“Almost home,” I whispered to the station, sensing its protection extending toward me, eager to embrace me. I’d get inside, clean the blood and dirt off, and wear whatever the station had in the closet, rebuilding my armor, and then I’d seek out Etienne. Had it been day, I’d have gone straight to Kensey, but the risk was too great. Night was my territory and my strength. I was so ready to climb back into the role of hostess and forget this nightmare had ever happened.
“It took you long enough to bring her back,” Caine chuckled, his voice carrying in the quiet.
What?
Caine had known Jack had me?
Didn’t matter.
Jack limped to a stop in front of Caine. He’d emphasized the limp, pretending to appear weaker than he was, reminding me how nothing about Just Jack was real.
I wove around patches of brush, each footfall carefully placed. Caine probably knew where I was, but I was relying on Jack to keep him and anything else out here occupied. The station was so close, I could almost taste its cinnamon and citrus air.
“Are the preparations complete?” Jack asked.
What preparations? Didn’t matter…
“Etienne is… difficult,” Caine replied.
“The fae always are.”
A twig snapped under my heel. I froze, holding my breath. Fae? What did they mean? And why were they talking about Etienne? Unless…
Could Jack have orchestrated the kidnapping? Had he made Etienne lock me inside the carriage with him? No, none of that made sense. Having me gone only to return me again was a pointless exercise. Unless they had wanted me out of the way for… something.
I squinted into the shining station lights.
So close…
Once back inside the station, I’d be strong again.
The vampires had fallen quiet.
The sound of my thudding heart filled my ears.
A glance over my shoulder revealed the vampires were no longer where I’d expected them to be. They weren’t on the tracks—or anywhere.
My heart picked up its thudding.
They weren’t fighting because Jack was working with Caine. They wanted me gone to get to Etienne, to prepare for something…
The queen?
Oh no… no, no, no…
Gods and spices.
That fanged bastard. Telling me to leave him…. Keeping me safe… He didn’t need me to get inside the station; he’d needed me out of it, leaving it unprotected. Bringing me back home was a part of that.
I still had the stake. I clenched it tighter. It wasn’t much, but I’d killed a rakshasi with it.
The station lights twinkled.
Bushes rustled behind on my right.
Run, my instincts demanded. Ice trickled down my spine.
Running never worked out well.
The vampires didn’t want me dead, or they’d have killed me by now.
I drew in a breath, lifted my head, stepped from the brush, then kept right on walking like it was broad daylight and nothing in the dark could touch me.
Jack wanted me alive. He’d told me as much. He wouldn’t hurt me now, or let anything else do so.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are…” I whispered. Plenty of other creatures lurked in the dark around the station. Every night, they watched through the bright station windows, eyes full of envy. They knew me. For decades, they’d coveted sanctuary and my and Gerome’s role in it. And here I was, in their space… ripe for the picking.
Bushes rustled on both sides of the tracks. I didn’t think phantoms rustled anything, so whatever it was, it had a physical form. That narrowed it down to a few hundred possible human-eating nasties. Good. Let them come.
I wouldn’t run.
The lights were closer, throbbing and flickering. I fancied I could hear twinkling laughter from inside. There were a hundred different species of Dark Ones inside those walls too, all with teeth and minds just as sharp.
I had to keep walking.
My heart pounded like a beacon to vampires.
Distantly, something howled. The sound rolled on and on across the empty land.
My blood raced, urging me to run and close that last fleeting distance.
But all the hungry things watching me from the dark were waiting for exactly that.
I was Lynher Aris. Nothing would stop me from walking back through those station doors. “You can’t have me,” I told the dark.
The unmistakable sound of a phantom screamed to my left, coming in fast.
“Come at me, then,” I seethed, keeping my head up and my eyes locked on the station.
I could make out the beautiful figures on the platform. Women in frills and lace. Men in patterned silk and polished shoes. The breeze whispered me closer, sprinkling a taste of magic in the air.
The phantom flew in, a wave of black liquid hissing over the tracks, but it didn’t reach me. Jack appeared, his forearms crossed, his station mark blazing.
“Back!” he yelled.
The phantom whirled around itself, spiraling like oil down a drain.
I walked on, around Jack.
More phantoms spilled into the light.
“Lynher! Get down!”
No, I wasn’t doing a damn thing Jack said. He wanted me to live, then he could make it happen. I was going home. Fuck everything else. Fuck him and Caine’s so-called claim on me, and the queen, and the phantoms, wyverns, drones, rakshasis, demons, fae. Fuck all of them.
They. Needed. Me.
The mark on my arm sizzled to life, the station reaching out, as safe as a mother’s hand, a mother I’d never known.
Come home, it said. Come back to me, my child. How had I ever doubted it?
A vampire roared behind me, and then huffed a breath, as though it had been hit. Caine or Jack, it didn’t matter. Just a few more steps.
Silvery sparks exploded on the platform, a small celebration of Rafe’s arrival. His wings flicked, scattering sparks around him, startling the crowd and alerting them to the scene beyond the white line.
Do. Not. Run.
Rafe pulled his wings closed and cocked his horned head, his stupidly pretty face cut into a frown. He didn’t approach, didn’t appear in front of me and wrap his arms around me to take me off somewhere. He could have, but maybe he’d learned his lesson, because he stayed behind the white line.
Phantoms howled above. Light flashed behind me, washing over them, driving them back, and with every step, the mark on my arm grew hotter.
One liquid shadow broke from the others and plummeted toward the tracks, flooding the last few meters between me and the station platform. It looked like the others, just threads of night around an invisible core, but there was something different about this one. It stayed between me and the platform, between me and Rafe, and it seemed to see me.
I stared back, light throbbing off my mark. Maybe it was the same phantom that had taken Rafe’s soul? “You and I have unfinished business, but now is not the time…”
It shot skyward, but I’d likely see it again.
Rafe knelt and reached out his hand, a jaunty grin lifting the corner of his lips.
I closed my hand in his and let him pull me onto the platform.
“Welcome home, Lynher Aris.” He stepped away, and as I took that final step over the white line, breathing a sigh of relief, he bowed low, the gesture sweeping and overly dramatic, so typically Rafe.
It was more than good to see him, even if he was broken.
I was home.
My lip wobbled.
I clenched my teeth, straightened my shoulders, lifted my chin, and headed through the open doors.
Chapter 21
Night
Rafe followed me inside a random residential room, and I let him, too exhausted to argue. I’d only made it a few steps inside when the entire room blurred, color spilling into color. My empty gut flopped, and my head spun. I reached for a wall, and then it was done. The suite the station had provided was full of all the things i
t knew I loved. Cushions and books, plush couches and day beds. A spread of fresh food overflowed the dining table. Candles lit. Glittering cutlery. Even a bottle of wine and a black rose. If I didn’t know any better, I might have thought the station felt… guilty.
“It’s good to be home,” I told the space.
Kicking off my boots, I sighed with relief, not caring that I trailed mud and leaves behind me. My mind itched from Rafe’s presence, but he was the least of my concerns. A glance behind me and I caught him eyeing the food like he wanted to open his wings, fall over it, and claim the entire spread as his.
“Rafe… where’s Etienne?” I asked.
“Etienne?” His top lip arched.
“Yes. Etienne.”
“The shy Frenchman?”
“Where is he?”
His frown was back. “You disappear for a week and then you reappear on the tracks, lit up like a star, rags hanging off your bones, with vampires fighting in your shadow, and the first thing you ask is where’s the Frenchman?”
“I’ll explain. I just need to find him. And then…” find Kensey. I had to know my brother was okay, and I couldn’t wait until dawn. I patted my pockets. “Pencil…”
Of course I didn’t have a pencil. My clothes weren’t Lynher Aris’s clothes.
Rafe rested a hip against the table. “A what?”
“A pencil, do you have one?”
“Darling, why would I have a pencil?”
Gods and spices, why would he indeed? I needed to think, to fix my thoughts and focus. The closets. Heading into the bedroom, I reached for the closet door and froze. The woman looking back at me in the floor-to-ceiling mirror had eyes sunken into their sockets, her hair was a rat’s nest, her hips jutted, and her skin was the color of dishwater. I’d seen healthier corpses.
Rafe’s reflection loomed in the doorway. A moment of fear flicked through his mismatched eyes. Fear for me? Was that possible without his soul?
Later. I’d deal with him and everything else later. I had bigger issues.
I yanked open the closet door and grabbed the first dress hanging on the rail. Pockets. They were everywhere, hidden in the seams, the underskirt, the boned waist. Inside one of them, I found a pencil and a small piece of paper. Quickly, I scribbled a note to Kensey.
I’m okay.
Are you?
Folding it in half, I turned to find Rafe close, his wings open and loose, his shoulders sloping. He stiffened the moment I found his gaze.
“Take this…” I could trust him, couldn’t I? It didn’t matter. I had to know. “Place it under the antique pitcher in the eastern hallway. Do you know where that is?”
Nodding once, he plucked the note from my fingers and left.
I heard the main door click closed and shuddered out a sigh.
Weakness rushed in, and before I could stumble to the bed, I dropped to my knees, fell forward, and sobbed. Once one gulping gasp was out, the rest followed, and I couldn’t stop. I cried out all the hurt inside, but more came, spilling over, and it was all I could do to breathe and exist.
Jack was out there. Caine too. Maybe the queen was coming here? I had to deal with Etienne and show the station residents all was well. I had to check everything was well, that the station hadn’t been compromised, but above all, I needed to know Kensey was okay. Because if anyone had hurt my brother, I’d burn them alive and send them to whatever place they called hell.
* * *
I wanted to crawl into bed and hide, but it was night, and nothing was over, not yet.
Showering was a new kind of hell. I couldn’t get warm, no matter how high I cranked the heat up. Naked and shivering, I pulled on the dress, the same one I’d rummaged through. Each buckle sealed shut and ribbon tied off rebuilt my image. There would be no fixing my hair, so I took a pair of fabric scissors to the locks and hacked them off, creating a messy bob.
I emerged from the bedroom halfway back to my old self and found Rafe leaning against the table, his wings illusioned away. He still had his horns, though.
“Has anything happened?” I asked, grateful no hint of my breakdown lingered in my voice.
“Anything?” He double-blinked, surprised by my new look.
“Is anything wrong. Has anything… bad happened since I’ve been gone?”
He picked up an apple and turned it over in his hand. “Besides the normal? I don’t believe so. But it’s not my job to monitor your station. I was off doing demon things for much of your absence. In fact, I hardly noticed you’d gone.”
I headed for the door. So, if everything continued as normal, whatever Jack was planning might not be in place yet. I’d find Jack, but first, I had to find Etienne. He’d started all this. He’d have answers.
“Eat.” Rafe bit into his apple, the crunch loud.
“I will.” I reached for the door handle.
“Humans need food,” he said around his mouthful. “I read it in a book.”
“You can read?” I tried the handle and found the door stuck closed.
“Ha. Ha.”
Pulling on the door didn’t help. Rafe had just come back through it, so it could open. I tried again, rattling the handle and putting weight into the pull. “Oh, come on…”
I glared at Rafe, and he raised his hands in surrender. “It worked fine earlier.”
The skeleton key. I patted my dress down, searching each nook and pocket, finding them all empty. “Oh, this isn’t fair. I have to get out there.” I wandered in circles, talking to the walls. “I have to find Etienne. You can’t lock me in. Jack and Caine are working to hurt us and you. That has to be more important than anything else.”
A chair skidded out from under the dining table, its legs scratching across on the parquet floor.
Rafe’s chewing stopped. He arched an eyebrow at the chair and me. “I’d say the station agrees with me.”
Gathering my skirts, I sat at the table, grabbed a chunk of bread, and picked at it, stuffing bite-sized pieces into my mouth. “Happy now?” I fumed.
Rafe snorted, earning a scowl.
“Fine.” Reaching for the water and cheese, I loaded my plate. I did have to eat and drink before I fell down and couldn’t get up again. And going after the VG while weak was a terrible idea. I knew that… but too much was happening while time ticked on.
I ate methodically, taking little pieces, knowing too much would likely come back up again. Rafe simmered, a thousand questions in his blue and green eyes, but he ate enough for ten incubi. They were nothing if not gluttonous for all pleasure.
Lost in dark thoughts, I almost missed Rafe freeze up. Then he plucked a knife off the table and threw it with lethal accuracy at the wall.
“What the—”
His wings popped into existence.
“Rats!” he hissed, picking up another knife.
“Stop!” I launched from the chair.
A mouse darted along the skirting board. The first knife Rafe had thrown with terrible accuracy had lopped off the tip of its tail.
“What’s the matter with you?” I cupped the mouse and brought it close to my face. Its whiskers twitched, and its mouse hands rubbed its pink nose. “It’s just a mouse.”
Rafe had spread himself against the far wall, wings out and crackling. “Bring it closer and it dies.”
Raphael, Lilith’s favorite incubi elite, was afraid of… mice? I set the mouse down on the table and returned to my chair, hiding a laugh by clearing my throat. The mouse sat on its haunches, stroked its nose, and then without fanfare, its body dissolved into a pile of white sugar, which was, in fact, what it had been made of. In the sugar lay a tiny folded note.
“What sorcery is this!” Rafe lowered his knife and peeled himself off the wall, venturing closer to eye the paper as though expecting it to scurry up his leg.
I filed the knowledge that he was afraid of rodents in my “useful for later” mental pile and picked up the note, grinning. The note had to be from Kensey. Nobody else knew how to send
sugar mice between night and day, which meant he was okay. He’d probably be angry and demand to know everything, but it didn’t matter. He was okay, and that was…
The scratch-like handwriting was not Kensey’s.
I read the note and let it fall from my fingers.
Rafe pinched the note’s corner between his finger and thumb and frowned. “‘Your brother is in our care. Do not search for him.’ You have a brother?”
Kensey… Someone had Kensey.
I couldn’t believe it. Lies. It was all lies.
Was it Etienne? He’d know about the mice. Kensey could easily have told him. He had Kensey. I would rip his damn heart out of his chest and have Rafe eat it.
“Rafe…?”
“Darling?” he purred, sidling closer.
“I need your help.”
“Of course.” He tossed the note aside. “I am forever your faithful servant.” He bowed again, and when he looked up, his grin was full of demon teeth, his tongue forked. “For a price.”
The rage Jack’s venom had bottled up inside me seeped through and heated my veins. “We’re going to destroy every last vampire in this station, and we won’t stop there. Anyone who has dared wrong me, who thought me weak, who trapped me in that damn carriage… I’ll make them wish for death.”
He straightened, planted a hand on his hip, and eagerly wet his lips. His two-tone eyes shone. “For that, you had better believe I’m having you all to myself for a week.”
Ugh, incubi. “An hour,” I countered.
“An hour?” He laughed. “An hour is nothing. Three days.” He leaned forward and stroked his warm finger along my jaw, spilling wholly inappropriate shivers down my spine. “And nights.” He was so close I could taste his sweetness on my tongue. His magic wrapped in close, trying to convince me Rafe was the air I needed to breathe. “They have your brother, whom you’re apparently fond of, whoever he is. What are three days and nights with me in exchange for rescuing sibling love?” His words touched my lips.
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