Chapter 31
S
ound asleep, cuddled in her bed in the underground Colorado headquarters, Janie sighed. She wondered if Zane remembered her birthday.
He jogged out from behind a wall of rock, a bunch of pink balloons in his hand. She took them with a happy squeal. “You remembered.”
“Of course.” He rolled his pretty green eyes. “You reminded me every time I saw you last month.”
Well. Boys sometimes forgot important stuff. “I've missed you.” She released the balloons to float into the sky.
He watched the balloons rise with a grin and nodded, yanking a small black box out of his jeans. “I've missed you too. Happy birthday.”
Janie took the smooth velvet box and slowly opened the lid. A fragile silver chain held a sparkling horseshoe at the end. “It's beautiful,” she whispered.
Zane smiled. “I know you like horses, and we need good luck, so ...” He took the box from her and unclasped the necklace, motioning for her to turn around.
She reached for the horseshoe when he placed the chain around her neck and secured the fastening. “Thank you, Zane.”
He maneuvered her around to face him. “The necklace looks pretty on you. You're welcome.” A frown settled between his eyes. “I wish you could take your present with you, but this is just a dream.”
She smiled up the several inches to his strong face. “I'll keep the sparkles in my memory.”
“Good idea.” He brushed his thick hair back from his forehead. “I'd send your present to you, but I don't know where you are.”
Janie shrugged. “We're moving tomorrow to somewhere new, and they won't tell me where.” Not that she didn't have a good idea, but she wasn't completely sure.
Zane frowned. “Why are you moving?”
Janie cocked her head to the side. “No one will tell me.”
“Oh. Well, I'm sure the king is doing his best to keep you safe.” Zane glanced toward the rocks and back again. “I must go, Janie Belle. I'll leave you for the king to protect for now.”
Janie grinned. “He thinks that's his job.”
Zane's dimples flashed at her. “Your safety is the king's duty right now. Someday it'll be mine.”
Janie nodded, watching Zane walk away until he faded into the mist. Boys. She wasn't sure how or why, but the safety of them all would end on her shoulders.
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She awoke from the dream with a start, her gaze wandering around her pretty room inside the earth, softly lit by a night-light in the corner. Her clothes lay packed in boxes near the door. Mr. Mullet had fallen to the floor, and she reached down to grab him by the hair.
A sparkle caught her eye.
Sitting up in bed, she perched Mr. Mullet on her lap and clasped the horseshoe necklace around her neck. She smiled.
Zane.
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“C
ouldn't you just have fired her?” Tristan looked down at the motionless body of yet another of Finola's personal assistants.
Finola lifted her herbal relaxation mask from her eyes and made a rueful face. “I suppose. But if you had seen what she'd done,” she sighed deeply, “Well, you'd have had a hard time thinking rationally too.”
Tristan, still contemplating the body, raised a dubious eyebrow. “I highly doubt it.”
Finola sighed again. “That's true. You are so much more judicial than I am.”
Was that what she was going to call it? Tristan would have gone with sane, but tomato/tomahto.
Finola retrieved her crystal champagne flute from the glass end table beside her massage chair. She sipped her Dom Perignon White Gold Jeroboam. A sure sign Finola wasn't pleased. The champagne always came out when she was feeling stressed. He'd call it petulant, but there was no point mentioning that to Finola. Best to just let her soothe herself with her $40,000 bottle bubbly.
“Honestly though, Tristan,” she said once she'd drained her glass and poured herself another glass, “she was utterly in competent. I mean, she couldn't do a single thing right. And it wasn't like I was asking for the moon. I just expect that when I ask for something to be done, it be done on time.”
Tristan, only half-listening, made a sympathetic noise. What the hell was he going to do with
this
one? Getting a grown woman down from the fifteenth floor of a busy building out to the even busier streets of Manhattan wasn't easy, even for a demon.
Really, he was the one who deserved the damned champagne.
“I simply asked her to get me the fabrics that an artist in Milan was creating specifically for the Alber Elbaz photo shoot. This was not an unreasonable request.”
“When is the photo shoot?” Tristan asked, considering the white hand woven Persian carpet in Finola's office. It was big enough to wrap the body in, but Finola would have a conniption that he was using her handmade, original flown in directly from Nain, Iran. But then again, this was her doing. He couldn't help if her damned rug was another casualty of her temper.
“It's tomorrow,” Finola said, a hint of peevishness making her tone a little defensive. “I didn't say it wouldn't be easy. But it was absolutely doable.”
Tristan looked from the carpet to the body then back to the carpet. “What time did you tell her about this absolutely doable feat?”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her wave her hand, “Oh, I don't know. Probably one-ish.”
His gaze shifted from the rug to the cabinet behind Finola's desk. That would be heavy all on its own, and with a body in it ... he returned his attention back to the carpetâalso heavy, the best bet.
“When is the photo shoot?”
“Eleven,” she answered, topping off her glass again, the golden liquid, sparkling, bubbles dancing.
Tristan didn't feel like dancing, he was furious, but he pushed it aside, remaining cool. Giving in to his own emotions wouldn't help the situation.
He returned to the body, crouching down to slide an arm under its neck and under its knees. With only a slight grunt, he hefted it up. Thank Lucifer and his many minions, this one was thin. The last one had been a good twenty-five pounds overweight, which hadn't helped her with Finola's wrath and ultimately was a large part (no pun intended) of her ... early retirement.
“You do realize that gave her less than twenty-four hours to get the material for you, don't you?” he said, his tone breathy as he struggled to carry the body over to the rug.
“Well it can't be impossible. It could have been flown on the Concorde or something.”
Tristan dropped the body rather unceremoniously onto the one side of the carpet. “The Concorde stopped flying about five years ago.”
“Oh,” Finola sighed, clearly weary of their conversation, “well whatever, she was a terrible assistant.”
She settled back in her lounger, replacing her mask over her eyes. Tristan arranged the body so the limbs were straight, then he lifted the edge of the carpet and started to ease the carpet and body over, rolling the body up like the filling of a jelly roll. A very complicated, costly jelly roll.
Finola lifted the edge of her mask and peered at him. “What are you doing?”
Saving your ass.
“Playing it safe,” he said, with a grunt, shoving with both arms to finish rolling the carpet. “You should really require height and weight to be included on all your employee résumés.”
“You are so right,” she agreed, but not for the reason he wanted the measurements on there.
He rose, running his hands down the front of his Armani trousers, smoothing any wrinkles. Ah, there was an analogy there.
“I quite like that carpet, you know,” Finola said, but then released her mask back over her eyes.
Well, at least she accepted that better than he'd expected.
“I'm going to have to go get one of the moving vans to dispose of this,” he told her.
She made a noise of acknowledgment, disinterested acknowledgment. But why would she care? Finola just made the messes, he cleaned them up.
He strode across her office, heading out to get the van and get this done.
“Wait,” Finola said, sitting up, her voice suddenly panicked, “I don't have a personal assistant.”
“No,” Tristan agreed, his voice wry, “this is true.”
“I need an assistant. I mean, look.” She took off her eye mask and waved it in his direction. “My mask is absolutely cool now. A cool mask is not going to help this wretched headache behind my eyes. I need someone to warm my mask.”
Tristan fought back the urge to roll his eyes. Instead he walked over the cabinet he had considered using for the body disposal. He opened the bottom drawer and pulled out a thick manila folder. Then he went to Finola and placed it onto her lap.
“Pick one.”
She considered the file for a moment, then opened it. She flipped through several of the résumés, scanning them very briefly.
Finally she sighed, and randomly tugged one out of the dozens. “Hire this one.”
She held the page out to him without even glancing at the person's education, abilities or experience.
“This could be why your assistants never work out,” he said dryly, but accepted the résumé.
He raised an eyebrow as he perused the information there, but he walked over to Finola's desk and picked up her phone. After punching in the numbers, he waited as the phone rang.
Finally, just when he would have hung up, a woman answered, her voice breathless, and heavily laced with a Southern drawl.
Tristan cringed. Not a good start. Finola wasn't fond of the South.
“Hello,” he glanced back to the page in front of him, “I'm trying to reach AnnieâLou,”
Lou?
Really? “Riddle.”
Oh yeah, this was
not
going to go well.
The woman on the other end excitedly told him that was she.
“My name is Tristan McIntyre and I'm calling from
HOT!
magazine. I'm pleased to tell you that Ms. Finola White has decided to hire you as her personal assistant.”
Tristan nodded impatiently as Annie Lou thanked him profuselyâand lengthily.
“Great,” he said, finally cutting off her sweet, golly-gee gratitude. “We'll see you tomorrow morning. Eight o'clock sharp.”
Annie Lou Riddle was still drawling away as he hung up the phone.
“Done,” he said.
“You are the best, Tristan.”
Yes, he was. But he didn't say anything, he just left the office. As he strolled past the large, ultra-modern assistant's desk, he made note to himself that he had to get rid of all of the last assistant's personal items that were still there.
Annie Lou Riddle. She had no idea that by accepting this job, she'd just sold her soul to the devil. Literally.
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ANGEL OF DARKNESS
by Cynthia Eden, coming next month ...
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H
e'd been created for one purposeâdeath. He was not there to comfort or to enlighten.
Keenan's only job was to bring death to those unlucky enough to know his touch.
And on the cold, windy New Orleans night, his latest victim was in sight. He watched her from his perch high atop the St. Louis Cathedral. Mortal eyes wouldn't find him. Only those preparing to leave the earthly realm could ever glimpse his face so he didn't worry about shocking those few humans who straggled through the nearby square.
No, he worried about nothing. No one. He never had. He simply touched and he killed and he waited for his next victim.
The woman he watched tonight was small, with long, black hair, and skin a pale cream. The wind whipped her hair back, jerking it away from her face as she hurried down the stone cathedral steps. The doors had been locked. She hadn't made it inside. No chance to pray.
Pity.
He slipped to the side of the cathedral, still watching her as she edged down the narrow alley way. Pirate Alley. He'd taken others from this place before. The path seemed to scream with the memories of the past.
“
No!”
That wasn't the past screaming. His body stiffened. His wings beat at the air around him. It was
her.
Nicole St. James. School teacher. Age twenty-nine. A woman who avoided the party streets. Who tutored children on the weekends. A woman who'd tried to live her life just right ...
A woman who was dying tonight.
His eyes narrowed as he leapt from his perch. Time to go in closer.
Nicole's attacker had her against the wall. One of the man's hands was over her mouth, the better to make sure she didn't scream again. His other hand slammed against the front of her chest and held her pinned against the cold stone wall.
She was fighting harder than Keenan had really expected. Struggling. Kicking.
Her attacker just laughed.
And Keenan watchedâas he'd always watched. So many years ...
Tears streamed down Nicole's cheeks.
The man holding her leaned in and licked them away.
Keenan's gut clenched. Knowing that her time was at hand, he'd watched Nicole for a few weeks now. He'd slipped into her classroom and listened to the soft drawl of her voice. He'd watched as her lips curled into a smile and a dimple winked in her right cheek.
He'd seen laughter in her eyes. Seen longing. Seen ... life.
Now, her green eyes were filled with the stark, wild terror that only the helpless can truly know.
He didn't like that look in her eyes. His hands clenched.
Don't look if you don't like it.
His gaze jerked away from her face. The job wasn't about what he liked. It never had been.
There'd never been a choice.
They have the choices
.
I only have orders to follow.
That was way it had always been. So why did it bother him, now? Because it was her? Because he'd watched too much? Slipped beside her too much?
Temptation.
“This is gonna hurt ...”
The man's grating whisper scratched through Keenan's mind. Neither the attacker nor Nicole could see him. Not yet.
One touch, that was all it would take.
But the time hadn't come for her yet.
“The wind's so loud ...” The man lifted his hand off Nicole's mouth. “No one's gonna hear you scream anyway.”
But she still screamedâa loud, long, desperate screamâand she kept fighting.
Keenan truly hadn't realized she'd struggle so much against death. Some didn't fight at all when the time came. Others fought until he had to drag them away.
Fabric ripped. Tore. The guy had jerked her shirt, rending the material. Keenan glimpsed the soft ivory of her bra and the firm mounds of her breasts.
Help her.
The urge came from deep within, but it was an urge he couldn't heed.