Smoke (The Slayer Chronicles Book 1)

by Val St. Crowe

  Actually, I wondered if they did make something like that. I snagged my phone off the kitchen counter, ready to look it up.

  When there was a knock at the door.

  Seriously? Who could that be?

  I opened the door.

  It was Naelen Spencer.

  Well, I had to admit that was convenient. He looked the same as he did yesterday. Different suit—this one was navy blue and he was wearing a bright yellow tie with a baby blue dress shirt—and the colors brought out his eyes even more.

  I peered into their mesmerizing depths for a moment. “Hi,” I said, and I think I might have actually smiled at him.

  He pushed past me into the apartment and began pacing in my living room. “All right, I know you said you weren’t interested yesterday, but I simply can’t accept that. I’ve been stewing over this all night, and I think there’s got to be some way we can come to a compromise. Maybe if I put a timeframe on the amount of time I keep Reign locked up. If I say that I have, oh, I don’t know, five years to find the cure, and that if I haven’t by then, you must come and… and end her suffering. Perhaps that would appease you. Perhaps—”

  “Shh.” I put my finger to my lips. “Not so loud. My sister’s sleeping.”

  He furrowed his brow and looked around the apartment. “Your sister lives here too? Both of you in this place?”

  “She’s just crashing,” I said, glaring at him. “And what’s wrong with this place?”

  He cleared his throat. “Nothing. Obviously nothing. It’s… quite, er…”

  “Never mind that,” I said. “I realize I don’t live the way you do. Likely, you have three homes, all huge enough to house an entire baseball team.”

  “Four houses, actually,” he said. “One for each season.”

  “Seriously?”

  He looked embarrassed. “That’s not important.”

  I folded my arms over my chest. “You did rush to correct me there.”

  “Well, I’ve worked hard to achieve my success,” he said. “I suppose I’m a bit proud of myself.”

  “Worked hard? You were born with a silver spoon in your mouth.”

  “I built Spencertech from the ground up,” he said. “It’s my company. I own it.”

  “With a nice cash infusion from your daddy to get it up and running, I’m sure.”

  “No, I don’t take a thing from them,” he said, and suddenly he was fierce. “I did it on my own. I don’t want their money.” He was so serious about it that I couldn’t help but believe him.

  “Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry. I supposed I shouldn’t have assumed—”

  “You, Miss Gannon, have quite the knack for making my blood boil.” He shook himself, nostrils flaring. “I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone who makes me as angry as you do.”

  “And yet you still want me to work for you?”

  “Naturally, I do. You’re the best. I will have the best. Only the best. Tell me that you’ll reconsider, or I will be back to pester you every day, twice a day, until you say yes.”

  “The payment?” I said. “That offer of two years’ rent still floating around?”

  “Make it three years’,” he said.

  My eyes widened. I wondered if I should haggle, try to get him up even higher. The man clearly had no regard for spending ridiculous sums of money. But that offer was more than generous. It would be enough for me to put Gina in rehab and to live comfortably for a while as well. I’d take that.

  Besides, I was going to feel guilty enough taking all this money for locking up a dangerous rogue and putting so many lives in danger. If that rogue, formerly his sister, killed anyone, I didn’t know if I’d ever forgive myself, and the cash would be little solace in that case.

  “If you feel you need something more—”

  “No,” I said. “That offer is acceptable. I will work for you.”

  He took a step back. “You will?”

  I nodded.

  He rubbed his hands together. “Well, that’s excellent. I’m quite pleased.”

  “Sure,” I shrugged at him. “Uh, I’m wondering if I could get a little bit of my salary as an advance?”

  * * *

  Gina sat down gingerly on her bed in the Magnolia Center. The bedspread was pure white, and Gina ran tentative fingers over it. “It’s so clean. I don’t want to get things dirty.”

  “Get things as dirty as you want,” I said. “This place costs enough. They can afford to do an obscene amount of laundry.”

  Everything in the place was white, in fact. The floors, the ceilings, the walls. All the pictures on the walls were in white frames, and they were all pictures of things like snow on trees, or frozen ponds, or dandelion fluff in the breeze. White everywhere. Even the people who worked here wore white. It was giving me a bit of a headache.

  Gina looked up at me. “I still don’t know how you afforded this place.”

  “I told you,” I said. “I’m taking a job. A really well-paying job.”

  “But what kind of job?” she said.

  “It’s to do with dragons,” I said.

  “You don’t ever take much money for killing dragons, though,” said Gina. “I don’t want you to make exceptions for me. You’ll resent me, and—”

  “I already resent you, sis,” I said, giving her a lopsided grin.

  She rolled her eyes at me.

  “Seriously, I’m not doing anything that would make anyone lose sleep. It’s on the up and up. It’s fine. You need this. Hell, we need this. You and I haven’t caught one single damned break our whole lives.”

  She fingered the white bedspread. “No, I guess we haven’t.”

  “So, you settle in here,” I said. “You get better.”

  She nodded. “Thanks, Clarke.”

  “Hey,” I said, “you know I’m doing this for me, so that I don’t have to keep bailing you out of trouble.” I grinned at her again. “This is totally selfishly motivated.”

  She laughed. “Of course.”

  But then we both gazed at each other and our smiles started to waver, and we both knew, without having to say it, that there was nothing we wouldn’t do for each other if push came to shove. We were family.

  She stood up from the bed.

  I crossed to her.

  We hugged.

  She clung to me, and I held onto her, and tears sprang to my eyes.

  “You take care of yourself,” I whispered.

  “You too,” she said.

  And then I left her, because I was afraid if I stayed any longer, I’d start bawling, and I didn’t want to lose it like that.

  Wiping my eyes, I made my way down the hallway, all the way to the front of the building, where a woman in the uniform here—white dress and white scarf on her head—stopped me. “Excuse me,” she said. “Do you have a pass to leave?”

  “Uh, I’m not a patient,” I said.

  She looked me up and down. “Oh,” she said.

  “I was just dropping off my sister,” I said.

  “I see,” she said. “And your name is?”

  “Clarke Gannon,” I said. “My sister’s name is Gina. She was just admitted today.”

  “Let me look into that,” said the woman. She ducked inside a small room by the gate and typed on a console. “Yes, I see Gina here. And you as the billing contact. Although the balance has been paid in full.” She eyed me again.

  “What?” I said.

  “Nothing,” she said. “This is a very wonderful thing you’re doing for your sister.”

  I let out a breath. “Yeah, well… she needs help.”

  The woman smiled at me. “Do you have any identification…?”

  I narrowed my eyes at her, but I dug out my ID and showed it to her.

  She smiled. “Thank you. You can go on out, then.”

  I started to head for the gate, but then I stopped. “Uh, I can come back to visit her?”

  “Not right away,” said the woman. “We like the patients to be immersed i
n the culture here for at least a week to begin with. After that, you are welcome to come during visiting hours, which are in the afternoons. But you should be receiving some information in your email. It will answer all your questions.”

  “Right,” I said. “Well, thanks.” I started for the gate.

  “Bye now,” said the woman. “Have a blessed day.”

  Blessed? Really? Whatever. When I got through the gate, I saw a shiny black car sitting at the curb, idling there. I wouldn’t have paid it much mind, but then the back door opened, and Naelen got out.

  I gaped at him. “Are you following me?”

  He surveyed the place. “So, this is why you wanted the advance?”

  “It’s for my sister. She needs help, and she wanted to come to this place, so I decided I would do what I needed to do for her.”

  “I understand,” he said, sliding his hands into his pockets. “I care about my sister too.”

  His sister was dead, though. But I decided it wouldn’t be prudent to say that out loud. “You can’t follow me around.”

  “You’re an investment now,” he said. “I keep an eye on my investments.”

  I drew back. “I most certainly am nothing of the kind.”

  “You are, though,” he said. “I’ve hired you to do a job for me, and I want to make sure that you deliver what you promised.”

  “So, you’re stalking me,” I said.

  “Well, I did wonder when it was exactly that you would get started on trying to track down my sister.”

  “Wait, track her down?” I said. “I don’t track dragons. I react to them.”

  “We have to find her before we can capture her.”

  I sighed. “‘We,’ huh? I guess you want to follow me around while I’m doing this job?”

  “Oh, I’ll be there at all times,” he said. “I don’t intend to ‘follow you around’ however. We’ll be working together.”

  I nodded slowly. “Don’t you have things to do? A corporation to run? You know, the one you were bragging about yesterday? The one that you built up from nothing?”

  “Actually, Spencertech is doing just fine on its own these days, but thanks for asking. I’ve been buying things up and expanding my empire and trying to stay busy, but the truth is, it’s evolved beyond me. Mostly, these days, I’m bored. So, as you can see, I’ve got lots of time to look for Reign.”

  I studied my shoes. “How should I put this?” I pretended to muse over it. “I don’t like you, Naelen. You’re arrogant and demanding and you represent everything I hate.”

  “Excuse me?” he said. “I would think, after your sister, you’d be grateful to me.”

  “Well, you’d be wrong. Here’s the thing. I don’t think you really like me either.”

  “Of course I like you, Miss Gannon.”

  “How about you call me Clarke?”

  “All right.” He smiled. “Seems to me things are going even better for us, aren’t they? Now, we’re on a first name basis?”

  “You don’t like me. You don’t like people like me. I’m sure you hate slayers. In fact, I looked you up, and you regularly give money to the Stop Slayers Strikeforce Initiative, which aims to create a trained wing of the FBI to hunt down slayers and lock them up.”

  “That’s because slayers kill my kind,” he said.

  I shrugged. “Well, there you go. You don’t like me.”

  “You’re different.”

  “I wouldn’t kill a shifter,” I said. “It’s true. I think it’s murder. But I’m still a slayer. I work the wrong side of the tracks, and I associate with criminals and riffraff, and I don’t think my methods and your methods are really going to… mesh.”

  “Too bad,” he said. “We’ll have to find a way. Because we’re working together, and that’s the end of that.”

  “You’re used to getting your way, aren’t you?”

  He smiled, flashing me a bright row of perfect teeth. “I always get my way.”

  I grimaced. “Maybe not this time.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly, Clarke,” he said. “What are you going to do? Walk away? Give me back my money? You need the money. You need the job. You need me. You have to do things my way. It might be hard for you to swallow that, but I suggest you chew a bit harder and use a glass of water to get it down your throat, because I’m not going anywhere.”

  My whole face twitched. I could feel that my cheeks were heating up, not from embarrassment, but from annoyance. The hell of it was that he was right. I might not want to work with him, but I didn’t have a choice in the matter.

  He smiled wider, gesturing to his car. “Won’t you get in?”

  I drew in a shaky breath. I would have loved to tell him to shove it. I would have loved to walk away, throw his money in his face. Let him deal with that. He couldn’t control me simply because I was broke and desperate. Except that wasn’t true. He actually could control me. I hated that he had so much money, because it meant he had power over me. That made me feel itchy. But life was a bitch, so I had to do as he said and try to swallow it. I squared my shoulders. I let out my breath. And I climbed into his stupid car.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “All right,” said Naelen, “so where do we start?” He buckled his seatbelt.

  I buckled mine too. “Well, I have no idea. The way that I usually work is that I listen to the police scanners for news of dragon attacks. Then I go there, take care of the rogue.”

  “I never hear about dragon attacks on the news,” he said.

  “I thought you talked to Penny Caspian,” I said. “Someone’s covering them up. She thinks its Eaglelinx.”

  “Oh, yes, I do remember something about that.” He nodded. “Well, anyway, that’s not going to work. Because it’s far too passive. We need to do something to find Reign. How do we do that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You don’t know?”

  “No, I have no experience with this,” I said. “You hired me to shoot your special tranquilizing arrows, remember? I’m not a private detective.”

  He furrowed his brow. “Ah. Well, I suppose that’s one way to go about it, then. Let’s behave as if we were detectives.”

  “What would we do then?”

  “Well… I don’t really know. Don’t you?”

  “Do I look like a detective?”

  He let out a breath, clearly starting to get a bit perturbed.

  “You’re the one who said we had to work together,” I said.

  “And a good thing too,” he said. “You’re proving to be next to worthless. I could be doing this all on my own for the amount of help you’re providing.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to do.”

  “Yes, that’s the problem exactly,” he said. “You’re not doing anything.”

  I sighed. “Look, when did you see her last?”

  “Oh,” he said, considering. “I suppose going over that makes sense.”

  “Seriously? Are you an idiot?”

  “I assure you I am not,” he said. “I am quite intelligent. I got very high marks at Harvard Business.”

  I rolled my eyes. “No common sense, though, am I right?”

  “That’s highly offensive, you know.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said in a voice that made it clear I wasn’t the least bit sorry. “Not all of us had trust funds. Not all of us could go to college. Or even finish high school.” I gritted my teeth. I was going to murder Naelen Spencer before all this was over, and then his estate would probably demand the money he’d given me back. Even if they didn’t, I’d need it to pay for defense lawyers.

  “Really?” he said in a different voice. “You were unable to finish high school? What happened?”

  “My sister turned into a drake,” I said. “I couldn’t just let her…” I ran my hand through my hair. “You know what? Never mind. Let’s get back to your sister. Where was the last place you saw her?”

  He was giving me a concerned looked, and his expression b
ordered on pity for me.

  I couldn’t handle that. “Stop it,” I said. “Do not feel sorry for me. I am fine. Fine. I can take care of myself. If my sister went missing, I wouldn’t need to hire someone to get her back.”

  The concerned look faded immediately, replaced with a pinched expression. “I saw her at a family dinner several months ago.”

  “She’s been gone for several months?”

  “No, only two weeks or so,” he said. “But that was the last time I saw her.”

  “Well, when was the last time anyone saw her?”

  “How could I know that?” he said. “I hadn’t seen her in months.”

  “How do you even know she’s missing?”

  “Well, about a week ago, I tried to call her, and she never called me back, and then I went by her place, and no one was there. And I checked out her social media sites, which she uses rather heavily, and I found that she hadn’t posted anything in two weeks. So, I assume she’s been missing for that long. Listen, something you might not understand, considering that you’re not a dragon, is that when one of our loved ones goes off the face of the earth, we immediately assume that they’ve been killed by a slayer. Cut up and turned into talismans to be sold on the black market.”

  I pressed my lips together. I did think that the way dragons were hunted was awful.

  “But then I spoke to Penny Caspian, and she told me that it was actually very rare for a shifter to be killed by a slayer, because most slayers had their hands full with rogues. And then—the idea that my sister could be a rogue—still alive, well, I had hope again.”

  He shouldn’t have hope, though, that was the problem. If Reign was a rogue, she was gone.

  “Look, Penny has some crazy theory about candy,” I said.

  “No, I heard about it. Apparently, the product that Eaglelinx makes, the eagleclaw, is supposed to occasionally set off a shift in a dragon.”

  Dragons could only shift in water. If they didn’t, the weight of the shift was too much for their human bodies. The bodies were destroyed. Anyone who shifted into a dragon out of water could never shift back, because their human form was dead. They became rogues.