Bladed Magic (8 page)

I was already tuning him out.

He could pinpoint all he wanted.

I had another plan in mind.

Apparently, I had a talent for multi-tasking because while I was digging for the information I needed, I came across a couple of spots that would probably suit Justin. I jotted them down—kept an eye on him—and continued on my search.

It wasn’t hard.

The internet made things all too public.

The internet was the reason why
we
had been forced out into the open.

The internet. YouTube. Idiots who couldn’t remember that territory disputes really needed to be settled privately.

Nobody had publicized anything about the deaths of those girls, not their funerals or anything else.

But even non-humankind had nosy sons-of-bitches and when you had nosy sons-of-bitches, there were those who’d think it was completely cool to dig into fresh wounds, all in the name of
the public has the right to know
.

There was a blog, run by some offshoot that lived near the borderlands, an area I avoided with everything I had in me. I’d heard of him—went by the name of Cyclops, although I had no idea if the name had any real meaning. He did use a one-eyed monster as the icon for the blog. The blog was a news site and most of it, to his credit, was researched and it tended to focus on news about other offshoots, the Assembly, the witch houses, lower-ranking wolves and cats and happenings outside of East Orlando. I suspect he was more than a little afraid of the Wolf Pack and the Cat Clan. Usually people with brains
were
.

That blog gave me the information I needed, detailing the funerals for the slain girls and where they’d have memorials, if they’d have them at all. Without bodies, some families chose not to do anything, hoping against hope that the child would somehow make it back to them.

Four bodies had been recovered.

Two had been placed in the same cemetery, one that had been built in the narrow strip of land where cat and wolf land intersected.

But that wasn’t the one that made my blood burn.

It was the listing below.

The little red-haired cat. The facts surrounding her death, and what had happened after, flashed through my mind. Her parents had tried to go to the Cat alpha for help. The father had been killed just daring something so trivial. Nothing about that was printed, but those were the rumors riffling through the cat shifter community and I could believe it.

The mother, missing still.

The girl had been buried in the graveyard near an old church well outside East Orlando.

“Find anything?”

Clumsily, I shoved the datapad toward Justin. It was the information he’d been looking for. Useless in my opinion.

As he looked it over, I cleared the computer’s history and closed the windows.

I don’t know if I managed an innocent look when I looked back at him but I did my best. He nodded at me and said, “We’ll hit all three. If he’s been in the area, I’ll be able to tell—”

“You can do it.” I pushed back from the table and looked around for my bag, avoiding his gaze. “You nearly got my ass locked in an Assembly vault earlier. I’m not even
in
the Assembly so I don’t have the pitiful rights they’d allow me. They could have just killed me where I stood. I got you the information you needed. Take it from there.”

When I turned around to look at him, he was watching me with eyes devoid of emotion.

After a moment, he took a step closer. “So. Just like that. Ready to go back to pouring drinks for lowlifes already?”

“Hey, the tips are decent.” Actually, most of the time they sucked and people looked at me like I was the next up on the menu. But it was predictable. It was safe. And…I wasn’t heading back there yet anyway. He didn’t need to know…

The gleam in his eyes had my spine twitching. “Is that right?”

I went to dodge around him and he shot out an arm. “Tell me something, Kitty. What did you find when you were digging around online?”

He leaned in and when I took a breath to steady my nerves, it flooded my head with the scent of him.
Whoa…
he smelled…
whoa
. My belly started to twist and to my utter shock, it wasn’t the
fear
I’d expected. Men usually either freaked me out or just caused a…
whatever
response. Justin, though, with that wicked grin and the reckless attitude was something else. And now I had the scent of him flooding me. He smelled like magic. He smelled like grass and summer and abruptly, I had an image of him across from me, grinning as he came at me with a sword.

It wasn’t a frightening image.

He’d said something about sparring—my head spun with that image and when it stopped spinning, the images shifted, reformed. And now…he was coming at me again, all right. But in a different way. His naked skin to mine. Our breath mingling.

“You’re going to make me lose track of the job here,” he murmured.

I blinked and eased back, half-expecting the moment to shatter, sending shards of glass into my flesh. I almost
welcomed
it. But instead, he reached out, rested a hand on my forearm. That light contact pulled a gasp out of me. It was like grabbing magic out of the air, his skin on mine. It wasn’t painful, but it sent sparks of sensation jolting through me.

I couldn’t move, could barely breathe as he moved in and dipped his head. The heavy fall of his hair fell around us as he brushed his lips against my cheek. “I knew the second I looked at you that you were going to be trouble. Turns out I’m right,” he whispered against my skin.

I tensed, terrified.

“I kinda like trouble. But…”

He pulled back and my heart slammed, too hard and too fast, against my ribs. “This is the kind of trouble that requires some time, some attention. So we’ll just let it wait a little while. At least until this job is done.”

Curling my hands into fists, I let my nails cut into my skin, that slight pain focusing me enough so I could come back down to earth. “That’s fine,” I said. Was that
my
voice? That raspy, erratic tremble? Clearing my throat, I tried again. “That’s just fine. You go finish the job. I did my part.”

I edged around him.

“You never did tell me what you found,” he called out behind me.

“Sure I did. I gave you the information.”

He chuckled. “Kitty, you’ve got a lot to learn about the world you live in. Here’s your next lesson.”

I made the mistake of glancing back at him.

His eyes were gleaming and that wide, taunting smile was firmly in place. His gaze dropped to linger on my mouth for a moment and my heart started to race all over again.

“You can’t lie to a witch. We see it. But you go on ahead…poke around, see what you can find.” Then he winked. “Tell you what, Kitty-kitty. If you find that runner before I do, I’ll let you try to beat me up. You won’t win, though.”

I gaped at him. “Who said I wanted to fight you?” Then blood rushed to my face as my own thoughts taunted me.

“Don’t you?” He rocked back on his heels. “It’s not about fighting, though. It’s called fun. It’s not like you don’t like those weapons you pack around. I know better. I saw the way you were all but drooling over the ones on my wall. Go on. Go see if you can’t pull a thread free and figure out something about this monster we got on the run.”

He turned back to the large table. “Find him. I dare you.”

I was half through the door when he said, “Hey. Catch.”

I barely caught the keys. Staring at them, I scowled.

“You’ll do better if you have wheels.”

Find him. I dare you
.

Arrogant peacock.

I made a face at the dials on the dashboard and tried to remember the lessons Goliath had given me the past summer.

I
knew
how to drive. I had driven a car, a few times.

But this one had a lot more bells and whistles than Goliath’s old van.

“Works the same way,” I muttered. It had to. It had a key. It had four wheels. It operated on a road.

I passed the keycard over the ignition area and when it purred to life, I smiled, pleased.

Okay.

I managed that much.

The smile lasted exactly fifteen seconds. My screech of terror took a little longer to fade. I damn near drove the car through the front of Justin’s house.

Panting, I gripped the wheel and stared at the porch in front of me. I gulped and then looked down at the lettered area. I’d wanted to pull the car around. I’d pressed on the gas.

Looking up, I saw Justin standing on the porch, arms crossed over his chest.

Already this wasn’t going well.

I eyed the letters again. I’d just given it too much gas—no. This was too new. It wasn’t going to operate on gas. Too much of whatever fuel it used. Sleek and shiny as it was, it probably had a duel engine, solar and e. Slowly, I shifted into reverse and lightly touched the pedal. It glided back, nice and easy.

Much better
.

Although he continued to watch me, I didn’t look at him as I swung the car around and headed off down the lane.

It would serve him right if I just headed south to TJ’s. She could call him to come get his car—it might or might not be in the same condition it was in now.

But while the peacock might deserve it, the girls…

Yeah.

Okay.

I pulled up a mental image of the maps I’d studied.

Then, with Colleen’s voice urging me on, I turned and headed northwest.

You’re guided by those instincts
.

I hoped Colleen was right.

There was a little market in the store close to the cemetery. I pulled over. I had to pee, I needed a drink and as I stood at the counter, my eyes fell on the display of flowers near the register.

I hated flowers.

Well, not if they were in the ground.

Cutting them like that was a human thing.

Of course, I was in a human place of business so it wasn’t surprising I’d see them there. I didn’t understand it. People cut flowers, take them out of their natural habitat and already they are dying. I could even faintly smell that coming death—it wasn’t unpleasant, not yet. But it was a flat scent of…lifelessness. Still, I found myself gazing at the flowers.

“Would you like to get some of the flowers?”

Shifting my attention the girl behind the counter, I frowned.

She started to squirm and I could have kicked myself. I could pass for human. Nothing about me screamed
magic
or
monster
but humans and NHs acted in ways that were just…different. She’d asked a question. If I kept looking at her like she was a puzzle, I was going to freak her out. People like me—non-humans—did our best to avoid freaking out her kind.

“Sure.” I pasted a polite, fake smile on my face and touched one of the bouquets in front. Daisies, bright and cheerful. “This one.”

A few minutes later, I left the store behind, acutely aware that at least one person in there had been unsettled by my presence. This was why humans irritated me. I wasn’t worth even being
noticed
by them. Well, sure, I could have killed anybody in there, but I wasn’t the monster under the bed. I was more likely to take off running from anything that looked at me funny.

It was the rest of my kind that they needed to worry about.

But if they’d decided they were uncomfortable, all they’d have to do was make one call. I’d never pass as human if somebody knew what to look for. And I wouldn’t even have the protection of the Assembly behind me. It was poor protection, but it was better than the instant death handed out to the unaffiliated NHs found out in the human populace.

Shoving all of those thoughts aside, I watched the road, waiting for the turn-off.

There it was.

Cobb Cemetery
.

I wonder why she was buried here. Had to be a family connection. If there was a family connection, family who wouldn’t argue with her being buried here despite her NH blood, then that would explain it.

My car wasn’t the only one.

And when I caught sight of the other car, my skin started to buzz.

Sliding out, I kept my face blank.

There was a man, wearing a dull brown jacket, standing roughly near the plot where I needed to go.

And when I started up the walk, I could see the way he tensed.

No human would have noticed. It was too far away.

Not yet…not yet
…

Veering to the side, I stopped at a headstone featuring two joined hearts.

Beloved mother and father. You are so missed
.

That was nice.

Crouching down, I put the flowers down. Somebody else had been here recently. I’d picked a good spot. The other flowers were wilted. It seemed the courteous thing to do so I picked them up, watching my man from the corner of my eye.

He hadn’t moved.

And he watched me.

Somebody brushed inside my head.

I
felt
it.

Fighting not to recoil, I focused on the people buried beneath my feet.

I had no happy memories of my parents. But I had a happy memory of my mother and I latched on to it, the way she tucked me into bed at night, how she sang to me.

I love you
…

I kept my surface thoughts focused on that, just that.

And vaguely, that crawling, probing touch eased away.

Oh. He was going to hurt for that.

As he started to rise, I straightened my arm and dropped one of my daggers into it.

He was striding my way now, head bent.
Come on…come on…

I was about ready to do something desperate just to make him look up so I could make sure it was him when the roar of the engine came from off in the distance.

I shot a look over my shoulder. Instinctively, I whirled back around as he came rushing for me.

Satisfaction tore through me.

I wouldn’t find him, huh?

I let the dagger fly and it buried itself in his gut. He screamed, his doughy white hands going to clutch at his belly as he went to his knees.