Shadow Rising by Kendra Leigh Castle Page A

move along.
    “Well, I don’t want your diamond, so that’s a bonus for you,” Ariane finally said as she got resituated at the end of the bed. “In fact, I don’t want anything from you except your expertise.”
    He gave a short, sharp laugh. “In what arena, Ariane? I’m a man of many talents.”
    “You also have a one-track mind,” she said with a sigh. “Look, it’s obvious we’re going to keep running into one another. We want the same thing. Pooling our resources makes sense.”
    “You have no resources. I’m holding all the cards here, Ariane, and I say no.”
    She fought the urge to punch him. “Hear me out. I’m not stupid, Damien. I’m well aware that you have better contacts and that you’ll find the next step easier than I will. Manon was the only lead I had, and that was an accident. But I have more to offer than you think. This is all just… more difficult than I’d expected.” She frowned at the floor and muttered, “And now it’s even more complicated.”
    “You mean the Grigori who strung me up,” Damien said, shifting slightly on the bed. “I told you this didn’t seem like a normal abduction. Who was he? Another friend of yours?”
    “No,” she said, shaking her head as the strangeness of the encounter hit her anew. “That’s what I mean. He’s one of ours, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before. It makes no sense. There aren’t really that many of us.”
    “Well, I’ll agree with you,” Damien replied. “That is odd, and bears looking into. But you not knowing him doesn’t exactly make you more useful as a traveling companion. I’m still not understanding what I get out of this partnership you’re proposing.”
    Ariane looked at him, at his impassive, politely curious expression, and knew he wouldn’t take her on out of compassion, or even pity. He was a creature who worked on the basis of what and how much he could get, a system utterly divorced from emotion. Maybe Sariel had been right—she relied too much on her own emotion. She needed to come at this logically. It was the only way she would get anywhere with Damien.
    “I’m an extra set of hands, and I can hold my own in a fight,” she said. “I’ve got enough money to pay my way; that’s nothing you’d need to worry about. And I know Sammael. I understand him, just as I understand the Grigori in a way you don’t. Considering what happened earlier, I think that would be very useful to you.”
    Damien tipped his head at her. “Persuasive. I think Drake would find you fascinating.”
    “Drake?”
    “The Master Shade. My employer. Collecting information has been a very lucrative hobby of his… but he knows next to nothing about your dynasty. It annoys him to no end. I suppose spending time with you might reveal a few things he’d be interested in. And if he’s interested, I get things I like.” His gaze was shrewd. “Your wings, for instance. Useful and pretty and very, very strange. No wonder your kind hides in the desert. That would be hard to conceal otherwise.”
    She felt slightly ill. It figured that she would pay forsaving him. Still, this changed nothing. She needed Damien to find Sam. And regardless of what secrets she revealed or not, she could not go home.
    “I guess it wouldn’t do any good to ask you to keep that information to yourself,” she said quietly.
    “No. But if it makes you feel any better, it likely won’t go far. The knowledge is much more valuable if almost no one has it.” He sat up and leaned forward, and she saw much more of the cat in him than she ever had before.
    “You need to realize up front, Ariane, that this is just another job for me. I’m not going to coddle you or keep your secrets out of some misguided sense of fair play. If we work together, it’s a business arrangement, nothing more, and one that is going to end up working to my advantage. Is that really what you want?”
    Ariane took a deep breath. In his own way, Damien had been