“So neither of you has mates, either,” I said.
“She’s right, it’s not just her being picky that made this happen.”
“It’s said a man of a certain age and property is in want of a wife,” I said.
“Did you just quote Pride and Prejudice?” Jacob asked.
“I guess I did, embarrassing, sorry.”
“I wouldn’t have known what book, or who you quoted,” Nicky said, not like he was happy with it.
“But I get what you mean with the quote,” Jacob said; “my hair is starting to gray and I’ve never taken a real mate. I’ve never committed to a territory and my pride is all males, except for one, and she’s not into guys, so it’s not a problem.”
“We travel too much for women and kids,” Nicky said.
Jacob nodded. “That’s what I keep telling myself. Now get in the car, Anita. We’ve still got a job to do. Remember what I said about controlling your side of the problem. Nothing we could do would be worth the lives of your lovers.”
“Agreed,” I said.
He handed me my jacket. I slipped it back over the empty shoulder rig, but still had the big knife down my spine. He held the passenger door for me, and I didn’t protest the gallantry, though under the circumstances it seemed weirder than normal. Nicky got in behind me and leaned against the back of my seat. “I wish you weren’t the job, Anita.”
“Me, too,” I said, and meant it, though probably not for the same reason he did.
Jacob got in behind the wheel and said, “Buckle up; it’ll slow you down by a few seconds if you decide to do something stupid.”
I buckled up. “So we go on with your plan?”
“Yes,” he said, “nothing’s changed.”
“So you’ll still kill the people I love if I don’t raise the dead for your client?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Yes,” Nicky said from behind me.
“Then we’re clear,” I said.
Jacob started the engine. “Yeah, we’re clear. You’ll kill us if you can, and if you’re sure it won’t get your people killed. We’ll kill you if you force us to.”
“Great,” I said, “we all know the rules then.”
“Why aren’t you afraid?” Nicky whispered from behind me.
“Being afraid won’t help.”
“People are brave, but you can always smell the fear, taste their heart speed up. But you aren’t. You really aren’t any of that.”
“If I get afraid, or pissed, then my pulse rises, and my heart races, and my blood pressure goes up and it’s harder to control the beasts. Jacob was clear; I can’t afford to lose control in the car with you guys.”
“So because you have to be in control, you will be, just like that,” he said.
“Just like that,” I said, and watched where Jacob drove so if I lived through the night I could take the police back to their client and arrest his, or her, ass.
“If I’d known what you were we might not have taken the job,” Jacob said.
“Nice thought, but it doesn’t really help us out, does it?”
“No, we took the client’s money, we have to deliver.”
“Then it doesn’t matter to me if you feel guilty or not, Jacob. In fact, I think it’s worse that you’re going to maybe kill the people I love, the people that make up my pride, and maybe kill me, and you’ll regret it, but you’ll do it anyway. That’s not honor, Jacob, that’s your conscience letting you know that you’re doing the wrong thing.”
“It’s not my conscience, Anita, it’s my libido, my beast, and it doesn’t have a conscience.”
He was right on that, but I also knew that wereanimals aren’t just animals. There is a person in there and there is a conscience. The beast usually didn’t care about it, and could make you do terrible things that you had trouble living with afterward, but this time Jacob and Nicky’s beasts were on the same side as their conscience. It made me hopeful, and I cursed it, because hope will keep you alive, yes, but it will also get you killed in ways worse than anything you can imagine. Hope is a bad friend when men with guns have you. But my lioness and their lions lusted after each other, sort of. Lust I trusted. Hope will lie to you, but lust is what it is; it never lies. Hope would keep me hoping, but lust might be a weapon I could use to divide them. Divide and conquer has been a strategy for thousands of years; there’s a reason for that.
We drove to a very nice subdivision in a part of St. Louis where the yards are large, the houses larger. Some of the smaller yards had the biggest houses, as if the owners felt insecure and had to compensate for something. The driveway we finally pulled into was long and swept gracefully from the road to a house that was as big as any and had one of the largest yards I’d seen. From house to professionally landscaped yard the place breathed money and care, and didn’t seem to feel it needed to compensate for anything. The whole image was so perfect you knew the architect had worked with the landscaper to make the visuals, as if a magazine photographer should pop out of the shrubbery and put it all on the cover.
“You don’t smell surprised,” Nicky said, as we all got out of their rental.
I just shrugged.
Jacob blocked my way up the driveway. He studied my face. “Did you know the client’s address before we drove you here?”
“No.”
“Are you lying?” he asked.
I frowned at him. “No, I don’t know who your client is, and I didn’t know you’d bring me to one of our nicer new-money neighborhoods. But I did know it had to be someone with enough money to afford your kind of help.” The moment I said it, I was betting on Natalie Zell. Any woman who wanted to raise her own husband from the dead so she could chop him up with an axe then bury the pieces “alive” wouldn’t blink at a little kidnapping and the deaths of men she didn’t even know.
I heard Nicky close behind me and fought not to move out from between them. I never liked for my kidnappers to flank me, and really didn’t like shapeshifters this close when they meant me harm. “You’re crowding me, Nicky.”
“She smells like the truth,” he said, but was still too close.
Jacob nodded, but said, “Give her some room, Nicky; we don’t want to accidentally touch each other.”
He backed up a few steps, so that I followed Jacob’s broad back with Nicky trailing us. There was no talking, no questions; we just went for the front door. Nice that the client didn’t make us use the servants’ entrance. Did mansions have servants’ entrances these days?
“No questions,” Nicky said.
“No,” I said.
“Most people would have questions, especially women. They always talk too much.”
Jacob rang a doorbell that made a rich, melodious sound deep inside the house.
“You make a habit of kidnapping women?”
“Work is work,” he said.
“Sure,” I said. We waited to the tune of birdsong and someone’s lawn service in the distance using a large mower.
“They talk because they’re nervous,” he said.
“The only one talking is you, Nicky,” I said.
“I’m not nervous,” he said, but it was too quick a denial, and there was a tone in his voice.
“Liar,” I said, softly.
“Drop it, Nicky,” Jacob said. He straightened his shoulders just a bit, and I knew he’d heard something I hadn’t. A moment later the door opened and I was left staring at Tony Bennington.
Now I was surprised. “Son of a bitch,” I said. He’d seemed so much more sane than Natalie Zell. Just another grief-stricken husband trying to bargain with God to get his wife back, but I guess when God didn’t listen he’d bargained with someone else, something a little lower than heaven. When God ignores you, the devil starts looking good.
“That’s better,” Nicky said. “You really didn’t know.” But he said it soft from behind me and I’m not sure that the “client” heard him. I didn’t give a damn if he did.