by Lola Gabriel
He let the words hang ominously over Elsa’s head, and she nodded quickly.
“I’ll do it myself,” she told him, eager to get on his good side again. Not that Reef was mad at her. It was impossible to run his business when Wilder stepped in and overrode his decisions. He didn’t fault Elsa or any of the others for being endlessly conflicted on day-to-day matters. It was hard to refuse Wilder when Reef wasn’t around to tell them otherwise.
Even though Wilder has no right to interfere with anything, he thought. Just because he thinks he’s managing partner around here doesn’t mean he is.
Without another word, Reef made his way from the bowels of the palace up toward his brother’s offices.
“Mr. Parker, you need to wait—” Wilder’s receptionist called out to him, but Reef ignored her and pushed his way inside the office. Just as Reef’s employees obeyed Wilder, Wilder’s employees also knew better than to antagonize the other dragon brothers.
Wilder peered up at him from behind his post-modern desk as Reef strode forward, a dark eyebrow raised in irritated curiosity.
“No, I don’t want to wait until next week, Virgil. I wanted it yesterday. Don’t make me come up there! You know how I hate to mess up my schedule,” Wilder ordered into the phone, his eyes already moving from Reef’s face. He was all but ignoring Reef’s arrival.
“I need to talk to you,” Reef said, not caring that he was on the phone. Wilder continued to speak with Virgil, completely disregarding his brother, but Reef had expected as much, and he leaped, half-shifting onto the desk, smashing the phone aside with an extended claw before falling gracefully back on his wings. His tail swept the papers and pens off the surface into a clatter on the floor.
By the time Reef landed on his feet, he was in his full mortal form again, staring impassively at his incensed sibling with bored, blue eyes.
“I was on the phone!” Wilder spat.
“The operative word being ‘was,’” Reef agreed. “Now you’re not, and you can explain to me why you are, once more, poking your nose in Authority business.”
Wilder frowned and leaned over to grab the broken pieces of the phone from the ground before straightening himself in the chair. He coolly glanced at Reef.
“You’ll have to be more specific,” he replied nonchalantly. “I’ve been cleaning up your messes since the dawn of time, it seems.”
Reef snorted. “You didn’t seem to feel that way when you put me in charge of enforcing the laws around here,” he snapped back. “And since when is letting a robber roam free ‘cleaning up messes,’ anyway?”
“Robber? Oh, are you talking about Oscar Lucas?”
“Holy hell, Wilder, he better be the only one. If there’s more—”
“We need Oscar,” Wilder interjected smoothly. “And if you’d been on top of your security, you’d know why.”
Reef was almost afraid to ask not only what his brother was going on about, but how he knew. It was unfathomable that Wilder could be everywhere at once, and yet sometimes it seemed that he was cloned ten times over.
“What?” Wilder demanded when Reef gaped at him. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Well, for starters, I’m waiting for you to elaborate.”
Wilder sighed heavily, as if an explanation would take more energy than he had, but Reef wasn’t going anywhere until he understood why his brother interfered with yet another matter that didn’t concern him.
“Oscar brought an interesting tidbit of information to my attention,” Wilder explained, falling back in his chair. He pressed his fingertips together in a way, Reef knew, he thought made him look regal, but it just made Reef want to smack Wilder’s smug face.
“Oh, I can’t wait to hear this,” Reef muttered sarcastically. It wouldn’t be the first time an immortal had gone to one of the dragon princes to curry favors, and with a career criminal like Oscar Lucas, it could only be sheer bull.
“I don’t like your tone,” Wilder said.
“I don’t like a number of things about you, but that’s not really the issue we’re discussing, is it?”
Wilder’s scowl deepened. “You are very ungrateful toward someone who is trying to stop a catastrophe from occurring under your watch.”
“Oh, would you just spit it out? What crap did Oscar feed you?” Reef snarled. “I have real matters to attend to today.” Wilder stared at him, presumably for effect, before opening his mouth and speaking again.
“He claims to have knowledge of an infiltration.”
Reef didn’t know what to make of that and continued to eye his brother, but Wilder didn’t offer anything else, much to Reef’s increasing annoyance. “You know, dragging this is out doesn’t add an air of mystery, but it does grate on my nerves.”
“What else do you need to know? Someone has been infiltrating the Hollows.”
“What the hell does that mean, Wilder? ‘Infiltrating the Hollows’? Infiltrating with what? Bad music? Jerk chicken? What is so important that you think it’s worth giving a crook like Oscar a pass?”
Wilder snickered. “I assure you it’s worse than spicy food and heavy metal.”
“What’s wrong with heavy metal?” Reef asked before he could stop himself.
Wilder smirked. “May I finish?”
“Gods, would you? Please?”
“From what Oscar knows, one of the immortals living on the Sunside has been bringing mortals into the Hollows.” He said it in such a flippant way, Reef had to laugh. “What’s so funny?” Wilder demanded, seeming slightly hurt by the chortle.
“You know, brother, you are a lot of things, but I never thought dumb was one of them.”
“Are you saying I’m dumb, Reef?”
“I’m saying,” Reef elaborated, “if you bought a dumbass story like that, you’d have to be. Mortals can’t come into the Hollows. You know that. They can’t survive the portal.”
“Ah, yes. That.” The smile of bemusement slipped off Reef’s face as he realized that his brother believed what he was saying. “Well, according to Oscar, there is one portal which can be survived, although why is anyone’s guess.”
Reef couldn’t stop gawking at Wilder, even though he was acutely aware of his mouth hanging open.
“Really.” It wasn’t a question but a statement of sheer cynicism.
“Yes. Really.”
“So what, the mortals are among us? Wandering around in the Hollows, and we just never noticed? Does that sound right to you?”
“Why not? We have been living along the mortals without them being any wiser.”
Reef gritted his teeth, wondering if perhaps his brother was genuinely losing some of his razor-sharp mind. “Wilder, they can’t sense us. We know a mortal when we see one. If one was walking around, we’d know it. Instantly.”
“According to Oscar—”
“Oh, dear gods, I wish you’d stop saying his name. He’s a conman, Wilder! He’d say anything to get what he wants, and you granted him immunity based on some fairy tale!”
Wilder stared at him coldly. “Do you want to know or not?”
“I guess I really do,” Reef confessed. “It’s like an audio train wreck.”
“There are no mortals staying here, but they do come on short trips and leave. Whoever is bringing them through has made a business out of it.”
Reef laughed again, disbelief staining his face. “Mortal tours through the Hollows? Do you even hear yourself? If anyone was ever caught doing something like that—”
“I know,” Wilder insisted, “but it’s happening.”
“Okay.” Reef took a deep breath. “How do you know this isn’t something Oscar concocted? I have to believe that you’re basing this on something other than his word.” Wilder smiled thinly and leaned his huge frame forward, pulling open one of his desk drawers. He withdrew an envelope and shoved it toward his brother. “What’s this?”
“Open it.”
Reluctantly, Reef pulled the tab back and dumped out the contents.
His eyes widened when he saw what was inside. There were half a dozen pictures, each apparently taken within the Hollows. And there were unmistakably mortals in each of the shots.
That’s impossible, he thought. I don’t care what Oscar says, and I don’t care what the pictures show. This isn’t real.
“These are photoshopped,” Reef declared, although to his highly-trained eye, they didn’t appear to be.
“I thought they might be,” Wilder agreed. “Which is why I didn’t bring this to you immediately. I am still investigating myself.”
“Well, next time, bring it to me first. Letting beasts like Oscar Lucas do whatever the hell they want is not how we run things down here.”
“Letting mortals into the Hollows is not how we do things, either.”
The brothers stared at one another for a silent moment.
“What did you promise that cretin for this information?” Reef asked, breaking their silence.
Wilder shrugged. “I didn’t promise him anything, really. I merely compensated him for his information and told him he is to report to me with anything else he learns.”
“Meanwhile, he thinks he’s untouchable,” Reef muttered. “I am having him detained as we speak.”
Wilder face twisted in anger. “I gave him my word.”
“Then you did promise him something. Your word doesn’t apply to his criminal acts, Wilder. He can’t do whatever the hell he pleases on the hopes that what he says is even true.”
“Well, do whatever you have to do, Reef,” Wilder sighed. “Just remember, if it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t be alerted to this catastrophe at all.”
“If it’s even true!” Reef snapped again. “You’re making a giant leap.”
Wilder shrugged, apparently relenting under his brother’s ire. “I guess it’s up to you to figure out if it is, isn’t it?”
“I wish you had come to me with this first,” Reef grumbled. “When did you learn this?”
“It’s been about a fortnight since he’s come to me.”
“A fortnight?”
Wilder was unperturbed by Reef’s outburst and turned his attention toward the phone. “Is there anything else, Reef?”
“Yes,” Reef snarled. “The next time you go behind my back in the matters of Hollows security, you’ll regret it.” The expression in Wilder’s face was confirmation enough that his brother believed him, and he spun to storm from the inner office.
He held the folder in his hands, the pictures clutched to his curled fingers. No matter how skeptical he had appeared for Wilder’s sake, Reef had a terrible feeling that when he examined the pictures, he was going to find out that they were authentic.
And then what the hell am I going to do?
3
“Are you sure about this, Penny?” Cate asked worriedly. “I feel like you should come with me.” Penny shook her head vehemently for what felt like the tenth time in that conversation.
“I don’t want to see him again,” she said firmly. “I never realized just how much he’d been manipulating me, Cate. I’m worried if I see his face, my resolve will crumble.”
“You see him at work every day,” her sister reminded her. “How is this any different?”
“It just is,” Penny insisted, but she no longer believed that was true. The night she and Ryland had broken up, she had rushed back to the condo, only to find that Ryland had locked her out by changing the codes. She’d been unable to get inside for any of her stuff. Penny knew he’d done it in the hopes that she’d be there when he got home, fuming and therefore forcing her to speak to him. Once more, however, she had surprised herself by walking away.
She drove directly to her sister’s house and had only left to attend work. Thankfully, she and Cate were roughly the same size, making the need to buy new clothes a secondary concern. And what a blessing that was, since Ryland had cleared out their joint account.
Penny was forced to dip into her well-planned savings, which burned her as deeply as Ryland must have known it would. Still, she couldn't bring herself to call him and demand her portion of the money he’d essentially stolen from her. It was what he wanted, and she would not give him the satisfaction.
The trouble was that, at work, he was making it increasingly impossible for Penny to ignore him. Several times a day, Ryland would strut by her desk, purposely lingering at nearby cubicles, his gaze trained on her. He never overtly spoke to her, as if he knew she might involve human resources if he crossed a line, but that didn’t make his presence any less unnerving to her.
It wasn’t that Penny felt threatened, per se. She just knew that if Ryland kept up with his constant presence, she would eventually be forced to deal with him, and she wasn’t sure how that would go. Her work was suffering, and she found herself distracted for the first time in her life, unable to separate her emotions from her workplace.
She had been considering her options. It had been a week, and Ryland was showing no signs of letting up his covert harassment.
I need to think about finding another job, she thought. Even if I go to HR, they’ll probably side with him. He’s an important guy at Veriday. I’m dispensable. It’ll be a he said, she said, and we’ll probably be told to stay away from one another. But he won’t comply, and I’ll be in the same place, unnerved and complacent.
It bothered Penny endlessly to realize that she had put three years of her life into a company without getting so much as a decent raise out of it, but what other choice did she have? She reasoned that if she hadn’t received a promotion yet, she likely wasn’t in line for one anytime soon. It was better to cut her losses and simply walk away.
“Penny? Are you still with me?” Cate demanded, snapping her fingers in front of her sister’s face. “Are you sure that you don’t want to come with me? What if he doesn’t give me all your stuff?” Penny shrugged, trying to maintain a nonchalant expression on her face.
“It’s only stuff.” Her voice cracked as she thought about the $120 she had just put out on a brand-new set of ceramic dishes. They’d been on her Amazon wish list for almost a year, and now she had no doubt that Ryland had either smashed them or would purposely withhold them. It wouldn’t be the first time he smashed something of mine.
Amid her mounting consternation and unease over the past week, Penny had also been met with visions of blinding clarity. Their relationship hadn’t just been stagnant—it had been unhealthy.
She wondered how she hadn’t seen it before. Had the notion of being alone been so terrible that she was willing to overlook Ryland’s sometimes volatile behavior, the holes punched in walls, and the days of being locked out verbally? Silent treatments, little head games… They had been subtle but real.
“I’ll get everything I can,” Cate promised, her eyes still reflecting the same concern she had from the start. “Just leave it to me.”
Penny was depending on that. It wasn’t that they were physically different, Penny and her dark-haired sister. Cate was also much tougher than her. She looked like their father and took after their mother, while Penny was the opposite.
Cate would never have lived like that for three years, Penny thought. She would have been the one to clear out the apartment and the bank account and walked away. Why didn’t I come to her for help earlier?
It was not the first time Penny had envied her spitfire younger sister, and she doubted it would be the last.
“Penn…”
“Hmm?”
“Are you all right?” The question was almost laughable, but Penny knew Cate was genuinely concerned about her.
“I’m fine,” Penny insisted. “Everything’s fine.”
“You can talk to me,” Cate told her gently. “I won’t judge you, no matter what.”
Penny blinked at her uncomprehendingly. “Judge me?” she repeated. “For what?”
Cate shifted her eyes away, and Penny was filled with a fission of alarm.
“Never mind,” her sister said quickly, grabbing her car keys. “I’ll
be back in a few hours, okay? Maybe soak in the hot tub, pour yourself—” She abruptly stopped talking, her face paling. “Uh, maybe make some tea?” she suggested. Penny’s eyes narrowed, and a peculiar sensation began to creep up her neck.
“Why are you talking to me like that?”
“Like what?” Cate asked innocently, but Penny knew her sister well enough to see that she was hiding something.
“Like I’m made of glass. And why can’t I have a drink?”
“Shit,” Cate swore, staring down at her hands. “I promised I wouldn’t say anything.”
“To me?” Penny demanded dubiously. “Promised who?” And suddenly, it hit her at once. “You’ve been talking to Ryland!”
“I had to!” Cate protested indignantly. “You made me call him, remember?”
“So that you could get my stuff, not talk about me behind my back!” Penny cried. “What the hell did he say about me?” What was that maniac doing now? Wasn’t it bad enough that he wouldn’t leave her alone? Now he was dragging her sister into this mess, too?
“Penny, he’s worried about you. This breakup kinda came out of nowhere, didn’t it?” Penny could only stare at Cate in disbelief, the words she wanted to say stuck in her throat.
Out of nowhere? Maybe if you haven’t been paying attention, she thought, though she supposed she understood why Cate saw it that way. Penny had never talked to her family about her personal problems, her need to keep her troubles quiet almost pathological. There was no real reason for Cate to suspect that she was unhappy.
“No, it didn’t,” Penny replied shortly. “But I can see why you might think so.”
Cate twirled her keys nervously in her hand. “Penn, tell me about the drugs,” she sighed, and Penny’s neck stiffened.
“The what?” she choked. “What drugs?”
“You don’t have to hide it from me, babe. We can get you the help you need, and Ryland wants to help you—”
“That son of a bitch!” Penny gasped, laughing in shock. Her eyes were wide, and she stared at her sister. “Is that what he told you? That I’m on drugs?”