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“Well, we’re not using mine!” Caleb said angrily.
“I’ll buy you another one—”
“I don’t want another one! I’ve had this coat for twelve damn years—”
“Then perhaps it’s time for an upgrade,” I pointed out, grabbing a sleeve.
“Like hell! I just got it spelled the way I like—”
“I’ll help you spell a new one,” Pritkin told him, tugging at the back.
“Get off me!”
“Caleb,” I put a hand on his arm. “Please?”
He looked at me and his lips tightened. “You’re damn right you will,” he told Pritkin. “And none of those little pansy-ass spells, either. I want the good stuff.”
“You can make me a list.”
“Fuckin’ A I’ll make you a list,” Caleb muttered, and stripped off his coat. “You know, legend or not, you’re still a royal pain in my ass.”
Pritkin nodded approvingly. “Now you’re getting the idea.”
Chapter Thirty
Five minutes later, Pritkin and I were haring across a dark parking lot that was rapidly becoming less so as sunrise toyed with the horizon. But nobody was around, and we had enough darkness left to get away clean and things seemed to be looking up. Until I put a hand on the door of his beat-up jalopy—and froze.
Draped over the passenger seat and trailing halfway onto the floor was Pritkin’s battered old potion belt. It was just a strip of worn leather, darkened in places from handling, with the nicks and scratches you’d expect from long use. A few enchanted vials filled with sludgy substances were still in place, like oversized bullets on a bandolier. Others had been used in the fight, leaving lighter places on the leather, like a toddler with missing teeth.
There was nothing remotely sexy about it. But I had a sudden, visceral image of the last time I’d seen it, arcing against the night as it was thrown over the front seat of the car. And I shivered, hard.
Pritkin glanced at me sharply, and his face tensed. “It will pass,” he said roughly, and threw the belt in back.
I bit my lip and nodded, which was pretty much all I could do with a sensory memory of pleasure ripping through me. It tightened my body, blurred my vision and sent goose bumps washing over my skin in waves. It was . . . shockingly realistic. He was on the opposite side of the car, not touching me, not even close. But suddenly, I could smell his scent, taste his sweat, feel his lips on my skin. They were warm and soft, unlike the hard fingers digging into my hips as he held me in place, as he—
I made a small sound and shuddered again, my breathing picking up, my hand tightening on the side of the car hard enough to hurt. I prized my fingers off and wrapped my arms around myself and rode it out. I was suddenly really grateful for the trench, which was too thick and too loose to show any inconvenient signs of my little flashback.
After a minute, I got in, not because it had stopped, but because cars were starting to come back in larger numbers, popping out of the ley line in strobes of blue-white light, sending cracks like thunder echoing against the building. Pritkin put the car into gear and we pulled out the normal way, I guess to avoid the metaphysical traffic jam. We eased through a fence, a ward rippling around us like water, and slid into the empty streets of predawn Vegas.
This far out, it was mostly asphalt and industrial buildings, in between empty lots of hard-packed red soil, a few desert plants and blacktop. It didn’t look much like the glitzy, glittery city of the tourist brochures, but it had a stark kind of beauty nonetheless. Distant scarlet veils of dust turned the sunrise spectacular and painted the buildings in black and gold. I watched the landscape pass by blearily, so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open, and so aroused I wanted to scream.
Yeah, this was fun.
“This didn’t happen last time,” I finally said, mostly as a distraction.
“I didn’t feed as completely last time,” Pritkin told me, as I tried to control my breathing and failed utterly.
I swallowed. “How . . . how long?”
“Usually five or ten minutes. Do you want to stop?”
“No!” The only thing keeping me from grabbing him was the fact that he was driving.
He didn’t say anything for a moment, and I concentrated on not writhing against the seat. It didn’t go so well. I wiped my hands on the skirt of the trench and left sweaty palm prints on the beige fabric. I stared at them, teary-eyed and hurting and desperate. God, if this didn’t stop soon, I was going to go completely—
“After Ruth died, I went somewhat mad for a time,” Pritkin said suddenly.
I blinked, because that had come completely out of the blue. And almost read my mind. “Y-you did?”
