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“But now I see you’re just an old, tired woman,” he said. “Old, tired, and lost.”
He slowly lowered himself down, a controlled collapse, and I saw the pupils of his golden eyes growing wider.
“You kill with poison,” he said. “Don’t you?”
That was what I had been about to tell Ellie, before Karathrax had revealed himself. Before you touch the arrows, I want you to learn precautions against the poison. Because every wicked edge had been tainted with it, a poison that felled dragons and humans alike.
It had sliced my hands, as I’d caught it.
It had sliced open the tendons at the backs of his legs. A death sentence for us both.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and it came from some secret, true, dark place inside me. “She was magnificent. You were all magnificent. And we were wrong to destroy you. I know that. I knew it then.”
And in the end, Karathrax reached for my hand, and we lay in the hot, comforting afternoon, growing cold in the sun together.
“Murderer,” he murmured before his eyes fluttered closed.
My heartbeat slowed, slowed, and in the instant before it stopped, I thought, Guilty.
No doubt the Pope would have disagreed.
He would have been wrong.
Rachel Caine is the New York Times bestselling author of the popular Weather Warden series and the young adult Morganville Vampires series. She has another series, Outcast Season, which began in 2009 with the novel Undone. In addition, Rachel has written paranormal romantic suspense for Silhouette, including Devil’s Bargain, Devil’s Due, and Athena Force: Line of Sight (which won a 2007 RT Reviewers’ Choice Award). Visit her Web site: www.rachelcaine.com. MySpace: www.myspace.com/rachelcaine.
DARK LADY
by P. N. ELROD
My name is Jack Fleming. I am owned by a nightclub. As a sideline I have been known to help damsels in distress, though in my experience the damsels of the Windy City are well able to look after themselves. Now and then I’ll step in, against my better judgment, and attempt to lend a hand; just call me Don Quixote with fangs.
CHICAGO, APRIL 1938
“Myrna,” I said to the apparently empty room, “you are the pip.”
Myrna wouldn’t leave the office radio alone and kept changing the station to dance music when I wanted to hear the sports scores. I’d dial it back, but soon as I sat down, she’d switch to dance music again.
“Five minutes,” I said, twisting the knob. “Just lemme listen for five minutes, then pick whatever you like.”
She gave no reply until I was behind my desk, then Bing Crosby crooned from the speaker, smooth as butter, the volume twice as high as normal.
“Okay. You win. Just turn it down so I can work.”
After a moment, the volume eased. She’d made her point.
Arguing with a dame gets you nowhere fast.
Arguing with a ghost dame who happens to be haunting your nightclub is just plain screwy, but some nights I’m a slow learner.
I could imagine her putting on a smug smile, though I had no idea what she looked like. She’d been a lady bartender killed by shrapnel from a fragmentation grenade during a gang war that began and ended years before I bought the building. The bloodstain marking where she’d bled to death was visible on the floor behind the lobby bar. I’d replaced the tiles a few times, but the stain always reappeared.
Myrna was quirky, but as ghosts go—and I don’t have much experience—she was okay. She seemed to like me and my friends, and even helped out at the club’s bar, moving bottles around. Sometimes she played with the lights, which was hell when we had a stage show going, but I didn’t mind much. She was usually undemanding, comfortable company, just not at present.
Maybe she was bored. I could sympathize. The nights got long for me, too, though I had worldly distractions to keep me busy.
I hammered various keys on my adding machine, pulled the lever, then wrote the result into the correct ledger column. It being Sunday night, my club was closed, and I used the time to check stocks and balance the books. The place was quiet, except for the radio.
Myrna must have changed her mind: Bing’s voice faded and ceased altogether with a soft click. The dial no longer glowed. She’d switched it off, which was odd. I held still and listened, and downstairs in the chrome-trimmed lobby a visitor rapped insistently on the front door.
