Made for Sin (10 page)

He nodded. “It wasn't pleasant.”

“You realize I'm trusting you here, right? I mean, I just don't want there to be any misunderstanding. I'm trusting that you're telling me the truth.”

“Why would I lie?”

She emptied her glass again—damn, she could drink, couldn't she?—and licked her lips.
Slowly
licked her lips, so it looked more like she was pressing the tip of her tongue between them, savoring the taste of the vodka. He shifted in his seat again, trying to stop looking at it. That would probably be easier if looking at it—thinking about that tongue, about the sound she might make if he caught it with his teeth as he kissed her—didn't feed the beast, and if he didn't need the beast to be fed so he wouldn't have to worry about it breaking through. “I don't know. I guess you wouldn't.”

Pause, one last pause—so he hoped, at least. So he assumed, with relief, when she spoke again. “So let's see if we can find anything about what he said. What was that word?
Gethleshi,
wasn't it?”

At least he was prepared this time. At least he'd already clenched every muscle he could possibly clench, started to tune out from her voice, before the word came. He'd even started to look away from her under the guise of having an itch on his leg, so his gaze was cast down and she couldn't see if his eyes did anything like they apparently had before—which was also not a fun thing to think about.

All the same, the beast's voice thundered through his head and the feel of it thrashing around, its pain rocketing through him, made his jaw lock. It took a second before he was able to speak. “I think that was it.”

“Funny.” She was watching him. Her gaze was a physical weight on his head. “I didn't feel anything, saying it.”

That could not be good news, but then, he hadn't expected there to be any. He shrugged. “Maybe it won't work for you. Maybe you didn't put the right intention behind it.”

“You try saying it, then.”

Like that was going to happen. Ever. “I don't want to say it.”

Those fine dark brows rose. “Afraid of a word?”

He glared at her, and kept glaring. Damn it, he'd thought they were past this baiting, that they were starting to at least be okay working together. “If you'd felt what I felt, you wouldn't be too eager to say it, either, especially when we don't know if something transferred to me when he said it. Feel free to keep being a bitch about it, though.”

“Okay.” She'd produced a laptop from somewhere and flipped it open; she typed as she spoke, her slim fingers dancing on the keys. “I am not finding anything for
Gethleshi
online, at all. Not even on some of the—oh, wait.”

Shit, would she stop saying that word already?

“There's a ‘Mirror of Gethleshi,' ” she went on, obviously unaware that he was starting to sweat with the effort of looking normal, acting normal. Every time she said the word the beast's spasms became more violent. “Eighth century if not older. Very valuable, last known owner got hold of it not quite forty years ago—oh my God.”

“What?”

She snapped the laptop shut and sat up, her face a shade paler than it had been. Not good.

He tried again. “What?”

It was odd to see her looking so worried. It was even odder to want to get up and go to her, to gather her in his arms and try to chase the frown off her face. He didn't even want to think about the desire to personally slaughter whoever had written whatever it was that made her look that way, which was doubly ridiculous since she'd apparently gotten upset about a fact, not somebody's ridiculous Internet opinion.

He couldn't, and wouldn't, do any of those things. But he could, and would, move forward to the edge of the couch, where he could reach out and touch her arm. “Hey. What's wrong?”

She wasn't upset, though—at least, that didn't appear to be the dominant emotion furrowing her brow and making her lips twist. He saw confusion instead, confusion and pain. When she turned toward him he saw sadness in her eyes. “My dad,” she said. “The owner of the mirror was my dad.”

Jesus, was any piece of information going to help complete the puzzle, instead of sending them off in some other direction?

He didn't want her to know he was thinking that, though. “Okay. So that's not a big deal. I assume he got rid of it, since you've never heard of it before.”

“But it lists him as the owner. It doesn't list any date of sale or transfer. And he never hid items from me,” she said. “He opened his books to me—I've seen the listing for every item that ever passed through his hands. Why wouldn't that one be in there?”

“Maybe the website or whatever you just looked at is wrong. Wouldn't be the first time somebody wrote bullshit online, right?”

She shook her head. “No. Not where I just looked. That's not—he had it. It's a private site, and the people who keep that record, they know. And it doesn't say he procured it for someone else, either. It says he owns it, like it's his.”

The helplessness in her eyes, the baffled pain, started to fade, but she was clearly still not happy. She raked her fingers through her hair; the light caught different strands as they slid over other strands, deepening the color in layers. “There was nothing like that in his stuff—it's all mine now. I went through everything, and I double-checked it all with the inventory. I don't know why it wouldn't be listed in his books. I don't know why he'd own something that dark, either. If it made you feel like that—that's some serious power, right?”

“Yes.” Scarier than any power he'd ever come into contact with—any external power, at least. “But—isn't it possible that that's why you've never heard of it? Maybe your dad got hold of it, realized it was bad news, got rid of it, and never wanted to be reminded. Maybe he didn't want anyone to know he'd had anything to do with it, for fear they'd come after him.”

That seemed to make her feel better, or at least lessen her gloom a bit. “Yeah. I guess he might have done that.”

“If he'd dealt with things like we ran into earlier,” he said, “I don't blame him for erasing any mention of it from his records. I'd be tempted to do the same, if I had a daughter to worry about.”

Like he knew how that might feel. Like he'd ever know. The risk of passing the beast on, the knowledge that its demands meant he'd be a shitty father by definition, made that impossible, even if he were somehow magically able to find a woman willing to stick with him while he ran around sinning or turning into a demon.

But Ardeth smiled. A wan smile, but a smile nonetheless. “Thanks. I guess maybe you're right. I just—why isn't it in his records as destroyed, then?”

“Let's find out. Who of his friends might know about it—do you think any of them would? Maybe they know what he did with it, or where it went, if it's not with his things. You think they'd tell you?”

“Of course they would. I've known them my whole life, they were like second fathers to me. Les Carrigan, Martin Frye, Paul Regan…they went through it all, too, and none of them said anything.”

That didn't mean they didn't know anything. Or that they would want her to know if they did. An item that powerful would be worth a lot, and there could be any number of reasons why someone wouldn't want it falling into Ardeth's hands—especially if Mickey Coyle himself kept it hidden from her. “Maybe they didn't want to say anything to you.”

“But they helped me clear out his place and get the inventory sorted.”

Another idea struck him. “They're pretty old-school, these guys, right? Maybe I should talk to them.”

“You mean, I'm just a woman,” she said. “And they won't—don't—take me seriously.”

He tilted his head and opened his hands in a semi-shrug. “Men like that don't think loyalty ends when someone dies, and they don't say unpleasant things about a man in front of his daughter. Especially if they're protective of her and think of her as their own, too. Or if they think she's just overemotional and doesn't need to know things.” Or if they were guilty of something.

Watching her reaction as he spoke was fascinating. The way those eyes of hers, that deep blue, clouded with surprise for an instant before turning into adding machines again as her thoughts clicked into place with every word he said, the way they darkened for a second at the idea that anyone might have anything bad to say about her father…and the sudden sharp anger that flared in their depths and spread to her entire face as he finished. He would not want to be the subject of that anger.

Damned if she didn't pull it back, though, and slowly enough that he understood she'd allowed him to see it. She'd trusted him with it. “Let me see if I understand this correctly,” she said. “You're saying that if they know about something like this, they wouldn't tell me even if I asked because they'd want to protect me?”

That wasn't exactly what he'd been saying, but it was a good connection to have made. Maybe it was the only connection she could have made; suspecting that her own father might have had something to do with an object that was now putting her in danger, and that his friends who were supposed to care about her had stolen it after his death, probably wasn't something she was ready to do.

That was okay. He'd do it for her. And if he was wrong—he really hoped he was wrong—she'd never need to know about it. “Basically.”

“So we should go talk to them,” she said. “Tomorrow?”

Shit. He'd be able to get through the night on some shoplifting and lustful thoughts, but by late morning he'd need to find a more serious sin to commit. The thought of doing it in front of her didn't please him.

Plus he had to check in with Laz and Majowski, and see if there was any more information on Theodore's and Frank's deaths. Majowski wasn't a problem, but he didn't like the idea of taking Ardeth to Laz's place—if for no other reason than she didn't seem to be a fan of the man.

His reluctance must have been all over his face, because she said, “I think this is important.”

“It is. But it's not the only important thing.”

“Oh? What else do you have to do that matters so much more than finding out why these people are after you?” Her brows turned into an arrow over her eyes. “Does doing Lazaro Doretti's bidding mean more than your own life—or mine?”

“I'm sure this will come as a shock to you,” he said, trying to control his temper, “but I have other things in my life, too. Believe me, I don't want to be here any longer than you want me here.”

“Then let's get this done.” She set down her glass with a loud clank and leaned in close to him. Close enough to make his mouth water. “Help me figure this out. Or do you think you can find the demon-sword faster by yourself?”

Oh, no. Nobody played that game with him. He leaned back, deliberately. “You think you can find the truth about this mirror by yourself? Only one of us doesn't have any other options here, sweetheart, and it's not me.”

Calculation ticked behind her eyes. He didn't mind. Let her calculate all she wanted; he was the one holding the ace—the one who could find the truth about the mirror for her, the one who could deal with the people now after both of them, the one who could probably find the sword even with the limited information they'd managed to gather so far—and they both knew it.

She blinked. Yep. “Fine. But both of these things are important. I want to know what's going on, and I don't want Doretti's bullshit to get in the way. And neither do you, if you want my help.”

“Oh, don't worry,” he said. “I'll get what I want. And so will you.”

Her eyebrows rose, delicate arches making her heavy-lidded eyes look even bigger as they slowly ran up and down his body. He tensed his abdomen and shoulders in an effort to keep the blood from rushing out of his head and into his cock, to no avail; that look, from that woman, could have gotten a dead man hard. And he was definitely not dead.

Her smile only made it worse. “Yes,” she said, “that's what I hear.”

Before he could respond to that, she was standing, stretching, so her T-shirt rode up and exposed her smooth, pale flesh. “I'm going to take a shower. The guest room's down the hall, on the right. Make yourself comfortable.”

As if he could make himself comfortable knowing she was thirty feet away from him, naked and wet.

He tried. He really tried, despite the fact that trying meant pissing off the beast, which wanted nothing more than to sit on the guest bed and gorge itself on lustful fantasies. Her body, moving under the rush of warm water…her hair a tangled mass down her back…her hands sliding over her skin, slick with soap. He could picture those fingers moving as her eyes closed and her head fell back, hear his name on her lips, and he had to clench the sheets with his fists to keep from getting up, crossing the hall, and kicking the bathroom door down.

Which he could not do. No way, no how. Couldn't happen. They were working together. Bad idea. Bad idea even without the beast making everything so much worse. Without its dark voice in his head, its hunger pushing him harder, he'd probably be ready to doze off on top of the dark blue comforter, or turn on the TV and watch a little of what passed for programming at three in the morning. Without its desires pounding in his blood, he probably wouldn't be thinking of her body at all, or the sylphlike way it moved, or how that hair would feel trailing across his chest as her head moved lower and lower— Goddamn it, that wasn't doing him any good at all.

With an irritated gasp he pushed himself off the bed. He needed a drink.

The house was dark, and quiet save for the low hum of the refrigerator and the sound of the water running. Good. Let her stay in there, then. The bottles and glasses still sat on the coffee table, ready for him to pour Liquid A into Receptacle B and chug it down Throat C, hopefully to give him Buzz D. It would take more to do that than it would take for an ordinary man—a lucky, non-demon-invaded man—but he bet he could get there if he tried. And he definitely felt like giving it his all.

It had just started to work, after four triple shots in as many minutes, when he realized the water had stopped running. Shit, when had that happened? How had he missed it? He never missed that kind of thing.

Did it matter? No, at least not at that moment. He had to get back into the guest room and get the door closed before she came out—if she was going to come out—because the thought of seeing her in a robe or, worse, wrapped in a towel, made his head spin. He turned and took three steps back toward the hall—

Too late. Her door opened, and there she stood, framed in light, her shoulders bare and a white towel covering her torso. Goddamn it, it had to be a fucking towel, didn't it?

Her face was half-obscured by shadow. If she wondered why he was standing there, she didn't say. Instead she said, “How did you know?”

Uh-oh. He didn't know what she was referring to specifically, but any question of that sort had to be bad news. “What?”

“How did you know those guys were there, at your place? They weren't really hidden, but they weren't obvious, either. We couldn't see them from your car. So how did you know?” She tilted her head. Curious, not threatening. The fresh scent of soap and lotion and whatever other mysterious ointments and unguents women used wafted around him, a warm, damp, feminine cloud. “Who are you, really, Speare?”

Shit. He managed a grin, a headshake with raised eyebrows like he thought she was being overly suspicious. “Don't you ever get hunches?”

“I get hunches.” She pushed herself away from the doorjamb in one graceful movement and walked toward him, her slim legs exposed halfway up her thighs by the towel. “Most of mine come from various magics or items to enhance them—at least the ones about events I don't control. But I do get hunches about people, and I'm pretty sure you're not telling me everything. I'm pretty sure there's more to you than you're letting on.”

“I thought you already knew exactly what kind of guy I am,” he said, with heavy emphasis. And, of course, immediately regretted it. Why let her know how much that remark had gotten to him, how it had stuck in his head? How he still remembered it, hours later?

She picked that up right away, of course. The slight, fleeting lift of her eyebrows made that clear. He braced himself for the dig.

It didn't come. “Maybe I was wrong.”

Her direct gaze invited confidence. But they all invited it, until they found out the truth. He'd tried that a few times, when he was younger, with women who'd interested him. Women he wanted to be with, like in a relationship. He'd tried telling them exactly what lived in his head and what he had to do to keep it from ripping through his body and destroying everything around him. And every time he tried it was the same: the sympathy, the affection, in their eyes had died, bit by bit, replaced with sadness. Then disbelief. Then horror. Then fear.

And then…then they'd stopped answering the phone.

Maybe they'd thought it was a story he told to get them to dump him so he didn't have to be the bad guy, but he didn't think so. They believed—or at least they believed that
he
did. And they couldn't or didn't want to deal with that, and he couldn't blame them. Who wanted a man who in the best-case scenario was mentally unwell, and in the worst-case might hurt them one day if he forgot to commit some morally repugnant act—a man who had to do things that might hurt them, in order to keep from hurting them?

Ardeth was still watching him, not letting him get away. For one moment, one moment that ran longer than it should have, he considered telling her. Just to see what she said.

Then he thought of seeing that expression of mingled fear and disgust on her face, of watching her edge away from him or invent some excuse as to why he had to leave after all or she had to go lock herself in her room—as if a lock could stop the beast. He shook his head. “I'm just damaged goods, sweetheart. That's all you really need to know.”

An expression he couldn't quite read crossed her face, a mix of curiosity and something like hurt, but he didn't know which was stronger or if he was even getting it right. The beast knew there was something unhappy in there, something bothering her—kind of strange, that; it usually wasn't quite so sensitive—but it wasn't analytical. It just chuckled to itself, like the sick, twisted fiend it was.

“Well,” she said, after letting two or three seconds too many pass, “maybe that's why they're after you, and not me.”

“Yeah.” He poured another glass of vodka down his throat and reached for the bottle. “Maybe.”

She grabbed the bottle from him and took a long pull from it, right from the neck. Even that looked hot when she did it. “You know…my dad always used to tell me that trust was a two-way street. That deciding to trust someone didn't do any good unless they decided to trust me in return, because if they didn't, I wasn't trusting them, I was letting them play me.”

One tug would drop that towel like a stripper's pants. “Maybe not everything is about trust. Or about you.”

“It's my house.”

“It's my secret.” Damn it! Goddamn it, how had she managed to get that out of him?

If she'd shown any hint of triumph, even the most fleeting grin, he would have shoved his way past her and out the front door. Knowing hotel clerks was part of his job, and he did it well; he could walk into just about any place on the Strip or off it and be given a room, no matter how full they were. He didn't need her guest bed.

But she didn't. Her eyes darkened, almost like she actually cared. “What is it?”

“I'm a member of the Illuminati.”

“Bullshit,” she said. “I know a few of them. You're definitely not one.”

Loneliness squeezed at his chest. Loneliness, and anger at that loneliness. Why the hell couldn't she let it go? He plastered a cocky smile on his face to cover it. “Sorry. I don't tell on the first date.”

“That's not going to work with me,” she said. “What was it you said to me at the Wheel? Oh. You can widen those big brown eyes at me all you want, but I'm not some desperate barfly who'll be utterly charmed by your boyish insouciance or big muscles. I'm more interested in the truth.”

She was close enough that he could have reached out and put his hands on her waist just by raising them a few inches; close enough that he could see her pulse fluttering at the base of her throat. Her hair fell in damp locks over her shoulders, one curling down over her collarbone to end just below the top of the towel.

She noticed him noticing, too. He knew she did. She didn't move, but he felt it.

Which pissed him off. Was that her plan? Was that how she'd managed to get out of the shower so soon after he'd left the guest room—had she been waiting by the door, letting the water run while she listened for his footsteps? He wouldn't put it past her.

And he definitely wouldn't let her win. “You're entitled to the truth,” he said. “About a lot of things. But not about my personal business. That's not part of the deal I made with you, so unless you want to start handing me all the tricks of
your
particular trade, let's say we call this conversation finished, and go to bed.”

He was clearly doomed to have everything he said to this woman sound like a double entendre. In an effort to combat the effect, he took a step back, plucked the bottle from her hand, and started to pour himself another drink. “You ought to go get some sleep. Busy day tomorrow.”

She folded her arms over her chest. God, that towel was going to fall right off when she let go. “Oh? Why, what are we going to do?”

More vodka slid down his throat. “What do you think we're going to do? We're going to solve a murder and save the day. Be ready by ten.”

She looked like she wanted to argue, and that was actually fair. He doubted she was much of an early riser. But she didn't. She spun around—like a dancer, all effortless movement and grace—and stalked back to her room. The door slammed shut behind her.

He was alone with his bottle. And, of course, his beast.

She was ready at nine-forty-five, though, looking fresh and tidy, with that mass of cherry-colored hair held back off her face by a thick black band, her body covered with jeans just as snug as the night before's had been and a long-sleeved, wide-necked T-shirt with narrow black-and-white stripes.

Not that he cared. He was in the same clothes, after all, although he'd managed to get in the shower that morning. The hot water had helped the cobwebs in his head but hadn't done anything about the rest of his problems. Especially the beast, which had been whining and pacing ever since he'd woken up. It was getting sick of waiting for him.

“So where are we going?” Ardeth leaned against the counter in her kitchen and cracked open a can of one of those energy drinks that tasted like a mixture of lemonade and battery acid. “What are we doing first, since we're going to solve a murder and save the day and all?”

“Wow,” he said. “You're even more sarcastic in the morning. How fun.”

“Nobody else has ever complained,” she said, sipping from the can.

“Nobody else was listening to you.” Looked like she wasn't going to offer him anything to drink. Whatever. He'd seen a water pitcher in her fridge when she opened it to get her drink; that would do just fine. He pushed past her to get it. “We're going to talk to your friend Nielsen, and find out what he knows and who wanted a demon-sword, and if he got them one.”

She nodded. “I assume Doretti's going to pay for that?”

“Don't worry about it.” Like he was planning to pay Nielsen anything. “Then we'll find out what he knows about this mirror, and decide what to do from there.”

The pitcher was almost full. Good. He filled a glass to the rim, gulped it down, and filled it again.

Her voice came from behind him. “Hungover?”

“No. Just thirsty.” He wished he could get hungover—okay, he almost wished he could. He'd never had a hangover in his life. But he'd never been really, truly drunk in his life, either. Close, once or twice, but not sloppy, crying, puking drunk. It was a stupid thing to feel robbed of, but sometimes he did just the same.

“You're a strange guy,” she said.

“Yep.” He set the now-empty glass down and headed for the front door. “Come on. Let's get moving.”

“Should I call him and tell him we're—”

“No.” Nobody waited for them outside. That was a relief. He'd had a short nightmare vision of opening her front door to a hail of bullets. But her street was clear of everything but shadows and dust, and no suspicious smells drifted toward him on the breeze. No one was out there. He glanced back and waved for her to join him. “We don't want to give him any warning. Better to surprise him.”

“I don't know why,” she said, sailing past him. She walked like a prostitute in a homecoming parade, a combination of pure sex and privileged pretty-girl innocence. “Nielsen's not the bad guy here.”

Oh, right. She thought that, didn't she, and he wasn't going to dissuade her unless he had to. “Right. But if he's so protective of his clients, we don't want him to have time to come up with excuses not to give us what we want, or with some lies or stories about how he wasn't really involved in the deal.” He opened the door of the Dart and watched her settle herself on the seat, ready to close the door again. “Honesty is usually easiest to get when it's gotten off-guard.”

That was true, as far as it went. But he was pretty sure they weren't going to get anything like honesty from Nielsen.

Driving to Nielsen's house was exactly the opposite of driving to Doretti's: Instead of the wealthy suburbs, Nielsen lived downtown, right on the Strip. Instead of a sprawling sixties mansion with an impossibly—and expensively—green lawn, Nielsen's home was in a high-rise condo only a couple of years old. Amazing how many different kinds of lives could be lived in one city, how everywhere he looked he saw a different Vegas. That, at least, never got boring.