I dodged—okay, I fell flat on my back like a turtle—and shrilled, “Are you insane?”
The flash of her teeth was dazzling. “Maybe.”
“You must be Taslima.” I accepted the hand she offered like an idiot. “I’m Grier.”
“Anyone who’s known Boaz more than thirty seconds knows who you are down to what size panties you wear.” She used her grip to yank me to my feet. “Either you’ve lost weight recently, or he hasn’t gotten in your pants yet. He’s off two sizes by my estimate.”
While oddly flattered he had spoken of me to his friends, I was still going to murder him for what he had told them. “The answer is both.”
Using her iron grip, she reeled me stumbling into her, putting us chest to chest, and latched her arms around me. A manic grin split her cheeks while I gasped for breath. “You can call me Taz.”
“Taz,” I wheezed. “I can’t breathe.”
She yielded not one inch. “Do something about it.”
Dots flickered in my vision before my brain got the message she wasn’t kidding. With my arms trapped at my sides and her body plastered against mine, all I could do was slam my forehead into her nose with as much power as I could leverage.
A sickening crunch made me regret the hearty breakfast I’d eaten, but her arms loosened enough for me to wriggle out of her hold.
Backing toward the porch, I couldn’t swallow down my reflexive manners. “Are you okay?”
“Did Volkov ask if you were okay when he kidnapped you?” The promise of swelling muffled her voice. “And if he did, tell me you weren’t dumb enough to stand around cataloging your boo-boos.”
My heel banged against the bottom step, and I turned to climb onto the porch.
A hard kick took out the back of my left knee, and I crumpled. Taz followed that up with a boot to my spine that made me cry out before she clocked me across the mouth. I face-planted in the grass and regretted ever asking Boaz for help. Clearly his choice of tutor was deranged. Had she misunderstood this was basic self-defense and not an assassination attempt?
“Get up,” Taz snapped. “You’re wasting my time if you don’t even try.”
Blood dribbled down my chin from a split in my bottom lip. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and focused on the vermilion bindi dotted between her eyebrows until the two Tazes floating in my vision merged into one. And then I blinked again.
Black mist whispered around her ankles, murmuring up her legs, until the wraith coalesced behind her with a threatening groan. Its skeletal hand palmed her throat, and the edges of its black hood brushed the spot below her ear, making me wonder if wraith had teeth.
Linus strolled from the carriage house, drying his hands on a dish towel. “What’s all this about?”
“I asked Boaz for self-defense classes.” I used the railing to haul myself onto my feet. “He sent me Taslima.” The wraith hissed, a death rattle in its chest, and its fingers tightened. Ignoring the whimper of my hindbrain, I wobbled over to her and pried at the wraith’s skeletal hand with my bloodied fingers, but it refused to obey me with its master present. “Let her go.”
A flash of respect glinted in Taz’s eyes, but then she glared at Linus. “You heard the lady.”
Linus studied me, evaluating the damage Taz had done, his lips mashed together to keep his opinions to himself until they whitened. Still I expected him to invoke his mother’s name to get his way or threaten to tattle on me if I didn’t stop damaging the Grande Dame’s investment.
“Come see me when you’re finished.” His tone had gone so cold I imagined his lips bluing along their edges as the wraith bled into the shadows gathered under the porch. “I’ll do what I can to patch you up.”
“That’s it?” I asked dumbly. “No threats? No ultimatums? No locking me in the attic until I see reason?”
“Grier, you’re a grown woman. I can’t stop you from doing anything you want to do.”
I squinted at him, certain this must be some kind of trick. No man was this reasonable.
“Taslima?” Eternity, bleak and endless, swirled in his eyes. “Teach her. Don’t use her as a punching bag.” Linus tossed me the damp rag to wipe my face. “You can’t beat lessons into your students’ heads, or I would carry a mallet instead of a tablet to class with me.”
With his chastisement ringing in my ears, Linus retreated and left Taslima and me staring at one another.
Sensing Taz was waiting on me to decide if I’d suffered enough abuse for one day, I balled up the cloth and flung it on the back steps. “Again?”
Cackling merrily, Taz sank into a fighting stance and waited for me to mimic her. “Again,” she agreed. “This time, I won’t pull my punches.”
Maybe her earlier hits had given me brain damage. I don’t know why else that would have made me smile.
Linus held his tongue while playing nurse after Taz finished tenderizing my face, and I was grateful he was willing to let me pursue my independence how I saw fit. I took a selfie before he broke out his pen, tempted to send it to Boaz as a thank you for today, but a lifetime of knowing him counseled it was better he didn’t see this caterpillar until she emerged from her cocoon. Still, I owed him some thanks for keeping his word and settled for a quick call as I wandered the garden.
“Go out with me.”
“Hello, Boaz. How are you? Me? I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”
“Hello, Grier. How are you? I’m fine. Thanks for asking.” A smile warmed his voice. “Go out with me.”
I plucked a few dead leaves from a thorny stem. “What if I say no?”
“I’ll give you time to see the error of your ways then ask again.”
“Mmm-hmm.” The man was energy caged in skin. He couldn’t sit or stand still. He wouldn’t last a full day if I turned him down before he was asking again, and each time would be harder to deny than the last. “What if I say yes?”
“Then I promise to be a gentleman and treat you with the care and respect you deserve.”
I laughed until I realized he wasn’t chuckling with me. “You’re serious.”
“As a heart attack.”
Talk about hitting a nail on the head. The idea of a date with Boaz gave me arrhythmia. “I’ll think about it.”
“You do that.” Satisfaction deepened his voice. “All day long, while you’re sleeping in my shirt, you think about how much fun we’re going to have.”
I lost focus and pricked my finger. “I haven’t said yes yet.”
“You will.” He sounded so sure, so cocky, I almost turned him down on principle. But then his tone softened, and a shy hint of the boy who’d helped me get into trouble most of my life peeked through. “I hope you will.”
There might be a girl somewhere in the world able to resist Boaz Pritchard when he shucked his charm and became earnest, but that girl was not I. Each glimpse of his big heart made me hungrier for the next. And yet… Though I had already made up my mind—as if there had ever been any doubt—I relished holding the upper hand for once.
“I’ll think about it,” I said again, breathless.
He must be fluent in the language of my exhales, because I heard his relief. “You do that, Squirt.”
“I have to go.” I climbed onto the back porch. “I’ll see you soon, right?”
“Only if you’re a very good girl,” he teased. “Or a very bad one.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing then said my goodbyes before he distracted me again. Not until after I hung up did it hit me. All his talk of dating had derailed my reason for calling, and I forgot to thank him for sending Taz, which I did in a text rather than tempting fate by hitting redial.
A plan had taken shape while I was trying to keep my head attached to my body with moderate success, and I was eager to set it in motion. But first, I had one more call to make.
“Odette?”
Odette Lecomte was a seer. The desperate, the hungry, and the curious traveled from all over the world to beg for an audience with her. Clients paid in favors and promises, gold and jewels, and other more precious things to sift their futures through her gnarled fingers. Those glimpses into other lives, other minds, made her a veritable encyclopedia of knowledge both common and forbidden. And she had been one of Maud’s best friends. That made her as good as an honorary aunt to me.
“Ma coccinelle.” My ladybug. The endearment, shouted over the crash of waves, was better than a hug. “You called for an update, yes?”
“Yes.” I crossed my fingers tight. “Have you found anything?”
“Nothing good, bébé, nothing good. Let me get in the house, and I will tell you what I’ve found.” The steady roar quit like a pulled cord on a noise machine. “There. That’s better.” Her breath caught before she groaned, a long exhalation, and I imagined her sinking into her plush couch. “I spoke with Dame Marchand.”
Dame Severine Marchand, my maternal grandmother, whose name Maud had forbidden spoken in her presence, whose existence had been all but scrubbed from my memories, until it occurred to me she might have answers about my absent father and Odette a way to get them. “And?”
“The Marchands have disowned Evangeline and wiped her from the family histories. Her own mother attempted to pretend she had no idea who Evie was until I reminded her with whom she was speaking.”
Evangeline Marchand, my mother, died when I was five. I don’t recall much about her. The way she smelled when she peppered my face with kisses, the melodious current of her voice when she sang to me in her native tongue, those things were lost to time. Thanks to Maud’s photo albums, I know I’m the spitting image of her. We share the same thin lips, high cheekbones, and sharp chin. Whoever my father was, his only contributions had been the wave in my dark hair and the color of my eyes.