“Ivy had better be okay,” I muttered as Mark sighed from behind the counter and Cormel entered the shop, his motions graceful with the ease and inevitableness of death. The man had run the country during the Turn, and his confidence was absolute. Handing his felt hat to the man coming in behind him, he stood just inside and breathed in the air, nose wrinkling as he scented demons under the rich coffee and tang of spent magic.
“Demons,” the man said, his Bronx accent obvious. “Have you gotten rid of them, then?”
“No. Why?” I said, and Cormel nodded to Trent as he shrugged out of his coat and carefully set it on the chair by the door.
“You’re a hard man to find lately, Kalamack.”
“Cormel,” Trent said in greeting, the thinnest trace of magic flowing through him making my skin tingle.
Blinking, I turned to Trent when Jenks whistled appreciatively. Not only was Trent’s hair slicked back and clean, but he was clean shaven. “H-how . . . ,” I stammered, then, “When did you learn that?”
A hint of red about his ears, Trent adjusted his collar. “It came with the, ah, circumcision curse. Kind of an all-encompassing trim-and-neat . . . spell.”
Do tell . . . I gave him an askance, approving look. Cormel was eight feet away, and all I wanted to do was run my hand over Trent’s smooth face. My eyes lost their focus, and when Cormel cleared his throat, I flushed.
“If Ivy is not okay, I’m going to slice your chest open with a plastic spork and rip your wrinkly heart out.”
“Charming . . . ,” Cormel drawled, and my eyes narrowed as he shifted one foot to stand directly on a painted line, in effect preventing Trent or me from circling him with the patterns in the floor. “I’m glad the rumors of your demise were premature.”
Premature? I thought dryly. Was that a threat?
Making a show of breathing in my rising anger, Cormel smiled. “Get me a small black coffee,” he said to the tidy man with him. “No cream. And whatever anyone else wants?” he asked pleasantly.
Okay, he was being nice, but that only made me more suspicious.
Jenks came in from the back smelling of fresh air. “I’ll have a buttercream latte if you’re buying,” the pixy said, and Cormel blinked before waving his hand at his aide to get one.
“You’re not afraid of me anymore,” Cormel said, and I shrugged, my attention on the parking lot behind him. The FIB had moved in and they were talking amicably with Cormel’s men. I felt a twinge of guilt. It wasn’t safe. Why had Edden listened to me?
Cormel cleared his throat, and my focus shifted to him. “Oh, sorry,” I said, and Trent hid a smile behind a cough. “Ah, no. No, I’m not.”
“You’ve no idea what that does to the undead,” Cormel said, his voice a mix of velvet and smoke. Behind him was the mundane sound of coffee being prepared, a study in contrasts.
Tired, I leaned against a table. It began to slide, and I jerked up again. “Yes I do. That’s why I apologized. Would it help if I shivered a little?” I said sarcastically. “Pressed up against the wall, maybe?”
“Shame what happened to your property,” Cormel said lightly. “Exploded boiler, was it?”
Jenks’s wings hummed louder, hands on his h*ps and near his sword as he hovered between Cormel and us. “It was my property, blood bag, and it’s going to take a lot more than a coffee to make up for it.”
Not a flicker of shame showed itself as Cormel settled his feet firmly on the floor, put his hands behind his back, and rocked forward and back. “You will return the demons to the ever-after.”
Is that what this is about? My shoulders eased. Ivy was okay—so far. “I’m not the one who freed them. Talk to Landon.”
Still as death and unmoving, I watched his thoughts realigning themselves in a pattern I couldn’t guess at. “He’s missing. You will send them back,” he insisted, a hint of a threat behind the professional cajoling. His lackey had come back with his coffee, and Cormel took it—never shifting his eyes from mine.
My skin was itching, humming almost where it was closest to Trent. It was kind of uncomfortable, and I edged away from him. “No. I like them where they are.”
Trent tensed at the flicker of anger crossing Cormel’s face as the vampire sipped his drink. “Landon claims you are able to reverse the spell and send our souls back to purgatory. That would be a mistake—Rachel.”
He had said my name, but he was looking at both of us. “How’s Felix?” I asked, knowing I’d hit a nerve when Cormel ignored my question, taking the top off his cup and going to the condiments bar. “When the sun comes up he’s going to walk.”
“Ah, Rachel?” Trent said, feet scuffing as his eyes flicked from me to the FIB guys outside. “The intent is to avoid conflict. Not incite it.”
“I like poking at dead things,” I said, and Cormel gave me a disparaging glance as he tore open two of the salt packets they had out for the breakfast sandwiches. “Felix is going to walk, and he knows it!” I protested. “Cormel, this can’t work. Admit it!”
Cormel calmly poured the salt into his coffee like sugar. “He’s doing much better.”
“It doesn’t matter how many sunrises you chain him in the basement for, he’s going to walk. I’m sorry, but the entire idea of the undead having their souls is wrong.”
“You. Out,” Cormel said tersely, and his aide left, head down and stinking of fear. Cormel was silent as the door chimes jingled, motions sharp as he stirred the salt into his coffee with one of those lame little sticks. “I’m here for two reasons,” he said, his gaze flicking to the FIB men among his own, making me wonder if he was as eager to avoid an interspecies confrontation as I was. “I will have my soul, and you will remove the demons from reality. I will not have them here mucking up the current power structure.”
Trent’s small sound of agreement was as significant as a gasp. That’s why he was here. Cormel was rightly worried about the demons, and Landon was missing. Damn it, Landon. If you’re going to break the world, you need to stay around to put it back together.
Jenks’s wings hummed a warning, and I strengthened my hold on the nearest ley line. It was more dangerous now that Cormel was alone. “You knew Landon was using you to try to topple the vampire power structure.”
“Obviously.” Cormel sipped his salted coffee. “And you will finish what he began.”
“Cormel, I can’t!” Frustrated, I pushed into motion. Jenks darted into the air, and I resolved to calm down when both Trent and Cormel jerked. “I can’t,” I said again, voice softer. “Undead souls running around, spontaneously merging? You’re going to lose your entire population of the old undead. Why do you think Landon gave you your souls to begin with?”
Trent looked pained, but I knew he believed as I did.
“As I said before, this is why you’re alive, Morgan,” Cormel said, and a thread of fear slid through me at his anger. “Fix it.”
Fix it. He made it sound so simple. “I swear, Cormel, if you go after Ivy I will hunt you down myself.”
Cormel’s expression was stoic. “Ivy is safe. Fix it.”
“Order up!” Mark called loudly, but Jenks hung where he was, over my shoulder. Cormel said Ivy was safe, but I didn’t believe him. Neither did Jenks. I thought of her at her parents’ house, knowing there was probably a crack team of efficient assassins within three minutes of her driveway. I never should have made a deal with him. Vampires and five-year-olds played by the same rules, and both threw tantrums when they lost.
Frustrated, I sat down. My cooled coffee was before me, and I reached for it, warming it up with a quick thought. “Why should I? You tried to kill us so Landon would bring back your souls.”
Trent made a pained noise, but honestly, everyone in the room already knew it.
“Your lives were reasonably safe.” With a sound of sliding linen and wool, Cormel sat down across from me, and surprised, I searched the vampire’s expression. He was a hard man to read. I didn’t know. Seeing me staring, Cormel saluted me with his salted coffee. “If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead. The destruction of your church was a warning. A reminder of what everyone’s place is.” His eyes were pupil black when he looked up. “You will do what Landon cannot. You will send the demons back.”
I exchanged a quick look with Trent. I’d give just about anything to be able to read Trent’s mind right now, but I had a pretty good idea of what he wanted. Too bad it wasn’t what I wanted. “Yeah?” I said, leaning back in my chair. “I like them here.”
“Rache!” Jenks protested.
“Well, I do!” I said, embarrassed. “They’ve been stuck in that hole for three thousand years. Maybe if they saw the sun once in a while they wouldn’t be so crabby.”
“Crabby?” Jenks darted over, and I covered my cup so his dust wouldn’t get in it. “That’s not crabby. That’s a two-year-old on a sugar high after missing his nap!”
I frowned at him and his Peter Pan pose on the wilted flowers. “They aren’t that bad. You just need to get to know them.” Trent sighed. I found his hand under the table and gave it a squeeze. He didn’t like my decisions, but he’d back them up.
“You have a week,” Cormel said, and I shifted my focus past an angry Jenks to Cormel fitting a lid back on his cup. It was the universal signal that this meeting was over.
An entire week. Wow. “Or what?” I said snottily. “You gonna kill everyone important to me?” Shut up, Rachel. Your mom is in town. My eyes narrowed and I stood, knees shaking. There were at least eight vampires outside, a dozen FIB officers. I didn’t want to risk them. I didn’t want to risk Trent either. “You need me,” I said, pointing my finger at him as Trent stood as well, his calm beginning to crack. “You need me because as soon as the sun rises, every single vampire who gained his soul tonight will commit suncide, and you know it!”
“You will fix this,” he said, hammering each word into me.
Trent’s presence was a whisper beside me. “Ah, Rachel? You’re making some rather large policy statements.”
“Yeah?” I wasn’t going to do it. I’d fight them to get them to behave themselves, but I wasn’t going to force them back in that pit. But there were FIB guys in the parking lot, and I tried to calm down. “I’m not the one busting in here with ultimatums,” I muttered. “And I’m not going to make the demons go anywhere but to driver’s ed, maybe.”
Cormel sat across from me, his chest not moving as his pupils widened and the air seemed to shimmer between us. I couldn’t tell if he was pissed or trying to bespell me. “Remove them,” he demanded, the hunger in his gaze breaking the illusion of a kindly political leader and laying bare his true intent. “Or Kalamack will be your whipping boy.”
Pissed, I reached across the table, fear making me stupid. Cormel was faster. His fingers encircled my wrist, as cold as steel and twice as unbreakable.
“Rache!” Jenks shouted as he darted forward, sword bared. Cormel’s eyes flicked to the pixy, and my breath came in a single, unhurried draw as I felt Trent pull on the line. I felt it flow into him, saw it almost as a bright silver ribbon that sang. A familiar tingle raked over my skin with the rustle of feathers. Purple eyes flashed open in my mind, rejoicing echoed between my thought and reason as somnolent mystics awoke, eager to dole out mischief in a splashing banquet of overindulgent intent.
Stop! I demanded, and they washed up against my will, cheerfully jumbled and riding the wave as I realized I was gripping Cormel’s neck while he pinched my other wrist. Purple eyes spun madly, wanting me to give them direction. Between one heartbeat and the next I saw the FIB arranged outside, heard the tense decisions being made beyond the constructed calm within the chilly parking lot. I felt the indecision within Cormel, the unending agony pushing him to believe what he knew to be untrue. I saw a flicker of pain, real and new in him as his thoughts, spinning in unchanging circles, widened into the possible understanding that he could not have what he most wished for.
And then my heart thudded and I realized I’d somehow crawled up onto the table, kneeling to put myself inches from Cormel’s face. His canines were bared and sheened with a slick saliva, and his breath held still within him. His fingers gripped my wrist, and my free hand remained around his neck, thumb poised and stiff to jab into his larynx. He didn’t have to breathe, but it would still hurt—not to mention impede his ability to talk for a while. Mystics wreathed us so thickly I could almost see them. They played in my hair, making it float. I wasn’t afraid. Cormel was a small thought, one already dead and spinning in circles.
Damn it, how had they found me? I thought, only now recognizing that the mystics had been in the room for a while, making Trent’s aura tingle against mine.
But Cormel’s black eyes had scummed over with a long-dead fear. Jaw trembling, he stared at me, remembering the feel of the mystics on him, knowing they could hold his death if I wished it. He’d been a master vampire for a long time, but he started out as all of them do, as someone’s toy. And he remembered being small. I’d made him feel it again. Oh God, I was deep in it now.
“You will leave Kalamack alone,” I said simply, never letting go of his eyes as more people came in, halting when Cormel waved them off. It had been my fear that had brought the mystics back, fear for Trent—and now I was really up shit creek.