Shifty Magic (22 page)

A brush of air across my cheek was my only
warning, and then hard hands gripped my upper arms, immobilizing
me. I pulled back, but Bellmonte pressed forward, pushing my
shoulders against the door and trapping my hand between our bodies.
We were the same height and his face filled my vision as his eyes
darkened with a different kind of hunger.

"I should kill you and be
done with it," he hissed, his gaze flickering over my mouth before
coming back to my eyes, "but then I would never know." He gave me a
light shake. "Why do I tolerate your insolence? Why do you
fascinate me?" His expression tightened as his fangs slid down.
"I
will
know the
truth of it. I will own you, or I will kill you."

I didn't waste time telling him he was
delusional. With a flick of my wrist, I jabbed the needle deep into
the base of his throat and snapped off the end. With the vacuum
inside the hollow tube broken, the vamp poison released quickly
into his bloodstream. His eyes widened in shock, and he stumbled
away from me, clawing at his throat.

"Burns like a mother, doesn't it?" I slammed
my palms into his chest, and he wobbled back another couple of
feet. He lost his balance and caught himself on the edge of the
desk. "Don't worry, it's not a fatal dose. I'm not ready to kill
you yet. Just wanted to make a point."

I stalked after him, my anger mounting, and
for the first time I saw a flicker of concern in his eyes. I pinned
him to the desk, much like he'd trapped me against the door.
Leaning in, I brought my face close to his, our lips nearly
touching. "Listen up, Bellmonte. I. Am. Not. Prey."

The poison hit his brain, and I watched his
eyes roll back as he slid to the floor. I wished for a moment that
I had a PRC collar. Without the owner's code, it was hard as the
devil to get them off, and I would have enjoyed thinking about him
struggling with his former humanity for a couple of hours.

Instead, I dragged his body over to the sofa
and propped him into a sitting position on the floor with his head
resting on the girl's shoulder. Since that had taken less than a
minute, I went over to his desk and did some rifling. After the
insult I'd just delivered, my life was worth less than nothing
anyway, so why not?

Like the police, the older vamps tended to
mistrust modern technology, preferring to do things the old
fashioned way. After a couple of minutes I lucked out and located
exactly the papers I was hoping to find, plus a bonus that might
buy me an extension on the whole inevitable assassination thing.
Rolling up the reports, I stuffed one into each boot and got out of
there.

When the door was barely open, I squeezed
back into the waiting area the way I'd left it, hoping to minimize
the chance that Ms. Fairview would see sleeping beauty. I shouldn't
have worried. She was too busy pacing back and forth, her face
seeming to have aged about ten years in the ten minutes I was in
Bellmonte's inner sanctum.

She looked up in surprise and started to
speak, but I held up my hand for silence. Bolting over to her desk,
I got the door closed as fast as possible. "He doesn't want to be
disturbed," I said in a hushed voice. "The news I gave him was a
little shocking."

"Oh dear," she said, fear clouding her
already worried eyes. She pulled in a breath and started wringing
her hands. "He's going to kill me," she whispered. And she meant
it.

If I'd entertained any thoughts that Ms.
Fairview was the informant who'd told me about Laiyla, I dropped
them on the spot. Her nerves couldn't have taken the strain.

"I told him I overpowered you," I said,
heading for the elevator. I figured I had maybe seven minutes to
get out of there before his Highness came to. "In light of some new
information, I think he'll understand." I pushed the down button,
anxious to be on my way.

She glanced back and forth between me and
the closed door, and then seemed to deflate. "No, he's going to
kill me," she said, resigned to her fate. "Quickly, if I'm
lucky."

I glanced at the numbers counting up, willed
them to move faster, and then turned to Ms. Fairview. She was
trying hard to be brave.

With a sigh, I pulled out the card Cooper
had handed me as a joke when we'd gotten on the hoverbus to go to
the club. He'd said that if we wanted to make it believable, then I
ought to have his private phone number.

"Go to a public place and call Agent Daine.
Tell him Addison said she didn't want you to be collateral damage.
Can you do that?"

Her hand trembled as she took the card.
"I...always knew this day would come. You can't work for them and
not risk—" She pressed her lips together into a hard, determined
line. After taking a moment to compose herself, she straightened
her shoulders. "Despite everything, I'm glad you didn't kill
him."

"What makes you think I didn't?" I asked as
a dignified chime announced the arrival of the elevator.

"We'd have no reason to run if you had," she
responded.

Surprised by her insight, I gave her a sharp
look as we stepped aboard. Rethinking my assessment of the woman, I
casually put my back to the wall so that I could keep an eye on
her. As we descended to freedom, I added a new how-to-stay-alive
policy to my mental list: never underestimate a good executive
assistant.

* * *

The sound of someone pounding on my front door dragged me
from a near-comatose sleep, and I wasn't happy about it. I fumbled
with the iC on my bedside table and squinted at the readout: June
21
^st
,
7:13 AM.

Did I say not happy? Try livid.

When I saw who it was, I opened the door and
caught Cooper with his fist in the air, preparing for the next
strike. He glanced with interest at my rumpled T-shirt and running
shorts and then barged past and into my living room.

Wizard gave him the evil eye from the
doorway of the bedroom, turned around and sauntered back to bed
with the haughty plume of her tail in the air. She didn't
appreciate having her sleep interrupted any more than I did.

"Please come in," I said sarcastically as I
closed and re-set the locks on the door.

"Did you know that your account has been
drained?" he asked.

"Did you know that humans need more sleep
than Weres?" I schlepped wearily into the kitchen to start the
coffee.

"I said your account's been drained. As in
zero. No money. We got a red flag on it this morning."

I paused in the act of measuring out grounds
into my other retro coffee maker and squinted at him. "You monitor
my bank account?"

He gritted his teeth and I could practically
see the impatience radiating off of him. "After Lord Bellmonte
registered you as one of his hunters, your name went on a watch
list. It's one of the ways the FBI can track hits. In case you
haven't noticed, we tend to frown on murder and mayhem."

"Still—"

"The point is someone drained it just after
3:00 AM. Ironically about the time I got an interesting call from
Lord Bellmonte's secretary. Care to explain?"

"Which lie do you want first?" I wasn't keen
to admit that Bellmonte, himself, was probably the cause.

Bracing his legs, he crossed his arms and
glared at me. Nothing like an outraged, frustrated male filling
your living room when you're barely conscious.

"Take your pick, except make it the truth,"
he said, his scowl deepening.

I weighed the wisdom of that choice and
concluded that I had nothing to be ashamed of. "I forced my way
into Bellmonte's office last night. Ms. Fairview failed to stop me.
There would have been consequences."

"Forced your..." He pinched the bridge of
his nose. "Okay. What are we supposed to do with her?"

"Protect her from becoming the victim of
murder and mayhem. Duh. She might even be an asset to you. She
probably knows a lot about vamp business and picked up a few
secrets along the way."

"The flaw in your solution is that Lord
Bellmonte hasn't broken any laws that we're aware of, so his
business isn't ours. Does your forced entry have anything to do
with your money going missing?"

"Possibly." I shrugged. "Joke's on him,
though. I never wanted his blood money in the first place."

"Which still doesn't explain why."

I wanted to pretend that I hadn't heard him,
but his gaze blazed at me steadily until I felt a little squirmy.
"Fine," I said in exasperation. "One thing led to another and I
sort of had to put Bellmonte in his place."

"Care to elaborate?" he said tightly.

The coffee maker started sputtering and
hissing, which meant that semi-alert thinking might soon be mine. I
needed that badly. Cooper was out-maneuvering me at a fast clip. I
eyed the pile of dirty coffee mugs in my sink. "Let's just say that
I left him resting comfortably."

"By the moon, Addison!" he bellowed. He
clamped his mouth shut, paced away from me and then charged into
the kitchen. "You were supposed to convince him not to jump to
conclusions about the case. Plain and simple."

"I didn't do a very good job, apparently. He
jumped to a lot of conclusions." I inspected my favorite mug, found
it to be acceptable and gave it a quick rinse.

"And the Regent got his revenge by draining
your bank account?"

"Can't drain 'em one way, drain 'em another,
I guess."

The emotions radiating off of him jumped to
a new track and suddenly he was turning me away from the sink and
cupping my face in gentle, warm hands. I didn't have time to brace
myself for being that close to him and my heart jumped into my
throat, sending the hyper butterflies that seemed to have
permanently taken up residence in my stomach into a panic.

"He bit you?" Cooper rumbled.

"The option was on the table," I whispered,
struggling to get the burst of feelings bunching around my heart
under control.

His gaze narrowed. "He tried to feed on a
Federal agent?"

"Um...among other things."

A wild fury flared in his silver-green
eyes.

"Look on the bright side," I offered, trying
to sound like I didn't care about any of this. "Now I'll have to
work with you on the VR case to pay my bills."

"That's not the point," he said, his tone
sharp. "He went too far. He'll want you dead for denying him." His
gaze skated over my face and hair, and a look of pained tenderness
softened his expression. Pulling away, he stared at the coffee
maker as if he'd suddenly been caught out.

I wiped sweaty palms on my shorts and felt
awkward. "He's just making a point. If he wanted me dead, I would
be. But he doesn't. I, um, managed to get my hands on some
information that he won't want getting out."

Cooper's momentary tenderness evaporated and
his annoyed glare zeroed back on me. "Addison," he growled, "what
else did you do?"

Turning my back on him, I filled up Betty
Boop with steaming black coffee. "He didn't make any objections, so
what's the big deal?" I faced him and leaned against the counter,
cradling the coffee mug in my hands. "How's Marla doing?"

He frowned. "Going through withdrawal and
still refusing to talk." Shouldering me aside, he selected a mug
with a beach scene and started washing it out with dish soap.

I mentally breathed a sigh of relief that he
was willing to change the subject. "I put in a couple of requests
to Falcon last night. Hope to get the answers this morning." I took
a gulp of coffee and let the bitterness and scalding heat of it
fire up my brain cells.

"About?"

"Kathy also mentioned that she and Marla had
worked in New York a few years ago. That's right before Marla
showed up at Tasson's school. There might be a connection."

"I don't know how that could tie in with any
of the murders. All I see is a paranoid donor who's fried her brain
on VR and is capable of anything."

"What about the inter-dimensional whatever?
That's part of this, too. "

He filled his cup with coffee and took a
cautious sip. "Marla would have been a minor when she visited
Tasson's school. Under the circumstances, he probably lied about
her refusing to join. If she did attend, she could have picked up a
few magic tricks, maybe done a little studying on her own, and then
gotten someone with real abilities to poke a few holes between
dimensions for her."

"That's a stretch."

"Exactly."

I bristled. "At least I'm trying to find
answers instead of stuffing the case into a convenient 'drug
addict' box and calling it a day."

"At least I'm not stubbornly ruffling
dangerous feathers. Eventually you're going to go too far."

"Putting myself in danger is my own
business, not yours."

He put his cup on the counter and stared
down at me, his expression serious. "I care about you, Addison. A
lot."

"And at least I'm keeping an open mi—" His
words sank in and my annoyance crumpled with the shock. "What?"

"Let me take you out. On a real date.
Probably several of them."

"No. Absolutely not." My hand shook,
sloshing drops of coffee all over Betty's face.

Cooper gently eased the cup out of my grip
and set it next to his. He ran his palms up and down my bare arms,
soothing and caressing and making heat spread into places that I
didn't want to think about. "What are you afraid of?"

"Nothing much. Just the danger of breaking
professional boundaries," I said with fierce bravado.

"I'm not proposing."

"I hear a 'yet' in there."

"I want to spend time with you that doesn't
involve chasing down criminals. I want to get to know you."

Those soothing hands skated across my skin
one last time, and then lightly cupped my face again. "You're going
to kiss me, aren't you?" I accused, staring up into eyes the color
of a moonlit meadow.