Page 138 of Demon's Bluff
Jenks’s dusted a cold blue. “It’s not his. It’s got too much yellow in it.”
Clearly concerned, Trent dropped back as the coven clustered together, each of them trying to get their opinion heard. Al alone stared at me, that book of his tucked under his arm as he waited for my explanation. It was Kisten, but it was not. He had always been graceful, but now his every motion held the smooth, unhurried refinement of the undead, an unsettling innocence. It pulled at me…until I saw Trent’s worry, his outright fear that he would lose me…and any bloodlust I might have felt vanished to the last tingle.
My breath shook as I exhaled, and I felt for Trent’s fingers, seeing the light in Kisten’s eyes dim when Trent grasped my hand tight and pulled it to his chest. This, I knew, was love, and I felt my throat close for what I was leaving behind; what I had with Trent summed far greater.
“Ah, I could use some context,” Kisten said as Ivy stared at him, touching his arm, his face, his brow as if he was going to evaporate.
“Me too,” Al said dryly.
Kisten put his head against Ivy’s for a moment. “I woke up on the morgue floor,” he said softly, and I winced in guilt. “In the furnace room. Naked and with a John Doe Vamp toe tag. Scared Iceman.” Bare feet shifting on the cold ground, he drew a manila tag from his pocket, the scuff it’d gained from my dragging him across the floor standing out against the otherwise clean paper as he showed it to me. “I know I’m undead, but how? I should be twice dead. I bit Art. Where did the aura come from? I don’t remember biting…Did I…bite someone?”
“Ah, about that,” I said, and everyone turned to me, coven and friend alike. Elyse winced and gestured for me to have at it. Maybe she thought it would help my case. “Um, I taught Dr. Ophees the spell to pull an aura from donated blood. She wouldn’t use it if it left smut on her aura, so I put a ten percent royalty use fee on it, storing my share of the take in the collective.” I stifled a shiver as the remembered feeling of other people’s auras tripped down my spine. “It went right to you. You’ve been getting a portion of every aura she collected.”
“That’s where your aura got smutty,” Al said, and I nodded.
“For two years?” Trent said, and I gave his fingers a squeeze, glad he wasn’t looking at me in disgust as the coven members were.
“I didn’t want you to starve as Art’s virus killed you,” I said, and Kisten’s smile softened as he put the toe tag back in his pocket.
“If he’s here, who is on Ivy’s closet shelf?” Jenks asked, and Ivy blinked fast, still not believing it.
“We never had any conformation that the ashes were Kisten’s.” I touched my pocket, hoping Johnny’s hair was still there. “Elyse and I put a John Doe Vamp in Kisten’s drawer. That’s probably whose ashes Ivy has.”
“You’re an undead,” Ivy whispered, and Kisten focused his entire self on her.
“Yeah, sorry, love,” he said, hitting his fake British accent hard. “I know you wanted to go first.” He smiled to show his long teeth. They werenew, unstained by anyone’s blood, and I stifled a shudder that might have its roots in ecstasy. “Where’s Piscary?” he asked, a flicker of anger marring his beauty, and Jenks snorted.
“Two years dead,” the pixy said from Bis’s shoulder, as proud as if he’d done the deed himself, and Kisten looked at Ivy for confirmation—but she was still lost in trying to figure this out. “We got some crazy nutjob named Constance running the city. Rachel is her brains, and Ivy and Pike are her muscle.”
Kisten spun back to me and I added, “Constance is a figurehead. Everyone is helping.” I didn’t like that the coven was hearing this. My throat closed, and I touched Trent’s fingers again. Cincy was safe, even if I had to leave it. “I can’t leave Cincy to Constance. She’s not ready to solo yet. Ah, Kisten—”
“No one is putting Rachel in Alcatraz,” Al interrupted, and Scott pushed forward, clearly peeved that he had to look up at everyone.
“The farce is over,” he said, the jaded sixty-year-old man shining through his ten-year-old visage. “You don’t have the mirror, and you won’t by June. Come quietly, or you will drag those you care about into the same cesspit.”
Jenks outright laughed, and the coven member flushed as Orion, Adan, and Yaz drew closer to Scott. “What part of Rachel doesn’t go to jail don’t you get, moss wipe?”
“She’s wanted for illicit magic,” Scott said, undeterred. “She can’t untwist that curse. She goes to jail. Time is up.”
“Time is notup,” Al said haughtily. “Nor is it down. Time is relative.”
“Rachel doesn’t need todoanything,” Elyse insisted. “I spent the last three days with her trying to get that damned Atlantean mirror. Survived a bet with a demon. Stole from an elf.”
Trent’s fingers tightened in mine. “You really need to stop doing that,” he whispered, and a delighted shiver rippled over my skin.
“But you make it so easy,” I whispered back.Oh, man. Quen. I have to talk to Quen.
“The coven’s position should be hands-off from here on out,” Elysecontinued. “We will leave her alone as Vivian told me to do. Not in Alcatraz. Not leashed to the coven. Rachel doesn’t need a leash. She needs a license to spell.” She took a slow breath. “I intend to give it to her.”
“Oh, my God,” Yaz whispered, one hand clutched around an amulet. “She cursed Elyse. Morgan bewitched her.”
“Rache did not bewitch anyone!” Jenks exclaimed, and Al’s grip on his cane tightened.
“Ley line. Let’s go,” Trent whispered, a hand at the small of my back.
A chill raced from his touch to light my entire existence. Kisten jerked as if on a string, and I shook my head, both at Trent wanting me to leave and at Kisten for reacting to my surge of emotion. He was an undead. I couldn’t…I just couldn’t. I had loved him, but now…
He wasn’t a ghost. Thank the Turn that that curse of Ophees would keep him in auras. He would only have to take in blood because he wanted to, not because he had to.