She came into view as he reached the table. Long wavy hair, parted on the side, flowing down her back. Its darkness emphasized how pale she was and made her eyes look huge.
Those eyes followed him as he sat down. She’d given him the seat facing the door; a courtesy, he guessed, because he couldn’t imagine anyone who did what she did for a living would choose to sit with their back to the door for some other reason. “Miss Coyle,” he said. “I’m—”
“I know who you are, Mr. Speare.” The slightly mocking tone in her voice as she matched his formality grated on him. Her faint smirk, enhanced with lipstick the color of blood, didn’t help. Nor did what she said next. “E. L. Speare, private investigator. Thirty-two years old. You worked in security, high-level stuff, before becoming a PI. You’ve never been married, you live in Winchester, you have definite ties to Lazaro Doretti, and—”
“I get it.” He didn’t bother to hide the fact that she was pissing him off. Maybe next she’d start talking about the high school football team he’d been forced to quit when the beast decided it wanted to hurt other players, or the month he’d spent in juvenile detention for stealing a car when he was sixteen because the beast was about to take over if he didn’t sin right that minute—those records were supposed to be sealed, but it didn’t sound like that would be much of a problem for her. “You asked a few people about me. So what.”
“I just like to know who I’m talking to,” she said, still smiling. Her hair was red, he realized; the contrast between the deep cherry-toned glints of light and the paleness of her skin was striking. “Only, nobody seems to know what the ‘E’ is for. The ‘L,’ they know, but the ‘E’…I got like four different answers for that one, and nobody could say for sure they had it right. What’s your first name, Speare?”
Oh, fuck this. “Are you going to help me or not?”
“See, that’s the thing, right there.” Her smile didn’t fade, even when she took a long drink from the beer bottle on the table next to her. “Am I going to help you. I have a choice. I don’t work for anybody but me. I agreed to meet you here as a favor to Felix, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to help you. Because I don’t help people I don’t know.”
He drained his own beer, eyeing her as he did. A delaying tactic, and she probably knew it, but he didn’t really care. Even though the black T-shirt she wore clung to her upper body in a way that made him think about peeling it off, and the quick, graceful movements of her hands made him wonder what they would feel like on his skin. The thing in his head squirmed a little. So did other parts of him.
All of which he ignored, because he didn’t take bitches to bed with him. At least he tried not to. “Look, Miss Coyle—”
“Ardeth. My first name is Ardeth.” Her smile widened, turned teasing. “There, I showed you mine.”
“Look, Ardeth.” Demon-sword, demon-sword. Demon-swords were bad news and more people could die, and if this woman could help him track down the one used to kill Theodore, she’d be helping him save some lives. “I appreciate that you’re having a good time here, but this is actually important. Felix says you’re a serious woman. Is he wrong?”
“If it’s that important, you should answer my question,” she said. Her eyes twinkled in the dim light. “I’m just trying to get to know you. I don’t—”
“Yeah. You don’t like to help people you don’t know. So here’s what you need to know about me.” He folded his hands on the table and leaned forward, narrowing his eyes. “I think that when lives are at stake, it’s not the best time to fuck around and act cute. I also think you probably get pretty far with this shit with most guys, and that’s made you think you can flash those big blue eyes and simper and get whatever you want from any man on the planet, but that is not the case with me. I couldn’t be less interested in getting into your pants, and I can’t think of anything I have that you’d want, so you can quit playing this little game.”
He gave that a second, then continued. “Now, what I am interested in is the murderer I’m looking for. One who cuts up his victims. He used a demon-sword to kill someone and I figure maybe that’s a way to track him down. Felix says you might be able to help me with that, so let’s either get started, or go our separate ways.”
She looked at him for a long moment, sitting perfectly still as she did so. Her smile didn’t fade, either, but the playfulness left her eyes. It felt like being examined by an adding machine; something mercenary, all business, looked at him from behind those thick black lashes and that inviting red smile.
She finished her beer. “Come on. Let’s talk outside.”
Without waiting for a reply, she stood up and reached over the table. For one mad second he thought she was going to climb into his lap or something, but she didn’t. She reached out toward the wall behind him—toward the corner itself, actually—and tugged at something. A small silvery light flashed, collapsing on itself as it flew into her hand.
“You set up a shabriri,” he said, impressed in spite of himself.
She gave him a quick glance, her eyebrow raised. “Did you think I’m stupid?”
“No, I just—”
“Nobody sneaks up on me,” she said, turning and heading for the exit near the bathrooms. She moved a lot faster than he’d expected her to, so fast he could barely hear her next sentence. “I sit with my back to the door, they think I don’t see them. But I do. Is that serious enough for you?”
“It’s better.” He managed to edge past her enough to push open the exit door and let her pass through it into the alley beyond. “It’s a good idea.”
“I’m so glad you approve. Now. It’s my turn to make a speech.” She spun to face him again, with her arms folded. That snug T-shirt was paired with equally snug jeans and a pair of flat-heeled shoes that made no sound on the cement beneath their feet. His burgeoning, reluctant admiration went up another notch. She was ready to go, if she needed to.
“I appreciate that you’re worried about your mob cronies getting killed,” she said. “But they’re not my cronies. I have to worry about me, first and foremost, because if I don’t do it, nobody else will. My business is risky, and all that risk is mine—I don’t have powerful people backing me up the way you do. Just admitting I might know of somebody who recently acquired a demon-sword could get me put on a lot of lists I don’t want to be on, you know? So you’re asking me to risk my life, and you won’t tell me your goddamn first name. That makes me wonder what the hell else you’re hiding, and why. It makes me wonder why I should trust you.”
It had cost him a lot of money, and a lot of time, to hire ritualists to erase that information from the memories of everyone who’d ever known it, and to get it removed from every public record he could find. Now he was supposed to hand it over to this woman, just because she wanted it? “You know what some people could do with my first name?”
“I do.” The streetlights and the lights from the Strip meant it was never really dark anywhere, but the alley in which they stood was angled so they were covered with shadows. He could barely make out her form, weight shifted on one leg, finger tapping against her upper arm as she spoke. “You know what could happen to me if the wrong person finds out I led you to them? Violated the trust of another person who does what I do, or someone who might be a client?”
She had him there. Damn it, she really did have him there. If she was involved in the sale of a demon-sword, and she fed him information about it…she could find herself dead, and fast. He guessed it was fair, then, for her to want a little insurance.
He sighed. “My mother was a showgirl—”
“I know. Va-va-voom-Vera, best legs in Vegas. Rumored to have spent time with the most powerful men in the city—I assume your middle name is evidence of that—up until she suddenly quit to have you. She made guest appearances after that, taught dance classes, makeup classes, how to—”
“Yes. She was a showgirl. She loved being a showgirl. She loved everything about it.” She still did, in fact. Visiti
ng her house was like visiting a Polynesian disco decorated by Liberace. “Every gold-spangled, sequin-covered, feathered-and-tasseled thing about it. And about this city. So you tell me, Ardeth. You have a woman who spent her whole life worshipping neon while dressing like an alcoholic flamingo. What does that woman name her only son—what name that starts with ‘E’ does she give him?”
He hadn’t even finished the sentence when he heard the gasp, the half-choked laugh, that told him she’d figured it out. Faster than most of the people he’d told—which wasn’t many, but still. “Really?”
“Really,” he said. “You can see why I prefer to keep it private.”
“I can.” For the first time she sounded relaxed. Not overly cheerful, not cold and hard, but normal. It was kind of nice. It was kind of nice to stand there talking to her, actually, to someone who knew things about him and didn’t seem to care one way or the other.
Unfortunately, he’d barely finished noticing it when his head went on high alert. He didn’t know what prompted it. A footstep, maybe, a faint rustle or the sound of metal against metal in the distance? A scent that the beast picked up but he didn’t? No way to tell. All he knew was something set it off, loud and sharp.
“We should go back—” he started to say, but he didn’t finish. It was too late. The alarm inside his skull started screaming, drowning out the distant sounds of traffic and the muffled music from inside the Wheel. Whatever was going to happen, he couldn’t stop it and he couldn’t avoid it. All he could do was hope he survived it.
Time slowed. He saw his hand reaching out to wrap around the back of Ardeth’s neck, shoving her to the ground as he flung himself down, too. They fell forever. An eternity passed while it happened, an eternity during which every pebble and crack in the pavement beneath them came into clear, sharp focus as they grew closer and closer. His hand hit it; he felt it scrape. He saw cement chips fly as something hit the wall right behind where they’d been standing, and he heard the gun’s report echo in the narrow alley.
It lasted only a second or two, that time freeze. Then he was on his feet and Ardeth was on her feet, both crouched low, both heading as fast as they could for the front of the building.
She didn’t scream. She just moved, cool and efficient. His admiration took another leap. Maybe she got shot at so many times she didn’t care anymore, or maybe she had some sort of spell or something protecting her, but even if all of that was the case, her businesslike calm impressed him. No freaking out, just doing what needed to be done.
Her hand was in his, too. He didn’t know how that had happened. He liked it, though, he had to admit. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d held hands with anybody.
Except he wasn’t doing it now, for fuck’s sake. They weren’t taking a sunset stroll after a romantic meal, they were escaping from a sniper. Not the same thing at all, no matter how much it might have momentarily felt that way.
And he couldn’t hold her hand like that, and he couldn’t do anything with her like that, because he couldn’t do that. Period.
Another bullet hit the wall not far behind them. Fuck, whoever it was, he was a really good shot. Professional good.
Good enough to nail him just before he and Ardeth reached the corner of the building. He saw it happen before he actually felt it, saw blood burst from his right arm to form droplets of sparkling black in the air and caught a glimpse of something—the bullet, he guessed—banking off his flesh and spinning into the shadows. Only a flesh wound, nothing fatal.
But painful just the same. Quite painful, in fact. He gritted his teeth against it and kept running across the parking lot, yanking Ardeth along with him as he fished his keys out of his pocket. It took only a second to get the door unlocked and open, to shove her into the front seat and follow after her. The engine came to life with a roar that still pleased him, and roared louder when he shoved it into gear and stabbed the gas hard enough that Ardeth fell backward in the seat.
There might have been another gunshot. He wasn’t sure. And in a few seconds they were too far away to worry about it anymore; he slid into traffic on the Strip, breezed a yellow just as it changed, and headed for home.
—
Neither of them said much on the drive. She didn’t seem to have noticed that he’d been shot, and he wasn’t about to point it out to her. He didn’t want to talk to her about it at all, or about who’d shot at them and why, and he figured she was just as eager to avoid it.
But they’d have to discuss it. He knew it, and he guessed she knew it, too. Fuck, this was not what he needed. He was, strangely, a little tired. His head was starting to pound; penny-ante sins were not enough—especially now that he’d been wounded—and his whole day had been spent on them. The only sin he could commit with her around was the one he really couldn’t commit, and the thing in his head was stirring and pacing and it was not going to be easy to hold it in check.
As soon as they got into his house he made a beeline for the liquor cabinet. Good thing he’d washed some glasses the day before. Even better thing that he had a new bottle in there, just waiting to be cracked open. Which he did, sloshing bourbon into two tumblers without asking her what she wanted, and handing one of them over without caring if she drank it.
She did, though. She poured the drink down her throat with one smooth, quick movement, and didn’t gasp or grimace as she held the glass out for a refill. “Thanks.”
He grunted in response as he poured. Damn, that was another problem, wasn’t it? She didn’t have a car there, and he didn’t want to drive back to the Wheel to drop her off at hers. But he sure as hell couldn’t have her spend the night, and he didn’t particularly want her to come along with him to look at Theodore’s clothes, either, if Majowski managed to get them.
He needed her to help him find the demon-sword; or, he probably needed her to help him find the demon-sword. He did not need her getting any deeper than she already was. Being responsible for her death wasn’t a sin he wanted to add to his way-too-long list.
“So who knows what you’re looking for? Who shot at you?” she asked, leaning against his desk. Like it was her fucking house or something.
“I don’t know,” he replied, aware that he sounded irritated, and not caring. “Who knows what you were doing there? Maybe they were shooting at you.”
“What makes you think—”
“Oh, fuck this.” Having her stand over him as if he were a kid was really getting on his nerves. She was getting on his nerves, like an itch he couldn’t scratch. Maybe that was why he didn’t feel tired anymore. “I’m not playing these little word games you seem to enjoy so much, okay? I’m not that kind of guy. I—”
“Yes.” Her arms were folded across her chest, her legs crossed at the ankle; her voice dripped with meaning. “I know what kind of guy you are, Speare.”
“Then you know I don’t like to waste my time.” She really knew how to make it sting, didn’t she? Damn. “Cards on the table. There are a lot of reasons somebody might take a shot at me, just like I figure there’s a lot of reasons they might take a shot at you. But it probably happened tonight because somebody doesn’t want us talking, which means no matter what we do now, we’re both targets. And the sooner we find the people responsible, the better. Right?”
“I—wait, were you hit?”
He glanced at his arm, his short sleeve and the bare skin below it soaked with blood. The bullet had grazed the back of his biceps, so he couldn’t see the actual spot very well, but he could feel it well enough. That would stop soon, though. One of the few benefits of the beast in his head was that he healed fast—not Wolverine fast, but faster than normal people. “Oh. Yeah. Don’t worry about it, it barely—”
She ignored him and lifted the bloody fabric away from the wound. Maybe Felix was right about how good she was at her work; he barely felt the touch, and he was actually watching it happen. “It looks torn.”
“It only scratched me.” He glanced at it—at what he could see of it?
??and saw it did indeed look torn rather than scraped. What kind of bullet had done that? Had it been a bullet? “A flesh wound.”
“We should clean it up, though.”
“I can do it.”
“I doubt you can even see it. Come on, quit being a baby and let me clean it up for you.”
Shit. He didn’t want her to do it. He didn’t want her to touch him, not when the pressure in his head was higher than it should have been already. Especially not when he was getting a good look at her in a well-lit room and realizing that her eyes were even deeper and brighter than he’d thought, that her hair was the color of bloody copper and sparks of flame were buried in it like secrets, that his eyes kept wandering up and down her slim figure and watching it move.
“Besides,” she said, “for all we know, those bullets were coated with something unpleasant. The kinds of people we both deal with have access to all sorts of things.”
She had a point there, he had to admit. It had happened before—not to him, or anyone he knew well, but it had happened. And that wound really didn’t look like it had been made by an ordinary bullet.
Damn it. He’d just have to focus on what a pain in the ass she was instead of on that fragrance that clung to her skin. “Fine.”
“Your place is nice,” she remarked, as he led her down the hall to the bathroom where he kept his first-aid kit. “You have a cleaning woman?”
He pulled out the kit and set it on the counter; his eyes narrowed. “Why? Because a guy like me can’t clean his own house?”
She ignored his glare. “Most men who live alone don’t keep their places this neat, that’s all.”
“Yeah, well, I do.” Of course he did, having grown up in Va-va-voom Vera’s house, with piles of skimpy clothing and magazines and makeup everywhere. His mother was not a housekeeper, in any sense. When he was a kid it had been a special occasion if she’d used the oven to heat a frozen meal instead of sticking it in the microwave. “And that’s not a compliment, you know, saying I’m not as much of a slob as most men. That’d be like me saying you seem pretty smart for a girl.”