They were all smiling, she noticed. Relaxing.
Maybe, just maybe, she could get there, too. Given enough time.
Enough s.p.a.ce from the city that had almost claimed her life.
From the man who had tried his d.a.m.nedest to get his fingers into her heart.
"Great." She jerked her head back toward the house. "Let"s get started on this s.h.i.t, then. The sooner we get all this out of the way, the sooner we go back and kick a.s.s, right?"
"Right," Jessie said, and took Silas"s hand in hers, fingers lacing tightly. They moved almost as one, Naomi realized, watching them go. Step by step, his longer stride shortened to match hers. He tipped his head over hers as Jessie said something up at him, and his chuckles resonated like thunder.
Beside her, Matilda sighed. "Love, huh?"
"I guess."
The woman smiled. Crooked, rueful. "So."
Naomi glanced at her. Narrowed her eyes at the gleam she found reflected in Matilda"s. That knowing f.u.c.king gleam again. "What?"
"I"ve been thinking of dismantling one of the wards I"ve got placed on this sanctuary," she said, as conversational as if she was talking about the clouds.
Why the f.u.c.k would she care? Naomi turned back toward the path, shaking her head. She didn"t have the time, the patience, for this.
"Not the protective ones, of course," Matilda said, following behind her. "Just the one that detects falsehoods spoken in the area."
Falsehoods.
He was there, I was there. He"s a good lay, and that"s it.
Naomi stopped so suddenly, she half expected the woman to collide into her back. That she didn"t told Naomi everything she needed to know. She spun, fists tight, murder in her voice as she warned, "You stay the h.e.l.l out of my life."
The woman smiled. Sad. "I can"t, my dear. You"re in my home. You"re part of this-" One hand swept across the foliage, the bay. Sanctuary. "And for reasons I know I"ll learn someday, Silas truly admires you."
Tears clogged her throat. Burned her eyes. She swallowed hard. "Phin Clarke," she said, every word strained through a crack in her heart that she didn"t dare acknowledge, "belongs topside. That"s his life. It"s where his grieving mother is, it"s where his friends are. It"s where his money is. He can rebuild his spa and his life and mourn in peace. That"s what matters."
Matilda nodded. Slowly. "I understand what you"re saying. And," she added quietly, "what you"re not. I"ll respect your request, Naomi West, and leave you only with this piece of advice."
"Can I stop you?"
Matilda"s smile gentled. "The ache never really goes away. But it eases, with time. I"ll try to keep your mind busy."
The tears threatened to overwhelm her as Naomi nodded curtly. "Thank you," she managed.
Matilda pa.s.sed her, pausing only long enough to lay a wrinkled hand over Naomi"s chest. Just over her heart. "I"ll give you some time to settle. We"ll see you back inside when you"re ready."
As the witch walked away, Naomi stared at the obsidian flagstone beneath the sole of one boot. A symbol was etched into it, something she supposed was witchy. But even if she knew how to read witch symbols, she couldn"t. Her vision blurred as the tears finally slid over her lashes.
Relieved.
He"d get over her. He"d find a pretty girl to love and spoil; an adoring thing with soft hands and sweet smiles. Who liked leather seats and champagne, and didn"t have a network map of scars over her silken skin.
Maybe he"d go back to Andy.
Her lips curved, but even Naomi knew how sad her smile really was. Deliberately, she drew her arm over her eyes, her mouth, and carefully rearranged her expression into one of determination.
"All right," she told the air as she strode back to the house. "A few weeks. And then ready or not, I am so getting out there and kicking a.s.s."
Chapter Twenty-Three.
The storm roiled overhead, twisting, coiling knots of black and gray. Lightning arced across it, lit up the ma.s.s of clouds like a flare of purple-white light smothered in a black veil.
It wouldn"t rain with weather like this. This was New Seattle"s winter specialty. Freezing-a.s.s cold and wired to blow. But the charge in the air was only one part electricity.
The rest was all her.
For the first time in twenty-seven f.u.c.king days, Naomi was on a mission.
The past month had been hard. On all of them. The secret cove had been great for healing her array of b.l.o.o.d.y wounds and bruises, but a month of constant supervision and unending exercises in witchcraft left Naomi ready to reconsider her newly found aversion to homicide.
Jessie and Silas had both struggled to find a balance with her that didn"t tread on dangerous ground, and the older witch still got the h.e.l.l on Naomi"s nerves. She felt as much a part of them as a wolf in a herd of sheepdogs.
But it was getting better. Even she noticed it. Slowly, surely, she was coming to adapt to her new role as-her lips twitched-healer. Whatever the h.e.l.l that meant.
Still, they didn"t have much to do, and that was the wedge that still kept them going for each other"s throats. It was hard to act when the city still crawled with missionaries and Church men; when the bounty on her head was still fresh enough that any hunter with something to prove would be keeping an eye out.
It had been Silas who saved her, and them, from a bitterly sardonic rant regarding the more murderous characteristics of knitting needles. "You"re going to go get us some work," he"d said. "It"s time to get off our a.s.ses, don"t you think?"
f.u.c.k, yeah.
Thunder overwhelmed the faint hum of the lower-level electricity. As she watched, gauging her next move from the shadows of an alley, the few lights in the apartment building flickered.
So did every light on the block.
Well, wasn"t that just peachy? The city had more than enough generators topside, but if the lights went out here, it"d be nothing but black. And silent. Perhaps for days.
Breaking and entry in the dead quiet seemed a really bad idea.
Play nice, Jessie had warned her.
Naomi smiled as she sprinted across the road. Nice was all she played these days. It wasn"t her fault that her nice and Jessie"s nice didn"t match up exactly.
Jessie"s nice involved way, way more effort.
The gra.s.s crackled under her feet, already frosted into brown icicles. She left dark footprints behind her, but that was exactly why she came at the rendezvous point from the side.
Her mission was pretty simple, really. Naomi slid onto the stoop, reached up, and caught the dim side bulb in her gloved fingers. A deft twist, a jiggle, and the light guttered out.
Inside she"d find the apartment number with a contact waiting for her. She was to make sure the place was secure, get to the contact, and give him the small packet Jessie had put in her satchel.
Simple.
She felt a little like a dog getting a pat on the head, but Naomi would take it. She was sick to death of being cooped up while they waited for some kind of sign.
Even if Matilda"s heated waters felt like a small slice of heaven on her faded bruises.
Keeping a wary eye on the streets, Naomi tucked her hand behind her back and tested the k.n.o.b. It squeaked as it turned, but it did turn.
Did n.o.body believe in locked doors around here?
The lights along the street guttered again, flashed on and off as the city struggled to feed power to the impoverished levels. As thunder boomed, loud enough to rattle the slat wall, Naomi slipped inside and shut the door gently behind her.
The hall was like every other lower city hall she"d ever been in. Dingy, drab. Stained by life and time.
Grimacing, she slid her tongue along the silver ring at her lower lip and checked the door numbers as she pa.s.sed. She walked quickly, soundlessly.
The appointed apartment was at the end of a short hall, its painted numbers all but peeled off the door. The outfacing window beside it had been boarded up long enough ago that the nails had eaten rust stains into the plaster. If she had to get out in a pinch, those boards would give way before she did.
"Is this guy trustworthy?" she"d asked Silas while Matilda and Jessie prepared for her departure.
He"d shot her a look that Naomi couldn"t read, inscrutable as all h.e.l.l. "Probably."
Naomi realized that she"d taken that at face value, and that said a h.e.l.l of a lot about her new role in life. A missionary could trust her allies. She could rely on the rumors of Church justice to keep her contacts thinking twice.
A witch had a lot more to worry about. Probably was just another way of saying, There"s no other choice.
Holding her breath, Naomi leaned into the door and pressed her ear tightly to the wood. Her fingertips hovered over the worn, stained panel. No sound. Not even the vibrations of footsteps. For a full five minutes, she didn"t move, strained to listen.
All she heard was thunder, waves upon waves of it crashing overhead. It shook the building with every wild boom. Shattered through her bones as if the storm raged immediately overhead.
If the contact was in there, he was either asleep or had the patience of a saint.
She reached for the doork.n.o.b as the walls trembled around her. The echoes of a powerful blast of thunder shimmered into another. The door eased open-unlocked again, for G.o.d"s sake-and creaked in the sudden, pitch-black silence of lost electricity.
s.h.i.t.
Naomi stilled, holding her breath as she waited to hear movement. Breathing. Footsteps, cursing, anything. Here and there, clips of activity filtered through the walls, the ceiling, but inside the black apartment, nothing so much as stirred.
If she said h.e.l.lo first, would it earn her a bullet for her trouble? Or a knife in the dark?
Grimly she slid through the half-open door, her eyes too wide, aching as she tried to see something, anything.
The faintest traces of light slipped through the windows between electrical flares. As it streaked through the room in shattered increments, Naomi picked out a single, open room. Furniture was spa.r.s.e enough to afford her a clear path from wall to wall, only a single rickety table and one chair beside it.
Opposite, one corner boasted a mattress on the floor heaped with blankets. The kitchen was a tiny affair of peeling tiled floor and two cabinets, most of the s.p.a.ce taken up by a small refrigerator and a two-burner stove.
She crossed the apartment in a few short strides, her grin a deep curl of memory, rueful annoyance. She"d spent more than her fair share of days in places like this.
Wordlessly she picked up the cracked mug on the table and tucked it under her nose. She grimaced when the dark, earthy fragrance of plain black tea filled her senses.
Its warmth seeped into her gloves, and she stilled.
Wood creaked behind her.
The mug fell from her fingers as she whirled. It shattered at her feet, sprayed cheap pottery and tea as she reached for the gun she no longer carried.
That she lunged away from the table, away from the figure looming out of the dark was more a credit to her reflexes than it was to her brain. That had stalled when she"d found no gun to hold on to.
f.u.c.k.
A flashlight clicked on, ripped through the dark and her night vision. She flinched, threw up a hand as the beam caught her squarely in the face. "Jesus b.a.s.t.a.r.d Christ, what are you trying to do? Scare me to death?"
"I like the lip ring."
Her heart slammed in her chest.
Oh, G.o.d. Oh, no; oh, s.h.i.t.
His voice came at her like a knife, like a whip that cracked over her skin and left her bleeding. Again. That voice. So easy, so casual, so . . . f.u.c.king Phin.
She closed her eyes. Took a deep breath.
And lunged at him.
The flashlight clattered to the floor.
Naomi ignored it. Ignored the cold, the thunder, the lightning that painted everything in a pearlescent tableau. All she cared about was Phin, his shirt in her hands, his lips on hers, his skin, his fingers. He caught her, his fingers wrenching at her coat as she panted for the breath she didn"t have enough of.
Somehow he managed to get her coat unzipped. Managed to tear open the laces of her fake corset, peel off the long-sleeved shirt seconds behind. Somehow she wrestled him out of his sweater, feeling as if they waltzed across the empty floor.
She fused her lips to his, kissed him with everything she"d thought she"d forgotten in a month. Everything she never could have admitted. Struggling, straining to reach the mattress, he seized her head in his large, warm hands, swept his tongue past her lips, and claimed the warm cavern of her mouth as his own. Demanded her gasps and her broken breath.
He swallowed her low, ragged sounds of fury, of need; so many emotions, she couldn"t acknowledge them all.
And then they were skin to skin. Naked, straining in the sporadic staccato of lightning and rolling thunder. The hard planes of his chest flattened against her b.r.e.a.s.t.s as they fell to the mattress, as she wrapped her legs around his waist and helped him guide himself into her wet, welcoming body, inch by staggering, gasping inch.
He kissed her bottom lip, tongue swirling over the metal ring curved around the center of it, kissed her chin, her neck. His tongue dipped into the hollow of her throat as he thrust deep inside her body; lips, tongue, hands, and body stroking every velvet inch of her in that perfect way only he knew how.
In that perfect way that she only craved from him.
It was always him.
Naomi arched, sweat blooming over her skin as she cried out, again and again, moving in time with his thrusts, threading her fingers through his curly hair and holding his head to her breast. Urging him on. Urging him for more.