The Living End (Daniel Faust #3)(12)

“Hey, lover,” she said. “Miss me?”

My head was reeling, and not just from the kiss. The last time I’d seen Roxy was the night she packed a bag and took a bus to Reno, out of my life forever.

“What are you—” I said, my voice catching. “What are you doing here?”

She reached down and took my hand between hers, squeezing it.

“I’m back. And I want to try again. A fresh start for us.”

“Roxy, it’s…it’s not that simple. Things are different now.”

I couldn’t get my footing. I felt like I was running along a freshly waxed floor in my socks, every fumbling step a prelude to a messy fall. Something in the back of my brain was screaming at me to slow down, to stop and collect my thoughts, but I chalked it up to being hit with too many surprises at once.

“Of course it’s that simple,” she said. “You know how good we were together. You remember. Everyone said we were a perfect couple—”

The bells over the door jangled behind me. Roxy looked over, the smile freezing on her face. I turned around, my hand still trapped in hers, and saw Caitlin in the doorway. Her expression was carved from stone.

This looked bad.

“Cait,” I said, “this is—”

“I know who she is,” Caitlin said.

Then she crossed the room with three quick strides and backhanded Roxy to the floor. Roxy tumbled against a bookshelf and sent a few hardcovers thumping to the floorboards with her. She clutched her bleeding lip.

“Cait,” I said quickly, taking a halting step backward. “It’s not what you think.”

She didn’t take her eyes off Roxy.

“No,” she said. “It is not what you think.”

Roxy grinned. She leapt to her feet, suddenly liquid, and bent backward in a spinebreaking arc, hurling herself across the bookstore. In the air she bent and twisted and rippled like a heat mirage, sprouting a coat of tawny fur striped in midnight black. She landed on all fours. Five hundred pounds of Bengal tiger crouched in the aisle now, licking her fangs with an eager wet tongue.

Now I knew why the alarm bells were going off in my head.

“Goddamn it,” I sighed.

“That would be redundant,” Caitlin said dryly.

I jumped at the clattering sound of a round pumping into a shotgun. Corman had his Remington up from behind the counter with its fat black barrel leveled toward the tiger’s head. Bentley was just as quick to defend their home turf. A pewter talisman dripped from his raised right hand, pregnant with thrumming power aching to burst loose.

“Went on safari once,” Corman said. “Never did bag a tiger. What do you think, Bentley? Stuff it, or just mount the head on our wall?”

“We could use a new rug,” Bentley said.

I held up a hand to ease them down. “Gentlemen, please allow me to introduce the Baron Naavarasi. She’s not from around here.”

The tiger’s form melted again, her body standing erect, fur receding and turning into a flowing wave of raven hair. Now she was an Indian goddess with dusky skin, draped in a jade silk sarong that matched the color of her fingernails. Her eyes were still tiger orange.

She wasn’t a demon, not in the traditional sense. She was a rakshasi, a hunger spirit and apex predator. She’d been written up here and there in the occult world, usually as the “Devourer of Innocent Flesh” or the “Lady of the Foul Banquet,” after getting forcibly drafted into the Court of Night-Blooming Flowers sometime in the fifteenth century. She was still pissed about it.

“Stay your hand, hound,” she said to Caitlin. “I am here as a formal and acknowledged emissary, and I have Prince Sitri’s permission to walk your court’s lands. You can check if you like.”

“I’ll be doing that,” Caitlin said.

Corman didn’t lower the shotgun one inch.

“We’ve got a policy in our store,” he said. “Humans only. The young lady over there? She’s got an exemption. You don’t.”

Naavarasi smiled at him. “But you liked me when I was Roxy.”

“That was cruel,” I said. “That was just…that was f*cking cruel.”

She strode toward us. Caitlin put a hand on my shoulder. Gently squeezing, letting me know she was in control.

“Cruel,” Naavarasi said, “was spinning me a web of pretty little lies. I thought we might have something together, only to discover you still in the Wingtaker’s arms.”

“I didn’t betray you,” I said. “We bargained for a traitor’s name, and that’s exactly what I gave you. There was no trick there.”

“Oh, I know, and my standing in the Flowers benefited handsomely for it. Even more so once I realized Prince Sitri tossed away a disposable asset and left a trail of false information for my court to fight over. I’ve milked that and milked it well. Don’t worry. I won’t tell if you won’t.”

“If you’re here for a fight,” Caitlin said, “you’ll be fighting me. Just so we’re clear.”

The rakshasi laughed. It sounded like crystal bells.

“Why would I want a fight? I profited in the end. As one with a trickster’s reputation, I appreciate the value of a good trick. Still, it did hurt my feelings, just a little bit. So, Daniel, I thought I’d come over and hurt you. Just a little bit. Now we can both get over it and move on.”