Midnight Blue-Light Special i-2 Page 8

  —Frances Brown

  A semilegal sublet in Greenwich Village, about twenty minutes later

  EVEN DOMINIC had to admit that expecting me to take three taxis in one night was pushing things, especially when we were looking at the trip from the Freakshow back to my apartment. There was no one else I needed to warn immediately, and that meant that it was time for me to email the rest of the family with an update and maybe get myself some actual sleep for a change.

  Besides, I needed some time to clear my head. Sarah said that Dominic was on the up-and-up, and I wanted to believe her—and him—enough that I was going along with it, for the moment, for as long as it didn’t mean taking him anywhere he’d never been before. But I needed to remember that he was the enemy, whether he wanted to be or not. I needed to be wary.

  Once again, the enemy met me at my front door. “Security is just a joke to you, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “This building’s security is a joke to anyone sufficiently determined to get inside,” he replied.

  “I suppose your building’s security isn’t?” I asked lightly, as I dug my keys out of my pocket. Dominic didn’t answer, but his shoulders stiffened. I sighed. “You know, eventually, this whole ‘I am Batman, I can never reveal the location of my secret lair’ shtick is going to get real old. Oh, wait. It already did.” And it just made me worry more about his motives, which wasn’t helping.

  “Verity, it’s . . . complicated. The Covenant . . . they would know if I had a woman in my residence. They would know she had been there the moment they crossed my threshold, no matter how little sign she left.” Dominic mustered a small smile. “Perhaps I could conceal some women, but you have a way of making your presence known even after you’ve left a place.”

  “It’s not like they make you guys take an oath of celibacy. Personal experience aside, I have several ancestors who will testify to that.” I shoved open the apartment door, triggering cheers from the small cluster of mice waiting on the hallway table. I waited until Dominic and I were both inside before frowning at them and asking, “Okay, where’s the rest of the colony?”

  “In attendance at the Catechism of the Patient Priestess!” announced one of the mice. The rest cheered again in punctuation. “We were selected to bear the great honor of welcoming you back to the domain when your travels ended.”

  Having a live-in colony of Aeslin mice means never having to come home to a silent house. I paused, the true meaning of what the mouse was saying sinking in. “I have a new honor for you.”

  “Yes, Priestess?” asked the mouse, whiskers quivering with excitement. I couldn’t tell whether it was male or female. It wasn’t relevant, and so I didn’t ask.

  “I need you to stay here in the hall until the catechism is over, so you can tell the rest of the colony that there will be cheese and cake if—and only if—they do not enter the bedroom until I open the door. Do you understand?”

  The mouse ran one paw over its ears in a thoughtful grooming behavior. Finally, it asked, “Is this a Now-Only Thing?”

  For a heady moment I considered saying that no, do not bother me in the bedroom was now part of scripture. The trouble was that the mice would believe me, and would expect cheese and cake every time I went into my room without being bothered. Aeslin mice are like normal mice in one regard: they’ll eat themselves into perfect spheres if you make enough food available to them. “One-time offer,” I said. “Leave me alone in the bedroom for now, get cheese and cake when I emerge.”

  “It Shall Be Done,” intoned the mouse, with audible capital letters on every word. The rest of the mice erupted into cheers. I flashed them a quick salute before turning to throw the deadbolt on the door, grabbing Dominic by the wrist, and towing him ignominiously down the apartment’s short hall to the bedroom.

  “What in the world—?” he asked.

  “No talking now. Kissing is more important.” I let go of his wrist as I pushed him past me into the bedroom. Once we were both inside, I closed the bedroom door, and locked it for good measure. I didn’t bother turning on the light as I turned to face him. Let the moon shining through the window be light enough. This wasn’t a time when we needed to see each other clearly. “Kissing now.”

  “And the Covenant?”

  “Are they coming tonight?”

  Dominic shook his head.

  “We’ve told Sarah. We’ve told the gang at the Freakshow. I called my family before I came to Gingerbread Pudding. If the Covenant is really going to be keeping that close of an eye on you while they’re here, you’re not going to be stopping by for sexy naked fun times.” I unzipped my hoodie and shrugged it off, hanging it on the doorknob before starting to unbuckle my shoulder harness. “I am thus demanding my sexy naked fun times now, so that I’ll remember why I like you and don’t start endorsing an all-Covenant shoot on sight rule. Besides. I don’t want you getting ideas about that oath of chastity thing.”

  I wanted to touch him one more time before I knew whether or not he was going to betray me. I wanted him to touch me one more time when I still believed that it was safe to trust him.

  “Chastity would be easier than trying to understand you, but not nearly so much fun. I suppose I will yield in this case to your very solid argument.” Dominic watched me hang my shoulder harness on the hook next to the door. “Are you still armed?”

  I smiled blithely. “Why don’t you come over here and find out?”

  He came over there and found out.

  My grandmother—Alice, the human one who spends most of her time in the Underworld, not Angela, the cuckoo one who spends most of her time in Ohio—always said that when I met the right kind of man for me, I’d know. He’d be the one who wouldn’t bat an eye at the fact that I usually had three or more knives in my pants. Instead, he’d start suggesting ways for me to carry even more knives, possibly while wearing less clothing. I always figured she was talking about some crazy ideal, the way dancers dream about big studios with high ceilings and low rents. Then I met Dominic and realized that no, she wasn’t fantasizing at all. She was telling me what it would be like to date a boy from the Covenant of St. George.

  Dominic found and dispensed with the various holsters and straps holding my weapons in place in short order, either hanging them from the doorknob with my hoodie, tossing them onto the dresser or, as in the case of the collapsible baton in my sock, just throwing them onto the floor. I was too busy responding in kind to argue about the treatment of my things. Dominic didn’t usually carry a gun—silly boy—but he had more knives than I did, secured in even more interesting places. If we’d been having a competition, I’m not sure which one of us would have won.

  Of course, once we’d finished stripping the obviously deadly toys away, we were down to our underwear, so I’d say that we both won. We stopped for a moment, hands briefly empty, and just looked at each other. Dominic was breathing hard already. The light coming through the open window was bright enough to let me see his expression, but not very much more. That was okay. I’ve always been good at picturing things with my fingers.

  He took a breath, raising his hands like he wanted to ward me away. He didn’t lift them all the way. “Verity—”

  “They could be here tomorrow. We could be back to being enemies tomorrow. They’re not here tonight. Let’s have tonight.” I stepped closer, to where he could either pull me close or push me away. “We’ve earned it, don’t you think?”

  Dominic didn’t answer. Instead, he reached out and wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me close, and kissed me hard. My lips would be bruised in the morning. I didn’t mind, because I was giving back as good as I was getting, and we were already halfway tangled together when we fell sideways onto the bed.

  Dominic’s fingers ran through my hair and down to the nape of my neck, where he took hold, gripping firmly enough to keep me where I was. I made a soft noise in the back of my throat and bent to bite his shoulder. He pulled me closer still, and after that, words and meanings and
consequences didn’t matter to either one of us. Let the purge come tomorrow. We would have tonight, and while I won’t pretend that one night is ever enough, it was still more than some people ever get.

  * * *

  Sunlight came in through the open window, shining into my eyes and pulling me out of the dream that I’d been having. I groaned, rolling over and pressing my face against Dominic’s chest. He laughed sleepily.

  “If you don’t get up, who will protect all the cryptids of your fair city from the big, bad men who are on their way?”

  “Don’t know,” I mumbled, without lifting my head. “Don’t care. Somebody else can do it. Lemme ’lone, I’m sleeping.”

  “No, you were sleeping. Now you’re denying the morning.” He leaned down to kiss the top of my head. “That never works. Better men than I have died trying.”

  I sighed and squirmed around to prop my chin against his chest, looking up at him sulkily. Dominic smiled.

  “Good morning, Verity.”

  “What’s good about it?” Even as I asked the question, I knew the answer. What was good about it was that I was waking up—always a bonus in my line of work—in a bed that was toasty warm, thanks to the addition of another body. The mice hadn’t come to bother us. We’d actually been able to get a decent night’s sleep . . . once we finally fell asleep, anyway, which took quite a while. All in all, this definitely qualified as a good morning.

  “Everything,” said Dominic, echoing my thoughts in a single word. Then he grinned. “Your hair is sticking in all directions like an electrocuted hedgehog’s quills. It’s endearing. You should wear it like this more often.”

  “Mmm. Get out of my apartment,” I said.

  “No,” said Dominic, and sat up, sending me rolling half off of him. He caught me at the last moment, pulling me up into a kiss. Pulling back, he added, “I don’t have any trousers on.”

  “Okay, fair. You don’t have a shirt, either. Or boxers.” I let my hand slide down the length of his torso, proving my statement with a light touch of my fingertips. “You’d get arrested for indecent exposure for sure if you went out there the way you’re not dressed right now.”

  “Infuriating woman,” said Dominic. This time there was no “almost” about it; the words were fond, even affectionate. Then he sobered, and said, “Verity. I have to ask you something.”

  “I don’t know where your pants wound up last night, but I can help you look,” I said. Then I paused. “That’s not what you were going to ask, is it?”

  “Truly, your grasp of the obvious remains monumental in its scope.” Dominic sat up a little straighter, dislodging my hand in the process.

  I blinked and sat up, clutching the sheets around myself like some sort of soap opera heroine covering herself from the camera. I realized a moment later how stupid that was, and I let the sheets fall. There was nothing about me that Dominic hadn’t seen. Not even the scars that my tango costumes normally hid from the rest of the world. My scars are nothing on my father’s, or my grandmother’s—life in the field is hard on a body, and it gets harder the longer it goes on—but they’re mine, and I usually make love in the dark to keep people from seeing them. Not Dominic. He had scars of his own to share.

  He watched me as I pulled away, a strange seriousness in his dark eyes. “You said something last night,” he said.

  “I said a lot of things last night,” I replied. “Which thing in specific was the problem?”

  “It wasn’t a problem, exactly. I just . . .” He paused, and sighed, muttering, “I am so much better at this with women who aren’t you,” before he asked, in a more normal tone, “Verity, what are we to one another?”

  “Uh . . . what?” That wasn’t a question I’d been expecting. Not from him, not now, and possibly not ever. “What do you mean?”

  “You, me . . . this.” He waved a hand, encompassing the room, the weapons scattered on the floor, our mutual nudity. “Are we lovers? Are we in a relationship? What are we? The tanuki called me your boyfriend. You didn’t deny him. You even used the term yourself.”

  “He has a name, you know. It’s Ryan.”

  “I know. You’re avoiding the question.”

  “I know.” I sighed and ran the fingers of my right hand through my bed-messed hair, using the gesture to buy myself a few seconds to think. “Jeez, Dominic. Most guys start the day by asking the girl if she wants breakfast. Not if they’re dating.”

  Dominic smiled a little. “I am not ‘most guys.’ No more than you are most girls. You are a fabulous, insane, infuriating creature, and I have never felt that normal was a requirement for this . . . whatever it is. Still. I’d like to know.”

  “Is this about those vow of chastity jokes? Because I really didn’t mean them.”

  “Verity.” Dominic reached out and took hold of my chin, resting his thumb in the hollow just below my lip. “Most of the young knights in my generation have taken lovers as soon as they arrived in a new city. Others hire prostitutes to fulfill their carnal needs. All of them know that one day, they will return to the Covenant and be married to a member of a good Covenant family, to have children of good breeding to join in the cause.”

  My eyes widened. I pulled away. “So what, I’m your spring fling?”

  “No! No.” Dominic scowled. “That isn’t what I’m saying at all. Verity, I didn’t take a lover because I didn’t want one. I was not looking for distraction from my mission. And so, instead of falling into the arms of a soft American woman who would never ask where I spent the small hours of the morning, I found myself with you, and you, Verity Price, you were so much more than that phantom girl could ever have been. Do you understand me? I did not choose you because you were expected. I did not choose you at all. But now that I have found you . . . please. I just want to understand what you are to me, and what I am to you.”

  I stared at him. That was the only thing that I could think of to do. “I . . .”

  In the pocket of his pants, kicked half under the bed and nearly hidden under the black cotton of my sports bra, Dominic’s phone began to ring. We both froze, the rest of the sentence dying before I could force it past my lips. It wasn’t a ringtone I’d heard before. Not that I’d heard his phone ring more than once or twice, but that ringtone—

  “Is that . . . ?”

  “Yes. It is.” He rolled away from me, spine suddenly stiff again, like the spine of the wannabe holy warrior who caught me in his rooftop snare. He was still there with me, but he was already gone by the time he found his pants and dug his phone out of the pocket, flicking it open. “De Luca.”

  There was a long pause as whoever was on the other end spoke. Then Dominic asked, in a light, rhetorical tone, “If God is occupied with the fall of sparrows then who, on Earth, will count the fall of dragons?”

  It must have been the right thing to say. There was another pause, and some of the tension went out of his shoulders.

  “Yes, of course, sir,” he said. “Pier A, in Battery Park. Two hours. Yes, sir. I have arranged for transportation and housing.” He paused again. “Yes, sir, I understand. I will bring all my reports thus far for review during the trip to your residence.”

  The next pause was longer. Dominic closed his eyes as it stretched on, chin dipping slightly, so that he looked for all the world like he was praying. Finally, he said, “Yes, sir, I understand the scope of the honor that is being afforded to me. I will not question my privilege. I will not doubt my orders. I will do my best to bring glory to the name of the Covenant, and to the family whose name I bear. Yes, sir. I will be on time.”

  Then he closed the phone. For a moment, he just stood there, eyes still closed, lit by the early morning sun streaming through the window.

  I slid out of the bed and walked toward him. “Dominic?” He didn’t react. I raised a hand, reaching carefully toward his shoulder. “Dominic?”

  “Don’t touch me right now, Verity,” he said. His voice was low. “I am betraying someone, right now, and I honestl
y do not know who it is. So please, I beg you. Do not touch me.”

  “I’m sorry.” I pulled my hand away. “That was the Covenant. On your phone.” In my apartment. For the first time in a while, I realized just how dangerous my relationship with Dominic really was. All he had to do was say the word . . .

  And if he was going to do that, he would never have told me the purge was coming, much less answered the phone in my presence. I couldn’t let myself start thinking that way. If I did, I might as well get out of the city right now.

  “Yes. They’re on their way. I’ve told you when and where they will arrive. Be careful. Don’t let yourself be seen.” He grabbed his pants off the floor, yanking them roughly on before looking back at me over his shoulder. I had never seen him look so miserable. “I truly do not know whether I’m doing the right thing. But I know that I don’t want you getting hurt, and I know that nothing I can say will make you leave. So, for me, for my sake, be careful.”

  “I’ll try,” I said. Where I grew up, “be careful” was a death sentence. From the look in his eyes, he didn’t think of it that way.

  To my surprise, Dominic laughed. It wasn’t a happy sound. “A man from the Covenant of St. George telling a Price woman to be careful. What is this world coming to?”

  “I don’t know, but we’ve been here a few times before,” I said.

  Dominic laughed again, even less happily. “So true.” He didn’t say anything else as he gathered the rest of his clothes and got dressed, and he didn’t look at me on his way out of the room. I heard the front door slam a few minutes later. Once again, I was alone, and feeling more lost than ever.

  * * *

  I stayed in the bedroom long enough to collect my thoughts and give Dominic a chance to get out of the building. Then I dressed, taking my time, concealing as many weapons as I possibly could under camouflage cargo pants and a black tank top. Adding my custom tactical vest—half-corset, half-Kevlar, all military spec material—gave me room for easily a dozen extra knives. If I needed all those weapons, I was probably already dead, but it’s better to be prepared for anything.