The Damsel and the Daggerman: A BLUD Novella (7 page)

Although Jacinda’s mind was halfway on the story and aware of how valuable the tale would be, she couldn’t stop glancing at Marco in between words. It slowly dawned on her that he was purposefully taking his time, giving her ideal views of his physique as he collected food and talked to Criminy by the cauldron of vials. His mouth was quirked up as if he knew his very existence teased her, as if he was more than pleased about it. Therefore, she wasn’t surprised when he slid into the booth directly behind her. He leaned back, letting his hair brush her neck, and she went still like a dog on point, positive she could feel the warmth of his body through the wood between their backs.

It was hard to respond appropriately to Cherie with him so close, and she wondered that the girl couldn’t feel the tension, the hot and cold running through her body. But no, Cherie just prattled, innocent as the girl she seemed. Demi stared contemplatively at Luc where he sat with his slightly less handsome brother at a far booth, sipping a daimon drink and staring right back. When Cherie reached what seemed like a stopping point, Jacinda closed her notebook with a satisfied nod.

“Thank you so much for sharing your stories with me, both of you. I may not be able to crack the toughest nut in the caravan, but this is just as satisfying. It’ll be good to keep my hands busy with something worthwhile instead of sitting around, twiddling my thumbs, and doing nothing.”

Behind her, Marco stifled a chuckle and cleared his throat. Demi and Cherie shared a look of bemused doubt.

“Um, you’re welcome?” Demi said. “And you should definitely talk to Veruca and Eblick. They don’t talk much, but I think they’ve got pretty good origin stories.”

With a nod, the contortionists stood, and Jacinda rose to let Cherie out of the booth, purposefully stepping back just enough to allow her bustle to brush Marco’s sleeve. As Demi and Cherie left to deposit their bloody teacups in the washing cube, Jacinda was sure she felt a hand slip into the pocket of her skirt, but it was so stealthy and quick that she might have imagined it. She paused a moment, rolling up her notebook, but the sensation didn’t come again. Although she had planned on visiting with more of the carnivalleros this morning for research purposes, she changed plans and headed outside without a word or a look for the man behind her.

In her pocket, she found a bit of parchment hastily scribbled with pencil.

Find me later. I have something to keep your hands busy. M.

She smiled to herself, fingering the paper.

Oh, I bet you do, Marco. I bet you do.

.10.

She made him wait.

Back in her conveyance, she refilled Brutus’s tank with clockwork oil, added to her caravan notes and stored them in a new pigeonhole, and, much to her own annoyance, primped in front of the mirror, making sure she looked ravishing but not as if she were trying too hard. She’d put on her fancier corset that morning, along with the new style of stockings she’d picked up in Paris. Even if it was wishful thinking, she’d found over the years that wearing fancy underpinnings gave her the confidence she needed to face up to anything from roaring bludmares to charging warriors in buffalo chariots.

With an odd little twinge of surprise, she realized that she had abandoned completely the idea that he might be guilty. Even without hearing his side of it, even knowing him only a few short days, she felt, bone deep, that he had not committed the crime for which he’d been accused. With renewed determination, she set out for his wagon and the answers she kept forgetting she needed.

She knocked on the door of his trailer first, but he didn’t answer, and she wasn’t willing to break in again, especially during daylight. Slipping past the clockwork bird was no problem, and she was soon exchanging pleasantries around the circled wagons, caught between wanting to win over the carnivalleros and wanting to get close enough to Marco to feel the ripple of acknowledgment her body seemed to experience every time he was near.

She found him by the target, throwing the knives with his usual offhand brand of lazy concentration. Waiting a respectful distance away, she admired his perfectly coordinated movements and the snap of his forearm that sent each silver missile thudding into the target. He didn’t acknowledge her until he’d thrown his last knife.

“Found something better to keep your hands occupied?” His playful smirk was back, so full of promise that she cocked her hips and licked her lips on instinct.

“As much as I hate to leave things unfinished, my time is too valuable to waste. I like playing games as much as the next girl, but I prefer to play to checkmate and have at least a few pieces to move around as I wish.”

“Talking in metaphors. That’s cute.”

“As a button.”

He’d collected all of his knives from the target by then, sliding all but one into their slots on his vest. Walking toward her slowly, he twirled the last one in the air. She wore an expression of bored expectation, but inside, her heart was racing, her toes curling in her boots.

“You ready to try this again?”

She glanced around, one eyebrow raised. “I’d prefer somewhere more private, if you don’t mind.”

“Damn, woman. You’ve got a one-track mind. I meant target practice.” He jerked his chin at the target.

She grinned to keep from showing her disappointment. “Same rules?”

“I’m upping the ante. Twelve knives, one question. You in?”

Jacinda took a deep breath, studying the painted shape on the target.

“Let me get this straight. You want me to let you strap me to a spinning target and hold still while you throw not one knife but an entire dozen? And in return, I get to ask one measly question, which you might or might not answer to my satisfaction?”

He took her hand gently and led her to the target. When he placed her palm against the shiny wood, her insides shuddered with recognition at the last time he had placed her hand, just so.

“You’re good at what you do. Trust that I’m good at what I do. There’s not a single cut in that wood that I didn’t mean to put there. It’s not as dangerous as you think it is. But I need a live assistant, and you need incentive.”

“Incentive?”

“If you want the truth, you have to work for it. You’re a woman who needs an occupation. And I think you like the excitement.”

With a raised eyebrow, she took her hand off the wood and faced him head-on. Putting her palm on his chest with the same gentle pressure he had used on her, she softly said, “You want to tell me the truth, don’t you? But something’s holding you back.”

He looked down at her hand, considering. “Tell yourself whatever you need to hear. But you’ve got two choices: play by my rules, or go interview the lizard boy about his acid spit. You’re the one who wants something here.”

She ran her hand down his chest, hooking a single finger into his belt. “You don’t want anything?”

He pulled her hand away. “Step up or keep walking, woman.”

She detected bitterness, but she also understood that this was a dangerous dance. He wasn’t just toying with her; any misstep on her part could cause him to shut down completely. She wasn’t accustomed to jumping through hoops for a man, to dancing around rules or playing games. But she knew that she would forever regret it if she didn’t find out the truth about Marco Taresque. So she stepped up, right onto the platforms, the wood against her back a familiar caress.

“Strap me in, will you?”

He obliged, silent as he gently tightened the leathers around her ankles, her waist, and, this time, both wrists. When he knelt to pin down her skirts, she waited, breathless, to feel his hands brush her legs. Because the game was so very tenuous, her senses were on alert, desperate for his attention. It was maddening. And intoxicating. When the pad of his thumb caressed her calf, the heat in her cheeks told her that he was right: she needed the thrill of this man and his knives.

For the flash of a few heartbeats, he disappeared behind the target, and then she was spinning slowly, wondering whether the drop in her belly was from gravity or from the man staring at her as if she was the only thing on earth.

“Six knives.”

He stopped twirling one and cocked his head. “What?”

“Twelve is insane. I want a question for six knives.”

“You can’t change the terms that you’ve already agreed to.” He walked up closer, close enough for her to count the holes in the buttons on his pants when she was upside down. “For the love of all that’s holy, woman. You’re strapped to a target. I could come at you with a hatchet, and you couldn’t do a damn thing about it.”

“But you won’t.”

“Just because I’m a gentleman doesn’t mean I’m about to let you tell me how things are going to be.”

“Eight knives.”

He chuckled and turned away, walking back to his bare patch of ground. She was so riveted with the progression that she very nearly forgot that deadly steel would soon be flying at her body with only the meager armor of her corset, and that only protected her vitals and her heart. Her head, arms, and legs were utterly vulnerable. And she didn’t know how many knives he would throw, although she swore to herself that it would be fewer than twelve, because she was betting he was an honorable man with a soft spot, somewhere under the dark clothes and darker eyes.

With a smirk that echoed down all of her own soft spots, he said, “This time, don’t move.”

She barely stopped herself from saying,
Yes, sir
.

The first knife surprised her, slamming into the wood by her hip. They came in quick succession after that, none of them coming close enough to really frighten her. She sensed he was going easy on her, that he could have outlined her every curve with steel had he so chosen, the blades pressing against her with the tenderness of fingertips. But they were all crowded in the vast plains of red and white rings between her arms and her body. She lost count, but as he walked toward her, she noticed three knives still in his hands.

“Nine?”

“It’s a square number.”

He disappeared behind the machine, and she giggled.

When he stood before her again, he asked, “What?”

The machine slowed to a stop, and he turned the target until she was head up. “Nothing. You just didn’t strike me as a mathematician.”

“Woman, what you don’t know about me could fit in a Kraken’s belly.”

“I know. That’s why I let you throw nine knives at me. Now I get a question. What really happened that night?”

“That’s too broad. Like wishing for a million wishes.”

“You never said I couldn’t ask a perfectly reasonable question.”

He said nothing, simply pulled the knives out around her. She felt exposed and ridiculous and realized suddenly that she hadn’t given any thought to her question. The first time she had asked him where the body was, and he had told her there was no body. Which meant she’d asked the wrong question.

“Where is Petra?”

“I have no idea.”

The answer came quickly, and in a flash, he was behind her, turning on the machine. The target began to spin again and, with it, her mind. She couldn’t concentrate with him staring at her, so she closed her eyes and wracked her brain as the knives landed, one after the other, in the wood around her.

Thwack
.

There was no body.

Thwack
.

He didn’t know where Petra was.

Thwack
.

That meant his ex-assistant had to be alive.

Thwack.

But if she was alive, where had the blood come from? He said he’d never drawn blood.

Thwack
.

And why had he run, if there had been no crime? Why would he tell no one the truth?

Thwack
.

She’d read every word of the newspaper, gone through her archives. There was no mention of the name Marco Taresque, not even on the broadsheets.

Thwack
.

And Letitia wouldn’t have let Marco stay if she’d seen anything unsafe in his past or his future. And she wouldn’t have let Jacinda herself stay had she seen danger.

Thwack
.

She was missing something.

Thwack
.

Her skirts felt oddly tight, and she opened her eyes and looked down. The last knife quivered between her thighs, piercing the layers of her skirts and drawing the cloth tightly over her legs.

“What—”

His mouth quirked up in a hungry, amused smile as she spun around slowly, and she pinned her lips together before the words escaped her and she stupidly wasted a question.
What on earth are you trying to do?
was not the question she’d suffered near impalement to ask.

It only took one breath, and she knew.

“If you didn’t do what they accused you of doing, why won’t you tell the truth?”

He switched the target off and spun her upside down. All the blood rushed to her head, and she found her mouth inches away from his thighs. She was about to ask him what the hell he was doing, again, but she knew: he was trying to confuse her, muddle her senses, keep her off balance. It was the same tactic she was using on him.

He sat on his haunches and leaned close to whisper, “Because a man has his pride.”

“Pride? Your pride is worth allowing the world to think you a murderer?”

He spun her right-side up and began to collect his knives as she went over woozy.

“Is that your next question? Because I can throw the knives faster, if you like. My aim is actually better when I remove my mind from the equation.”

“You’re being purposefully evasive.”

“You want something I don’t want to give. You’re lucky I haven’t taken off for the hills.”

“Why haven’t you, then?”

He stepped close, wrapping a fist around the knife he’d thrown through her skirts. His knuckles brushed her body, making her shudder, and he held his hand there, warm and solid, his wrist against the tender curve inside her thigh.

“Because you’re like an itch I can’t scratch. I keep telling myself to disappear.” He leaned even closer, his mouth near her ear and her hands pinned, unable to reach out in any way. “And yet I keep coming back for more.”

She shuddered, licked her lips. “For which I’m glad. Gladder still if you came closer.”

“I told you from the start: I can’t give you the things you think you want.”

He jerked the knife out of the wood, and the target shuddered against her back. That blade had gone deeper than most.

“Are you going to let me down?”

“Depends. You want one more question?”

She nodded, hoping that he would throw that knife again, so close to where she wanted other sorts of impalement. Instead of turning on the machine to spin her, however, he walked to his usual spot and said, “Really, this time, don’t move. Not a hair.”

“What are you going to do?”

His grin was fatal. “I don’t think you want to know.”

Before she could protest, a knife
thunk
ed into the wood, right against her ribs, touching her corset. Then another on the opposite side. Then one on each side of her waist. Then around her hips, the flat blades a whisper, a leaning away from her dress. Two more around her thighs, then her knees. The penultimate knife thudded beside her left ankle, and the last one glittered briefly in the weak sun before quivering in the wood beside her right ankle. But something was wrong. It burned.

“Marco . . . I think . . .”

Blood bloomed in the green of her dress, and she tried to pull her leg away, but the blade was firmly stuck. With the skirts in the way, she couldn’t see what exactly had happened, but the pain was radiating out. It was clear enough he’d struck her, for all his bravado.

“Oh, sweet Ermenegilda.”

He was beside her in seconds, yanking out the knife and unbuckling her, ankles first, then waist, then wrists. She all but fell into his arms, the blood drained from her arms and legs.

“Is it bad? I can’t see anything. It stings.”

Marco glanced around before carefully placing her on the crate where she’d once taken his carved pins from Demi and left all but one behind. He released her as if she might break, and she curled fingers around the splintered wood and tried to make the world stop spinning. He fell to his knees, running his hands up her ankles without asking permission and pressing the place that burned.

“It’s not as bad as it might have been. Dammit, woman. You’re too pretty. It’s distracting.”

He held back her skirts, and she leaned over to see a cut just above her boot top, her new stockings sliced neatly and blooming with blood. She’d had a lot worse. But she was shaken by the combination of excitement, fear, pain, and the strange sensation of having all of the blood in her feet and nethers instead of in her brain and fingers where it belonged.