He wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t already know. I held up the bracelet. “I’m stuck.”
“How?”
I debated whether or not to tell him, then said, “Dad got himself into trouble. Gambling.” I shrugged, doing my damnedest to look unconcerned. “Persimma wanted me and so she figured out a way to get what she wanted. No big.”
“No big? Seriously? Your father just let her—”
I looked up and down the street, wondering if Winter Court would be showing up tonight. If they did, guaranteed there’d be corpses on the ground by morning. “Why are you here? And are the shifters at the bar with you?”
A muscle in his jaw jumped. “I’m the new head honcho of Greymane pack. They think they’re my security detail.”
I frowned. “Not doing a very good job of it if they got here without you.”
He looked a little sheepish as he said, “I ditched them. I needed to see you and didn’t want them caught up in the shit that’s going down tonight.”
“What shit? I haven’t heard anything.” Just then, a gleaming limo—ice white—turned the corner and my blood froze in my veins. “Fuck,” I said, drawing out the word. “This is bad.”
“Come with me now.”
“I can’t.” I held up the bracelet again. “If I leave without fulfilling my obligation, she’ll kill Dad. I don’t have a choice.”
“How much is his debt?”
“No.”
“Dez.”
“Jake. I am not letting you pay it. Anyway, it’s a lot and it isn’t like she’s just going to let me go. She needs me. Especially now.” With me here, there couldn’t be all-out magical war ... but they could bring weapons and kill each other the old-fashioned way. “I need to warn Yessamyn,” I said. “You should get out while you can. I’ll be fine. Persimma will protect me.”
“How? Without magic, how?”
I shrugged. Persimma was a down and dirty fighter. She couldn’t lie—none of the fey could—but she could talk in circles with such dexterity that she easily obfuscated the truth. It didn’t even take that for her to catch my dad, though. He had a problem and she took advantage of it. “Good to see you, Jake. Stay away.” I turned on my heel and left him curbside, hoping to high hell he would listen.
Chapter Three
KIEREN SONDESBY, KNIGHT of the Winter Court, entered the bar just behind me, her cold green eyes assessing. When she saw me, she said, “Dez. Still in hock, I see. Would you like me to pay off your debt? You could work for me in Winter Court. No bars. No drunks.” Disdain curled her lip as she looked around the Ragwort. “You would be treated like a queen.”
“I appreciate that Kieren, but I like working here.” It wasn’t a lie and she knew it, though she couldn’t understand it. I did like the Ragwort. I liked the people. I enjoyed chatting with Yessamyn, dodging Benny’s hands, listening to the bands. It was just the indentured part that rubbed me raw and if I took Kieren’s offer, I’d be trading one type of servitude for another.
No, thank you.
“What can I get you to drink?”
She gave me her order, asked how much Spring was tipping and added on another 5%, then sat at a table nearest the door. Augustine was dancing, Nicta was in the corner laughing and doing coke off one of her bodyguard’s arms, and the three shifters were still sitting at the bar.
Benny and his group were looking rather pale at the sight of all the fey in the room. They usually stayed until I kicked them out at closing time, but tonight they shuffled to the register to pay their tab and headed out, hats pulled low on their heads. Word would spread through town that four Courts were at the Ragwort and soon there would be crowds gathered as unobtrusively as possible to rubberneck the ensuing chaos. Because there would be chaos. No doubt about that now.
Crap.
Jake had joined the shifters at the bar and now they were in a rather heated discussion, the trio’s ire directed at my ex-boyfriend. He didn’t seem concerned about it; hell, he didn’t seem to be listening to them at all, his eyes on me. I wondered what Greymane pack would think about their head honcho hanging out at a Summer Court bar. The packs liked to say they didn’t do any business with the fey, which sounded like posturing to me. One, there were shifters among the fey and two, it wasn’t like you could go anywhere or buy anything without directly or indirectly doing business with them. Their presence in our lives had been a fact since the meteor strike in 1908 that changed our world forever.
I couldn’t quite imagine what a world without magic would be like, though we read all about our mundane histories in school, and it was my favorite genre of fiction to read. I wished we could go back to a time without fey, without power struggles between overly-endowed magicals who had nothing better to do than try to be top dog.
The stories I read delved into what-ifs about technology and our future had we not been altered by the tainted meteor. Stories about people creating cities without magic, stories about worlds where mundanes built rockets using science and explored the universe in ships built with their own hands. A world where people created machines that did all the work that magic did now, machines that ran on oil derived from the ancient corpses of dinosaurs or on steam or waterpower.
No one back then could fly. They had to use ships to get across oceans and had just begun exploring motorized vehicles and planes when magic became the new norm.
I wanted to live in a world without magic and I supposed, in a way I did. If only my null abilities could blanket the world. We’d be screwed for a while until we figured out the substitutes for magic, but we could do it. Maybe it would make the world a better place.
A girl could dream.
The Jug Raymer band was deep into their second set for the night when the doors banged open and a swirl of trash-scented air filled the bar. The band awkwardly screeched to a halt and the room went quiet.
Persimma staggered into the silence, her fey blood dripping all over our floors. One of her hands was clutched to her side, but she didn’t seem to notice the steadily leaking wound otherwise. Her violet eyes searched me out and despite myself, I went to her, not compelled by any magic but by the look of desperation there.
Augustine was leaned back in his chair, smiling slightly. Nicta was outright grinning. Kieren didn’t even turn in her seat, unsurprised.
This was bad. So very very bad.
Heart hammering, I put my arm around Persimma and helped her to a barstool. She eased herself down and then jerked her head at Yessamyn. “A double fey blaster.”
Yessamyn nodded and, face pale, made the drink, a mix of fey alcohols distilled in Underhill and distributed to the world from the Ragwort. Her hand shook a little as she set the glass down in front of our boss and Persimma tossed it back like one long accustomed to chugging drinks.
The crack of the glass on the wooden bar was loud in the quiet room. Still, no one had talked, no one had broken the quiet. Everyone was waiting.
Horror stole over me when I finally noticed Persimma’s hands. Her nails were gone, ripped free from her fingertips, leaving behind a bloody churn of meat. “What happened?” I whispered.
She tipped her head but didn’t look at me. “Betrayal.” Her eyes were on Yessamyn.
“She wouldn’t—” I started, then watched Yessamyn’s eyes flick to Augustine and back.
She would.
Jake had moved closer while I processed, and he leaned in urgently. “Let us get you out of here.”
“Who are you?”
“Her ex.”
She lifted her head and sniffed. “Woof.”
“Dez.”
I shook off his arm. “I won’t leave her to be torn apart.”
Persimma chuckled without humor. “They’ll take you and auction you off to the higher bidder as soon as they’re done chewing me up. If you’re lucky, you’ll end up with Kieren and that would still be hell.” She spun the glass around, leaving bloody prints behind. “You didn’t tell me your ex was a shifter.”
I shrugged. Jake and
I hadn’t been a thing forever. It wasn’t anything Persimma had needed to know. “You didn’t ask.”
“Clever girl. You sound like me.”
The room was still silent, but I heard the whispers now as people processed what was happening. They itched over my skin and made me want to run far and fast, but I knew better than to flee from predators.
“Here’s the thing, Dez. They’re going to take you.” She snorted when Jake tensed behind me. “They will. If not today, then when they find you and they will find you. So here’s my advice. Figure out why you are the way you are. You’re the only null I know of whose influence is growing. Which means you aren’t just a null. You’re something else. Something they’re willing to destroy me to get.”
I was shaking my head because of course she was wrong. “Maggie Little’s influence has expanded too. Joseph B—”
“Shut up,” she snarled quietly, the mild look still on her face to keep Yessamyn from figuring out what was happening. She had retreated to the far end of the bar looking small and vulnerable and sick to her stomach.
As well she should. Sure, I hated being indentured to Persimma, but I despised being up for grabs by whichever one of them had the gold to buy me.
Bastards. Have I mentioned how much I hate the fey?
“You think you can get her out of here fast, shifter?”
“Of course.”
“Don’t stop for anything. They’ll have their minions all over town. It won’t be pretty, and you’ll probably have to kill a few of them. Have iron on you? Eggshells? Water from the Switch?”
He nodded.
“Don’t I get a say in this?”
“Do you want to bow and scrape for Augustine? Be Nicta’s love slave? Be used by Kieren in whatever dirty deal she wants made? No? Of course not. So, you have a say, but you’d better fucking choose the shifter. At least for now.” Another cold laugh. “And don’t forget, Dez. Figure out what you are before they take away your chance.”
Without another word, she swung out of her chair and flung her arms wide. “You bitches aren’t going to kill me. Did you really think your shitty ambush and iron pinchers would stop me? Make me weep in fear? You haven’t known fear. But you will.”
Chairs scraped as her kin came to their feet, their eyes on Persimma.
I had to hand it to the fey; she knew how to command the attention of a room.
Jake pulled me back and his bodyguards surrounded us as Persimma lifted one of Nicta’s people out of their seat by their throat. The audible snap of the bones in their neck left me cold all over. This was a side of my boss I had rarely seen, and I was grateful for it. “Get me out of here,” I whispered, hoping I wouldn’t regret those words.
He was already easing me toward the back door before I’d finished the sentence. Before chaos erupted in the bar and the fists—and claws—began to fly.
Chapter Four
“This way,” Simon said, leading us directly around the corner to an SUV parked under a streetlamp. “Armored with iron,” he said, giving Jake such a look I might have giggled at if I wasn’t fleeing the scene of what would be an absolute massacre as soon as I left.
“Shit,” I said and balked at being pushed inside the vehicle.
“Get in,” Jake said as if I were stupid.
“If I leave, they’ll kill her for sure.”
“If you leave, they’ll rip her apart, but she’ll live. With magic, she’ll survive even the worst of it. With you here, they could take her apart and perma-death her,” Michel said. “If there’s magic, she’ll have a fighting chance.”
I stared at the bar a bit longer anyway, telling myself I owed Persimma nothing, certainly not my life. “You sure?” I asked, hating myself for wanting to stay to protect the damned crazy bitch.
“Sure,” he said. No hesitation, no glance at his fellows as if to confirm he should lie. Just confidence and calm.
“Fine then. Let’s get out of here.” I slid into the backseat and buckled up, Jake on one side of me, Giles on the other. Yessamyn would have paid good money to be seated where I was ... the thought came and was chased away when I remembered that she’d been the one to betray Persimma. She’d betrayed our boss, yes, but also me. She had to have known that I was the object of Augustine’s attention and yet she’d sold out Persimma anyway.
What had she gotten for it? Security for her kid? Money to live on so she wouldn’t have to worry how she was going to pay her bills? I didn’t blame her ... but I totally blamed her.
My head was a jumble of contradictions.
Kind of like my feelings for Jake.
Giles was on my other side, his muscular thigh pressed against mine. His hair didn’t just look like honey; he smelled like it too and I found myself taking nice, deep breaths so I could take it in. The scent relaxed me to the point where my eyes almost started drooping.
I straightened. “What are you doing?”
He blinked all innocent-like. “Just sitting here.”
“What’s that perfume you have on?”
He turned his head and sniffed at his shoulder then shrugged. “I don’t know?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. Likely story. I twisted in my seat to see if anyone was following us and got to watch the lights flicker back on as we passed far enough away from them that my null magic no longer affected them. Boy were there going to be a lot of pissed off business owners tomorrow. Stories about the weird outages all up and down the street would spread and ... “Fuck.”
“What?” Jake looked back too.
“No. There isn’t anyone following us that I saw. I was just realizing that it’s going to be impossible to hide me. Everywhere I go there will be a brown- or blackout.” I’d never considered how obvious my so-called talent made me until now. Probably because I’d never been on the run before. “You’d be better off leaving me here and letting things happen how they’re going to happen.” The thought of being a slave in any of the fey courts made my stomach hurt, but I would rather that than see Jake and these strangers get pulverized trying to save me.
“Like I’d do that.”
“Like we’d do that,” Simon growled from the front seat, sounding more animal-like than human.
“You three don’t even know me,” I said. Call me Captain Obvious if you want, but he wasn’t thinking clearly. “And you obviously aren’t up on all the great and wondrous ways a fey can kill you. Last count, according to Persimma, was eight thousand, five hundred and fifty-two.”
Simon snorted.
Men. They were idiots at the best of times and when they thought their manhood was being questioned? Watch out. “Seriously, you don’t want to mess with the Courts. Even the ones that seem nice aren’t. Trust me.”
“We aren’t dumping you. And we have an idea on how to hide you. We just have to get there. ETA?”
“Three minutes, boss,” Michel said.
“Three minutes? We aren’t even leaving town? Death wish much?”
Jake patted my hand as if I were a nervous old lady he was trying to pacify. “Trust me.”
I didn’t trust anybody, least of all a car full of dudes with more testosterone than brains. We sat in tense silence as Michel took turns like a race car driver before pulling us into a parking structure alongside the Golden Goddess motel. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I asked, my heart rate ratcheting up into the five-hundred-beats-per-minute range. “Alexa is a goddess.” I stayed away from goddesses. Hell, had I not been in hock to Persimma, I would have been tucked away in my father’s cabin in the mountains, hiding from all magicals.
“We are well aware,” Jake said.
Michel pulled us into a separate garage slot, the door thumping shut behind us with the finality of a coffin lid.
“You are insane.”
“To be fair, people stay here all the time.”
“If they want their innards juiced.” I wanted out of the car and out of the building. No way did I want to be near a fricking goddess. Even my nu
ll abilities had their limits and their limit was a full-blown goddess. I’d met her once and she about fried my brain. Her power was as intense as sunbathing in the Sahara at high noon times fifty.
“She said she’d help us keep you safe.”
Jake slid out of the car and held out his hand expecting me to follow, but I sat there in stunned silence. Alexa wanted to keep me safe? Me? Why? Was I exchanging one type of servitude for another?
Noticing my lack of exit from the car, Jake ducked back down. “You coming?”
“No, I’m not coming. Is this some sort of con? Did you take me from Persimma just to sell me to a fucking goddess?”
He frowned, his forehead creasing with his irritation. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that? I saved you from that fey bitch and now you’re accusing me of selling you? Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“He would never,” Giles murmured. “If you heard how he talks about you—”
“Shut it,” Jake ground out.
I studied Giles, still ignoring Jake’s hand. Although my ex sounded annoyed with Giles, the other shifter’s words had done more to prove Jake’s innocence in the matter of my kidnapping than Jake himself. “You guys aren’t selling me?”
He shook his head, then crossed his finger over his heart before kissing the tip. “Promise.”
I nodded and then slid out, ignoring Jake’s proffered hand. No need for him to start thinking I was a wilting flower in need of saving. Sometimes I needed backup while I kicked ass, but I didn’t need saving, damn it. “If this is a double-cross ...”
He rolled his eyes so hard he was lucky he didn’t get them lodged at the back of his skull. “Let’s go, Drama Queen.”
“Screw you,” I said, my witty riposte right on point if I did say so myself.
He insulted me right back and we bickered through the garage to the elevator and up to the penthouse. I realized once we got there that he’d done it on purpose, keeping my mind busy so I couldn’t worry about the meeting.
Now, though, the full import of what was waiting beyond the door hit me and my stomach flopped like a rotted fish. “I’m going to be sick.”
Bound to Change: A Limited Edition Spring Shifter Romance Collection Page 44