Darkness Hunts(84)

He tsked. “And I had my best champagne on ice, too.”

“Save it for when we’ve got something to celebrate.”

“Later, then.”

“Perhaps.”

My reply was somewhat absent as movement caught my gaze. Lauren folded gracefully onto a chair and crossed her legs. The bright lights gave her dark hair a purple sheen but shadowed her face, softening her stern, somewhat matronly features. Once again I had that odd sense of familiarity, but I still couldn’t place who she reminded me of. Although she did remind me somewhat of a spider. A big black one, sitting in the middle of her nest and contemplating the world around her as she waited for her prey to fall into her web.

“Take a seat,” Lucian directed. “I’ll grab your drink.”

I claimed the chair nearest to Lucian’s, and Lauren gave me a thin smile. “And still you distrust me.”

“It’s not so much you as your profession.”

She raised one thin eyebrow. “Which is not saying much given my profession is who and what I am.”

I wasn’t quite sure how to take that statement, so I didn’t say anything. Lucian returned and handed me a can of Coke, then sat down between us.

“So,” he said, picking up his glass of wine from the floor. “As I said on the phone, Lauren believes she has come up with a possible answer.”

My gaze flicked to hers. Those icy depths watched me closely, and the hairs on the back of my neck rose. Not because of the intensity of her gaze, but rather the hatred so very evident in it.

Why the hell would someone I’d barely even met hate me so much? Or was it not so much me, but the fact that she considered me a sexual rival?

If she thought that, then she didn’t understand Lucian. But maybe she hadn’t even known he was Aedh until he’d told her about the device in my heart. She might be knowledgeable about the dark arts and the denizens of hell, but that didn’t mean she had any expertise when it came to the beings who inhabited the gray fields.

“I’m not committing to anything until I know exactly what we’re talking about.”

“Of course.”

He said it soothingly, like a parent talking to a spooked child. Irritation swirled, but I forced myself to ignore it and kept my gaze on Lauren.

“It is not a spell, so you have nothing to fear along those lines,” she said easily. A little too easily for my liking. It sounded like a well-rehearsed line more than anything approaching sincerity.

I took a sip of Coke, but it failed to help the sudden dryness in my throat. Despite what I’d said to Azriel earlier, I really didn’t want to be here discussing magic with a dark practitioner. And yet, it was an avenue that had to be explored. We do what we have to do, Azriel had once told me. It was that statement that had driven me to enlist Jak’s help, and if it also meant enlisting the help of a sorceress, then so be it.

“Then what is it if not a spell?”

She glanced at Lucian. And that had all sorts of alarm bells ringing, if only because it suggested they’d discussed just what she should and shouldn’t say before I’d gotten here.

Had that been another part of what they’d been arguing about? I knew Lucian was desperate to gain revenge on the Raziq, who’d stolen not only his wings but also his ability to shift into Aedh form, but was he so desperate that he would advise a dark sorceress what to say—and not say—to convince me to use her magic?

I briefly studied his angelic face and saw a determination that bordered on ruthlessness. Yes, I thought, he was.

Lauren took a sip of her wine, then casually said, “It’s a ward.”

I waved the statement away. “You and I both know there’s a million different kinds of wards.”

She smiled. It didn’t do a whole lot to ease the tension. Quite the opposite, in fact. “This one is designed to prevent magic escaping its boundaries once it has been activated.”

So, similar to the wards Ilianna had used when we’d attempted to read the clues in the book my father had sent me—a book that had been subsequently destroyed when the elementals had attacked. “How is it powered?”

“Not by blood magic, if that is what you fear.”

“Then how does it get its power? You felt the energy of the thing in my heart. You know it’s not a creation of this world.”

“Which is why I do not use the magic of this world.”

I stared at her, my stomach twisting into knots. “You exploit the power of hell to create your spells? That is a very dangerous practice—”

She snorted, the sound unladylike and at odds with the image she was projecting. “I think I understand better than you just what it is I’m dealing with.”