To Dance With the Devil

Now that was weird. She knew he was being released but didn’t know from where? That made zero sense. My expression must have shown how dubious I was.



“I don’t,” she repeated with a bit more heat. “I got an anonymous call telling me he was getting out. So I called the parole board. I got the runaround for a bit, but eventually they told me that he was not being paroled but was being released early for good behavior. I didn’t think to ask which facility he’d been in.”



Okay, I still didn’t buy that, but I decided to move on. “How long was he in?”



“A little over twenty-two years. I don’t see why—” She stopped speaking in midsentence. She was obviously angry now. Red spots had appeared on both cheeks; her breathing was rapid and a little ragged. The overreaction told me I was right. Something was amiss. She’d intended to keep me off balance, maintain control. She wanted her daughter protected, but she didn’t want me to know from what. Not acceptable. If I’m going to put my life on the line, I want to know all the details. It can make the difference between success and failure, or success with a major hospital stay.



“This isn’t going to work,” she said grimly as she rolled away from the table and turned to leave.



She was right about that. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” I said. I was lying. I wasn’t sorry at all. “Before you go, can I give you a bit of advice?”



She turned her head, giving me an unfriendly look over her shoulder.



“If you hire someone ethical, he or she will maintain confidentiality. But we all have to know what we’re up against. Tell the truth. All of it.”



She gave me a long narrow-eyed glare before setting her chair in motion. She motored smoothly past Barbara, who was heading for our table carrying a pitcher of iced tea. Barbara watched her go, lips compressed in a thin line. Turning to me, she said, “I take it I should cancel her order?”



“Yep. And bring me a margarita if you would.” It was a little early, but all things considered, I figured I deserved a drink. While I was waiting, I pulled out my phone and dialed Emma’s number from memory. She answered on the first ring. “Hey, girlfriend,” I said, “you got any plans for the day?”



“None I can’t change. What’s up?”



“You know all those boxes cluttering up my house?”



“The ones from when your gran moved?”



“And the ones Dottie sent over before the office blew up, and the ones with Vicki’s stuff from Birchwoods…” I tried to think if there were any others.



“You still haven’t gone through Vicki’s stuff?”



Vicki had been my best friend. She’d died a couple of years ago, the same night I was attacked and partially changed by the vampire. She’d stuck around as a ghost for a little while but eventually had moved on to her final reward. I still miss her every single day. Until just recently I simply hadn’t had the heart to go through her stuff and sift through those memories.



“Not yet. You know how she was about pictures.” Emma laughed. I’m sure that, like me, she was remembering all the times Vicki had pointed a camera at us, or had someone else photograph the three of us together. “I’m thinking there should be some good shots of all of us.”



“I’d be happy to help. Will Dawna be coming?”



“Nope. She’s busy.”



If Emma heard the irritation in my voice, she chose to ignore it. “Her loss. See you at your place in an hour. I’ll bring the wine.”



“Sounds like a plan.”



2



“All right, spill it.” Emma plopped down into the armchair, mock-glaring at me. “You’re upset about something. I can tell.” Emma is petite and pretty, with naturally blonde hair and blue eyes. A former gymnast, she’s built rock solid. Today she was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, but even dressed for sorting through boxes, she looked pressed and neat. I wonder sometimes how she does it.



I sighed in response to her question. She knows me so well. Being with Matty has relaxed her a little, but only a little. Ah, Matteo DeLuca, he is the love of her life and the brother of my current love, Bruno DeLuca. Matty is currently working on getting a transfer out of one of the militant orders of the priesthood to the regular branch, so that he and Emma can get married. It’s funny, I would never have thought to put the two of them together romantically, but it works.



I was glad I’d invited Emma over to help. Being around happy people always cheers me up. Emma was radiantly happy, and it showed. Of course, she’s in love, and Matty loves her just as deeply. I took a second to be thankful that the two of them found each other. Life is crazy at the best of times. Love should never be taken for granted.



I forced my mind back to the topic at hand. “It’s Dawna. She bailed on a meeting with a client. A female client.”



“Seriously?” Emma shook her head. “Crap.”



“She said she had to take Chris’s mom to the airport,” I explained.



“Isn’t that what cabs are for?”



“Thank you,” I said with vigor. “That’s exactly what I said.”



“And?”



I shook my head. Dawna hadn’t given me a further explanation, so I had nothing to share. “She hadn’t even done the preliminary paperwork. If she had, we would never have made the appointment. It was a complete waste of time. The woman was lying through her teeth and it would have been evident with even a simple examination.”



“Ouch.”



I took a deep breath. “It’ll be fine.”



“Uh-huh.” Emma packed a lot of skepticism into two little sounds.



I sighed. “I’m scared. I think…” I paused, trying to find the right words. “Okay, maybe I’m nuts, and I don’t have any proof, but ever since our office building was blown up, Chris has been pushing Dawna to quit. She told him no before, but I think she may give in to him after all.”



Emma’s expression grew pained enough that I had the sinking feeling I’d hit the nail on the head … hard. Crap. I must have looked curious, because she blushed and frowned.



“I can’t talk about it,” she said. I wondered if Dawna had said something to her or if Emma’s clairvoyance had picked something up. In either case, she wouldn’t tell me what she knew. If it was Dawna, Emma wouldn’t break a confidence, and if it was her magic, well, Emma and I both knew that sometimes talking about a vision of the future could make it come to pass. Or not. Either way, it was usually a good idea to say nothing.



I gave Emma a look that spoke volumes, then went into the kitchen to get us some drinks.



I poured Emma a glass of the wine she had brought, but I was in the mood for something different. Let it go, I told myself as I rummaged in the freezer for one of those pouches of premixed frozen cocktails. Available at the grocery store, you just stick ’em in the freezer for a half hour and they’re ready to go. Tasty, too. I found what I was looking for, salted the rim of a glass, and poured myself a margarita before heading back into the living room. I passed Emma her glass and raised mine.



“L’chaim!”



“To life!” Emma agreed, clinking her glass with mine before taking a long pull. “So, I understand you’ve put some ads out and are hiring. Are you looking for anything specific? Maybe someone male, and a mage?” She put a teasing note in her voice, but she was at least partly serious.



I shook my head. “No. Bruno made it very clear. He wants to work at the university. Besides, I couldn’t afford him.”



Bruno DeLuca: my fiancé in college, now my lover, my friend, and one of my favorite human beings on earth. He’s got power—he’d made those amazing knives of mine—plus brains and money. He’s sexy as hell. He can raise my pulse rate just walking into a room, even after all these years. You’d think I’d jump at the chance of bringing him into the company. Other people certainly do. I’ve seen some of the offers that have come his way from really major players.



It was her turn to give me a narrow-eyed look. “Uh-huh, like he wouldn’t change his mind if you asked him. That’s not why you’re not doing it.”



Ouch, that stung—probably because it was the truth. Bruno did want to work as a professor, to get out of the rat race in the private sector. I respected that. He’d made a ton of money making artifacts, but he’d wound up having no control over who used them or for what purposes. He didn’t like the idea of something he made being used for evil, but more than that, my honey is all about control.



That’s one of the main reasons I didn’t want him as a business partner. He’s a take-charge kind of guy, and I wanted to be the one in charge of the company. I’d already dealt once with a man who wasn’t able to follow my lead in a crisis. The results had been spectacularly ugly. I wasn’t going through that again. No way.



“Fine,” I admitted. “You win. I want to run the company and I don’t think he’d follow orders any better than John did. Been there. Done that. Wasn’t fun.”



Emma didn’t even try to argue. Instead, she stared across the room, her eyes growing just a little vacant. She could have been looking at the future—she’s a clairvoyant, after all. Or it could have been just a reaction to the alcohol.



I didn’t ask. If she wanted me to know something, she’d tell me. Instead, I put my empty glass down on top of a magazine on the coffee table and reached for a box.



There were a lot of boxes. I’ve been living in the same place for several years now, and for a while I’d cleaned up once or twice a year by throwing anything I wasn’t immediately using into a carton. Add that to Vicki’s boxes, and Gran’s, and the ones from my office—before and after the bombing—and there were plenty of boxes to go through. I didn’t expect we’d crack more than a few today.



The box I grabbed wasn’t a packing carton. It was smaller and flatter and clearly marked with the logo and image of the VCR it had once held. It was also labeled, in my gran’s neat block handwriting, FAMILY PHOTOS.