“Why did he choose ‘Winters,’ Mr. Blake?”
Maggie’s gaze was focused on the lighthouse filling the laptop screen in front of her, but Geoff immediately felt the shift of her mood. Her eyes had been in hyperactive mode from the time they’d arrived at the airport, so that Geoff’s reliance on Sir Pup’s guide harness was, once again, not completely faked.
And she hadn’t let up on the drive to Hilton Head, or after they’d entered the open-air café where they’d decided to have breakfast and look through the lighthouse photos Savi had compiled.
After Geoff mentioned his difficulty using her eyes, Maggie had made an effort to let her gaze rest on each photo. But she’d still managed to give a once-over to every customer, almost every pedestrian on the sidewalk, and many of the drivers passing by in their cars.
As she asked about the nickname, however, Maggie became too focused. Though Geoff had heard the hostess seating at least two newcomers, Maggie’s gaze hadn’t yet darted to them—which told Geoff that the answer was as important to her as their security.
And he wasn’t above using that knowledge to his own ends. “I’ll tell you, but only if there’s no more of this ‘Mr. Blake.’”
Her gaze lifted to his face. Christ, he hadn’t intended for his expression to appear that tense, that dark. ‘Mr. Blake’ didn’t anger him. It just . . . frustrated him.
“All right. Just Blake.”
No “mister,” and so no longer something she’d use with a superior, or an employer. He watched the line between his eyebrows vanish, saw how he eased back in his chair. Watched through her eyes.
And so Maggie knew, too, how much that had mattered to him. He began to push his hand through his hair, then realized how relieved the gesture seemed—as if he’d just fought a battle and won.
He was in the process of becoming completely wrecked by this woman. And seeing himself like this wasn’t helping his confidence.
He searched for someone who was looking at her, instead. He found one, two tables away, who was either staring blankly into space or fascinated by the platinum of Maggie’s hair in the bright sun. The focus wasn’t on her face, but Geoff could see her profile well enough to know her expression wasn’t giving much away.
And that she had a beautiful, incredible mouth.
With both hands, she brought her coffee cup to her lips. From any other angle, the ceramic rim would have hidden her smile, and he couldn’t hear it in her voice when she prompted, “Winters?”
“Winters,” Geoff said, “was the name of my uncle’s valet. His first valet, his second, his third, and his fourth.”
The corners of her mouth tightened. “I see.”
No, she likely didn’t. Not yet. She assumed that Colin, the son of a wealthy British earl, had lazily taken to calling all of his valets “Winters” so that he wouldn’t have to remember their names.
“They all were of the Winters family. Sons and grandsons. One a nephew. But it was the first who was in my uncle’s employ when he became a vampire. Whenever he traveled away from Beaumont Court, he took Winters. And it was the first Winters who was with him when he was cursed.”
He had no doubt Maggie knew of the curse. She would have noticed how few mirrors were in his uncle’s mansion. Every other vampire could see his reflection, but the taint of the dragon’s blood had erased his uncle’s. To a man as vain as Colin Ames-Beaumont, the inability to confirm his beauty truly was a curse.
“Oh,” Maggie said quietly. “Not just a valet. A gentleman’s gentleman. A man he trusted to do what he couldn’t—maintain his appearance, and protect him during his daysleep.”
“And, according to Uncle Colin, who remained one of his few links to sanity during those early years.” The family, of course, being the other. “There hasn’t been a Winters since the Second World War—not, at least, one who has served my uncle. His support of the Winters family allowed them to rise in class enough so that when my grandmother married a Blake, it didn’t raise any eyebrows. And Uncle Colin didn’t think it was appropriate for family members to serve as his valets, so he began to dress himself.”
With great care, she set her coffee cup on its saucer. “Your grandmother was a Winters?”
“Yes. And she hadn’t any more blond hairs on her head than I do.” He reached for his juice and raised it in a tiny salute. “And that, Maggie, is the story of the Winters name. You can infer what you wish from it.”
If she did infer anything, she didn’t share her conclusions. Instead, she slowly ate a piece of toast.
Geoff assumed her silence meant she’d been affected by it. Good, he thought. Very good.
Even if it meant that he was a bastard for telling her. He knew what she was looking for, what her psychological profile had laid out, describing a chain of events that had started when a young woman had given Maggie her last name, and nothing else. Then bandied about the foster system until she was twelve. She’d found stability, after that, with foster parents who hadn’t been able to have children of their own—and who’d taken in children not out of love, but to fulfill a sense of duty. The father had been a military man through and through, with a schedule for every aspect of the children’s lives. It had been constancy Maggie had desperately needed, but the sense of belonging she’d craved hadn’t been fulfilled until the service.
The CIA had known that, had used that when they’d brought her in. They’d depended on her loyalty—not just to her country, but to her fellow operatives. Whatever the CIA had given her, though, it hadn’t been enough after they’d told her to assassinate James.
And Geoff was a bastard for using that knowledge, too—but he was also determined to see that his family would be enough.
He lost sight of her a moment later. Damn, and double damn. The person he’d been looking through had come out of his reverie and glanced away from her.
When he slipped into Maggie again, she was studying his face. “Given how protective he is, I’m surprised that Ames-Beaumont hasn’t tried to force you out of the field.”
“You can be sure he’s tried. The first time I was shot, he threatened to break my legs every four weeks to keep me in bed.”
“The first time?”
“The scar you’ve seen was from the last—the latest one. That was eight months ago, in Colombia. And it was the first time I was too far from a Ramsdell facility. So I wasn’t patched up with vampire blood.”
By the movement of her head, Maggie was nodding. “Sir Pup carries blood in his hammerspace for emergencies. I haven’t had to use it yet—and I didn’t realize it healed that well.”
“It’s not completely miraculous. The others did leave a bit of scarring.” He wondered if his easy posture and the hint of his smile looked as casual to her as he hoped it did. “And it’s because of the blood that Uncle Colin will soon have his wish.”
Her vision darkened at the edges, as if her eyes had narrowed. “How so?”
“Ramsdell is building a new facility in San Francisco. The research will focus on the blood, which Uncle Colin has never allowed before—and so my focus will change, as well. I’ll head up security and operations, and only go out in the field when it’s necessary. And I’ll take a more direct approach when I do.”
“No more playing the doofus.”
He suppressed his wince. Even knowing “doofus” was true—hell, it had been deliberate—it wasn’t an easy thing to hear her say. “Yes.”
“And you’ll be living in San Francisco.”
“Yes.”
“Why the change?”
“It’s time. I’ve been protecting the family so long, I haven’t had time to start one for myself.” Whatever form that family took. “And I came out of Colombia; Trixie didn’t.”
Her gaze returned to his face. “She was . . . your guide dog?”
“For ten years.” He felt the familiar twinge in his chest and pushed through it. “She spoiled me. And traveling doesn’t have the same appeal without her. So when Uncle Colin told me about the plans for the San Francisco facility, I told him I would help him out.”
Her gaze settled on his mouth before moving to the photo of the lighthouse on her laptop. “There’s no interesting story behind my scars,” she said. “I wish I had eaten bullets, because that would mean that I’d taken a calculated risk. But it was just a mistake. I went left when I should have gone right. And I can’t tell you who carried me out.”
She couldn’t, but she didn’t need to; her implication was clear. James had.
“In other words,” Geoff said. “You want to save him from the demon, too.”
He thought she shrugged, but he found someone looking at her too late to be sure.
“I don’t know if he needs to be saved. But I’m not sure I could kill him. Not if the only reason is that he knows too much.”
Is that what she thought her role here was? That they expected her to perform a cold-blooded assassination?
“We’re just here to get Kate out, Maggie.”
“And then?”
“Uncle Colin will step in.” Which wasn’t, Geoff reflected, the best way to put it. He shook his head, and tried again. “When Katherine was eight, we were visiting a neighboring estate, and the lady of the house mentioned a locket that had gone missing twenty or thirty years earlier. My sister told her where to find it. The locket was of some historical significance, so the story was written up in the local paper. Just a minor little piece. But within a fortnight, two government men arrived at Beaumont Court to talk with her. When they left, they said they’d be calling on us again. My mother rang Uncle Colin. We didn’t hear from them again . . . but they are still alive.”
From across the café, he caught the edge of her smile. “He scared them.”
Terrorized them, because their deaths would only raise more questions. But fear created an ally of sorts; those two men would forever deny finding out anything unusual about Katherine or seeing the need for further investigation.
“And so if James can be persuaded to remain silent,” Geoff said, “we have no problem. The demon, however—”
“Needs to be slain.”
“Yes. But we’ll not likely be handling that, either.” From beside his chair, he heard an eager chuff. He shook off the memory of the giant demon dog, its teeth closing over Maggie’s arm. “And, so. No murder required. Just a rescue.”
Maggie was studying his face again. Specifically, his mouth.
“Maggie,” he warned. “Don’t look at me like that.”
Her gaze dropped to his hands.
“Not there, either.”
She met his eyes. He’d known few people who could hold his sightless gaze for more than a couple of seconds.
“I look everywhere,” she said.
“Yes. But not for as long as you look at me.”
She closed her eyes; he saw darkness. He heard the scrape of her chair. Warm lips pressed hard against his. Her fingers raked through his hair. His shocked inhalation brought her into him. Christ, she smelled incredible. Tasted like heaven. He wanted more, wanted to see her, too. But the idea of finding another pair of eyes to look through had barely begun to form when every sensation that was Maggie left.
Then she was back in her chair, and he was staring at his own astonished expression.
She looked down at her toast, picked up another slice. She must have noticed that her fingers were unsteady at the same moment that he did—her gaze snapped to the street, to the sidewalk, and began its familiar skip from face to face.
“I shouldn’t have—”
His temper flared. “You’ll not apologize for it.”
“Your sister is still missing.”
Yes, she was. Bloody hell. Katherine wouldn’t begrudge either of them that kiss, but dammit—there were priorities.
He nodded, pushed his hand through his hair. It’d felt better when Maggie’s fingers had done it. “More lighthouses, then.”
Blake found the lighthouse half an hour later.The photo had been taken from a position nearer to it than Katherine was, but it gave them a direction: about thirty miles north.
They’d only been on the road for a few minutes when the demon came to see Katherine again. In the passenger seat, Blake’s shoulders straightened, his eyes squinting slightly. As if, Maggie thought, he were trying to urge Katherine to look at something more closely.
“He’s GQ again. And he’s speaking to her, but Katherine isn’t . . . ” Blake tilted his head, frowning. “She’s not looking at him, so I’ve no idea what he’s saying.”
She shouldn’t have been surprised, but she was. “Can you read lips?”
“Not perfectly. Enough to catch a word here and there, put it together. Come on, Kate, you know I need to see his face.”
Oh, no, Maggie thought. She glanced in the rearview mirror, saw Sir Pup gazing steadily back at her. A hellhound wouldn’t know, and a man might not realize what that meant—but Maggie could guess.
Katherine was attracted to the demon. Probably trying not to be . . . but still attracted.
Demons, unfortunately, could be charming, so that their lies dripped like honey. And the shapes they took were usually as gorgeous as sin.
“He’s holding out his hand to her. She’s not taking it, but she is following him down the stairs. The curtains are drawn at the front windows.”
“So that no one can see in,” Maggie said. “Or so that she can’t signal to anyone.”
“There’s James, standing near the doorway of a dining room. He’s decked out in black, wearing a shoulder holster.” Blake frowned. “There’s food. It’s a nice setup. GQ is smiling, pulling out a chair for her. What the hell is he doing?”
“Playing good cop, bad cop,” Maggie said. “In a few minutes, James will get pissed, start yelling, pull out the gun. The demon will be the voice of reason and put himself between Katherine and the weapon.”
And then there was the food, she thought. How hungry was Katherine by now? Even if she didn’t want to feel gratitude, she would be thankful for the chance to eat. It was human nature.
Blake frowned. “So he’s creating an express version of Stockholm syndrome? He’ll make her trust him, so she’ll give up the location faster?”
“I think so.” Katherine knew the Rules, and what the demon couldn’t do to her. She wouldn’t worry about him, but look for ways to get around James. “They’ll want to keep her afraid of James, but they’ll also give her a friend.” A handsome, sympathetic friend. “One who can convince her that as soon as she helps him, he’ll let her go.”
Blake was silent for a few minutes, then said, “You were spot on, Maggie.”
“The fight?”
“Yes. The demon is taking her back upstairs now.” He pounded his fist against his knee. “And she’s still not looking at him, though he’s speaking with her. Still not . . . Oh, but she’s taken a scone with her and heaped it with jam.”
Jam? Maggie glanced over, saw his wide grin. “What?”
He shook his head. “We’ve only to wait now, and we’ll know what it is he wants.”
As soon as the demon left her alone, Katherine used the jam to write “dragon blood” on the bathroom mirror.
Which, Maggie thought, was not as helpful as it might have been.
“Dragon blood?” Blake scrubbed his hands over his face. “How would she find that? There’s only been one on Earth, and it was killed thousands of years ago.”
By the sword that had tainted his uncle’s blood. And—
Maggie’s stomach sank. “Is that what happened to you? And Katherine? You were changed by the sword?”
“Not directly.”
Born different, not changed. “Someone else. Your parents or your grandparents were tainted by it.”
“No. But go back two centuries, and you’ll land on them. What are you thinking, Maggie?”
“The reason your uncle hired me was that a few demons found out he was different from other vampires, so he needed that extra protection from them. And that if your family has been different for two hundred years, there will be a pattern that shows up. No matter how hard he tries to hide it. If a demon looked at him first, then looked at his family . . .” Maybe Blake’s pattern wasn’t as easy to establish. But his sister—“Katherine’s cases-solved rate is incredibly high.”
“And they took blood from us both.” His grim tone matched the lines of tension beside his mouth and nose. “So that’s how they knew. But that still doesn’t tell us where she’ll find dragon blood now.”
Her stomach seemed to sink lower. Maybe Katherine didn’t have to find dragon blood. Maybe the demon thought she already had it. “Do you know about the grigori?”
“No.”
That was no surprise. Ames-Beaumont, she knew, had only learned of them recently, too. “Demons can’t have children. But before the war with the angels—when the dragon was killed on Earth—Lucifer made some demons drink dragon blood. They were changed by it, and they mated with humans. The offspring are the grigori.”
She watched his face, and saw the horrified realization that his family had been changed by dragon blood. His voice was low and furious. “Is he trying to experiment with her? To see if he can impregnate her?”
“If he is, there is one silver lining: it has to be of her free will.” As in everything else, the demons’ Rules had to be followed.
“And so he does the nice-guy routine before he tries to—” He bit the rest off. Anger and horror battled for equal play in his expression.
“Yes.” She focused on the road again. “But maybe we’re wrong. It just might be . . . Oh, Jesus.”
The SUV sped past them, heading the opposite way, but she was certain she hadn’t mistaken the driver. James. Her heart began pounding, but she fought the impulse to slam the brakes, to whip the vehicle around and follow him.
She pressed the button that lowered the rear passenger window. “Sir Pup. It’s the black Land Rover that just passed us. Do you have your locator?”
“Is it James?” The fury hadn’t left Blake’s voice.
“Yes.” A tracking device landed in her lap. “All right, Sir Pup. Just lead us to him. If you can do it where no one can see it, detain him. But don’t shape-shift.”
The hellhound gave a disappointed whine.
Maggie slowed as soon as James’s vehicle was out of sight, then pulled off onto the shoulder. Sir Pup jumped out the window.
“Can he catch up at highway speeds?”
“Yes.” She watched the dark blur streak across the road. “If he’d run from San Francisco instead taking the plane with me to New York, he would have arrived before I did.”
“He’d have . . . Bollocks.”
Maggie met her own flat stare in the rearview mirror. “Do I look like I’m joking?”
“I don’t know. I’m with him. And he’s running . . . very fast.” Blake reached forward, braced his hand on the dash. “It’s a bad amusement park ride. Oh, hell. He’s purposefully running in front of oncoming vehicles.”
He probably was. Maggie pulled back onto the road and headed after the hellhound. And hoped that whatever chaos Sir Pup left in his path didn’t delay them too long.
And that he didn’t interpret “detaining James” as “eating his legs.”
At least, not yet.
Chapter Seven
James is a lucky man, Maggie thought. He’d stopped at a beachfront park, a location too public for Sir Pup to do anything more than lie in the sand a hundred yards away and stare at him.
Maggie parked and turned to Blake. “You can see him?”
“At one of the tables. He looks to be on the phone.” He held up his hands, moved his thumbs. “Not talking. Texting.”
And she would have to cross an open expanse to reach him. After a quick check of her gun, she said, “You’ll stay with Sir Pup while I talk to him.”
“Not a chance.”
She knew he’d say that. “He won’t talk with you there.”
“We don’t need him to talk. Just to point out the house.”
“Geoff, I need you to trust me.” And to be out of James’s line of fire. She couldn’t trust James, not until she knew what his role was.
And even then, it would be difficult.
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “This isn’t about trusting you, Maggie.”
“No. You’re angry on behalf of your sister, so it’s about you wanting to break your fist on his face.” She touched his hand, the tight, white-knuckled clench. “We can’t charge blindly into the house. We can’t take that risk.”
The fingers beneath hers loosened slightly.
“You can start punching after we get her out.”
He released a heavy breath and nodded. “All right, then.”
The relief that swept through her was too strong, she thought as she spotted James at the table. Relief like that came from caring.
And she wasn’t going to be careless with Geoff.
She knew the moment James spotted her. The expression on his boy-next-door face didn’t change, but beneath the table, his booted feet shifted slightly wider. Getting ready to dive to one side or the other.
She didn’t sit on the bench and offer an easy gut shot below the table. She leaned her hip against the tabletop instead, her arms casually folded beneath her breasts, her right hand on her weapon and concealed by her jacket.
“This can be easy,” she said. “But it’s up to you.”
He laid the phone down and placed both hands flat on the table. “I’ll make it easy.” With his chin, he gestured at the phone. “I sent you another message. You found me faster than I thought you would.”
And she’d never tell him how. “My employer has interesting friends.” Let him wonder about that. Wonder and worry. “And yours is a demon.”
“He used to be yours, too, Maggie.” He leaned back slightly, looking up at her face. “The demon is Langan.”
Their handler—her superior—at the CIA. The one who’d given her James’s kill order. She didn’t allow her surprise to show. And wondered if he was lying, just to make her stumble.
But it was possible. If Langan had been a demon, he couldn’t have killed James; giving Maggie the kill order would’ve been the only way to get rid of him without breaking the Rules. And Maggie didn’t know Langan’s current status . . . but she would have Savi check into it the moment the vampire came out of her daysleep.
“Langan,” she repeated flatly. “And what does he have on you?”
“A bargain. I help him find what he needs, and he doesn’t tell the agency that I’m alive . . . and that you faked the kill.”
A demon or vampire could have heard the pounding of her heart, might have sensed the fear that spiked through her. A human couldn’t. Her smile was thin. “I could make it real now.” She waited a beat. “That kill order was bogus. You know it, and if the agency looked close enough, they’d know it, too. Even if they dragged us back, we’d get the equivalent of a slap before they started hunting for Langan. So what else does he have that would make you stupid enough to bargain with him?”
Sweat beaded above his upper lip. “I took an assignment. A leadership change.”
A political assassination. “So?”
“I couldn’t complete it. I took the shot, but couldn’t complete the assignment. So I disengaged and reported to Langan. Reported everything.”
Maggie frowned. Failure wasn’t reason to—
Ice slid through her veins. “Couldn’t? Because he healed? Because bullets couldn’t kill him?”
“Maggie . . .”
“A vampire or a demon?”
He blinked. Was going to lie. But she knew, didn’t she?
A political assassination.
“Stafford,” she breathed. And James hadn’t known Stafford was a demon. An American citizen, on American soil. Oh, God. She had made a mistake. She should have followed through on that order. “What was in it for you?”
“A promotion, and a desk.”
Disgust poured through her. She didn’t attempt to conceal her reaction.
James sat back. “Goddammit, Maggie. I was tired of seeing my—our—friends shot in the field. Tired of seeing them killed. And it was a demon.”
One that Maggie would have killed herself, if she could have. But James hadn’t known Stafford had been a demon until after he’d tried to kill him.
Not that it mattered now. Katherine did.
Maggie swallowed, forced herself to relax.
“A demon, yes. Okay. And another demon has you in this bargain now.” And if James didn’t fulfill it, his soul would be trapped in Hell. Which was, she thought grimly, enough incentive to make James do almost anything. “You just have to help him, is that right? You don’t have to actually give him whatever it is he’s looking for?”
“Right.” Almost tiredly, James nodded. “Just help. But he decides what ‘helping’ is.”
“Then we’ll make it simple. I’ll go after Katherine when you aren’t there, so that you don’t have to help him stop me. Like now.”
His lashes flickered. “I’m due back in a few minutes. If I stay much longer, he’ll be suspicious, and ready for you. This evening, I’m supposed to pretend to argue with him, leave the house angry and stay away for several hours. I’ll contact you then, and give you the address.”
Maggie straightened. “All right. Tonight.”
She waited at the picnic table until she saw the Land Rover pull out of the parking lot. The ocean seemed louder than it should have, filling her head with noise. The sand was deep and soft. Her feet were hot inside her boots and her body bathed in a light film of sweat by the time she made it to Geoff’s side.
Geoff was cold, pale with anger, his voice ice. “What the bloody hell was that?”
A small directional microphone lay in his lap—no doubt from Sir Pup and the supply of equipment in his hammerspace.
Well, that made everything easier. She wouldn’t have to repeat her entire conversation with James; she’d just have to explain it.
Geoff stood. “You let James go. Might as well have told him to tell the demon we were coming.”
No, he wasn’t cold. He was close, and he was pissed, and she could feel the heat coming off him as well as she could the sun. Sweat trickled down her back, between her breasts.
Maggie glanced at Sir Pup. “Follow him. Detain him gently. But don’t let the demon see you.”
White still edged Geoff’s mouth, but color was returning to the rest of his face. A breeze pushed at his dark hair and cooled the back of her neck. “What was that, Maggie?”
“He’s bound to help the demon. I won’t force him to break his bargain and damn him to Hell.” She had a feeling James was doing a good job of getting there on his own. “But if he’s heading back to tell the demon—to help the demon—and Sir Pup prevents him from getting there . . .”
“He doesn’t break it.”
“Exactly.”
She turned toward the parking lot. Geoff caught her arm. “And the rest?”
Langan, Stafford. Kill orders that Langan must have known would never be completed. And the certainty that she had narrowly escaped the trap James was ensnarled in now.
“I . . . can’t,” she said. “I can’t think of it now. It’s too much, it’s too big. Maybe after we get Katherine.” She closed her eyes. “And for just one moment I need to . . . this.”
She leaned in, buried her face in his throat. Tension held Geoff stiff for a second before his arms slid around her.
“I’m tired,” she admitted, and let herself rest against him. Not physical exhaustion. Emotional. As if she’d been slowly wrung out since receiving that e-mail. “I haven’t been this tired since I left the agency.”
His voice was a soothing rumble against her cheek. “We’ll be finished soon.”
“Yes.” She stepped back. Her hand drifted down his arm until her fingers linked with his. Then she let her hand drop back to her side. “We need to go.”
Chapter Eight
Maggie drove just above the speed limit, her gaze constantly returning to the device tracking Sir Pup’s location. He and James weren’t too far ahead—but not, Maggie had said, so close that James would spot their vehicle.
Geoff nodded, casting ahead in an attempt to find Sir Pup, and was surprised when she admitted, “It’s almost a relief. To know I was wrong about him.”
She’d said that she couldn’t talk about it yet, that it was too much. But maybe, Geoff thought, too much not to. At least a bit. “Wrong, how? The kill order was a setup.”
“Yes. That’s not what I—Not exactly.” She checked Sir Pup’s position, still on a steady course north. “I was afraid I’d have to choose.”
“Choose what?”
“I didn’t know.” He heard the long, shaky breath she drew. Saw her hand make an open gesture, grasping at air. “Choose something. Something that would turn out to be karma coming back to bite me on the ass. Something that meant I wouldn’t be going back home.”
Home. She glanced over at him, and he wondered if she saw his face. If she knew what she was looking at when she did.
“But now,” she continued, “I feel I’ve done what I could for him. And the rest isn’t my choice, or my responsibility.”
Geoff didn’t point out that it never had been. Saying it wouldn’t mean she hadn’t felt it hanging over her head.
“Anyway.” She took another of those long breaths, but this was deep, steady. “I don’t feel so tired now. Thank you.”
Surprise shot through him again. “What for?”
“For caring.” She searched his features, and this time he was certain she saw. “Don’t get careless, though. Or do anything stupid. And I won’t, either.”
She was in an emotionally weak moment. It was probably unfair to press her now. “After we retrieve Katherine, I want a week with you. Or two. Time set aside every evening. Even if we’ll do nothing more than sit in your garden.”
“I killed all of my flowers trying to discover if I had a green thumb.”
“I’ll not look at them if you don’t.”
The mirror caught the corner of her smile. “All right.”
He should have asked for a month. Geoff pushed ahead, found a driver, went farther—slipping into more than thirty people before the world exploded around him in sharp, brilliant detail. Each flap of a bumblebee’s iridescent wings as it flew past Sir Pup. Minute particles swirling from mufflers, the pits in the pavement rushing beneath his feet.
His head began to throb, but he didn’t want to lose the connection. Narrowing his own focus on the Land Rover helped.
“I have him,” he told Maggie, and that was all that was said between them until, ten minutes later, Sir Pup began to slow.
“James is turning right. It looks to be a shared drive, marked with a stack of yellow stone blocks. I—” He clutched his head, fighting nausea as everything blurred.
A house rushed by, a second. Then a glimpse of the boathouse Katherine had seen from her window before Sir Pup was standing, peering through green-leafed shrubbery at the driveway.
Low, Geoff thought. Lying or crouching.
“I believe . . .” He swallowed hard. “I believe he looked over the layout of the area. There are three houses, but they are a good distance apart and separated by trees and plantings of some sort.” His thumb was no greener than Maggie’s. “The driveway is lined with the same. He’s waiting there now, on a bend. He’s past the lanes for the other two houses.”
“We’ll be at the turnoff in about a minute.”
Geoff nodded. Good timing. “And there’s James,” he told her.
The vehicle moved along the driveway at a good clip. Sir Pup seemed to rise from the ground—then darted forward.
Tendrils of smoke rose from the tires as they skidded over the pavement. Geoff didn’t hear the crunch of the metal hitting flesh, but he saw the bumper dent from the impact, the drops of blood that splattered the black paint.
The world spun once, twice. Sir Pup rolled to a stop twelve feet from the vehicle, his unfocused gaze directed under the Land Rover.
Playing dead, Geoff thought.
His own body had clenched, he realized, as if braced for impact. He drew in a deep breath, then another. “Does he heal quickly?”
“Sir Pup?” Her voice had a sharp edge. “Why?”
“He jumped in front of the SUV.”
“Oh.” Her short laugh was high, relieved. “Yes.”
James’s booted feet appeared beside the Land Rover and jogged over to Sir Pup. The hellhound lay still until James knelt beside him.
To Geoff, it only appeared as if Sir Pup batted James with a forepaw. Then Geoff lost sight of him until the hellhound rose to his feet and looked over at the Land Rover. The windshield had shattered. James slid down the hood and crumpled to a heap on the driveway.
Geoff’s heart pounded and echoed in the suddenly hollow space between his ears. “And you say that while my uncle sleeps you’re alone with that dog?”
“I’ve never said that. Is James still alive?”
Sir Pup was sniffing at the man’s legs, his arms. At James’s throat, his pulse beat faintly beneath his skin.
“Yes,” Geoff said, then slipped back into Maggie’s eyes when she next spoke.
“There they are.”
Maggie rolled James over and stripped him of his weapons. Nylon cable-tie handcuffs bound his wrists behind his back, his legs at the ankles. With Geoff’s help, she loaded him into the back of the Land Rover.
She pulled off her jacket and tossed it on the front seat. “Can you shoot a gun?” When Geoff’s brows lifted, she said, “If the demon looks at you, you’ll be able to aim and shoot him. The bullets won’t kill him, but they’ll hurt him a little.”
And with luck, provide enough distraction that Sir Pup would be able to do his thing.
At Geoff’s nod, she fitted him with a 9-mm from Sir Pup’s hammerspace and screwed on a sound suppressor. Sleek and effective.
“We’ll drive up in the Land Rover,” she told him. “Sir Pup—you go on around.”
The driveway bent to the right and down a small rise. Maggie studied the house longer than she might have if Geoff weren’t looking through her eyes. A columned veranda wrapped around the front of the house. It rose three stories, topped by a widow’s walk. Exits in the front, she noted, and likely in the back.
For a demon, though, any window could serve as an exit.
“I walk ahead of you,” Geoff said. And before she could protest, he added, “So I can see where the hell I’m going.”
And when he could see where he was going, Maggie realized, he moved as smoothly and as confidently as any of the operatives she’d worked with. He took the front steps and moved to the side of the door. He held up his hand before she could kick through.
Geoff pointed to his eyes, then the door. It took her a moment to understand.
The demon was waiting for them—and looking at the door from the other side.
On the stairs, he mouthed clearly.
Her pulse raced, and she couldn’t stop her grin. The British and American governments had no idea what they were missing.
He reached down and depressed the door handle. It opened easily.
Maggie swept through low, aimed—and froze. Katherine stood on the stair landing. Tall and dark, just like Geoff. Her eyes widened, and she raced down the stairs.
Geoff came in beside Maggie and raised his arms. His gun.
Oh, Jesus.
“No!” Maggie launched herself at him—too late.
He fired. Katherine’s cheek opened up; blood spit across the wall beside her. She staggered, fell.
Maggie’s weight knocked him to the side. He caught his footing, caught her with his free hand.
“Maggie! What the bloody . . .” He stopped, and his brow furrowed. “What are you seeing?”
She looked back at the stairs. Katherine stared at them, her gaze clouded with death. Crimson soaked into the cream-carpeted stair pillowing her head.
Coldly, Geoff aimed again. “My sister’s eyesight isn’t that good, Maggie.”
And the wound on her cheek was healing.
The tricking, lying bastard. Maggie clenched her teeth and opened fire.
The demon lifted his head, the ragged wound opening with his grin. But he didn’t stay Katherine and let them shoot him full of holes.
And knowing that a demon couldn’t hurt them didn’t make him any less terrifying when he shape-shifted.
The change was instantaneous.
If Geoff was looking through the demon’s eyes, he wouldn’t see the scales that covered the massive body, the glistening fangs, the ebony horns that curled back over his head. Hands became claws.
But it was the knees that made Maggie want to sink whimpering to the floor and curl into a ball. They were just the wrong way. Like a goat’s hind legs, but she couldn’t look at them without imagining her own knees snapping backward.
Maggie instinctively stepped back as the leathery wings snapped open and air gusted over her face. Her heart jumped into her throat as the taloned wing tips slammed into the stair-well walls, forming a barrier.
The message was clear: The demon couldn’t harm them. But it didn’t have to let them pass, either.
Where the hell was Sir Pup?
Geoff’s gun clicked. Out of ammunition. And Maggie almost screamed as something brushed by her leg.
A dog. Golden retriever. Wearing a guide harness.
Oh, thank God.
“Yours, Mr. Blake?” The demon’s grin spread wide over his fangs. A sword appeared in his hands. “Foolish. The Rules do not apply to animals—”
Sir Pup shifted as he leapt. Maggie grabbed Geoff’s arm and swung him around, dropping them both to the ground.
She looked, but couldn’t follow what happened. The demon crashed through a wall. A painting thumped to the floor beside Geoff’s head, then tipped over them. The house shook. Sir Pup yelped, once, and the echoing growl that followed it turned her blood to ice.
Geoff squeezed her hand. Maggie pushed at the heavy frame. Beside them, a ripped piece of wing bled onto the floor.
“If Sir Pup uses his teeth,” Maggie began, then shrank back as something huge rushed by them—demon or hellhound, she couldn’t be sure. The floor trembled.
Geoff pushed her tighter against the wall, shielding her with his body as she finished, “If Sir Pup bites him, his venom gets into the demon. Paralyzes him.”
Paralyzes him was said into sudden, deathly silence.
Maggie sat up, and her hand flew to her mouth.
The once beautifully decorated house was destroyed. Plaster and drywall gaped open, exposing the walls’ support posts like wooden bones. Carpeting had been shredded. There was blood . . . everywhere. On the furniture, the floors, the walls. Her stomach roiled.
“Bugger me,” Geoff whispered beside her.
A shadow darkened the dining room wall. A shadow, Maggie realized, with three heads.
With his left head, Sir Pup dragged the demon beside him, knocking chairs out of his blooded path. He was limping, Maggie saw. Limping and bleeding.
The demon had the stump of a right arm and a bite taken out of his torso. And he was still alive.
She swallowed down the bile that rose and held back her shudder. “Hold him here, Sir Pup,” she said. “We’re going to get Katherine.”
Geoff went up the stairs ahead of her. The door was locked. He slammed his shoulder against it, and it splintered open.
Katherine stood on the other side, holding the heavy antique lamp like a baseball bat. Uninjured, but obviously scared out of her wits.
Maggie reloaded her gun through their hasty reunion.
They weren’t yet done.
* * *
Geoff dragged James inside while Maggie brought their rented vehicle to the house. Sir Pup could vanish the blood. They’d leave the broken mess.
Katherine found food in the kitchen and brought it out to the living room while they waited for James to wake up. Geoff’s sister didn’t kick the mutilated and paralyzed demon when she walked by him, stretched out motionlessly on the floor beside James. Which meant, Maggie thought, that Katherine was a better woman than she would have been.
Geoff spent twenty minutes on the phone with Ames-Beaumont. “Uncle Colin has canceled his and Savi’s flight,” he told them. “And has scheduled ours for this evening.”
Maggie nodded. It’d be enough time. James was already stirring.
“And he wants to know what they were looking for,” Geoff said.
Katherine frowned. “I told you. Dragon blood.” She looked at Maggie. “They said it was something that your congressman had. That he’d kept it since the war of the heavens, intending it for a time when it could be used. Now that your demon is dead, he wanted it.” She pointed at the demon. “It’s not much to speak of. A few drops trapped in a crystal rock.”
Maggie forced herself to look again at the demon’s missing arm, the wound in his side. How much power did a few drops have that the demon had gone through this?
“Do you know where it is, Kate?”
“Yes.” She flipped over a blood-spattered cushion on a sofa and sat. “And I’ll tell you where you can find it once we’ve reached San Francisco. You can hand it over to Uncle Colin, and he can give it over to the Guardians. If I don’t, I suppose I’ll soon be repeating this experience.”
Geoff’s face was grim. “And someone else will be forced into a demon’s service.”
It could have been me, Maggie thought. She sank into a shredded armchair and brought her legs up.
Langan would’ve known when he’d given James the assignment to kill Thomas Stafford that it couldn’t be completed. It might have even been plotted by both demons, so that they would have—if they needed one—a hold over a human who could carry out assassinations, who didn’t have to follow the Rules. It wouldn’t have been the first time Stafford had used a human to kill for him.
And knowing her psychological profile, they’d probably even predicted that she’d fake James’s death. But even if her resignation had surprised Langan, she had no doubt that her placement in Stafford’s house had been his idea. He’d probably been the one to give Stafford that picture of her and James.
If the Guardians hadn’t slain Stafford, what might have happened? Would she, too, have found herself trapped in a bargain—forced to kidnap or kill to save her soul?
She laid her cheek against her knees and closed her eyes. But it hadn’t happened. Karma, luck, or maybe something else . . . She had escaped that fate, and ended up with Ames-Beaumont instead.
And Geoff.
Opening her eyes, she looked up and met his. They were slightly unfocused; they were never like that when he was looking through her. Her gaze moved to Katherine. His sister’s stare was as intense as Geoff’s could be.
She heard him say quietly, “Just a few more seconds, Kate.”
How wonderful to have family, Maggie thought.
Especially this one.
Chapter Nine
They made it simple for James.They sat him on the sofa and explained what would happen if he ever spoke a word about Ames-Beaumont’s family, or about what Geoff and Katherine could do.
They waited on the veranda while Sir Pup killed the demon in front of him.
When the hellhound was finished, Maggie cut through James’s handcuffs and let him go.
Maggie awoke in a familiar bed that wasn’t hers, with the most powerful vampire in the world glowering down at her.
She sat up, clutching royal blue satin to her chest. A chest that was, thank God, covered by the tank she wore beneath her uniform.
“Sir,” she said, and in the course of the word, tried desperately to remember how she’d ended up sleeping in his mansion.
She hadn’t fallen asleep on the plane. She did remember disembarking, and that her employer and Savi had met them at the airport. She’d said “Sir.” He’d said, “Good God, Winters. You’re bloody exhausted.”
That was the last she could recall. Which probably meant that Ames-Beaumont had given her a psychic shove and put her to sleep.
He sat on the edge of the bed, avoiding the sunlight streaming in through the eastern windows. When she’d first met him, she would have sworn the sun rose every morning purely out of hope it might shine on his face. There was beautiful, and then there was Colin Ames-Beaumont. He . . . glowed. Not physically, she knew, but psychically. The first weeks of her employment had been filled with humiliating leaps of her heart every time he’d entered the room she was in. Then she’d adjusted, the psychic effect had worn off, and she’d finally been able to look at him without catching her breath.
His deep frown could still affect her heart rate, though. She waited, holding her breath.
“I am disturbed, Winters.” His gaze, when it met hers, was slightly accusing. “I believe my nephew plans to steal you away from me.”
Her fingers clutched the sheet more tightly. God, she wished whoever had put her to bed had left her uniform on. “I have no intention of giving up my position here, sir.”
He tilted his head, and the sun hit the wild disarray of his hair, lighting the burnished gold. Mirrors were of no use to him, and Maggie knew he didn’t possess a single comb. “I can hear them plotting downstairs. My own family. She tells him where the dragon blood is, and he says he will persuade me to allow you to accompany him while he retrieves it.”
Maggie’s expression was a perfect blank. “It would be prudent, sir, for someone to accompany him—and to protect him.”
His gaze narrowed. “He also intends to spend a good fortnight flying about the world, so that if he were to be followed by some unknown party, they would lose track of him.”
“That also seems a well-conceived plan, sir.”
“A bloody expensive one, if you ask me. And what will I do, Winters? You cannot serve me if you are family.”
“I do not serve you, Mr. Ames-Beaumont. I am employed by you. I do not see any reason for that relationship to alter, whatever my relationship with Mr. Blake may become.”
He stood and slid his hands into the pockets of his tailored trousers. A pleased expression lit his features. “If you do become family, Winters—I suppose that means I will be able to pay you less?”
“I think, sir, you would have to pay me more.”
The vampire heaved a melodramatic sigh and turned toward the sitting room. “Do not break his heart, Winters, or we will have words.”
Maggie began to breathe again. She must have been breathing his entire visit—she only just now realized she was able to.
“And if he breaks mine, sir?”
He looked back and flashed a grin that seemed to be all fangs. “I would have to thrash him quite soundly. I have many nephews, but there is only one Winters.”
She was still clutching the sheet to her chest when Geoff came through the sitting room doors.
And she couldn’t allow this to happen again. Geoff in her bedroom? Yes. In her employer’s house? In his bed?
Far too awkward.
Geoff stopped at the foot of the bed. His hair was still damp from a shower, his jeans and T-shirt new. His gaze locked with hers.
And he couldn’t see her at all.
Her heart slipped into a heavy, steady beat.
“Uncle Colin said he spoke with you.”
“He did.” She threw back the covers and held his gaze as she walked on her knees to the end of the mattress. “And apparently, we will be spending the next two weeks in each other’s company.”
He reached out, his fingers brushing the sides of her waist. Her skin tightened and prickled with delicious sensation. “I’ll be happy with a fortnight in your garden, Maggie.”
She touched his jaw. “I wouldn’t be.”
“And I lied.” His laugh rumbled over her fingers. “I wouldn’t be, either. Ah, Maggie. I’m pushing you into this too fast.”
“What makes you think I can be pushed anywhere I don’t want to go?”
“No, I don’t suppose you could be.” He drew a deep breath. “Look, I ought to tell you—I crossed lines, Maggie. I had reason to go over your files, but I went over them again and again, and I went deeper than I should have. I was desperate to know you. If James hadn’t taken Katherine, if we’d met later, after I’d moved here, I’d have pushed you then. And if you’d said no, I’d likely have followed you everywhere in hope that someone would look at you, so that I could, too.”
Did he expect her to back away because of that? Not a chance. She didn’t know what they had now or what it would be, but she was going to grab on to it—on to him—and hold tight.
“So, stalking and surveillance.” She shook her head, smiling. “To someone like me, that’s either a precursor to killing someone . . . or to sleeping with them. So I think we’ll work out fine.”
He was still laughing when she bent forward and eased her mouth over his. Last time, she’d surprised him. It had been just a press of lips, her hands through his hair. Now she took her time, explored his taste, sought more of him to touch.
His hands at her hips pulled her closer, and he was warm, hot, would burn her alive.
Her pulse raced when she pulled away. “Not here,” she panted. “I can’t here.”
His large hand cupped her cheek. He kissed her again, then nodded. And she felt his disappointment when he let her go.
She walked past him, into the bathroom, and closed the door. A wall panel, when she slid it aside, revealed the one mirror in the house. He would see her there. She would lean back against the door, and he would lift her, and watch her face as she welcomed him in.
And it would be hard the first time, and rough, because she cared so much she knew that she’d be a little careless.
But it wouldn’t be her employer’s bed. She cracked the door open again and called out softly, “Mr. Blake?”