Page 57 of Bitter Spirits

Black edged her vision. She didn’t blink but simply let her lips curl up. “Your point?”

A heartbeat, two, the black seeping closer. Then the collar around her neck loosened.

Without breaking eye contact, she drew in a subtle breath. Behind Angel, a woman, maybe in her early twenties, with dark hair and eyes, crept closer, her need to exact vengeance filling Isa’s nose like an irresistible perfume and forcing her to function on two levels at once. She held Angel’s gaze for a long moment, knowing he had pulled back his magic as she had pulled hers, leaving them in a standoff.

Angel broke the heavy silence first, his voice flat, like the reptilian sheen in his eyes. “You were asking questions of Nova. Why?”

Still feeding on Isa’s magic, the wraith’s form took on depth, inching closer to Angel. Isa tried to watch it without being obvious. “There have been a couple of incidents. I wanted to know if they were one-offs or if they were something to be worried about.”

He cocked his head. “And how would these incidents be associated with me?”

The wraith was right behind Angel now, still invisible to mortal eyes, but that wouldn’t last. Needing it to stay unseen, Isa locked her magic down, cutting off its food source. The wraith’s head whipped up, and its fathomless eyes latched on to her as the mouth twisted open in a silent, furious scream.

Isa slowly got to her feet. “I didn’t say they were.”

Angel matched her movement, rising from his chair. “Where do you think you’re going?”

She motioned to the kitchen. “To get some water.”

“¡Siéntate!” He watched her sink back down to the couch. “I’ll get it.” He swept past her to the kitchen.

She eyed the front door as she listened to a refrigerator open then close. Meanwhile, the agitated wraith spun through the living room, working itself into a frenzy.

Enough. She flexed her power, forcing the wraith to slow.

“Go ahead, chiquita.” Angel appeared in the opening and leaned a shoulder against the wall. The wraith zeroed in on him, forgetting Isa for the moment. He held out a plastic bottle of water. “Try it.”

The door is spelled. Good to know. She stood and walked the few steps necessary to take the sealed bottle from him. Her fingers wrapped around the cool plastic and tugged.

He didn’t let it go. “What? No thank-you?”

The plastic creaked under her fingers, but she stared into his smug face and stayed silent, waiting him out. A long moment passed, his amusement replaced by a flash of irritation before he let the bottle go. She took it, turned away, and unscrewed the top then dropped it on the entry table. She turned back to see that Angel had moved back into the living room. She watched him reclaim his previous spot at the fireplace as she sipped the water, letting the cool liquid ease the ache in her throat.

He turned to her, keeping his body between her and the front door. “If you didn’t think these incidents, as you call them, were my doing, why ask my people questions?”

The wraith drifted in that space between Isa and Angel, twisting back and forth, torn between its need to get to Angel and its craving for the power Isa could feed it. “I took advantage of an unexpected opportunity.” It was hard to work on two levels at once, but she managed to keep the strain from her voice. “I had no idea he was going to take me to the Den. However, since I was there, and so was Nova, I figured I might as well see if she’d heard any rumors about a new drug.”

Her magic wrapped around the agitated wraith, shifting through broken memories with an unnatural speed. The details came together in a violent snapshot. The woman, Caro, arguing with him. Angel losing his temper, striking out. Then Caro stumbling back on her heels, balance gone as she fell, her head hitting the mantel’s edge with a sickening crack, and then the world fading as she crumpled into a boneless heap.

Isa concentrated on not crushing the plastic bottle in her hand as she raised it to her lips.

“A new drug?” His voice yanked her attention back to the room. “Why would she know anything about a new drug?”

Isa held the bottle partway up. “She’s a bartender. I’m a bartender. Something new hits the scene, it tends to spread.”

He canted his head. “And you thought that it had spread into my place?”

She shrugged and took another sip. In her mind, Caro’s demands were getting louder, crowding out Angel’s voice, a distraction Isa couldn’t afford. But she needed the wraith. Luckily, the wraith needed her. To get to Angel, Caro needed a physical body, and Isa had one to offer.

Bargain.

Caro stilled, her demands going silent as she considered Isa’s offer. Meanwhile, Angel drummed his fingers on the mantel. “You tried this before, chiquita. Remember how that ended?”

Holding that reptilian gaze without flinching, Isa set her plastic bottle carefully on the table. “How you set Danny up for the fall? Yeah, hard to forget.”

Cruel amusement flickered over his face. “There was no setup involved. Danny admitted it was his idea to run those drugs out of that business. He even shared how he lied to you to get you turn on me.” His fingers stopped, flattening out against the wood. “Which you did, breaking your father’s heart, my mother’s heart, and mine.” The last words carried an unmistakable threat.

Soul-deep aversion stripped her voice of pretense. “You don’t have a heart.”