Page 76 of Kiss of Wrath

A lapsed Catholic, she decided that going to church again might be a good idea. And holy water . . . she was going to get a gallon first chance she had. Where did one buy holy water, anyhow? And did holy water repel demons, or was that vampires? How about stakes? Oh Lord! She didn’t think she could ever stake anyone, even Satan himself.

And there was another thing. Mordr definitely regretted having told her about his children. The poor man! How could any person witness such atrocities having been done to his children and not be warped for life? Not that Mordr was warped. Just a little bent out of shape. Or a lot, she conceded, given his grim, no-smile demeanor.

Except she had made him smile, she thought with inordinate pride, remembering their kisses. Both times. Before her world came crashing down.

She followed Mordr into the house, where they found the children were all safely asleep, and Mordr’s brothers were watching some Bourne Identity flick on the TV in the den. Mordr exchanged a meaningful look with Harek and Cnut, and she knew that they knew she now knew their big, dark secrets. Well, some of them.

She went into the kitchen and sat down at the table, waiting while Mordr walked his brothers to the door. The sound of their soft conversation drifted her way, but she couldn’t hear what they said. She couldn’t think about that. So many other things riddled her brain. Questions, question, questions.

Mordr came into the kitchen, took one look at her face, and put two cups of water into the microwave.

“What are you making?”

“Tea. My sister-by-marriage, Alex, always drinks tea to calm her nerves when Vikar does something outrageous or dangerous or just annoys her.”

She gave a short, humorless laugh. “Honey, a gallon of tea and a pigload of Prozac wouldn’t calm me down now.”

“Do not call me . . . endearments,” he said.

Of all the things to home in on, that was the least important. “Why not?”

“Because it denotes a relationship, which we do not have.”

“Really? Honey, you don’t kiss a girl ’til her toes curl and her bones melt and then tell her there’s nothing between them.”

Before he could stop himself, Mordr’s glance shot to her toes, which were exposed in her high-heeled sandals. A grin tried to tilt his rigid lips, but he held firm. Darn him!

The microwave pinged, and he put a tea bag in one mug and placed it on the table in front of her, along with a slice of lemon and some honey, a combination he must have seen his sister-in-law make. He then eyed the other mug, seemed to consider whether to put in a tea bag, or not, then dumped the water into the sink. Instead, he reached the cabinet high above the fridge and got a bottle of Scotch whisky which she’d received from a client one Christmas and never opened. “Ah, uisge beatha.” He poured it into his mug, half full. “Did you know the Scots invented this particular brew? Water of life, it was called.”

When he sat down at the table across from her, she switched mugs and said, “I need this more than you do, babe.”

She saw him consider whether to chastise her for the “babe” endearment, then shrug as if it weren’t worth the trouble.

Mordr sighed in resignation. “You have questions?”

“That’s an understatement.”

He took a sip of the tea and grimaced, taking back his cup of booze. She didn’t care. Scotch tasted like medicine to her, even the good kind like this one apparently was.

“Assuming I believe all this demon/vampire/angel crap, how old are you?” she asked.

That question caught him off guard. He’d obviously been expecting something more important. “I was thirty-one when I crossed over in the year 850. So, that would make me roughly one thousand, one hundred, and ninety-five years old.”

Her eyes widened. “And here I was worried about being an older woman, thirty-four to your thirty-one.”

He appeared puzzled. “Why would that matter?”

“Things like that bother women. Like being taller than her lover. Or older. Or fatter. Or smarter.”

“I am not your lover.”

“Yet.”

His jaw dropped.

“Oh, get a life! I was just kidding. You have a serious case of commitment issues, buddy. If you’re interested, I have a group that meets about this problem every two weeks.”

“You have a group about everything,” he groused.