Page of Swords (The Demon's Apprentice Book 2) (18 page)

I stopped and let the magic fade, but I kept the glare on him at full strength.

“And?” I said. “What are my odds?”

“For most of your kind, I’d say you stood no chance whatsoever. You, I would give slim to narrow odds. But magi have a way of bending the odds to their favor. And you . . . I feel the touch of Fate upon you.” He gave me a half smile that didn’t really give anything away.

“Yeah, I’ve been getting that a lot lately,” I told him.

“You’re familiar with the etiquette and courtesies that rule our world, little apprentice. You came here knowing what you would get from me. While you play the Great Game well enough to survive, it does not suit you. Let us dispense with the façade. I take your claims seriously, but until I know more, or Etienne oversteps his bounds with you again, I can make no promises. If you truly are willing to . . . how did you put it? Let the first offense slide? If you are willing to do that, then the balance swings in your favor, and the debt will be mine for the moment.”

“For now, it’ll do.”

I got a slow nod for a reply, and he turned back toward the doors to his ballroom. In the distance, thunder rumbled across the sky. I glanced over my shoulder in time to catch a cascade of red lightning as it streaked along the bottom of the approaching cloudbank. As I passed him, he placed a hand on my shoulder.

“You should hurry home, child. There’s a storm coming,” he said quietly.

No, that wasn’t ominous or anything.

Chapter 13

~ Cowan technology is nice, but it will never replace good old fashioned magick. ~

Caleb Clay, Master Mage

Cross and T-Bone were gone when we left. The trip back to Dr. C’s place on the back of Shade’s bike was a thrill ride. With her Were reflexes, she made moves that left me wondering what had just happened. She zipped in and out of traffic at speed, and leaned deep into impossible turns. Deek barely kept up with us, and Steve fell in behind him until we came up on the exit off the freeway that would take us to Dr. C’s street. A semi pulled on ahead of us with a line of cars behind it. The smart thing would have been to slow down and get into the exit lane behind them.

Shade looked back over her shoulder then leaned forward over the handlebars. I followed suit as she twisted the throttle and we surged ahead. Deek’s bike roared behind us as we passed the cars, then the semi was sliding by on my right, the trailer’s bottom edge even with my eyes. Up ahead, I could see the exit, and my eyes went wide as I realized how close she was going to be cutting it. Then there was nothing on my right but air and the headlights of the semi’s cab. The bike leaned hard to the right, and I watched each letter on the tractor’s grill slide past as I looked over my shoulder.

We cleared the front bumper by about six inches, then the yellow crash barrier zoomed by on my left, and we were heading down the ramp, the bike growling its displeasure as Shade downshifted. The growl and deep rumble of Steve and Deek’s bikes faded as they headed for the next exit. We pulled to a stop at the light, and Shade looked over her shoulder at me. She was smiling under her helmet, and there was a fierce heat in her gaze.

“I like it when you hold me like that.”

“Like what?” I asked, trying to keep my bravado up. I was scared, but I was smiling too.

“Like you’re never going to let go,” she said.

The light turned green, and she gunned the bike. I held on tight, even though the ride wasn’t as wild. For a few minutes, I managed to forget everything: the Maxilla, Dani’s missing girlfriend, the Ordeal, all of it. All there was in the world was Shade on the bike in front of me, the heat of her body though her shirt, the gentle rise of her breast on the top of my hand, and the wind on my face as we rode through the darkened streets.

We pulled up by the side entrance to Dr. C’s house, and I wrapped my arms around Shade and drew her to me for a moment before we got off the bike. We slid off, and both our helmets bounced in the grass as she slid into my arms again, and her lips melted against mine. Her tongue darted against my lips as she let mine chase it, and my hands went in opposite directions from the middle of her back. I felt her grab a thick handful of my hair at the nape of my neck, and I followed suit. Her grip went slack once I closed my fist on her hair, and she pulled back for a second. Her eyes were still closed, and her lips parted as she let out a tiny gasp. I tried to pull her mouth back to mine, but she pulled back a little with a playful smile on her lips. Her eyes sparkled in the soft light.

“You have to earn the second one,” she said.

I tried to pull her to me, and she came, but she turned her face to one side, avoiding my lips with a giggle. I tried to follow, and she only let me brush her lips for a heartbeat before she twisted away.

“Take it if you can,” she taunted as she squirmed in my arms.

She ducked her head forward, and tried to bury her head under my chin. The part of me that I’d touched that afternoon woke up, and I gave her a growl of desire as I fought to keep it in check. The shiver that ran through her at that destroyed my will, and I tightened my hand in her hair then pulled her head back slowly. Her eyes were wide and trusting as she came up to face me. Then I lowered my head and put my teeth on the soft skin of her neck.

She trembled in my arms as a growl rumbled up from my chest, and I heard her whimper softly. Then her arms closed around me, and I felt her hold on to me like she was never going to let go. Something warm fell on my neck, then Shade’s trembling gave way to tremors from her stomach, and I realized she was crying. I pulled away, but she just held on tighter.

“Don’t let go,” she sobbed. “Please, just don’t let go!”

I held on to her with everything I had.

“Did I hurt you? Did I do something wrong? What is it?” I asked quietly. My hand came up and stroked her hair. In the middle of wondering what I’d done wrong, I noticed how good her hair felt under my fingers, and how much I enjoyed her reaction to it. Hot tears coursed down my neck, and my cracked ribs flared pain up my side as she held on to me tight, but there was nothing in the world that was going to make me let go of her a second before she wanted me to.

Finally, she pulled back and looked up at me. Her face was damp, and a single tear rolled down her cheek.

I caught it on my thumb and wiped it away gently.

“Whatever I did, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

She shut me up with a kiss.

“I don’t know why,” she said softly. “I felt good. Safe . . . and then . . . I was just . . . crying. God, I’m such a screwed up mess. I don’t even know what you see in—”

It was my turn to shut her up with my kiss.

“A lot. Don’t even go there. Please, you’re beautiful, and we get each other. Tonight, there’s no one else I would have wanted at my back, and right now . . . there’s no one else I want in my arms. When I’m with you, Shade, it’s like nothing else exists. I can forget about all the screwed up stuff in my life for a while. When we’re together . . . even as messed up as I am, as screwed up as my life gets sometimes, I’m happy.” I kissed her forehead and closed my eyes.

“We don’t exactly have normal problems, do we?” she asked.

“No, we don’t,” I agreed. “We better get inside.”

She nodded, and bent to pick up our helmets.

“Collins is here,” she said as we hit the steps to the porch. It wasn’t a surprise, since he was taking shifts watching over me. “There’s another cop down the street.”

She nodded toward the dimly lit side street, and I could barely make out a car parked well out of the nearest streetlight’s range. It was hard to forget Shade was a werewolf, with amped up senses and enough strength to bench press me . . . while I was on her bike. It was harder sometimes to remember she was a teenager.

Her hand slipped into mine as I touched the ward stone on the iron railing on the steps, and let her through. Dr. Corwyn had ramped them up from just setting off an alarm to lethal levels if they weren’t deactivated. If anyone came on the property and tried to get inside, they were in for a fiery welcome or the shock of their lives, depending on where they tried to come in. I opened the door to the kitchen and we slipped inside as I felt the wards reset themselves.

We stopped long enough to grab a couple of bottles of Coke from the refrigerator before we headed for the library. Shade reached for two of the bottles beside the fridge, but I put my hand on hers and shook my head.

“Don’t. Those are Dr. C’s. He doesn’t like his cold.” I got a look from her at that, and I shrugged.

“Weird,” she said as she popped the cap off hers with a casual flick of her thumbnail.

I set mine against the handle to one of the drawers and brought my hand down on it to get the cap off. Both went into the wire basket by the door that Dr. C used to collect them, and we made our way down the hall toward the open double doors of the library.

“Just give them a few more minutes, Demetrius,” Dr. C’s voice came from inside the door. “They don’t get the chance to just be teenagers that often. And if this all goes wrong . . . he might not have many more moments like this.”

“That ain’t right,” Collins grumbled. My chest went tight again when I heard what they were saying, and I had to stop for a second to get my breath back before we went around the corner and entered the library. Dr. C was behind his desk, still in the white button down shirt he’d worn to school that day. Collins had changed into a black t-shirt. He wore his gun in a shoulder holster with spare clips under his right arm.

“I’m back,” I said. “Did I make curfew?”

“Barely. And you’re welcome.”

“Did I miss something?” I asked.

“You could say that,” he sighed. “I got Draeden to pull the Sentinels off of you, but there was a price. Cross and T-Bone had to back off, too. On the plus side of that, they were assigned to watching over your mother and sister.”

“I’m okay with that,” I said.

“It isn’t how I would have preferred things to go, but it’ll work. How’d it go with Thraxus?” Dr. C asked.

“About like I expected. Thraxus didn’t commit to anything without more proof, but he did admit he owed me for letting the first attack go. If his boy Etienne does anything else, he pretty much has to give me sanction to go after him. So, now all I have to do is figure out how to prove he’s got Crystal without doing a B and E to actually see for myself. Or I can just wait to see if Thraxus actually digs anything up on his own.”

“How likely is he to do that?” Collins asked. I took a sip of my Coke while I gave it some thought.

“Actually, he probably will. I think he knows Etienne’s up to something and whatever he does is gonna get laid at Thraxus’ feet. In the meantime, I also have to figure out how to find where Mr. Chomsky hid a sword that doesn’t really want to be found.”

I set the Coke on the big oak desk and went to the bookshelf. Something was nagging at the back of my brain, and I pulled out one of the references I’d gone through Saturday night.

“Divinations are still proving fruitless,” Dr. C offered. “And nothing in Sydney’s journals has given us any clues about where he hid it. I’m going to check some of the Conclave’s archives tonight to see if I can find anything about where it would be likely to be found. There may be a more theurgic based spell to reveal it, given its origins.”

“Maybe you should try finding the old fashioned way,” Collins suggested.

Dr. C waved one hand at the bookshelves in exasperation.

“I’ve already tried! We’ve come at this from every angle we can!” he snapped.

“You’ve come at it like a wizard. If magic isn’t working, then maybe you need to come at it like a cop.”

“I’m not exactly a detective,” Dr. C said.

“I am,” Collins countered as he pulled out the bent note pad and pen from his back pocket and started scribbling things down. “Get hold of Kale and Romanoff, too. You’re gonna need a few things.” He ripped off a page from the notepad and handed it to me. “Don’t ask questions, just get this stuff,” he said.

Two hours later, Lucas and Wanda were sitting beside me in two of the other chairs, and Shade was curled up on the floor in front of me with her arm over my leg. Collins had a dry erase board up on the wall behind Dr. C’s desk, and a card table laid out beside the desk itself. In red marker he’d drawn a line with little hash marks with dates. On the left, the first read “
10/15 – Maxilla awakens (?) Seeker chosen. Seeker = CF”

Then he’d written:

10/19: Wards hit. 1
st
attempt to steal. Maxilla safe.

10/20: Chomsky IDs AC as perp. IDs CF as demon’s appr.

10/21: Chomsky murdered. TJC arrives. Case still in possession. TJC never actually sees Maxilla.

10/23: Case stolen.

10/24: CF finds case opened. Maxilla not in case according to note by SC.

He’d drawn a blue bracket between the entries for the 19
th
and the 21
st
, with a mark in the middle pointing at the 20
th
. A line led from it to another entry that read “
Maxilla hidden”
. On the right side of the board, he’d put up a map of the southwest quarter of Missouri and the southeast quarter of Kansas, with an area circled in red that centered on New Essex.

The table had a thick file on it and a box with red stamps that read “EVIDENCE.” Dr. C perched on the edge of his desk looking irritated as Collins taped up a sheet of paper under the timeline with highlighted entries on it.

“Okay, so the journal did tell us something,” Collins said as he turned around. “From Chomsky’s journal entry, we know he was asleep until late Monday night, when the wards were activated. That’s the last mention he makes of the Maxilla. We know from his journal and from witnesses that he was at school all day Tuesday. Chance was the last person to see him alive, at about three-thirty that afternoon. We know he was killed sometime Tuesday night. That opens two windows of only a few hours when no one knows where he was.”

“About midnight Monday night to seven or so Tuesday morning,” Lucas offered, “and Tuesday afternoon to Wednesday morning, right?”

“Right,” Collins answered. “The investigation into his murder is still open, so I pulled the evidence we had on it. Detective Roberts pulled his bank statements, and we have him using his debit card to buy gas just south of Springfield around one o’clock Tuesday morning.”

“How does all of this help us find the Maxilla?” Dr. C asked.

“It doesn’t help us find the Maxilla. Concentrating on the sword only led to dead ends. What you have to do is focus on the guy who had it. We’re gonna find where Chomsky went to hide it.”

“What’s the big circle?” Wanda asked.