Grave Intentions (Darkling Mage 3)

Madam Chien brushed me aside with a surprisingly powerful stroke of her arm as she went to examine the bloodied shard. “I don’t judge,” she said, an absent grin in the corners of her lips. “It’s a very modern arrangement,” she continued, waggling her eyebrows at Sterling, then at me.

Sterling nodded. “I know, right? So progressive.”

“Please stop,” I said. “There’s nothing going on between – ”

Madam Chien waved a hand. “So you can find my peach?”

Sterling looked to Prudence for an answer.

“A jade peach,” Prudence said. “It’s an heirloom artifact, passed down from our ancestors. Its enchantment is very specific – most mages won’t even find a use for it. But it belongs to our family.”

“And it passes to Mei Ling next,” Madam Chien said. “If only she would marry.”

“Grandma!”

Madam Chien’s features hardened, and I braced myself for another angry Mandarin tirade, but it didn’t come. “I don’t care if you marry this wolf boy here. Times are changed. Did I ask you to find a Chinese boy? No. But I want to see you married before I die,” she said, a patently false tremble in her voice. “And wolf boy will do. He will give you tall, strong babies.” She sniffed. “Latin American-Chinese babies. Very modern.”

“So progressive,” Sterling cooed.

“We should track down the culprit,” Gil said, his ears flaming red, his smile so fake and tight he could have ground his teeth down to powder.

“No. No.” Madam Chien shook her finger for emphasis. “You stay here with me, with Prudence. You help me clean up, close shop. Blood boy and his boyfriend can track down the peach.”

“I swear nothing’s happening – ”

“Come on, sweetheart,” Sterling trilled, slinging an arm over my shoulder. “Let’s go kill your doppelganger.”

Chapter 7

Sterling held the bloodied glass shard in front of him like a totem. It glinted in the streetlight as we moved, a crimson diamond in the palm of his hand. Every so often he would hold it up to his face, sniffing quietly, or flicking his tongue out to sample the blood. Then he’d point down a street or an alleyway, following the shard like it was a dowsing rod.

I was pretty sure he had no idea what the fuck he was doing. Either that, or there was a vampire bloodhound quality to him that I’d never known about. I left the possibility open. There was still so much that I needed to learn about the arcane and the supernatural, after all.

He wasn’t afraid of silver, for example, which was why he wore so muc

h damn jewelry, like the wannabe rockstar that he was. He was a fan of garlic, especially when Mama Rosa made up a batch of beef salpicao, which was essentially beef drowned in butter, Worcester sauce, and garlic.

Sunlight was devastatingly dangerous for him, though, something I’d seen him suffer twice. That second time totally didn’t involve a harebrained gambit that also resulted in the destruction of an artifact belonging to the Japanese sun goddess Amaterasu. Based on our playful and often wildly offensive banter, I knew that both fire and a stake in the heart could kill him, too.

Sterling held the shard up again, looking through it like a lens, or maybe he was studying the blood, gleaning whatever there was to glean from the bare traces of it that remained.

“This way,” he said. And like a moron I followed along without a word.

Despite never hearing about his blood-sensing skills, I knew that Sterling was a seasoned hunter. He was a beast of prey, at heart, something which fundamentally allowed him and Gil to get along in spite of their differences in attitude. It was weird knowing that the gentlest member of the Boneyard, at least before Asher came along, was our resident werewolf.

But again, what linked the two of them was the fact that they were both truly, innately killers, apex predators at the top of their respective food chains. In a way I was almost relieved that Gil hadn’t come along, because when we found Other-Dustin, between the three of us, there was a good chance he was going to end up dead. And I had questions.

If it truly was Thea, then we would have a fight on our hands. But again it was so unlikely. Smashing shit up just wasn’t her style. If this impostor was someone – or, let’s be realistic here, something else – then Sterling would want to play his wicked games.

It was bizarre how territorial he could get about the Boneyard and its constituents, but I was getting the impression that vampires were clannish like that. Even Carver said so. It was strange to think of Sterling as less of a monster knowing that part of him valued his tribe so much, how absolutely fucking feral he got each time we encountered Bastion, knowing he was such a threat. And if tonight meant that we would be in danger –

“We’re close,” he muttered.

I looked around, chewing my lip as I understood exactly where “close” was. We’d wound up on the edge of the Gridiron somehow, Valero’s industrial district, no small feat considering we’d gone the entire way on foot.

“Are you sure about this?” I gathered my jacket around myself, shuddering. I didn’t think to wear anything thicker, not imagining that we would spend so much time away from the Boneyard, but it was well past midnight by then.

“You’ve got your magic, I’ve got mine.”