Mary's excited blathering rang through the house as I hurried down the hallway. I could see the bathroom at the end and three closed doors along the way. Great. Did they have to be shut? With my luck, they'd probably squeak. I could only hope that Mary would remain too loud and too distracted to notice.
The first door opened-with no squeaking-into a bedroom. The bed was unmade, and clothes had been pushed into piles against the wall. An old dresser sat against one wall, and a nightstand with some papers stood near the other. There was also a mirror on the ceiling.
Shuddering, I considered going in to investigate the nightstand papers but decided to hold out and see if I might find an office behind one of the other two doors. Shutting this one silently, I continued down the hallway.
The second door did squeak, and I froze, waiting for Mary to come tearing down after me in an effort to bludgeon me with one of Seth's books. I wasn't entirely sure how far his star power would go to save me if caught snooping. She didn't look like the violent type, but one never knew. Fortunately, she kept talking without pause, and I stuck my head inside the new room. It was just another bedroom, a guest one by the looks of the dust and lack of personal items. I closed the door, grimacing at another squeak. One more room to go.
Jackpot.
The third wasn't an office, but it did appear to be a workspace. Wide tables lay along the walls, covered in chunks of crystal-clear quartz, smoky quartz, etc.-in various states. Some were raw and jagged; others were polished and carved. Tools like blades and picks lay nearby, along with a more sophisticated and modern-looking device I couldn't identify. Maybe some type of laser cutter.
Best of all, there was a two-drawer filing cabinet against the wall. I hurried to it, still mindful of Mary's chatter, and opened the top drawer. Over a hundred file folders with names met me. I pulled one at random and saw that it did indeed have a job order. There was a description of the item, client information, job status, and a picture of the finished product. Unfortunately, having all this information meant little to me. I had no idea what name had been used for the seal-or if Mary was even the one who had made it.
Frustrated, I opened the next drawer and found financial records, like bills and bank statements. I also located folders labeled "work logs" categorized by month. I eagerly pulled out this month's and discovered a simple list of dates, client names, and brief descriptions of products. All-except for the three most recent ones-had check marks beside them. Finished products, presumably.
I scanned the dates before Jerome's disappearance, cross-checking against the descriptions. Green Tara statue . Bracelet . Athame . Three invoices in the last two weeks caught my attention: round pendant, talisman, medallion . I recognized none of the client names, but the culprit could no doubt have used an alias.
Returning to the second drawer, I found each client's file. The pendant was the right size and shape, but it had a hole drilled in it for a chain or string. I couldn't say why, but something told me the seal's original form would be whole. The talisman turned out to be the wrong shape. It was thick and oblong, more like a stone someone would keep in their pocket for good luck.
I was starting to panic now. This was taking too long, and I couldn't hear Mary anymore. God, espionage had been so much easier when I could turn invisible. With shaking hands, I pulled out the last file-the medallion. The client was Sam Markowitz, and he'd picked it up four days ago. The photo depicted a flat, quarter-sized disc made of smoky quartz with symbols I didn't recognize etched onto it. Was that it? It was the closest I had to a match of Carter's description. There could be other matches-items ordered months ago-but I didn't have time to go through any more files. I shoved the medallion photo into my purse, closed the drawer, and hurried back out to the hall, half expecting to find Mary blocking my path.
I had no need to worry, though. She had never left Seth's side-literally. She now sat in my spot, pressing Seth between her and the couch's arm. Two stacks of books were on the coffee table, and an open one was on his lap. He finished signing it and glanced up at my entrance with a relieved look.
"But you see," Mary was saying, "until O'Neill is able to confront the darkness within himself, he'll never be able to open himself to Cady. He's had his moments of vulnerability, of course-like the cave scene in Dominant Eclipse -but he's still keeping his armor up-just like on the veranda in Memories of Man -and so it's no wonder-"
"Hey," I said cheerfully. "We should probably get going."
Seth shot up from his seat, looking rather like a trapped animal who had just gnawed its own leg off and was about to run free. "Yes. We don't want to detain Mary any further."
Mary stood up too. "No, no! It's okay. Really. And you have to finish signing my books."
With a grimace, Seth grabbed the last three books and hastily scrawled his signature in them. "Thanks for talking to us," he said. "It's been great meeting you."
"Are you sure you have to go?" she pleaded. "I was going to make some dinner soon." She shot me an accusing look. "And if it's Ginger who needs to leave, I can give you a ride home later in my van-"
"No, really," said Seth, backing up to stand by me. "I appreciate it, but I have to, you know, get back to writing."
Extricating ourselves was painful. Mary begged and kept offering everything from discount jewelry to thinly veiled sexual suggestions.
"Step on the gas and do not look back," Seth told me when we got in the car.
I complied, peeling out of her driveway as fast as I could and kicking up dirt and gravel in the process.
"That right there," I mused, "is the kind of fan who keeps authors in their crawlspace."
Seth leaned his head back against the seat. "Do not ever do that to me again. Ever."
"I wasn't that far away. I would have heard you screaming."
"Not if she used ether first. God, Georgina. She had her hand on my leg."
"That's Ginger to you."
"Please tell me you got something useful out of that. I know you didn't go to the bathroom."
"Nope. I broke into her workroom and ransacked her files."
He groaned. "Breaking and entering."
"Hey, I'm a creature of Hell. And she technically let us in."
"What'd you find?"
Eyes on the road, I reached into my purse and fumbled until I found the picture. I handed it to Seth.
"This is it?" he asked.
"I'm not certain. It's close to the description, but I don't know enough about this to really say."
"Hmm."
Seth studied it and then slipped it back into my purse. We rode for a few more minutes in silence until I finally asked, "I was never that bad of a fan, was I? That crazy?"
"Oh, God, no," he said. "Absolutely not. You were charming and cute and-" He abruptly cut himself off, but those words hung in the air between us. "You-you weren't like that. Nothing like that," he managed at last. There was a husky tone to his voice, hinting of some emotion but refusing to reveal which one it was.
I'd meant my comment to be light, just a way to keep the conversation going. However, like everything else lately, the words had ended up triggering far more meaning than I'd intended. I had a flashback to when Seth and I had first met, when I hadn't even known who he was. I'd rattled off my feelings for my favorite author, little knowing I was actually talking to him. Unlike Mary, I hadn't stalked him on the Internet and known what he looked like.
Seth cleared his throat. "So...what will you do with the picture now?"
I ran with his change in subject. "Get someone to identify it, I guess. Erik, maybe. Or Dante."
More silence fell, and I felt the tension ratchet up. Dante. Once again, harmless words had triggered big consequences between us. I expected Seth to try again to shift the subject, but instead, he actually addressed it.
"It's weird...seeing you with Dante."
"Don't you mean it's weird seeing me with anyone?"
"Well..."
Even with my eyes on the road, I knew he had that thoughtful, slightly distracted look in his eyes that meant he was pondering how best to phrase his next words. I used to love that look. Now I was on high alert.
"Yeah, to a certain extent, of course," he finally admitted. "It'll always be weird. But every time I talk to him, I just think..."
"If you say that I can do better, then I'm pulling this car over right now."
"Um, no. I was just going to say he doesn't seem like your type."
"That's nearly the same thing," I pointed out. "You sound just like Hugh and the others. I'm getting so sick of this! Honestly, it doesn't matter who I date. You're never going to be happy."
"That's not true," said Seth. "It's just...when you're around him, you're darker and more cynical. You're not like you used to be. This sounds stupid, considering what you are, but you're...well, you're a force for good in the world."
"Oh, come on ," I said.
"No, I mean it. Maybe you are a creature of Hell, but people feel better when they're around you. You have this way of talking and smiling that affects everyone. You're nice, you're good-hearted, you worry about others..." He sighed. "But when you're with Dante, it's like all that light that normally shines out from you gets sucked away."
"That light got sucked away a long time ago," I said bitterly. "Long before he came along."
"No, it didn't. It's there, and if you're going to be involved with someone, you need someone who sees it, someone who loves you for it and wants to help bring it out."
I had someone like that , I thought. You .
"Dante and I work well together, no matter what any of you think. He understands me."
"No," said Seth flatly. His voice was low, but I could hear the anger in it. "He doesn't."
"What other options do I have? You're throwing me into an impossible situation. You know I can't date anyone who's good. I can't risk hurting them, but I don't want to be alone. This is my only option."
"No. It can't be. Before we were together, it wasn't like this. You weren't drinking all the time and having sex with anonymous guys in bathrooms!"
And that's when I did it, just like a dad on a road trip. I pulled the car over to the side of the road. It was a long, country highway, and there wasn't much traffic. Seth stared incredulously.
"What are you doing?"
"Saving us from an accident," I growled, turning so I could meet him straight in the eye. "And you'll be lucky if I don't make you get out and walk the rest of the way. Look, you want to know why I wasn't dating loser guys when we met? Because I wasn't dating anyone . I took my hits and went home alone. Why is it so wrong for me to want to be with someone now?"
"It shouldn't matter if you're dating someone or not. You still shouldn't be acting like this!"
"You're telling me what I should and shouldn't be doing? It's my business. You have no right!" I yelled back.
"Friends have every right to tell friends when they're on a bad path," he snapped back.
"Bullshit! I've never seen you interfere with anyone else's life, no matter how badly they were screwing it up. I'm the only one you seem to want to mess with. Why do you care so much about what I do?" Seth and I had raised our voices only rarely while dating, and it had never even come close to this. It was a wonder we didn't shatter the windows.
"Because I care about you! I told you that at the party. Breaking up doesn't mean you stop caring about someone."
"Yes, but it means you have to let them go." I was so upset that I was on the verge of tears. "You can't have it both ways. You can't get rid of me and then try to pull me back..."
"I never wanted to get rid of you."
I stared at him for several heavy moments and felt those traitorous tears brimming heavier and heavier in my eyes. "Then why did you do it?"
After all that yelling, his voice sounded barely like a whisper.
"Because...I wanted to save you."
"You can't," I murmured, swallowing the tears back with great effort. "You can't keep saving me, can't keep trying to. It's too late."
"No," he said. His heart was in his eyes, and it was ripping mine apart. "Not for you. Never."
I don't know how it happened exactly, but suddenly we were kissing. His lips were just as I remembered, soft and powerful and wonderful. It wasn't a chaste kiss, nor was it a ripping-off-each-other's-clothes kiss. It was hungry and desperate, like we'd been struggling through a desert and only just now found the water we needed to survive. Best of all, it was just kissing. Just me and Seth. There was no life energy or succubus schemes involved. There was no need to back off for fear of what might happen. We could drink from each other without pulling back.
Except, well, we did.
We jerked apart, and I knew the shock on his face mirrored my own. What had we just done? Had we...had we really done it? It was a kiss. A real kiss. The kind of kiss we'd always wanted. The kiss we weren't supposed to be having.
I turned abruptly away, staring at the road ahead. I was frozen and numb...and yet, alive and filled with warmth. The world had been in that kiss. But I didn't know how to react to it, didn't know what I was supposed to do now. So, I did the most inane thing possible. I started the car.
"We should get back," I said.
"Yeah," he agreed, sounding as stunned as I felt.
I dared a look out of my peripheral vision. His eyes were fixed straight ahead, his wonderful lips tightened in a line that somehow made them look strong and vulnerable at the same time. I wanted to lean over and kiss them again, to melt as I had moments ago and forget all about reason. I wanted that perfect feeling to last forever.
Instead of dealing with what had just happened, however, I did the cowardly thing and stepped on the gas. We drove back to the city in miserable silence, neither of us mentioning the kiss but both of us thinking about it. I dropped him off at the bookstore and offered a polite thank-you for his help. He returned it equally politely-giving me one last pensive look-and then walked off toward his car. I watched him go, memorizing every line of his body and how he moved. Every emotion possible warred within me, and I had no idea which deserved to win.
I was exhausted by the time I stepped into my apartment building. The day had been mentally and physically wearying, what with would-be rapists, larceny, and the kiss heard 'round the world. Later, I'd find someone to identify the photograph for me. For now, I just wanted to sprawl on the couch and watch TV, preferably TV that had nothing to do with the magical or paranormal-or any romantic tension.
Unfortunately, the magical and paranormal was waiting for me.
What's Nanette doing here?
That was my last coherent thought before I was thrown against the far side of my living room.
I hit hard, my head cracking against the wall. I fell to the ground, my legs just barely possessing the reflexes to keep me from falling as black spots sparkled across my vision. Nanette faced me, terrible and beautiful in all her golden glory. She hadn't laid a hand on me, but she didn't need to, not with the power she wielded.
"How dare you," she hissed, eyes narrowed. "How dare you spread those kinds of rumors."
"What are you-ah!"
I was shoved back to the wall again. The distance wasn't nearly so far as before, but the force was so hard that the impact hurt just as much. More pain shot through my skull as I tried to make sense of all this.
"I don't know what you're talking about!" I cried.
Nanette stalked toward me, putting her face inches from mine. "Of course you do. You told Cedric that I was the one who'd summoned Jerome, that I was the one causing chaos in his territory."
"I didn't," I whimpered. "Not exactly. I just told him you'd met with Jerome."
She snarled and grabbed me by the front of my shirt, jerking me forward. "That was nothing. Nothing! But now others are suspicious."
"I just thought he should know and-"
"Do you know what you may have done?" she screamed. "I was a candidate for this city! You may have ruined everything."
She threw me again, this time toward the corner my TV was in. Its sharp angles bit into me when I hit, and I crumpled to the floor. I tried to pull myself up but never made it. Nanette was right there beside me. I had a full view of her black stiletto pumps just before she kicked me in the ribs. Pain blasted me, and my body instinctively tried to curl over and protect itself. But she was too fast and too powerful. Greg had had a lot of brute strength at his disposal, brute strength I'd been able to counteract a little. But against Nanette? Against a demon? Her strength was beyond that of a human, nearly beyond human comprehension.
"Do. Not. Fuck. With. Me," she said, punctuating each hit with a kick to my stomach or ribs. "Do you understand? You are nothing. Nothing ."
"I'm sorry," I said. My eyes burned, and every part of my body was screaming, begging for this to end.
The kicking stopped, and I rolled to my side, only to have a wave of power slam down on me and roll me to my stomach, pinning me down on the floor like an invisible ton of bricks. I tried to move but couldn't even budge.
"I don't care if you're Jerome's favorite or Cedric's new darling," she said. Her voice was all ice and malice. Again, she didn't touch me with her hands, but the back of my shirt suddenly ripped open. "I could destroy you right now, blast you from the face of the earth, and no one would say anything. Instead-you're lucky I'm in a good mood today."
Her "good mood" felt like a thousand whips hitting my back. Tiny lashes of power, sharp as razors and burning like flames, slammed into me. I screamed as they slashed at my skin, ripping it open. Some part of me thought that if I screamed loud enough, maybe a neighbor would hear me. It was a useless sentiment, though. She would have soundproofed this room much as the demons had at the Cellar. Besides, what could any mortal do against this?
Again and again those invisible whips tore into me. Obviously, I couldn't see what was happening, but in my mind's eye, I imagined my flesh torn to ribbons, my entire back a horrible, bloody mess. I don't know how many times those lashings repeated. They blurred together. I was fast approaching a point where the pain was so intense, so overwhelming that I almost couldn't feel it. My vision was going black, my brain barely able to hold consciousness.
When the beating finally stopped, I wondered if I was dead. The room was still and silent. Then, the invisible force lifted off my back. I tried to roll over but couldn't. Nanette knelt down, her lips right against my ear.
"Do not fuck with me," she whispered. "You interfere again, and I will kill you."
She vanished. I was left alone, sobbing and bleeding. I tried to move again but still was unable to. What was I going to do? I couldn't even call for help. Of course, it probably didn't matter. The pain was so great that I was either going to die or pass out any minute now. Human devices might not kill me, but demonic ones could, regardless if I was in stasis.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, I felt strong arms slide underneath me, gently lifting me in a way that kept my back up. I stifled a small cry. Even without my back being touched, the movement hit every other muscle and place on my body that Nanette had hurt. I opened my eyes, trying to see who was there, but my vision was swimming and rapidly darkening.
"What..." was all I managed to get out.
"Shh, love. It's going to be okay. You're going to be okay."
Those arms gently eased me onto my bed. I moaned again as fire shot through my ribs. Cool hands smoothed back my hair, but I still couldn't see anything.
"I can't heal you," the voice said. "But I'll get someone who can help. Just don't move. It's going to be okay."
There was something familiar about the voice, but I couldn't identify it through the haze and confusion in my head. I could barely breathe, let alone think. Silence fell after that, as though my mysterious benefactor had left. Yet a few moments later, I blearily saw hands set Aubrey on the bed beside me. She leaned forward, sniffing my face. One of the friendly hands petted her head and back, in that way that could so often coax cats into lying down. It worked, and after turning in a couple of circles, she settled down beside me.
Then, the hand stroked my hair one last time. "Everything's going to be okay."
That was the last thing I remembered hearing. My savior might have stayed or left. I didn't know because a few moments later, that blackness finally won, and I sank into a dreamless sleep that was mercifully free of pain.