Even so, I took dauda-dagr out of the hidden inner sheath in my messenger bag and belted it around my waist before I ventured into the Wheelhouse. The first time I’d walked into this bar, I’d been on an investigation with Cody and the atmosphere was markedly hostile. But that was before Stefan had successfully squashed a rebellion and consolidated his power over the Outcast in Pemkowet. It was also before I’d killed two ghouls: poor Emma Sudbury’s deranged sister, Mary, and her . . . boyfriend, I guess, who I only ever knew as Ray D.
I hadn’t been in here since.
It hadn’t changed all that much. It was still a rough place where rough-looking guys in leather vests or jackets with Outcast motorcycle club colors gathered to shoot pool and drink beer, many of them with eyes that glittered a little too brightly in the dim light, watched by tired-looking mortal women who had histories of violence and hardship etched on their faces. But it was different. It felt different. Still dangerous, but somehow not quite as seedy, not quite as dissolute.
Huh.
“Hey, darlin’.” The blond kid from last night peeled himself off the wall he’d been leaning against. He checked me out with an impudent look. If I hadn’t known he was more than two hundred years old and had been hanged to death, it might have tickled me. “Here to see the big man himself, are you?”
“If he’s free.” I put out my hand. “Cooper, right?”
“Best you don’t.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He wore a chambray shirt with the sleeves cut off and his bare arms were thin and wiry. “Miss Daisy, right?”
“Right.” I was having a hard time reconciling his age with his appearance. “So no leathers for you, huh?”
“Haven’t passed the initiation yet.” He looked me up and down again, pupils flaring briefly in his angelic blue eyes. “No disrespect, m’lady, but you’re a wee mite to be carrying such a big dagger.”
“Yeah, well.” I laid my hand on dauda-dagr’s hilt. “You know what it can do, right?”
“Oh, I do!” Cooper flashed a grin that was at once charming and unnervingly fearless. “You’re the angel of death in a feckin’ ponytail. C’mon, I’ll take you to see him.”
I followed him to Stefan’s office in the rear of the bar. Patrons moved out of the way with alacrity. Cooper may not have been initiated into the motorcycle club yet, but he’d obviously gained their respect. No one here showed any inclination to challenge Stefan’s choice of lieutenant.
“Daisy.” Stefan rose to greet me. He sounded surprised. “Is everything well? I thought the situation resolved.”
“It is.” The room seemed to get smaller as Cooper exited and closed the door behind him. Conscious of Stefan’s gaze on me, I had a vivid and not entirely unwelcome memory of the hunger in it last night. Taking a deep breath, I suppressed it. “As Hel’s liaison, I came to offer my official thanks for your assistance.”
Stefan smiled.
It was a genuine smile, one that brought out the dimples he had no earthly right to possess. One that gave me a funny feeling in the pit of my stomach and made me wonder if that really was why I’d come here in the first place, and . . . oh, gah! What the hell was wrong with me, anyway?
“It was my pleasure, Hel’s liaison,” Stefan said. “I’m glad that you called upon me, and I hope you will not hesitate to do so again.”
“I won’t.”
“Good.” He sounded serious. “With practice, discipline, and will, the Outcast can become a force for order in this community, and learn to take sustenance in the process.”
See, he had me right up until the bit about taking sustenance, which unfortunately reminded me that I’d let Stefan take sustenance from me, which meant he was attuned to my emotions, and . . . um, yeah. That outburst of lust I’d let loose last night that had blown one of the Mamma Jammers’ amps? He’d probably sensed it. And maybe the bom-chicka-wow-wow that followed it.
My face got hot.
I don’t know how Stefan followed my train of thought, but he did. Hell, it probably wasn’t that hard. After all, he’d had centuries of practice. He smiled a little, but soberly, without dimples. “Your personal business is your own, Daisy,” he said in a quiet voice. “It is as I have said. Your emotions are exceedingly powerful. If you desire my aid in expressing them without consequence, I will gladly give it to you. But the bond between us does not exist for the sake of prurience, and I am capable of deflecting my awareness at need.”
Oh, my God, he totally knew. “Can it be broken?”
Stefan raised one eyebrow. “I assure you—”
“It’s okay.” I held up one hand—the left hand, letting him see the rune etched on my palm. “I believe you. But I have a right to know.”
He hesitated. “Not that I’m aware of, no. Even if there were a way, I would be reluctant.” He took a sharp breath, his pupils dilating in a rush. “Your position is not without its dangers, Daisy. It brings me a measure of comfort to know that if you are in distress, I will sense it.”
The memory of Stefan coming to my rescue, sword in hand, rose in my mind. Unfortunately, it was accompanied by the memory of Stefan impaling himself on that same sword, dying, and being restored to wholeness.
“Did it leave a scar?” I asked him. He looked blankly at me. “The sword. The other month, when you . . .” I touched my chest with my fingertips.
“No.” He shook his head. “No matter how many times we die, we remain as we were when we were first Outcast.”
“Oh.”
Stefan cleared his throat. “There is one method you may employ to deflect your own emotions from my awareness, and indeed, the awareness of others among the Outcast. It is a temporary measure, and one that requires discipline and concentration, but I can teach it to you if you wish.”
I thought about it. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
I ended up staying for a while. As it turned out, Stefan’s method was a lot like the creative visualization techniques my mom taught me when I was a kid, except instead of focusing on containing my emotions and getting rid of them—or wrapping them up to be dealt with later—it was about deflecting them. Stefan had me visualize a shield with an interior polished to mirror brightness and then hold it between us in my mind.
Sounds simple, right? Well, it wasn’t.
For one thing, I’d never seen a shield in real life. All I had to work from was movies. God knows I’d seen enough of them, but still, it wasn’t the same. Apparently, you had to be really precise about the details, and I kept waffling between one half-remembered vision—Perseus in Clash of the Titans, Captain America, Richard the Lionheart in various versions of Robin Hood—and another.
After an hour, Stefan gave up. “You’ve a good grasp of the concept, Daisy,” he said to me. “You just need to articulate your vision.”
“I know, I know.” My head was aching with the effort. “I’ll try looking online later. Or maybe the library has a good book on armor.”
Again, there was a brief hesitation. “I may be able to procure something that would assist you. Allow me some time to . . . assess the matter.”
That seemed a little unnecessarily cryptic, but then, that was par for the course among the eldritch. “Okay, thanks.” My phone buzzed. Glancing down, I saw that it was a text from Sinclair, and also that it was later than I’d realized. “I should really be going.”
“Of course.” Stefan inclined his head to me. “Thank you for the courtesy of your visit. It is appreciated.”
Cooper escorted me out of the bar, his hands shoved back into his pockets. Oddly enough, I felt safer in his presence than I did with any other ghoul except Stefan—and maybe even than with Stefan, come to think of it, since there was no risk of my being attracted to a skinny Irish kid who looked six or seven years younger than me. But between the fact that he’d died daring God and the deference with which the others treated him, I had a feeling he was pretty badass in his own right, and given the care he was taking not to touch me, I suspected he was rigorous about enforcing Stefan’s orders.
“How long have you known Stefan?” I asked him at the door.
“Oh, a while.” His narrow shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “Since the late eighteen hundreds, I reckon.” He gave me a challenging look. “He’s a good one, you know. Most of us aren’t.”
“Why is that?”
“Too easy to get bitter. It’s hard to have a good relationship with the world when you’re in it but not of it.” Cooper’s mouth twisted. “It passes us by. Even a vamp can turn a mate. All we can do is use ’em up and throw ’em away. Can’t even be with our own kind. You know how that goes.”
I did. A romance between two ghouls, like the late Mary and Ray, was doomed to set off a ravenous loop. “What about other immortals?” I asked him.
He shot me an amused look. “Going to fix me up with a nice dryad, are you? It’s no good.” He shook his head. “They won’t have us. Even if they did, it’s human we were, and it’s human companionship we crave.”
“I’m sorry.” Without thinking, I put my hand on his arm. Oops.
Cooper’s pupils waxed alarmingly, sending a jolt of fear through me. Licking his lips, he took a step backward, removed one hand from his pocket, and wagged a disapproving finger at me. “Don’t go giving me a taste, Miss Daisy. Not if you want you and me to be friends.”
“Sorry!” I tried raising my imaginary shield. Nope, still couldn’t get it quite right. “I didn’t mean to.”
“I know.” His pupils steadied anyway. “Go on, now. Mind yourself.”
Outside, the late-afternoon sun beating down on the parking lot intensified my headache. I got into the Honda, turned it on, and cranked up the air-conditioning before checking out Sinclair’s text.