it,” I told her quietly. She put it away. The red marks were fading from her skin, gone the way they had come. I rubbed at my eyes. “For now,” I said slowly, “we’re going to forget about your decision to edit me out of her life. Because chewing over it won’t help her right now, and because her best chance is for us to work together. Agreed?”
Susan nodded.
I spoke the next words through my teeth. “But I haven’t forgotten. Will never forget it. There will be a reckoning on that account later. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” she whispered. She looked up at me with large, shining dark eyes. “I never wanted to hurt you. Or her. I was just . . .”
“No,” I said. “Too late for that now. It’s just wasting time we can’t afford to lose.”
Susan turned her face sharply away from me, to the fire, and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, her expression was under control. “All right,” she said. “For our next step, we’ve got some options.”
“Like?”
“Diplomacy,” she said. “I hear stories about you. Half of them probably aren’t true, but I know you’ve got some markers you could call in. If enough of the Accord members raise a voice, we might get her back without incident.”
I snorted. “Or?”
“Offer reparations to the Red King in exchange for the child’s life. He doesn’t have a personal interest in this matter, and he outranks Arianna. Give him a bribe big enough and she’ll have to let Maggie go.”
“Right off the top of a building, probably,” I growled.
Susan watched me steadily. “What do you think we should do?”
I felt my lips do something that probably didn’t look like a smile. The storm had settled somewhere around my heart, and heady tendrils of its fury were curling up into my throat. It was a good ten seconds before I could speak, and even then it came out in a snarl.
“Do?” I said. “The Reds stole our little girl. We sure as hell aren’t going to pay them for that.”
A hot and terrible hunger flared up in Susan’s eyes in response to my voice.
“We find Maggie,” I said. “We take her back. And we kill anyone who gets in the way.”
Susan shuddered and her eyes overflowed. She bowed her head and made a small sound. Then she leaned over and gently touched my left hand, the one still covered in slowly fading burn scars. She looked at my hand and winced, beginning to draw away.
I caught her fingers and squeezed hard. She settled her fingers against mine and did the same. We held hands for a silent moment.
“Thank you,” she whispered. Her hand was shaking in mine. “Thank you, Harry.”
I nodded. I was going to say something to stiff-arm her and keep the distance, but the warmth of her hand in mine was suddenly something I couldn’t ignore. I was furious with Susan, furious with an intensity you can feel only when someone you care deeply about hurts you. But the corollary of that was unavoidable—I still cared, or I wouldn’t be angry.
“We’ll find her,” I said. “And I will do everything in my power to bring her back safe.”
Susan looked up at me, tears streaking her face, and nodded. Then she lifted a hand and traced her fingers lightly over the scar on my cheek. It was a newer one, still angry and colorful. I thought it made me look like some old-school German character from Golden Age Hollywood with a dueling scar on his cheek. Her fingertips were gentle and warm.
“I didn’t know what I was going to do,” she said. “There was no one willing to stand up to them. There was no one.”
Our eyes met, and suddenly the old heat was there between us, quivering out from our joined hands, from her fingertips against my face. Her eyes widened a little, and my heart started pounding along rapidly. I was furious with Susan. But apparently my body just read that as “excited” and didn’t bother examining the fine print. I met her eyes for a long moment and then said, through a dry throat, “Isn’t this how we got into this mess?”
She let out a shaking sound that was meant to be a laugh, but was filled with awareness of the inherent irony, and drew her hands away. “I . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .” Her voice turned wry. “It’s been a while for me.”