Crimson Death
Page 148

   “I’d prefer no witnesses, but if Anita said go, then yeah,” Domino said.
   Ethan shrugged, and said, “You seem like a nice person, but she’s the boss.”
   A voice from behind them said, “She’s a great deal more than that to you.”
   We looked up and an elderly woman was just standing there, only a few feet behind Ethan. I’d have sworn that she hadn’t been there before, and because the room was too open and not that crowded, there was nowhere for her to have come from. If she’d been a vampire, I’d have said she’d mind-fucked us, but she so was not the walking dead. In fact, I don’t know if I’d ever felt so much life. It was the way I’d felt a few times in the forest or in the mountains—those moments when you just suddenly feel how alive everything around you is, and you can almost breathe in the energy of every humming insect, flying bird, windblown tree, or silent, heated moment of sunlight.
   The woman was shorter than me, a little bent forward over a cane. Her dress was long enough to touch the floor and covered in small blue flowers over a lighter blue background. A red shawl that looked soft and hand-knitted covered most of her upper body. Her skin was browned from years of being outdoors, so her face reminded me of a dark brown walnut. A cheerful, smiling walnut with eyes that were a rich blue and seemed to belong to a much younger face. She leaned heavily on the dark wood of her cane as she moved smoothly toward us, with only the slightest hint of a limp. It was obvious that whatever had caused her to need the cane had happened long ago since she used the cane so expertly.
   Flannery got up, smiling, and went to meet her partway. “Auntie Nim,” he said, and kissed her on her cheek. She laughed when he kissed her, and for just a moment, I thought I heard birdsong.
   Flannery’s auntie Nim made me want to smile, but I didn’t know why, which made me suspicious and not want to smile at all. He offered her his arm, which she took with more bubbling laughter. It made me think of a burbling stream in some pristine forest with birds singing, so why didn’t I just give in to the good feelings and enjoy them? It was me and I was wearing a badge. I was on the clock to try to save lives in Dublin. I’d give in to euphoric magic and happy little old ladies after we’d accomplished something. Besides, it was magic that I didn’t understand, but it seemed like it was trying to cloud my mind, and that wasn’t cool.
   Domino and Ethan were watching her come this way, and they seemed to be fighting not to smile.
   “It’s okay, Anita,” Dev said.
   “How do you know that?” I asked.
   He smiled. “I’m not just here because I’m pretty.”
   “What?” I asked, because the comment made no sense to me.
   He reached his free hand across the table to me. I didn’t want to compromise my gun hand in a strange bar in an alien city with known magic walking this way. Did I think I’d need to shoot our way out? No, but . . . holding hands with both hands right that moment would make me feel less relaxed, not more.
   I shook my head.
   “Does he mean so little to you, Anita Blake?” the woman asked as Flannery pulled a chair out for her and helped her settle herself with the shawl and long skirt.
   “It’s not that,” I said.
   Flannery made Ethan move a chair down so he could sit beside his aunt, which put her closest to Nicky on the other side. If he was fazed by our new tablemate it didn’t show, not even in so much as a twitch of the arm he had across our shoulders.
   Auntie Nim smiled at us, and it was as if the sun had come out from behind the ever-present clouds. I felt like a flower that had to turn toward her. It was as if the air in the pub was suddenly fresher and easier to breathe. Her eyes, which were like the rich blue of autumn skies or like cornflowers, were startling in the dark brown of her face. Had they been that color a moment before? Surely I’d have noticed eyes that blue even from a distance? I couldn’t remember.
   Dev stood up and moved around behind Nathaniel and me. His hand was incredibly warm against the side of my face. I started to ask him to sit back down, because no matter how good it felt, it seemed inappropriate for a business meeting, but then he touched Nathaniel’s face, too. It was like Dev’s touch was a key inserting itself in the lock of us. He turned that key with the near fever heat of his skin against ours, and suddenly things looked different.
   Now Auntie Nim’s eyes weren’t the blue of sky and flowers, but gray like clouds and rain. Her face stayed the same, as if the lines of age in her face and the weathered tan of her skin didn’t bother her enough to use illusion to change it. I liked that, or she didn’t have enough magic to hide that part of her appearance, but I hoped it was the first, and not the second. She seemed tireder, and less bursting with sunlight and birdsong.
   “What are you doing, Devereux?” Flannery asked.
   Dev leaned in and whispered to us both, “Remember, you have magic, too.”
   With him touching me, I could remember that, and I could feel more of Nathaniel through our entwined hands. It was as if something about her magic had dampened our own. Why would it work like that? I didn’t know how to ask Flannery without giving away that it had, and if it was accidental, I didn’t want to give his aunt any ideas.
   I looked at Domino and Ethan on the other side of the table, trying to judge how much they were being affected by Auntie Nim without Dev to protect them with his touch. I could have just asked, but that seemed like giving away too much, so I dropped just a tiny bit of my shields, which kept them from invading too far inside me. With Dev touching me, I could feel that I kept the walls between myself and the two men across the table higher and thicker than with Nathaniel or even Dev. I wasn’t sure what it was about being hooked up to our Devil that made me suddenly aware of how differently I shielded with them, but it was there like a thought, or maybe knowledge, that I hadn’t wanted to really understand before. I filed it away for later, because right now we had other problems. Yeah, I was aware that was how I ran a lot of my life, one emergency to another, so I didn’t have to dig too deep at other issues. My therapist and I were working on it.
   Domino and Ethan both startled as if I’d touched them for real and they hadn’t known I was behind them. Domino shook his head as if he was trying to clear his ears after a loud noise. Ethan shivered from the top of his head down the rest of his body that I could see above the table. They glanced at me in turns, and then went back to paying attention to the possible threat in front of us all.
   Auntie Nim narrowed her eyes at us. I didn’t feel like a flower with the sun overhead now, not unless the flower was trapped in an ice field and the weak winter sun was too far away. She didn’t like that we’d seen through her illusions.
   “You missed this one, nephew,” she said in a voice that was as cold as her attitude and didn’t hold a single note of birdsong in it.