Except for your darkness. G.o.d, I hate my subconscious so, so much.

After dinner we were supposed to meet Boz at an art gallery in the trendy SoWa district. Incy hailed a cab, and I tried to quash the instant recoil of fear and dread I felt about Incy + cab.

As Katy climbed in, Incy took my hand and kissed it.

"I was wrong," he said quietly, looking intently into my eyes. "I was wrong, and you showed me that. You have nothing to fear."

There was never a point in pretending not to understand something with Incy. He knew I knew what he was talking about. We always got each other, with words or without.

I nodded and got into the cab, feeling relieved and touched.

The art gallery was less than ten minutes away, and we arrived safely without my darkness overpowering anyone and forcing them to commit heinous acts. You may draw a smiley face here: [ ].

We got out and saw huge, floor-to-ceiling windows showcasing a large gallery full of light, people, and a bunch of art, including some by Lucian Freud, whose work I had always adored. A few people turned around when we came in, but none openly pointed at my hair and laughed behind their hands. The evening was going well so far.

"Ooh, there's Boz!" Katy snagged a gla.s.s of red wine off a waiter's tray and made her way through the crowd to where Boz was charming a small crowd of admirers.

"Who's that girl he's talking to?" I asked Incy, when he'd brought me some champagne. "She looks familiar."

Incy glanced over. "There was a picture of her upchucking off a balcony on the front page of Boston for You yesterday."

"Oh. Her. The heiress."

"Why else would Boz be talking to her?" Innocencio grinned, and I nodded. No duh.

"He's got to learn to invest his money so it sticks around longer," I said. "There's only so many other people's fortunes you can run through."

"He hasn't seemed to find a limit yet," said Incy. "Shall we mingle?"

"We shall."

Reporters from society magazines were snapping pictures. There were an unbelievable number of beautiful people in this room. I was sure many of them were famous and notable, but I wasn't up on the latest society in Boston, and I didn't recognize anyone except the barfer.

I thought I'd feel like an idiot with my Popsicle hair, but there were so many extreme styles here that I actually blended. A tall, stunning, brick-house-shaped black girl had a short, snow-white afro. She should have been a model with those looks, and I thought very briefly about Brynne. Another Amazon had a mathematically precise haircut that was a deep navy blue on top, black underneath. Someone even told me that they loved my hair. That hadn't happened in... decades, I think.

"You really do look sensational, love," Incy said over my shoulder.

I turned around and he offered me a minuscule china plate with an even more minuscule roasted beet napoleon on it and some other tiny nibbly things. We'd just come from dinner, so I limited myself to a couple of plates full. I noticed Incy smiling at me as I rounded up my third or fourth doll-size eclair. I mean, I get the whole precious-food thing. But give me a big honking eclair, know what I'm saying?

"What?" I said.

"You've gotten your appet.i.te back," he said. "Your holiday was good for you."

I smiled and nodded. Was that all it had been, my time at River's Edge? A holiday to recuperate from my life? Now I was back, living my old life again. And I was loving it. Had I really been that unhappy before? Were my friends-was Incy-so awful?

I mean, Reyn had killed hundreds of people, if not thousands. My parents had killed people-including my father's brother. River and her brothers had killed their own parents. All Incy had done was cripple a cabbie. Which, okay, still bad. I know that. But relatively. And possibly triggered by my ancestral darkness, which no one could blame a girl for, could they?

I drank my champagne, mulling over more thoughts than I'd had since I'd left River's. My eyes wandered along with my thoughts, and as if my thinking had manifested him, I saw a tall man with broad shoulders and raggedy, dark blond hair. I stopped breathing as my eyes raked him for details. He was about six feet tall. Could it actually be Reyn? Had he come here to find me? My heart started beating quickly, my pulse buzzing like a blowfly in a bottle.

Then he turned. I held my breath, already moving toward him, thinking of what I would say, how I would explain my absence, how I could laugh all this off.

His face, when I saw it, was such a letdown that I almost stumbled. It was a smooth face, the face of a lawyer or an investment banker. The features were bland, softened; the eyes roundish, blue, and unremarkable. Other women would probably find him good-looking, but he was so far beneath what I'd hoped to see that tears almost came to my eyes.

And when he turned again, chuckling at something someone had said, his back and shoulders looked absolutely nothing like Reyn's. He was altogether too groomed, too civilized, too mannered to be Reyn, or even be in Reyn's world. Reyn had been bashing his way through life for more than four hundred years, and his angular features, tip-tilted eyes, and perpetual look of alert wariness advertised that.

He didn't always look wary.... The champagne coiled warmly in my stomach as I remembered Reyn's face flushed with desire, his mouth coming down on mine as his strong hands molded me to him. Reyn's hot look of determined conquest was nothing like this man's easy sweep of the crowd.

My own face flushed, and it suddenly felt hot in here, crowded and too bright, too loud. I looked for Incy and after a moment saw him standing next to a beautiful girl. She was smiling, wide-eyed, gazing into his dark, dark eyes. She was almost as tall as him and wearing less dress than I was, a strapless mini in deep lilac satin with beading around the top and bottom edges. Incy was leaning close to her, murmuring, and she cast her eyes down as if his words scandalized and tantalized at the same time. Which was probably exactly what they were doing.

As I watched him murmuring into her ear, I saw her eyes glaze over and wondered how much she'd had to drink, and if Incy would take advantage of that. I'd certainly seen him do that before-though usually his own personal charisma was enough to make people drop willingly at his feet. In this room alone, there were probably about thirty people, male and female, who would happily go home with him if he simply asked them.

I almost smiled as I pictured how easily Incy could persuade people to do anything. We'd gotten out of more traffic tickets than I could count, refunds on expired items, hotel rooms when the place was fully booked. He'd been talking people out of their clothes, money, connections, and influence for as long as I had known him.

I straightened, hit by a disturbing thought, and just then the girl slumped. Okay, she'd had too much to drink. As I watched, Incy gracefully guided her down onto a small brocade couch against the wall, and I thought, Good, he isn't going to try to hustle her out of here. He was making the right choice, and I was pleased. I smiled as he thoughtfully leaned her head over to rest on the couch's arm, and that was when I saw it: his smile of triumph.

For a couple of seconds I didn't understand. Then a chill washed over me, as if I were standing beneath a glacier. Noooo... Incy's face. His look of triumph. The girl slumped over, her slight chest moving erratically with uneven breathing. Incy stood, gazing down at the girl. He inhaled deeply. His eyes were bright, his skin glowing. He looked... like we all looked after a circle, at River's Edge: full of life. Full of magick. My breath lodged in my throat like a piece of wood.

It looked like he'd used magick on her, a regular person. Everyone, everything, has power, whether or not they're immortal. Immortals had a lot more. Incy had murmured a spell into this girl's ear and taken hers. I wasn't positive, I had no real proof, but something deep inside me said, Yep. That's what he did.

For a minute I stood there like one of those overpriced statues, my gla.s.s half raised to my lips. But current Incy had seemed so different. He'd seemed fine and really not evil. Was he as dark as I had once suspected? What was he doing? I started toward them and was immediately blocked by a small throng of people surrounding a painting while someone talked about it. I peered through them, seeing Incy glide away from the girl. Was she alive? Had he killed her? Increased alarm doused my pleasant alcohol feeling as I tried to squeeze between two suits. What would I do if she were dead? What would I do if magick could save her and I didn't know enough?

I finally pushed rudely through the crowd and when I came out on the other side I saw two girls leaning over their friend, shaking her shoulder. The girl on the couch blinked slowly and sat up with difficulty. I slowed my approach. She wasn't dead. Her friends were laughing, teasing her about drinking too much, and she just shook her head and looked confused. I heard her friend say, "Get a taxi, get you into bed, lame-o," and I hoped she would be okay. In fact she was able to stand, and with her friends' help left the gallery on her feet.

I didn't know how she would be tomorrow.

I didn't know how Incy had learned to do that.

I didn't know how I could live with it.

So what would I do now?

CHAPTER 20.

That night, in keeping with my tradition of dreaming about whomever I'm not with, I dreamed about River's Edge. I was standing by the fence that kept deer out of the vegetable garden. I was dressed all in black, with my old motorcycle boots, the ones that had a hiding place in one heel to hold my taraksin. In my dream I felt the heat and weight of my amulet radiating up from my heel to my leg.

I was watching River and Reyn working on River's old red pickup that looked like it was from the early sixties. Maybe it was. River was in the driver's seat, leaning out the window so she could hear Reyn's instructions. Reyn was bent over the open hood, doing manly things with tools. I saw them speak to each other but couldn't hear. I leaned against the fence, striving for nonchalance, and I waited for them to see me, so I could snub them.

The plan was to look marginally surprised when they spoke to me and then be cool and disinterested as they urged me to come back. I would tell them I had better places to be, better people to be with. I would say that I was waiting for my friends to come get me. They would be disappointed, crestfallen.

Then a car would drive up. I'd climb into the darkened backseat, and say, "Adios."

Except they never noticed me. I stood by the fence until my legs ached, until I was achy with standing, and they never turned to see me.

So I'd walked closer, still nonchalant, waiting for their faces to light up, so I could conspicuously not light up in return.

I felt the vibrations of the truck engine trying to turn over, but there was still no sound. I was in a cone of silence, separated from everything.

I went very close to them, dropping all pretense of nonchalance, walking right up. I spoke to them, but no sound came out of my mouth. I tried to grab Reyn's arm, and though I saw my hand reaching out, it never got to him-just kept reaching out endlessly. Now I was shouting, trying to smack my hand on the truck, trying to grab River's shoulder, trying to hit Reyn, but I was silent and alone, affecting no one.

When I woke up, my face was wet, my throat was sore, and all my muscles throbbed as if I'd been standing in a field for hours.

I had no idea what it meant. If you figure it out, drop me a line.

"What girl?" Incy's face was genuinely, sincerely confused.

"The girl from the gallery last night," I said.

"Which gallery?"

"I guess it was probably the only gallery we went to," I said. His eyes searched mine. He wasn't used to me questioning anything he did. Until a few months ago, I'd found everything he did pretty funny. Former me was easygoing, nonjudgmental, acquiescent. I'd built up a snarky abrasiveness for outsiders, which had come into full play at River's Edge. But I almost never used it on Innocencio.

"Okay, what girl?" Totally perplexed. Complete furrowing of the brow.

We were in my room with the door closed; I hadn't wanted to confront Incy in front of the others. I still felt weirdly like an outsider. After decades of totally belonging with this group, they now seemed like one thing, and I like another. It was only temporary, of course. Probably only in my imagination. But I felt reluctant to shake things up.

It was early evening; we were getting ready to go out to dinner. After I'd woken up this morning in the throes of my dream, the next thing that hit me was that my tarak-sin was still back at River's. I'd never known what its traditional name was-it had always just been my mother's amulet. Now that I knew, I felt even more lost without it. I could try to get it back. I definitely could. But should I? It was dark. It would make my own darkness stronger. I believed that. I longed for it but was still afraid of its power over me. Ugh.

After that, my dismay and horror over what I thought Incy had done last night washed over me like dirty dishwater, and I felt worse. Last night I hadn't had a chance to question him about it-he and Katy had gone to a club right after that. I'd realized how antisocial I felt and had gone back to the hotel. I had no idea what Boz, Cicely, and Stratton had done.

I hadn't fled Boston, though. Hadn't caught the first flight out of there. I was trying to... run less these days. But after thinking about it all afternoon, I'd decided to put some of my emotional progress into motion: to confront someone about an issue, instead of ignoring it or seething silently with anger. Thumbs-up, River!

Not that it was easy. I'd debated confronting Incy all day. On the one hand, I felt I had to; on the other hand, I dreaded the outcome. It wasn't that Incy and I had never argued. We had. And always made up. But for the most part, we let each other do what we wanted to do, without lectures or questions. But maybe that had only been because I'd refused to see what we were actually doing.

I sat down on the boudoir chair in the bathroom and reached for tonight's beautiful Manolo Blahniks: leopard-print peep-toes piped with hot pink. As soon as I started learning magick again, I was going to get a couple of anti-blister spells under my belt, for sure.

I was stalling. I'd rehea.r.s.ed what to say, but now it all seemed too abrupt. A small, unevolved part of me wanted to just not think about it, not worry about it, pretend nothing was wrong. In the past, that was what I had done. But you know, Eve had eaten the apple from the Tree of Knowledge, blah, blah, blah....

I put on my metaphorical big-girl panties. "Incy. Last night I saw you whispering in a girl's ear-"

He grinned at himself in the mirror and smoothed his hair. "I whispered in many girls' ears last night. Oh, did I tell you who I saw at Carly's? Have you been to Carly's bar? Tiny and squalid and perfect-"

"This one was tall, in a lilac strapless dress," I broke in. "You whispered in her ear, and she smiled, and then her eyes glazed over and she slumped onto the couch. When you straightened up, you looked like you'd just drunk an... energy drink or something."

He tilted his head. "Energy drink? They're disgusting. Have you tried one? Why would I drink that?"

I took a breath, feeling increasing trepidation about pressing him on this.

"Innocencio." I made my voice gentle. Maybe he just needed help, like I had. And I would save him, and we would laugh about it a hundred years from now. Maybe. "You used magick to take that girl's life force, her chi, or whatever. You took it from her so you would be stronger. You sucked energy out of her."

Innocencio looked at me steadily, two pairs of black eyes locked on each other. In the hundred years I'd been looking into those eyes, had I never seen their depths? Part of me felt that our whole relationship had just shifted somehow. The air around us seemed charged, almost electric, and Incy seemed subtly on guard.

"Nas. I don't know what you're talking about." Not a hint of falseness. Solid as a brick, looking at me head-on. I'm a world-cla.s.s liar, and I can detect bulls.h.i.t from a hundred yards away. Though I was looking for it now, willing to see it now, I wasn't. It was weird. He frowned. "Wait-you mean the drunk girl?" he asked.

"She wasn't drunk." I stood up and looked at myself in the mirror, fluffing my cartoon hair with my fingers. Tonight I was wearing a sleeveless Alexander w.a.n.g hot-pink satin jumpsuit with a hoodie and a wide leopard-print belt with three buckles. The four-inch heels made me a respectable five foot seven. I looked like a club-goer with too much money. If anyone at River's Edge could see me now... they probably would wonder why they'd ever bothered.

"Okay, no, she wasn't drunk, but the daisy she'd popped wasn't doing her any favors." He leaned closer to the mirror and ran a hand over his chin to see if he needed to shave.

"What do you mean?"

"I was teasing her about staying sober, the better to enjoy my wares, so to speak, and she giggled and said it was too late, that the daisy would be kicking in anytime now. And by George it did, with a vengeance." He shrugged and used one finger to smooth his strong, dark eyebrows. "I moved on to more interesting challenges."

A daisy was a powerful narcotic, popular in clubs. It was round, yellow in the middle and white around the outside, like a daisy. It would have knocked her for a loop, made her act the way she had.

If she had taken it.

I felt in my gut that Incy had used magick on her-in the last two months I'd seen a lot of people in the various throes of magick, and I felt he had. The way that I could now sense a person's energy as he or she approached me or stood outside my room; the way the air felt alive, vibrant in a room where magick had been worked. The way I'd been able to feel the dark smokiness of ancient power drifting off my tarak-sin as if from a stick of incense. All those senses had been awakened, developed, during my short time at River's Edge. And I trusted them.

"Okay, say she took a daisy," I said, putting on moon-drop pearl earrings. The overhead light glinted on my emerald ring as I shut the clasp. Incy leaned against the doorway of the bathroom, humoring me, elegant in his John Varvatos trousers and striped fisherman sweater. "That doesn't explain why you looked the way you did. You looked... full of magick, full of power."

Innocencio smiled easily, coming to stand behind me, his hands on my shoulders. We looked at each other in the mirror. "Why, thank you, my dear. I'm flattered. I wish I could take credit for that, but I'm afraid it was probably the whiskey I was knocking back, coupled with the somewhat unnecessary heating of that packed gallery. I thought a lot of people were looking kind of glowy and dewy, if you know what I mean."

What a facile explanation. Which I would have totally bought, in the past, if I had even questioned him, which I wouldn't have. I opened my mouth again, and he leaned forward, reaching his hand around my neck to put a finger gently against my lips. "Nas. Are you worried about me?" he asked softly. "The way I was worried about you?" He looked into my eyes, and I could see, absolutely see, the love shining there. "I can't tell you how much that means to me, how much I've missed it. You're worried about me. You don't want me to get into trouble. You want me to be, for lack of a better word, a better man. Right?"

I let out a breath. "Yes. I guess so." I felt confused at the conversation's sudden left turn.

"Thank you." He pressed a kiss on my bare shoulder. "With you by my side, I'm the best I can be. I know I am. And now you're back, to keep me centered. You care about me." He really did look happy at that thought.

"Yes, of course. You know that," I said, feeling like we'd gotten off track somehow. I'd wanted to say- "Don't worry. Be happy," he said, quoting an old song. He squeezed my shoulders again, looking cheerful, then strode out and threw open my bedroom door. "Is everyone ready?" he bellowed.

I looked at myself in the mirror, not knowing what to think. That hadn't gone the way I'd planned. How had he brushed aside my concerns so easily? I shook my head at the Nas in the mirror. "You don't know anything," I whispered. Then I grabbed my cashmere wrap and headed out into the suite's living room.

The gang was all there; everyone but Stratton was spiffed up. He was wearing an old sweatshirt and a pair of jeans, his thick brown hair untidy and adorable.

"You're not coming with?" I asked.

"Nope," he said. "Game tonight. Play-off. Going to watch it down the street at Paddy's. I'll try to get someone to carry me home. But you guys be good." He grinned and sort of danced sideways toward the door of the suite.

I couldn't help laughing. He was like a big, handsome bear, especially compared to Incy's and Boz's sleekness. It was a relief to be out here with the others, instead of having a difficult conversation with Incy. "Stratton-way American, buddy," I said.

He danced backward out of the suite, and we heard him singing as he went down the hall.

"Since when does he like basketball?" I asked.

"Ye G.o.ds, even I know it's football," Cicely said, lighting a cigarette.

"It's weird. He's developed a fascination with American football," Boz said. He picked some cookies off the afternoon tea tray and ate one. "I'm worried he's going to want to play it."

"I guess he could," I said. "He could play pretty hard and not worry about injury too much."

"Ruggers," Boz stated, tossing a cookie in the air and catching it expertly. "Whoa, two points! You see that?"

"Yeah, 'cause you only had a couple of centuries to perfect that move," I said drily, and he threw a cookie at me. It fell in my lap, and I ate it.