Someday I’m going to push Jericho Barrons as far as I can and see what happens. But I’m going to wait a while, until I’m stronger. Until I’m pretty sure I’ve got a trump card.
I may have been forced into this war, but I’m learning to choose my battles.
I didn’t see Barrons for the rest of the day.
A dutiful soldier, I retreated to the ditches as ordered and hunkered down there. In those ditches, I had an epiphany. People treat you as badly as you let them treat you.
Key word there: let.
Some people are exceptions, mostly parents, best friends, and spouses, though in my bartending job at The Brickyard, I’ve seen married people do worse things to each other in public than I’d do in private to someone I couldn’t stand. Bottom line is most of the world will push you as far as you let them. Barrons might have sent me to my room, but I’m the idiot that went. What was I afraid of? That he’d hurt me, kill me? Hardly. He’d saved my life last week. He needed me. Why had I let him intimidate me?
I was disgusted with myself. I was still behaving like MacKayla Lane, part-time bartender, part-time sun-worshipper, and full-time glamour girl. My recent brush with death had made it clear that chick wasn’t going to survive over here, a statement emphatically punctuated by ten unpolished, broken fingernails. Unfortunately, by the time I had my epiphany and stormed back downstairs, Barrons and the inspector were gone.
Worsening my already foul mood, the woman who runs the bookstore and carries a major torch for Barrons had arrived. Stunning, voluptuous, in her early fifties, Fiona doesn’t like me at all. I suspect if she knew Barrons kissed me last week she’d like me even less. I was nearly unconscious when he did it, but I remember. It’s been impossible to forget.
When she looked up from the numbers she was punching in on her cell phone, I decided maybe she did know. Her eyes were venomous, her mouth a moue fanned by delicate wrinkles. With each quick, shallow inhalation, her lacy blouse trembled over her full bosom, as if she’d just dashed somewhere in a great hurry, or was suffering great distress. “What was Jericho doing here today?” she asked in a pinched tone. “It’s Sunday. He’s not supposed to be here on Sunday. I can’t imagine any reason for him to stop by.” She scanned me from head to toe, looking, I think, for signs of a recent tryst: tousled hair, perhaps a missed button on my blouse, or panties overlooked in the haste of dressing, left bunched in the leg of my jeans. I did that once. Alina saved me before Mom caught me.
I almost laughed. A tryst with Barrons? Get real.
“What are you doing here?” I countered. No more good little soldier. The bookstore was closed and neither of them should have been here, raining on my already rainy parade.
“I was on my way to the butcher when I saw Jericho stepping out,” she said tightly. “How long was he here? Where were you just now? What were the two of you doing before I came?” Jealousy so vibrantly colored her words I expected her breath to come out in little green puffs. As if conjured by the unspoken accusation that we’d been doing the dirty, a vision of Jericho Barrons naked—dark, despotic, and probably flat-out ferocious in bed—flashed through my mind.
I found it staggeringly erotic. Disturbed, I performed a hasty mental calendar count. I was ovulating. That explained it. I get indiscriminatingly horny for three days when I am: the day before, the day of, and the day after; Mother Nature’s sneaky little way of ensuring survival of the human race, I guess. I check out guys I wouldn’t normally look at, especially ones in tight jeans. I catch myself trying to decide if they’re lefties or righties. Alina used to laugh and say if you can’t tell, Junior, you don’t want to know.
Alina. God, I missed her.
“Nothing, Fiona,” I said. “I was upstairs.”
She stabbed a finger at me, her eyes dangerously bright, and I was suddenly afraid she would cry. If she cried I’d lose all backbone. I can’t stand older women crying. I see my mom in every one.
I was relieved when she snarled at me instead. “Do you think he healed your wounds because you matter to him? Do you think he cares? You mean nothing to him! You couldn’t possibly understand that man and his moods. His needs. His desires. You’re a stupid, selfish, naïve child,” she hissed. “Go home!”
“I’d love to go home,” I shot back. “Unfortunately, I don’t have that choice!”
She opened her mouth but I didn’t catch what she was saying because I’d already turned and was banging through the connecting doors to the private residence part of the store, in no mood to get dragged any further into the argument she was spoiling to have. I left her shouting something about how she didn’t have choices, either.
I went upstairs. Yesterday Barrons had told me to lose the splints. I’d told him bones didn’t heal that fast, but my arm was itching like crazy again, so I went in the bathroom adjoining my bedroom and took it off.
I gingerly wiggled my wrist then flexed my hand. My arm had obviously never been broken, probably just sprained. It felt whole, stronger than ever. I peeled off the finger splints to find they were better than fine, too. There was a faint smudge of red and black on my forearm, like a smear of ink. While I rinsed it off, I turned my face from side to side in the mirror, wishing my bruises would heal as quickly. I’d spent most of my life as an attractive blonde. Now, a badly battered girl with short black hair stared back at me.
I turned away.
While I’d convalesced, Barrons had gotten me one of those little refrigerators college kids use in dorms, and stocked me up on snacks. I popped open a soda and sprawled across the bed. I read and surfed the Net the rest of the day, trying to educate myself on all the paranormal stuff I’d spent the first twenty-two years of my life belittling and ignoring.
For a week now, I’d been waiting for the army from Hell to come. I wasn’t stupid enough to believe this little lull was anything but the calm before the storm.
Was Mallucé really dead? Though I’d stabbed the citron-eyed vampire during my aborted showdown with the Lord Master, and the last thing I’d seen before losing consciousness from the injuries he’d dished out in retaliation was Barrons slamming him into a wall, I wasn’t convinced of his demise and wouldn’t be, until I heard something from the empty-eyed worshippers that stuffed the vamp’s Goth mansion to overflowing on the south side of Dublin. In the Lord Master’s employ—while two-timing and withholding powerful relics from the Unseelie leader—Mallucé had tried to kill me in order to silence me before I could betray his dirty secret. If he was still alive, I had no doubt he’d be coming after me again, sooner rather than later.