Steal the Night (Thieves #5)(19)

I wrapped myself around him and felt tears threaten again. “I’ll wait, too.”

“And Daniel will finish what he needs to and he’ll follow,” Dev said quietly. “If anything happens, I know we’ll be together again.”

We sat there for the longest time holding on, praying Dev’s words would prove true.





Chapter Five





“Have you tried a locator spell?” Christine’s mouth twisted thoughtfully as she regarded Nim.

I was very glad Nim didn’t roll her eyes at the question. I’d requested she try politeness with my dad’s girlfriend. I found Christine annoying from time to time, but she was good to my father and she’d made great strides in her witchcraft studies. Christine wasn’t a latent witch like my friend Sarah. Christine’s talents had been earned through study and discipline. They weren’t instinctive. I’d discovered that, in some cases, the very fact that Christine had been forced to work so hard caused her to think creatively when it came to a problem.

“I did.” The god-only-knew-how-old nymph sat on my father’s couch looking young and pretty. Nim was about my height, but of a much slimmer build. She had curly sable-colored hair and the most striking violet eyes. The eyes gave her away. Modern times aided her in passing as human because these days people assumed she was wearing colored contacts. She’d been quiet all afternoon. I expected her to chatter away about her sexual adventures with Michael from the night before, but she merely smiled and said she’d enjoyed herself. I asked if Michael had done anything he shouldn’t have and she insisted he’d been sweet.

I think she was missing Arawn, the Welsh death god she’d loved for so long. Michael had been her first foray into sex that didn’t include the man she left behind in Faery.

“And?” Christine prompted.

Nim shook her curls. “Maybe I’m out of practice. I’ve narrowed it down to three different places, but I don’t want to clue anybody in to the fact that we’re coming. I want to know exactly where I’m going. It would have been easier if I had a piece of the item I’m looking for, but I like to travel light.”

“And this…item you lost. What was its origin?” the blonde witch asked.

She couldn’t care less what the “item” was. Christine wouldn’t care that we were looking for a thousand-plus-year-old wizard, but Nim didn’t want witch worship to cloud the issue. Apparently before Merlin had been imprisoned, he’d had his share of groupies. “Was it something you crafted yourself or something you found?”

Nim thought for a moment and then smiled. “No, I didn’t have anything to do with that, I’m happy to say. I suppose you could say it’s demonic in origin, at least partially.”

I smiled as I exchanged a glance with Neil. We’d been doing a lot of research on Merlin. Well, I’d been doing a lot of research. Neil had been listening to the Spamalot soundtrack. The legend had it that Merlin was the product of a union between a human female and an incubus—a horny demon who ran around knocking up unsuspecting women who thought they were having a harmless little wet dream until, oh crap, nine months later they had to explain Junior.

“Well, naturally it involves a damn demon,” Lee grumbled. Lee sat on the couch in my father’s house in far north Dallas. We’d come to see Christine, but I hoped to catch a minute with my dad. He and Christine had been out of town when we returned from Faery, and this was the first chance I’d had to talk to him.

I heard the door open and knew I’d gotten lucky. My father walked in looking dapper in his golf clothes, carrying the clubs I gotten him for his birthday a few years back. He poked his head into the living room and waved to Neil and Lee. I introduced him to Nim, and then he got a very serious look on his face.

“I’m glad to see you, girl,” Dad said, his Irish accent heavy. “Why don’t you come up to the office? I want to talk to you.”

A little anxiety hit me. He’d asked me to come up to his office. My father had two offices in this house. The office on the first floor was the one he used on a daily basis. In the past, he would have taken clients into that office. It was a study in neat professionalism. The office upstairs was where Dad kept the secrets. If he was taking me upstairs, he had something serious to discuss.

I got up, giving Lee a nod. He relaxed and settled in to wait for me. My father’s house was secure, so he didn’t feel the need to wait outside the door like he normally would if we’d been in public. I followed Dad up the stairs and past the bedrooms that Danny and I had lived in during our high school years. My father and I had settled down once Danny had come to live with us. There wasn’t a room in this house that didn’t remind me of my vampire husband, my first love.

Dad unlocked the door to his private office and slipped inside. There was nothing vaguely professional about this piece of my father’s soul. It was filled with shelf after shelf of books, most of them incredibly old and beyond rare. All of them dealt with the arcane arts. Harry Wharton was a master thief, but he dealt in a very select clientele. He stole for and from supernatural creatures. It made him a very wealthy man.

“Sit down, Zoey,” he said in that voice that made me feel like I was eight again and we were about to talk about my report card.

I took the seat opposite the desk, but I didn’t relax.