“Why the change of heart?”
He gave me a wry smile. “The trouble with having your head up your ass is the shit view. You told me to take a page out of my mother’s book and reclaim my power from Isaac. One of many wise things you’ve said to me lately.”
He really had listened and internalized the things I’d said. That was huge. Nicola had come to me for assistance, so I’d leverage this into helping her and accept his offer as an olive branch from a team member.
“Get me to Jonah Samuels,” I said.
He blinked. “I was prepared for you to ask me to do several things, but that really wasn’t one of them. He’s—”
“An older guy. Kind of a dick.” I ducked out from under his arm. “But most importantly, tight with the dead.”
“And also, inconveniently, in prison.” Levi dropped his arm, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “What do you need him for?”
“I’d like to ask him about the Kiss of Death.” I filled Levi in on the amulet and my tentative plan. “Isaac is looking for it. And, uh, well, he knows about me. Being a Jezebel and all.”
The world didn’t blow up or crack into shards. Levi held himself so stiffly that if I knocked him into something hard, he might shatter, and his hands were clenched into fists, but he stayed in control. A knot in my chest eased.
“Jonah is awaiting trial,” Levi said. “Necromancy is illegal, and as Mayan is a key witness, I have to be careful not to find myself in a conflict of interest.” His lips flattened. “I’d rather we’d have gotten him on attempted murder.”
We’d decided it was best to leave my surprise visit to Sheol out of the charges laid against him because my escape was too dangerous a can of worms to put on public record. Jonah was still under the impression that he’d gotten away with my death.
“So that’s a no?” I said.
Levi slowly walked the length of the corridor and back. “You’ll give me a chance?”
“To win my trust?”
He hit me with a blazing blue gaze. “Yes.”
I ran a finger under my collar. Back in the carnival vision encounter with Levi, he’d been the one wanting to fight for us, whereas this Levi had experienced some profound realizations in a very short time.
Was I one of them?
Could I trust him again? I sucked my bottom lip into my mouth. I gave my trust as freely as I gave my love—slightly less often than a blizzard in hell—and Levi had already broken and discarded both.
Was that another comfortable fallback position? Giving people one chance and then never forgiving them when they made a mistake, no matter their reason or how good I knew them to be?
“I will,” I said.
Levi’s nod was almost startled. “Okay, then. Let me pull some strings.”
Please don’t let me regret this.
“I’d better go.” I hurried out of HQ without a look back, wondering if a reset was even possible between us.
When I got outside, I looked up at the House, bathed in moonlight. There was a faint smear of pinkish orange across the crimson exterior, almost like a smile.
I touched a hand to it. Okay, then.
Chapter 17
Wednesday was spent in a frustrating limbo. Levi texted that he was really sorry, but the prison had refused our request, despite calling in a favor from a very high-placed government official in the area. He was working on it, but it didn’t look good.
Priya found nothing on the dark web about the Kiss of Death and Lux didn’t come up with any possible filter solutions to separate the Nefesh and Asherah magic and return Rafael to normal. Miles’s people hadn’t figured out where the ledger might be, while Arkady still couldn’t locate my grandfather.
If all that wasn’t enough, my mother had yet to contact me after our last meeting, and to add insult to injury, my car repairs cost me the equivalent of a small nation’s GDP.
I’d just brought Moriarty home when the alarm went off for the library. I’d opted for a silent alarm so intruders wouldn’t know they’d set it off. Upon inspection, nothing inside the library had been disturbed. I reached for the doorknob, which had been visible to me ever since Rafael had run out the front door, and hesitated.
If Chariot was on the premises, it was likely I’d be outnumbered. On the other hand, this might be a rare opportunity to identify more of the Ten. It was a risk worth taking.
I cracked the door open. All was clear, so I eased outside, and crept around the building, checking the perimeter. Nothing. Had it been a racoon or a dog?
“Not much to look at, duckie, are you?” A blonde woman in her forties stood near the closed loading bay door. She held a man in a mechanic’s coverall captive, a gun to his head.
“Please,” he said. “Don’t kill me. I have a family.”
“That’s up to Ashira,” she said. “Will she save you and take your place or save herself? Does the famous Jezebel sense of responsibility live up to its reputation?”
I couldn’t let an innocent man be harmed. It was anathema to everything I stood for as a Jezebel, but I wasn’t stupid enough to hand myself over to Chariot, either.
“The oil smear on the front was a good start,” I said, “but you should have rubbed some grease under the nails to really sell it. It’s always the little details...” I shrugged. “Go ahead. Shoot him.”
The man yanked away. “Told you she wouldn’t buy it.”
The blonde vanished, but before I could go after her accomplice, I heard her say from behind me, “I hate smart-asses.”
She struck me on the back of the head and the world went dark.
I came to with my arms chained above my head. Struggle as I might, there were magic suppressers built into the cuffs, and I couldn’t wrench free. The back of my head throbbed and when I moved my neck, my hair was matted to it.
With each breath, I gusted out white puffs of freezing air, goosebumps covering every inch of skin. I was rapidly losing feeling in my extremities, and every blink was slow and sticky, frozen tears coating my lashes.
A hard blue light bathed the slabs of beef hung on hooks to either side and the empty metal shelving stacked against the wall.
I was in a walk-in freezer.
“Help!” I screamed myself hoarse, my cries swallowed by the cold, and my heart knocking against my ribs. Terror gnawed at my thoughts, first with needle-sharp precision, then like a muffled blanket, smothering all rational thought.
The blonde woman came and yelled at me but her words were fuzzy. There was a sharp sting, and my blood flowed sluggishly into a vial. Such a pretty color.
“I need that,” I slurred, though I couldn’t remember why it was important.
I lost track of the woman, but it wasn’t so bad because my friends came to visit me. Priya brought Mrs. Hudson, and even His Lordship deigned to share some jelly donuts with me.
He fed me one and the jelly glooped out onto the concrete floor.
“Whoops.” I laughed.
A hot copper tang assaulted me and my stomach lurched. That was a lot of jelly for one donut and something lay next to the puddle.
I screwed my eyes shut.
“Ashira,” a male voice said. “Wake up.”
Another friend had come to visit. I opened my eyes.
Moran leaned on his sword, breathing like he’d just run a 5k. Maybe it was one of those weird food ones, where you have to stop at different stations, eat a donut every kilometer, and then finish without throwing up. His normally pristine white disco suit certainly looked worse for wear.
“Dude, you got jelly all over your stomach,” I said, and blacked out again.
I came to screaming, my limbs burning with a pins-and-needles tingling, and a heavy warm weight surrounding my body. My mind caught up with me. I’d been captured—the blood—what was this around me?
Blind with panic, I lashed out with everything I had. It wasn’t much, but I was pleased when someone grunted. Yeah, take that, asshole.
Two arms tightened around me. I
spasmed in their grip, continuing to fight. Get free or die. I was not about to be another slab of meat in this freezer, but damn it, I’d take that over giving Chariot any edge.
“Ashira,” Moran said, wincing as my elbow caught him in the stomach. “You’re safe. Breathe.”
Warm. I was wrapped in heated blankets. Although I couldn’t control the hitch in my ragged breathing, I stopped struggling and took stock of my environment: a study lined with warmly stained bookcases that were packed with titles in Russian and English. The spines I could read were all non-fiction, history and politics. A small fireplace tiled in white blazed cheerfully, with an arresting red abstract painting hung over the mantel. It was the perfect ambiance for the busy henchman to unwind.
Moran stepped back, his hands up.
“You were stabbed.” I wiggled my fingers and toes, my eyes watering at the pain. I’d almost have taken the hypothermia and loss of blood flow back.
“I was, yes. It’s been quite a little while since that occurred.” He was clad in a white button-down with—what else—sharp pleated white pants, but looked more relaxed—and totally healed. “Although in my defense, they were, as you would so eloquently put it, stabbed worse.”
Blood on the floor… the library… Chariot…
I fumbled for my gold chain. “I need to get out of here.”
“Your library is safe.” Moran resettled the blanket around my shoulders.
“What library?” I said in a mostly even voice.
He moved to a small free-standing bar cart and poured himself a whiskey, holding the decanter out in question. I shook my head. “Your quaint little book nook with the scrolls of the Sefer Raziel HaMalakh,” he said. “Chariot was very forthcoming on the details. With a little encouragement, of course.”
Of course. Moran was always very good at getting the details out of people. I sat back in the birch white chair and contemplated the vase of white orchids on his windowsill. The Queen knew about the scrolls, what they were, and the power they possessed, and now the literal most other dangerous person I knew besides Isaac knew where to find them.
I took a deep breath. What had I learned from Arkady? Trust was a two-way street. Her Majesty knew about the library, true, but she also trusted me with the knowledge of her daughter being a Bookworm. If we were truly allies, then this had to go both ways. I had to trust her with this.
“Were you tracking them?” I opened an app on my phone. The silent alarm had been reset. Moran must have used my finger to gain access.
Moran smiled, like I’d passed a test, and smoothed out the edge of his white fluffy area rug with his boot. “After that unpleasantness with the Mafia Romaneasca, Her Majesty requested that I find out who in Chariot gave the orders to attack Hedon. The Ten are now Nine. Theresa Magnon now only exists in the past tense.”
Theresa’s head on the freezer floor, her blonde hair fanned out, the tips dipped in blood. Her skin was waxy and her eyes wide with surprise. I hadn’t wanted to face it back there, but I couldn’t get it out of my head now.
Moran had killed her.
Moran had saved me.
Two stories, both true. But my father had been right back in Hedon: the way you told a story mattered. A woman had lost her life, but she had tried to take mine. I’d been saved by a friend and had one less enemy to worry about.
I dropped my head to my hands, shaking. I was still alive.
My relief was buried under a curious numbness. I wrapped the blankets tighter around me. “Thank you. What about her accomplice?”
Moran swirled the amber liquid in the glass, the ice tinkling. “An unfortunate soul who chose the wrong person to ally himself with for the sake of a paycheck. He has, as you might imagine, also bid farewell to this mortal coil.”
“Oh.” I allowed myself a moment to process that before the rest of the night’s events rushed back in to me. The blood. They’d taken my blood. “Did you find a vial?”
Moran’s keen eyes glittered over his whiskey glass as he set it down next to a decanter. “I took the liberty of annihilating that as well. Do be careful, Ashira. The Kiss of Death is quite the valuable bauble, I doubt much beyond the Sefer would make Chariot happier to possess.”
I hugged a white decorative cushion to my chest. “Sounds like you and Theresa had quite the chat.”
His sword flashed briefly in his hand. “I bring out the… conversationalist in people.”
One of the Queen’s Nightingales thoroughly checked me out, while I stared at the sconces with white frosted glass, each etched with the Queen’s heart and crown logo, that were mounted on either side of the painting. Only when he pronounced me physically fine did Moran agree to let me go. I didn’t see Her Majesty, as she was with Isabel, but Moran said that she’d checked on me when we’d arrived in Hedon.
When I got home, I sent Priya a quick text asking her to look into Theresa, then grabbed every extra blanket and buried myself under them in my bedroom. Even sweating, there was a cold knot inside me that I couldn’t melt. I’d been so focused on Isaac that I’d dismissed the danger that the rest of the Ten posed, and nearly died.
Restless, I tossed the covers off, grabbed my car keys, and drove mindlessly around the city, constantly changing radio stations to surround myself with voices, and telling myself that I was here. I was alive.
I ended up in the one place I’d known I would. In front of Levi’s house. I rested my head against the steering wheel. What a fucking hypocrite I was, bitching at him for seeking comfort in me, when I yearned to do the same.
Luckily he was at work, so I couldn’t make a fool of myself. I sat there, imagining the sound of the waves through his open living room window, sunlight bathing it all in a hazy gold. Eyes closed, I hugged myself, pretending I was safe in his arms.
Someone rapped on the window and I screamed and jumped, only to be strangled backward by the seat belt.
Levi stared at me through the glass. “You’ve been sitting outside my place for an hour.”
His house was monitored. Of course it was.
I gripped the car key, but couldn’t make myself turn on the ignition.
“Were you casing the joint?” His voice was light but there was a tightness at the corner of his eyes. “Or do you suspect members of Chariot using this as a hideout, too?”
“Could we punch out for a few minutes and you ignore everything I said about emotional therapy dogs?”
He bit his lip, rocking back on his heels. “Do you want to come inside?”
I was already halfway out the car door, so that was a yes. I followed him through the gate and up his drive, rubbing my hands over my arms, convinced my breath was puffing out in cold white bursts.
Levi motioned to his living room with a questioning glance but I shook my head and went into his office, filled with functional furniture and the massive aquarium with multi-colored fish darting quick-silver that dominated the space. He didn’t have jellyfish, but the tropical fish were soothing enough.
I sat down in his ergonomically aligned desk chair, while Levi leaned against the desk, both of us bathed in the muted blue light of the tank. A fat orange fish with a black stripe head-butted his way through a school of neon tetras, scattering them.
“That’s Nacho,” Levi said. “He’s an asshole.”
“Would it be all right if I sat closer?”
He frowned, but nodded. “Sure.”
I rolled the chair over to him, and lay my head against his side, drawing my knees up to my chest.
Levi sank his fingers into my hair. I tensed for a second, then relaxed under the slow pressure of his massage.
“How close did you come to dying?” he said conversationally. He chuckled when I started. “You wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
“Chariot got me.”
He stilled. “Isaac?”
“No, a woman.” I told him about it as succinctly as possible, by which time I was in such a tight ball with my head pressed against my knees, that my words were muffle
d.
Levi tried to tug me up, but I shook my head, not wanting to see pity on his face at how easily I’d been captured.
“We’re punched out, you infuriatingly stubborn dork. You almost died, so let me give you a freaking hug.”
I glanced up. His annoyed brow crease was in full force.
We sat down on his area rug and Levi wrapped me in his arms. I leaned back against him, my hands over his, wishing we could keep existing in the right now.
Levi propped his head on my shoulder, his cheek resting against mine.
Secure and lulled by the fish swimming in the tank and Levi’s arms around me, I felt safe enough to acknowledge how vulnerable I was going up against that behemoth. I’d intellectualized how bad it could get, but never felt it on this primal level. I hadn’t anticipated Theresa being a Transporter and it had cost me. Being a Jezebel meant I couldn’t hide away, but how could I anticipate every possibility?
I’d been hung on a hook and left to die. If Moran hadn’t arrived…
I shivered.
Levi’s hold on me tightened.
Almost dying had given me a clarity about how much I wanted to live. I took the fear and adrenaline and anxiety of my near-death encounter and honed it into a weapon. Whatever Chariot threw at me, I’d overcome it. I would win.
But I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be warm again. And not just warm like the way Moran’s blanket had felt, like an emergency ebbing back to survival, but warm, like cozy. Like feeling truly at home and happy again.
“I should go,” I said, twisting around to face Levi. “Thank you.”
He caressed my jaw with his knuckles and met my gaze, the silence between us as sweet as cotton candy. It didn’t take away our hurt or resolve anything, but knowing we could exist outside everything and act from our hearts, mattered.
The moment shifted and spun away. I mimed punching back in but Levi gently caught my fist.
“We’re fighting together now,” he said. “If you sense Chariot is close, call me.”
It was one thing to discuss Chariot in the broad sense, but how Levi would cope if I needed help with Isaac remained to be seen.
Revenge & Rapture: A Snarky Urban Fantasy Detective Series (The Jezebel Files Book 4) Page 17