Crossed (46 page)

TABITHA:

UNHEX MY HUSBAND

He didn’t even recognize me,” I shouted at John Paul Courtney as I ran full speed in human form down the side of the road in Paris. People were noticing, but the way I looked at it, that was the True Immortals’ fault. If they’d just left Eric and me alone to have our honeymoon, none of this would have happened. “He sensed me and he didn’t even recognize me. He said, ‘Hey.’”

“That little sister of yours done hexed the boy.” John Paul Courtney’s ghost floated alongside me on a horizontal plane like a bad rear-screen projection effect. While he had saved me from burning up by using the handle of
El Alma Perdida
to shove my unconscious little cat body up under a car, I attributed at least half of my survival to sheer dumb luck. I mean, what if someone had moved the car? I’d assume he had a backup plan, but . . .

“Well, duh!” Zipping along the roadside, I took a swipe at the ghost, averted an unintended plunge into the River Seine with sheer willpower, regained my stride, and shot on after Eric and my sister. It wasn’t about spending a night in Paris
now, it was about getting my husband back before he had to fight
la Bête du Gévaudan,
the thought of which was terrifying. I’d never seen Eric in a fight he couldn’t win, but against
la Bête du Gévaudan,
he’d been powerless.

I caught up to the car again, close enough for Eric to sense me, and kept announcing myself in the hope that he’d hear me or remember me. He didn’t, though. It was weird: I got a connection, but it was like a one-way mirror. I could see him hovering in my mind’s eye, a semitransparent hologram. Queen’s soundtrack to the movie
Flash Gordon
—the football fight portion—playing on his iPod rang clear as a bell to my ears. The scent of him filled my nostrils, but to him, I was invisible. “It’s me, damn it! Eric! Eric!”

Everybody’s seen those cop shows where the witness is behind the glass, pointing out the suspect, and an idiot turns on the light in the room so the one-way glass becomes a window. In the mental contact, a light turned on and Eric vanished as if I’d been seeing, feeling, and hearing a reflection, and in its place was Rachel, driving the limo and watching me through the rearview mirror. It was just an image, a mental projection, but my little sister stared at me, eyes in a mirror, eyebrows narrowing, and spoke in a voice filled with derision.

“Hello, slut. Your master is busy at the moment, but luckily for you he has a thrall powerful enough to intercept your attempt at reaching him and tell you to fuck off. Enjoying your honeymoon?”

“I don’t have time for this, Rachel. If we don’t leave Paris tonight, then Eric is going to have to fight
la Bête du Gévaudan
.”

“So? Eric can kill anything.”

“
La Bête
is an immortal werewolf, Rachel. Eric already fought him once and this thing batted down the uber vamp like it was nothing. Whatever you’re doing has to stop, and we have to get him out of here.”

I dodged a little Citroën Nemo, vaulting over the rear and
dashing down the hood. My ankle buckled on the asphalt and I rolled back onto the hood for a fraction of a second, long enough for the driver to see me, and balled myself up, feet flat against the bumper, palms on the hood to launch off again. The driver lost control of the car and swerved into another lane, sideswiping a minibus.

“How athletic,” Rachel mocked.

“Rachel, why the hell are you doing this?”

“Because I made a deal.” Her eyes softened. “I didn’t want to completely screw up your honeymoon, Tab. I would have let you have a couple of nights, but I was going to get killed if Ebon Winter hadn’t given me a get out of jail free for a favor card . . .”

“Winter put you up to this?”

“He said if Eric didn’t lose in Paris, then he wouldn’t win in Void City.” Rachel’s image flickered as the car sped up, and I increased my pace to match it.

“And you believed him?”

“He said it was a bet.” Her eyebrows drew in closer at the center, the outer edges arched high. “Have you ever known Winter to lose a bet?”

No, I hadn’t. Winter never lost. Eric had to lose here to win there. Win what? Lisette had headed to Void City. Did Winter mean Eric had to become embroiled in all this Immortal Politics crap to have a chance at Lisette?

“Did he explain anything?”

“Does Winter
ever
explain anything?”

“What exactly are you supposed to do?”

“It’s a good thang you don’t show up on film,” JPC shouted next to me. Several motorists had cell phones out, trying to take pictures or video of me.

“Keep him here a week,” Rachel said.

“And to do that you decided to kidnap him and make him cheat on me.”

“Oh, please.” Rachel flipped me the bird. “Do you know a better way to keep Eric occupied than with liberally applied pussy? Consider it his bachelor party come late and forget about it. It’s not like he’s going to be faithful anyway. Not unless your name is Marilyn—and neither of us are her.”

“Damn it, Rachel!” I poured on the speed, leaving my ghost escort so far behind that he blew away in a puff of smoke and re-formed next to me.

“Don’t go doin . . .” He fell behind. Vanished. Re-formed.

“. . . that, missy. It ain’t . . .” He lost the pace, vanished, and re-formed a third time. “. . . fun a t’all.”

“Sorry,” I mouthed. “You go wait in the In-between or something, but keep track of me.” I slowed up to keep from pulling past his range limit. “And, John Paul.”

“Yes?”

“If I fall asleep tonight and I don’t have Eric . . .”

“Yes?”

“I’ll need you to shoot me with
El Alma Perdida
. Can you do that?”

“Well, a certain number of times and in the raht circumstances, but it’ll set you on fahr.”

“Only if the bullet lodges in me,” I said. “You have to make sure the bullet goes clean through, enough to wake me up, but not set me ablaze.”

“Maybe you ain’t noticed, missy, but Perdy’s bullets don’t like ta go straight through.”

“Then pull the bullet out, but fast. Promise me?”

“Why do you want me ta shoot you in the first place?”

“To wake me up, so I can keep looking. We’re on a timetable here.”

“Ah promise.” He didn’t sound happy. “But it’ll count as one of yore times.”

“What times?”

“Times I kin fahr Perdy on yore behalf.”

“How many do I get?”

“I cain’t tell you.”

“Fine then. Done.”

Courtney’s body lost cohesion, drifting apart in a roiling cloud of smoke scattered on the breeze, and I sped back up, the repetitive slap of my boots on the pavement jarring my knees and rubbing raw against my skin the longer I kept it up.

“I’m sorry, Rae,” I said when we were in full contact again through her thrall-master bypass. “Winter’s going to have to lose this bet.”

“I thought you might feel that way.” She waggled her eyebrows impishly. “Say hello to my little friend.”

Irene appeared before me at the same time I sensed her. She was at least twenty years older than me, vampirically. Pink hair and a slight figure masked a core of strength. She was a Vlad, too. That I hadn’t sensed her before, I chalked up to Rachel’s mystic shenanigans. She wore capri pants and an open ruffled blouse without a bra. My eyes went to the wedding rings on her finger. I’d only seen them once before, but I recognized them.

Greta had brought them back when she finally got around to cleaning out Marilyn’s apartment. They were Marilyn’s wedding rings—an engagement ring with a large square radiant-cut diamond flanked by two tapered baguettes, and a matching wedding band of channel-set radiant-cut stones. There was an engraving on the inside, but I couldn’t remember what it said. “He’s going to kill you.”

“Nah,” she said, jogging backward as fast or faster than I ran forward. “He’s got a soft spot for me.” She smirked. “And a hard-on.”

“Irene . . .”

“Oh, what’s the harm?” She darted from side to side, hard to follow with my eyes, so fast—even for a vampire, unbelievably fast. “It’s a few tumbles. You’ll get him back in a few days
and the sex you guys have will be great. Makeup sex is the best.”

“Didn’t he try to kill you?”

“Oh please.” Irene shook her head. “That was forever ago. A tiff. It’s hard to stay mad at Eric. It would be like staying mad at Disney World because Pirates of the Caribbean broke down once. The other rides are still fun.”

“Irene . . .”

She stopped, going from high speed to stationary in an instant, arm outstretched, and it clotheslined me. My head and body flew in divergent directions and the traffic went nuts, cars crashing into each other as my blood spurted everywhere—not as much as a decapitated human might have, but impressive nonetheless.

I lay in the dark, unable to move, when John Paul Courtney appeared next to my head.

He let loose an appreciative whistle. “That one’s feisty.”

“Head back on,” I mouthed.

“I’ll do my best,” he said. “I cain’t touch you, but I kin touch Perdy and she kin touch ya. Got you under the car at the hotel, didn’t I?”

The indignity of having one’s head rolled across the highway to be reattached to one’s body cannot be underestimated. Particularly when the ghost of an ignorant hick who’s doing the job misjudges a car trying to drive past the accident and gets you hit again in the middle of the road. Yes, JPC had rolled my cat-body up under a nearby car just before dawn on the same day, but it hadn’t been nearly so far, and I hadn’t been awake for it.

In mid-roll, our surroundings shifted and I found myself in a Vale of Scrythax a few feet from my body with no JPC to roll me the rest of the way.

“You are a very determined vampire,” a German-accented voice said. Aarika stepped into view, armored up and ready for
a fight. “And an even more determined wife. I’ve convinced the Council that if I don’t provide you my assistance, our furry itinerant dinosaur will hold it as a breach of trust.”

She rolled my head back to my neck and when the flesh touched, my body reawakened and the healing process screeched to life.

“Do you have a car?” I asked.

She helped me stand.

“I do.”

“I can track Eric, but only as a cat. It’s hard to explain.” My outfit was ruined. “Can you understand Cat?”

“I can link us temporarily.” She touched my forehead, and a telepathic link opened between us.

“Say something.”

“This feels different, more . . . organized than when I talked with James.”

“Of course,” she said with pride. “I am German. Now transform.”

I did, reassured by the familiar feel of my feline form, a welcome change from sore ankles, wrecked clothes, and dirt.

“Can you still understand me?” I thought.

“Of course.”

We walked to where she said we’d be out of the road and we left the Vale, appearing in the real world next to a silver sports car with futuristic lines and a front grill reminiscent of a guitar pick. The doors rotated up like the wings of some stylish insect.

“Wow.”

“You like it?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“It’s a Wiesmann GT MF5. A good German car. Don’t claw up the seats or I will be forced to kill you.”

I climbed into the seat.

“Shedding is to be kept to a minimum.”

She pressed the silver Start button and the car roared to life. As we pulled onto the road, JPC appeared in the passenger’s seat, overlapping me.

“I like this un,” he said. “I put Perdy in the trunk.”

“Thanks, John Paul,” I meowed.

“Think it,” Aarika corrected. “Don’t speak it. I can understand your thoughts, not your words.”

She pulled back into traffic, ignoring the emergency vehicles behind us.

“Did anyone get hurt?” I asked.

“Of course,” she snapped. “Vampires played among humans.”

“Keep going straight,” I thought at her. “I may not have a whole lot of notice on turns.” I switched to meows for talking to John Paul. “John Paul, you go ride with Eric. Come back and tell me when they turn.”

    47    

ERIC:

BLIGNORANCE IS HISS

Two hours later, I finished watching
Casablanca
and started on
Singin’ in the Rain.
Gene Kelly had just escaped his fans and was jumping off the roof of a streetcar and into the passenger’s seat of Debbie Reynolds’s car when I hit Pause.