Читать книгу Masked Desire - Alana Delacroix - Страница 12

Chapter 6

Damn him. Damn. Michaela wanted to scream with the intense frustration of being stuck in traffic with the world’s most irritating feyman. Of course she didn’t. As a masquerada she could maintain precise control over every nuance of expression she wished to reveal.

Cormac, though, had the disturbing ability to peel back her defenses until she felt as open and unsophisticated as a child.

She glanced over at him when she stopped at the next light. Cormac lay with his eyes closed and his arms tucked behind his head. He was tall for a fey. His hair was golden but by his ear she noticed streaks of what looked like silver, as if the metal had been coated with pearl. His face was perfect, of course, although slightly more rugged than the other fey she’d met. The body was…nice. Exceptionally nice.

Over generations, humans had imagined fairies into tiny winged creatures that tended to flowers and giggled behind trees. The fey were nothing like those translucently dressed beings. Like the rest of his kin, Cormac exuded an aura of wild power.

His eyes opened and she was taken aback by the motley mix of grass-green and dark sable, illuminated by the fading sunlight. It shadowed his face and highlighted his bone structure, almost too lovely for a man but still enticingly masculine.

“What do your eyes mean?” she asked abruptly.

He looked confused. “That I can see?”

“No. The colors.”

“There’s no guide.” He gave her a whimsical smile. “Like to a box of chocolates. Are you looking for the caramel or the candied cherry?”

She ignored that. “They must reflect something about how you’re feeling or what you’re thinking.”

“If you want to know that, why don’t you ask me?”

“You lie.” The words came out before she could check them and a quiver ran over him, gone so fast that she wondered if she’d even seen it.

“Aye. I suppose I do.” He glanced up, eyes now a cool gray. “You know I love your admiration for my good looks, but the light changed.”

Michaela hit the accelerator.

“Nadia might be an idiot, but I saw the screen,” said Cormac. “The figure was clearly Hiro, but it did resemble you.”

“Generic Asian?”

“Generic business casual. He wore all black, like you, and he had his hair pulled back, like you. If you ask me, he was impersonating you.” And if he was, then Hiro wasn’t the target.

Rendell might not be the killer.

“First, I didn’t ask. Second, we’re in Toronto. Everyone wears black.” Michaela kept her voice cool, but inside pieces were clicking together. Hiro was in her office, dressed like her. It was so obvious whoever killed him thought it was her, especially since there was no reason for Hiro to be there at all. She now needed to find enough incontrovertible proof to convince Madden.

Too bad her own mentor didn’t trust her.

They drove a few blocks in thick silence until her phone rang.

“Auntie! Ni hao le ma?” Ivy’s cheerful voice filled the car and Michaela’s entire body relaxed.

“Hao le, xiao xiao.” She ignored Cormac as his entire, rather distracting, body swiveled towards her. Best to keep the conversation in Chinese so her Watcher couldn’t spy on this part of her life.

“You sound stressed, Auntie.” Ivy was excellent at reading people and Michaela hadn’t been surprised last year when she decided to go to medical school. “Are you driving?”

“Stuck in traffic.”

“I won’t be long. I wanted to remind you about dim sum this weekend. My parents are coming to visit.”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

Ivy chattered on a little more about her schoolwork and roommates and job. “Late shift tonight,” she said.

“Your parents won’t like that.” Her parents thought Ivy’s efforts should only be academic but Michaela had supported her. A woman had to know how to earn money of her own.

Ivy’s happy laugh came down the line. “That’s why they don’t know. I keep safe.”

“I love you.”

“Love you too, Auntie. See you this weekend.”

Michaela hung up and stared at the bumper sticker of the car in front of her. Hanging with my gnomies was inaccurately pictured with a line of small, colorful goblins. Yao would have been proud of Ivy, thought Michaela, reeling with a momentary grief for her old friend, dead these many years. Not that he ever would have had a chance to meet his great-great-granddaughter. A human’s life was so very brief and his had been cut even shorter.

“A friend calling?” asked Cormac neutrally.

“Yes.”

“She sounds young.” He said it in perfect Chinese.

“Your accent is very good.” He wasn’t going to shock her.

“I’m an exile. I have plenty of time to practice.”

“Where did you learn?”

“Here and there.”

She almost grinned, knowing he was remaining vague to irritate her.

“I have a sister,” he said.

She glanced over in surprise. “You do?”

He laughed and regarded her with eyes that were now deep gray. “Is that any stranger than a human niece for a masquerada? Isindle stays in the Queendom.”

“Do you see her often?” Michaela could have bit her tongue off the moment she saw Cormac’s face go blank. She hadn’t meant to be deliberately cruel and had forgotten his exile.

“No. Tell me about Ivy and why she thinks you’re her aunt.”

“She doesn’t. It’s a term of endearment. She knows me as a family friend.” Although she watched over all Yao’s descendants, she rarely made herself known. It was too difficult to explain her lack of aging. From the first, though, Ivy had spoken to her heart.

“Are you?”

“I knew one of her ancestors.” Michaela skirted around the issue, not wanting to discuss Yao.

Incredibly, Cormac seemed to respect her reticence. “She seems happy,” he said. “You must watch out for her.”

Michaela laughed. “Ivy wouldn’t like that.” Which is why she didn’t know.

He shut his eyes. “When has that stopped you from doing anything?”

* * * *

Cormac kept his eyes closed.

He didn’t like going to Michaela’s box in the sky any more than she wanted him in it. Like a proper fey, he made his home in a tree. Not the great oak of his forest—he prevented himself from instinctively touching the pendant at his throat—but a perfectly serviceable chestnut tree he’d found in the hidden depths of High Park. Keeping himself isolated (not that other fey would risk being seen with him) was necessary to hide his physical need to be close to the dolma.

That he was a caintir, a forest talker, was a secret he could never allow out. Queen Tismelda would have him clapped in irons in the bottom of her dungeon. The caintir’s deep connection to the dolma—the world and its living things—far outstripped that of all other fey, making them both powerful and dangerous. Tismelda would have considered his mere existence a challenge to her throne. Not even Isindle knew, though he was sure his sister suspected.

He was the last existing caintir in or out of the Queendom and had survived because he’d buried his ability so deep he often wondered if he’d lost it forever. The only other he’d known was the bitch queen’s own sister, Kiana, an extraordinary feywoman who could effortlessly impress her will on the dolma. Animals had done her bidding and trees would flower at her word. Kiana had secretly trained Cormac to do the same, all the while covering for both of them so Tismelda would never know of their existence as caintir. With a fierce sense of loss he remembered the communion he felt when he opened himself to the world, and sent his mind to fly with the birds and hunt with the wolves.

That had ended when the bitch queen had holed Kiana up in a room devoid of any natural element and watched without mercy as Kiana’s very skin and bones had faded and turned to dust.

Kiana had forced him to swear on his tree that he would remain hidden after her death and he had done his best to avoid the slightest lure of his power. It had been so difficult during the first years he thought it would send him mad. He stared at his hands and flexed his fingers. Only fear for Isindle helped him persevere. He monitored every action to ensure he didn’t give himself away, fighting the enticement of wood whenever possible, knowing he could lose himself in a single touch. A physical ache filled him when he thought of how complete he had felt in discuss Yao.

Correction: Michaela skirted around the issue

those days with Kiana.

He opened his eyes to watch Michaela weave expertly in and out of traffic. Like everything else she did, she drove well. How old was she? Younger than he was, that was certain, but there was a wariness around her eyes he’d seen in other arcane beings. She’d seen many things, and few of them had left happy memories.

She loved that Ivy girl, though. He considered Michaela under this new light. To be able to love like that after so many years was unusual, and many arcana avoided love, especially love for a human. Experiencing the death of a loved one hurt as much the tenth time as it did the first, even after centuries. After a while, the heart couldn’t take it anymore. The scars surrounding it tightened until it was so tough nothing could penetrate it.

Yet impassive Michaela risked her heart to a young human. Seeing Michaela’s unguarded joy as she spoke with Ivy had stirred a primal and almost foreign emotion in him, and he didn’t like it at all.

Tenderness had no place in the fey world.

Not only that, it was laughable. Tenderness for Michaela Chui, the most hardheaded woman he’d known outside of his own queen? She’d see it as weakness.

But she’d laughed so freely when she was talking and her entire face had lit up like a diamond hit by the sun. Seeing her with her guard down had unleashed his instincts to keep her from harm. The fey were almost ferociously protective once they formed a connection. He could take her out of the damn car and dance her over to the big chestnut, where he would wrap her in his arms and…

And what? His priority was getting the proof to show that Rendell had killed Hiro out of spite to prevent him from getting that forest. Seduction had no place in his plans. He tried to hide his sudden iron erection. Knowing Michaela’s hard exterior hid such a caring gentleness was extraordinarily alluring.

This was bad. She’s a masquerada, he thought desperately. Who even knows her true face? Her true self?

“We’re here.” Michaela pointed up to a very modern building, all shiny chrome and bluish sheet windows.

“You live here?” He’d expected something with stained glass and old dark wood. Red and green accents. When she led him in, even the elevator was lined with gleaming black granite.

They stepped out and he almost walked right into her when she stopped halfway down the hall. Before he could open his mouth, she held up her hand in an imperious gesture and motioned for him to stay still.

“I should have mentioned this in the car, but I’ve done my own security,” she said, pressing a button on her keys. A series of soft trills came from the dark apartment and she listened before moving ahead. “All good. Come in.”

The next few minutes were a lesson in paranoia. Cormac watched in increasing wonder as she stood in the foyer and methodically checked through a catalog of security measures she’d installed in every location.

“How do you know if the door has been tampered with?”

Michaela waved her phone. “I monitor the hall during the day. There’s also a motion sensor.”

“This seems excessive.” Was the woman expecting an army? Multiple assassins?

She slid off her shoes and lined them up neatly near the door, which he now saw had been sealed around the perimeter to form a barrier against any gases or powders being forced in. “It’s been a rough few months,” she said.

Cormac followed her in. “Your civil war.”

“It’s not a war.”

“Excuse me. The minor disagreement that split the masquerada into warring factions and forced the Hierarch into mortal combat to keep his throne.”

She didn’t crack a smile. “True, though dramatically phrased.”

A blue light glinted from the balcony door. A motion sensor? “How many death threats have you received?”

“Enough.” Michaela sat on the couch and closed her eyes.

“Any attempts?” That someone even considered laying a hand on her was enough to start a dull red climbing up behind his eyes. At least now he was with her to add a measure of protection. Relief flowed through him but he told himself it was only because of his pride. It would be deflating if she was injured while he was Watcher.

“Not often,” she said, eyes still closed.

“You do get them, then.”

Now she met his gaze. Her eyes were almost black and fringed by thick lashes that tipped very slightly downward. He wanted to trace his finger along them. “If I did, it would be neither new nor unusual.”

“Despite that, you still think Hiro was the intended target?”

“Since he is the one who is dead, yes.”

She was lying.

Michaela stood. “Tea?” She shut down the conversation and he let her go, watching her straight back as she left the room. She didn’t think Hiro was the target. Why was she pretending that he was? Michaela never did anything without a reason. Perhaps she was covering for Rendell. A feeling of discontent rolled over him that she might be in league with his enemy.

“Sit down, Cormac.” Her voice floated out from the kitchen. “I can hear you thinking from here.”

He did, and finally let himself take stock of her apartment. Then he blinked, a bit stunned. Michaela’s place was a collector’s wet dream. An exquisite jade melon sat in the center of a beautiful carved lacquer table. To the left was what appeared to be an entire herd of Tang dynasty ceramic horses, their distinctive glazing perfectly lit by a small light. He stood and wandered in awe, categorizing her treasures before ending up in front of an achingly lovely brush painting of a crane about to take flight. The Chinese characters on the side evoked a similar sense of movement. Kiana would have loved it. He took his time examining it, then wandered slowly through the rest of the room before returning to the painting. It had a poignancy that attracted him powerfully.

“Here’s your tea.” Michaela gave him a handless cup of flowered tea. “Imperial jasmine.”

He inhaled the steam. “This painting is extraordinary.”

“Thank you.” She stood beside him and tilted her head to the side. Even here, safe in her domain, she stood straight and her hair was still tied tight. “It took me some time to decide how to place the bird.”

“You did this?”

“Yes.” She said no more. “I’m going to bathe. It’s been a long day.”

With that, she left him in a cloud of jasmine-scented steam. He forgot the crane and instead thought about how she would look with her skin pinked from the bath.

Never mind.