Night Shift

I'm racking up one hell of a bill with Perry. Then, a small, noiseless thought: I wish Saul was here. I'd like to see him.

When had I started being happy to see a disdainful country-boy Were? When he'd kissed me? Or when he'd stayed to make sure I was still breathing after tangling with a rogue?

You've got bigger problems, Jill. Get up and start fighting. It's what you know how to do. So do it.

I blinked and looked up. Galina's hot mortal fingers pressed against my clammy forehead. "Get up!" she screamed, and thunder rattled. Coruscating energy sparkled in the air around her—she was actually dividing her Sanctuary spell, protecting me as ripples of power boomed and echoed, potential-paths opening as lightning blurred down, the sound like ca

I made it to my feet. Leaned on Galina as she half-dragged my heavy self—muscle-dense, hellbreed-strong, weighed down with leather and metal and ammo—across the street under lashing rain slicking down her hair and mine. She smacked the door to her shop open, and the bell tinkled merrily as she dragged me into safety. I collapsed on the floor near her glassed-in counter, next to a bookcase and a rack of candles. My body curled into a ball, and I decided on the spot to spend the next few hours shaking and drinking some of her spiced rum.

Alas, such was not meant to be. Because as soon as I shut my eyes and sagged against the floor, really wanting to shut the world out for a while, the bell tinkled again, and a soundless step filled the shop. The protections thrummed, a high mounting note of energy just aching to be unleashed.

Galina spoke with the sonorousness of church bells chorusing morning in some ancient, smoke-decked city.

"Take one more step toward her, Pericles, and you will be thrown back to Hell screaming." She paused, the heavy static-breathlessness of power not abating one iota. "And while you're at it, close the door."

Perry wrapped his long pale fingers around the steaming mug. It was peppermint tea, the vapor rising from it assuming angular screaming shapes before dissipating. Galina swabbed at the blood on my cheek while rain smashed against the skylight overhead. Her marcel waves were tousled and she moved with quick, sharp birdlike movements, her necklace glinting at odd moments as the protections fluctuated.

I took another jolt of rum. The scar on my wrist throbbed. Perry's blue eyes lingered on my throat, and I was suddenly very glad Galina had made him sit at the other end of her long scrubbed-pine kitchen table.

"The Weres lost him, you know." His words were underscored with a booming rattle of thunder, and every once in a while a small mouselike tremor would run under the surface of his skin, flickering and gone in a heartbeat as whatever shape lurked under his semblance of bland, almost-handsome male humanity responded to the raw energy in the air. Still, even Perry didn't dare make trouble in a Sanctuary, and he sat very still where Galina told him to. "He slipped their hunt. Rogues sometimes do, I'm told."

Not often, Perry. As a matter of fact, hardly ever. Just one more thing about this case that isn't what it should be. I set the bottle down on the table with a click. The scar flushed, a knot of poisoned delight. I wished I'd tucked a spare copper cuff in my coat along with everything else, instead of leaving them at home. "I'm getting blood on your floor." I sounded mournful. "I'm sorry, Galina."

"No problem. I'm just glad I came out in time to see what was happening." She gri

Who sipped his tea, quietly. And sat still.

Hallelujah and pass the ammunition, there's a single place where Perry won't fuck with me.

The only trouble was, I couldn't stay here. I had too much to do.

Galina's eyes caught mine. Her fingers were gentle as she sponged more blood from my face. Silver buzzed in my hair like a rattlesnake's tail, responding to the humming tension of the storm overhead and the echoes of the Sanctuary protections' lunge into wakefulness, reverberating in the ether.

I took another jolt of rum. "I'm fine, sweets. Thanks." I had no idea you could divide your Sanc protections. Stilly that's not the question I'd like answered most right now. Right now I want to know who called me, and where Cenci was hiding. I should have felt her in the neighborhood, especially after driving her off Harp. I should have fucking smelled her.

Which meant either she could cloak herself from me more effectively than any other hellbreed, or she hadn't been waiting for me in the neighborhood.

Galina made a small derisive sound. "Your pupils are all over the place, Jill. I think you have a concussion." She wrung out the washcloth, water dyed thin crimson squeezing through her fingers. "What were you doing on my roof?" The question was casual, but her shoulders were a little too tight.

I don't even know what I was doing on your roof. "Someone—I'm betting it was this hellbreed Cenci—buzzed me. Maybe it was to lure me away from Harp and Dom, get me where she could at least put me out of commission for a while. Probably so she could get back and move her Were buddy." The spell in the cellar was laid to protect and conceal him, neatest trick of the week. This just keeps getting more tangled the deeper I dig. My eyes flickered across the table to Perry's, interested and bright over the rim of his cup. "Any light you can shed on this, Perry?"

He set the mug down, a slight smile playing over the corners of his lips. His linen suit was, of course, pristine and unwrinkled, though he must have been outside in the downpour. "I've interceded with Arkady for you. As long as we keep you out of his way, I think we can avoid further unpleasantness."

A flickering tremor slid through his face, as if something had shifted just under the skin. His grin widened a trifle as he adjusted his cuffs, his forgettable face turning sharp and predatory for a single moment.

Which doesn't explain what you're doing here. My skin chilled. Galina's mouth drew down sourly. She carried the bowl over to the sink, glanced at the water washing the window outside, and dumped the bloody mess down the drain. Her silence was full of the kind of loathing most people associate with pale wriggling things in spoiled meat.

"Very kind of you." I picked up the bottle, took another swig. Then, because not to do it would be weak, I met his eyes again. The scar turned to an agonized infected burning burrowing into bone, a reminder that he could tweak it into pain or pleasure as his mood called for.

"A pleasure." The smile widened, white teeth exposed. Electric light shone mellow in his sandy-pale hair; a flash of lightning outside bleached everything briefly. "Especially when done for my Kiss."

Do not call me that, Perry. I hate that. Again, I didn't say it. "Why did he come all the way from New York to fetch his daughter instead of sending you a request to have her sent back? You are, after all, the ranking hellbreed in the city."

His eyes hooded. "Especially since you recently thi

I wondered which he thought worked better, the reward or the punishment.

"You're not answering my question." That gives me wriggle room on our bargain. Cautious relief warred with fresh unease.

A single shrug, infinitely evocative of nothing, pulled up his shoulders. His eyes flicked away, roving the surfaces of the kitchen, leaving a thin vibration of slime on everything they touched. "Other families and their dirty laundry hold no interest for me. He is here, he wants his earthborn progeny, under our laws she belongs to him." Perry's gaze flicked back to me, and the faint smile he had settled into now seemed a grimace of distaste.