“He told me he was my father,” she said, her voice and body stiff. She didn’t know why she started there when the story could be boiled down to the few sentences she’d told Miranda. She looked away from Asil’s exquisite face because there was no beauty in this story. “I don’t know. I don’t think he is. But I don’t remember anyone else. All I remember of being a child is him—and being sick all of the time.”
Impulsively she struggled with the laces on her wrist covering, but they wouldn’t cooperate with her tear-blinded eyes and the shaking clumsiness of her fingers. Asil’s graceful, well-kept hands closed over hers, stilling them. Then he made a single, elegantgesture and the leather separated and fell away from her wrist, revealing the ugly black lines of symbols on her skin.
“He did this after the first time I ran away. I was still a child.” She tapped one of the dark lines. “This is his blood. He told me I could never escape him with these. Then he quit locking the door.” She didn’t want Asil to think her weak—though of course she was. “I tried removing the skin—but the marks go all the way to the bone.” She paused. “I could cut the whole thing off.” She had thought about it more than once.
Except for when he’d broken her wristband, Asil had not released her hands, though his grip was soft and she knew she could pull away if she wanted to. But somehow, she had the feeling that as long as he touched her, nothing could harm her.
“A possibility,” he murmured, but there was a velvet growl in his tone. “But not a good one. No need to be hasty just yet. What does he want from you, Ruby? Why does he bind your magic and try to keep you close?”
But that wasn’t the question she wanted to answer. “Do you think I haven’t had people who tried to help me before?” She turned away, pulling her hands free and rubbing at her eyes. “Good people who were hurt—killed—because of me.”
He didn’t ask why, if she was reluctant to put anyone else in harm’s way, she had agreed to arranging this date. She answered him anyway.
“If it weren’t for Miranda, I’d never have agreed to asking you to come,” she said. “You’d have to meet her. She’s about four and a half feet tall with a temper like a wet cat. When she’s really mad, she screams at you in Mandarin.” Ruby heaved a sigh. “And she’s six months pregnant with a baby who isn’t sure he wants to hang in for the finish. I didn’t want to upset her.”
He was so quiet that she wondered if he was still there. Sheturned around finally to see him standing patiently, exactly where he had been when she pulled free.
“I was supposed to beguile you with my wiles,” she told him. “So that you would want to help me. Then I would do magic, any magic, and he would come. Hopefully while you were still here and willing to fight for me.” She swallowed. “It was not fair. I wasn’t going to let it happen.” She wanted him to know that. “He wasn’t supposed to come unless I did magic. A lot of it.”
“Inshallah,” said Asil with a graceful shrug. He didn’t look at all upset. “Who is he?”
She bowed her head. “A monster,” she told the werewolf, and was rewarded with a smile that displayed very white teeth. And she gave in. “I don’t know what he is, other than fae.” She paused, and then whispered, “He feeds from me.”
Asil tilted his head so she knew he was listening. He didn’t say anything—probably because he judged she was more likely to tell him more that way.
“He lets me escape sometimes,” she told him, knowing that it was true. “I think it’s because if he didn’t, I would have died a long time ago. It is hard to live without hope.” And didn’t that sound pathetic and helpless. She grimaced at herself.
“Fed how? Like a vampire?” he asked.
She shook her head. “It isn’t... isn’t usually physical—though he does that sometimes, too. Drinks my blood, eats my flesh.”
The lines around her wrist suddenly lit from within, as if they had been inked with blue neon instead of blood. Her world stopped.
Did she really hear the creak of wood? Or did her imagination supply the sound of his feet on the front porch?
“He is here,” she told Asil.
She’d locked the main door of the house, but it didn’t surpriseher when she heard the door open and shut. She couldn’t move, couldn’t look around. She heard and felt him walk into the reception room. Her eyes held Asil’s as hands closed over her shoulders.
“Ruby, my Ruby,” her captor said. She’d always thought his voice beautiful, but compared to Asil’s, it was thin and a little harsh. “I named her so because her price is above rubies,” he said conversationally. “Ruby, don’t be rude. Introduce me to your werewolf friend. Is this Alan?”
Wendigo, said Asil’s wolf.Wechuge. Jikininki. Preta. A hungry ghost.
None of those terms was precisely correct, Asil thought, but they weren’t wrong either.
The one who held Ruby was taller than Asil, but not a big man. His face was chiseled and masculine—and looked to Asil’s cynical eye as if he’d tried a little too hard to resemble an old-time movie star. There was a little too much Cary Grant in his jaw and Montgomery Clift in the mouth. He wasn’t as beautiful as Asil, even while using magic.
But Asil was old and he didn’t need any fairy ointment or special magic to see through a fae glamour to the real creature beneath.
Addictions were terrible things, and immortal creatures were not immune. Ruby’s enemy had once been some kind of goblin, Asil thought, or maybe another lesser fae type. He could not be sure because there was not much of the original creature left.
Some of the greater fae could feed upon others with no harm done to themselves—and perhaps if this one had stuck to feeding upon those lesser than he, he would have been safe. But though Ruby had been young and vulnerable when this creature hadfound her (because there were no blood ties between them), her power was far greater than his.
And it had eaten away at him until there was not much of the original fae left. As soon as the creature had touched Ruby’s skin, he had begun to feed, filling himself with Ruby’s magic to fill the gaps his feeding had caused. There were other bits of foreign power that clung to the fae’s inner being—but Asil could sense the deeper, older scraps of Ruby’s power.
Asil was pretty sure he could kill the fae—as long as he did it before the creature absorbed very much of Ruby’s magic, though fae could be terrible foes.
But.
