Free Darkness Falls (DA 7) by Keri Arthur Page B

sheets.”
    “You still can.” I traced a line down his chest with a fingertip and lightly played with the button of his jeans. “Twenty or so minutes isn’t going to matter one way or another to my strength.”
    “Twenty minutes hardly does justice to the fire that plays between us,” he said, and pulled away from my teasing touch. “Sleep, Risa. It is for the best, trust me.”
    “You, reaper, obviously have a core of steel somewhere inside that rather enticing exterior of yours.”
    “Believe me, I have not.” He caught my hand and kissed it. “I merely wish us both to survive the next couple of days.”
    With that, he released my hand and disappeared. I sighed, then snuggled deeper into the blankets. And, despite the desire that still spun through my body, fell to sleep almost instantly.
    *   *   *
    A few hours later—feeling refreshed but still somewhat unsatisfied sexually—I leaned back in the office chair and rubbed my forehead. We were now back in the office above the café I owned with Tao and Ilianna, and the sounds of a world going about its business as usual drifted upward—sounds like the murmur of conversation, the clink of cutlery being polished, or the happy whistle of our sous chef as he prepared for the next influx of customers. Normal, everyday sounds in a life that had become far from normal.
    At least for me.
    But they were also sounds that would no longer exist if we didn’t find the remaining key damn soon. Unfortunately, the search was going nowhere fast. My father might have said that the key could be found in a palace whose coat of arms lay the wrong way around, but there were no actual palaces in the state of Victoria, and Google had thrown up hundreds—if not thousands—of places that used “palace” in their names. It was going to take forever to check and eliminate every one, even with Azriel’s ability to zip from one place to another in seconds flat.
    “Perhaps it is time to call on Stane’s skills again,” Azriel commented. He was sitting on the sofa at the other end of the room, outwardly relaxed but not so inwardly.His frustration swirled through me, as sharp as anything I was feeling. “Cannot a computer work far faster than either of us?”
    Stane was Tao’s cousin, and a black marketeer who just happened to be able to hack into any computer system ever created. It was an ability I’d made full use of when it came to Hunter’s cases as well as the search for the keys.
    “Yes, but while a computer can check location, it can’t visually visit every place and check whether it bears a coat of arms that lies the wrong way around.”
    “But could he not write a program that would at least list those buildings that bear a coat of arms? Surely not every building would do so. It would, at least, shorten the list.”
    I frowned. “I guess—”
    The phone rang, cutting off the rest of my words. I glanced at the caller ID and groaned. It was Hunter. I guess I should have known the bitch would catch up with me sooner rather than later.
    “You do not have to answer it,” Azriel commented. “Although doing so might cause the very problem we are trying to avoid with her.”
    “I know. Trust me, I know.” I reached for my Coke, taking a sip to ease the sudden dryness in my throat, then reluctantly hit the vid-phone’s Answer button.
    A brief, psychedelic pattern ran across the screen; then Hunter’s countenance—which seemed oddly sharper—glared back at me. Her shadowed green eyes were filled with the promise of death, and a tremor that was part fear, part foreboding, ran through me.
    “Good morning, Risa Jones.” Her voice was soft—pleasant, even. But there was something in the way she said my name that increased my fear. Or maybe it was the fact that she’d used my full name, something shehadn’t done in a very long time. “I appear to be missing a Cazador. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
    “And why would I know