Poison Fruit by Jacqueline Carey Page B

wasn’t a smell hit me, and the pit of my stomach lurched. I swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “How can you be? I mean, you did it, didn’t you? Claimed your birthright?” I waved one hand. “And yet—”
    Dufreyne leaned close to me, the reek of wrongness that hung about him intensifying. “And yet the Inviolate Wall still stands,” he whispered in a silken tone, his breath hot against my face. “Is that it?”
    I held my ground with an effort. “Yes.”
    He laughed. It wasn’t a full-on villainous mwah-ha-ha , but it was close. “I don’t know whether to envy you or pity you, Daisy Johanssen. You honestly don’t know what the difference is between us, do you?”
    I gritted my teeth. “Well, I can think of a few.”
    For a long moment, he just stood there, his gaze boring into mine, the stench of his existence surrounding me. “Your mother was an innocent,” he said at length. “Foolish and ignorant, but innocent.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    “Oh, it makes all the difference.” This time Dufreyne’s smile was bitter. “Only one of our kind conceived in innocence has the power to breach the Inviolate Wall and destroy the world as we know it. One such as you.” He shook his head. “But you’ll never use it, will you?”
    “No,” I said automatically.
    “More’s the pity,” he observed. “I hope you appreciate the irony. You, possessed of world-shattering power, can never use it.”
    “Why the fuck would I?” I asked. “Why would you? Why would anyone ?”
    Dufreyne did the eyebrow-raise. “To reign over the resulting chaos?”
    Beneath my skirt, I swished my tail back and forth. “Yeah, that’s not really on my bucket list.”
    “No, of course not,” he said. “Because you were raised to love and cherish this tiresome world, to live a tiresome mortal life and die a tiresome mortal death.”
    I eyed him. “If you’re that bored, maybe you need a hobby.”
    “A hobby.” The notion seemed to amuse him. “Yes, thank you for the suggestion. Perhaps when this business is concluded, I’ll take a flower-arranging class.” He beeped his Jaguar unlocked and turned to open the driver’s-side door. “In the meantime, I have a vocation.”
    “Wait!” I called out. “Your mother . . . If she wasn’t innocent, what was she?”
    He paused, his back to me. “Complicit.”
    “I’m sorry.” The words came unbidden.
    His shoulders tensed visibly before easing, but the tone of hisresponse gave no indication that my sympathy had struck a nerve. “Don’tbe. She was well compensated for it.” He got into his car. “I may not be capable of destroying the world, but I can wield influence over it, and there are those who value my skills.”
    “Like who?” I asked him. “Satan’s Planned Parenthood? Whoever’s behind this whole Elysian Fields thing? What do you mean when you say a lot of people have been busy since Halloween?”
    “Good day, Ms. Johanssen.” Daniel Dufreyne closed his car door, cracking the window. “I’m sure our paths will cross again.”
    I watched him pull out of the parking lot. “No shit.”

Twelve
    I ducked back into the PVB office.
    “Wow, way to throw yourself at Mr. Brooks Brothers, Daisy,” Stacey observed. “Not exactly subtle.” I shot her a glance, and she had the grace to look abashed. “Sorry. Force of habit.”
    “Don’t have anything to do with that guy,” I said to her. “He’s bad news.”
    “Like what?”
    I hesitated, then flashed her the devil-horns sign with my right hand. As far as I was concerned, Daniel Dufreyne wasn’t protected by the eldritch honor code. “One of my kind gone to the dark side.”
    Her face paled. “Are you serious?” She cast an involuntary glance upward, as though the Inviolate Wall were hovering above us. “I didn’t think you could do that without . . . you know.”
    “ I can’t,” I said. “But he can. Apparently, not all hell-spawns are created equal.”
    I knocked on Amanda’s