Pure Blood_ A Nocturne City Novel - Caitlin Kittredge [92]
“Already taken care of,” I said, and dissolved into giggles. This day had been too long and terrible to do anything but laugh.
Sunny helped me sit up, pulled a blanket over my legs, and ordered, “Don’t move. I’ll make you tea.” The Rhoda Sunflower Swann All-purpose Cure. She rushed downstairs and I let my eyes fall closed. I could have sworn I smelled beef lo mein. That did it—I was cracking up.
Sunny reappeared after a minute with a tray bearing a steaming mug of tea and a plate of rice and the afore-scented lo mein. Well. At least I wasn’t going to add a trip to the padded room to my resume.
“I thought you might be hungry when I came over,” she said, tucking a napkin under my chin and plumping my pillows.
“Thanks.” I sighed, taking a token bite. It was delicious, and I realized I was starving.
“Why is your phone off the hook?” Sunny asked. I answered around a towering forkful of rice and noodles.
“I sorta had a fight with Dmitri.”
“Dmitri?” Sunny blinked. “What happened to Trevor?”
I thought back to our last phone call, and his subsequent silence. “Um, I guess I had a fight with him too.”
“Can’t say I didn’t see that coming,” said Sunny. “What happened with Dmitri?”
I set down my fork. “I made a promise I couldn’t keep. He let the daemon bite have a little too much lead. It got ugly. That, and it happened right after one of Seamus O’Halloran’s thugs beat me half to death, so I wasn’t thinking very clearly.” I prayed she’d buy the edited version and not interrogate me. I wasn’t a very good liar where Sunny was concerned.
Sunny bit her lip. “So, now I must seem like a total idiot with all my esteem for the family.”
“Forget it,” I told her, hiding my relief behind a toss of my head. “How were you supposed to know?” I filled her in on the rest, the short story of the Skull and my all-around idiocy.
Sunny picked a noodle off my plate and chewed on it. “So they stole the Skull of Mathias from the Blackburns?”
I nodded. Sunny rubbed her temples. “That’s really bad.”
“You don’t know the half,” I told her. “They’re close to being able to figure out how to use it.” I shook my head. “Funny how the Blackburns held onto it for thirty-seven generations or something, and not once did anything bad happen, and now the good guys have the bad guys’ ultimate superweapon and all hell is breaking loose.”
“People don’t always do what you think they should,” said Sunny quietly. “You, for instance.”
“Ouch,” I told her. But as usual, Sunny was absolutely right. It was an annoying habit of hers.
No one would be able to stop Seamus O’Halloran if he gained access to daemon magick. Hell, I wasn’t sure if I could stop him now. I was sick of daemons, sick of Asmodeus and Dmitri and the stupid Skull.
I choked on a piece of beef. Sunny whacked me on the back. “What is it?”
“Gods,” I said. Like the sun had finally broken through polluted clouds, I grinned. Seamus couldn’t be allowed to read the daemon workings, and Dmitri needed daemon magick.
“Luna?” said Sunny with concern. “Is something the matter?”
“Sunny,” I said, grabbing her hand. “You have to help me steal the Skull of Mathias.”
CHAPTER 27
Sunny thought I was patently insane, of course, and went home after making me promise not to do anything stupid. I duly promised, because stealing the Skull wasn’t stupid. It was the solution to all of my problems.
It was why I was driving recklessly into the city, dodging taxis and pedestrians who probably had the right of way. I parked the Fairlane in the valet slot in front of Shelby’s building. The valet glared at me when I got out, and then at the Fairlane with its poor dangling headlight. The glare said I’d better come up with one hell of a big tip if he was going to drive this undignified piece of crap around the block.
Shelby answered the door herself this time, and I was relieved to see that her leg was encased in one of those cloth walking casts instead of the Frankensteinian swath of bandages she’d gotten at the hospital.
“Did you come back to give me a hard time again?” she asked morosely.