind us.

All the other doors stood open. All the other rooms sat empty. “Can I ask an honest question?”

“As long as you don’t expect an honest answer.”

My head whipped toward him. “Was that a joke?”

“That question is only asked when the joke fails to perform.” Raven snapped his fingers, and a faded couch resembling the one in my living room appeared. He led me to it. “Have a seat. I want you to be comfortable.” He noticed my preoccupation with his sofa. “Your roommate is sleeping. You are away. I see no reason why we can’t use your couch, do you?”

“I— No.” There was comfort in the familiar, especially under such peculiar circumstances. “This is fine.”

I sat on the middle cushion, amused when a familiar spring poked me in the butt. Raven perched on the arm closest to me. Despite his posture and casual clothes, he evoked this primal fear response in me. As if death were more hideous because of his beauty, and I had zero doubts Raven was a killer.

His stillness unnerved me, made me feel like a field mouse trying to outmaneuver a bird of prey who saw the landscape unfurling for miles but afforded me the luxury of running myself to exhaustion before he swooped in for the kill.

Raven tapped his fingers against his thigh. “Your father is missing.”

I sank deeper into the sofa. “What does that have to do with me?”

“He brought balance to the lands of Faerie. Now is a dangerous time for scales to be tipped.”

“I can sympathize, but I’ve never met my father.” I shrugged. “I have no idea where he is.”

“We are aware of that. We don’t expect you to find him. It’s more we were hoping you might be persuaded to act in his stead. Only one of his bloodline may take his place, and you are the only known child of Macsen Sullivan.” He paused. “We are not without resources. You will be compensated.”

Caution lent my voice a sharp edge. “Who is
we
?”

“I speak for House Unseelie.”

Another statement. This one more malleable, but I let it slide. “What is their stake in this?”

“Balance must be maintained.” Power thrummed in his voice. “It was your father’s duty to serve the fae realm and now, as his only child, I offer you his position. If only temporarily.”

“You said he went missing. Why are you acting like he’s dead?”

“When old creatures go missing in Faerie, it is because they do not wish to be found.”

The pressure in my chest eased. “So he might be taking a vacation from court life?”

One year in the field and my job frustrated me. After millenniums of casting irrefutable judgments upon those condemned by the Faerie High Court, of which my father was a founding member, I would be ready for a break too.

Raven cast a meaningful look my way. “He has done so once before.”

Right. He took a position once with the Earthen Conclave, spent a few months here and met Mom.

Would she want to know Mac had gone missing? Would she care? Or would she worry he might be here and hadn’t come to visit? Maybe this was what Mac did. Maybe he had a thing for mortal women. He wouldn’t be the first. I might be the only child of his to appear on the conclave’s steps with blood on her hands, but that didn’t mean I was the only child he had sired.

The thought of having siblings out there...
No
. Raven said Mac had done this once before, with Mom. Pathetic, I know, but I clung to the childish dream she had been special to him, at least until she got pregnant with me.

I twisted to face Raven. “Why not wait for Macsen to return?”

“It’s a delicate time in Faerie, as I have said.” He glanced away. “We can’t afford to wait.”

Unseelie being concerned over the balance in Faerie struck me as suspicious. They weren’t all bad, just as Seelie weren’t all good, but Unseelie were called
dark
fae for a reason.

“I’ll think about it.” I pushed to my feet. “My father left this realm before I was born, so you understand why I don’t feel any particular attachment to his legacy or any concern for its continuance.”

Raven stood as well.

“I’m sorry he vanished,” I continued, “but I have to think of my mom, the parent who stuck around and raised me. I’m all the family she has. She needs me.”

As powerful as my father was, he had cultivated equally lethal enemies. Mom was under conclave protection, but being Mac’s mortal ex-lover, and the mother of his heir, made her a tempting coup for any of them. Especially if I wasn’t here to see the law enforced on her behalf.

I liked to believe I could handle myself, mostly, but Mom had no means of protecting herself against the fae.

I couldn’t do this. It would be Mac all over again. I couldn’t leave her for Faerie.

Raven inclined his head. “I can allow you twenty-four hours to consider your options.”

“Do me a favor while we sort this out.” I didn’t make it a question. “Don’t answer any more of the Morrigan’s summons, okay?”

“As you wish.” He trailed me to the door, pinching a lock of my hair and twisting it around his finger. “As it is, I have taken enough to sustain me.”

Unnerved by his familiarity, I glanced over my shoulder. “What happens if I don’t go?”

He bent to inhale the hairs caught in his fist. “The houses will declare war upon one another.”

Chapter Thirteen

Raven’s offer left me so keyed up, I decided against returning to the apartment. Mai would be waking up and getting ready for work soon. Opting to let her sleep while she could, I shot her a text and told her I was heading in to the office early.