“I don’t know. Come closer and let’s see what happens.”
He landed beside her. She was surprised that he was so graceful, given his size and musculature. She’d thought that his feet would thud, but he landed with the elegance of a bird. When she didn’t pass out cold, he extended his arm, inviting her touch.
Alex’s guts shook. She reached out all the same. This was part of what Donovan was. Maybe it was even the essence of what he was.
His blue scales were firm and warm. She’d thought they’d be slippery or cold, either like a fish or a suit of armor. In reality, they were somewhere in between. Each one appeared to be edged in gold, which was what made him glitter so when he moved. The scales overlapped by a good third, covering his body in an impressive protective shield.
The blue gave way to gold on his chest, as splendid as an ornamental suit of armor. That wound was still open on his chest, the one where the pearl had been. It wasn’t infected or bleeding, though, so he must be healing.
She met his eyes, thought about how Magnus saw the world, and figured that Donovan could probably read her thoughts. There was compassion in those glittering depths and a bit of unexpected trepidation.
“Okay,” she said, hearing how her voice shook. “Now change.”
“You want to look away?”
“No. I’m going to watch.” Alex swallowed and put her hand back on his claw. “I’m going to stay right here while you do it. Change shape really slowly so I can see exactly what you are.”
Chapter 12
Donovan was shocked.
He’d expected Alex to faint when she touched him, but she was made of sterner stuff that that. He was impressed by her resilience, but that didn’t mean he was going to fulfill her request. He couldn’t help thinking of Olivia.
Again.
He hadn’t cared about Olivia’s response when he’d taken the Dragon’s Tooth to her, but still it had been disturbing to watch her mind unhinge.
He always changed shape quickly, as quickly as he could manage the deed. There was something about a slow and deliberate change, of hovering between forms, that was almost impossible for the human mind to accept. Olivia’s reaction, Donovan had learned since, was perfectly typical.
He would not repeat his past with Alex.
For any price.
“No,” Donovan said flatly.
“Yes,” Alex insisted. “I need to see this.”
“You’re wrong. You don’t need to see anything.” He caught her by the shoulders and spun her around, changing shape with lightning speed while her back was turned to him.
“Cheat,” Alex said when she saw what he had done. Her lips tightened with anger, but she wasn’t insane.
That worked for Donovan in a big way.
He forced himself to recall that they’d just worked together to finish a Slayer and that was a good thing. He felt his usual postfight euphoria. He was more than ready to celebrate in the time-honored tradition.
Wine.
Women.
Sex.
Lots of sex.
He didn’t imagine that Alex had any doubt what was on his mind, given that he was standing in front of her in his underwear. It was easy to remember what they’d been doing when Tyson arrived.
He was more than ready to find out whether the firestorm could be thwarted.
All he had to do was get them both out of the conservatory. That and disperse Alex’s annoyance with him.
She folded her arms across her chest and glared at him. “You did that on purpose, so I couldn’t see you change.
Don’t tell me you’re shy.”
Donovan felt a flash of irritation. “I’m not going to show you the change, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t know what you’re asking of me.”
“I do.” Alex nodded. “The Wyvern showed me her change.”
“Then you’ve seen it already.” He looked around the conservatory, ready for a change of subject. “How are we going to get out of here, anyway?”
Alex pulled something out of her pocket, her lips drawn in a tight line. She stretched out her hand and Donovan was shocked to see the Dragon’s Tooth on her palm.
“How’d you get that?” he demanded.
“I took it, so it wouldn’t fall out of your hand. The point is that I have it and that you want it back. Guess what my terms are?”
Donovan was infuriated by the idea. “I am not going to shift in front of you, no matter what you say.”
Alex looked as if she were summoning an argument, but there was a sound of a car engine outside. They froze as one.
Was it the police?
Or was it Alex’s brother? There were no sirens, so Donovan knew what he’d put his money on. He was suddenly very aware of their situation and how it might be compromising for Alex.
Having a visible erection wasn’t going to improve matters. Donovan would have sold his soul for his jeans at that moment.
She seemed to be thinking the same thing. “You could be hard to explain,” she said with a glance to his underwear. She shoved the pearl back into her pocket.
“I’m thinking the corpse in the lap pool is going to be even tougher.” Donovan surveyed the damage. “Never mind the demolition plan. This place looks like a wreck.”
“It looks like it survived a dragon attack,” Alex corrected.
Footsteps sounded on the veranda.
Donovan was going to have to beguile Peter, but he hoped he wouldn’t have to beguile Alex as well. It was a bad precedent to set, and he liked the honesty between the two of them.
Even if they did disagree on some things. He didn’t doubt that she’d agree with him if he explained himself, but that would mean telling her about Olivia, and Donovan wasn’t going to go there.
“What are we going to do?” Alex asked in a whisper.
“Alex?” A man shouted before Donovan could figure out how to summarize his plan. “Is that really you in there?”
“Peter,” Alex muttered, confirming that it was her brother. Then she raised her voice. “Hi, Peter. Sorry!”
There was a sequence of beeps as the security system was accessed from outside by Peter’s own code. Then both steel doors slid skyward in unison. Donovan watched them disappear into the ceiling, secreting themselves perfectly, and was impressed. He knew what kind of upgrade he was going to install in his lair.
Then he focused on the problem at hand.
Peter looked just like the risk-averse bank security adviser Alex had said he was. And he didn’t look happy.
This could go very badly.
Peter was on his cell phone, obviously talking to the police. Alex hoped he kept his cool. If nothing else, her brother had a good poker face.
“False alarm, Lieutenant,” he said with his easy charm. “I’m very sorry for the disturbance. I guess my sister forgot the access codes. Yes, better safe than sorry.” His gaze flicked over Donovan and his eyebrows rose as he met Alex’s gaze. She felt herself blush. “In future, I hope my sister tells me that she intends to use the house, but maybe this was an impulse visit.”
That was an accurate summary of the situation. Peter listened, apologized again, then ended the call. He snapped his phone shut, the click seeming very loud, then put it away. His gaze darted from Donovan in his underwear, to the burned saltillo tiles, then to Tyson’s body bobbing in his lap pool.
Alex knew she didn’t imagine that Peter paled.
“I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me what’s going on here?”
Alex cleared her throat and pushed a hand through her hair. She needed to distract her brother and get rid of him. It wasn’t going to be easy, but she knew one thing that would get his attention. “It’s kind of a long story.” She smiled. “Do you want a drink, Peter? It’s a bit of a drive from the city. . . .”
Peter’s gaze fell to Tyson’s body again. “We should call the police,” he said, and pulled out his cell phone.
> Donovan stepped forward then, his voice dropping to the same low tone that Tyson had used. She watched as he leaned toward Peter.
Alex was transfixed by the change in Donovan. His voice dropped to a melodic murmur and his eyes took on a curious radiance. She saw a flame flicker in their depths, even from her oblique angle. She wanted to move around, stand beside Peter, and stare directly into those flames. Donovan raised his left hand toward her. Even though she didn’t understand, she stayed put.
He was doing to Peter exactly what Tyson had tried to do to her.
But what was it, exactly?
“What a strange evening,” Donovan said to Peter, his voice a musical variant of his usual tone. He always had a faint Irish accent, but it was a full rolling brogue as he spoke to Peter. It was so enchanting that Alex could have listened to him all night.
Even if he’d been reading the phone book to her.
“A strange evening,” Peter agreed. His voice was so lacking in inflection that Alex looked at him. He was staring fixedly at Donovan, as if he couldn’t turn away.
Alex glanced Donovan’s way again, and those intriguing flames in his eyes drew her closer. What were they? It must be an illusion of some kind, and she desperately wanted to know more about them.
It was odd how much she wanted to know.
Donovan made a quick dismissive gesture with his hand. Alex understood that he didn’t want her to look and wondered why.
“So much fuss for so little reason,” Donovan said in that same low tone.
“So much fuss for so little reason,” Peter agreed.
Alex opened her mouth to argue this conclusion. There was a dead man in the lap pool, after all, and the security system was roasted. The plants were dead, the planter was a wreck, and Diane’s tiles would have to be replaced. Never mind the broken windows.
Donovan tore his gaze away from Peter and glared at Alex. There were no flames in his eyes at all, but they were snapping with anger. “Why don’t you get Peter a drink?” he hissed, and Alex knew her presence was unwelcome.
Peter, seemingly back to normal, cleared his throat, frowning as he glanced toward the lap pool. “That is a dead man, isn’t it?”
Donovan leaned toward Peter once more, his manner intent again. “There is no corpse.”
“No corpse,” Peter echoed with obvious relief.
“There is no trouble,” Donovan said. “It was a false alarm.”
“It was a false alarm.” Peter sighed, reassured.
Alex retreated, but didn’t go far. She understood that Donovan didn’t want her interference, but what he was doing was really interesting.
She’d never seen Peter agree so easily with anyone before. It was bizarre, given what he’d seen with his own eyes. But he looked ready to be persuaded that there was nothing wrong.
Donovan was doing the persuading with the ease of an expert.
“Alex forgot the codes,” Donovan said in that reassuring tone.
“Alex forgot the codes,” Peter agreed.
Alex bristled that she was being blamed for this, but then, it was an easier situation to explain than the dead Slayer in the pool. She wondered how Donovan was going to get Peter past that.
“The security system overreacted,” Donovan said. “Perhaps it has a flaw.”
“Perhaps the security system has a flaw.”
“A review should be booked. In two weeks.”
“A review should be booked in two weeks.”
“It’s time to go home.”
“Time to go home,” Peter said, reaching into his pocket for his keys.
“There’s no need to worry your wife.” Donovan spared Alex a quick glance, a question in his eyes. Obviously he did need her for something, and she was tempted to deny him. Peter was wavering though, now that Donovan’s attention wasn’t fixed upon him.
“Worry,” Peter murmured, and looked around the conservatory with a frown. He seemed to be trying to remember the root of his concern, and his gaze flicked to the lap pool.
The last thing they needed was Peter calling the police back.
Alex wasn’t ready to go to jail for killing a man. She doubted that admitting he was a Slayer would help. She’d just end up in a different psych ward, one with bars on the windows.
“Diane,” she supplied in a whisper. “His wife is Diane. Kids are Jared and Kirsten.” Peter was pulling out his cell phone, opening it, punching in a number.
Donovan intercepted him, laying a hand on his arm, leaning close. “There’s no need to worry Diane,” he murmured. He reached to clear the number that Peter had punched in. “You need to call Diane,” he urged. “You need to tell her that everything is fine.”
“Everything is fine,” Peter echoed, staring into Donovan’s eyes.
“It was a false alarm.”
“It was a false alarm.”
“Alex forgot the codes.”
Peter repeated this with more assurance than he had the last time. Donovan led him to the conservatory. Peter continued to stare into Donovan’s eyes. “I need to call Diane,” he said in that same flat tone. “Everything is fine.”
“Except the plants,” Donovan said as they walked through the conservatory. He directed Peter’s gaze to the long planter of ferns that hung over the lap pool. They were all cooked to cinders. “Diane’s plants have died.”
“Diane’s plants have died.”
“The security system malfunctioned.”
“The security system malfunctioned.” Peter shook his head as he said this.
“A review should be booked in two weeks.”
“A review should be booked in two weeks.”
Donovan sighed. “Money doesn’t buy everything.”
Peter sighed in his turn. “Money doesn’t buy everything.”
Alex wished she had a recording of her materialistic brother uttering those words. The pair reached the exterior door and Donovan opened it. He seemed to take a scent of the wind and then he nodded slightly.
“And it’s time to go home, Peter.”
“And it’s time to go home.”
“Go home to Diane.”
“Home to Diane.”
“You’re going home, Peter.”
“I’m going home.”
No matter how hypnotized he might be, there were some things Peter couldn’t be programmed to forget. He offered his hand to Donovan, who shook it with solemnity.
Then Peter left.
Alex joined Donovan at the door, astonished by what he had done. She watched her brother walk to his big Mercedes sedan.
“What did you do to him?”
“I beguiled him,” Donovan said, sounding as if he’d rather not talk about it.
Alex didn’t really care much what he wanted. She wanted to know more. “You put a spell on him.”
“No. It’s a kind of hypnosis.”
“You made him do what you wanted him to do.”
“Correction: what we wanted him to do.”
“Don’t blame this on me. It wasn’t my idea to trick my brother.”
“I didn’t trick him!”
“Oh, right. He just decided to ignore the dead body in his summer retreat and went home of his own volition to tuck in the kids. I don’t think so!”
Donovan fidgeted. “There wasn’t time to talk to you about it. I had to act.”
“You chose to lie to him.”
“It wasn’t a lie.” Donovan winced and Alex knew he didn’t like what he had done any more than she did. “Not really.”
“You got those flames in your eyes. Tyson did it, too.”
“Humans stare at flames. You have a primal attraction to fire. And as humans stare at the beguiling flames, they become susceptible to entertaining ideas that are not necessarily their own.” Donovan spared Alex a look. “It’s a useful way of disguising our presence among your kind.”
“It’s a lie.”
Donovan didn’t say anything to that. Peter started the engine and the big Benz’s h
eadlights sliced through the darkness as he drove down the driveway.
Alex couldn’t leave it alone. “Anyone who knows me even a little bit knows I never forget security codes.”
“And what was the alternative?” Donovan flung out his hands in frustration. “To let Peter call the police? To let a coroner do an autopsy on a dead Slayer? To let the forensics people find you guilty of shooting the gun that killed a man?”
“There’s always a better solution than lying. . . .” Alex heard the lack of conviction in her own tone.
“Are you saying your brother would have looked the other way for the greater good?”
Now Alex fidgeted. “Well, no, but—”
“There’s no but!” Donovan said with irritation. “We had a problem. I solved it.” He shook a finger at her. “Say ‘Thank you very much, Donovan.’”
Alex gestured to the body in the pool. “I’ll thank you when you really fix it, not when you make one person believe it’s not a problem. We’re not out of the proverbial woods yet.”
“One step at a time,” Donovan growled.
“Why didn’t you just beguile the entire police force?”
He spoke through gritted teeth. “It’s not that easy to do. I did this for you, you know, to make your life simpler. I think you could show a little gratitude.”
“I could, if I were sure that you’d never beguiled me.”
Donovan looked so genuinely upset by the idea that Alex knew he hadn’t. “I’d never do that. . . .”
“Why not?”
“The firestorm is a sacred trust, whether we consummate it or not.” He glared at her. “I’d never do that to you, Alex.”
“Promise,” she said. She liked the way her name rolled off his tongue. She smiled. “Or I’ll always wonder why it is that women always give you what you want.”
The back of Donovan’s neck turned red and his eyes became a vivid hue of green. He was utterly serious as he held her gaze and there were no flames in his eyes at all. “I swear to you that I have never done that to you and never will. I don’t like beguiling.” He grimaced. “In fact, I’m not very good at it.”
“Why not?”
“Practice makes perfect.” His expression was rueful.
Alex believed him.
She still couldn’t believe what Peter had done. She looked after his departing car and saw a familiar shadow descending from the sky. She grabbed Donovan’s arm, unable to voice her terror.