Steal the Sun (36 page)

“I love you.” It would be useless to say anything else.

I almost made it to the door when I was whirled around and Dev hauled me up against his body. His arms were a sweet cage holding me to his chest, my feet dangling inches off the floor. He kissed me and I ran my fingers through his hair, all the passion and love we had ever felt in that one meeting of lips.

He pulled back and rested his forehead against mine. “I love you, wife. Forever and always.”

I didn’t ask him to come with us. He would have said no. He was doing what he felt he had to and I was doing the same. I kissed him sweetly and gave him back his words. “Forever and always, my love.”

He set me down and he and Daniel exchanged a look. Something dark sat between them, a wariness I didn’t quite understand.

“Watch your back,” Daniel said.

Dev nodded and we walked out. I turned back as the door closed between us. His eyes were on me to the end.

I brushed a tear away, wanting so much to destroy that door that separated us from Dev.

“It’s time to go.” Daniel took my hand. Neil and Lee were already moving toward the front of the palace. We would exit through the front gates and from there we would be completely on our own.

Strangers in a strange land.

I turned away. Daniel was right. It was time to change this world. I had to. My world depended on it.

Chapter Twenty-One

“Is this like the Lucky Charms guys or the ones who ate Jennifer Aniston?” Neil asked as we peeked over a hill and looked down on the small encampment. There were several tents and two large campfires. Someone was having a party down there, and it sounded a little raucous.

“I think she survived that film.” This was definitely the place. There was that sucker in his green suit with his green and gold hat perched on his head. So stereotypical. Leprechauns had a uniform. They also had what looked like a roaming casino going.

“Huh,” Neil said thoughtfully. “I must have fallen asleep during that movie. It would have been better my way.”

“Don’t try to eat the leprechaun.” Daniel crawled up to us on his belly, keeping his head down. Even though it was well after dark, we didn’t want anyone to see us watching. “At least not until we figure out where he stashed his treasure. Then, man, feel free ’cause I was awake for that whole movie and they get pissed off when you take their gold.”

It had taken us two days, but we tracked them down. Normally leprechauns are solitary Fae creatures, but there were two down in the field working their short con. Even from this distance, I could see they had two tables of card games going. There were twelve faeries watching or playing along, and they all looked to be warriors, probably on their way to the palace. The war was already proving to be a boon to the plane’s con artists.

“He can keep his gold,” I muttered. “I just want the Blood Stone.”

Daniel had relaxed, so much more comfortable now that it was dark. We had thought to try to sleep through most of the day, shielding Daniel from the sun and reserving his strength. Unfortunately, the only way to track the leprechauns was by following their rainbow, and it was only visible during the day. Without Dev’s magic to feed from on a daily basis, his strength in the daytime was failing. He could still daywalk and the sun didn’t burn him to a crisp, but it was painful. We got along by protecting Danny’s skin with a black hoodie and sunglasses, but it was hot. He was so much happier now that he was able to get rid of the hoodie and gloves and pare down to his T-shirt and jeans. He was at full strength now that darkness had fallen.

“Well, I doubt the stone is down there, baby,” Daniel said, looking things over. “Harry dealt with them on the Earth plane. You remember he used one for a job back in the nineties. They don’t keep their treasure on them. They stash it away.”

My dad, Harry Wharton, had used a leprechaun once. He’d needed a person of small stature to get through a series of caves and unlock a door for the rest of the crew. Danny and I had been kids so we hadn’t been in on the heist. I just remembered how foulmouthed the little guy was and how much he’d liked beer. I also remembered that the leprechaun had buried his piece of the action. I don’t know why he had been against a bank, but he preferred the hard ground to Wells Fargo.

“So what’s the plan?” Neil asked, his gaze focused solely on me. If I’d hoped that close quarters would bring my husband and my best friend to some sort of understanding, I’d been wrong. They still avoided each other like the plague.

I watched as Lee prowled the edges of the forest down below. He clung to shadows and if I hadn’t known what to look for, hadn’t watched him work, I would never have seen him. He was being his normal, careful self. Lee never liked to walk into a situation until he’d taken a cautious inventory of every risk involved.

“Well,” I said, getting around to Neil’s question as Daniel settled himself down on the ground, his hand planted firmly on my ass. “I thought we would try to talk to them first. We should see if we can buy it from them.”

Neil rolled his eyes. “Z, they stole it in the first place.”

Danny leaned his head against my shoulder and squeezed a cheek. He didn’t care that we weren’t alone. Since we’d broken through his reserve back in Colorado, he never held back with the PDA. “No, they didn’t. They conned her out of it. Z’s right. We gotta respect a good con. If we don’t, what the hell kind of criminals are we?”

“The horny kind?” I asked because he was kissing on my shoulder, working his way toward my neck.

The last two days had been illuminating. In the course of our normal, daily lives, Daniel was very busy. Back home he was responsible for training new vampires and had all the work the Council gave him. He and Dev worked on their coup plans all the time. Sex was certainly something we slipped into the schedule, but not like this. I discovered that when Danny had nothing to do, he constantly tried to do me.

“I can’t help it.” A wicked grin brought out Daniel’s ridiculously cute dimples. No one who had killed as much as Daniel had should have adorable dimples. They always made me sigh. “I’ve started to think of this trip as a long overdue honeymoon, baby.”

“Oh, yes, Danny, this is all terribly romantic,” I whispered sarcastically. “When I think of a honeymoon, I think of Hawaii and a big comfy suite. I don’t think of tents and sleeping bags and hiking through Faery forests all day. I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since we left the palace.”

Neil eyed me. “I don’t think you’ve slept at all, princess. I’m pretty sure of it because you’ve kept me awake for two nights. I don’t want to go on your honeymoon.”

“How did I do that?” I’d stayed in the tent with Danny the whole night. Once we’d eaten our craptastic rations, I hadn’t bothered Neil at all.

Daniel grinned lecherously. “He’s talking about the noise you make, baby. You’re kind of a screamer.”

I blushed and reached back to firmly move Daniel’s hand off my ass. “We’re working. No hitting on the boss. It’s a rule.”

“We’ll see who the boss is,” Daniel whispered in my ear, not giving up his position. “I still wear the pants here, Z, but don’t worry. I’ll let you in them anytime you want.”

I laughed and pushed at my husband because he was such a dork and I still loved him. He rolled me over until I was on top, looking down at him.

“God, not again,” Lee groaned as he joined us. “Let her rest, Donovan. You would think her being one husband down, she could get some rest.”

“Spoilsports,” Daniel groused but let me scramble off of him.

I sat back against a tree, looking up at my bodyguard. “What’s the report?”

Lee’s brown eyes were serious as he looked at me. “There are only the two leprechauns. As far as I can tell, they aren’t armed.”

“They don’t need to be.” Daniel sat up and straightened his shirt. “Unless we lay physical hands on them or keep our eyes on them, they can teleport. I’m serious about keeping eyes on them. You can’t even blink or they’ll be gone in an instant.”

Lee nodded. “Okay. We have to deal with that. They’re in the early portions of the con. They’ve lost money at this point, so they aren’t going to want to drop everything yet.”

“Why don’t Danny and I head down and watch for a while?” I said. “You and Neil can work your way around to flank them. When the time is right, we blow their con and if they try to run, you catch their tiny asses.”

“And if they won’t talk?” Lee asked.

I shared a smile with Neil. “I have ways of making them talk. Trust me. This is going to be fun.”

I had plans for the evening. Daniel helped me up, his hand going around my waist.

“Have I told you how fucking hot you are?” Daniel obviously had plans, too.

I couldn’t help but laugh. We’d lost so much in the last few days, but Danny had been with me. He’d held me and loved me and given me strength. Sometimes I worried that Danny and I had too much of a past, but these last few days had proven me wrong. He’d given me a comfort no one else could have, an ease. As we began to walk down toward the leprechauns, I leaned into him, finding strength there.

He leaned over, kissing my hair. “This is kind of fun, Z. It reminds me of the old days except we have a ton of sex. I prefer having the sex. It makes everything better. Do you want to stop somewhere and have sex now?”

Yeah, he pretty much never stopped. “You could be nicer to Neil.” We hadn’t talked about it yet.

He sighed. “It’s hard, Z. It’s hard to forgive because he put you and Dev in danger.”

We kept walking, our feet crunching against the forest floor. I did understand that he was possessive and anything that went contrary to his nature came under fire. “Dev wasn’t your partner then. It shouldn’t have mattered.”

His face turned away. “I’d shared you with him by then. I’d had his blood by then. It mattered, Zoey. Neil…damn it, I want to forgive him. I do. Just give me time.”

The problem was vampires viewed time differently than the rest of us. I wasn’t ready to wait a couple of decades to have my family whole again. Still, I had more to worry about than just Neil. “Can you forgive Dev?”

He stopped as we reached the flat valley where the leprechauns were working. Roughly a hundred yards away sat the small encampment we’d been studying. “It isn’t the same.”

Something had been going on between them, a distance I didn’t understand. I could only think of one thing that could really come between them. “He told you to send Summer back. He actually told me to get rid of her.”

Daniel stopped, turning my way. “He didn’t understand, Z. Dev wouldn’t do that.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. I remembered that day so long ago. We’d all been confused and scared with a demon on our trail. I didn’t blame Dev, but I worried about Daniel. “Then what happened between the two of you?”

Daniel’s stubborn frown did nothing to dissuade me. “He’s just mad I wouldn’t commit genocide on his say-so. He wants to be able to point and shoot. I’m not his weapon, Z. I’m not anyone’s weapon.”

But there was obviously so much more and I knew suddenly that he wouldn’t tell me. Something had happened when they were out in the field, but he wasn’t about to talk to me about it. He strode forward, making any further conversation impossible.

Danny watched carefully as the con artists worked their game.

“Who can find the queen?” the leprechaun asked in a rapid-fire voice. “Ten gets you twenty. Twenty gets you forty. All you gotta do is keep your eye on the queen.”

“Seriously, who falls for three-card Monte these days?” I stared at the crowd surrounding them. The leprechaun’s hands shifted quickly, moving the cards back and forth.

“They learned it on the Earth plane, I’m sure.” Daniel’s eyes followed every movement. “These
sidhe
are from the country. They’re only making their way to the palace for the war. They’re just ripe for the plucking. What a bunch of pigeons.”

“We have a winner,” the leprechaun said with a frustrated sigh. He made a big deal of paying out the “winner.”

“We have a shill,” I commented and Danny smiled.

I watched as he caught Lee’s attention across the field and gestured toward the faery we were pretty sure was working with the leprechauns. They were working a classic short con. Get a bunch of people together with nothing better to do and offer them a seemingly simple game. The shill would look like everyone else. He would pretend to not know the cons and step up to play the game. He would make comments on how easy it was.
Hey
, he would say,
look at that
.
The idiots marked the queen without knowing it. We can take them for everything.
For a while, the shill’s words would prove true, but in the end, the fast hands of the con artists would win every time.

We stood on the fringes of the small crowd, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. The pigeons were starting to lose, but they hadn’t realized the scam yet. Unfortunately, they did realize something was wrong and, as usual, it was me.

One of the
sidhe
warriors stared at me and not in a sexy, good way. He looked at my hair, and distaste was plain on his face. He turned to his friend and whispered something that made Daniel tense beside me and then the friend studied me, too.