Dessa suddenly pulled back and rocked up onto her feet, eyes wide, lips plump and wet, her lipstick smudged.
Lord.
Her fingers flew to her neck, then her arms, brushing over them as if assuring herself she was still whole.
I wasn’t the only one wondering if I’d survived that contact. I wasn’t the only one breathing a little harder.
Her pale skin was scorched red across her chest and cheeks, hot with arousal. If my hands were free, she wouldn’t be standing alone right now. She’d be in my arms, in that bed.
“You could have killed me just then,” she said with a catch in her breath.
It took me a minute to reply. Finally, “You’re the one with the gun.” It came out slow, low, and I watched her pupils dilate in response.
“But you could have killed me,” she said softly. “Drunk down my life.”
There was no reason to deny it. “Yes.”
She licked her bottom lip, and I blinked slowly, unable to look away.
“I need you, Shamus. You are the man I’ve been looking for.”
There was something about the way she said it that made me think she wasn’t talking about sex.
“How about you untie me, then?”
She drew her fingers through her hair, pulling the stray locks of it away from her face. Her heartbeat was still elevated. She swallowed and took a few more steps away from me as if space would cool the heat between us. “First,” she said, “I want you to name your price.”
“For?”
“Helping me find my brother’s killer. I can’t . . . do anything else with my life until that happens, Shame.” She studied my lips with a soft longing as she said it, then stared into my eyes. Her cool blues darkened with need. “Just help me find him, and if I can convince you that he deserves to die, help me kill him.”
“And then?”
“You can name your price. Tell me what you want.”
“I don’t kill people for sex.”
Yet.
She shook her head. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just . . . I didn’t realize what you are . . .” She licked her lips and stared at my mouth again, then my eyes. “How very good you are. You tell me what you want in exchange, and I’ll do it.”
Jesus, I was going to explode.
Eleanor drifted into my line of sight. I had completely forgotten about her. She floated up behind Dessa and put her hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t,” I warned her.
Dessa frowned, and a roll of goose pimples pricked across her skin. Eleanor’s touch was grave-cold.
“Don’t?” Dessa asked.
Before I could answer her, Eleanor was floating between us. Ghosts can occupy the same space as people, so even though you couldn’t have fit a first grader between Dessa and me, Eleanor hovered there just fine.
Eleanor lowered her hand toward my crotch and raised one eyebrow.
“No.
No
,” I said. “Do not touch me.”
Dessa took another step away, obviously reassessing my level of crazy.
Eleanor did not pull away. She cupped my junk like a doctor. Then wiggled her fingers around a bit more just to make sure she had covered all the ground.
Her ice-cold touch ended all my happy-sex thoughts, and not in the good way.
Bitch.
“You weren’t complaining just a minute ago,” Dessa said.
“It’s . . . Jesus.” I scowled at Eleanor. Took a deep breath and tried again.
“It’s not you. Listen, love. I’m all for the sex-as-bribery thing. A fan of it, really. But if we’re going to trust each other enough to actually do anything about this killer of yours—not that I’m agreeing to help, let’s just assume I’m entertaining the idea—you have to untie me and tell me the details of what I might—
might
—be agreeing to.”
She hesitated. I didn’t blame her. But what she wasn’t seeing was that my head was finally, for the first time since before the bar, completely clear.
Maybe it was from the ghost clutching my junk. More likely whatever she’d slipped in my drink had worn off.
I could break out of these ropes and suck all the binding bits out of the wooden chair and free myself, Void stones or no Void stones. But it was my turn to see if she really wanted to negotiate. Really wanted to trust me.
“Set me free and we can bribe each other like adults,” I said with a smile.
Her eyes flashed, then settled into a deep smolder.
She walked slowly around me. “Do you think I don’t know how dangerous you are?” She paused at my back. I wondered if she was reaching for her guns. Wondered if I’d have a bullet in my head.
“Do you think I’m going to trust you enough to just let you go?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I do.”
She was silent for a second or two. Then she bent down and her voice was warm against my ear, sending a fever across my skin. “You’re
very
good, Shamus.”
A hard, sharp jerk at my wrists. The rope cut free and fell away. I pulled my hands apart and rolled my shoulders.
“What about my feet?” I asked, hoping for another chance at her, on her knees in front of me, and me, with my hands free this time.
“You can handle that, can’t you?” She dragged her fingers up the back of my neck then tugged on my hair.
I arched my head back, eyes closed, neck bare. Wanting her touch. She let go.
Damn.
I bent and took some time untying the ropes around my ankles, fingers thick and numb.
Then I stood.
I’m not going to lie. I was sore and bruised. I didn’t know how long I’d been crammed in that trunk, nor if she’d gone through the trouble to beat me with a tire iron before tying me up. Or I could just be hurting from whatever it was she’d dosed my drink with.
Still, it wasn’t the worst date I’d ever had.
“So, what exactly did you poison me with?” I turned.
She was shrugging into her shirt—a button-down that was not buttoned.
She looked over her shoulder, and her lips curved at one corner. “Just a little something I have and you want.”
“Mmm,” I said, not paying a lot of attention to her answer.
She must have picked up on that. She bent and, holding my gaze, took her time pulling her jeans up her long, smooth legs and over her hips before she tugged on the zipper.
I swallowed to get my tongue working again. “So we’re going to bargain and blackmail over every last detail? Is that any way to build a relationship?”
“Look at it from my perspective,” she said. “Having the upper hand with you is the only way you and I can have a relationship. Plus, it’s a lot more interesting that way, don’t you think?”
I could lie. I didn’t.
“Yes,” I said, rubbing at my wrists and the ache there. “Much more interesting. I don’t suppose you’d like to kiss on it to seal the deal?”
She started buttoning her shirt. “We have a deal?”
“We do if you tell me who killed your brother. And before you refuse, listen to me, love. There are certain people in this world I will not kill. Will not. No matter what manner of horror they have committed.”
That seemed to speak to her. She nodded.
“I don’t know his name,” she said. “But he was a member of the Authority. Dangerous then. More dangerous now. I have information that says he might be in the Portland area.”
“Why? Do you know what he’s doing here?”
“No. My guess is he’s planning to kill more people.”
“Or he’s visiting his dear old gram for all you know. So far, I’m not seeing a lot to go on. Do you know why he killed your brother?”
“My brother was . . . mixed up with the Authority. I didn’t know it then. He never . . . said anything to me.”
“There’s only one way to keep a secret organization secret,” I said.
“I didn’t want to believe it. Didn’t even find out about it until I pulled his files. He worked for the group in Seattle.”
“Do you know what style of magic he used?”
It used to be a big hush-hush that there were more styles of using magic than Life, which doctors tended to use, or Faith, that teachers liked to use. We’d pretty safely kept Death and Blood magic out of the public notice, although there were just enough Blood spells leaked to the public to keep the druggies and thrill seekers happy.
“He was a Closer. I don’t know what that means.”
“Well, that means you have a possible motive for revenge. Closers were magic users who took people’s memories away. Magically,” I added. “So the secrets of the secret organization could remain secret.”
“Jesus,” she said.
It was still strange to me that people were so surprised by that. I’d been born and raised in the Authority. Since before I could talk I’d known the price for stepping too far out of line—and getting caught—was having your memories wiped.
“He must have known something,” she said.
“Or he was part of Closing someone’s memories and they decided they didn’t like it much.”
“Enough to kill?”
I slipped my fingers in my jacket pocket, digging for cigarettes. Found them, lit up without asking her opinion on it. Sat on the edge of the bug-infested bed. She really had chosen a shit hole of a motel. I wondered why.
“Closers could take memories away,” I said. “Change lives. Make a person forget those he loves: spouse, children, siblings, parents. Give a person an entirely new past. A new identity. Make it so he could never use magic again.” I took a drag on the cigarette, exhaled. “So, yes. I’d say someone could be angry enough at a Closer they’d want him dead.”
She grappled with that for a bit, which stalled her in buttoning her shirt and jeans. I did not mind the view.
“How did he kill him?” I asked.
“What?” she said. Okay, she was a little more shaken by her brother’s past as a Closer than I’d expected.
“How did your brother die?”
She seemed to pull herself together. She shook her head. “I don’t want to say. Not yet. But I can show you.”
The cigarette had almost burned down, so I took the last drag to kill it. Looked around for an ashtray, didn’t see one. I flicked it on the carpet with the other cigarette burns and wiped my boot over it.
“It would be a start. But I’m not saying I’ll hunt anyone down for you.”
“He was a good man,” she said. “Had a wife and a baby girl.”
“I’m sorry for their loss. And yours. But I make no promises here.”
She had kicked off her boots to pull on her jeans. Her top three shirt buttons were still undone, showing just the edge of her bra and breast.
For a second, I wondered what was wrong with me. The old Shame would have promised her anything, fucked her in this dirty hotel, then left her with nothing but a pile of lies.
Was it possible I’d contracted a conscience from all the hell I’d been through? Picked up a terrible case of morality and a Zayvion-like sense of right and wrong?
Who was I kidding? I’d always had a moral code. I never used a girl who wasn’t consciously using me right back. And I never promised someone something this important, something their heart was riding on, and broke my word.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t all that moral, but it was a code.
“There are other people I can approach to do this,” she said.
“I know.”
“I have information that could mean the difference between people in this town staying alive or not.”
“I know.”
“I have information on the missing girl who was found dead up in Forest Park.”
“So do the police.”
She shook her head. “They don’t know what I know.” She paused, studied my face. “You don’t care, do you?”
She was wrong. I cared. A lot. Especially if anything happened to harm Zay and Allie. And yes, even if anything happened to Terric.
“I’m not promising to care. Not even about your brother’s killer.” It was blunt. Honest. “But I want to see how he was killed. And I want to hear about the missing girl.”
She didn’t look at all surprised. Still, she considered me for a long moment.
“Not here,” she said as she tied up her boots. “Let’s do lunch instead. Also, I think you should pay for the room.”
“How about I don’t file kidnapping charges instead?”
She glanced up. Smiled. “You know I could kill you from a rooftop if you approach the police.”
“Oooh. I like it when you talk dirty.”
She stood. Stepped up close to me.
I thought maybe I ought to kiss her. Maybe I ought to talk her into seeing things my way, Shamus-style.
“You still haven’t given my boyish charms a chance,” I said.
“To seduce me?” she asked.
“To make you never want to be with any other man as long as you live.”
She laughed, truly laughed. It was a musical sort of thing that filled the silent places in me.
“You think
very
highly of yourself, don’t you?”
“Not at all. I am painfully humble.”
She closed the distance between us. Close enough I could smell her perfume, a very light vanilla scent that made me want to lean in closer and taste it on her skin.
“And what if I took you up on it?” she asked, tipping her head up to meet my eyes. She was breathing deep and slow. Waiting. Wanting.
“You would not be disappointed,” I said softly. I lifted my hand and gently pushed her hair away from her face.
A key turning the bolt on the door clicked. We both looked that way.
She pivoted, a gun suddenly in her hand, but I knew who was on the other side. Knew the heartbeat.
I grabbed her arm and pulled her up against me, turning to foul her shot.
“No,” I said. Just as the door opened to show the man standing there.
Davy Silvers.
“Sorry to interrupt. Shame, I need to talk to you.”
Davy looked like he was barely old enough to drink, although he’d shown me his license once that said he was twenty-three. Blond, sort of an easygoing-skater-kid look, complete with a turquoise beaded necklace. Most people had no idea he was the head of the entire network of Hounds in Portland. And since Hounds used to be the best at tracking illegal spells back to the caster, he liked the anonymity.
The reason I knew his heartbeat? He was the only man I knew who had been more screwed over by magic than Terric and me.
He’d made it through the apocalypse, but not before he’d been infected by poisoned magic, and then had been kept alive by Eli “the Cutter” Collins. Collins was brilliant, as most sociopaths are, and was a hell of a magic user. Eli had also been kicked out of the Authority for the horrors he’d done with magic. So even though Eli had literally carved spells into Davy’s skin to keep Davy alive, I wasn’t sad when I’d heard Collins had left Portland for good.