“—worked there, I met him once.”
“—diner girl was first.”
“Fucking town is going to shit.”
Henri was right, there was a dark tension in the air, and on closer inspection, there were no smiles on faces.
The queue moved forward. “Oh, God, how much longer,” the woman in front of me moaned. “I knew we should have paid for VIP passes. Hate waiting.”
So did I. VIP passes sounded good. I gripped Henri’s hand and tugged him out of the queue. My heels were only two inches, but I walked with the confidence of someone wearing six-inch heels and ruby-red lippy. The bouncer at the door looked like he bench-pressed houses in his spare time. His black T-shirt stretched across his shoulders and pecs as if trying to become one with the flesh between. His jaw was stubbled, and dark eyes ringed by even darker lashes sat beneath severe eyebrows.
He raked me over. “You got passes?” His voice was gruff and raspy like gravel.
I locked onto his peepers and smiled, injecting suggestion into my tone. He’d believe what I said, he’d see what I wanted him to see. “Yeah, I got passes.” I pulled an old receipt for Starbucks from my jeans and held it out.
He looked at it, raised his brows, and then smirked and lifted the rope to let us through. I made to breeze past, but he leaned in as I passed and whispered in my ear.
“Coffee for one? Now, that is sad.”
Chapter Five
Fuck, what was he? Why’d he let me through? He knew what I was, knew I’d tried to mesmerize him. He had to be a supe or one of the tainted, but I would have picked up on it.
The bass beat of a familiar track reverberated through the soles of my feet as we walked past the cloakroom. I tugged Henri to the side before we hit the club properly.
“Did you catch what he was?”
Henri’s jaw was tense. “No. I got nothing off him.”
“Me either. He was masking.” And masking took a huge amount of energy. “What did Mai tell you about this place?”
“It’s the only club in town.”
“And the owners?”
“She didn’t say.”
I glanced over my shoulder at the entrance. The bouncer’s back came into view. Part of me wanted to go back out and confront him, but what if he chucked me out? I needed to be in here, to mingle and get a lay of the land. People talked when they were intoxicated, and the mood in the queue had been charged. People were on edge, blowing off steam. Sometimes, people didn’t even know they had useful information until they accidentally volunteered it.
No. I’d figure him out later.
“Come on, let’s mingle and see what we can learn.”
Music washed over us, strobe lights painted our faces all colors, and the bar beckoned. Alcohol did squat for Nightbloods, and Henri didn’t eat or drink. He’d just hold a bottle of beer all night. It worked.
I ordered and paid, and then we leaned against the bar and people-watched for a moment. Bopping bodies, writhing bodies, tongues down throats, and hands in inappropriate places. Looked like a good time, and for a moment, I allowed myself to pretend that I was here for the F word. No, not that one, the other one that ended in N and had a U in the center. Fun. Not on the cards for the likes of us. The Watch had a strict no-fun policy.
But a girl could dream, and okay, what was that at twelve o’ clock? A group of five humans, three males and two females, stood to one side. They all held drinks, but no one was taking a swig, and they all looked … off, and then they all turned and looked at me in that creepy horror movie way. The faces shimmered and blurred as if there was an overlay on them, and suddenly the eyes looked like empty screaming sockets, but then they were just faces again. Smiling faces. Swigging faces.
What. The. Fuck.
Ice was dripping through my veins, and my pulse, which was usually a slow, sedate pace, kicked up a notch. I’d seen this phenomenon, but only once in my life, and I knew what it was. What they were. These were humans infected with riders.
I turned away, downed my drink, and ordered another which followed the first into my tummy, where it sat warm and blooming but doing very little else, but the whole knocking-‘em-back scenario had the desired effect. Focus had returned, and the ice threatening to fill my veins was on standby.
Henri leaned in slightly. “You look, for want of a better phrase, like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Har-de-bloody-har.” I touched his arm to lend him my sight. “Not a regular ghost. Check out twelve o’ clock.”
His bicep tensed. “Motherfucker.”
“You really shouldn’t be able to swear.”
But his exclamation had taken the edge off my terror and maybe … Maybe I wasn’t about to run screaming from the club like a lunatic. The humans were behaving normally now, but the blur of a hand or a leg told me that I hadn’t been mistaken. A rider inhabited each body. Humans would call this possession, but riders weren’t regular ghosts. These were something else, something that may have once been human but were now uncategorized entities. They fed off human emotion, craved human contact, and they literally rode their victims. They experienced life through the host, and the longer they stayed, the worse it was for the human—best-case scenario, insanity, worst-case scenario, death.
I clenched my teeth as decency warred with self-preservation, because riders didn’t like to be called out. They didn’t like to be seen, and they certainly didn’t appreciate being unlatched from their hosts. I’d learned that the hard way, but still … “I have to do the thing.”
Henri tensed. “Last time you did the thing, I’m pretty sure it almost killed you.”
“I know.”
“Then no, you can’t do the thing.”
“I have no choice. I can’t leave them like that.”
Say something, tell me not to be a hero. I’m too young to die.
Henri was silent for a long beat. “Do you know what you did wrong that time?”
“Yes.” I’d dived too deep. I’d connected too long, and they’d latched on to me and almost drained me. “I need to keep short bursts of contact and as many tugs as it takes to pull it free.”
I’d dealt with riders three months ago when we’d had our quarterly weekend off. A couple we bumped into at the quaint B&B Tris had booked had been infected. Early stages. They hadn’t even been aware yet. Like with most ghostly encounters, I’d relied on my instincts to guide me, and the whole weekend had been spent unconscious, unconscious, and … Something slithered at the back of my mind, an unease laced with a new dread, but it was gone too quick to grasp and examine. No one except Tris and Henri had been the wiser to what had happened.
Afterward, I’d done my research in the Watch library and found the details in an obscure little volume that had taken me two weeks to translate, but it was worth it because this time … This time, I wouldn’t be going dark for forty-eight hours.
“I don’t like this,” Henri said. “If it goes wrong, you’ll be exposed to your new colleagues.”
“It won’t.”
He sighed. Once again faking the whole lungs thing. “What’s the plan?”
“We need to get them outside.”
They were on the move now, weaving their way through the crowd. Motion at the periphery of my vision caught my attention. Wisps of smoke with faces and dark eye sockets flew across the club a meter above the crowd, tracking the humans and riders.
More ghosts. What the hell was this?
The group of riders sidled up to a woman sitting at a table alone. The men surrounded her, flirting, talking. Were the humans in charge now or the riders? It was impossible to tell, but the brown-haired, doll-faced female was beaming from the attention. She pushed her neat glasses up her nose and nodded eagerly at one of the guys. He led her to the dance floor.
Okay, so maybe the human was in charge here.
“How do you plan on getting them outside?” Henri asked.
Fuck. If it was a couple of guys, or a guy and a girl, Henri and I could
There was only one thing to do. “I’m going to cause a scene, and you’re going to get security.”
Henri’s brows shot up, and then he looked down at himself. “You think I need security.”
Shit. Fuck, he had a point. “Fine, you start a fight with one of the guys. I’ll get security.”
“You want me to hit a human?”
“You don’t have to hit anyone.”
“You want me to start a fight that doesn’t involve hitting anyone?”
Dammit, why did he have to be so contrary? I gripped my empty glass tighter than necessary. “Just be a dick, okay. Shove and curl your lip, just cause a scene.”
“Be a dick?”
I smirked up at him. “Yeah, just be yourself.”
“You’re afraid.” He said the words softly, but my super-hearing picked it up fine.
The fear I’d been squashing surged up to momentarily choke me. “I’d be a fool not to be.”
He locked gazes with me and then nodded. “I’ll go be a dick.”
He strode off toward the group of riders. Damn him, he was a pain in my ass most of the time, a stickler for protocol and rules, but then when it came down to the crunch, he had my back every time.
He reached the group and knocked into one of the guys. Drinks went flying, and the guy held up his hands in a placatory gesture. Henri froze for a moment, and then he said something I couldn’t quite catch and shoved the guy again.
The others closed in on him, riders blurring in agitation, and I was already halfway across the club in Nightblood fast-frame mode, headed toward a security dude who was looking in the opposite direction and—thud—I hit a wall of muscle and bounced back.
A large hand gripped my bicep, and delicious, fresh cologne filled my head.
“Your friends causing trouble,” a gravelly voice said.
I looked up into a hot bouncer’s face and shrugged. “Yeah, you know, he can be a dick, but that group, they were rude, like sooo rude, and I think they may be dealing drugs or carrying a weapon of some description.”
Behind me, yells and exclamations had broken out.
I winced. “I think maybe you need to throw them out.”
His eyes narrowed, and then he looked over my head at the scene, his gaze scanned the ceiling, and his mouth pursed. Could he see the ghosts?
As far as I was aware, I was one of the few supes who could see riders, but if he was a supe, then he should be able to see the ghosts floating about. The activity seemed to worry him enough to move into action. He gently pushed me toward the exit. “Wait outside.”
Another guard appeared as if from nowhere and steered me the rest of the way outside before vanishing into the club again. Gentlemen, through and through.
The cool air was refreshing, and the street was now empty. It seemed all the queued patrons had finally made it in.
Shit, how long was this going to take?
A short, sharp scream cut the air, and I was already headed toward it, down the street and up an alley to the side of the club. Two figures tussled, a male and a female. And then a shaft of moonlight glinted off a frightened bespectacled face.
It was the woman from the club, the one who’d gone off to dance with the rider.
The man’s body blurred as he tried to pin her to the wall, and an ethereal form hovered above them.
“Hey, let her go!” My boots clipped as I sprinted toward them.
The rider spun to face me and hissed.
The woman screamed. I grabbed hold of the guy with my hands and reached out with the unnamed part of me that could touch the spirit. The contact sent ice racing up my arm, numbing in its wake. I tugged, and then released, breathing around the terror and the chill before latching on again. Come on. I pulled at the rider, and ice slid down my neck. Release and latch on.
The rider hissed and growled, and then razor teeth surged up toward my face. I jerked back with a yelp.
The woman did the smart thing and ran. Yeah, she was no hero.
“Mine!” The rider’s voice was broken glass that made me want to lose bowel control.
I tugged on him, pulling him away from the body like taffy. “What were you doing with her? What do you want?”
The rider stopped struggling and pushed back, and ice shot toward my heart. “You. I can have you instead.”
No. I had to let go, I needed to let—
“Begone!”
White light hit the human in the chest, and the rider detached. His phantom weight hit me, forcing me back a step, and then the ice rushed out of my limbs as the now untethered spirit whizzed away.
The host human’s eyes rolled in his head, and he fell back against the wall before slumping to the ground in a dead faint.
“Dammit!” I rounded on my unwelcome rescuer. “What the fuck did you do that for?”
“What? Save your life?” The voice was honey and whiskey.
The face wasn’t too bad either—lean with a strong jaw and full lips. His eyes were shrouded in shadow but glinted amber where the light from the lamppost at the head of the alley caught them. He raised inky brows.
“I was handling it.” My tone was clipped.
“Oh, yes, you looked perfectly comfortable having the life sucked out of you.” He crossed his arms and studied me. “In fact, it looked like you were having fun.”
Hey, sarcasm was my tool.
I shook out my hands to dispel the pins and needles, an after-effect of shoving my hands into a fucking spirit. “I had it under control.”
And then the reality of the situation hit me. This dude had just seen me grappling with a rider. He’d seen it, and he’d dispelled or repelled or whatever the fuck it was you did to spirits, and now we were standing here having a conversation about it. He knew my secret.
What now? Okay, play it cool.
“What are you?” I narrowed my eyes. “And don’t lie to me because I’ll know.” Which was a lie, because heck, I was no lie detector.
And from the look of amusement on his face, he didn’t think so either. “I’m a reaper, and you’re stepping on my toes.”
I looked down and then felt like a twit. Of course, he’d meant it metaphorically.
His chuckle was warm and smoky. “Oh, God, you are adorable.”
“Whoa, you take that back.”
He let out a bark of laughter, and his eyes crinkled, and what the hell was wrong with my mouth and the curving, smiling shit it was doing. I adjusted my face. I’d heard of reapers, of course. They wandered around convincing spirits to cross over to wherever spirits went.
“Well, if you are a reaper you’re doing a shitty job.”
“I got a shitty location.”
He had a point. This place was crawling. “You know about the riders?”
“I’m handling it.”
“Really? Are you? Did you see the circle of eager spirits rider-watching?” I waved a hand over my head. “What the fuck is going on?”
“I’m trying to find that out, but what’s your story? A Nightblood, right? How the hell can you see riders?”
Bollocks! There were very few options here, and lying wasn’t one of them. Everyone knew Nightbloods couldn’t see ghosts, and it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that if one could, then they weren’t pure Nightblood, and that meant they shouldn’t exist because Nightbloods did not procreate outside of their breed.
He canted his head. “Look, shit happens. I get it. Your secret is safe with me.”
Until he wanted something. A prickle of unease pebbled my skin. “I don’t do well with blackmail. In fact, I get positively stabby.”
That smile was back and that twinkle in his eyes, brown eyes, warm brown eyes.
“Kat?” Henri’s voice drifted down the alley.
The man on the floor groaned, coming to. Shit.
The reaper leaned in, his scent like freshly cut grass and something else, something dark and seductive wrapping around me, and his eyes, warm brown with huge dark pupils, sucked me in.
“Be careful.” His hand curled around my upper arm and heat shot through me. “Things around here are out of balance. The spirits aren’t your regular fare. Leave them to me. Okay?”
“Kat?” Boot falls echoed down the alley toward me.
“Until we meet again.”
I glanced away to see Henri headed toward me, and when I looked back, the reaper was gone.
Chapter Six
Henri helped the man to his feet. The human looked dazed and confused, pretty standard considering his body had been host to a greedy spirit only moments ago. If he had his sanity intact, it meant that the rider hadn’t had a grip on him for long.
“Hey.” I snapped my fingers in his face. “What’s your name?”
“Justin …” He blinked rapidly. “Justin Freeman. What … How did I get here?”
Henri placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. “You drank a little too much. You felt sick, so my friend here was kind enough to bring you out for some air.”
He glanced about, his gaze sharpening. “In an alley?”
“Hey.” I shrugged. “You ran off. I just followed to make sure you were okay.”
He ducked out from under Henri’s grip and backed up. “Yeah. I feel fine now.” He took another step toward the mouth of the alley. “I’ll just …” He turned and ran.
Henri rounded on me. “What happened?” His tone was tight.
Oh, shit. Protocol break lecture coming up. Guilt gripped my throat. “I de-rode him.”
“That is not a word.”
“It is now.”
Something on the ground caught my eye—a tiny black clutch bag. The woman’s bag? I scooped it up and made to brush past Henri and up the alley.
He grabbed my elbow and spun me to face him. “What were you thinking, running off like that without me? You could have been killed. That thing could have killed you.”
He was right, of course he was, hence the guilt, but … “I heard a scream, and I reacted, okay. He had the woman from the club up against a wall. He was hurting her.”
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