Free Bad Blood by Kristen Painter Page A

cause.

    Atticus stood behind her. She gasped as his cool fingertips found her back, tracing their way to her spine. His hands were thickly calloused like every signumist she’d known. The heat of their trade turned their skin leathery.She knew when he’d begun to outline the scars because the sensation blurred into something more like pressure than true feeling. Perhaps the loss of feeling would make the new signum easier to bear.

    “Hmm.” Atticus followed the wrinkled marks down the sides of her spine. “I’ll have to sand these scars first. They won’t take signum.”

    “Sand them?”

    “Smooth them out. Not a pleasant process, I’m afraid, but necessary.”

    Her resolve wavered. She lifted her chin a little higher. “It will be fine.”

    His hands left her and he sat. “Tomorrow, then, this same time. It will take me a little time to prepare the gold once you arrive, then we will begin. You will recover at home or here?”

    “At home.” She tugged her tunic down. Getting home afterward was going to be unpleasant, but she couldn’t ask Dominic to use one of his suites. Things were tenuous enough. “Can’t you prepare the gold before I arrive?”

    “Ah, yes, of course. I didn’t realize you had it with you.”

    “I don’t.” This was not good. “I thought you’d have gold, actually. I can get some—that’s not an issue. I just wasn’t prepared.”

    “I have gold,” Atticus assured her. “But what I use is common gold. The mortals I engrave are not true comarré. You know that. They never will be.” He shrugged. “Sacred gold would be wasted on them. But for your purposes, I assumed you’d want sacred gold as has been used for all your other signum.”

    “I do. I guess. Is there a way to purify the gold you have?”

    “Unfortunately, I do not have that capability. And without the proper gold, the signum won’t have the power to open the portals or access the Aurelian.”

    She sighed and shook her head. “Where am I going to find sacred gold?”

    Mal cleared his throat. “What about the ring?”

    “What—” She looked up and the lack of expression on his face caught her attention. Only the pain in his eyes let her know he was still thinking about what he’d seen. She dropped her gaze to her hands. “Yes, I suppose that would do.” The ring of sorrows would certainly qualify as sacred gold. But that gold had its own power, and she had Mal’s blood in her veins now. Both made everything she was about to do much more risky.

    Would the ring’s power manifest when laid into her skin? Would it react to the vampire blood she carried? That much power could kill her.

    Or worse.

Chapter Seven

    Y ou failed, demon.” Aliza stared down the slightly crispy monster once again contained within Evie’s old aquarium. “A simple task and you failed.”

    “Yeah,” Evie added, her left eyelid flitting up and down. “The house you made me is great, but I really wanted the guy.”

    “The half-breed is Kubai Mata,” the demon snarled. “You tricked me.”

    Aliza laughed. “We tricked you? That’s rich.”

    “What’s a kubay mada?” Evie asked.

    The demon bared his teeth at the words, then crouched down and began to flick his forked tongue over his oozing wounds.

    “Tell us, demon,” Aliza said. “What is it?”

    But the creature just hissed a string of curses and went back to tending its wounds.

    She raised her hand to smack the side of the aquarium, then thought better of it. The pentagram that held him might be glued down, but the aquarium wasn’t in the best shape. No point tempting fate and getting themselveskilled, because there was no chance the demon would leave them alive if he got loose.

    “Damn thing smells like road kill,” Aliza muttered. “Makes my whole house stink. Evie, light some of those candles.”

    “Will do, Ma. Then I’m going to my place. I’m worn out.” She popped the lids off a few jar candles and lit them with a simple fire