Right Hand Magic (31 page)

Hexe turned to me, his golden eyes darting over my body. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Did he hurt you?”

I shook my head. “I’m okay.”

“Thanks to all the gods in every heaven,” he whispered, cupping my face in his right hand. “I don’t know what I would do if anything bad ever happened to you.”

He wrapped his arms around me, pressing my body tight against his own, as his warm, pliant lips found mine. I eagerly returned his kiss, like a woman dying of thirst drinking a glass of cold, clear water. I had come so horribly close to losing this amazing man forever, I never wanted to let him go.

But as we broke our first kiss, Hexe’s eyelids fluttered and his face went deadly pale. I caught him in my arms as he fell into a swoon. It was then I realized just how badly he’d been wounded in his battle with Lukas. His naked torso was covered with deep scratches and bite marks, and when I gently cradled his back as I helped him to the ground, my arms came back bloody.

“What’s wrong?” Lyta asked.

“Hexe has been hurt,” I explained, trying to keep my fear at bay. Bursting into tears at that moment wasn’t going to do either one of us any good. “He’s lost a lot of blood. He needs a doctor!”

“Will I do instead?” Lady Syra asked, smiling down at me as I held her injured son in my arms. She knelt and removed a small jar of ointment from her Prada purse, which she then rubbed over Hexe’s wounds. Within seconds the bleeding stopped and the cuts and bites began to close.

“What are
you
doing here?” I gasped.

“Don’t look so surprised, my dear. Apparently there was at least
one
fan of this horrific blood sport still loyal to the royal house.” She returned the ointment to her purse and removed a flask of greenish liquid, which she tipped into her son’s mouth, causing him to spit and sputter. “I received an anonymous text message, informing me of what Marz was up to.”

Hexe’s eye fluttered open. “I should have known you were involved, Mom.” He smiled ruefully. “You’re the only other person who can let Scratch out of the house.”

“Yes, when I learned what was happening, I lost no time setting your familiar free and sending him ahead of me. Imagine my surprise,” Lady Syra said, nodding in the direction of Hildy and Lyta, “when I arrived to find the cavalry loitering in front of Ghastly’s Diner.”

“Yeah, sorry about getting here so late, guys,” Hildy said apologetically. “We were on our quarterly ride to Woodstock when I got your text. We got back as fast as we could.”

“What about Scratch?” Hexe asked as he got back on his feet. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine, son,” Lady Syra said reassuringly. “Marz’s familiar decided to dematerialize rather than risk being killed on the mortal plane. I’ve already sent Scratch home to lick his wounds. You should do the same. That healing is fresh, and I don’t want you tearing it back open.” She shook her head in disgust as she looked at the squalor of the kennels. “I took the liberty of calling the Paranormal Threat Unit just before I arrived. They should be here any minute to mop things up. I would recommend that you and your friends make yourselves scarce. The New York City justice system takes a dim view of vigilantism—even in Golgotham.”

“Your mom’s right,” I said as Hexe and I slipped our arms around each other’s waists. It felt so incredibly natural, as if we had been holding each other for years.

“She usually is.” He smiled. “You’ll find that out soon enough.”

“C’mon, you two!” Lyta said, motioning for us to hurry up. “We’ll give you a ride home.”

I looked around, suddenly realizing we were missing a member of our group. “Where’s Lukas?”

“Don’t worry about him.” Hexe smiled. “You know how cats are. He’ll show up at the house when he’s hungry. Besides, he has no reason to hide anymore.”

I took Hexe’s six-fingered hands in my five-fingered ones and kissed them. “Before we go riding off into the night with a bunch of lesbian road warriors, there’s just one thing I wanted to tell you. ...”

“Yes, Tate? What is it?”

“Don’t you
ever
nearly get yourself killed trying to save my life
ever
again! Not that I don’t appreciate the gesture, mind you. . . .”

He grinned and leaned in for another kiss. “You know what they say—‘No pain, no gain.’ ”

I rolled my eyes at that last part, but I kissed him anyway.

After a week spent recuperating from his near miss in the fighting pit, Hexe was finally taking me on our first real date. And, as promised, he wasn’t taking me to the Calf.

Lukas was standing in the door of the kitchen as I came down the stairs in a strapless black sequined lace cocktail dress and a pair of Jimmy Choo open-toe sling-back pumps. Now that he was no longer a fugitive from the Malandanti, the teenaged were-cat had transitioned from refugee houseguest to paying boarder, thanks to his new job delivering prescriptions and medicinal meals via bicycle for Dr. Mao.

“What are
you
all dressed up for?” he asked.

“Hexe has reserved a table for us at the Golden Bowery,” I explained as I finished swapping out my stainless steel hoops for sparkling pear-shaped diamond drop earrings.

“You two are going out?” he groaned. “Why didn’t anyone tell me before I went out and bought a large pizza to celebrate my first paycheck?” He pointed to the pizza box sitting on the kitchen table, the top of which was emblazoned with the Strega Nona logo—a witch riding sidesaddle on a pizza peel.

“Why don’t you invite Meikei over?” I suggested. “After all the times she’s brought you food, it’s about time you returned the favor.”

Lukas’s eyes lit up. “That’s a great idea!”

“You’re welcome, kiddo.”

“I just got a call from Kidron,” Hexe announced as he leaned over the second-floor balustrade, still fussing with his tie. “He’s waiting for us at the curb.” His golden eyes widened upon seeing me. “Wow! You look amazing
.
”

“And
you
look like you’re not ready yet,” I chided.

“ ’Tis merely an illusion, I assure you.” He snapped the fingers of his right hand, and the tie about his neck looped itself into the perfect Windsor knot. He trotted down the stairs to join me, adjusting the cuffs of his Ralph Lauren suit along the way. “What do you think? Am I presentable?”

“You clean up pretty good.” I smiled. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were a male model. Although I’ll admit I never would have guessed you owned a suit like that when I first met you.”

“I didn’t!” he laughed. “My mom bought it for me when I told her where I was taking you for dinner. I think she was afraid I’d show up in front of the mâitre’d in a sports coat and a Panic! At the Disco T-shirt.”

“Something tells me she didn’t need a crystal ball to see
that
in your future,” Scratch sniffed from his perch on the ground-floor newel post. His hairless body still bore the fading scratches and bite marks from his brawl with Bonzo.

“So, if you two are going out on the town, who’s gonna feed me?”

“Lukas will take care of that, won’t you, kid?” I replied, catching the were-cat’s eye.

“No problem,” Lukas answered.

“And you’ll make sure our young friend here stays out of the liquor cabinet while we’re gone, right Scratch?” Hexe said pointedly.

“Awww, c’mon Hexe ... ” Lukas groaned.

“Emancipated minor or not, you’re still just sixteen,” Hexe reminded him. “And while you’re living under my roof, you abide by the rules. And the rule is ‘no drunk underage were-cats.’ I have enough headaches as it is without adding that to the list.”

Hexe wasn’t kidding. Thanks to Roger’s big mouth, once he had unfrozen, everyone now knew I was the heiress to the Eresby fortune. So now Derrick Templeton, Roger, and the taxi driver who plowed through the plate glass window when the Cyber-Panther ran out in front of his cab had all filed civil suits against Hexe and me for everything from breach of contract to pain and suffering to supernatural assault. It looked as though for the foreseeable future most of my trust fund payments would be going to pay my lawyers.

Luckily, though, Lady Syra’s connections had kept us from getting into real hot water with the authorities. Once the PTU realized the extent of the Malandanti’s pit-fighting operation, they could have cared less about finding out who put Boss Marz in the hospital with a broken sternum, or how Nach ended up with
both
arms ripped off.

Marz could have dropped the dime on us himself, of course, once he regained consciousness, but all that would’ve netted him were a couple charges of kidnapping and attempted murder on top of the RICO charges he was already looking at.

“Don’t worry, boss,” Scratch assured his master. “I’ll keep an eye on things while you’re away.”

Having bid our housemates good night, Hexe and I gathered up our belongings and headed for the door.

“Here, allow me,” Hexe said, helping me into my coat.

“How Continental of you!” I teased.

“Yes, but in my case the continent is at the bottom of the sea.” He opened the front door with a grand flourish, motioning for me to exit ahead of him. “Milady, your chariot awaits.”

As I stepped out onto the front stoop, I gasped in surprise at what stood waiting at the curb. Instead of the usual hansom cab he piloted, Kidron was harnessed to a Victorian carriage, like the ones in Central Park. The trim of the carriage was decorated with a garland of interwoven red roses, and there were flowers woven into the centaur’s mane and tail.

“Do you like it?” he asked hopefully.

“It’s
beautiful
,” I replied.

“You deserve to be surrounded by beauty,” he said as he helped me into the carriage. “If it were in my power, I would make every day from here on in perfect, so you would never be unhappy again.”

I leaned back and rested my head on his shoulder, staring up at the few brave stars strong enough to pierce the night sky over Manhattan. The sound of Kidron’s hooves clip-clopping against the pavement was almost hypnotic. Hexe slipped his arm about my waist, pulling me even closer.

“As long as you’re with me, I don’t think I
can
be unhappy,” I whispered.

“Me, too,” he replied.

The Golden Bowery was located on Green Man Lane, a relatively short dogleg street that connected Maiden Lane with Liberty Street. I don’t know if it would be fair to call it a “throwback” to the halcyon days of the Stork Club and the Copacabana, because it predated them. Since the Roaring Twenties, the Golden Bowery had mixed the sophistication of the “smart set” with the allure of the exotic into a potent cocktail of power, money, and glamour, in every sense of the word.

Although its exterior was relatively nondescript, it boasted a pair of huge doors cast from bronze and gilded in fourteen karat gold. On either side of the entrance were huge African lions carved from marble. The twin statues were said to be enchanted and would come to life should anyone be foolish enough to try and steal the establishment’s trademark portals.

After dropping off our coats with the hatcheck station, which was run by a young woman with four arms, we went to see about our reservation.

“Name, please?” the headwaiter asked without looking up from his seating chart.

“Hexe. Party of two.”

The maître d’, an older Kymeran with a scrying-glass monocle screwed into his right eye, snapped to attention as if he’d been goosed with a cattle prod. “Of course, sir!” He picked up a couple of heavy leather-bound menus and motioned for us to follow him. “Your table is right this way, Serenity.”

The Golden Bowery’s main room was supported by Grecian pillars and hung with velvet drapes the color of good wine. Vines wrapped themselves around the pillars, creating a living canopy through which strands of colored lights were cunningly woven. On the ceiling overhead painted nymphs frolicked with fauns bearing clusters of ripe grapes. In the middle of the room was a large parquet dance floor. The chandelier hanging overhead from the ceiling was made of stained glass, which cast a rainbow of light onto the crisp white tablecloths below.

At least half of the clientele was human, and I recognized several famous actors, influential politicians, and wealthy socialites. The other half was a mixture of Kymerans, leprechauns, huldrefolk, and various shape-shifter species—all as elegantly dressed and carefully groomed as their human counterparts. These were the Beautiful People of Golgotham, not unlike those I had been raised among on the Upper East Side.

Our maître d’ led us to a raised section overlooking the dance floor, opposite the swing era-style band box. As we wound our way through the other diners, the Golden Bowery’s Kymeran patrons fell silent to watch us, only to start talking again, in hushed voices, once we had passed.

A bottle of champagne was already awaiting us at our table, nestled inside a silver bucket full of ice. Hexe held out my chair for me as the maître d’ set about uncorking our wine, which he then poured into delicate crystal flutes, the rims of which were chased in twenty-four karat gold.