Rather than take down a few guardians to make an opening, he skimmed from all of them.
Soon, the lot of them hit their knees, their lips moving in silence. Their power fluctuated in wide bands that brushed against my face like a hot, foul wind, but their spell didn’t break.
“That’s our cue.” I clasped hands with Remy, grateful when she reverted from her feral aspect. “Let’s go.”
We leapt into their circle, over their joined hands, and raced for the inset stairs. I held my breath as I took the first step. A painful cold stabbed me, but I eased into the archive without difficulty, grateful I couldn’t look down and see the howling faces of the damned I recalled from the photos on my phone.
Remy lagged behind me, and I loosened my grip to give her one final choice to stay or go.
Her fingers tightened at the last second, as I sank in past my shoulders, and she hurried in after me.
Ambrose slid into me, stuffing me with a sense of fullness that nauseated, but there was nothing for it.
Why I thought it would help, I don’t know, but I gulped a lungful of air before ducking my head under the surface of the archive. I held my breath until my chest burned, until I had no choice but to gulp oxygen.
Oxygen, if this denser matter qualified, sliced my nasal passages and froze the back of my throat until I tasted blood.
I can breathe, I reminded myself. I can breathe. I can breathe.
The archive just wasn’t making it easy.
“Oh,” I whimpered as I surveyed our surroundings. “Oh, my goddess.”
I had really, really, really hoped the vengeful souls only appeared on film.
That was how it worked in the movies. Frak it all, couldn’t reality get it right just this once?
Unsure what I expected to see when I glanced back, I goggled at the stone gateway that had spat us out onto the staircase. Runes were carved into its frame, and mist curled from its center to pool at our feet.
The archive was far more gothic chic on this side.
The scent of fresh meat must have called forth the curious, each the vestige of a strange and unfamiliar creature. They drifted beside us, not quite touching, as they glared with hate-filled eyes at the intruders.
“They can’t hurt us.” Remy laughed with near-panicked gaiety. “They can’t touch us.”
I was thinking the same thing, but I was afraid to say it out loud and jinx us both.
Obviously, she didn’t share my superstitions.
“Don’t be too sure,” I cautioned her. “It’s pointless to attack us when we don’t have room for them.”
A shudder rippled the length of her arm and trembled in our joined hands as my words struck home.
In perfect unison, the petulant souls swiveled their heads to stare behind us with renewed interest.
I tensed, ready to sprint for it and drag Remy along with me, but it wasn’t the coven in hot pursuit.
Fur stained with blood, a blond gwyllgi stepped into the archive with us.
The spirits shrieked over him, whipping themselves into a frenzy, biting and clawing to get to him first.
“Midas,” I breathed. “What have you done?”
I lunged at him, but the spirits got there first.
They swarmed before I could reach him.
Eleven
Midas was lost within a howling whirl of spirits, devoured as they delighted in the feast given to them. I screamed for them to leave him alone, I punched through them, busting my knuckles on the stairs, but they clung like burrs in his fur.
As rage-filled tears poured down my cheeks, the spirits exploded outward, flung in every direction.
With a deep chuff, Midas shook out his fur to rid himself of any stragglers, then grinned at me, tongue lolling out one side of his mouth.
I sank to my knees before him, threaded my fingers through his ruff, and sobbed against his throat.
“You idiot. You big, hairy idiot.” I clung to him. “What are you doing here?”
Crimson magic washed over him and left me with my arms circling Midas’s neck.
“Idiot.” I pulled back and wiped my snotty face on my shirttail. “I just…” I balled my fists. “You idiot.”
“You can kick my shins once we’re somewhere safe.” He lifted me and set me on my feet. “Promise.”
During the free-for-all, I had let go of Remy, and she backed down the steps to give us space.
Or to get out of the splatter zone in case I decided to murder him for letting me think he was dying.
“We good?” She craned to see around me when she deemed it safe. “Midas okay?”
“He appears to be.” A knot formed in my chest. “Help me keep an eye on him?”
“Yeah.” A shrug rolled through her thin shoulders. “Sure thing.”
Linking my fingers with Midas’s, I tethered him where I could feel him and let her guide us down the stairs. I threw glances over my shoulder, but I couldn’t decide if I was more terrified that whatever protection he was using to hold the spirits at bay might fail or that he wasn’t Midas at all, but a coven spy hidden by a charm.
Seriously, Paranoia and I ought to invest in BFF jewelry at this point.
“I’m me.” He read my concerns with ease. “I’ll prove it when we’re not fleeing for our lives.”
“That’s exactly what a coven spy would say.”
With their newfangled glamour charms, I couldn’t count on my sight to reveal his true face.
A spasm twitched in my chest, and he grimaced at the same time, as if he felt it too.
“Is this normal?” He rubbed the spot. “I feel like I’m about to burst.”
The sensation was my exact experience, but I remained wary. I couldn’t afford for my heart to get in the way of common sense. Until he could prove he was or wasn’t Midas, I had to treat him like a threat. Even if I couldn’t bring myself to quite let go of him. Just in case.
The unsettling presence of Ambrose, crammed into my sternum, made me wish for Tums. The energy he consumed from the guardians overflowed into me, leaving me with an acute case of magical heartburn. How an intangible presence gave me acid reflux boggled the mind, but there you go.
As my mind wandered that ridiculous path to distract from my fears, I stumbled across another worry.
On Bishop’s wintry road, Ambrose had been able to manifest into a physical creature. Did that mean he could do so here? Was it within his power to remain intangible? Or would he gain weight the longer he was exposed to this new gravity, for lack of a better descriptor?
Basically, did I have to worry about an alien bursting out of my chest?
As we made our way down, we passed level after level of stone tombs, each belonging to an individual, if the unique runes carved over the ornate doorways meant what I thought they meant. They struck me as labels, which made sense when you considered this place might as well be a closet or department store for witchborn fae.
The spirits from earlier, sated on the blood and gore they’d hoovered from Midas’s fur, didn’t bother us again. However, word traveled fast among the creatures. Dozens more escorted us in our downward spiral, which sounded a bit too on the nose in retrospect. They didn’t bother Remy or me, but they buzzed around Midas like thirsty bees. Thirsty murder bees.
“Does this staircase ever end?” I kept my voice whisper light. “Are we sure we ought to follow it down?”
Leaning over the edge gave me heart palpitations. The stairs curved on forever, and the darkness writhed with spirits.
“There’s nothing else worth stopping for,” Remy answered. “We have to find where it begins.”
The beginning meant Faerie, the last place I wanted to drag Midas, but it would also be the end too.
“Scents are muted in here,” Midas added, “but this stairway is pungent. We’re on the right track.”
With all the foot traffic it had gotten in the last few days, I wasn’t surprised it was stained with foulness.
“Good to know.” I
rolled my shoulders to resettle my supply pack. “We should—”
Voices carried up to us from below. Far below. Yet not far or below enough for my comfort.
Melodious and soothing, they chanted an oddly peaceful rhyme that lulled the spirits around us into a stupor. They drifted off, in ones and twos, each to their own tomb, like fussy babies sung to sleep by their mothers.
The steady march of feet told me this was the next batch of twelve, and that many coven members on a collision course with us meant we had to play chicken to survive.
Motioning for everyone to pause, I consulted with Ambrose. “Can we muffle our steps?”
The coven’s unguarded movements illustrated how well sound carried in this place. It also warned me if we could hear them, then they could hear us. We had to fix that, and quick, or we would announce ourselves to this batch and every other envoy we intercepted along the way.
A thoughtful hum tickled the back of my mind, and I dismissed it before surprise registered on my face.
No frakking way.
Ambrose did not just speak to me.
I wasn’t standing on the precipice of death. There was no leeway here, but there was magic. Maybe, for him, enough of one overrode the other.
A tickle in the back of my mind, more Ambrose’s usual style of communication, prompted me to shut my eyes.
A familiar sigil flashed in pure light against the darkness of my eyelids, searing my retinas as if I had been staring into the sun. The design was one we had used before, an obfuscation sigil, but as soon as he was certain I understood, he altered one bit with a splash of color.
Confident I would recall the tweak, I palmed the modified pen in my pocket and opened my eyes. “This will keep our footsteps silent?”
The bright design faded into a simple word.
Yes.
But there was more, teasing the edge of my understanding. “And…our voices?”
Yes.
Again, I experienced the sensation of more tickling my thoughts. “Until we’re seen?”
Yes.
A sigil designed to mute you would help if you could be seen, so that worked for me.
With the design fresh in mind, I drew the sigil onto the backs of everyone’s hands, including mine. Before I gave the word to test it, Remy had already started hopping up and down the stairs, shaking her butt, and singing—badly—at the top of her lungs.
“Thank the goddess that worked.” I wiped sweat from my brow. “Otherwise, we would be in—”
Busy amusing herself, Remy ranged ahead of us for several flights before skittering back with a curse.
“I see them.” She bumped into me. “Maybe five flights down.”
That didn’t leave us much time to hide before they were on us, and they held the home-field advantage.
“These tombs are all marked.” I scanned the level to either side. “We need to go lower.”
“You aren’t serious.” She made a face. “You want us to hide in an unmarked tomb?”
“I’m open to suggestions if you’ve got a better idea.”
“Will that work?” Midas stared at his hand. “Will the sigils protect us from discovery?”
“There’s only one way to find out.” I tugged on his wrist to get him moving again. “Hurry, Goldie.”
A jolt went through him, and his pace slowed. “You haven’t called me that in a long time.”
“I don’t know why I did it.” I frowned back at him. “It just popped out of my mouth.”
Insulting him had been my hobby when we first met, I admit, but I put that behind me as we grew closer. That I had reverted told me I was more freaked out by his sudden appearance than I wanted to admit.
Argh.
Forget BFF jewelry. I owed my paranoia an engagement ring.
But it couldn’t have mine.
The diversion at the warehouse might have been that—a diversion. But I could have been wrong about the target. The coven might have used Midas’s likeness to nudge me on, to guide me into danger, to get me out of their hair.
But he knew about the Goldie thing. That was a Midas and me thing. An us thing. It was a point in his favor.
Cradling his cheek in my hand, I searched his face, desperate to be convinced. “Why did you risk it?”
A brittle smile tipped his lips. “I couldn’t let you go without me.”
Tightness around his eyes hinted at a bigger reason, but a warning hung there too, one I couldn’t read.
“Midas?”
“Bishop texted me after you left.” He leaned in, and his breath warmed my cheeks. “I had to act based on his intel.”
A cold lump formed in my gut. “What did he—?”
“Not here,” he whispered. “Not now.”
“Okay.” Thumb stroking his cheek, I couldn’t stop touching him. “How did you know you would survive?”
“Ambrose is bonded to me through you.” He pressed a kiss into my palm. “There was no guarantee he could protect us both, but I had to try.”
His quiet answer slammed on my mental breaks, and I skidded into a tailspin of indecision.
There hadn’t been time between when we left Midas and when he located me outside the bay doors for the coven to perform a dark rite on him. He didn’t smell like black magic either.
The mate bond would have told me if Midas had died. Failing that, Ambrose would have enlightened me. Therefore, Midas was not dead. He wasn’t a suit ready to hang in this grisly closet. That meant the coven had no access to his memories.
Call it a charm, or call it a glamour. No matter how fancy the trick, it was just an illusion. No one on Team Evil knew about the bond. Without cracking his head open and sifting through our prior conversations, they had no means of divining the bizarre nature of our three-way entanglement.
Dybbuks were too rare for people to know much about them. They were hunted and killed as soon as they were identified. As they tended to prioritize murder above romance, I had found no information on the mating habits of dybbuk in any book I had ever read on the topic. Neither had Linus. Therefore, the coven couldn’t know either.
That meant…this really was Midas.
“I was an idiot.” I cringed at how I had treated him. “I should have believed you.”
“You were being smart.” He slid his fingers into my hair. “I’m glad you didn’t trust me on sight.”
The mate bond wasn’t the same as a photo ID. I knew that. I just wished, in addition to a soul-deep connection to another person, it came with flashing lights or something.
“There,” Remy butted in on my epiphany to point out a row of unfinished tombs. “Two are open.”
She bolted for the first one, but she didn’t get far. It was more of an alcove. Unfinished. Or locked. Hard to tell from this angle.
“I can make this work,” she promised when she read my worry. “You two take the bigger one.”
Mashing her back against the wall, she did her best to let the shadows conceal her. That left one vacancy the next row up on the end. She was right. It did look bigger, but not by much.
Whatever soul had lived there, it must have been taken out of commission. The rune above its doorway was scratched out with a rake of massive claws. I worried that meant it would be sealed, but slight pressure from my fingertips nudged open the stone door.
The interior was three feet wide and three feet deep. I could stand without bumping my head, so I put the ceiling at a hair less than six feet. It would be cozy with a man Midas’s size, and I didn’t mind an excuse to plaster myself against him.
Twisting to fit myself into the corner, I made as much room for him as possible, sucking in my breath when he pressed fully against me. He got the door shut behind him and scooted back to give me room.
“The intel I mentioned?” He wasted no time updating me now that we were alone. “The hearts are missing.”
The hearts?
Missing?
Frakking cheese on frakking crackers.
This
could not be happening.
“How is that possible?” I rubbed the fabric of his shirt between my fingers, more proof this was him, that he was real, that he had survived his fraught entrance to the archive. “No one knows where Bishop hid them.”
“He brought them to OPA HQ after the coven arrived in the city in numbers. He believed it was the most secure location.” He took care with his next words. “They were already there when Bishop left us in the closet.”
“Only a handful of people can find HQ,” I countered, “let alone access it.”
Midas said nothing, and I got the sense he was letting me work it out on my own.
“Break in? Steal from it?” I saw the dots, all right, but they didn’t connect. “There’s no way.”
“Unless someone with access was responsible.”
“There’s only…” I hesitated. “No one would…”
“What about Remy?”
“Remy?” I jerked back and hit my skull on stone. “No.”
A Clydesdale kicked me square in the chest. The potential betrayal made that kind of impact.
Bruising.
Painful.
Shocking.
Break the bargain, and we forfeited Ford’s life. She might not care about him one way or another, she was indifferent to most people, but it would gut me to lose him. She wouldn’t do that to me. I was her friend. That meant something to her. I could see the difference in her. It couldn’t have all been a lie.
Like with Ares?
Worse than that doubt was a second, fainter whisper that questioned why Bishop chose tonight to finally share his secret winter wonderland with us, why he introduced new people to HQ, why he brought the frakking hearts there in the first place.
“I hate this.” I thumped my head, on purpose this time. “I hate it so hard.”
Trust was hard enough to establish without the added pressures of the witchborn fae assuming the guise of friends and allies to work their evil through them. The coven had taken a wrecking ball to my life, and I owed them for that.
Big time.
“The hearts are in her backpack.” I traced that logic trail back to its start. “That’s what took her so long to gather supplies from the storage room. That’s why she called dibs on that particular pack.” I couldn’t stop myself from adding, “If she did it.”
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