“Then I guess we’d better be ready for the shit to hit the fan. Because I don’t think we can pull this off without everybody in this house knowing what’s up.” She began to set the table as I checked on the pizza.
“Fifteen more minutes.” I stared out the window. We were all in the midst of personal crises. And things didn’t seem to be lightening up any. “Have you decided what to do about your father?” I finally asked, pushing the matter of the antidote to the side.
Peyton nodded. “I’m going to see him, but do you mind if he visits me here? I can’t ask him to come to my house, not with my mother there. And I’d rather chat someplace where we’ll have more privacy than a coffee shop.”
I nodded, absently wishing my only problem were meeting my father for the first time, then immediately felt guilty for thinking that. Peyton had a lot riding on getting to know her father.
“Sure,” I said, glancing over at the door. Leo was scuffing the snow off his boots out on the back porch. “Well, I guess we’re about to find out which way the cookie crumbles.” I flashed Peyton a strained grin. “Let’s just hope the crumbs all fall close to home. Hansel and Gretel had it easy compared to me.”
“Yeah.” She gave me a thumbs-up. “Because if Lannan so much as gets a whiff of the gingerbread house, he’s going to be on your tail like white on rice.”
“Or snow on snow,” I added softly, staring out the window at the drifting banks that continued to grow ever taller.
Chapter 14
Leo was grumbling as he came through the door. “Damned snow. I wish it would give it a rest.” He looked up and saw Rhiannon entering the kitchen, with Kaylin and Chatter right behind her, and the frown turned into a smile as his face lit up. “Hey, honey, I’m home!”
As he enfolded her in his arms for a long kiss, I hoped to hell that I wasn’t going to be a wedge between them. I also hoped that Peyton was wrong about Leo—and that my own secret suspicions were off.
I sliced the pizza and slid the pie on the table while Peyton poured drinks all the way around and set out the pudding and cookies. Kaylin and Chatter slid into their places and I stared at Kaylin, wondering what he’d say. He’d been against my dreamwalking with him the first time, but a lot had happened since then. He glanced up to meet my gaze, unblinking. A dark smile fell across his lips as he lifted his beer and slowly saluted me with it.
As we all fell to eating, I glanced over at Rhiannon. She nodded. No time like the present. I leaned back and licked the melted cheese off my fingers.
“Guys, I need to talk to you about something. I need your help.”
“Peyton and I have already agreed to help her in this, and we’re not changing our minds, so I suggest you think twice about turning her down.” Rhiannon swallowed her pizza and blinked. “Kaylin, we especially need your help.”
“Why do I think I’m not going to like this?” Leo frowned, pushing his food around on his plate.
“Because you feel it’s your duty to protect us even when it’s not. But we’re here to help each other, and no single one of us is strong enough to protect the others.” Rhia gave him a playful kiss, but he scowled at her.
“What’s up? I can feel something coming.” He reached for another slice of pizza.
I took a deep breath. “I’m planning something. I need your help, Kaylin, but if you aren’t comfortable then I’ll find another way. No matter what, I’m going through with this.” In a rush, I spilled out, “I’m going to steal some of the antidote and give it to Grieve.”
Leo choked on his pizza, coughing so loud I thought we were going to have to thump him on the back. I glanced over at Kaylin, who raised his eyebrows but didn’t say a word. Chatter looked at me like I was crazy.
After a moment, Leo pushed his plate back and stood up. “This is insane. You’re going to get all of us killed.”
“I’m not asking you to help. I’m not asking Rhia and Peyton to go in with me. I’m just asking you to keep your mouth shut about it. As far as you’re concerned, you don’t know anything.”
“If Geoffrey finds out that I’m keeping this quiet, he’ll rip my throat out—and yours, too!” Leo slammed his hand on the table. “You can’t do this! I know you’re hot for Grieve, but face the fucking facts: He belongs to Myst now. You lost him, he’s gone. Buh-bye!”
I slid out of my chair, staring at him, unable to believe the extent of his anger. Leo seemed mild-mannered on the surface, but he’d shown a nasty temper more than once now.
“Excuse me, but you don’t own this house and you don’t own me. You’re not my brother or my keeper. Grieve means more to me than you can ever comprehend. If you can’t accept the fact that he and I have been bound for lifetimes, then you never will.”
“We don’t always get what we want.” He turned a cold eye at Chatter, then back at me. “We don’t always get who we want.”
He was jealous. Chatter had a crush on my cousin, and Leo knew it, so he was taking it out on all of the Cambyra Fae.
“You’re threatened—Grieve and Chatter threaten you!” I shoved my finger against Leo’s chest. “Grieve scares the hell out of you and you’d do anything to keep him out of my life. And Chatter—you don’t want him near Rhiannon.”
“Fuck that! I’m not scared of some freakshow Fae. What I am scared of is having a member of the Indigo Court under the same roof as me. A member of the race that killed my sister. That killed my fiancée’s mother. Your aunt, might I remind you! And I take my job for Geoffrey seriously. I owe him—”
“You owe him what?” Rhiannon turned on him. “A paycheck? He’s one of the vampires, Leo. I don’t mind you working for them, but I’ll never trust them.”
“At least the vampires keep their word—”
“Yeah, right. And they use every trick in the book on us. Look at the contract I signed with them.” I waved my hand, accidentally knocking over my juice. I ignored it as it trickled across the table. “Lannan’s not going to keep his word—he’d love a chance to humiliate me, especially now. You think they have respect for you just because you play toady for them?”
“Don’t you ever call me that again!” Leo knocked his chair over as he backhanded me across the face.
I reacted instantly, kicking him in the stomach and knocking the wind out of him. “You ever touch me again like that and I’ll make you wish you hadn’t.”
His eyes wide, Leo slid to the floor. “I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean to hit you . . .”
“Bullshit. You knew what you were doing.” I rubbed my cheek. “And for your fucking information, dude, I’ve been thinking about alternative places where I can keep Grieve. I value my cousin and Kaylin too much to chance having him in the house with them. You—I’m not so sure about right now.”
Rhiannon stared at him, horrified. “I can’t believe you just did that. I thought I knew you.”
“Please, don’t look at me like that. Honey—sweetie . . . I didn’t mean to hurt her.” Tears in his eyes, he turned a dark gaze on me. “Geoffrey does respect me. And since that seems to be all the respect I get around here, then maybe I should move back to my apartment. Rhiannon, come with me. Get the fuck out of this place and cut your losses.”
She shook her head, slowly backing up from his outstretched hand. “Leo, what the hell are you doing? I know you’re upset, but nobody touches a woman like that in this house. Cicely, are you okay?”
I nodded. My jaw was sore, but he’d grazed me rather than hit spot on. “Yeah, I’m all right.”
Leo stared at the table. After a moment, he said, “I can’t excuse myself. I can’t take it back, but Cicely, please. I didn’t intend to hit you. I don’t know what I thought . . .”
“You’d better leave—” Rhiannon started to say, but I stopped her.
“No,” I said, moving between her and him. I faced him down. “There’s nothing more I’d like to do than throttle you, Leo, but we can’t afford to divide up. Myst would come after you in a heartbeat. Not only are you a day-runner for the vamps, but she assumes you’re a friend of mine. I’m no longer sure she’s right, but you’re a sitting duck. However, understand this: I will rescue Grieve if there’s any chance of doing so. You’re going to have to get over your fear and learn to accept it.”
He smoldered but then ducked his head and nodded. “I don’t like it. And I won’t pretend to.”
“You don’t have to. You just have to stay alive, and your best chances of doing that are while you’re here. Got it?”
Rhiannon was staring at him, arms crossed. After a moment, she turned away. “So, Kaylin, after all this, are you going to help us?”
Kaylin let out a quiet snort. “Whatever you like.”
I turned back to him, searching his face. The old Kaylin would have objected, but he seemed blasé about the whole matter. Everything felt like we’d been shifted onto quicksand; the landscape was changing even as we walked through it. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” He reached out and slid another piece of pizza onto his plate. “You might want to wash the blood off your face.”
I reached up. Where Leo had hit me, a trickle of blood trailed down my cheek. Without a word, I headed to the bathroom. He’d been wearing a ring that had grazed my cheek, slicing a thin weal down the side. As I washed it off and slathered it with antibiotic ointment, I wondered if Myst was going to sit back and watch us tear ourselves apart before she even had a chance.
As I returned to the kitchen, Leo was talking in quiet whispers with Rhiannon, who was shaking her head. After a few minutes, he grabbed his coat and slid into it.
“I’ve got work to do.”
“Are you going to tell Geoffrey?” I turned to him. “Tell me the truth.”
After a long pause, Leo shrugged. “Not right now. No, I won’t. But you’re being a fool. And I don’t want any part of it.” And with that, he headed toward the door, but before he could get there, his phone rang. He answered, listened for a moment, then flipped it shut.
“Shit, we have problems.” He glanced out the window. “It’s almost dusk but not quite enough for Geoffrey’s people to come out.”
“What’s going on?”
“Vampiric Fae, spotted heading into the parking lot at Anadey’s Diner. Probably light-crazed.”
“Mother!” Peyton grabbed her coat and I was right behind her.
Without another word, we headed out into the growing dusk.
I floored it and we swerved into the parking lot of the diner. The door was ajar and there was a ruckus coming from inside. I pulled out my fan as Peyton raced to the side, transforming into her cougar self even as she ran.
Leo reached into the pocket of his trench and I let out a sharp breath as he pulled out a Beretta . . . by the look of it, an M92. Dane—my mother’s boyfriend—had showed me his collection when we lived with him, and I’d soaked up all the knowledge I could about guns from him.
Slapping in a high-capacity magazine, he cocked the gun in wait. Whether bullets would work against the Indigo Court, I didn’t know, but the fact that he owned one and hadn’t told us caught me by surprise.
As we neared the entrance, screams echoed into the evening air. Kaylin rushed through and I followed.
The diner was a bloody mess. Four of the Shadow Hunters were enough to take on a diner full of people. One of the Lupa Clan was in a fight for his life with one of the Vampiric Fae, rolling on the floor trying to push the Shadow Hunter off as the creature began to transform atop him.
A second Shadow Hunter was feasting on the remains of a woman, and her blood ran thickly across the floor. The doglike monster looked up, a long scrap of muscle hanging from his mouth, but his eyes were intelligent—crazed, but far too smart for our safety. The woman was still screaming—he was devouring her alive. My stomach lurched.
Still another pounded against the ladies’ room door, trying to break through, and we could hear screaming from inside. The fourth was headed toward the kitchen, where Anadey was wielding a huge cleaver.
“Stop him!” I shouted, but Peyton was two steps ahead, leaping on the Vampiric Fae and knocking him to the floor. I motioned for the others to stand back and swept my fan three times.
Winds don’t fail me now. Gale force.
A gust howled through the diner, raging more than one hundred miles per hour, catching everyone off guard, toppling everything not nailed down. Plates went whipping like Frisbees, glasses smashed against the walls, the hurricaneforce winds caught up the chairs from the front tables and sent them sailing through the windows. The lights flickered as screams erupted—the Shadow Hunters were not happy with me.
As soon as the winds died, Kaylin rushed in, aiming his shurikens with deadly accuracy toward the head of the creature who was feasting on the woman. She had passed out—or died—and was a bloody mess of torn flesh. The Shadow Hunter screamed again and rushed toward the dreamwalker.
As Leo aimed and fired off a half dozen rounds, Rhiannon held her hands out and sent a blast of flame through the air. Both the bullet and the flame caught hold of the Indigo Fae and he fell to the floor, transforming as he did so. As he shifted back into his normal form, he jumped up, blackened from the fire and bleeding slightly from the bullet, which had gone directly through his shoulder. But the bullet hadn’t seemed to slow him down any, and he aimed himself directly for Rhiannon.