LITMIR.BIZ

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ignored Justin’s outstretched hand. This was her doing, she’d handle it.

      “Hello, Stella. You’ve a very sharp young man there. He was telling me all about Newcastle’s chances against Sunderland.”

      “He’s their staunchest supporter, I think.” Soccer had been a godsend. Right from day one, he’d made friends in the playground on the basis of heading and dribbling. “How’s London?”

      “Wet! Is Angela handy?”

      Her palms might not go sweaty anymore, but her throat still tightened. She was about to upset a four-hundred-year-old vampire. “Tom, Angela’s not here right now. She decided to go to Totnes to see what she could find out.” Silence greeted her announcement.

      Tom didn’t ask her to repeat it. He’d obviously understood fine. His irritation seethed through the wires. “Have you no sense?”

      Plenty, but now wasn’t the time to point that out. “Tom, until Justin came home an hour or so ago, I was unaware of the problems with the West Country. So was Angela. No one thought to mention the matter to us.”

      It was the first time she’d heard a vampire splutter. The line went silent for several seconds. “Where is she? And how long has she been gone?”

      “At the Royal Oak in Totnes. She went on the ten o’clock train this morning and called me when she arrived. She’s fine.”

      “You don’t know that, Stella, and you shouldn’t be meddling!”

      “Tom, she was going to leave whether I helped her or not. This way, I know where she is, and she’s calling me every day. Would you rather I’d refused to help her and she’d gone off without telling me? Do you want the phone number of her hotel?”

      “Yes…please. And let me speak to Justin.” She gave him the phone number, and as soon as she finished, Justin picked up the other phone.

      As he said, “Hello, Tom,” she realized the door was still ajar. She stepped out to check on Sam. He was engrossed in the action on the flickering screen and blissfully unaware of the worries that welled up in her heart. What if something had happened to Angela? Justin hadn’t been sure if it was dangerous for her, but if witches had tried to extinguish Kit, an elder vampire, what would they do to a new-made ghoul?

      Stella walked back into the library just in time to hear, “I agree, but it’s done now. And to be honest, Tom, these women do a darn good job of taking care of themselves.” Justin listened in silence for several seconds, looking up at her as she closed the door behind her. “You’re leaving right away?” he asked Tom.

      “Let me speak to him again,” Stella said.

      “If we hear back from Angela, I’ll call you at once.”

      “Justin,” she hissed. His ignoring irked. His imperious wave of the hand got her dander up. “Justin, let me speak to him!” Remembering the Brit insistence on the courtesy, she added, “Please.”

      “Keep me posted, and good luck.”

      Justin set the phone on the table after clicking it off, and he met her frown with a soft smile.

      “I wanted to speak to him, to tell him not to go barging in playing the masterful vampire.”

      “I was aware of that, my love, but I’m afraid Tom’s self-restraint was in short supply. If he’d caved in and cursed you from here to Hades, I would have been in the position of having to call out an old friend for insulting my wife.”

      “Oh, give me a break! You…” She stopped. It would be just like them to still duel over her honor. “Justin, that would not have been necessary.”

      “Maybe not, if he’d apologized sufficiently, but I sensed Tom was not in an abject frame of mind.”

      “He’s worried?”

      “Frantic might better describe it.”

      “You should have let me speak to him.”

      Justin reached out and caught her hand. “Stella, nothing will allay his worries but seeing for himself.”

      Since she was getting to that point herself right now…“He’s going to bring her back?”

      “Right away, my love, and I did urge him to employ tact and sound reason over emotion.”

      Once Angela called back, she’d fill her in so she’d be prepared when Tom arrived. It had to take several hours to get there from London. Unless…“He is driving?”

      “I imagine so. He has no change of clothes down there, and I doubt Angela will have anything he can wear.”

      She’d already learned from Justin that bat or bird form was the fastest way to get anywhere, but transmogrifying back and standing naked could be a bit awkward. Justin had spare wardrobes all over the place.

      “Stop worrying.” His arm snaked behind her and drew her close. “I’ve missed you. Think Sam would settle for me reading to him in bed while you try out the bath oil I picked up in the duty-free?”

      His wide lips were just inches from hers. “Trying to seduce me with gifts and sweet words?”

      “Why not? It works every time.”

      That earned him a dig in the ribs and the slow promise of a kiss.

      Angela set off at a brisk pace. The rain had eased but the early nightfall, and just about every shop closing, turned Fore Street from bustling to well-nigh deserted. She’d stayed longer than she realized in Meg Merchant’s welcoming shop.

      Angela closed her fingers around the deck of cards in her pocket. Even if she never found Mariposa, she had a clue to her past. As soon as she got back to her room, she’d lay out a spread and see what the cards had to say. She couldn’t keep them in this paper bag; they needed to be wrapped in silk to retain their power. How the hell did she know that? No idea! She sped up. The sooner she got back to the Royal Oak, the sooner she could grab at another fragment of her past.

      “What’s the hurry, then, sexy lady?”

      Angela stopped midstride as a tall teenager stepped out from a doorway, blocking her path as the sidewalk narrowed. One look at the menace in his eyes, the dangling piercing beside his left eye, and the death’s head tattoo on his bare arm, and Angela stepped into the street.

      And almost collided with a battered car that just happened to pull up alongside.

      “Wanna ride, sweetheart?” someone called from a rolled-down window. The tattooed menace stepped closer.

      Fear lasted seconds. Fury came fast. She and Jane had survived homeless on the streets of Chicago. She was not getting mugged, or worse, in a sleepy little market town.

      “Get away from me!” she snapped at anyone within earshot.

      A hand closed over her left arm. “Unfriendly are you? We can’t have that, can we?” Tattoo lad raised a hand and stroked the side of her face, pressing his ring into her cheek.

      He smiled at her shudder.

      Behind her, a car door opened.

      Her anger incandesced. A wild buzzing echoed in her ears, her eyes seemed to tighten, and she snarled, leaning into tattoo boy and fixing his eyes with hers.

      He paled, let go of her, and stumbled backward. Recovering his balance, courtesy of the shop window, he darted in front of the car and begged then to open the door.

      A voice behind her asked, “Did the nasty bitch frighten you then, didums?”

      Angela spun around and glared. The thug dropped the knife in his hand and backed away. “Christ!” he muttered.

      He looked around as if searching for help. “Oh God!” He wailed, as he lurched backward. Seemed Providence declined him succor. Thug number two almost leaped into the car headfirst.

      “Get

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