In the Company of Witches(44)

She rose, pivoted. She made it a good six steps past Mikhael before Isaac rallied.

“Wait. Miss Raina. Wait.”

She kept going another ten paces until he repeated it, and she heard him trying to scramble after her. She turned.

“Wait.” He swayed, fell back down. She didn’t move as he struggled to his knees and stayed there, fingers templed on the ground to hold him steady. “Fuck, what was in that barrier?”

“Something that would have killed you if you had prolonged contact with it.” Mikhael shifted to one hip, crossed his arms across his chest. Scratched his jaw with a jagged hunting blade twice the size of Raina’s switchblade. Isaac turned three shades paler.

“Please.” The gaze he turned toward her was full of misery. “Please.”

“No excuse, no babbling attempt to persuade me?”

Isaac shook his head. “I like Gina and everyone, but no one protects our kind. Not even our kind. It was just a matter of time before you sold me out. You’re fucking him.”

“Hey.” Mikhael kicked him in the side, flipped him over. Isaac yelped, then cringed as the Dark Guardian planted his boot on his chest. “You talk to her like that again, you won’t have a tongue left to save your worthless hide.”

Raina glanced at Mikhael’s dark and forbidding expression. An impartiality settled over him when he faced something like this. A variety of contingencies were likely going through his mind right now, calculations and considerations. He was apathetic to the terror of the creature utterly helpless to him. It was chilling.

“No one protects our kind,” Isaac repeated in a broken whimper.

“I can’t imagine why, since we’re obviously so trustworthy and loyal.” She studied him. The incubus looked perilously close to tears, which, of course, could be an act. It could all be an act. It didn’t change the truth of his circumstances, or that she understood what he felt. Damn it.

On certain things, she didn’t second-guess herself, or agonize over decisions. She was likely to regret this one, but she knew she was going to do it. No use beating it to death in her head. “You will apologize to all of them, especially Gina and Li. After that you’ll be confined to one of my guesthouses, reinforced by my protection and the Dark Guardian’s. You won’t leave that house until this is resolved. Then we will decide what shall be done with you.”

He nodded. “All right. Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh, please. That’s pouring it on a little thick.” She was still angry. Now that she knew her people were safe, what bugged her the most was how her nice day had been ruined. She’d taken a risk, and it had resulted in this. And she resented the hell out of it; it didn’t matter how petulant that was. She’d wanted one goddamn day.

It was just one day, she reminded herself. She’d had plenty of good ones, so she needed to suck it up. But this had been a damn near perfect day.

“Go to the guesthouse there.” She pointed to it. “Mikhael or I will be there shortly, and we better find you sitting in a chair like an altar boy. Touch nothing.”

As Isaac scrambled off, still staggering like a drunk, Mikhael approached her, but Raina moved away, out of reach. “Tell Matilda you want something for dinner. Doesn’t do any good to tell her what. She’ll prepare what she thinks you should eat. Or you can go out, so you don’t have to be here tonight, if that’s what you prefer. There’s a good steak house right off of Main.”

Marisa was coming toward them. She’d have a report on Li, and a hundred other details Raina needed to handle. Then she had the eight o’clock, followed by hostess duties from ten o’clock to closing. She was already running it down in her head, using the routine to settle her temper and her nerves, when Mikhael touched the small of her back. If she could have shrugged him off with grace and no evident agitation, she would have. Instead she set her teeth, looked up at him.

“Are you brushing me off?” he asked.

“I have things to do. I run a business here. That’s the truth of it, Mikhael.” She touched his forearm then, a contact she didn’t let herself feel. She couldn’t afford it right now. “Getting my staff calmed down enough to perform at the right level tonight will take me a while, not counting all the other things I need to do. We’ll talk later.”

He studied her. The truth was the easiest lie, so she let the harried expression show, a woman up to her elbows in alligators. Two more of her people were coming out looking for her, reinforcing it. Brush-off or not, she did have things to do, and if he couldn’t help with that, he was just in the way. Plus, having him in her field of vision made too many things rise to the surface. She was trying to lock down a montage of images. Nearly being shot, riding a kelpie, eating a sundae, staring into his eyes in that tree as she wondered what was truly growing between them.

He hadn’t given her a straight answer, but she knew the answer. It was nothing. A pleasant interlude. This, in front of her, that was her life. It was a pretty damn good life.

“Do what you need to do. I’ll get your staff calmed down.”

He meant it, which was shocking enough, but the fact he’d decided to help her was even more unsettling. He touched her arm, a firm grip. “I’m here, Raina. You’re not in this alone. Let me help.”

She gave him a stiff nod. “If for no other reason than I’ll be fascinated to see what you do to calm them down.”

“I’m sure you have a game of Twister somewhere in the house. Twister calms everyone down.”

She looked down, pressing her lips against an aching smile, and he touched her chin. When she lifted her gaze, he bent. He didn’t kiss her mouth; he did something far more devastating. He pressed his lips to that graze on her shoulder, keeping his kiss there long enough that a tremor went through her lower belly. Her hand found its way to his head, fingers burrowing in his hair. She laid her forehead against his temple.

“I’ve been through far worse, Mikhael,” she said. “It’s okay.”

His arms went around her, held her close, and she relented, curling her arms around him under the strong grip of his. “Don’t do that again,” he said against her neck.

“We have very few gunfights. Except on Ride a Cowboy night.”

Lifting his head, he did that gentle stroke over her hair. She was aware of Marisa’s fascinated regard, but then he let her go, pivoted and strode toward the house. She didn’t know what he said to Ana and Luke, the other two who’d come out, but they turned and followed him.

“Li’s doing fine,” Marisa said. “Gina says she’s all right, but I think she’d be better off out of it for tonight. Li says he’s ready to go. What do you need me to do?”





15



RAINA WORKED WITH THE CLEANING STAFF TO MAKE sure the upstairs parlor was restored to its normal appearance, atmospherically and physically. She handled the former and the maids handled the latter. But when she was done, her curiosity got the better of her. Laughter and occasional raised voices, like kids clamoring to be next for a treat, kept drifting up from the first floor. Following the sound to the lower parlor, she discovered Mikhael had indeed found a way to settle her staff, get them in the right mind-set.

With tarot cards.

Somehow he’d found out that Min did readings. In the past, they’d occasionally whiled away a rainy afternoon with the activity, so once he had them pointed in the right direction, it seemed several of them had volunteered to have their fortunes read. Min’s interpretations were of course being subjected to the peanut gallery formed by the rest of them, the source of laughter and raised voices.

It wasn’t just the choice of activity that amazed her. As she stood in the parlor doorway, she realized he’d taken to heart what she’d said about them being children in many ways. He’d apparently moderated his behavior accordingly, because instead of maintaining a cautious distance from him, they were clustered around him like kids around a mall Santa Claus. Okay, maybe not that bad, but still…

Min had talked him into having a tarot reading, so he was the one in the hot seat across from her now. They’d already taken him through several questions. About half of Raina’s staff crowded around the wingback chair he was occupying, the rest around Min.

Sophia was kneeling next to Mikhael’s leg, her bosom pressed into his knee as she leaned over it and offered alternate scenarios, since she and Min both did tarot and regularly argued over interpretations. Catalina sat on the other chair arm, and Mikhael had his hand casually laid along her hip and thigh to steady her as she twisted around to exchange quips with Saul, standing by Mikhael’s one shoulder, Luke hanging over the other. It couldn’t be comfortable to a warrior like Mikhael to have them at his back like that, but he showed no sign of it, exercising his dry wit to win nervous laughter and draw them out.

It was like leaving a room before an execution and coming back to find the hangman and sentenced sharing a Coke and a smile. Cue the swelling overture that assured the viewer that anyone could get along, as long as a soft drink was involved.

She noted Mikhael did appear to have a Coke, which almost made her smile. It broke free when Ana stole a sip from it, thinking he wasn’t paying attention. Good luck with that, sweetie. The man misses nothing. Sure enough, he pinched her, telling her to behave, and though she jumped, he won a cautious, playful smile.