“I wish I could do something for you,” he’d said as we stood outside the Wizard’s compound.
“You’ve done plenty, Asha.”
“And yet I feel incomplete.” He stared at me a moment; then his eyes cleared. “There may be something after all.” He laid his hand on my forehead. For a second it burned, just as his tears had. Then it was over. “Your Mark is gone,” he said.
“How did you do that?” I asked. “I thought —”
He shrugged. “It is within my rights, and so I exercise them.”
I smiled up at him. “You’re a good guy to know.”
“Thank you.”
I was just pulling on my manteau when Dave walked into the girls’ room. “What’re you up to?” he asked.
“Going to get those reavers,” I said.
“Why?”
“Well, I can’t let them run around loose grabbing stray souls, now, can I?”
“Jaz, I’m working for Raoul now, remember?”
“Um, yeah.”
“So . . . it’s taken care of.”
I looked at him. There were new lines beside his eyes. New depths behind them. A blooming misery I hoped he’d be able to master. “Oh. Thanks.”
“No problem.”
Long pause. Soon an awkward one. “Jaz?”
“Yeah?” I said quickly. My chest tightened. I knew what he was going to say. He was going to ask me to go back into hell. To rescue our mother. And I couldn’t. Wouldn’t. There was only so much you could sacrifice. I’d given her my childhood. I’d given the CIA my beloved cards. I’d reached my limit.
Maybe he read it in my eyes, because that wasn’t the question he asked. “Do you like Cassandra?”
“She’s a jewel.”
He nodded. “Good.”
He left and I sank onto the bed, mostly because my knees didn’t want to hold me anymore. Before I realized what was happening my eyes had strayed to the calling feature on my special specs and I’d dialed Evie’s number. “Jaz?”
“Yeah. How’s everyone? How’s E.J.?”
“Fine. She’s right here. She just woke up for the day. I’m feeding her right now.”
Crap, I hadn’t even thought about the time difference. I checked my watch. Nearly midnight in Iran. Yeah, I guess it was about time for breakfast in Evieland.
“And Albert?”
“Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
Before I could stop her, she’d handed the phone to the old man. We talked for a while. Just long enough to exhaust him. We hung up just as Vayl walked into the room.
“I missed you,” he said, striding over to sit on the bed beside me.
“Yeah.” I handed him my glasses. Didn’t want to wear them anymore. They felt too heavy. “I just talked to my dad.”
“Oh? That is good, yes? You should tell David.”
“Okay. But maybe, you know, just until he’s sort of recovered from this whole ordeal, I’ll leave out the part about how Albert thinks somebody is trying to kill him.”
I leaned my head on Vayl’s shoulder as his arm came around me. But I could not feel comforted. A necromancer had enslaved my brother, a demon had tried to steal my niece’s soul, and now my father was telling me his motorcycle wreck was no accident. The violence that formed the framework of my life had never before touched my family. But within just a few days it had nearly destroyed it.
I looked into Vayl’s eyes. “This shit’s hitting too close to home,” I whispered.
“What do you want to do about it?”
I didn’t even have to think. “Hit back.”
Acknowledgments
I
want to express my deepest gratitude to all the pros at Orbit who work tirelessly to put Jaz Parks into the field. They include: Bob Castillo, Bella Pagan, Penina Lopez, Alex Lencicki, Katherine Molina, Jennifer Flax, and most especially my editor, Devi Pillai, who is an absolute freaking genius. Plus, she’s hilarious. To my agent, Laurie McLean, whose astounding energy and absolute support let me know I am professionally blessed — thanks so much for everything you do. My readers have hung in with me once again, and if the beauty is in the details, much of what’s lovely in this book is due to Ben Rardin, Katie Rardin, and Hope Dennis. And to you, Reader, it’s so cool that we’ve shared this adventure! Shall we have another?
extras
meet the author
Photo by Cindy Pringle
J
ENNIFER
R
ARDIN
began writing at the age of twelve, mostly poems to amuse her classmates and short stories featuring her best friends as the heroines. She lives in an old farmhouse in Illinois with her husband and two children. Find out more about Jennifer Rardin at
www.JenniferRardin.com
.
introducing
If you enjoyed BITING THE BULLET, look out for
BITTEN TO DEATH
Book 4 of the Jaz Parks series
by Jennifer Rardin
I stood in the stone-paved courtyard of a Greek villa so old and refined it would’ve made me feel like a cave-dweller if I hadn’t been so pissed. I’d only just raised Grief, the Walther PPK my former roommate-turned-tech consultant had modified for me, so I had no problem keeping a steady bead on my target. Since he was a vampire, I’d pressed the magic button, transforming Grief into a crossbow. Which said vamp was taking pretty seriously. The only reason he was still pretending to breathe.
Beside me, my boss played his part to perfection. He’d already made the leap from feigned surprise that I’d drawn on one of our hosts, to acceptance that I’d once again dropped him into a socially precarious situation. Maybe he slipped into the role so easily because he was used to it. I did tend to make his existence, well, interesting.
He turned his head slightly; his dark curls indifferent to the steady breeze coming off the bay they were clipped so short. He managed to keep an eye on my target, as well as whatever vamps might come pouring out of the sprawling sand-colored mansion to back him up as he said, “Are you sure you recognize this fellow?”
“I’m telling you, Vayl, he’s the one,” I insisted. “I just saw the report on him last week. He’s wanted for murder in three different countries. His specialty is families. The pictures were —”
gruesome,
I thought, but I choked on the word. The twitch of Vayl’s left eyebrow told me I was on a roll. The thing was, at the moment, I didn’t give two craps about our little game. The Vampere world might be all about superiority, which was why we’d needed to make a power play the minute we crossed their threshold, but I’d have popped the vamp in front of me even if it meant we had to fight our way out of a nest of enraged vultures and their human guardians. In fact, that we should personally benefit from his demise made me feel almost . . . dirty. I know, I know. As assistant to the CIA’s top assassin, I was hardly in a position to make moral judgments. But I didn’t see why that should stop me now.
“You can’t prove anything,” snarled the vamp, whose shoulder length hair did nothing to hide his enormous bulging forehead.
“I don’t
have
to, you idiot!” I snapped, wishing I could objectify the rage I was feeling, hurl it at him like it was an enormous black vase full of cobras. “Much as it often pains me to say so, you
others
have so few official rights they could fit on the back of my driver’s license. That leaves me free to smoke you if I feel you are a clear and present danger to society. Which you are.”
“What is the meaning of this?” demanded the woman who steamed out one of the villa’s blue-framed back doors, all four of which were framed by solar lamps made to resemble antique street lights. The tendrils of her black chiffon gown batted the air behind her, making her resemble a pissed off Homecoming Queen candidate, one whose friends had voted for the other, uglier girl. Though her carefully groomed version of beauty could have landed her in any number of pageants, her psychic scent hit me between the eyes so hard I felt like I’d been drop-kicked into a garbage dump. As a Sensitive, I recognize vampires like hawks sight rabbits. But I’d never before felt so nauseated by the realization. What the hell kind of vamp