My Darkest Passion (22 page)

“Dude.” She rolled her eyes while she dug her wallet out of her purse and handed her ID to the waiter. “Can I see the wine list?” She stared at Harsh. “I’m legal, and if I get drunk off a glass of wine with dinner, feel free to put me in a cab.”

The waiter handed back her license and maintained a perky smile. “We have an excellent wine list.”

Harsh hoped his own smile wasn’t as strained as it felt. “Whatever the chef recommends, then. Full bottle.”

When the waiter was gone, she leaned her forearms on the table again and winked at him before she whispered, “You know I give good head. Come on.”

“Stop it.” But she was laughing at him, and it was absurd for him to be this uptight. She’d picked up some of Kynan’s raunchy sense of humor. Though, for all he knew, she’d always been like that.

“Full bottle of wine.” She shook her head, and the blue in her hair glinted. “All right then, boss. You’re in charge of the drinks from now on.”

“Thank you.”

“Because, as we all know, wine is one of the few things that matters.”

“As a matter of fact, yes. The right wine can make or break a dinner.”

“Really.” She widened her already big eyes. “Does it matter more than an awesome BJ of gratitude?”

“Possibly.”

“Your priorities are completely messed up.”

He leaned back, one hand on the table, drowning in his uneasiness and confusion about what the hell he ought to do about her. About them. “So. Are you coming to work for Nikodemus?”

Harsh didn’t expect her to answer right away, but her silence was less certain than the other times he’d broached the subject. Which was both interesting and a welcome distraction. “Should we talk about that, now?” he asked.

“Yeah. I think so.” She nodded and then stared at his chest. “You’ve got something on your shirt.”

He looked down.

She leaned across the table to get a better look. “Is that blood?”

23

“W
hat? No.” But she was right. There was a spatter of red on his shirt so fresh the stain was still bright. From his earliest days, he’d had a freakishly accurate memory. Starting before he hit puberty, information stuck in his head. He did not forget things. Ever. He closed his eyes and chased after the bit of information that, this once, had not stuck. His sense of something missing had to be related to the bloodstain on his shirt, didn’t it? How could it not be, given he hadn’t know it was there.

Instead of the mental focus he needed, behind his lids he saw blood arcing across a dull green background. Something was wrong with him, and he couldn’t remember what had happened to make him like this. Argumentative. Blowing it with Addison.

He remembered being at the hotel and finishing up a call with Maddy and Nikodemus. Addison had been long gone by then; back home to change and run a few errands before she headed here. He knew he’d showered, dressed and then…walked straight here.

He opened his eyes and saw Addison gazing at him with concern. The image of blood against industrial green faded, but not the tension or his frustration. He couldn’t answer her. There was blood on his shirt, and he had no idea how it got there.

“What happened?”

He clenched his hand so hard his fingers hurt. Something. Something happened between the time he left his hotel and arriving here. Something that had turned everything wrong. The answer was there. Just out of reach. How could he not know? “I must have cut myself.”

“Oh.” Her cheeks pinked up, and he realized she’d made a reasonable conclusion. There was one common way he could have ended up with blood in places it shouldn’t be. She was in such control of herself, so thoroughly human to him, that he’d forgotten what she was. How much she knew about the kin and their intimate needs and customs. And what she would think about him having sex with someone else after what had happened between them. Blood exchange and all.

She rubbed the spot just above her upper lip. “I’m not prying. Seriously. I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” Her cheeks turned pink and it was such a human reaction that he didn’t realize what that meant. “I’m not asking about your personal life, it’s only, you know, I know how that can go.”

“And how is that?” Again, the wrong words. In the wrong tone of voice.

“I guess for you it depends on whether you were with a man or a woman.”

“Neither.”

“Right.” This time, she fell silent for a time, and there was a lot packed into her quiet.

“I would remember if I’d recently had sex.”

That made her look up. “You have.”

He returned her look. “More recently than that. Let alone the kind of sex that includes biting. And I don’t remember any—” Another image paralyzed him. Brilliant red against green again, but now with the recollection of striking hard, talons curved, the fierce joy of justice served. The hot scent of blood. Visceral memory detached from all context.

“What?”

“I don’t know.”

She crossed her arms on the table and took a deep breath. She maintained eye contact, and he was struck by the certainty he saw there. A young woman, yes, but mature beyond her years. No one lived through what she had without ending up changed. “Should we call someone?”

“I’m fine.”

Something flashed in her eyes. Irritation? Yes, but also a hint of what she’d become. He could not help responding to that certainty. Few of the kin could have. Not even Kynan would have been immune. “I don’t think so. Let me in?”

He leaned back and lifted his hands, palms out. He’d made a tactical mistake here, underestimating her, failing to remember that behind that youth and the blue-tipped hair and talk about blow jobs out of gratitude, she was a warlord of considerable power.

Harsh opened himself to her and she looped in. The center of his chest went tight and there was this reverberation in his head, the certainty that he was on the edge of figuring out what was wrong with him. Addison was the key. Again the image of blood against a green background rose up and while he dug at the memory and tried to find the context, Addison dropped out.

“Oh my God.” Her eyes shifted from hazel to blue and then back.

“What?”

“Your oath to Nikodemus. I don’t feel it.”

“That’s—” His body flashed ice-cold as one fact rose above all the wrongness he was feeling. The disorientation. His sense of being disconnected. A roar went off in his head. The ocean between his ears, a bolt of lightning thought him. Pieces fell into a dreadful shape as what she said ripped away part of the shroud around his memory. He cut off their connection.

She grabbed his hand and squeezed tight. They fell silent when the waiter brought their salads. When he was gone, she spoke in a low voice. “You don’t remember how?”

“No.” With his free hand, he fished his phone from his pocket and realized the last time he could recall checking his calls and messages was at five thirty. It was nearly eight now. Could he have let that much time pass without checking his phone? Half a second before he would have set the device on the table, he saw flecks of something on the screen. He whipped his hands out of sight, away from contact with her so she wouldn’t see him shaking. “Excuse me.” He rose. “I’ll be right back.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“No.”

But she followed him anyway. In the men’s room, he went to the sink where the light was strongest and examined his phone. Tiny black flecks against the dark screen taunted him. He touched the button that would wake up the device but nothing happened. Dread expanded through him, every corner filled.

“Broken?” she asked.

“No. But the battery should not be dead. I took it off the charger minutes before I left to meet you here.” He tried to track back in time and couldn’t. “No. That’s not right. It can’t be.”

“I think we should go back to the hotel see if there’s anything there that jogs your memory.”

“Agreed.” He brushed at one of the specks. He had to scrape since the specks were hard, but the top of one of them flaked away. A smear of red transferred itself to his finger. Panic at not having any memory of those missing hours turned his fear sharp and fierce. With trembling fingers, he dampened a paper towel and wiped at the specks.

The towel turned pink.

They exchanged a look in the mirror. “Let’s go,” she said.

That goddamned arc of blood across green flashed through his head again, and again that recollection of tearing and a feral joy. He wiped off the entire device, and Addison grabbed the towels he’d used and walked them to the toilet to flush them. Desperation tightened his gut when it occurred to him to press the power button in case it wasn’t the battery. It wasn’t. The manufacturer’s icon appeared on the screen. He never, ever turned off his phone. His work for Nikodemus required that he be reachable twenty-four/seven.

Where the hell had he been between the time he left the hotel and the time he arrived here?

“Check your pockets,” Addison said.

He emptied his pockets. His wallet was clean: cash, plastic, and driver’s license intact. Hotel key card, yes. Keys to his rental. There was no napkin, business card, or slip of paper with a phone number on it, nothing to suggest that he’d met a woman and arranged a hook up that would explain blood on his shirt.

She came back and faced him. “Jacket off.”

He did, and also unbuttoned his shirt and pulled aside his tie long enough to confirm that if the blood had from come him, the injury had already healed. Or else the blood was not his. Except for that stain, his suit was pristine. She knelt at his feet and held out a hand. “Damp towel.”

He shoved some at her, and she rubbed at his shoes. More pink. His phone completed the power-on. Emails, texts and tweets started downloading to the device.

“If I broke my oath,” he said, “I’m lucky to be alive.”

She flushed more paper towels and when she came back, she said, “What if he broke his?”

“That’s not possible.” On the counter, his phone stopped vibrating.

“Why not?”

He picked up the phone and swiped a finger across the screen. Seventy-five new texts, a hundred and two unread emails. Six missed calls. He forced himself to concentrate as he scrolled though the screens of notifications. The bulk of them had come after 6:25 p.m. The emails were from earlier in the day. There were two from Leonidas that had come in at 6:45 p.m., and 6:59 p.m., both with a subject of
check in
.

His recent calls list gave him the shivers. Three were from Nikodemus, all of them short, fewer than ten seconds, all received after 7:25 p.m. At 5:06 p.m., he’d made a call to Giuseppe Infante.

He had no fucking idea why.

24

“W
e should go. Now.” Addison couldn’t stop the panic about what it meant that his oath to Nikodemus was gone. Harsh wouldn’t break his oath. Ever. She grabbed his hand. Everything felt wrong. As wrong as it could be. “Put the phone away. You can make calls later, okay? Pick up your things, and let’s go.”

While he did that, she ran the water in the sink until she didn’t see even a drop of pink-tinted water. Then she scrubbed a towel in the basin and flushed that, too.

They were three steps to the door when her phone rang. She about jumped out of her skin. “Answer it,” Harsh said.

“No. It can go to message.”

“Addison. Nikodemus knows I’m down here.” The ring tone continued. “He’s been trying to reach me. He may be trying to reach you now.”

She pulled the phone out of her back pocket and checked the screen. Her heart thudded even as she told herself it didn’t necessarily mean anything. “Kynan.”

“Answer it.”

“Hey, Kynan. What’s up?”

A woman said, “Is Harsh Marit with you?” Her voice was low and clipped.

She straightened. “Who is this, please?”

“Maddy Winters. Kynan can’t make this call himself. I hope to God he told you enough to figure out why.”

“Yes.” Her mouth went dry as dust and she met Harsh’s gaze. She grabbed his hand and dragged him out of the restroom, phone at her ear. “Is he all right?”

“Kynan is fine. Put Harsh on.”

Her chest went tight, and she had to work to get enough air. “Not until I know what’s going on.”

“Lovely.” A word said so as to sound exactly the opposite. “A coven of mages have a contract out on him and every single one of us sworn to Nikodemus. They mean business. Leonidas is already gone. He’ll know what that means.” The woman sucked in a breath. “Wherever you are, get him out. Now.”

She kept walking. She knew enough to be frightened, enough to believe every word Maddy said. At their table, she grabbed her purse, dug out her wallet and threw all her cash on the table, making apologetic gestures at the waiter while she did. Harsh added several more bills to the pile. “Where do I take him?”

“Anywhere. Get him back to San Francisco if you can. I think we can smooth things over with Nikodemus by then. Call before you get here. Understood?”

“Yes.”

“Take care of him.” Maddy’s voice softened. “Please.”

“I will.” But she was talking to dead air. Maddy had already disconnected.

Addison shoved her phone back in her pocket, oddly calm, considering. She snatched her jacket off the chair. “That was Ma—” Her entire body went on alarm, and she whipped her head toward the source. The front door opened and four men came in. One mage. Three of them null to her. Magehelds. The mage didn’t see them yet, because she and Harsh were both passing and damn good at it. He stepped into the light, and she saw who it was: Guiseppe Infante.

“Now is not the time,” Harsh said.

She took a deep breath and forced everything out of her head except her determination to get Harsh someplace safe. She grabbed his hand again, reassured by Harsh’s coolness in the presence of Infante with three magehelds. “Out the back.” They moved quickly toward the restrooms. “That was Maddy. Not Kynan.”

She’d never seen Harsh as shaken as he’d been, but he had his shit together again, and that reminded her that underestimating him was suicidal. Harsh was scary in a way that snuck up on you. Physical perfection did not mean stupid and calm was not the same as placid. In some ways, he was scarier than Kynan, and Kynan Aijan was not someone you wanted to mess with. Ever.