Chapter Thirty-Three

Ten minutes later we drove toward the mansion.

“I really thought it would work,” I murmured.

“You raised her,” Diana said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“She wasn’t much help.”

“We know Henri has to commit the ultimate sacrifice to be cured.”

“We just don’t know what that is.”

Together we sighed.

I left them at the mansion and returned to my shop. Letting myself in the front door, once again I missed the sound of Lazarus’s slither. I was so alone here, and it was starting to prey on my mind.

Maybe it was all that had happened tonight, or all that hadn’t. I was slightly hysterical at the loss of my dream.

Which might have been why I didn’t notice there was a man in my room until he grabbed me. Hand to hand was not my thing; I was much better with a knife. Unfortunately, I’d left the weapon in my bag and my bag was still in the car.

Brains were clearly not my thing, either.

I stomped on his instep, heard a hiss of pain that sounded familiar, spun with the heel of my hand speeding toward his nose, and recognized the tangle of Murphy’s hair in the silvery light from the full moon shining through my open bedroom window.

He caught my wrist. “Where’ve you been?”

“Dammit, Murphy.” I tugged, but he wouldn’t let me go, instead drawing me closer. “I could have stabbed you.”

His free hand patted me down, lingering in places that would have gotten him a lawsuit if he’d actually been a cop. “With what? You don’t seem to be carrying.”

Suddenly I was so tired, so depressed, so damned sad and lonely, I wanted to cry. To my horror, I snuffled.

“Hey.” He leaned down to look into my face. Tears spilled onto my cheeks. “What happened?”

“I—I--I raised the voodoo queen from the dead.”

“Did you now? And I’d think that would be makin’ you happy, not sad.”

“Quit with the Irish,” I snapped.

“Sorry.”

“I raised her, but—”

Quickly I filled him in on the “but.”

“You’re saying the only reason Mezareau could raise such nonzombie zombies was because he was a werewolf?”

“Not a wolf. Leopard, I think.”

“Right. Wereleopard. You bet.”

“You don’t believe me.”

“Listen to yourself, Cassandra.”

“You saw the zombies, the waterfall, the baka. Yet you balk at believing in a wereleopard?”

“I have to draw the line somewhere,” he muttered.

“I killed him,” I said. “And ruined any chance of ever seeing Sarah again.”

“Maybe that’s not so bad.”

I shoved him away. “You’ve never loved anyone the way that I love her.”

“Obsessively?”

“I’m not being obsessive; I’m being a mother.”

“Same difference.”

“I can’t help it,” I said quietly.

“I know.”

“I thought you’d be lounging on a beach by now. Where have you been?”

“Around.”

I lifted a brow. “How informative.”

“I didn’t think you’d want to see me.” He brushed my cheek with his fingertips.

“Then why are you here?”

“Why do you think?”

I backed away, leaving his hand poised in the air, nowhere near my face. “For the diamond.”

He lowered his arm. “I’ve already got the diamond.”

“Where is it?”

“Safe.”

“Diana thinks there’s another member of the Egbo in town looking for the j ewel. We need to give it back.”

“Finders keepers.”

“You stole it!”

“What’s your point?”

I ignored the question because I’d had an idea. “If there’s a member of the Egbo, the leopard society, turning furry and running around New Orleans killing people, that’s a shape-shifter.”

“Don’t the Jäger-Suchers kill them?”

“Yes,” I said absently. “But maybe I can get it to kill me.”

“Cassandra,” he said softly. “You’re starting to worry me.”

“Only starting?”

He didn’t smile.

“I already know the ritual,” I said eagerly, “and it works; I proved that. But if I need to be a shape- shifter to raise the living dead, then that’s what I’ll become.”

“I won’t let you.”

“How are you going to stop me?”

He cursed in a language I didn’t understand, shoved his fingers through his hair, then took a few steps toward the window as if he meant to leave. I couldn’t blame him; I was irrational.

Instead of climbing out, he leaned on the sill, took a deep breath of the silvery night air, then laughed a little and turned.

He crossed the short distance between us before I realized he was coming, then yanked me into his arms and kissed me. I should have shoved him away, but I couldn’t. I needed him to touch me, to make me forget for just a little while that my life sucked and probably always would.

His mouth devoured mine, rough, reckless, tongues and lips and teeth at war. He seemed as desperate as I was, and I wasn’t sure why. But I wasn’t going to ask, either, maybe have him decide that this was such a bad idea.

His hands were everywhere, clever fingers stroking, teasing, arousing. His mouth beat a moist path across my j aw, to my neck.

“Cass,” he whispered.

I grabbed his head, lifted it, and muttered, “Don’t talk,” then crushed our lips together, tangling my fingers in his hair all the way to the scalp.

No one had ever called me Cass, probably because Cassandra wasn’t even my name, but having Murphy call me that put an intimacy on this relationship that frightened me.

Murphy and I were lovers without the love, partners without the trust. Basically we were two ships that banged each other in the night. If I weren’t careful, I’d sink to the bottom of depression ocean when he left. I couldn’t let myself care.

Sure he’d come back, even after he had the diamond, but that was for sex. I wasn’t so delusional that I thought a guy like Murphy and a voodoo priestess like me could ever find a life. Especially once I became a shape-shifter and raised a living zombie child.

I shoved that thought right out of my head. Talk about a mood killer.

In an attempt to feel something other than nothing, I focused on the sensations—his mouth, his hands against my skin, the drift of his hair along my cheek.

I stroked him through the loose khaki of his slacks, rolling my thumb over his tip, skated my fingernail down his length. He hissed in a breath and grabbed my wrist, but I twisted away.

Every time he tried to slow things down, I used all that I knew about sex, about him, to speed it up. Soon he was as crazy as I was and needed very little encouragement to toss off his clothes and tumble with me onto the bed.

Desperation clawed at my stomach, a desire to forget all in a mindless bout of sex, to feel alive when everything about me—my dreams, my child, my life—seemed dead.

My skin felt on fire, that familiar yet new sensation of being too small for my body. I put it down to the heat, the humidity, the arousal. I wanted to burst free, but I needed some help.

“Please,” I whispered, and guided him to me.

At first he followed my lead. Hard and fast, he made me forget everything but him and me, together like this.

I was close to the edge when he stilled, deep inside. “Look at me.”

I didn’t want to, but he refused to move. Even when I arched my back, attempting to create the friction I craved, he just used his superior weight and strength to hold me beneath him in a suspended state of arousal.

My hair itched; my nose ached; my very fingernails tingled. The only way to make it stop was to come, and unless I looked at him, that wasn’t going to happen.

I opened my eyes, ready to spit in anger, and he leaned forward, pressing his lips to my brow, my cheek, my chin. The gentleness of the gesture made my throat go thick with an emotion I refused to put a name to.

He sighed and tipped his forehead against mine. His hair shrouded our faces, creating a curtain that encased only us. Our breath mingled, his brushing my lips, making me shiver.

As the full moon spilled through the window, sprinkling silvery shadows everywhere, he flexed his hips just a little, just enough to touch me in ways I’d never been touched.

“Devon?” I whispered for the very first time, sensing something new, something frightening, just over the horizon.

The orgasm hit us both as the last thread of his name faded into the night. He shuddered in my arms; I shivered in his, and in the distance the shriek of a wild thing called to me.

Even while forgetting, I could not forget.

When the last tremors died, he rolled away, and I felt bereft. What was wrong with me? I’d never needed him to stay before.

I turned my head; he turned his.

“Thanks,” I said, which sounded crass, but he smiled.

“Jolis yeux verts,” he murmured, expression dopey with sleep.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Pretty green eyes,” he said, and drifted away.

I slid from the bed and hurried to the mirror. Staring out of my face were the bright green eyes of a jungle cat.