Callie

CALLIE

  Keepers of the Flame: Origins #2

  Copyright 2013 Cate Morgan

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgments

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Epilogue

  Brighid’s Mark Excerpt

  Other Books

  About the Author

  Dedication

  For Holly Atkinson, aka “Editor Awesome”, who loved Callie from the get-go and who has patiently taught me so much, while putting up with all my authorly foibles. Thank you.

  ONE

  It was called the Age of Jazz, and if New Orleans was its soul, then Chicago was its heart.

  At least, Callie imagined it so as her cab turned down East Van Buren where the music was at its hottest, living and breathing and sweating as much as its melting pot of patrons. Outside the Friar’s Inn she paid her cabbie and stepped out awkwardly in a knee-length dress and high heels she was really too tall to wear. But tonight was special. She was going to a jazz club, she had a date, and the New Orleans Rhythm Kings were playing.

  As the cab pulled away a figure in a slick suit handed its cigarette to a companion and came bounding toward her with a wide smile. “Wow-ee, girl!” His blue eyes skated over her appreciatively. “You can catch a fish without a hook in that getup.”

  Callie grinned back. “Beats that starchy nurse’s uniform, doesn’t it?”

  “You’re not joking, sister.” He offered her his arm. “Come meet your hot date. Hey, Sam—get your caboose over here.”

  Sam appeared, a platinum blond flapper hanging from his arm like a small bumblebee caught in his orbit.

  The flapper pouted her perfect, garnet-painted mouth. “Who’s this, Georgie?”

  “Sam’s lovely for the evening—lucky bastard.” George gave Callie a friendly, one-armed hug. “This is Callie. Cal, this is Sam and Susie.”

  An aggressive giggle from the bumblebee. “’Callie’? What kind of a name is that?”

  “A family one,” Callie drawled, arching a brow. She turned to Sam with her hand proffered. “Nice to meet you, Sam.”

  A painful expression flitted across his classically handsome face as he gave George what she could only describe as a pointed look. Callie could guess why—in her heels, she was several inches taller than he was. “You, too.” A polite façade wiped his expression clean.

  George invited them toward the stairs leading to Friar’s basement cabaret, the stone steps still damp from that day’s rain. “Ladies first.”

  Callie strode off, Susie tripping along beside her. “Hell, George,” Sam stage whispered behind them. “You didn’t tell me she was a giant.”

  “You said you liked tall girls. Callie’s the tallest girl I know—one of the classiest, too.”

  “Tall is one thing—she’s a giraffe!”

  “Legs from here to eternity, though.”

  “Like I said—giraffe. Couldn’t you have found me a nice cool blond?”

  Story of her life. Callie rolled her eyes—but she couldn’t have cared less. She was here for the Kings.

  Goosebumps trilled up and down her bare arms, as jazz seemed to seep from the very sidewalks. Callie’s group pushed past a cadre of excitable high school boys elbowing one another out of the way every time the door swayed open to catch a brief, glorious burst of music. “Out of the way, Jimmy—it’s my turn!” “The hell it is, Eddie!” And, Callie’s personal favorite: a wolf whistle followed by “Jeezus, check out the legs on that redhead!”

  Callie gave the boy her patented saucy wink-and-grin one-two combo, bowling the kid over into his slack-jawed buddies. In thanks she paused slightly longer than necessary in passing through the front door. She slid a sly gaze over to Suzie, who’s perfect, Clara Bow bee-stung lips were pouting with the best of them. “Sorry, Suze,” Callie said as she dropped her coat into Sam’s hands at the coat check counter. “It seems leggy redheads are where it’s at.”

  George burst out laughing. “Ain’t it the truth.” He slapped Suzie on her non-existent posterior and followed the maitre’d.

  Johnny lit his fine Cuban cigar—a gift of profound gratitude from an admirer and business associate—and eased back into his reserved seat, perfectly positioned to gauge the action of both the show and its enthusiastic audience. Dancers whirled and bounced to the music, feathers on flappers’ headbands swaying to the beat of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, sequins on their knee-length dresses glittering in the lights.

  Of course his name wasn’t really Johnny. That was simply the name he used these days, appropriate to the time and place. Everything he did was appropriate to the time and place, which is how he’d risen in the ranks of Lilith’s inner circle. Unlike the Mother of Demon’s greater beasts, Johnny had been human once and believed that civilized behavior and the right deal would bring about the victory they were looking for.

  Johnny was expert at making the right deal and civilized behavior. He also enjoyed the finer things in life, while they could still be had. All things considered, Prohibition in Chicago was the most fun he’d experienced in a rather long time, and he planned on sticking around to enjoy it to the fullest.

  The current mayor gave the phrase “A wink’s as good as a nod” whole new meaning. And one night not so long ago, the Chief of Police, while dining with Johnny at this very table, had complained only half-jokingly that half his force was in the bootleg business. He’d visibly blanched when Johnny informed him it was closer to sixty percent. It was something to see an entire city laugh openly at the idea that Prohibition would prohibit anything at all, except perhaps restraint in the five thousand or so speakeasies in the city alone.

  Prohibition, Johnny mused, had been one of his better ideas. He imagined, with deep satisfaction, Lilith laughing herself breathless as corruption and hedonistic living blossomed all over the country and bled like spilled wine over other parts of the world. Naturally, it couldn’t last—but it was fun while it did. And all the while, the money kept rolling in.

  A beyond voluptuous redhead with candy apple red hair and a seductive smile swayed her way over, causing more than one drink to slip from nerveless fingers, leaving shattered glass and hearts in her wake. Johnny stood politely, giving her a gallant bow as he pulled a chair out for her. “Maeve. Always lovely to see you. It’s been, what—twenty years?”

  “Thirty. Victorian England was rather more lively once the sun went down than one might otherwise suspect, wasn’t it?”

  “Thanks to you.” He gave her another bow, this one expressing admiration for a talented colleague, which she was.

  Maeve settled her generous curves into the chair and extracted a cigarette from a silver case. “So you’re going by Johnny Sinclair these days?”

  Johnny shrugged as he returned to his seat. “It suits the job. You?”

  “I never bother changing my name. Humans are so utterly short-lived and unobservant, why bother?”

  “I find it’s a matter of necessity as well as style in my case. And names do carry power.”

  “Yes, I can imagine Mestopheles might present something of a bugbear in your line.” She paused delicately so he could light her cigarette. “Speaking of bugbears,” she added, exhaling, “don’t look now, but I do believe one just entered your fine establishment.”

  Johnny narrowed his eyes as he studied her body language, puffing on his cigar. Nothing—but nothing—came without a price in his business. Either of them. “Do tell. Or would your prefer I guess?”

  Maeve grinned wickedly. “What do you think?”

  He raised a brow. “At least give me a hint. Blond? Brunette? Redhead?” He smiled back as she tapped her nose playfully at this la
st, his eyes making slow work of her exquisite beauty—if slightly overstated for his tastes.

  She shook her head. “Not me. But closer than you think.” She leaned forward with her elbows on the table as she watched him try to puzzle it out.

  Johnny’s eyes skated the dance floor of flying tails and flapping flappers. Before long his gaze paused on a couple slightly more dignified than most, dancing expertly but with little of the liveliness of their fellows. A strained smile on the part of the gentleman, whose own gaze searched the dance floor instead of focusing on his partner—an obvious expression of awkward displeasure, considering said partner was extremely pretty and taller than her escort.

  It was the partner who caught his eye. A redhead on par with Maeve, with an athletic build accentuated by curves, and—beyond all else—a definite aura surrounding her. She moved like a tigress in heels, and a fierce light shone in unusual whiskey-colored eyes.

  As he watched she caught his eye. He offered her a smile of genuine sympathy for her choice of partner, and to his surprise she smiled back, as if to say “You don’t have to tell me,brother.” He found himself immediately intrigued.

  “One of yours, I take it?” he asked, gaze sliding reluctantly from the redhead back to Maeve.

  “Not yet,” Maeve answered, blowing more smoke.

  Had Johnny not been a master card player, he might have leaned forward in his eagerness. Instead he relaxed back in apparent unconcern, crossing one leg over the other. “She has no idea what she is?”

  “None,” Maeve confirmed with a smile the very definition of temptation itself. Johnny wondered if she’d learned that particular move from Lilith, or come upon it on her own. “But if you were to…ingratiate…yourself with my dear, unsuspecting cousin, you might find it to your advantage.”

  Johnny hardly needed the benefits spelled out for him. After all, this was a game of his invention. “Cousin? So she’s one of Brighid’s?”

  “Does it worry you?”

  “Not in the least.” That was ostensibly true. The real truth was that it worried him a great deal. But the advantage would far outweigh the risk. Taming a Keeper of the Flame before she ascended into her power would be easy enough. Keeping her tamed afterward, however, would be next to impossible. He needed the right motivation, the right words. The right deal.

  “Find out what she wants. Discover that which sets her soul alight.” Maeve stubbed out her cigarette, and stood to leave. “And her power is yours, as will be the approbation of Lilith.”

  “And what’s in it for you?” Johnny inquired, giving her a lazy look through the haze of cigar smoke.

  Maeve gave him one of her patented sly smiles. “A favor, for the future. To get my dear cousin on your side—and keep her there—for the next century or so until the end game is upon us will be no mean feat. There is only a slim chance you’ll succeed.”

  “Your confidence in my abilities is gratifying,” Johnny drawled.

  “Even Lucifer himself, dare I say it, would find himself challenged with this one.” She crossed her arms, eyes gleaming. “That being said, I may find myself in need of other arrangements. Either way, you need not worry yourself that I’m working against Lilith’s aims.”

  He nodded. “Your loyalty to the Mother of Demons has never been in question.”

  “I’m glad you see it my way.” She gazed at him, clearly trying read his expression. “So you’ll do it?”

  “I’ll give it due consideration.”

  TWO