Tempting the Enemy (8 page)

Closing the door, she shut her eyes, took a calming breath and reached for the light around her. There were thousands of tiny sources in reach. Taking the ambient brilliance into herself, she willed it into warmth. When she opened her eyes again, it was to find Rysen watching her from over the hood of the car. His eyes weren’t friendly.

“You’re glowing,” he growled.

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Jade raised her chin, tempted to look down and see if he was right. She’d never tried wearing light before.

“Better than freezing.”

“Stop it, before someone notices.”

She clenched her teeth together. “You said at the station you’d get something for me but you didn’t, so I took care of myself.”

“Don’t make me tell you twice.”

Perversely, she wondered what might happen and felt a quake deep in her belly.

His eyes narrowed. Did he know? How could he possibly know? “Consider this a safety issue.”

Safety from what, exactly?

“
Now
, Jade.”

She stifled a growl. The whole block illuminated to almost blinding proportions.
Uh-oh
.

Rysen looked overhead, then back, leveling her with an expression of disbelief. “Tell me you have a better grasp of your tracking skills.”

“Would you believe me?” She crossed her arms tight, the cold air coming off the lake rolling through her sweater as if it were no more substantial than webbing.

The trunk of the car suddenly popped open. He tucked his keys into a pocket with one hand and pulled out a giant tan coat with the other. The fuzzy inner lining of thick lambswool almost made her groan in relief. He held it out to her. “Considering that, so far, you’ve burned me, blasted me, clawed me and given me a raging hard-on?”

She eyed the coat for a half second before snatching it and pulling it around her shoulders. Unbidden, his scent surrounded her. The tightness in her belly coiled almost to Dee Tenorio

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the point of pain, and color suffused her cheeks. She pulled the coat closer so he wouldn’t see. “Sounds like you have some masochistic tendencies you need to deal with.”

He tilted his head. “You’ve given me absolutely no reason to ever trust you.”

“Then why ask?”

Heat filled his gaze, going much further than his coat ever could to warm her blood. He leaned close to her, his beard brushing her cheek as he pulled the fabric out of his way. “Maybe I just want to hear you lie.”

Jade jerked away. The picturesque lakeside street had suddenly lost its ethereal quality. All the sweetness and bright holiday cheer felt glaring and false next to Rysen’s raw energy. She could feel him practically wrapping around her, drawing her closer. She swayed, just enough to feel his chest pressing against her shoulder while she turned her back on him. He stayed still, his breath a warm mist at her cheek. She could almost feel his lips graze her skin. If she moved just that last little centimeter…

“The scene is that bus stop bench there.” He pointed his finger just over her shoulder to the covered and lit alcove directly ahead.

She stared, determined not to feel rejected, even if the sensation flooded her chest. Touching him had been a bad idea, one her mind hadn’t actually spent any time thinking about. Instinct had pressed her against him. He might like to toy with her, but she couldn’t let herself forget his opinion of her. Or what she was there for.

Steeling herself, she looked at the target.

Open front and back, the construction was a long rectangle of glass panels, supports and green trim forming a friendly safe zone. Each section had two metal benches 64

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end to end, coated in thick green paint. A thinly bundled young woman sat on one bench, a small boy next to her, wearing faded white mittens on his hands. Couples walked the sidewalks, families spilled in and out of businesses. No one else seemed interested in riding the bus.

“Shouldn’t this area be cordoned off?” It was what she’d been taught to expect for crime scenes. To preserve the evidence.

“This scene is days old. Tape only stays up until the forensics crew is finished. Tends to only be hours in public-use areas like these. Life goes on pretty quick around here.”

It made a sad kind of sense. Ultimately, it wouldn’t matter anyway. She’d be able to isolate the signatures no matter how many were there.

Opening her mental eye, her first thought was that something was wrong. Near-white light flooded her vision. But the emotional signature—dominance, strength, control—spread through her and she recognized it immediately. So much for being warm. She shrugged out of the jacket and pushed it behind her into the brick wall of man waiting there.

“I thought you were freezing,” came a dry grumble.

“I am.” Taking off the coat helped tamp down Rysen’s signature, but the man himself was still too close.

She looked down at herself, not surprised to see that his color had looped around her like a living ribbon. She lifted her hand, watching the flows move around her forearm and reach gently for her fingers. Warmth of a different kind flooded her. “You need to move away.”

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65

“No.” The streak of blue shot across her hand, its binds tightening at her middle, across her chest to wrap her from hip to shoulder in solid color. Possessive.

Demanding.

“Move, Detective,” she growled, irritated. A minute ago, she’d have felt reassured by his unconscious desire to stamp her. But he’d made himself clear that he saw her only as something to play with. “You’re interfering with my senses.”

Despite all the people walking nearby, she was only aware of his silence. Finally, she heard a faint grunt and he moved. Four…five…six paces back. His signature around her loosened as well. But only enough that she could see through it again. It still twined around her in a thick band across her middle.

She fixed her gaze on the benches and waited.

The marks of people who had passed were the faintest. Streaks of color here and there. The pastels of children whose emotions weren’t as focused as adults.

She moved closer, passing small blurs of color that didn’t strike her as important. Blues and greens of contentment.

Purples of peace. The bright yellows and oranges of happiness mostly floated on the sidewalk where the tourists walked. Common browns of the serious or brooding floated in one corner. Probably someone’s regular spot, as the signature was so strong. The woman and the boy shared a hue, a loving blue, deep and rich.

Trying not to be surprised at what she recognized, she ignored them, searching for the older colors.

Faint, mere whispers behind fresher marks. Nothing particularly stood out as unexpected. All more of the same. Except… A ghost of red, the slightest haze, at the back of the seating. Another Sibile had been here. Only 66

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they had red signatures. She backed a step away, making sure not to come anywhere close to it. Where living humans left a mark, a hint of their emotions as they expended them, they were essentially harmless. She’d feel them as if she were a spectator. The Sibile, on the other hand, had power throughout. Too much to deal with if she touched theirs.

Refocusing, she searched for the victim. Finding that should be easy. The dead left imprints that were usually far stronger than the living. Overwhelming for the same reason as a Sibile’s signature—intensity. Most people died unwilling to give up their lives. In the hopeless scrabble to stay alive, they often left a mark that could take years to fade. There was none of that here.

“Are you sure this is the site?” She scanned again, but nothing lifeless, much less violent, stood out.

“Positive.” She felt his color swirl around her again.

Impatience threaded through it.

“There’s no sign of it here.” Another sweep. She shifted away from him again, but he followed her.

“You’re too close.”

“Too bad.”

She turned to snap at him, but the glow of his color shifted the shadows where they stood. Most of them.

Stopping, she stared down at an inky blackness that didn’t change. She reached her hand out, using the ribbon to shine a light directly on it. The glow disappeared into it.

“My God.”

“What? What did you find?”

“Nothing.” Literally. A black signature. A void.

Emotion so dark it was evil. Her power recoiled from it.

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Rysen’s color, though, remained brilliant against it. “This must be him.”

“You need to start talking, Jade.”

The order made her hackles rise. Rather than bite him as she wanted to, she flicked her gaze to the woman and the little boy. The child was all of maybe seven, his dark eyes watching them with interest. Brown hair fell over his rounded brow. He didn’t need to hear them talk of death. “We have company. I’ll explain later.”

If she went only by Rysen’s low growl, she’d think he was resigned to her decision. His signature promised retribution for her dissention.

Let him try.

Using his light, she spread her hand wide to the right.

Then left. The signature didn’t have the streak of movement. It was a near solid mass of blackness. As if he had stayed in that place for a while. But how? “This doesn’t make any sense. He was here…but he didn’t come from anywhere and he didn’t go anywhere.”

“That’s not possible.”

Did he think she didn’t know that? She eyed the signature. She could learn more if she was willing to touch it. But opening her mind to the signature of a murderer? What if he wasn’t human? Even if he was, she’d never touched the taint of evil.

She glanced at the boy again. He smiled at her, waving small fingers. She smiled back, watching as the bus pulled to a stop and the boy’s mother tugged on his arm. They both rose, rushing to climb on. A moment later they were gone, leaving her with the detective in the shadows. “How many victims again?”

“Three.”

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She turned to him, surprised at the ripple she felt all around her. “You’re lying.”

His chin rose, his bright eyes reflecting affront.

Maybe this signature thing of his was better than she thought. She smiled, slowly. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

He made her wait. She sensed his implacability about saying any more.

“Fine, keep your secrets.” She fully planned to keep her own. She turned back to the sphere of darkness. “It doesn’t matter anyway. It was an unimportant question.”

“Why?”

She sighed, wishing she could let herself off the hook. But three people had already been killed. More were going to end up that way. There was no choice.

“Because it doesn’t change the outcome of what has to be done.” She pulled off her glove, flexing her fingers in the cold air. “If I start screaming, pull me back.”

“Why would you start—”

Jade reached out and slid her fingers into the oily darkness. All at once, the world disappeared. No light. No color. No Rysen. Complete black. Frigid, icy cold. Rage without end.

And pain. She felt it like spikes of ice spearing through her body. It had to stop.
Please, God, make it
stop.

She yanked her hand back, but the taint came with it.

Seeping into her hand. Climbing up her arm. She clawed at it, but nothing stopped the advance. “No. No, no, no—”

Brilliant blue light tore through the dark, wrapping around her arm and shredding the shadow from her skin.

She cried out, the ripping sensation feeling as if it were Dee Tenorio

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being pried from her flesh. A blink, half an instant later, it was gone.

She gasped, grappling for breath through chattering teeth, trying to find her bearings again. Surprisingly, she found instead that her feet weren’t on the ground anymore. She looked down, her hands landing on the iron band around her ribs.

Rysen.

“I don’t know what the hell that was.” His voice was a lethal whisper in her ear. She could see his breath puff past her face and didn’t kid herself that he wasn’t furious.

With her. “But if you ever put yourself in danger like that again, I won’t lose a second’s sleep leaving you to it.”

No, he wouldn’t. She didn’t bother checking his color for validation. She could feel it in the absolute control he kept over her with one arm. “How long was I gone?”

“Three seconds,” he answered, finally, when she shivered so hard her muscles jerked. “Maybe four.”

Three seconds and that evil had nearly overtaken her.

Her next shudder had nothing to do with the cold she felt all the way to her bones.

“Can you stand?” His question lacked the fiery anger she’d sensed at first. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was concerned.

Eyeing the ground several inches below her feet, she had to laugh. “I don’t know.”

He grunted—she doubted it was from any strain of holding her up—and lowered her. She expected weakness, but nothing was wrong with her legs or her body. Just coldness. Her blood felt icy.

She’d no sooner stabilized her footing than he spun her around, shrouding her with the coat again. She 70

Tempting the Enemy

couldn’t help a small smile as he took pains to button her up. His warmth surrounded her. Then he took her arm and led her to the car. “Let’s get you somewhere warm. Then you talk.”

Chapter Six

The snow made a neat crunchy sound as Emmitt Crowe walked through it. He was still getting used to it, and to the boots the people at the last house gave him.

They were too big, so Sarah had stuffed some paper towels in the toes, which was nice because his toes were really warm now. His fingers weren’t, though. She’d slipped two pairs of her socks on his hands to keep them warm, but her fingers were freezing where they held on to him.

“Don’t stomp, Em.”

Emmitt looked up at his sister. Her skin was as blue as the snow. She’d put her hair up into a cap their mom had knitted for her last Christmas. He’d held the ball of yarn for her and she’d put his name on the tag when they wrapped it. He wished she wouldn’t have done that. Sarah had pretty hair. Yellow, like Mom’s used to be.