“And he didn’t admit it to me, but he was frightened. Especially toward the end,” Iris explained. She chose that moment to turn me toward the mirror, and even I gasped.

The dress was incredible. It had halter straps and a deep V-neckline that plunged downward toward its empire waistline. There was a large black carved flower button thingy sort of visually joining together the waistline and the halter neck. The material was chiffon and there was tons of it floating around me. I’d never felt so gorgeous in my life. And the crowning glory was the shoes, which were just sassy. All thought of Peter fled as I turned around, getting the 360-degree angle from the three-sided mirror. This isn’t a dress, I thought. It’s a gown.

Ryu’s voice was husky, when he finally spoke. “Iris, all of this information is great. But do you have any idea why Peter was afraid?”

Iris turned to Ryu, and her expression was the most serious I’d seen all night. “No, I don’t, and I knew better than to ask. I’ve not gotten this far in life asking questions to which I know I don’t want the answers. All I do know is Peter was genuinely afraid and that was enough for me.” Iris walked away from me, toward the elegant, ladylike little rolltop desk that was sitting against the wall near the mirror. She opened a bottom drawer with a key and took out a large accordion file.

I pulled the long skirt out, fanning the material and letting it fall, loving the feel of it against my legs. I just couldn’t get over myself. It can be yours if you kick off the heels and run, I thought. The succubus will probably catch you, but if you can get the keys to the Porsche you’ve got a fighting chance… I told myself quite firmly to shut up.

“So, I haven’t even looked at this,” Iris said, and I finally stopped admiring my image in the mirror. She handed the folder to Ryu, dusting off her hands as if glad to be rid of it. “It’s a copy of Peter’s case file. He left it with me for safe keeping. He said if something happened to him to release it to the proper authorities.” She eyed Ryu, speculatively. “And I guess that’s you. I just want it out of my shop.”

I could see Ryu was itching to get into the file, so I knew what I had to do. With a sigh, I reached behind me and tried to get a hold of the zipper to take off the gown. Iris saw what I was doing and came toward me to help.

As she zipped down the gown, she seemed to remember something. “Oh, there is one other thing. Peter did tell me who he was working for.”

Ryu looked up sharply, his eyes as sharp and focused as a wolf’s when confronted with a pound of sirloin.

“One of your kind,” she said, nodding at Ryu. “Name of Nyx.”

I watched, fascinated, as Ryu turned about six different shades of purple. And then I watched, less pleased, as he swore like a trooper and tore my old gray sweater right in half. Which made it my turn to curse.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

We drove out to Rockabill Bluffs, overlooking the Old Sow, so that Ryu could read the file and have a think.

The tiny trunk of the Porsche was filled with packages from Iris’s, and I still felt a little weird about that fact. I hadn’t wanted Ryu to buy me anything and I certainly wasn’t comfortable accepting such expensive gifts. But he’d said that he was doing it as much for Iris’s sake as mine—that he owed her as part of the information game they’d played and he’d bill it to the company anyway. So I let him buy me the pants outfit, the kimono dress, and their matching accessories, wandering away to look around the shop when she rang everything up so I didn’t see what everything actually cost. I bet each pair of those red-soled shoes cost at least a hundred dollars. So you needn’t worry, my sweets, I thought down at my battered old Converse. Mommy will never replace you. All joking aside, Ryu had even wanted to buy me the gown, but that’s where I drew the line. I didn’t need a gown in Rockabill, no matter how beautiful it was.

Iris had also thrown in the sweater I was currently wearing, since Ryu had laid waste to my own. It was a lovely cream-colored V-neck made of real cashmere. I’d tried to talk her out of it, but she was insistent. I could tell she felt really guilty about me being the subject of Peter’s research, which was silly since she hadn’t even known who I was.

When we got to the bluffs we parked a little way from the edge. Ryu rummaged around the packed trunk until he managed to extricate his picnic blanket and a bottle of wine. The mere sight of the blanket made me a little hot under the collar, but Ryu’s face wasn’t exhibiting any signs of erotic life. In fact, when he lit a little mage light that tagged along behind us like a faithful terrier, he still looked really pissed off.

“Ryu?” I asked hesitantly, as we spread the blanket and sat down. “Who’s Nyx?”

Ryu scowled. If I thought he’d looked angry before, he now looked positively apoplectic.

“Nyx is an absolute piece of shit,” he said, unhelpfully. Then he seemed to collect himself, and his voice took on the “tour guide to the supernatural” tone I’d gotten so used to at this point. “In our world, the Alfar rule,” he began. “They’re the oldest, and rarest, of our kind.” He stopped and thought for minute, as if unsure how to continue. Finally, he started again. “We don’t study ourselves, the way humans do. We don’t try to trace our origins or examine our past for the keys to our present. But some of us have our own theories as to how we came into being. We know that our kind has been around for a very long time—far longer than humans—and that in the beginning we were all the same. But, and this is just one theory, mind you, at some point we began to… interfere with ourselves.” At this point, Ryu paused to open up the bottle of wine. He took a swig and passed me the bottle.

“Basically, because of our access to the elements, we could force our own evolution. And that’s what some of us think we did,” he continued. “Different factions chose to pursue different strengths, admittedly making themselves vulnerable to certain weaknesses. For example, nahuals gave up most of their access to the elements in order to concentrate on developing their shape-shifting ability. Then humans came along, and they were impossible to get rid of.” I took another drink of the delicious red wine, choosing to ignore that bit about “getting rid” of mankind. “So we had to integrate them into our landscape, so to speak, and this led to further evolutionary engineering. Some of us, like vampires, succubae, and incubi, all evolved to harvest a concentrated form of power, what we call essence, straight from humans. After millennia had passed, these changes were occurring naturally rather than consciously, for by this time we’d lost the power to mutate ourselves directly.

“Are you following me?” he asked, and I nodded. I was getting the gist. “The only creatures left who still resemble our origins are the Alfar. They remain the most powerful of us, and the longest living, but in some ways this has made them curiously weak.” He looked around, like he was betraying a secret, before he realized what he was doing. “They are our leaders, and yet they are out of touch with reality. Their long lives mean they live in a world almost separate from ours. Yet at the same time their power allows them to rule over us—” He cut himself short, mentally veering back on course. “Our current King and Queen are Orin and Morrigan. They are of the fourth generation of Alfar, only three generations removed from the beings that first manipulated their own destinies. They are both tremendously old, but they have held their throne for only a short time—a little less than one hundred and fifty human years. When the former Queen faded, there was a Great War of Succession. Luckily for those of us who fought with them, Orin and Morrigan won that battle.”

“Really? A war? Like a real war?”

“Yup, definitely a real war.”

“How did we not know?”

“You mean, how did humans not know?” Ryu asked, his lips quirking. I ignored his implication and waited for him to answer my question.

“Well,” he said, when he realized I wasn’t to be baited, “it was a long time ago, in terms of human advancement. There were less people, fewer ways to communicate, no cameras to avoid. Not all of us, after all, are as good at manipulating human technology or humans, in general, as my kind are. So it was close, and there were quite a few leaks. The fallen would sometimes turn up as murder victims, or battle sites would turn up as legends of hauntings. Neither side could risk exposure; both were weakened, forced into corners. So even though it was difficult to keep it secret from humans, we managed it.”

“Something you probably wouldn’t be able to pull off, now. What with CCTV, global satellites, Google maps—”

“No,” Ryu agreed. “Another war would be too conspicuous to hide.”

I realized I’d polished off almost a quarter of the wine, so I passed it to Ryu who quaffed it nearly to the halfway mark with a look of relief. I lay down on my side, propping my head up on my hand, and waited for him to continue. He put the wine bottle down, nestling it into the blanket to keep it upright, and then lay down beside me, his eyes looking into mine. He ran a finger down my cheek gently and I smiled. He leaned toward me for a split second, but then seemed to recover himself.