blood felt hot, burning in her hands and cheeks, as tears brought on by speed blurred the corners of her vision.
Reaching the end of her route brought her to a violent stop, skidding and tripping over her own feet in the spasms of muscles pushed hard enough that they no longer knew how to do anything but continue forward. Margrit walked it off, stopping to flip her ponytail upside down and gasp for air after the numbness faded from her thighs. When she straightened it was with a clear expectation formed. Genuine surprise swept her as the blond murderer proved to be nowhere in sight.
Murderer. That wasn’t fair. He was wanted for questioning, not necessarily guilty. And he hadn’t hurt her. She was sure he wouldn’t hurt her, given a second chance.
She let out a quick blast of hot breath that steamed in the cold afternoon air. That sort of dubious logic would get her killed, if not by the blond man, then by Cole or Tony, whose concern might drive them to frustrated homicide. The sense of expectation lingered, and she frowned into winter browns and greens, searching.
New joggers, the women running in pairs or groups, made their way around people talking on their cell phones and children hauling their parents across paths. Weak light from the low sun glinted through the trees, making empty branches into shimmering sticks. An ordinary morning at the park. The dead girl hardly mattered. The blond man was nowhere to be seen.
Margrit waited, then twisted her wrist to look at her watch, shrugged, and jogged home to change clothes for work.
Something was wrong.
Sunset had come and gone, and there was no sign of his ward. His dark-haired, fearless runner. Margrit. He savored the name even as he glided from one tree to another, searching the routes she ran. She changed them regularly, a sensible self-defensive measure, but he had watched her for years. He knew the paths she preferred, the stretches of park that she defaulted to.
Did her scent linger in the air or was it his imagination? His own hope, prodding him to belief where none belonged? He had wanted to speak with her again. To hear her voice, even colored with caution. Her accusing irritation the night before had woken in him a spark of life so long dampened he was surprised to discover it still existed.
He’d hunched in the cold atop the building across the street until dawn had driven him away. Wondering, from that distance, if he might ever step past the threshold into the warmth of her life, and dismissing the possibility in the same moment.
The kitchen window had been open, wind shifting a curtain enough to allow him to see that the table in the dining room was covered with paper, used as a workspace rather than for sharing meals. Changing light flickered from the room beyond it, a television droning on. His ears had pricked, preternatural hearing picking out words even from across a street filled with city noises. He was unaccustomed to bothering with such focused listening, but last night, having learned her name, having dared as much as he already had, he’d heard stories of trouble in the park. Hardly unusual, but the man described—
He had lost his focus then, catching his breath as he wrapped his mind around the idea that someone had described him as the murderer. Shudders had taken him, despite the fact that he didn’t feel the night’s cold. It was impossible; he only needed to explain.
Explain to Margrit. She was a lawyer. She could defend him when he couldn’t possibly defend himself. And there was no one else. He closed his eyes briefly, trying to remember the last time he might have turned to a human for help. A moment later his eyes came open again and he chuckled under his breath. Over a century and a half ago. Since then he’d had even less contact with mortals than he’d had with his own kind, and he went to some lengths to avoid his own. A faint smile curled his mouth, then faded once more.
To miss her tonight. That, he hadn’t counted on. A chill slid through him, making him flex his shoulders in discomfort. Had she recognized him from the news report? How could she not? But he hadn’t anticipated it keeping her out of the park.
He curled his hands into loose fists and spread his wings, feeling wind catch under them as he launched into the sky. He had to find a way to speak to her.
THREE
“YOU EVER FEEL like you’re being watched?” Margrit’s question came with a laugh and an uncomfortable shift of her shoulders.
Cole, a few yards ahead and escorting Cameron over an icy patch, glanced back with an elevated eyebrow. “Everybody feels like they’re being watched, Grit. Paranoia is part of a healthy New York City lifestyle.”
Margrit laughed again and hurried the few steps to catch up, avoiding the slick stretch. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“It’s because you’re a lawyer,” Cameron said easily. “You think everybody’s out to get you, because they are. First we hang all the lawyers. Cole, I told you we should’ve gotten here earlier. Look at the line.”
“Dinner took longer than I expected,” he answered patiently. “We’ll be inside in five minutes, Cam. It’s fine.”
“Says you,” she retorted. “You’re not wearing heels and a short skirt in twenty-nine-degree weather.”
Cole took a judicious step back, looking Cameron up and down before sighing happily. “Yeah. I know. But you are.”
She laughed out loud and reached for his hand, tugging him over to steal a kiss. “I guess that’s why I keep doing it, too. Charmer.”
“You mean you’re not dressing up for the other girls? I thought that’s what women did.”
“Only if they don’t have you,” Cam said, then widened her eyes and snapped her fingers. “And gosh, I guess they don’t.”
“You two are disgusting.” Margrit tossed off the accusation in a light voice, turning in line to scan the street. There was an itch between her shoulder blades that hadn’t lessened since her run in the park, making her uncomfortable. She was accustomed to feeling wary and watching out for herself, but the lingering sense of actually being followed and watched was new. There was no particular reason or way the blond man from the park might find her a second night in a row, but the idea that he would rode her like a bad dream.
The image of him as a vampire in her dream made Margrit shudder again and turn back to Cole and Cameron. “Cute,” she said with a quick smile, trying to reassert her place in a normal evening with friends, “but disgusting. I’m glad you asked me to come out with you.”
An innocent man wanted for murder would—She let the thought break off, knowing better. Might well not go to the police, for a dozen reasons. Innocent until proven guilty carried little weight, with a brutally murdered woman in the park and an eyewitness stepping forward. Still, there was no reason to expect to see him, and no good reason to want to. One chance encounter did not a relationship make.
Relationship. She wondered at herself for the word, goose bumps crawling over her skin. Cameron, oblivious to Margrit’s mental gymnastics, smiled back. “You haven’t been out with us since Christmas. It’s about time you said yes.”
“It’s about time you were home early enough in the evening to be invited.” Cole wrapped his arms around Cameron’s waist from behind, standing on his toes to rest his chin on her shoulder, and playing up the difference in their height. “I thought I was seeing things when I got home and you were there.”
Margrit laughed. “I told
