Tension slammed into me and my pulse ratcheted up. Valdis only ever reacted to two things—evil and danger.
Whatever it was, it wasn’t my father; I would have felt his return. I licked suddenly dry lips and breathed deep, trying to keep the fear at bay as I listened. I couldn’t hear anything—couldn’t smell anything—and as a half-wolf, I would have. But there were things in both this world and the others that had neither scent nor smell nor form, and it wasn’t out of the question for one of those things to be hunting me. The Aedh could traverse the gray fields—the unseen lands that divide this world from the next—as easily as the reapers, and those who’d trained as priests could also control the magic of the gates. The Raziq were rogue priests. It wouldn’t be beyond them to free something from the dark path and fling it after me.
Although I couldn’t actually imagine them doing that when they still needed me to find the keys.
Valdis grew brighter, sending flashes of electric blue light across the pale walls. Azriel silently drew her from the sheath at his back and held her at the ready. The blade hummed with every movement. “Someone comes.”
“I gathered that.” I dropped the papers and the items I’d gathered from the two safes onto the desk, then looked around for some sort of weapon. But with the house cleaned for sale, there really wasn’t anything left. Not that Mom had ever had weapons in the house, anyway.
Which meant I’d have to rely on my own fighting skills, damn it. Because while I could fight, I preferred not to.
It wasn’t cowardice, merely practicality. I’d learned the hard way that I was never going to be as good as a guardian, despite the fact that I’d been trained by two of the best.
I flexed my fingers, then said, “What is it?”
“Vampire.”
I blinked in surprise. “A vampire? Really?”
He nodded, glancing at me. “You sound relieved.”
“I am. I mean, vampires can be nasty, but I wouldn’t put them in the same league as something that’s crawled from the gates of hell.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” an-all-too-familiar voice said from the hallway. “I could name quite a few people who would consider me far worse than any nightmare hell has ever produced.”
I closed my eyes and swore softly. This day was definitely going from bad to worse. Because the vampire out in the hall was the one and only Madeline Hunter, queen bee of the Directorate, major vampire supremo, and a woman deadlier than almost anything on the planet.
She sauntered through the doorway, her light steps leaving little trace in the thick carpet. She was a small, slender woman with longish dark hair and startling green eyes, but those eyes were as icy and as remote as her near perfect features.
“I never knew you and Mom were friends.” I crossed my arms and watched her warily. I might have agreed to work with this woman—or at least the council she represented—but that didn’t mean I had to trust her.
And Valdis’s reaction emphasized just how accurate my gut reaction was.
“We weren’t. But she, at least, had some manners.”
Which was a not-too-subtle dig at the fact that I’d refused her entry into my apartment a couple of months ago. “Mom gave up teaching me manners when I was a teenager. And I can tell you right now, they’re not about to improve anytime soon.”
Not where she was concerned, anyway. I had a bad feeling I was going to need my bolt-hole, and Hollywood had at least gotten the whole threshold-and-vampires thing right.
Amusement touched the corners of her lips but never cracked the ice in her eyes. Her gaze flicked to the warm presence beside me. “I gather this is your reaper?”
“This is Azriel, yes.” I didn’t bother pointing out that he wasn’t actually mine, simply because no one seemed to listen. “Azriel, this is—”
“Madeline Hunter,” he finished, and bowed slightly. “You walk a dark path, vampire. Beware of overstepping your own boundaries.”
She raised a dark eyebrow. “And would that be advice or warning, reaper?”
“Both.” He sheathed a still-glowing Valdis and glanced at me. “I shall leave.”
If you need me, call. The words were unsaid, but I heard them nonetheless. I nodded, and he winked out of existence.
Hunter’s gaze returned to mine. Her scent—a faint mix of jasmine, bergamot, and sandalwood—was surprisingly pleasant. But it sent a chill down my spine, because nothing about this woman was ever pleasant.
“Why would my mother invite you into her home?” She’d hated Hunter. Hated and feared her. I never really knew why, although maybe it was as simple as sensing that my destiny would be tied to hers.
“Because, technically, she was in my employ, just as you are.” Hunter pulled back one of the visitors chairs near the front of the desk and sat down, crossing her legs elegantly. “In fact, your mother and I had many a pleasant discussion in this very room.”
Yeah, I believed that about as much as I believed in the Easter bunny. “About what?”