Black Magic Woman (10 page)

Except for right now. At the moment, Daphanie didn’t think a baker’s dozen of Xanax could offer her tranquility.

“Daphanie has a little problem,” Corinne said, cutting straight to the heart of the matter. “We were hoping you could help us figure it out.”

Missy cocked her head to the side and frowned. “Oh, no. Of course, I’m happy to help, but I hope it’s nothing serious.”

Daphanie feared she might choke.

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Corinne continued. “But I can tell you that it all starts with Quigley.”

“Uh-oh. That’s not a good sign.”

“Tell me about it.”

“I wish someone had told me about it yesterday,” Daphanie said.

Corinne shook her head. “Water under the bridge. The objective now is to figure out what we’re dealing with and come up with a plan for damage control.”

“Damage control?” Missy’s eyes widened and her hand reached out to hover over the phone beside her chair. “Should I call for reinforcements?”

“Maybe later. In fact, why don’t we fill you in and you can let us know if we need to muster the troops just yet?”

It was a little surreal, Daphanie decided, to be sitting there listening to someone else recount the events of last night. It felt almost as if she were hearing a story about another woman entirely, instead of a retelling of something she’d personally experienced.

Too bad last night couldn’t have been the nightmare and her odd dream the reality. Nothing so terrible had happened while she danced to drumbeats in the firelight, and it had felt so real, she could almost consider it a memory rather than a dream. And it hadn’t involved threats, fights, or being intimidated by tall, sexy men with heroic tendencies. That made it tops in her book.

“Oh, my goodness,” Missy breathed when Corinne had finished. “You met a Guardian? A real Guardian? I was ready to write them off as a myth. You know, a real myth, not a vampire-slash-werewolf myth. What was he like?”

Corinne threw up her hands. “That’s all you have to say? I tell you that Daphanie here ran off with an imp, mortally offended a witch doctor, and had dreams of performing some weird ritual that were so real she nearly passed out, and all you can ask is what the guy who walked her home was like?”

“Hey, I didn’t ‘run off’ with the imp,” Daphanie protested. “You make it sound like we were headed to an all-night wedding chapel in Vegas. I just went with him to a club and let him show me a little bit about the Others.”

“Yeah, and he nearly ‘showed you’ to an early grave!”

Missy held up her hands and scowled at Corinne. “Take it easy, Rinne. I’ll agree with you that Daphanie’s decisions last night might not have been the wisest ones she could have made, but she looks fine to me. She’s here, she’s unhurt, and according to what you’ve said, she’s under the protection of a Guardian. Frankly, that’s about as safe as a person can get, from what I hear.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

It took an effort for Daphanie not to repeat the question.

“Like I said, I’ve never met a Guardian, but Graham has mentioned them. From what he tells me, there aren’t many left these days. I’m not even sure if he’s met one.” Missy drew her legs up beneath her and leaned into the arm of her chair. “The louder the community rumbles about the time to Unveil ourselves, the fewer Guardian angels seem to be on the job. Though from what I hear, they’re not wild about the angel comparison.”

“You might say that,” Daphanie muttered.

“Graham says there’s nothing religious about them, so that may be what makes them touchy on the subject. Apparently, they’re not sent by God, or anything; they’re led by someone they refer to as the Watcher. He’s supposed to be the oldest Guardian alive, and it’s his job to keep an eye out for humans in danger and to assign a Guardian to protect them if need be.”

“That’s funny, because I didn’t see any winged warriors rushing to the rescue when you and Reggie nearly got yourselves killed.” Corinne crossed her arms over her chest and glared.

“Neither Reggie nor I were really in that much danger,” Missy said, her tone calm and only the slightest bit reproving. “Besides which, we had Graham and Misha watching over us. I think we were pretty well protected as it was. I gather that the Guardians save their efforts for humans who don’t have an advantage like that. In fact, the Guardians supposedly try to stay in the background and only reveal themselves to the humans if there’s no other way to help them, so I’m thinking that they generally deal with people who don’t know about the Others and may not even realize they’re in danger.”

“Trust me; I realized it,” Daphanie said.

Missy smiled. “From what I hear, I’m not surprised.” She hesitated for a moment, chewing her lip. “I’m sorry, but I have to ask … did the Guardian really have wings?”

The expression on the other woman’s face reminded Daphanie of nothing so much as a little girl about to hear a secret. She couldn’t help a soft laugh. “Huge ones. I mean, he didn’t spread ’em and fly away or anything, but even folded up, they were enough to give a girl pause. He didn’t have them all the time, though. It was like he could … I don’t know … put them away when he wasn’t using them. Where he hides them, I can’t imagine, but when we left the club, he looked pretty much like a normal guy.”

“Hm, maybe I have met a Guardian, then, and I just didn’t notice,” Missy said. “But as for the disappearing wings, I’ve learned over the last couple of years that magic can make a whole bunch of impossible things perfectly possible.”

Daphanie nodded, then she tried to imagine not noticing Asher Grayson pass by and it was like her brain blew a fuse. The idea just did not compute.

“That’s all well and good,” Corinne said, leaning forward, “but I’m more interested in hearing about what else the guy can do. I mean, how exactly does he plan to protect Daphanie? Aside from being huge and mean-looking and following her around like her shadow?”

Missy frowned in concentration. “I’m hardly an expert, but from what I can remember, Guardians do have certain powers of their own. Aside from the wings, of course.”

“Right,” Corinne said. “Because in a hairy situation, he could probably just scoop Daph up and fly her out of danger. Like Superman. Without the tights.”

The thought of Asher in skintight spandex flashed through Daphanie’s mind and made her draw in a deep breath. A very deep breath.

“They’re supposed to be able to identify people at a glance, first of all. Like, they can tell just by looking at someone for the first time if they’re human or Other, and even what kind of Other they might be—vampire, shifter, demon, what have you.”

Corinne nodded and made an encouraging gesture.

“I think, fundamentally, they view themselves as warriors, so they’re highly trained in combat, and I think I heard something about preternatural healing powers and unusual strength, comparable to a shifter, even. Also—don’t quote me on this, though—I think they can absorb a certain amount of harmful magic.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, if someone sent some kind of magical arrow at a human under his protection, a Guardian could step in front and take the damage instead without being hurt as badly as the human would have been. But that might be part of the healing ability.” Missy paused, brow furrowed, lips pursed. “That’s really all I can remember. Like I said, there aren’t a lot of Guardians around, but the stories say that once one has taken a human under his protection, he’ll do whatever he has to in order to keep them safe.”

“Once a Guardian, always a Guardian.”

Daphanie turned in the direction of the door and saw a tall, obnoxiously handsome man with toffee-streaked hair standing in the archway. Behind him was an even better-looking man with dark hair and lightly bronzed skin. Even if she hadn’t already known both of them to be Others, she would have assumed it of both. Just like with her new brother-in-law, these two were much too gorgeous to be human.

“Hi, sweetie.” Missy smiled at the fairer of the two, her face taking on the kind of glow that Daphanie would have mocked if she weren’t so jealous. The woman’s love for her husband shone in her expression like a beacon. “Come join us. You didn’t tell me Rafe was coming over.”

“I dropped in unexpectedly,” said the dark-haired man as he crossed the room to take Missy’s hand in his. He raised it to his lips as if it were the most natural thing in the world to kiss the back of a woman’s hand like a character from a Jane Austen novel. “You’re looking lovely as always, Melissa. You really must leave your brute of a husband and run away with me. I would shower you with diamonds, as befits your radiance.”

And somehow he managed to speak like that without sounding like a total prat.

Daphanie shook her head in bemusement.

“Leave my wife alone, you overgrown alley cat,” the other man growled, draping a possessive arm around his mate’s shoulders. “Go get your own woman.”

“Only if one of these two lovely ladies is available. I beg you to introduce me.”

Missy laughed out loud while Corinne rolled her eyes. Daphanie merely tried not to let herself be hypnotized by the intensely golden, flirtatious gaze now trained her way.

“Since you’ve already met both of them, I’d say you can stuff your charm and try it on someone who might not find it insulting,” Graham Winters taunted. “Corinne D’Alessandro is one of Missy and Regina’s oldest friends, so forgetting her name is about as flattering as complimenting her on how good she looks for her age. And Daphanie Carter is Danice’s sister. You met her last night at the wedding reception. So much for Rafael De Santos’s famous touch with women.”

“Ah, forgive me, ladies,” De Santos begged with a grin that could probably charm bracelets. From what Danice had said of him in the past, Daphanie suspected that “charm” was the werejaguar’s middle name. “I was clearly ill or suffering from some sort of mental impairment when we were introduced, otherwise I would never have forgotten such beauty.”

“Christ, I’m gonna need hip boots if he keeps shoveling this stuff.”

Missy elbowed her husband in the ribs hard enough to make him grunt. “Enough of your flirting, Rafe. Tell us what you meant about ‘once a Guardian, always a Guardian.’”

Graham had been correct. Daphanie had been introduced to Rafael De Santos during her sister’s reception, but the man had been simultaneously meeting about a dozen other people and already schmoozing with five or six more. She supposed that was part of the job of being the head of the Council of Others. She watched as the man settled himself gracefully in the vacant club chair opposite Missy’s.

“I meant just exactly that, my dear,” he said, speaking to Missy but training that glittering golden stare on Daphanie. “It is not in the nature of a Guardian to abandon a human once she has been taken under his wing, as it were. Especially if there is, perhaps, a lingering threat.”

“That’s what we’ve been trying to decide,” Missy said. “Whether or not the threat lingers.”

“May I ask what sort of threat?”

Corinne groaned and threw herself back into the sofa cushions. “No. I’m not telling that story again. It was hard enough to remember all the details the first time.”

“It’s not your story anyway,” Missy dismissed. “Daphanie, do you mind running through it all again? I’m sure the Cliff’s Notes version will do.”

Daphanie figured it would have to. Even after retelling and hearing the story retold in the bright light of day, somehow the events of last night seemed less real to her than the events her subconscious had conjured up this morning while she slept. If they’d asked her about the dream, she could have described every detail. About the episode at the club, she could offer not much more than an outline. The events had begun to blur somehow. The only figure she could remember in HD clarity was Asher, and she had to wonder if that was because her hormones played a part in keeping the image fresh in her mind.

And other places.

Forcing eyes of silver and gold out of her mind, she sketched a brief summary of her and Quigley’s jaunt to Lurk. She described the encounter with D’Abo, the altercation with the witch doctor and his entourage, and her timely rescue.

When she finished, Graham winced. “I swear, you humans must work at getting into this kind of trouble.”

His wife smacked him hard on the leg and scowled. “You can take your idiot Other prejudice and shove it, right alongside Rafe’s charm, Graham Winters. Were you listening to the same story I heard? Because it sounded to me like this Charles D’Abo character was the one who started the trouble. Daphanie was the innocent party here. Let’s keep that in mind before we open our smart mouths, okay?”

“Obviously Daphanie was not at fault for the altercation,” Rafe agreed smoothly, “but the unfortunate truth of our world is that when a human and an Other find themselves at odds, it is the human who faces the greater danger. I doubt that D’Abo is worrying whether he is in continuing danger this morning.”

Corinne pounced on the words. “Does that mean this creep really is dangerous? Should Daphanie be worried he might mean that crap about her getting ‘what she deserves’?”

“It is hard to say…”

“Wait, D’Abo said he wouldn’t hurt me,” Daphanie reminded them. “He told Asher that himself, so wouldn’t that indicate that I shouldn’t be worried?”

She hoped she sounded more convinced of that than she felt. The trouble was that she
wasn’t
convinced. That was why she’d let Corinne bring her here for answers, instead of relying on the word of a man who seemed to regard humans as beneath his notice. Did that suggest that they were beneath his sense of honor, too?