Obsidian Prey Read Online Free PDF Page A

opened on the fourth floor. Without a word they went down the hall. She opened her door, stepped into the apartment, and turned on the light switch.
    A large ball of dryer lint with bright blue eyes tumbled toward her, chortling a cheerful welcome. Its six paws skittered on the hardwood floors. A small, jaunty red beret was clipped to the tatty fur in the vicinity of the top of its head.
    Lyra scooped up the dust bunny and plopped him on her shoulder.
    “I’m home, Vincent,” she said.
    The greeting ritual satisfied, Vincent burbled happily and hopped onto Cruz’s much broader shoulder.
    “At least the bunny is glad to see me,” Cruz said. “Hey, there, pal. How’s it rezzing?”
    Vincent chortled again.
    Dust bunnies were not overly concerned with petty things like the legal ownership of spectacular amber discoveries in the jungle, Lyra thought. Nor did they fret about having fallen in love with the wrong man. But she rose above the impulse to make that observation out loud. She had to stay focused. The window bench was at the far end of the room, still in shadow, but she could make out the curves of the bra cups
    “While you two reminisce, I’ll get out of these heels,” she said.
    She hurried toward the window bench.
    The plan was simple. She would keep her body between Cruz and the bra.
    She reached her goal, grabbed the end of the towel, and rolled the bra inside with a few quick twists. Still moving fast, she darted behind the sliding screens that concealed the bedroom area and dropped the towel and its contents onto the dresser.
    In the outer room, Cruz rezzed another light switch. The resulting glow permeated the bedroom through the translucent screens.
    “I see Vincent is still painting,” Cruz said from the other side of the screen.
    Oh, damn, the painting . She had been so focused on the bra that she had forgotten about the artwork. Well, there was nothing for it but to brave it out. The odds were seriously against Cruz ever discovering the truth.
    She went back out into the main room, deftly sliding the screen closed behind her to conceal the bed. There was something about having a bed clearly visible when you were alone with a man who could heat your blood and excite all your senses with just a look; something dangerous.
    Cruz was standing over Vincent’s latest work of art. The canvas lay flat on the floor atop a protective layer of newspapers. The one attempt at setting up an easel had ended in disaster when Vincent had tried to climb it to get to the top of the painting. He’d had a blue rez-brush in one paw at the time. The easel had toppled over. Vincent had landed with his usual adroitness, but the rez-brush had shattered when it hit the floor. The little tube of paint attached to the brush had broken off, splattering blue paint on everything within range, including the artist. It had required a great deal of paint remover and repeated baths to restore Vincent’s fur to its customary shade of nondescript gray.
    “Painting is just a game to him,” she said. “I keep thinking he’ll grow tired of it. But so far he hasn’t. I still have to lock up the rez-brushes whenever I’m not around to supervise, though. Three weeks ago, I went downstairs to take out the trash while he was playing with his paints. I was gone for only five minutes, but by the time I got back, the lower portion of the refrigerator was green.”
    Cruz studied the bright, chaotic swipes and blobs of color that covered a third of the canvas. “Looks like he’s heavily into magenta. When I left he was still in his blue period.”
    She thought about what had happened to the three blue paintings and cleared her throat. “He’s gone through several colors since we last saw you,” she said.
    Cruz looked at her across the room. He had removed his jacket and tossed it over the reading chair, just as he had done so often during the time they had dated. His black tie was unknotted, and he had opened the top three or four