Delusion in Death (In Death 35)

“I was thinking, before your telepathy woke you up, how pretty you are. Then, since you woke up, I figured I might as well take advantage of you.”

“It’s appreciated.”

“You were probably almost ready to get up anyway, to slink off and start the first stage of your daily world domination.”

He glanced toward the clock. “Ah well, I’ll have to get a late start on that today.”

“I’d better get started on my daily hunt for bad guys.”

“Let’s have coffee in bed first.”

She liked the sound of it. “Who gets up to get i

t?”

“That’s a question. Rock, paper, scissors?”

“You’ll cheat.”

“How?”

“It’s the telepathy.”

“Ah yes. Then you might as well get it, as you’ll lose anyway.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” She shifted enough to hold out a fist. He held out his in turn. Counted to three.

“Damn it,” she mumbled as his paper covered her rock.

She rolled out of bed, fed the cat as she programmed the coffee.

“Tell me about the dream.”

“It was weird. Mixed up. All this digging into the Urbans. That’s where I was, here in New York.”

She brought the coffee back, told him.

“I was so pissed, but not … I don’t know. Upset? I don’t know if that’s the word. But I kept looking at her, listening to her. Bitch, bitch, bitch. Blame, blame, blame. And there’s Mira, so calm. Unshakable, the way she can be. Part of my head’s thinking, look how different they are. Like opposite sides. And Mira had some bad shit in her life, but it didn’t turn her into some monster. I didn’t let Stella turn me. So what has she got? She’s got nothing but what I let her have. I know it. I always did. But …”

“What happened in Dallas was vicious. You had to work through it.”

“I know it took a piece out of you, too. And I know the time since hasn’t been easy for you. It’s going to be better.”

“I can see it.”

“She wasn’t going to walk off with that kid, or hurt her. Then when I saw it was Bella. Jesus. Over my dead body, you worthless cunt.” Eve took a breath. “She wanted me to shoot her. It’s weird, right? Even though it’s my dream, my inner whatever running the show, she wanted me to shoot her, then it’s like I killed her. I guess there was some stupid little seed of guilt in there I had to dig out and crush. Punching her felt so damn good. Mira’d probably have something to say about that.”

“I believe she’d say, Brava.”

“It’s going to be like it was with Troy, when I worked through that. She may come back, but she can’t hurt me anymore. That’s done.”

He lowered his forehead to hers. “I can’t tell you what it means to me.”

“You don’t have to. There’s probably some crap in here that still needs shoveling, but everybody’s got crap, right? It’s what you do about it. Choices. I’ve got to take a good look at mine, at some point. And now, I’ve got to start looking at choices people made in the Urbans that helped build the maze that led to the choices Callaway’s made.”

“As I said, some dream.”

“You got telepathy, I’ve got dreams. And I’m going to use them to kick some ass.”