Free Demon Fire by Ann Kellett Page B

forward to finding out all about myself.”
    The teenage girls giggled again as Dax walked away.
    A few minutes later, Elena appeared. “Just a few more. We should be able to get out of here right on time.”
    “I hope so,” Meredith said. “Something tells me there’s more than meets the eye with that cowboy—Mr. Dax Thelassian in the flesh. He’s still hanging around. If you’ll start packing up, I’ll go turn on the charm one more time so we can leave him behind for good.”
    Dax was seated in the corner, reading a newspaper.
    “You’ll be front page news when the paper comes out next week,” he said. “We don’t get many celebrities through here.”
    Meredith smiled. “To tell you the truth, I’d rather be page one news here than just about anywhere. People here are so kind. San Saba doesn’t have a bookstore, so they were nice enough to let us use the hotel. But I do find it odd that no one ever mentioned you before, Mr. Thelassian.”
    “Like I said, I keep to myself,” he said. “You asked earlier if I wanted anything. Two things come to mind.”
    “Oh?” Meredith braced herself.
    “First, call me Dax. And second, have lunch with me here in the hotel diner. I’d like to hear all about your book and how you came to write it.”
    Meredith smiled. “I’d be happy to, Dax. My treat.”
    ****
    The outcome wasn’t perfect—the cousin, Elena, had tagged along—but Meredith seemed relaxed and chatty.
    He had to get her talking about the book. Being only half-demon-warrior, he could not force her to do anything. He had to coax her, make her think things were her idea. Being half-human, he knew what made humans tick. He would make Meredith and Elena think they were the most fascinating creatures on Earth. For now, they were. The fate of all the other creatures in the world might depend on it.
    He’d get Elena out of the way first. “Meredith tells me that you’re cousins,” Dax said. “You must be close.” He tore open a homemade sourdough roll and dipped it in the gravy on his chicken fried steak.
    “Like twins born two years apart,” Elena said. “Our grandmother raised us. In the middle of the barrio in San Antonio. We didn’t have much except each other. Now it’s just the two of us. Nanna died three years ago.”
    Meredith said, “Right. Seems like yesterday. Elena still lived with her, took care of her. Thankfully, I was able to get there just before she passed. Remember how she was hallucinating? Saying wild things, that people were in the room and yelling at her—Native Americans in traditional dress. She kept repeating, ‘It’s true! It’s true!’ Right at the end, she had a moment when she was perfectly lucid. She sat up and told us how sorry she was.”
    Dax resisted the urge to glance at his Rolex. “Sorry for what?”
    “We always knew that we had some Native American blood—Lipan Apache,” Meredith said.
    She licked a bread crumb off of her upper lip. Dax felt his mouth water. Concentrate !
    “She said she was sorry she never told us more about our heritage, our people, our purpose in life. We never gave it much thought growing up. Now it’s all lost, except for this.” Meredith held up the pendant—a square chunk of iridescent green stone encased on three sides by a heavy, intricately engraved silver setting.
    “Nanna wore it all her life. She tried to give it to Elena that night, since she was the first born and actually has more Native American blood than I do. But you dropped it, remember? You said ‘ow,’ like it burned you or something.” Meredith smiled.
    “Don’t be silly. It’s just that I don’t like it. Never did. I couldn’t promise her that I would never take it off, like she asked,” Elena said.
    “I don’t like it much, either,” Meredith said. “The first thing I did was put it on a longer cord so I could tuck it under my shirt. She said I had to follow it wherever it led, even to the gates of hell. She also kept repeating some kind