The urge to thump him on the end of his nose surfaced, but I exercised restraint as a mature adult and let the insult pass unchallenged. And if I was mentally plotting revenge later, then we all needed our hobbies, didn’t we?
“You could fling yourself down the stairs.” Remy walked to the edge of this level. “That would do it.”
“We can’t see the bottom.” A growl rose in Midas. “It might kill her.”
“Hey,” she complained. “I didn’t say she ought to do it, I just said that would do it.”
A light dawned in Midas’s eyes, and he smoldered at me. “Would any physical exertion work?”
A smidge breathless, I leaned in. “What did you have in mind?”
“Ugh.” Remy hid behind her hands. “Please don’t emotionally scar me.”
“We turn the spiral into our very own Stairmaster.” He bounced on his toes, ready to run. “It might take a while to burn off the magic, but we have to empty our tanks for the next tether—I mean, faegate—right?”
“That’s less fun than what I had in mind, but it might work.” I located my shadow. “Ambrose?”
“I have not done cardio for cardio’s sake,” he mused. “This might prove entertaining.”
Exercise was not my idea of entertainment, but plenty of folks thought otherwise. “Do you think it will work?”
“Perhaps.” A dark curl in his featureless face indicated a smile. “I suppose we are about to find out.”
“Next question.” I pursed my lips at Midas. “Do I want to save the city enough to work up a sweat?”
“Just pretend there’s a bomb.” He grinned at me, already backing toward the stairs. “Then race toward it like you’re going to fling yourself on top of it.”
“I’m going to fling you,” I mumbled, the tips of my ears burning, “right down the stairs.”
“I’ll just count reps or whatever.” Remy inched away from us. “That’s a thing, right? Reps?”
“Not in cardio, no.” I stepped onto the staircase and glared up the way we had come. “Just catch us if we fall.”
“Sure thing.” She flickered into three Remys who linked arms and squished together onto the same step. “One net, coming up.”
“Ugh.” I began to climb, Ambrose beside me, Midas behind me. “Here goes nothing.”
Leading the pack, I jogged up two more flights then reversed to let Midas lead us down four more.
Rinse and repeat for an eternity.
“Popcorn.”
Wiping the sweat out of my eyes with the hem of my shirt, I paused for a breather and braced my palms on my upper thighs. “Say what now?”
Remy sniffed the air, and her eyelids fluttered with pleasure. “Don’t you smell it?”
“All I smell is myself.” I tried not to breathe too deeply, but I was winded. “And black magic.” I was sucking in so much air, I couldn’t avoid gulping down the stench. “Not sure which is worse at this point.”
“I smell it too.”
“Rude.” I twisted to glare over my shoulder at Midas. “How are you not sweaty?”
Laughing, he smiled at me. “When was the last time you went for a run?”
Before this latest coven flare-up, I hit the Active Oval each night, as he well knew. But this was next level. Had I hit the track every night for the last month, I couldn’t have kept up with a frakking gwyllgi prince.
“Don’t change the subject,” I huffed. “I get plenty of exercise.”
“Yes.” His palm curved around my hip. “You do.”
Gagging noises rose from below, Remy reminding us we weren’t alone. As if we were ever really alone with Ambrose around. And…yeah. I wasn’t going to think too hard about that one. Not when you considered Midas was right about the type of exercise I had been getting lately.
“I feel mostly normal.” I checked with Ambrose. “How about you?”
“I find that holding this form burns through my stores nicely, as does conversing aloud with you.”
“Without the running?” I clarified. “Just standing there talking would have worked?”
“Yes.”
Straightening, I glared at him. “And you didn’t tell us this why?”
“You were performing an experiment,” he reasoned, his wispy smile sharper. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“Pro tip,” I offered. “The next time you see a way to get me out of cardio, take it.”
Ambrose angled his head toward Midas, clearly more clued in than I wanted him to be.
“Not that kind of cardio.” A fire engulfed my cheeks. “That kind is fine.”
Midas’s lips twitched. “Just fine?”
“Better than fine.” The burning spread down my neck. “Goddess.” I wiped my face with the hem of my shirt for the excuse to hide. “Ambrose, forget I said anything.” I glared at Midas. “You, I will deal with later.”
“Even that sounds kinky,” Remy complained. “You two couldn’t have kept it in your pants like two more weeks? Life was so much easier when you two were all sexual tension but no action.”
“No,” Midas and I said together and then laughed and then stopped when Ambrose joined us.
Frak, that was creepy. I had to talk to Linus about how to put Ambrose in timeout when Midas and I exercised in the future. He was no Boy Scout, and taking his word he wasn’t watching or listening in was stretching my faith in him.
Even a dead guy was still a guy.
And I was the vehicle through which he navigated life. I was fine with that. I had made my choice. But I wanted our shared ride to have a steering wheel and brake pedal so I could park him when I wanted alone time with my mate.
“Shall we?” Ambrose took the steps down to Remy with a bounce in his gait. “Popcorn, you said?”
“Can you not smell it?” Another thought occurred to me. “Can you smell anything?”
“Myriad flavors of magic.”
“Flavor is taste, not scent.”
“The two senses are intertwined for the living. What I lack in one area, the other provides.”
“Hmm.” I followed him onto the level with the door. “So, why the chocolate?”
It wasn’t magic, so it didn’t have a flavor. Or…crap. That wasn’t quite right, was it?
“The spells used to keep the chocolate from melting.” I answered my own question. “You like those.”
He was a snob, and his addiction to high-end magically crafted chocolates, like the ones Choco-Loco sold, cost me a fortune.
“There are others, more subtle ones, not listed on the menu. All are benign, most enhance flavor.”
That made sense, but it did make me wonder where they hid the fine print on how liberally magic was applied to their treats. Sure, most folks were buying for themselves, their sweethearts, or as gifts, but if I was buying treats for a magic-eating boogeyman, then surely someone else…
Okay.
That was unlikely.
But they should still give me the option of skimming the fine print by posting it where I could easily ignore it.
“You eat other food,” I pressed. “You beg for leftovers all the time.”
Which made him sound like a dog.
Oops.
“There are limits on what I can give for free,” he said after a moment’s consideration. “I am not unlike the fae in that manner, in that a balance must be struck. That is part of our bargain. Any exchange between us must be equitable or mutually beneficial.”
His murder spree hadn’t been mutually beneficial, not by a long shot, but the use of his power in exchange for the use of my body was equitable. Once behind the wheel, he had free will. And total control of me. I couldn’t stop him from doing whatever he chose while balancing the scales between us.
The takeaway here, for me, was I needed to pay him in chocolate for absolutely everything to keep our slate clean.
“And,” he confessed, “you tend to eat food that has passed through many hands.”
Wrinkling my nose, I recons
idered my food truck addiction. “You make it sound so appetizing.”
“Bits of the cooks’ and servers’ magic flavor the meals, a seasoning of sorts, and I can appreciate those subtle hints.”
That made sense as to why he preferred certain leftovers to others. Plenty of humans worked in the food service industry, and he wouldn’t gain nourishment from them.
We stopped before the second gateway, and Ambrose began to prowl around it, doing his thing.
As he did, a blur of white streaked past, and its taloned fingers raked the length of his spine.
Frak.
That was not good.
The spirits couldn’t hurt the living, but…Ambrose was dead. He had been a shade, albeit a powerful one, when I struck my bargain with him. It hadn’t occurred to me that he might be in danger from the souls. I had taken Vasco’s sweeping statement about my immunity as encompassing Ambrose too.
A vicious growl poured out of him as he spun toward the spirit and took one step toward it. “No.”
Feathers quivered in its hair, and a possumlike tail, thick and meaty, flexed and curled as it watched him.
“I am a devourer,” he said when it continued defying him. “You are but a morsel for me to snap between my teeth, and when I swallow, you will be no more.”
Hissing and spitting, it backed off a safe distance, but it didn’t leave.
Ambrose inclined his head toward the spirit. “I will not harm you if you give me no cause.”
One or two others joined it, but none of them ventured closer, and none of them dared strike again.
We must be alone in the archive. Without the coven’s lullaby, souls were rousing from their slumber.
“You could snack your way through this place,” I realized. “Talk about all-you-can-eat. This is a buffet.”
“I could, yes, but I won’t.” Ambrose observed the gathering, unable to hide the predatory gleam in his eyes. “These beings have suffered enough without me inflicting myself upon them.”
That tread dangerously close to him expressing remorse, and I wasn’t willing to touch it with a ten-foot pole. I couldn’t afford to be sucked in—or suckered in—if that was his game.
This much exposure to an Ambrose capable of verbal and emotional manipulation couldn’t be good for me. I couldn’t walk through any of the doors he was leaving open. Not yet. Not when I couldn’t trust his word fully. Not when my friends, and my city, were on the line.
Ignoring his hostile audience, Ambrose returned his attention to the gateway.
A faint vibration in my pocket did not make me squeak or jump back.
“What’s wrong?” Midas jerked toward me, hands lifting in a defensive pose. “Hadley?”
“I got a text.” I laughed, surprised. “It must be the proximity to the gateway.”
“You were supposed to turn off your phone,” Remy reminded me. “I’m amazed it’s not fried.”
“I did turn it off.” I thumbed the screen. “Or maybe I put it on silent out of habit.”
Phones these days never got shut down, unless they ran out of juice, but I ought to have checked mine.
Rolling her eyes, Remy gave me a bland stare devoid of surprise. “Any news from topside?”
Bishop had flooded my inbox while I was incommunicado, and I swallowed hard as I read them, wishing I could put his mind at ease.
>>The hearts are gone.
>>Remy took the hearts.
>>Abort the mission.
>>Abort.
Then, as if he had given up hope of stopping me, he slid into update mode.
>>I texted Midas to inform him of the situation.
>>Damn fool won’t text me back.
>>You’re probably together by now.
The next to last one crocheted my gut into a matched set of potholders.
>>A coven emissary demanded we hand over Liz. We refused. Now it’s their move.
The final entry frogged the potholders then tried to go bigger, like maybe a blanket.
>>The Faraday is under attack.
>>I don’t know how long we can hold them off.
>>If I don’t get another chance to say it…
>>…you’re the best friend I’ve ever had, kid.
I shook my phone, but no more texts fell out of it.
>Hold on, Bish. We’re coming. Just hang in there a little longer, okay?
Heart clogging my throat, I forced my thumbs to type out the rest before I lost my nerve.
>You’re the best friend I’ve ever had too.
The girl I had been thought she would remain best friends with Grier for life, but Grier hadn’t known Amelie half as well as she thought. That friendship shaped their formative years, but it had been superficial in so many ways.
Bishop knew me. Good, bad, ugly. He had seen it all. Bit by bit, he was revealing his dark side too. That required an investment of trust that would bankrupt most friendships, but we had paid the dues. I wasn’t going to lose him. Not to the coven. Not to anything, if I could help it. And definitely not tonight.
Powering down my phone, hoping the magic exposure hadn’t fried it, I put it away.
“The coven has launched their assault on the Faraday.”
Midas wrapped his palm around the back of my neck. “The enforcers will keep them safe.”
“For how long?” I leaned into his hold but then withdrew. “That’s what worries me.”
“The second I sign a lease, this happens,” Remy grumbled. “Moving near you was a mistake.”
Another time, I would have laughed and meant it, but I was too heartsick.
“Yeah, well,” I tried to joke back, “you did get a newly renovated apartment out of the deal.”
“The fact it got a facelift due to a massive explosion should have tipped me off.”
Midas gave her a flat look, but he didn’t burst into his favorite song, the one with a chorus about how many times I had been blown up, in great detail. For his silence, I was grateful.
“I only have myself to blame,” she agreed. “Good thing I haven’t unpacked my trash bags yet.”
The reminder of her move-in status made me think of Lillian. “Your roomie will be okay?”
“I doubt they’ll care about a potted plant,” she said, touching the flower in her hair. “Lil will be fine.”
Ambrose, who had finished his assessment, turned to us. “Are we ready to begin?”
“Yes.” I took Midas by the hand. “Let’s do this.”
With a nod, Ambrose began the process of breaking down the faegate and devouring its magic. He ought to have swelled like a tick ready to pop, that was how I felt, but thankfully none of us exploded from the magical overload as the second faegate’s mirror-center winked out for good.
“You appear to be in pain.” Ambrose dusted his hands. “Perhaps I miscalculated.”
“Perish the thought.” I rubbed my belly, though my whole body ached. “How fast can you digest this?”
“Not fast enough unless I exert myself.” A twist of shadowy lips conveyed his annoyance at being wrong, a novel experience for him. “Our proximity to Faerie is accelerating my transformation from shadow to…let us call it a more substantial state of being. As I become more tangible, I can hold less magic.”
“We can still Stairmaster it away, though, right?”
“Yes.” He cast me a sideways glance. “I will cardio off the excess.”
Skin tingling, I resisted the urge to scratch an invisible itch. “How long will that take?”
“Ten flights ought to do it.” He dropped his gaze to his feet. “Will you join me?”
As much as I hated to work up a sweat again, the vulnerable note in his voice suckered me in. “Sure.”
Remy and Midas took their cues from us and began their descent while Ambrose and I began our ascent.
Perhaps to balance the ledger between us, Ambrose taught me a new trick that left me grinning as we caught up to the others.
“What do you have to smile about?” Remy
wrinkled her nose at me. “You’re sweating buckets.”
“For your information—” I wiped my face then flicked my fingers at her, “—I’m a naturally happy person.”
“How are you feeling?” Midas steadied me. “You’re…glowing.” He frowned. “Are you okay?”
The glow was news to me, but I couldn’t decide if it was happiness or a side effect, and I didn’t care.
“First,” I panted, “tell me how you feel.”
“Caffeinated.”
A laugh burst out of me, and I patted his cheek. “Good.”
Narrowing his eyes on my face, he asked, “What did you do?”
“I syphoned off you.” I buffed my nails on my tee. “Ambrose taught me how.”
A slight furrow dug in across his forehead, and I could sympathize.
On the one hand, Ambrose was a fountain of necromantic knowledge, and he had the power to back up his lifetimes of study. He was an invaluable asset.
On the other, Ambrose was never as powerful as when I leaned on his magic, his know-how, or his advice. Dependence on him was a deadly liability.
As much as I wanted to believe Ambrose was Team Hadley all the way, he had access to unlimited power on this trip. He could eat, burn off the calories, then gorge again over and over. Until we let our guards down, until we let him feast to the point his will rivaled mine, until I went down hard the one time he didn’t catch me.
“How weird is it to be one-third of a thrupple?” Remy glanced between us all. “I have trouble committing to rubber band colors for my braces, but you’re with two guys. One of them is in you twenty-four/seven.”
“I’m not with two guys.” I jerked upright. “I’m just bonded…to two guys…at the same…” I waved my hand. “Those are technicalities. Stop being a perv.”
“Hey,” she said, setting off again, “I had nothing else to do but watch and wonder.”
“I don’t experience sexual gratification.”
The three of us went stone-still as Ambrose chimed in, and I wished I had gone stone-deaf too.
“I admit,” he enlightened us. “I was curious if I would develop an appetite to rival Hadley’s once she and her mate became sexually active, but no. The act itself generates a purely physical pleasure. As I am not a physical being, I don’t experience it in any meaningful way.” He turned toward me, and I swear I caught the arch of a brow. “However, there are certain rites that can be performed while—”
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