Night Series Collection: Books 1 and 2 (52 page)

“It’s not the same; you know that. She’s on our side.”

“So says you.”

He sighed.

Graveyards in this part of the world were very different from many others. Bodies were buried not only below ground, but above it in ornate cement blocks. Sepulchers ran about a mile out in every direction. It was actually really beautiful here. There were baskets of wine and cheese and bread already set down on my gravesite. Flower wreaths in the hundreds draped tombstones so that everything smelled fresh and clean.

Every grave was painted a different color so that the effect dazzled the eyes. There was pink, turquoise, lemony yellow, and white with red trim. On and on it went in every direction, but something I noticed this time that I’d not noticed before was the profusion of red mums everywhere.

Stopping, I snatched one up, staring at the hearty bloom in perplexity.

“Pandora?”

“Nothing. I…” Frowning, I blinked and then gave him a weak grin. “I don’t know, but I swear I’m either going crazy or something is weird about all these mums. I’m seeing them everywhere lately.”

Looking around, he shrugged. “Why? They’re just flowers.”

“Remember I told you about the one I found on my doorstep that night? And then yesterday right before my attack the old woman set a red mum right in front of me. This can’t be coincidence. Right?”

Taking the bloom from my hand, he set it back down on the tomb. “Mums are the universal symbol for death. It could mean nothing or it could be a clue, but right now it’s just a flower.”

“Yeah.” I rolled my eyes. “You’re right, just… Yeah.”

Feeling kind of stupid, I tried to walk around him, but he wouldn’t let me.

“Hey, we’ll keep a lookout. Why don’t you just hand over whatever responsibilities you have here to someone else, I vote Vyxen, and you and I go kill some zombies?”

“You’ve got more of a sense of humor than I first gave you credit for. I used to think you had a giant stick up your ass.”

“Funny.”

Lips twitching, I shook my head. “Ash, I’m not gonna stop you from going there, but I don’t trust Grace as far as I can throw her. I just need time.”

“Pandora.” He gripped my shoulders. “Do not forget the Order knows your every move. You’ve given Grace nothing to report back to them. If you don’t do your job, they’ll know we’re on to them. Right now we have the element of surprise. Don’t ruin it because of your…” He cleared his throat and thinned his lips, clearly not wanting to say what I knew was really on his mind.

“History.” I finished his sentence and I was so damn angry that for a second I wanted to stab him with a stiletto all over again. But while my heart was stark-raving furious, my brain understood he was probably right.

“You’re angry.”

“What do you think?”

“I think right now it’s easier for you to give in to your anger than it is to try to reason through the truth, because you want to hate her.”

“Shut up, Asher, you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” I shoved past him, walking up to my grave. It was a small grave, no wider than three feet and about as long as my thigh. “And if I were smart, I’d be doing the same to you. You can’t just expect me to forget and move on—I’m not built that way.” Murmuring under my breath, I licked my front teeth but refused to look at him.

There was a giant box of goodies one of the other Neph had set aside earlier this morning for me to unpack. I dropped to my knees, not caring if the grass stained my dress. My movements were stiff and jerky as I unloaded a giant box of dark chocolate, bricks of cheese, and several loaves of bread.

“If you were human, I’d understand this, Pandora. Or at least I’d try, but we don’t have the luxury of time to figure things out,” he continued, and God, I wanted to rake my claws down his pretty-boy face.

I slammed a wedge of cheese down, denting its side.

“Hello,” he said.

This time I made my actions deliberate so that he’d finally take the hint. I turned my face to the side. My heart was thrumming violently through my chest. My head understood what my heart obviously couldn’t. Yes, I might be a demon. But only part of me—the other part was most definitely human. I wasn’t wrong to feel as I did, wasn’t wrong to still want revenge, even if she’d actually been working with me. That wasn’t the point, the point was she’d lied to me and the end result was the death of Kemen and lots of innocent children. In what universe was that possibly okay?

He snatched the bread out of my hand. “You planning to acknowledge this at some point tonight?”

“No.” I yanked the bread back and slammed it down into the wicker basket, causing it to form a fissure down its yeasty middle.

“Well too damn bad, because you just did.” He tugged the basket his way and held it away from me until I was forced to look at him.

“Ash, give it back.” I held out my hand.

“Not until you realize I’m not Luc or any other guy you’ve ever known in your life. You will not shut me out, you hear me? Being together means communicating and sometimes saying stuff that isn’t pleasant but that the other person needs to hear. I’m sorry about Kemen—as far as Nephilim went, I didn’t hate him.”

I scoffed and tried to snatch my basket back, but he wouldn’t budge. “Ash, I’m tired, okay? Please, give it back.” I huffed because he was making sense, and how could you fight with someone when all they seemed to want was in your best interest? But he completely discombobulated me too, because I didn’t know how to do this. How to interact like a normal person should.

I jutted out my jaw, and he tipped my chin up, careful not to smear the paint.

“You know I’m right.”

I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t. There was a betraying hint of heat gathering behind my eyeballs, making them ache and burn, and I was so not going to cry. I was sick of crying, of being this pathetic demon who couldn’t get her crap together, ever.

“I’ll give you one more night, little demon. And then we go, together. And you will talk to Grace.”

Clenching my fists, I squeezed my eyes shut and cursed the fact that the man was right. That I was acting like a big, fat baby about all this.

At the end of the day, I’d been the one to take Kemen’s life, not Grace, not the Order. Me.

“Fine!” I blew out a hard breath, glaring at him. “But you’re not coming with me to Grace. I have to talk to her myself and in my own way, and you just distract me.” I waved my fingers at him.

His dimple poked out. “Deal.”

“Now give me my basket and go away.” I snapped my fingers on my palm in an imperious gesture.

He laughed. “I’ll give you the basket.”

I sighed and this time it wasn’t anger causing my jaw to clench up tight, but laughter. Because Asher and I had just had our first official fight and the sky hadn’t fallen.

Still upset, but curiously humbled by him, I tackled him to the ground. I wrapped my arms around him, surprising him enough that we fell together. But he twisted just in time to make sure not to land on me.

“What is this?” he asked when I peppered his whisker free jaw with kisses. “You’re going to smear that stuff on me.”

Sucking my lip between my teeth, I framed his face with my hands and we just stared at each other. I wanted to tell him thank you: thank you for standing up to me, thank you for not taking my shit, thank you for being there, and holding me, and forcing me to be better than I was. But I was still learning how to do it. While I’d always craved this level of intimacy, parts of me feared it too. Feared that someday I’d push him too far, drive him away, make him realize I was really nothing more than a lust demon who needed killing.

His arms squeezed me tight. “Told you, little demon, you can’t scare me off.”

“Sometimes I really don’t like you.”

That damnable dimple peeked out. “I’m your favorite person—you just haven’t realized it yet.”

Shoving off him, I shook my head because that wasn’t true at all. I did realize it. That’s why he scared me so much. Dusting off his shirt, he watched me for a second.

But I had nothing else to say, so I started setting up my altar. After a second, he joined me. Grabbing short and long candles from the box, I lined the casket with them, propped up a couple of pictures of the Virgin Mary, and set a freestanding antique gold crucifix at its center. I then moved the basket to the foot of the cotton-candy-pink grave before tracing my fingers across the headstone.

“Who did this grave belong to, Pandora?” His deep voice washed through me like healing waters. I was becoming addicted to the man.

“Her name was Paz.”

“Means peace, right?”

I nodded and he squeezed the fingers of my other hand, which was resting on my thigh.

“She died in eighteen sixty-three of consumption. She wasn’t even a year old.”

Placing his hand above the one I had on the grave, he moved it so that we were both able to feel its scratchy texture rub against us.

“Her grave looks remarkably well preserved. I remember your years in Mexico—that would have been around eighteen sixty-three, wouldn’t it?”

I sniffed. “You’re such a stalker.”

“Pandora.” He playfully swatted my hand before grabbing back on. “Read the damn book.”

“Whatever. And yes, it was around that time. Influenza had hit the village hard, decimating the people. But Paz was so young that when she contracted it, it morphed and became twice as deadly to her. She didn’t stand a chance. Her family threw her out into the streets. Not an uncommon practice back then, sadly. I found her, and I held her until she died.”

My lips thinned as the memory of that night came floating back, as vivid and bright as the day it’d happened. Me standing on the edge of a cliff, cooing and rocking the child as she’d coughed and struggled to breathe. I’d stood under the stars holding her because it seemed like a beautiful place to die.

At the very end, Paz had curled her brown little fist around my finger and she hadn’t seemed to struggle, she’d simply let go.

“How’d you know what her name was?”

“I didn’t.” I shook my head and lovingly traced her grave once more. “I named her. Then I buried her and watched over the gravesite for years. A century later when this graveyard popped up, I transferred her remains over here and have been tending to it ever since.”

“You’re remarkable, little demon.”

He hadn’t said I love you or given me any promise of some fairy-tale future, but the words he’d said hit me harder than an actual declaration. I smiled and kissed his cheek. “I’ll go to the hive with you tomorrow. But I am going to talk to Luc first.”

“You know I’ll support you no matter what. But maybe I’ll just join in on that meeting of the minds.”

“You think he’ll burst a blood vessel when I tell him this?”

He stood, then helped me to my feet. “At least ten.”

“Well, I feel better being here tonight anyway. After what happened last night, I don’t want to leave and then find out after the fact that zombies set upon this crowd.”

“Agreed.” He rubbed my arm. “Look.” He jerked his chin. “The mystery of the mums is solved.”

I turned to look where he’d pointed and noticed a slim, young brunette dressed in a plain blue dress and wearing black shoes, standing across the street from us and holding an obscenely large wicker basket full of bright red mums.

I shook my head because there was no way I was seeing what I was seeing. But I couldn’t deny the fact that that fresh-faced girl most definitely had one brown eye and one green eye.

“Just flowers, see.”

“No.” I shook his hand off and started across the street. “I know that girl. She was the girl at the taco stand that night.”

He walked beside me. The moment we stepped onto the sidewalk, it was like trying to wade through a crush of migrating salmon. People were everywhere. The bands were playing all along the streets.

There was chaos and noise and heads obscuring my line of sight. A group of giggling girls bumped into my back, giggling even harder when Asher smiled down at them, before running off with squealed delight.

The dual-colored eyes were locked on me.

“Which girl, Pandora?” he asked, looking around the crowd.

I pointed to the scrap of blue I could still see between the crush of people. “Her.”

“I don’t see her.” He frowned. “Which girl from the taco stand is this?”

There were dancers and revelers everywhere, some drinking, others just trying to make their way to the graveyards to light their candles and set out their food. Asher was holding an arm out in front of us, trying to help clear the way, and I just couldn’t understand how we were suddenly swamped by humans.

It was frustrating that for every step forward I made, I was shoved back two or three.

“The one serving me that night, Ash. The one who looked at me like I was nuts when I asked her if she’d seen the man who disappeared.”

Literally in the split second that I’d taken to turn and answer his question, she was gone. The girl in the blue dress with a basket of mums had vanished.

I hissed, standing dumbfounded. Not only because the girl was gone, but the crowd that’d been bearing down like a wave had thinned out to a trickle.

“Did you see where she went?” I asked in frustration.

Rubbing his jaw, he glanced to his left and then to his right. “Now I see what you’re talking about when you say people are vanishing. And was it just me, or does the sudden lack of crowd disturb you?”

I rolled my eyes. “Everything disturbs me, especially since stepping foot in Mexico. Nothing at all is going like it should. There is nothing I hate more than a mystery.” I tossed my hands in the air. “What do we do now?”

“You bring us some paying customers, that’s what you do.” Luc’s voice growled from just behind me.

I turned. Luc’s arms were crossed and he was dressed just as Bubba had been, but he was eyeing Asher like a man who wanted to kill something in a most violent and brutal manner.

“Luc, I thought I saw something—”

He chuckled. “I could give a crap what you think you saw. You work for me, don’t forget that. And you.” He turned to Asher. “You can just get the hell away from her.”

Asher was practically vibrating, and I stepped in front of him. Last thing I wanted was a pissing match between these two out in public where everyone and their mother could see it.