Rossi slid out of the driver’s seat, stepped around the front of the van and then leaned against it, glaring at me.
“No one kills you.” It was the kind of statement only a creature of power can really pull off. The kind that makes the words hammer down into your bones so that you feel them in the soles of your feet.
“I know what you promised my dad. But this isn’t an end, it’s an advantage. Lavius won’t think you’d let me die because he knows you won’t let anyone kill one of your own.
“You proved how you respond to your family being harmed with Ben’s kidnapping. So let’s use this advantage he’s handily given us and take him down.”
“Death is not a toy,” Rossi said a little too loudly. “It is not a state of mind that can be entered into and out of like a room. It changes a mortal. Delaney, it will make you someone,somethingyou are not.”
“I’m already something I’m not. Soulless, remember? So yeah, I don’t care about the changes death will force on me. After we kill Lavius, I’ll get my soul back from Bathin. AfterthatI’ll find a way to deal with whatever marks death leaves on me, okay? I might be damaged, but this is not a permanent state for me. Not even close.”
Even without a soul I knew I was a little more than mortal. I knew the limit of my own strength. I knew I could handle a quick death and quicker resurrection and come out of it still standing. I was a daughter of Ordinary. My roots, my blood, generations of Reeds chosen by gods sunk deep in this earth. Ordinary would hold me strong, just as I had held strong for it.
There was no storm we Reeds could not face.
“Could it work?” Ryder asked.
“No,” Myra said, just as Jean said, “Oh, screw you, Bailey.”
Brown had spent all this time staring up at my house, a look of confusion on his pretty face.
Bathin might be up there, watching us. The elf hadn’t met the demon yet, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t sense him. He’d said he could tell when darkness and evil walked through Ordinary, and Bathin had those words written on the inside of his shoes.
“Could it work?” Ryder asked again.
He didn’t need to ask Rossi that. Not really. He was all-powerful with the ability to see contracts, agreements, what would or wouldn’t happen between connections. He had already told me he could see how the tie and my death could be used to gut Lavius.
Now he was just waiting to see if Rossi was going to lie about it.
I had to admit it was kind of hot.
“Do you really care for her so little as to ask me that, Ryder Bailey?”
Ryder clenched up, his muscles tight, and I could feel the effort it took for him to force his body to relax, to not just yell with the anger those words lit inside of him.
“I love her, you ass.”
Holy shit. I think that was the first time I’d heard him say that word. Well, yell it, at a vampire, but still, it was for me. For us.
“Love her enough to know that this choice is hers. We can try to talk her out of it, we can offer otherbetteroptions which is what I hoped we’d do.
“But her job is to keep Ordinary safe from all threats. And she is damn good at her job. Even when other people get in her way and keep vital information that could be the difference between her trying to do something on her own with nothing but a damndemonon her side, to doing something with the support of the people wholoveher.”
Oh. Oh. I had not…I didn’t think he’d see it like that.
But he wasn’t done. “Not that I think death is the right option here. But if itis, if it is the path we walk, then I want to know every detail of how we’re reducing the risks and getting her back. I will not be shy about writing this up and getting it signed in blood. Yours, if necessary. Understand?”
Something shifted in Rossi. He gazed at Ryder for a long, long moment, then back at me. There was judgment there, and sadly, disappointment. But there was also a sort of acceptance.
It wasn’t like he was blessing our union, or even that he was agreeing with Ryder. But it was pretty hard to ignore the claim Ryder had just staked on me. On my capabilities.
His faith in me was humbling.
Things were going to be done, and however we went forward, it was going to be with full disclosure and a mountain of dotted i’s and t’s crossed in triplicate.
“Do you have a weapon that will kill Lavius?” I asked. “We’re not going to go forward unless we have that, and a plan B in place, which could be our original plan A of making it up as we go.”
“I have a weapon,” Rossi said.
