Her grandmother let out a long breath and muttered something in Spanish Esme didn’t catch. “What?”
“Drink your cocoa, palomita.”
Esme did as she was told. She relaxed again, swirling the spicy flavor around in her mouth before swallowing.
Her grandmother’s eyes focused sharply on Esme. “The others didn’t see you?”
“Looked right past me, like I wasn’t even there. But everyone looks past me. Except Val.” That thought kept dancing around her brain. He had seen her. But saying it out loud made the thought even more real and even more frightening.
“Good to know the magic is still there. I was afraid the spell had worn off.”
Esme realized she was about to freak out and took the precaution of putting her hot cocoa on the coffee table. “Spell? Abuelita, what are you talking about?”
“It’s all real, my little bird. All the fairy tales I told you. All real.”
Esme’s thoughts stopped. She just stared into her grandmother’s brown eyes, which had always held all the answers before. “What?”
“The chupacabra, la llorona, the skin-walkers, all real. And all alive and well in Dallas.”
The flight response was back and in double force. Esme leapt off the couch and started to pace. Her Mary Janes echoed off the wood floors. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Our blood is very faint. The magic only surfaces once a generation. Skipped your mother entirely. ”
“Magic?” Esme stopped before her grandmother. “Are you trying to tell me you’re a witch? I’m a witch?”
“Fairy actually.”
Esme laughed. “Seriously?”
A furrow formed between her grandmother’s brow, nestled between her other wrinkles there, and she rose from the couch. “I would never lie about this, palomita. Not now. Not that you’ve been seen by one.”
“Seen?” Esme’s entire life flashed before her eyes. Everyone ignored her; she slipped by in every class because the teacher never called on her. She was ignored in movie lines. She’d started wearing steel-toed boots at work because people stepped on her feet so often. Everything clicked in her head. “I’m invisible.”
“No, my little dove. You burn too brightly. The magic keeps you hidden from those who would take your light. Take another sip of your cocoa.”
Esme looked down at the table. That clicked, too. “The spice. Have you been drugging me all these years?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Esme. It’s just nutmeg, cayenne, and maybe some ground poppy seed.” He grandmother didn’t meet her eyes, suddenly very interested in the rug beneath them.
“Oh God. You’ve been using magic on me.”
“It’s nothing, just a bit of garden magic, palomita. It’s part of our heritage.”
“You’re insane.”
Her grandmother grabbed her shoulders and poked a stubby fingernail into Esme’s chest. “You need to listen to me if you’ve got vampires after you.”
“Vampires?” Esme’s knees gave, and her grandmother pushed her toward the chair, where she landed with a jarring bounce. “He’s a vampire?”
“Iron blade. If it were silver, I would have said shifter.”
“I just went on a date with a vampire.” Even when she said the words out loud, they didn’t feel real. Didn’t jibe with what she knew of vampires. He’d been kind, and opened the door for her, paid for coffee.
But he didn’t drink it. He’d just spun it as they talked, as he watched her talk. And he’d probably just opened the door for her to see the long line of her neck in the moonlight. See what his next meal was going to look like.
“But he saw you,” her grandmother said.
“Yeah, probably as dinner.” Esme pinched the flesh of her pinky, the pain focusing her thoughts as the tip turned bright pink with blood.
“No,” her grandmother said. “He saw you. He saw through the magic. You said the others didn’t.” Her grandmother smiled. “His intentions are good, Esme.”
Esme huffed. “Well, his intentions can stay on his side of town.”
She rose and brushed past her grandmother as she grabbed her bag and went back to her room and made a spectacular show of slamming her door. She was going to have to find a new place to work, a new coffee shop, and maybe a new life altogether.
Chapter Four
“HE’S HERE.”
Valiance could smell his blood on the wind. Mondrian had always been good at tracking, but Valiance had never fully appreciated his brother’s skills until his scent stopped right outside a house with a magical border around it a mile thick. The white stones around Esme’s house glowed in the moonlight, creating a boundary around the property Valiance was sure he couldn’t even get through.
Violet crouched beside him. “Think we just confirmed your girl is family.”
“She’s not my . . .” Valiance dropped it. Violet wasn’t going to stop, and he didn’t have the breath to waste.
“What’s the plan?” she asked.
Valiance had to shift his weight to accommodate the fire burning down his injured leg. “Wait him out. And then you can see if she’s okay tomorrow morning.”
“That’s not the Valiance I saw stand up against his Clade Source.”
Valiance clenched his jaw, and the entire back of his head lit up like a lightning storm, all bright lights and pain. His jaw was still throbbing though he’d set it himself on the way over here. The blood from the crack on the back of his head was dried now and made the leather of his sheath itchy.
Violet winced for him. “You need to feed, don’t you? It’s why you’re not healing. Not enough of your own power to heal yourself. Isn’t that how it works?”
“You volunteering?”
Violet finally shut up for two seconds, so he could think. Mondrian wouldn’t be able to get through that border, especially if his intentions were to hurt Esme. But even if Valiance was right and Mondrian couldn’t see Esme, he might be able to see her grandmother.
Valiance might be able to make it through the border. Make sure they were okay. But if Esme had seen three seconds of what happened in the parking lot, she was never going speak to him again, let alone invite him in to wait out the night against another vampire.
His head dropped down to his chest. His true colors had shown through, and she’d seen them and ran.
“I smell pity,” Violet said.
“You smell a man realizing he should have stayed in the shop.”
“Yep. Self-pity. Smells a little like rotten milk.”
“Were you always so campy?” He looked over at his Prima.
She nodded. “Yes, actually. But I’m right.”
Violet jumped and reached for the glowing cell phone in her back pocket. “Just when things were getting good.” She sighed as sat down on the cold ground. “Hello. What? Now? I’m kinda in the middle of something, Nash. Oh, well talk about burying the lead. Of course. I’ll meet you there.”
Violet hung up the phone, and her energy danced around her. “I have to go.”
“What?” Valiance snapped.
“Kandice just went into labor a month early. I have to go.”
“You’ve got a hostile vampire hunting innocents in the city.”
Violet patted him on the back. “And I’ve got my best Riko on the case.”
“Riko? That’s a shifter title.”
Violet ran her fingers through her long hair as she pulled it back into a ponytail. She slipped off her tennis shoes and shoved them in her messenger bag. “I’m a shifter. The words are pretty. Do you accept?”
“Accept what?”
“The rules and responsibilities of being the warrior and the protector of the pack?” She zipped up her jacket against the cold wind. She dropped her personal borders, and her power sizzled around them. “Do you accept?”
Valiance knew you didn’t say “no” to Violet, and even if you did, it didn’t stay a “no.” “Yes?”
“Wonderful. From what I’ve heard, there’s a vampire going around and attacking innocents. Take care of it. Call Tucker if you can’t handle it.”
Violet winked. In a blur of black and a whirl of energy, her panther form streaked down the street in the direction of downtown before Valiance could even manage a protest.
He clenched his jaw, and the pain flared again. “I don’t have my cell phone,” he finally said to the wind.
“Told you she wasn’t worth it.” Mondrian appeared in the street before Valiance, his hands casually in his pockets.
Valiance rose. The slick red over Mondrian’s lips was unmistakable, even in the dim glow from the streetlights. He’d gotten a chance to feed. It was like hitting a reset button on the evening. He’d be faster now, stronger than Valiance who barely had anything, power or blood, left.
“The Prima trusts us to clean up our own messes.”
Anger made the angles along Mondrian’s face sharper, uglier. “Is that what I am? A mess to clean up?”
Valiance walked out onto the street, hiding the wince of every step. “Destroyed my evening.”
Mondrian looked at the small house. “So your girl is special?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re going to kill me, your own brother, to protect her?”
“Yes.” The honesty rang through Valiance and made the sword on his back hum with anticipation.
Valiance saw another figure in the darkness. Female. Older. And completely under the sway. He recognized the glassy eyes of the woman as she stumbled this way and that. Like a marionette on strings, she danced how Mondrian wanted her to dance.
Valiance didn’t have time to get her before she fell to her knees beside the white stone periphery of the house, her teeth snapping against each other as she dropped. Where a vampire couldn’t touch the protective border, an innocent human would have no problem pulling a stone out of place to break the spell.
He ran for her, but Mondrian met him in the middle of the street. His brother slammed against him with the force of a semitruck, and they flew down the street. Valiance landed hard on the pavement, with his brother on top of him, and they rolled, both struggling for the upper hand.
There was a distinct clap of flesh meeting something solid, but it didn’t come from him.
Valiance looked over from his position beneath Mondrian to see an old woman with a baseball bat standing over the limp body of the puppet woman. It had to be Esme’s grandmother, the abuelita she spoke so lovingly about, wielding the bat like Babe Ruth himself.
The older woman’s courage gave Valiance the kick he needed. He threw Mondrian over his head and jumped to his feet. He used the last of his energy to enhance himself, heal his leg, and give his muscles the strength they needed to wield his sword.
“Keep the circle,” he called out to the old woman.
The woman yelled something back at him. But he missed it when his eyes landed on Esme standing in the doorway of their small house. The entire world stopped for a moment, and he was caught up in the sight of her. Her dark hair unbound, her cheeks flushed, she glowed in the doorway of her home with her tear-filled eyes.
He heard Mondrian’s sword sing as it cut through the air behind him. Valiance ducked and felt the wind of the attack against his hair.
Valiance swung his arm back hard, and Mondrian’s ribs cracked under his blow. He turned around sharply and swept Mondrian’s legs out from underneath him. The other vampire bounced against the concrete like a rubber ball. Valiance caught his shirt in his fist and threw him at the protective spell.
Mondrian slammed against the magical border and sizzled and seized within the white energy before being thrown across the street into a car. There was no alarm, just Mondrian’s long groan.
Valiance tried not to smile, but it was the first break he’d gotten all evening.
He turned back to the house, where Esme and her grandmother were together on the porch. He walked over to the edge of the white stones but didn’t dare step across. He looked at Esme. “Are you okay?”
“No problem here,” her grandmother said, her grip still tight on the bat.
“Stay inside. I’ll be right—”
Mondrian’s boot landed square between Valiance’s shoulders, and he flew forward through the white-stone protective spell and landed hard on the frozen ground of her front yard.
Mondrian’s hand clamped down on Valiance’s ankle and raked him back along the ground. As Valiance struggled to stop, he felt the protection spell break around him as he pulled a white stone from its place, like the pop of an electrical transformer.
Mondrian ripped him from the ground and threw Valiance into the same car that had broken his own fall. Valiance let gravity take him and slid down to the pavement. He couldn’t feel his legs for a moment and fell forward to his knees, seeing nothing but stars.
He leaned back against the car and shook the celestial array from his vision. He had to blink a few times for his sight to focus.
Mondrian was already on the porch. He grabbed Esme’s grandmother and locked an arm around her neck, swinging her petite frame around like a rag doll.
He was less than a foot away from Esme, who had plastered herself against the outside wall next to the door.
His brother didn’t need to yell; the wind carried his threats fine enough. “Bet she never goes out with you again if you let her grandmother die.”
Mondrian cloaked him and her grandmother in darkness and blurred away into the night.
Valiance tried to push himself up against the car, but the power was gone. He fell to the concrete. He couldn’t breathe. Everything hurt, but it wasn’t over. He might not have his unnatural strength, but he was still breathing. He wouldn’t stop fighting until he stopped breathing.