“So I’m still just a test, then.” Not a woman, but a lesson to be learned.
“Not now,” he said. “I stopped believing shit about you and seventy-five percent of the Guardians in Caelum right away. But it took me a little while longer than that to pull my head out of my ass and realize that not everything is about me proving my worthiness as a Guardian, or a trial to pass or fail.”
“How many years did that take?”
“About a hundred and thirty.” He gave her a crooked grin. “I can be slow.”
Not slow. Just immutable. Solid. Good qualities, sometimes. Not always at other times. But it looked as though he’d figured that out. She might have saved herself the hurt if she’d waited, and become friends with this man instead of the boy he’d been.
And though she’d been pushing aside and ignoring the hurt his carelessness had caused for so many years, only now could she finally feel it cracking, as if the pain might crumble to dust. It hadn’t yet. She could still feel the pain there, right around her heart, but she was suddenly very glad she’d come.
She gave him a smile, and a nudge against his shoulder. “Shall we go find this demon quarterback, then?”
CHAPTER 3
So she was still here. Still hiding from something, obviously, since his apology hadn’t been her reason for coming—but he wasn’t going to question her about the why. He’d just do what he’d planned to do before, and watch over her until she left.
And in that time, he’d try to repair some of the damage he’d done. Try to rebuild a friendship that he’d always valued over any other, and that he’d had to force himself not to miss after he’d destroyed it. If he couldn’t do that, if that was too much to hope for, Marc would just make damn certain he didn’t do anything so careless and hurt her again.
Right now, that might just mean catching her if she slipped on the icy sidewalks. A Guardian’s feet wouldn’t freeze, but he couldn’t imagine walking barefoot across the slush and snow as she was.
“It’s bothering you,” she said.
“What?”
“My feet. You keep looking at them.” She wiggled her toes, gold rings winking. “You’re not alone. It bothers Mariko, too. She thinks I do it to be like Michael.”
The Guardians’ leader—who didn’t need shoes now anyway, trapped as he was in Hell. “Why do you?”
“Partially because I want to be like Michael.” Her grin invited him to laugh with her. Probably every Guardian had admitted such a thing at some point. “But it also helps me build illusions. The better I know how something feels or tastes or looks, the more convincing I can make it. And I like the feeling, too. Cold doesn’t hurt us, so why would I protect myself from it?”
“You could cut your feet.” God knew how many broken bottles or sharp stones were hidden beneath the snow.
“And heal in less than a minute. You weenie. Afraid of a little blood?”
God, he’d missed her teasing. “Maybe. But you wouldn’t like the look of my feet anyway, so I’ll spare you the sight of them bare.”
“I remember perfectly well how they looked, thank you—and they were nice. Long and lean, just like you. Every part of you was long. That was nice, too.”
Was she still teasing him? Probably. But all that he could think was that her feet were just like her, too. Small, delicate, soft—and that when he’d touched them, kissed them, she’d gasped and shivered.
She wasn’t shivering now. “Is that the girls’ Jeep?”
He forced himself out of that memory, spotted the Cherokee parked in front of the small city library—about a half block down from Perk’s Palace.
“That’s theirs,” he confirmed. “Let’s hope we don’t have to slay the bastard in front of them.”
Radha slanted that Don’t say stupid things look at him, and he realized that with her Gift, the girls wouldn’t see anything that Radha didn’t want them to.
But the girls weren’t at the coffee shop—and he and Radha wouldn’t be slaying Gregory Jackson unless they planned on breaking one of the most important rules that a Guardian had to follow: not to hurt or kill humans. One psychic touch told Marc that the kid behind the cash register was human, through and through. The demon might have taken his shape at some point, but it wasn’t here now—and so Gregory Jackson probably wasn’t the demon’s default identity, the form the demon used when it wasn’t shape-shifting and stirring up trouble.
“It figures,” Radha murmured. “Finding him after one conversation would have been too easy.”
She’d had one conversation since coming to Riverbend. Marc, on the other hand, had talked to about thirty people so far, starting with the county sheriff and his deputies. Still, he had to agree. It would have been too easy.
But it wasn’t a wasted trip. Gregory might have seen something that homecoming night, especially if he was with Miklia. He might not know what he’d seen, but that was Marc’s job—to figure out what fit and what didn’t.
On the other hand, he could imagine quite a few places where Gregory Jackson wouldn’t fit. Marc wasn’t a small man by any measure, and it wasn’t often that he had to look up at someone, let alone a seventeen-year-old kid who must have weighed the equivalent of him and Radha put together, all muscle. A small monitor hanging in view of the front counter played a classic football game, and Jackson kept an eye on the television while Marc showed his identification and asked for a few minutes.
“I have a break in five,” Jackson said.
Marc glanced at the screen. “The ’84 Orange Bowl?”
“Yeah.” Jackson flashed a big smile. “Nebraska’s about to go for the two-point conversion instead of the tie, and lose it all.”
In other words, he’d talk when the game was over. Standing near the glass case of pastries, Radha narrowed her eyes on Marc, but whatever she intended to say had to wait. A black-haired woman in a flour-dusted apron emerged from the back of the store, drying her hands on a towel. No question where Jackson had gotten his height from. Her eyes were level with Marc’s.
“Are you here to talk to my son?”
“With your permission,” Marc said. “We need to ask him a few questions.”
“Is he in any trouble?”
“No, ma’am. We’re just gathering information.”
“All right, then. And since you’re here on the government’s dime, you make sure you order something.”
Radha tapped her claw-tipped forefinger against the glass case. “I want that.”
A four-layer slice of white coconut cake. Jackson’s mother retrieved the plate and slid it across the counter. “Forks are at the station by the window. Gregory will bring your coffees out to you.”
“In about four minutes,” the kid said, watching the game again—but even distracted, he made the correct change.
“Pfft. Worthless boy.” She flicked his bottom with the towel, but it was easy to hear the affection in her voice—and easier to feel her pride.
Definitely not a demon, either.
The shop held a mix of mismatched tables and chairs, centered beneath long striped curtains hanging from the middle of the ceiling and drawn back to the corners of the room. A few big pillows and long benches along the walls provided more comfortable seating areas. Pop music piped through the speakers, and Radha danced her way across the floor with small steps and long swings of her hips. With a twirl of blue skin, orange scarves, and black hair, she chose a sturdy square table and sank gracefully into the wooden chair. Less gracefully, Marc sat opposite her, then watched her scrape off half the frosting before digging her fork into the cake.
Before taking a bite, she asked, “You follow American football?”
“This is the Midwest,” he said. “I remember that game, and when Nebraska lost. I don’t know if a thousand demons descending on a city would have caused the same amount of rage and despair coming from those fans.”
“Ah.” Radha nodded. “You should visit my territory during the Cricket World Cup.”
Maybe he would. “But you follow the matches a bit, don’t you? Soccer, too. Because not everyone in your territory follows them—and up north in my territory, it leans toward hockey—but every once in a while, you run across someone who should know the language of the sport, but doesn’t.”
“And it’s either a demon or a liar. You’re a clever man, Marc.”
“Well, I enjoy it, too.” He liked the strategy involved, the endless play variations. “And—”
He broke off as, beneath the table, a slight weight fell across his thighs. Radha’s icy feet pressed between his legs.
She grinned at him. “I’m trying to warm them up.”
God. Her toes wriggled, as if she were snuggling in deeper. Suddenly rock hard, he waited for them to wriggle higher, to torment him a little more. They didn’t.
“And what is everyone else seeing?” he asked.
She didn’t even glance at the few other people in the coffee shop. “My feet are firmly on the floor. I’m wearing black pumps. Boring black pumps. And your muscles are so tense.”
Her toes rubbed against his inner thighs. Biting back a groan, Marc caught one of her feet. Still cold, but to a Guardian, that wasn’t necessarily unpleasant. Not unpleasant at all.
“What are you doing, Radha?”
Making him pay for that long-ago hurt? A little friendly teasing? Something more?
He’d take anything she dished out, but he damn well wouldn’t respond until he knew what she wanted in return.
“I’m having fun.”
“Working me up?”
“Am I?” Her eyes began to glow, the gold flecks brightening, casting their own light. Not an illusion at all. A Guardian’s eyes did that when they were affected by a deep emotion. “Can a celibate warrior be worked up?”