Flesh and Blood

‘Nothing. My friend is … dead. Kind of.’

Aliza lowered the shotgun and pursed her mouth to one side. She narrowed her pale gray eyes in thought. Finally she nodded. ‘You can come in. Your behavior determines how you leave.’

Lunatic. He tied up the airboat, stepped onto the dock, and climbed the steps. Chewie was still out of sight. Aliza looked the same as the last time he’d seen her. Maybe her yellowy-white dreads were a little longer, but other than that, she was the same albino crackpot she’d always been.

She motioned with the gun for him to go in. He pushed through the door and walked to the center of the kitchen. The house smelled like swamp and women. In Aliza’s case, that was probably the same smell. How she’d ever turned out a daughter like Evie, he had no idea. That girl was beautiful. Or had been, before Dominic’s drugs had turned her to stone.

And there she was. In front of the wall of sliding glass, facing out toward the Glades, the statue that had once been Aliza’s daughter stared blindly into the vast swamp. Her hands clutched at her throat just like they had that night. He swallowed and rubbed a hand over his scalp as if there weren’t anything unusual about such a thing.

The screen door slammed shut behind Aliza. She pointed toward the kitchen table. ‘Sit.’

He took a chair that let him keep his back to the wall and twisted slightly so Evie’s statue stayed out of his peripheral vision.

Aliza tucked the shotgun under one arm and poured a cup of coffee, then brought it to the table and sat opposite him. ‘Talk.’

He explained everything he could about Fi, how she had come to be a ghost through Mal’s curse, how she’d gotten killed again, how she’d started coming back, reliving the past … everything he could think of, except that he was in love with her. No need to give the old witch any further ammunition.

‘Your friend’s not a ghost anymore.’

‘Yes, she is. I saw her with my own—’

‘No, she’s a shade now. It’s different.’ Aliza sipped her coffee, wrinkling her brow. ‘She’s caught in a time loop and will stay that way, dying again and again every night.’ She shuddered. ‘Shade’s a horrible thing to be.’

‘Then help her.’ He relaxed his jaw and forced out a difficult word. ‘Please. I said I’d do whatever it took and I meant it.’

‘Hmph. And I suppose in exchange for helping make Evie right, you’re also going to want your curse lifted.’

He blew out a long, unsteady breath. ‘I’ve wanted that for a long time. But I’ll settle for just helping Fi.’

She arched her thick white brows. ‘That so?’

He nodded, ignoring the widening hole in his chest. Having Fi back would be enough. She’d help him forget about the curse. She always had.

‘You love her?’

‘That’s none of your damn business.’

‘I’ll take that as a yes.’ Aliza drained the last of her coffee and sat back, judgment clear in her harsh stare. ‘The kind of magic that turns a woman into stone isn’t easy to undo. It’s heavy. Means sacrifice. Can’t just whip that kind of thing out of thin air.’

He sighed, steeling himself. ‘What do you need?’

‘Some of the drug she took that night.’

‘Done.’ Evie had scored an eighth of Medusa, a highly potent love potion that gave the user the ability to keep a man hard for as long as she wanted.

Aliza leaned her head forward. ‘I’ll also need blood.’

With a calm that surprised him, he laid his arm on the table. ‘I’m prepared for that.’

She laughed. ‘Not yours, fool boy.’

The small, sharp teeth of his sixth sense nipped the back of his neck in warning. ‘Whose, then?’

‘Dominic Scarnato’s.’

If she’d asked for the blood of an unborn child, he’d have been less stunned. ‘Do you know what you’re asking? I can’t just walk up to him and say, “Hey, I need some of your blood.” The man is a powerful crime boss. He pretty much runs the supernatural business that goes on in Paradise City.’

‘Told you.’ She shrugged. ‘I need the blood of the one whose magic made those drugs.’

‘I can’t get it. Pick something else.’

‘There is nothing else.’ She stood and walked her empty cup back to the sink. ‘Come back when you have it.’ She leaned against the counter. ‘Or don’t come back at all.’

Anger made him bold. He jumped up, almost knocking his chair over. ‘Anything else? Pot of leprechaun gold? A unicorn horn?’

‘Nothing quite that tough.’ She crossed her arms and smiled, crinkling the corners of her gray eyes. ‘I need the blood by Samhain.’

Samhain was Halloween. Son of a— ‘That’s less than two weeks away.’

She inspected her fingernails. ‘Well, then, you’d better get cracking.’

Chapter Eight

‘Do you know what I hate about this place?’ Tatiana asked Nasir as she stared out the window of her private jet, watching the horrifically bright landscape blur past the landing aircraft.

‘What’s that, my love?’ He curled a lock of her hair around his finger, leaning into her space.

She hooked her finger around the lock he’d claimed and tugged it from his grasp. ‘Besides the fact that this place is full of fringe, fae, remnants, and all sorts of undesirables, besides the fact that the Americas are a mess of human politics and infighting, besides the fact that several people who’ve tried to kill me reside here, it’s too damn sunny. All the time. Why would any vampire in his right mind want to live in such an awful place?’ She collapsed back into her seat with the appalling weight of returning to this forsaken land, her eyes fixed on the world beyond the helioglazed glass.