"I"m not at liberty to discuss that with you. I just thought you"d want to know. Is there anything you need before you...er...
retire?" He glanced beyond her, and Topaz knew it was because he couldn"t look her in the eye, even though he made it seem as if he were checking the room for anything that might be lacking.
"Your heart on a plate, with ketchup," Topaz said.
He shot her a look. "I"m being as nice as I can here."
"Yeah, I just love kidnappers with manners," she said.
He backed out of the room. "Good night." Then he closed the doors. She heard the lock turn, and she called, "If you think that mortal lock could keep us in here against our will, my friend, you are sadly mistaken. When we"re ready to leave here, believe me, we"ll-"
Tanya, stop!
The harsh tone of her mother"s thoughts stunned her. And wounded her, too, though she told herself that was utterly stupid.
There"s no point in giving away everything we"ve got. If they don"t know we can beat that lock, for example, why tip them off?
We could easily wake up to a new lock, one we can"t break.
h.e.l.l, Topaz thought back at her. It"s a miracle I ever survived without you, isn"t it? These guys are experts on our kind. I"m not telling them anything they don"t already know. Though I do appreciate the motherly advice.
Sarcasm isn"t an attractive quality, Tanya.
It"s Topaz. And I"ll be as sarcastic as I want. You think I"ve been searching all over the country for you just so you could start mothering me now? Keep it, Mirabella. I don"t f.u.c.king want it.
Her mother"s face was stricken. She went to the bed where she"d slept earlier and sank onto it, her back to Topaz. "I"m sorry, you know. I"m sorry. I know it doesn"t change how you feel, but it"s true, and I"ll keep saying it until you believe me. If I had thought I had any other choice, I would have taken it. I swear it on my soul."
"Even if you had no choice when it...happened, Mother, even if you couldn"t see yourself raising a mortal child, there have been a lot of years in between. You could have contacted me once I was an adult. And you certainly could have stuck around and told me the truth the night you changed me over. You can make up all the reasons you want to for abandoning me as an infant, but there just aren"t any excuses that explain why you did it all over again the night I was reborn as a vampire."
Mirabella was silent as she pulled back her covers and stripped off the gown she wore, revealing the black lacy slip beneath it.
Then she lay down in the bed.
Topaz stripped off her jeans, removed her bra from beneath her shirt without taking the shirt off, and then she crawled into the other bed.
The sun was rising. Topaz felt it, the weight of it, the tug of sleep-of death, really-pulling at her.
"You"re right," her mother said at last. "There is no excuse. I was ashamed. I was afraid to face you. I was afraid of the very condemnation you"ve now delivered. I didn"t want to feel your anger, much less your hatred. But I"m sorry, Topaz. I"m so sorry."
I never hated you, Topaz thought, even as she drifted into sleep. And it"s Tanya.
"I have an idea. A germ of an idea," Reaper said as Jack drove. And then he focused his mind, leaving it open to Jack"s, to keep him in the loop.
Rhiannon. Can you hear me? Rhiannon. It"s Reaper, and it"s urgent.
Moments ticked past. Moments during which Jack was unsure Reaper would receive an answer. "Where is this Rhiannon you"re trying to reach?" he asked.
"In the States. I"m not sure exactly where."
Jack gaped at him, then clamped his jaw closed when he realized what he was doing. "Surely even your mind isn"t powerful enough to reach that far," he said.
"She"s my maker. And one of the most powerful vampires alive. She"ll hear me."
And she did, Jack realized with awe when she finally replied.
For the love of the G.o.ds, darling, if I wanted to be bothered, I would have called you. What is it?
Reaper smiled, something Jack had seen rarely enough to notice it with a touch of surprise. Your friend Eric Marquand, the vampire scientist...
Yes, yes, my dear Roland"s best friend. What about him?
I heard a rumor that he created a formula several years back that would allow a vampire to remain awake by day. Is it true?
Jack snapped to attention, surprise echoing in his mind. Not only had he never heard of such a formula, he could feel the vampiress"s reaction, and it wasn"t a good one. It"s true. But Roland nearly killed me when he tried it. It makes us violent, Reaper. It"s dangerously flawed.
That"s a chance I"m going to have to take. Can you get it for me-and get it to me-before tomorrow night is out?
Why? Why would you need something so volatile?
Lives are at risk. I can"t go into detail, though I"ll tell you the rest when I see you. Trust me when I tell you it"s vital. Can you do this for me?
I can.
In time?
I have a private jet.
Will you?
There was a pause, and then, finally, Yes. I will. Tell me where you are.
By the time they arrived back at the bungalows, Reaper and Jack had a plan worked out. They still hadn"t agreed on which of them was going to be taking up s.p.a.ce in that body bag twenty-four hours from now, but Jack thought he would win that argument in the end.
It wasn"t foolproof, their plan. It was going to take the help of every last member of their gang. Even the mortal ones. But it could work.
h.e.l.l, it had to work. Jack had no intention of letting Topaz die thinking he had played her yet again. It was killing him to know she thought it now, even for a little while. He had to get to her. He had to tell her the truth. And then it occurred to him that he might die himself before he got the chance. This plan was risky at best. Suicidal at worst.
He put a hand on Reaper"s arm as he pulled into the driveway that led to the beach houses.
Reaper looked at him.
"If anything happens to me..." Jack began.
"I"ll tell her the truth," Reaper said. "Just like I told the rest of them. She"ll know you weren"t running a con this time, Jack. You have my word on that."
"She has to know something else, too," Jack said. "That I...that I..." He closed his mouth, unable to say the words that had always come so hard to him. "Just tell her it was real this time."
"h.e.l.l, Jack, are you just figuring that out? Roxy"s known it from the day she met you."
Jack shot him a surprised look as he braked to a stop and cut the engine. Reaper only smiled at him, and then they jumped from their vehicle, just as Vixen and Seth got out of the Mustang. The four stood watching as Roxy"s van bounded along the driveway and came to a stop in front of the first little beach house.
She opened the driver"s door, got out and blinked at the eastern sky. "It"s starting to pale. Come on, get inside, all of you. Hurry."
The van"s side door slid open, and Briar stepped down, carrying Crisa in her arms. Reaper rushed toward her. "I"ll take her," he said, reaching for the wounded girl.But as Reaper tried to take her away, Crisa"s arms snapped around Briar"s neck, and she buried her face there, clinging.
Briar rolled her eyes, then met his. "Great. Now she thinks I"m her mommy. I hate you for making me do this, Reaper." Then she carried Crisa up the front steps and into the bungalow.
15.
The jet landed on one side of the border, while Reaper waited on the other. Before he knew what she intended, Rhiannon had raced toward him, her powerful body moving far too fast to be visible to the human eye, even if anyone had been looking. For the most part, the border patrol were more concerned about keeping people from coming into the U.S. than they were about keeping them from leaving it. Still, the jet might have drawn some attention, Jack thought worriedly.
Too late to worry about that. The jet she"d left behind was taxiing across the expanse of naked desert and taking off again seconds after she"d debarked.
And then she was standing in front of him.
"Rhiannon," he began, a warning note in his tone. "Why did you send the plane away without you?"
"Oh, please," she said. "Don"t waste time on worn-out arguments, Reaper. I"m here, I"m your maker, and I"m staying. So shut the h.e.l.l up and let"s get on with this."
He held her gaze for one long moment, then sighed. "All right."
"Glad to see you can be sensible."
He thought about Briar. About Rhiannon meeting Briar. Rhiannon hating Briar. Rhiannon and Briar ripping each other"s hair out.
h.e.l.l, this mission had better go off as planned, not to mention as fast as humanly possible.
Topaz woke quickly and completely. One instant she was in the depths of her deathlike slumber, and the next, her eyes and her senses were wide open, scanning. She sat upright in the bed and virtually sniffed the air for signs the room had been entered while they"d been asleep, but she saw none. More importantly she felt none. Her bed was exactly as it been when she"d fallen asleep.
The door was still closed. She didn"t feel as if she"d been touched while she"d rested, and she thought that if she had been, she would know it.
With a sigh of relief, she let the tension ease from her body and turned to see her mother coming awake more slowly. Mirabella woke like a cat, gradually, eyes opening a bit at a time, then closing again, as if sleep were too blissful to leave behind just yet.
Then they opened again, a little wider this time, and finally she stretched her arms above her, arched her back and tipped up her chin. Then she rolled onto her side, facing Topaz with a bright smile. "Good morning."
"It"s evening."
"Then...good evening." She said it the way Bela Lugosi would have said it, her accent ridiculously overblown.
Topaz fought back a smile and kept her expression serious. "This is no time for joking around, Mother. Our lives are on the line here."
"What better time will there be, then?"
"We have to get out of here before Reaper gets himself killed trying to rescue us."
Mirabella"s cheerful expression faded. "Are you so sure it won"t be Jack doing that?" Topaz averted her eyes. "I believed in him once, and he betrayed me and broke my heart. I was stupid enough to give him another chance, and he did it all over again. There"s no way I"ll ever trust him again."
"Or me, either, I imagine," Mirabella said softly. "And for exactly the same reasons. I walked away from you...not once, but twice. And it doesn"t matter that I"ve regretted it ever since, does it, Tanya?"
Topaz didn"t answer.
"Jack might be having regrets of his own by now. I mean, he must be. He must have felt something for you. You"re too intelligent and too perceptive and far too wary to be completely fooled, even by him."
"I believed what I wanted to believe. I fooled myself far more than he ever could have."
"So it"s yourself you don"t trust?"
"I don"t trust anyone. Myself included."
Mirabella nodded slowly. "You know, even in baseball, you get three strikes."
"This is life, not baseball," Topaz said, turning her back on her mother and everything she was saying.
"And what if you"re wrong?" Mirabella asked. "You said you don"t trust yourself, that you fooled yourself into believing something. But what if you"re wrong about being wrong? What if you"re judging him, judging me, according to how you think we feel, how we made you feel, without even knowing how either of us truly feels? You"re judging us by the mistakes we"ve made in the past, without caring how different we might be in the present. If you"d give us a chance, Tanya, you might find out that you"re completely wrong. You"re so convinced that no one will ever love you that you wouldn"t see it if it were staring you right in the face. You can"t even see that you"ve been loved all along. By me, at least. And maybe by Jack, as well."
Topaz still had her face averted. She had to keep it that way, because her eyes were wet, and that was something she didn"t want her mother to see. In a tight voice, she said, "Please don"t try to make me start hoping for that. It only leads to heartbreak-every single time."
"Why did you spend so much effort searching for me, Tanya?" her mother asked. "Was it only to condemn me for my actions, show me your anger, vent it a little and then walk away?"
Topaz blinked her eyes dry and faced her mother. "I honestly don"t know. I think I just wanted to ask you why you walked away."
"The first time, necessity. The second time, shame. And I"m sorry, but those are the only answers I have to give."
"They"re not good enough." Topaz paced the room. "Let"s get on with this."
"All right." Her mother got out of bed finally, and pulled on the white-and-green halter dress she"d been wearing the night before.
"I wish we had time for a shower."
"If we hang around too long, they"re liable to decide to drug us again. Besides, I wouldn"t trust those three enough to shower here." Topaz put on her shoes as she said it.
Her mother shrugged. "They couldn"t do more than peek, and that wouldn"t kill us."
"Neither will skipping a shower. Come on."
Sighing, Mirabella slipped on her shoes. High heels, open toes, spotlessly white. She came to stand beside Topaz, right at the bedroom"s closed door. "I"ll see where they are first," Topaz said. "Then we"ll rush them, no holds barred. We can move faster than they can see us coming."