But the other driver—
Jesus Christ, Balthazar thought, coming back to himself as he struggled to open the door with it upside down. I wanted to get to Skye, but I didn’t want to hurt some innocent person. Or kill them—please, not that.
He managed to push his way out onto the days-old snow, which had turned black from dirt and soot along the roadway. The intersection wasn’t a busy one, at least; only the two cars were damaged, though both of them appeared to be nearly totaled. Each of them was now a twisted, smoldering hulk on the side of the road. His Ancient Civilizations text lay in the dead center of the intersection, open to an illustration of the pyramids. The only structure nearby was a junky bar farther down the road that looked as if it had a shady clientele; though most bars wouldn’t have been open yet at this hour, neon signs in the window proclaimed different beer brands as the best. Nobody had ventured out to see what the ruckus was, though; the wreck must have been distant enough not to be heard inside.
All of this flooded into Balthazar’s mind unfiltered, slightly disjointed. He must have struck his head—not badly, but enough to shake him for a second. As he struggled to his feet, he saw someone walking toward him—the other driver, it had to be, thank God she was okay—
Then he saw who it was.
“Constantia,” Balthazar said. He realized that he hadn’t had a stop sign at the intersection; he’d done nothing wrong to cause the wreck. “You rammed me.”
“It looked like the only way to get you to stop. I had to do some wild driving just to catch up with you.” She smiled at him, maddeningly confident despite the bloody scratches across her cheek, or the splinters of dashboard glass scattered across her jeans and olive-green coat. “In a hurry?”
“Where’s Redgrave?”
Constantia’s smile became even more smug. “Where you’d most like to be, I think.”
That meant, with Skye.
His car was beyond driving, now or ever again. He’d have to run the rest of the way. But he was within a mile of her house—it wouldn’t take long. “Get out of my way,” he said.
“I think it’s past time for me to be in your way,” Constantia said.
Balthazar reached inside his jacket—no, he’d lost the stake at the Valentine’s Dance. So he’d have to improvise. He snapped a short branch off a nearby tree, never dropping eye contact with Constantia. “It’s past time for us to settle this.”
She laughed at him. “Think about it, would you? You’re so desperate to reach Skye in time. Well, it’s too late for that. Redgrave has her. What you need to know is what’s going to happen next. I’m willing to tell you.”
Did he believe her? To his horror, he did. At times like this, Constantia didn’t bluff. “Are you saying you’ll help me?”
“And all it will cost you is one drink.” She nodded toward the bar. “C’mon, Balthazar. For old times’ sake.”
As if the old times had been any better than these. But if Constantia was telling the truth—and he suspected she was—getting more information was probably the best thing he could do. “Five minutes,” he said. “Tops.”
“Ten minutes, and you buy the drinks.”
“If it’s ten minutes, you’re buying.”
“Fine.” Constantia laughed again. When she was happy, and thought herself in control, she could be such a beautiful woman. “Ten minutes and the booze is on me.”
The bar was even more decrepit on the inside. Avocado-green linoleum on the floor seemed to have been laid down in the 1970s, which Balthazar suspected was also the last time it had been mopped. Only a handful of other customers were in there, all men, all reeking of tobacco, alcohol, or other, more highly controlled, substances. Eighties heavy metal blared from the jukebox; no wonder nobody had heard the wreck. A few of the men gave Constantia hungry looks, but as soon as she looked back, they seemed to understand that it was time to turn their heads and study something else.
Constantia spoke to the bartender, ample br**sts snug on the bar, a bill folded between two of her fingers; all of this guaranteed his attention. “This guy usually prefers red wine, but here, I think he’d like … a scotch. Straight. I’ll have a shot of tequila.”
“You’ve changed your drink,” Balthazar said.
“Good absinthe’s not as easy to come by, these days. They finally sell it again, but they’ve stripped the hallucinogens out. So what’s the point?” Constantia smiled at him, warm and inviting, the same way she’d looked at him countless times in the centuries between them. Despite her cruelty and her petty need for vengeance, she was beautiful, vital, and witty. Had she not orchestrated his murder, and Charity’s, Balthazar might have truly cared for her.
As it was, he said only, “You never give up, do you?”
“On you? I’m glad to see you have enough ego to assume my only possible motivation could be jumping your bones again.” The bartender slid her shot in front of her, and she gulped it back in one smooth motion. “I’ve moved on to bigger game now.”
Balthazar was wild to reach Skye, to find out what was happening to her, but he knew the only way to get that information was to let Constantia play it her way. “And what’s that?”
Constantia leaned closer to him, and in the avid, hungry gleam of her eyes, he could see flickers of the Teutonic warrior-woman she’d been in the thirteenth century. “Redgrave. It’s time to finish him. My suggestion? We take Redgrave on together, like you suggested back in 1918. I knew you didn’t really mean it then, and that’s why I didn’t listen, but you were righter than either of us realized. That wasn’t the best opportunity, though. This is.”