Twiceborn (10 page)

“You’re next,” she’d mouthed as I’d stared through the smoke, my own face bloodied in escaping Monique’s fate. She revelled in the proving. To the rest of us it was a bitter necessity, but to her it was a cause for sheer delight.

Jason still waited for my answer, watching me with a lazy glint of amusement in his eye as I checked the room. It was three-quarters full, mostly of businessmen lunching on the company account. My thralls were at a table by the door, one watching us, the other with his eyes on the street. The one watching nodded when I caught his eye. Nothing to report.

My cool act probably wasn’t fooling Jason. Finishing off Ingrid had cost a lot, both in money and in lives. Add to that the blow of Jason’s defection and his almost-successful attempt at killing me, and my situation remained dire even though months had passed. Continual harrying by Valeria hadn’t helped. Here a thrall would go missing, there a deal would fall through or another shifter defect, till I hardly knew who to trust. Always I was playing catch-up, always a few steps behind her. If Jason was genuine in his desire to change sides again, it could make a huge difference.

But that was a big if.

The fawning waitress brought Jason’s meal, but he hardly noticed her. His gaze rested on me as he ate.

“Valeria doesn’t trust me, you know,” he said round a mouthful of linguine. “I’m sure the only reason she wanted me was to deprive you. Nada’s always in her ear, trying to turn her against me. I’m walking a tightrope every day. Believe me, I want out.”

My phone buzzed. Luce. “Yes?”

“Are you with him?” she demanded. “Why didn’t you wait for me? I’m your head of security—it’s my job to protect you. Are you crazy?”

“You forget yourself,” I snapped. Jason busied himself with his pasta, trying to look as though he wasn’t listening. I turned away, cupping the phone with my other hand for at least the illusion of privacy, and lowered my voice. “This unreasoning hatred is exactly why you’re not here. You’re not yourself where he’s concerned.”

“Not myself? I’m not the one making small talk with the man who damn near killed me a few months ago.”

Jason beckoned the waitress and murmured something I didn’t catch.

“Not to mention what he did to me. Or doesn’t damage to a mere wyvern count?”

“Lucinda.” My voice hardened. Her petty grudges could not be allowed to take precedence over my best interests.

“Sorry,” she said at last, though her tone held little of apology. “But you can’t afford to take a stupid risk like this.”

“You’re wrong,” I said. “I can’t afford not to.”

“I take it that was Luce?” said Jason when I’d hung up. “Does she still hate me?”

“With a passion.”

He grinned. “She’ll get over it.”

If he thought so, he didn’t know Luce as well as he imagined.

“Finish your drink.” He indicated the last sip of mineral water in my glass. “I’ve ordered champagne. We should celebrate our new partnership.”

I arched one eyebrow. “That’s a trifle presumptuous. I haven’t agreed to anything yet.”

He laid one long-fingered hand over mine. “Don’t get huffy, Lee. You know you’re going to. Let’s skip over the part where you object and I try to persuade you with my brilliant arguments and get to the good part where we’re a team again.”

His hand was warm on mine and his blue, blue eyes sparked with amusement. I didn’t trust him for one minute, but I felt myself weakening regardless. I stared down at our hands on the snowy white tablecloth.

“Suppose I did agree—what then? I assume you’d have to lie low for a while, though Valeria’s not stupid. She’d guess where you were. I’d have to get Luce to beef up security on the house. You’d have to stay with me; I don’t have the manpower to protect more than one site.”

He grinned. “That should be no hardship.”

“That wasn’t an invitation.”

“Of course. Strictly business. I understand.”

I finished my water as the waitress arrived with a bottle of French champagne. The older ones were such snobs about wine—wouldn’t drink anything made in Australia. They didn’t know what they were missing.

“Let’s have a toast,” he said, raising his fizzing glass. “To the future!”

I took a sip and set the glass down, while he drained his and refilled it. I’d never cared much for champagne, so I toyed with my glass while he drank and chatted. His talk centred on complaints about Nada, Valeria’s lieutenant, and happy thoughts on how she might be brought down, and how Valeria had never appreciated him and therefore deserved everything that was coming to her.

“Not like you, Leandra, my sweet. You always knew how to make a man feel wanted.”

True. But I could learn from my mistakes. I wasn’t going down that particular path again, however attractive I found him, no matter how hard he flirted. Luce would be proud. She treated everyone with a fierce suspicion and wanted me to do the same.

One of my thralls approached our table. “Mistress, Steve reports two of Valeria’s servants three blocks away, moving in this direction.”

Anger stirred inside me as I turned to Jason. “Know anything about this?”

He grimaced. “I told you she didn’t trust me. She’s sent her lackeys out searching, to see what I’m doing.” He pulled out his wallet and placed a handful of fifties on the table. “I hate to eat and run, but I’d rather she didn’t find out yet.”

I watched him leave, wondering how far I could trust him.

“Mistress? We should leave too, just in case …”

In case it was all a lie and he’d just sprung a trap on us. Indeed.

I picked up my handbag, but it wasn’t till I stood that I realised something was wrong. The room spun so dizzily I fell heavily against my thrall. Taken by surprise, he couldn’t catch me before I careened into the neighbouring table, sending glassware crashing. Red wine spread like a bloodstain across the white tablecloth. The couple there drew back in shock, and suddenly the whole restaurant was staring,

My man showed great presence of mind. “It’s all right, folks. A little too much champagne, that’s all.”

He helped me across the room to his partner. Good work, Steve. I’d have to give him a raise. No, Steve was the other one. I gasped and stumbled again as my stomach clenched with a vicious griping pain.

Champagne? But I’d hardly touched it, and Jason had drunk half the bottle. They hustled me outside, one of them phoning the driver to bring the car around. The colours on the street were all wrong, and the people passing by seemed stretched and deformed. A woman on the other side of the street stared at me. I blinked, and she was gone. Was it only my imagination, or had her blonde hair been braided into a crown around her head?

The pain slashed its terrible claws through my abdomen again and I moaned. The bastard had poisoned me. How? The car oozed up to the curb. Its open door gaped like a mouth and swallowed me up.

Must have been just before the champagne came, when the conversation with Luce had distracted me. Was she in on it? “Finish your drink,” he’d said. That one last gulp of mineral water. I tried to laugh but only a whimper came out as I broke out in sweat all over. “Can’t you drive any faster?” someone demanded.

Poison. How very old-fashioned. How stupid was I, to fall for his lies again?

“Mistress? I’ll call a doctor. Just hang on till we get home.”

My mind raced as my body rode the waves of pain. “No. No doctor.” We were immune to most poisons, so there were only a couple of possibilities here, and no doctor could do anything for me in either case. I had an hour or two, three if I was lucky. I clenched my fists, anger coursing through me. No! I refused to admit defeat. Not like this.

“I’ll call Luce, then.” Not-Steve, whatever his name was, clearly didn’t want to take responsibility for a rapidly disintegrating situation. But I didn’t want Luce either. The timing of that phone call was suspiciously convenient.

I could trust no one. If there was a way out I had to find it on my own. Another spasm racked me. And soon. I fell against my panicking thrall as the car rocketed around a corner.

My mouth was so dry I could hardly speak. The only thing I could think of was so desperate it seemed hopeless.

“Don’t call Luce,” I croaked into his shoulder. “Just get me home. Have a herald meet us there. Make sure it’s the same one as last time, do you understand? The girl.”

If the alternative was to lie down and die, I had no choice.

I had to try.

***

I opened my eyes on an unfamiliar ceiling. Moonlight lay across the sheets, and the breeze from the open window carried a faint hint of salt and the sound of waves, like a great animal breathing. It took a moment to figure out where I was. A jumble of images filled my head, the fading shards of a dream.

Jason had been in it, smug as ever, but it wasn’t Jason lying beside me. Why the hell was I wasting good brain cells dreaming about
him
when Ben lay here, snoring gently in my ear? If I never saw him again it would be too soon.

I’d lost the thread of the dream. It had made perfect sense at the time, as dreams did, but now all I recalled was something about poison and a deep feeling of distrust.

The red numbers on the clock said 3:05. Halfway through a luxurious stretch, my bandaged shoulder twinged. It hardly hurt at all. Seemed odd, but I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe the scratches hadn’t been as deep as they’d looked with blood everywhere.

Thinking of blood recalled the hideous image of my bloody hands. I shifted restlessly, glaring into the dark. Through the bedroom door I could see the black shapes of unfamiliar furniture in the tiny house’s main room. Ben stopped snoring and rolled over, his arm curving protectively round me. Why couldn’t I remember what had happened?

I could see the garden, hear the faint tap of my shoes on the paving stones as I walked the tree-lined path. Red roses bloomed on my left, their perfume rich and heady. The path curved around an ornamental fishpond where fat carp slipped lazily under a Japanese-style bridge.

Again I saw the woman waiting beneath the trees, her back to me. She looked like she’d stepped out of an office on her lunch break: slim grey skirt with a matching tailored jacket, long blonde hair caught back in an elegant tortoiseshell clasp at her nape. Then she turned, but this time I saw her face, corpse-pale and beaded with sweat. Her huge brown eyes were desperate.

Help me, Kate.

I jumped, heart pounding, and Ben muttered a sleepy protest. Was this Leandra? Had I helped her or killed her?

“You okay?” Ben’s breath tickled my ear. He sounded only half awake.

“Fine.” I was turning into such an accomplished liar. “Go back to sleep.”

He knew me too well to be taken in. “You’re not still worried about becoming a werewolf, are you?”

“No.”

“Are you in pain?” He propped himself up on one elbow, trying to get a good look at my face in the dim light. “Do you want some more painkillers?”

“No. Really, Ben, it hardly even hurts. Stop fussing.” I stroked his stubbly face to soften my words. I’d never admit it, but I kind of liked the fussing. “I was trying to remember what happened today. It drives me mad that I can’t.”

I told him what I’d recalled.

He pressed a thoughtful kiss into the palm of my hand. “Could be Leandra. She’s—she
was
—blonde.”

“But it could be anyone, couldn’t it?” She certainly didn’t have a monopoly on blonde hair. My skin tingled everywhere his lips touched.

“True. Is that all? You didn’t see anyone else? Nothing out of the ordinary?”

“Not that I can
remember
.” Frustration filled my voice. “Ben, what if it’s true? What if I did kill her?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Why would you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe she attacked me. And why can’t I remember? It seems suspicious—something weird’s going on. And then there’s the stone, and the glowing guy—”

“Whoa, back up there. What stone?” Suddenly he sounded wide awake.

With all the other excitement, I’d forgotten to tell him. “Wait here.”

I padded across the cool floorboards, back through the main room to the tiny pink bathroom. My handbag was there, tossed into a corner.

“You won’t believe this.” I offered him the black stone as I came back into the bedroom. “I threw this up when I got home from work.”

The bed creaked as he sat up and took it, holding it up to the light from the window. The silver tracery sparkled even in the dark room. “You threw this
up
? What the hell is it?”

Deflated, I sat on the lumpy bed. The sheets still held the warmth of my body. “I was hoping you’d know.”

“Nope.” He shook his head. “Never seen one before.”

I took it back, turning it over as he had done, as if the answer would suddenly appear in glowing letters on the dark surface. It felt warm in my hand. Sighing, I thrust it back into my bag and stared out the window at the black silhouettes of gum trees against the sky.

Outside a patch of darkness broke from the shadowy trees and flowed across the yard. I froze.

“Ben. There’s something out there.”

He followed my gaze to the window, but nothing moved outside now.

“Get dressed.” He pulled on his jeans in two quick moves. I hunted for my T-shirt on the floor, painfully conscious of the open window looming behind me.

“What is it? Can you see anything?” I whispered, struggling into my shorts. I had a bad feeling about this. My fingers shook as I tried to do up the button of my fly.