“I don’t think we should allow Mackie to even attempt to breach the cell’s crater.” It was the least I could do for those who’d stood, and sat, and lay dying, for me. “You guys need this place. It’s your home.”
“And you suggest?”
“A show of boldness verging on the insane,” I said grandly, pouring him more tequila.
“I like it already,” he said in his liquid, rhythmic voice, though for the first time he looked uncertain.
Smiling, I reached over and squeezed his hand. “Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, and more importantly, the date of the grandest, most lavish wedding this city has ever seen. The papers have been announcing it for weeks. Dignitaries from all over the world are expected to attend. I’m a bridesmaid.”
He cocked a dark brow. “Which Mackie surely knows.”
“Which,” I emphasized, “means I’ll have to stick very close to the Tulpa.”
The irony in sticking close to one enemy to avoid another had one corner of my mouth lifting, but Carlos’s considering exhale was a teakettle’s hiss. “This is your grand plan? Kill the Tulpa in front of hundreds of guests, gain the aureole, then escape Mackie for Midheaven?”
And stop Suzanne from marrying a freakishly obsessed man with ties to a paranormal underworld. After that?
I was going to fucking ferry Hunter away from Solange and back into this world. Unless I died trying, I thought, shrugging. “You have a better one?”
“Wedita,” he said, laughing humorlessly, “I never thought we would get this far. I have no plan at all.”
“Okay, then.”
Carlos reclined again, one arm over the back of his chair. “Of course, you’re forgetting one grave detail. You can only attempt public patricide by first getting past one very pissed off leader of the Light.”
Ah, yes. Warren. I sighed and attempted Carlos’s careless shrug, but he didn’t smile. Instead he pursed his lips and stared off into the distance. “I don’t think the other agents of Light will move to hurt you,” he finally said, voice a mere whisper. “Their confusion was obvious tonight, both at our appearance and your revelations about this man, Hunter. But what you couldn’t sense was their flashing anger and mounting frustration. I know this tangled knot of emotions. It will turn them against one another.”
Yes, but would they move to help me against Mackie? Because none but Vanessa had done so during the tunnel fight. I frowned, mentally canvassing the scene at the border. I couldn’t be sure, I’d been too giddy with laughter to notice, but I didn’t think I’d seen her there. And if I noted her absence, along with her violent opposition of Kimber, Warren had too. A fist-sized worry unclenched in my belly, one I hadn’t even known was there, as I realized one person in the troop remembered me.
I silently thanked Vanessa.
“You could still head that way, you know,” Carlos said, jerking his head in the opposite direction of the city. He was right. With Olivia’s money I could change my mortal identity a dozen times a year, alter my locations at whim, and still never make a dent in anything but the interest.
But Suzanne’s words on the night of Mackie’s first attack swung my way like a pendulum marking the moments. No gossip or naysayer-and certainly no asshole-is going to keep me from love. The next moment brought Tripp’s voice back to life, words so recently spoken I could almost feel the warmth of his breath on my cheek.
Everyone’s got a right to their own damned reasons.
I glanced down and tentatively rubbed my printed fingertips over Carlos’s. “There’s no freedom in flight, Carlos.”
His smile took a long time to spread over his face, but when it did, it lit up the night. “And now you’ve discovered what all rogues eventually do. It is why at some point we settle somewhere, and battle for the right to remain where we choose.”
Which settled that. Tomorrow I’d head back into Vegas, risking Warren’s wrath, the Tulpa’s suspicions, and Mackie’s blade, all because what I really wanted, my reason, was as valid as anyone else’s. I wanted to get the aureole, enter Midheaven, and take back what was mine. More than anything? I still wanted Hunter.
“You still offering your full resources to protect me from Mackie’s blade?” I asked, tilting my head.
“I’m here, verdad?” And the shrug was back, as was the gleam in his eye. What a fatalist. What a dreamer.
“You should get some sleep.”
I nodded, then stood, and waited for Carlos to accompany me back into the cell. When he only held out his hand for my lantern, I realized he was standing guard.
“And while you’re sleeping,” he went on, graciously ignoring my sudden tears, “send up a prayer that we find a way to get past your former troop leader. He’s pretty pissed.”
“I’ll take care of Warren.”
“Really? So again, you’re going to take on Warren, the Tulpa, and Sleepy Mac?”
“All in a day’s work.”
“You must be some sort of superhero.”
In response, I stepped forward and kissed both his cheeks, scented the slim vein of tequila coming off his breath, then briefly pressed to my lips to his. If I weren’t in love with another man, and if Carlos didn’t know that, we might have deepened the kiss into something more. I pulled back and saw that knowledge in his eyes too.
“No, chilango, ” I said, cupping his cheeks. “But despite all odds, I’m alive, and that’s enough.”
But it wasn’t all.
So with my failures piling aboveground like a funeral pyre of mistakes, I headed off in search of Io instead of rest. I had an idea which might just set a torch to that pyre, but what the hell…
One way or another, life as I knew it was about to go up in flames.
26
“You sure you want to do this?” Io asked when I told her what I wanted. She remained ambivalent at my answering nod, those wide eyes searching, but ultimately shrugged, agreeing to put me under with the same drugs Carlos had previously used to send me to Midheaven. As long as she stayed nearby to pull me back out again, I assured her I’d take care of the rest.
She placed a condition on the favor, though, claiming she wanted to work on my body again since female anatomy had become more or less a novelty to her since joining the cell. Remembering Hunter’s final, desperate kiss, I relented, telling myself her curiosity was professional, not unlike a doctor keeping up on her skills, yet I was still nervous about her fondling my organs…not to mention a little skeeved now that I knew that’s what she was doing.
“Interesting,” she muttered after placing my pancreas back into its natural resting spot. Swallowing hard against the rise of bile in my throat, I rolled my eyes. Really, was there anything this woman wouldn’t touch? “But what’s that doing there?”
“What?” I asked, lifting my head, but she shifted her body to block my view.
“Let’s see if we can’t work it out…”
She rolled her fingers atop, along, and then into my lower abdomen, and I winced as she pulled and stretched in little striated motions, as if plucking harp strings. The motion caused me to alternately tense and relax, and while Buttersnap was lying passed out in her regular position at my right side, one particularly odd movement had me letting out a nauseated groan, causing the giant hound to lift her head and growl-almost like I was an agent of Light.
“Shush, you beast,” Io said, shooing the dog with one hand.
“Ugh,” I said, as she found the center harp string again. “Stop it!”
“No? You want it to stay?” Io asked, though she wasn’t addressing me as much as she was my stomach. “Well, never mind then.”
She then began administering a more traditional massage, the magic of her fingers making fast friends with my fatigue. “Ready?” she asked, and I managed a nod. There was a needle’s pinch at my upper arm, and suddenly I floated, like oil atop water.