CHAPTER NINE

Noelle watched Tamatsu vanish in a flash that seemed to suck all the oxygen out of the room yet again.

Shit.

She dragged a hand through her hair and then tugged. “I …”

Her heart beat in triple time and her head felt like it’d been filled with noxious air.

“I …”

Jenny padded over and squeezed her shoulder. “Don’t worry, love, we’ll figure out what happened.”

“I should go find him.” Propping the table end—or ends, rather—atop the back of a chair, Tarik trudged toward his coat, and also to the one Tamatsu had left behind.

“Tarik, perhaps you should give him time,” Clarissa said. “I won’t act as though I know him better than you do, but I think I know him well enough. You may be his oldest friend, but I see things you don’t. I hear things you don’t.”

Tarik closed his eyes and his broad chest expanded with the forceful inhalation he drew in. He let it out and unclenched his fists along with the breath.

“I try to stay out of his head, and yours,” Clarissa said. “But often, your thoughts are loud enough that I can hear them.”

“You probably know more than anyone in this room right now.”

“My albatross to carry, as always. I don’t always know when I should share—when I should interfere.”

“What did you hear from Tamatsu?” Noelle asked. “I know he’s angry, but, do you think—”

Clarissa put up a hand. “Angry might be an understatement. I imagine you felt that way once, when you did what you did.”

Noelle hung her head.

“I understand why you did what you did, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t know what he is to you.”

So Clarissa understood. Noelle didn’t have to explain their connection because she had the same kind with another of those insufferable creatures.

“I don’t know how that would be possible.” Noelle wrapped her hair into a hasty bun and paced. “To me, the reason for my anger was obvious. We were both there. He saw what I saw.”

“What exactly did you see?” Tarik asked, clutching the coats against his chest. “What sin did my friend commit that would cause you to condemn him to an eternity of silence?”

“He—” Noelle cleared her throat, glanced at the kids playing in the corner, and lowered her voice to say, “He was untrue.”

Tarik raised an incredulous brow.

Noelle paced some more. “I watched for at least half an hour before I made myself seen. There were several of them, and there were naked. What else would they have been doing?”

“Was he aware of the exclusive nature of your relationship?”

“I don’t understand how he couldn’t have been. We’d decided to travel together, just the two of us. Yes, sometimes we allowed others into our company because—”

She withheld the words because they didn’t need to know that, but both she and Tamatsu had been sexually adventurous in those days. Sometimes four hands weren’t enough.

“But I’d gone out to investigate a rumor about an elf in the area, and when I returned a few days later, they were still there. His shamelessness triggered me. He acted like he hadn’t done anything wrong.”

Tarik closed his eyes. He didn’t say anything. He stood stiff as a column, barely breathing.

Noelle looked to Clarissa, who appeared to be meditating on some spot on top of her great-grandchild’s head.

Jenny was just wide-eyed. Terrified, likely. She wouldn’t have known how to navigate such intrigue. She’d been mostly shielded from it during their days in the elf court.

“I won’t go to him.” Tarik finally opened his eyes and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’ll remain here and stretch my wings as I’ve been invited to do.”

“I believe that’s wise,” Clarissa said.

“She’ll go to him,” he said. “Let them hurl their anger at each other, and at least then, the hostility will land on the parties each thinks deserves it. But before she goes, I must do one thing.” He vanished, leaving the coats behind.

“What is he doing?” Noelle asked.

“They don’t always make their plans so clear,” Clarissa said. “But tell me this. Do you want to fix what you’ve done?”

“Well, of course I do. I made a deal. I don’t renege on deals, and not just because I’m fae. My honor means everything to me.”

“I hoped that’s what you’d say.” Clarissa’s smile was soft. “But have you forgiven him?”

“What are you asking me?”

“You believe he’s yours, and you believe he was untrue.”

“Triply so.”

“He’s not an elf, dear. With creatures as old as him, you must take nothing for granted. You must leave nothing unspoken. I’ve learned that obviousness comes in different shades. What may be perfectly clear to a tethered elf will certainly not look the same to an angel who’s used to going his own way.”

“You make me feel so … petty.”

“I don’t mean to. Listen.” Clarissa took her hand and projected telepathically, “With Gulielmus, I tell him what I need to tell him at the prudent times. Transparency and prudence should always work in tandem. Remember that.”

“I—” Noelle had been about to tell her that she didn’t know how to do that, but she couldn’t get the words out.

Lola had arrived. Her gaze quickly landed on Noelle. “Tarik phoned. You’ll come with me, if you want.”

“I …” Noelle smoothed her thumb over the strap of her tote bag and struggled to meet the goddess’s gaze.

She wanted to go. She was afraid to—afraid of that anger that both she and Tamatsu carried—but she wasn’t a coward. Her breeding precluded cowardice. She’d been born to serve, and to fight, but when she’d lost her queen, she’d lost her way.

She looked to Jenny, ashamed.

Jenny waved her away. “Oh, I’ll be all right here with the kiddies.”

“It’s not that, Jenny. I—”

“Don’t think anything of it, Noe. We all slip up sometimes. You can’t always be perfect. I’m glad that sometimes you’re not.”

Jenny’s encouragement should have made her feel better but, instead, Noelle felt all the more sour. She was supposed to be the example-setter for the less assertive elves, and yet she continuously committed unforgivable gaffes. She wasn’t quite sure how Clarissa had ever put up with her.

Noelle gave her friends a glance on retreat, hitched her purse strap up to her shoulder as bravely as she could, and let Lola take her by the arm. She muttered to the goddess, “You’re not, like, going to drop me into a fiery hell pit or some such thing, are you?”

“Of course not.” Lola cleared her throat. “That would require me being there as well. I’m sure you’ll find the destination almost as unsettling, though.”

“I guess I can’t change my mind.”

“You could.” Lola made a moue. “Though I imagine that would defeat the purpose of this entire ordeal.”

Noelle cringed and then dragged her tongue across her lips. Matte lipstick was so drying. “All right. I’m ready.” Fortunately for Noelle’s nervous stomach, Lola was far better at transporting people from one spot to the next than Tarik. Noelle didn’t even feel the urge to retch when they landed on the other end.

They were in the desert.

She looked up at the jutting mountains not too far in the distance and the utter nothingness in front of her and to her right. Behind her was an old Airstream trailer.

She gave Lola a querying look.

Lola clapped some dust off her long peasant skirt and pushed up an eloquent eyebrow.

“Where are we? Somewhere in the Americas would be my only guess. Look of the mountains isn’t right quite right for outback.”

“New Mexico again. We’re about fifty miles from Maria.”

Noelle nodded. “So, this is …”

“Yes.”

“And I should just …”

“You may go about this endeavor in the manner in which you see fit. Do know that if you require an escort back into the range of normal transportation, I will be unable to assist.”

“Due to non-interference rules?”

Lola shook her head gravely. “No, because Tarik asked me not to. I may change my mind, but you shouldn’t count on me doing so.”

“Understood.” Noelle looked over her shoulder at the silver trailer once more. Some desert grass had grown beneath, the hitch had rusted, and the tires were beyond flat. She didn’t see wheel marks in the earth. Someone must have parked the trailer ages ago. “Of all places,” she muttered.

“Perhaps not as refined as you’ve come to be used to, however it is where he is now. I have done my job. Now I must depart.”

Nodding, Noelle rooted her phone out of her purse. “Well, I have this. I’ll call if I need anything, I guess.” She rattled off a text message to Jenny. Jenny would want to know where she was.

Jenny responded with,

“Unlikely.” Noelle snorted and tucked the phone away.

Lola nodded her farewell, and then vanished.

Noelle turned squarely toward the trailer, straightened her spine, and took a deep breath. “All right, then. You’ve faced worse.”

Dragons, even, before they went extinct. The extinction part wasn’t her fault. If anything, they’d have to blame themselves for the condition. They shouldn’t have gone around trying to eat people.

She put one foot in front of another, regretting her choice of heels. She could have worn something practical like ballet flats or even some of those disposable pedicure flip-flops. Pausing, she stepped out of her stilettos. All things considered, she preferred ruined pantyhose to blistered feet.

She dropped one shoe into her oversized tote and stepped tenderly across the broken, arid ground. She’d always thought the desert floor resembled the aftermath of millions of little earthquakes breaking the surface into miniature canyons. The ground crunched as she stepped, the top layer cracking as she disturbed the salt and other things that preserved the ecosystem.

Nearly at the door, she was trying to drop her second shoe into her tote when she heard the screech like a massive mosquito diving toward her.

“Oh, isn’t that my fuckin’ luck.”

She would have preferred a mosquito. She recognized that annoying fish-head sound, though she hadn’t heard the noise since the last time she’d been near Tamatsu.

“Are you kidding me?” she shouted toward the Airstream. “You haven’t fixed this yet?”

No answer, of course.

“You stubborn bastard.” Keeping her eyes on the slack-jawed fishy thing, she reached for the knife she kept tucked into the base of her bag. She didn’t have time to get the holding clasp free. The creature was already on her, and her reflexes kicked in.

The disturbance hurtled down from a weak fissure between realms. She sliced her stiletto through its ghostly form and pushed outward the little magic she could muster up on such short notice.

The thing solidified at the bombardment. She could kill things that had flesh and blood. Ghostly things, she could only annoy.

Stunned, the fish head squirmed on the ground.

She didn’t give it time to make a recovery. She finally got her knife free of the clasp and had the blade thrust between the dark hollows of its eyeholes before it could float up again.

She rolled her eyes at the resulting squeal, and thunked the side of its head with her shoe.

It went still against the ground, then the noise stopped and blood seeped from what was left of the carcass.

She scooted back a couple of feet away from the mess. The thirsty desert would absorb some of the gore. The buzzards would likely get the rest, assuming that thing tasted enough like food. She had no idea.

“Ugh.” Tossing her ruined shoe onto the ground, she shouted at the Airstream, “You’re welcome.” She rooted a wet wipe out of her bag to clean her knife’s blade with. The shoe had actually been more expensive than the knife, but she could replace the shoe if it turned out to be uncleanable. The knife had been a gift from someone she wasn’t on speaking terms with at the moment. Angel-forged blades weren’t so easy to come by.

As she wiped the knife, she scanned the sky for any other disturbances. Hungry creatures like the one she’d killed had to work very hard to move between realms, but they were like sharks smelling a drop of blood in a vast expanse of water. Tamatsu had picked up a curse that caused his energy to taste very alluring to the things.

Or something.

Tamatsu had explained the phenomenon to her, once. She couldn’t quite remember all the details, though in her opinion, she had a pretty good excuse for being distracted. He’d been nude and glorious and really hard.

She sighed, and then sighed at her sigh. Noelle wasn’t the sighing kind of lady. She generally left that to Jenny.

She stopped in front of the door of the Airstream, and poised her fist to knock. She was about to strike the dented panel with her knuckles when the window banged open.

Tamatsu leaned outside, looked briefly at Noelle, and then at the bloody carcass behind her.

“I—”

He slammed the window shut.

“Rude.” She knocked on the door. “Listen. Let me make this right. That’s why I’m here.”

Gods.

She hated the way her voice sounded. When she was around other elves, she sounded husky in comparison. The desert and isolation had a way of reminding her that she was a small woman with an occasionally … perhaps often … grating voice.

She knocked again. “I’m sure you don’t want to do me any favors right now, but if we work together, we can figure something out. We can pool knowledge like we used to. Remember?”

There was rattling inside the camper, and heavy footsteps, but not nearer to the door. If anything, he was moving away.

She groaned and plopped her ass onto the concrete blocks that acted as stairs by the door.

Reaching behind her, she knocked once more. “Do you have a generator? Is there electricity in there? I’m going to need to charge my phone, especially if I’m going to have to hobble across the desert in one shoe to get back to civilization.”

A minute or so later, the window opened barely an inch, but that was enough for Tamatsu to dangle a long brown extension cord through the gap.

“Thanks, I guess.”

She unwound the charger cord from its spool and plugged in, scanning the sky yet again. If her memory served her correctly, she wouldn’t need to worry about another of those things making her a target anytime soon. Her understanding was that they weren’t particularly prolific breeders, but that may have been another thing she’d misheard. Again, Tamatsu had been nude, and he’d had his fingers in her. They’d had a bad habit of saving all their serious talks for when one or both of them were horizontal.

Snorting, she pinched the bridge of her nose. “That’s probably why we can’t have a conversation right now, isn’t it?” she said to the window. “We don’t know how to talk when we’re upright.”

That actually wasn’t a good excuse, either. The man had infinite strength. They’d done plenty of “talking” while upright. Standing, even. He had wonderfully muscled forearms.

She set her phone on the tiny windowsill and, once again, she looked to the sky. The Airstream was shielding her from the sun’s rays for the time being. Within an hour, though, she’d be crispy as a pork rind. Elves were from a foggy realm accessed from a very northern country. They had no innate defenses against sunburn, and even having lived in Vegas for so many years hadn’t forced her body to adjust to the conditions. She’d need centuries for that.

Remembering Clarissa’s golden tan, she frowned and muttered, “I bet she went straight for the warmest place she could find.” She finished cleaning and drying her knife, and then strapped the blade beneath her purse once more. Then, she sat on the steps, tapping her toes against the dirt and drumming her fingers against her thighs.

She needed a plan. Once, she’d been better at making plans on the fly, but she was dealing with Tamatsu, and she’d never been especially rational where he was concerned. Supposedly, being tethered to him would change that in time—he’d ground her and make her more logical. He’d compensate for the messy parts of her.

They hadn’t had a chance to get there. Barely a month together.

“I just want to understand,” she said to the window. “Maybe I pretend that my self-esteem is better than it really is sometimes. Maybe I pretend that I don’t care about things, but what you did hurt. Do you even remember, or have you been alive too long to recount your old experiences?”

No response, but of course, he couldn’t give one. Her fault. She hoped she was doing a little better than talking to a brick wall.

Or maybe I’m not.

She hadn’t seen a flash, but he may have teleported out of there while she’d been speechifying.

She walked to the window and hopped to see inside, and then cringed.

He was seated facing the window, shirtless, hair loose, and his dark eyes held a murderous glint.

“Shit.”

Back to the cement blocks she went. “I need to understand,” she said, bobbing her knee. “Did they mean anything to you?”

The last time they’d been in each other’s company, they’d been able to use basic telepathy to communicate when they needed to be discreet but, Noelle had to be touching someone to make it work on her end. She doubted he would leap for joy at the suggestion she hold his hand for a few wee minutes.

She heard a rip, and then the crumpling of paper.

A small yellow projectile soared out of the window, nearly spinning her phone off the ledge.

She leapt off the blocks and ran to grab the wadded paper before the breeze could whisk it away. Smoothing the sheet against her thigh as she returned to her seat, her heart was already in her throat and sweat was beading on her brow. The very worst thing he could tell her was, “Yes, they were as important as you.”

Already, Clarissa’s attachment to Gulielmus had Noelle questioning everything she knew about mate tethering. She was out of sorts with knowing so little about the way the most sacred elf connection was supposed to work. Her mother had told her that the feelings would be reciprocal, but her mother had told her all sorts of white lies, she’d later discovered.

Her air rushed out of her as if she were a balloon that had been stabbed when she read his terse missive, but not for any reason she could have predicted. It read:

“Mine?” she whispered, furrowing her brow. “Surely, he can’t be serious.” She repeated the sentiment louder to be sure he could hear her. “You’re not serious, are you? Who are you talking about?”

More ripping. More crinkling. Another hurled paper bullet.

She fetched that one, too, and didn’t bother returning to the step. If they were going to communicate in such a way, she figured she’d might as well stay put and catch what he was lobbing.

She growled softly and fired back, “The orgy, if you can even call it that, had ended. I left for an errand.”

She remembered no such thing. “You’re remembering wrong,” she yelled. “You may be an angel, but your memory isn’t bulletproof.”

Another wad of paper.

Noelle squinted at the horizon. “I’m pretty sure that didn’t happen.”

There was a scraping sound from within the trailer, that of a piece of furniture being pushed across the floor.

Tamatsu’s big body appeared in the window next. He pushed the window all the way open, put his forearms against the sill, and gave her an eloquent glare.

She sucked in some air.

It might have happened. Her memory of that couple of days was a bit spotty. It was winter, and she’d been exhausted, but she didn’t think she’d be so far from the truth.

Maybe she was, though.

She’d been notorious for practically sleepwalking through her days when she’d been the elf court. Supposedly, there were battles she’d fought in and couldn’t remember anything about her participation in them, except that she’d lived.

Shit.

Maybe there had been a man on a horse. She’d always remembered that as being Tamatsu.

She forced her hands into her hair and dug the tips against her scalp. “Okay, so what if he did? My brain may have been mush by that point. I may not have been entirely cognizant of—”

Buzzing. Terrible, annoying buzzing.

She closed her eyes, balled her hands into her fists at her sides, and walked calmly to her tote as Tamatsu slammed the window shut.

“Thanks a lot, you cad.” She grabbed her knife by the blade, and—screaming wordlessly—tossed the weapon through the descending spirit. It had saved her the trouble of forcing it into a solid shape, having already morphed.

Sliced clean through, it fell to the ground in a splat, and her knife clattered nearby immediately after.

“This is quickly getting old.” She took a deep breath, flicked a bit of spirit goop off her ankle, and walked to the window. Banging on the cracked pane, she shouted, “If I were buzzed on magic or in my blackout period, there may have been some touch I don’t remember.” She knocked again. “Open the window. You not responding is one thing, but I refuse to shout at glass.”

He appeared on the other side. Arms crossed. Scowling.

“Would you like to have a conversation like civilized adults?”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, fine. We can have the closest thing to a conversation—a monologue. Only one of us is doing the talking.”

He squinted at her again.

“I don’t know what you want me to say. I can try to give you a better apology, but you and I both know I’ll sound disingenuous even when I mean what I’m saying. I could beg, if you like, but you need to give me a script to go on. Just tell me what to say, and I’ll say it. Or do you want me naked on my knees, pleading to you?”

That made him tilt that eyebrow up once more.

She groaned, and muttered, “Of course, I’d toss the suggestion of fetish to you and you’d perk right up, hmm?”

The Airstream’s door creaked open, and the tin can shook as he shifted his weight to the ground. He straightened to his full height of seven feet something-or-other, and his black wings shuddered, sending dust and who-knew-what-else floating into the air.

She sighed, though not at the dust.

The very first time she’d seen him, he’d been wearing so many clothes—all the layers of a feudal warrior, and with his hair pulled neatly back. She’d been impressed then, by his size, his intrigue, his beauty. The strength he radiated. She was attracted to strength.

And his voice …

She closed her eyes on the memory. His voice used to make her body thrum. All he had to do was whisper her name, and she’d be ready.

She’d never hear that whisper again, and that was her fault. She’d grabbed his voice away. She’d behaved like a bratty child who was angry that other children weren’t playing the way she would have liked, and she’d broken it so they couldn’t have a nice thing, either.

He stepped closer, loose pants billowing in the breeze, feet bare and pale against the harsh desert ground.

He was inches from her—closer than they’d been in hundreds of years, and her body craved his embrace. She wanted him to scoop her up the way he used to and let her wrap her legs around his waist. He used to hold her on his lap, rub her hair, and tell her stories about things a little mind like hers couldn’t fathom. Stories about war and friendships and the things angels did that creatures bound to the earth never learned of.

Most angels, she’d learned, were no “angels.”

She looked down at the ground and at her feet in ruined pantyhose and shifted her weight.

He was waiting.

She was stalling.

Their exchanges had once been so much more fluid and instinctual. They’d understood each other or, at least, she thought she’d understood him.

Swallowing, she lowered herself onto her knees and stared forward at his thighs. “I … I still don’t know what to say besides I’m sorry. I felt betrayed.” Whether or not she actually had been would have to be an argument for another time. She still needed to try to piece the memories together. It may have been too late to even try. “I overacted because you belonged to me and you let someone else touch you.”

Intimately.

She didn’t see the point of getting into the nitty-gritty details. Obviously, he’d been there.

His weight shifted.

She looked up.

He didn’t appear to be moved. His expression was far too neutral. Not even his eyebrows had anything to say on the matter.

She swallowed again. “I know there are elves who have reputations for keeping several lovers, but that’s only elves who haven’t bound themselves to anyone. If I gave you any suggestion that I was open to … that beyond that one night …” She let her breath out in a sputter. Hell, it’d been fun—she remembered that much—but that was only because she’d been with him. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t like the idea of sharing you.”

She still didn’t.

Hundreds of years might have passed, and certainly he’d taken other lovers since their last encounter. She’d had to, being a sexual creature like most things on two legs, but those lovers had been merely a means to an end. They hadn’t been Tamatsu. They hadn’t even come close to filling in the hole he’d left in her life. They may as well have been phantoms.

“All I can say, again, is that I’m sorry. I’ll keep looking for your voice. I’ll do everything in my power to draw the magic back if it’s out there to be found but, in the meantime, will you let me make it up to you? Tell me what you want.”

No response, of course.

In fact, after staring at her for several long seconds, he turned on his heel and strode back to the trailer. The feathers of his wings ruffled like the hair on the back of a hissing cat as he went.

He slammed the door.

She slumped.

“Shit. Now what?”