Magic Burns(52)

“So this Saiman, he has a thing for you?” Derek asked.

“Right now Saiman has a thing for everyone, including you, from what I saw. He’s drunk on magic and bored.” I finished rebraiding my hair and guided my horse up Marietta Street toward the dense forest that used to be the twenty-one acres of Centennial Park. I really didn’t feel like continuing this conversation.

The magic fell. It would reassert itself in a minute: the waves had been coming one after another, short and intense.

“It appeared you were definitely his preferred entertainment,” Ghastek said.

Asshole. “It didn’t matter who was up on that roof, he would’ve changed his shape until he found a perfect fit.”

“In more ways than one.” The vampire cut in front of the horses again.

“Thank you for your commentary. I noticed you didn’t do anything to help.”

“You seemed to have the matter well in hand.” Ghastek sent his vamp galloping forward, ahead of us. When confronted, run away. My favorite strategy.

“Look,” Derek said, “all I’m saying is it would’ve been helpful to have all relevant information before we walked in there.”

“I didn’t have all the relevant information. Had I known he would be on the roof dancing in the snow, I wouldn’t have gone up there.”

“I can’t effectively help or protect you…” Derek said.

I turned in my saddle. “Derek, I didn’t ask you to protect me. I didn’t ask you to come with me. If I had realized that you would be imitating Curran the entire time, I would’ve thought twice about letting you tag along.”

Derek clamped his mouth shut.

Ahead of us the vamp turned to the left, loping onto Centennial Drive.

That wasn’t a good thing to say. I halted my horse. Derek stopped, too.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap.”

“Who should I imitate, Kate?” he asked softly.

I didn’t have an answer.

“Or are you going to give me a load of bullshit about being myself? Who would that be, Kate? A son of a loup and a murderer, who couldn’t save his sisters from being raped and then eaten alive by their father. Why would I want to be that?”

I leaned back in my saddle, wishing I could exhale all of the weight that had settled on my shoulders. “I apologize. I was wrong.”

He sat still for a long minute and nodded to me. The vamp halted in the street, waiting for us.

“I shouldn’t have nagged,” he said. “I get like that sometimes.”

“It’s okay.” I sent my horse forward. I knew why he got like that. I’ve seen him meticulously fold his clothes. His shave was perfect, his hair cut short, his nails clean and trimmed. I bet his room didn’t have a single item out of place. When you live in chaos as a child, you strive to impose order over the world. Unfortunately, the world refuses to comply, so you have to settle for trying to control yourself, your habitat, and your friends.

“I’m just worried about a lot of things,” I said.

“Julie?” he guessed.

“Yes.”

I wished I could have called in to check on them, but I had no clue where I could find a working phone line and with the preflare magic, the phone probably wouldn’t work anyway. Andrea had promised to stay with her. Barred from the field or not, Andrea could shoot a squirrel in the eye from across the street.

“It’s hard for you,” Derek observed. “To rely on other people, I mean.”

For a moment I wondered if he had developed telepathy, too. “What makes you say that?”

“You said you were worried about Julie and then your face looked like you had a hemorrhoid attack. Or a really hard…”

“Derek, you just don’t say things like that to a woman. Keep going this way and you’ll spend your life alone.”

“Don’t change the subject. Andrea is cool. And she smells nice. It will be okay.”

Apparently I was supposed to sniff people to determine their competence. “How do you know?”

He shrugged. “You just have to trust her.”

Considering that the two men I had most loved and admired spent my formative years drilling into me that I could rely on myself and myself alone, trusting other people was easier said than done. I worried about Julie. I worried about Julie’s mom, too. Since I’d gotten the liaison position with the Order, I made it a point to hang out in the knight-questor’s office, because I knew next to nothing about investigative work, and he, being an ex–Georgia Bureau of Investigations detective, knew pretty much everything. While there I had picked up a few vital crumbs of information, and I knew the first twenty-four hours of any investigation were crucial. The more time passed, the colder the trail grew. In a missing person case, that meant the chances of finding that missing person alive dropped by the hour.