by Z. J. Cannon
Boston wasn’t where most tech companies chose to set up their headquarters. The few who eschewed the obvious choice of Silicon Valley tended to cluster around New York City. But this was where Eddie Ellison had chosen to make his home and set up the headquarters of Nexegence Technologies. It would have made sense if he had been from the area, but my preliminary research on him showed that he had grown up in Charleston.
The choice of Boston made perfect sense, though, if he wanted to stick as close as he could to the largest and most stable Faerie portal on the North American continent while still gaining the benefits of a big city. In other words, it made sense if Dwight Conley had been telling the truth, and Arkanica really was Ellison’s baby.
The uniformed doorman gave me a slow once-over as I approached the door. With his face all but eclipsed by the inferno of reflected light, I couldn’t tell whether the extra attention he paid me was due to suspicion or simple appreciation. If he recognized my face from the news, this little adventure would be over before it began. But as best I could tell, his eyes weren’t lingering on my face. Either this man already had more than a passing interest in the male form, or he was going to be doing some soul-searching later tonight.
I had to admit, I looked good. Although this outfit was hardly one I would have chosen for myself, even in my most hedonistic days. Back when I could afford to dress well, I had preferred simple elegance, with subtly-flattering cuts and fabrics that felt as smooth as butter against my skin. But tonight my outfit was tailored to Eddie Ellison’s preferences, not my own. Which meant leather pants tight enough I didn’t dare try to sit down, and a form-fitting silk shirt in an eye-popping purple that caught the eye a little too readily for my liking. It felt good to be in silk again, but I was already starting to sweat underneath the leather.
Once a week, every Thursday evening at seven forty-five, Eddie Ellison indulged in the pleasure of paid companionship. A woman on the first and third weeks of the month, a man on the second and fourth. I didn’t dare ask what he did on months that had a fifth Thursday. The male escort who had been scheduled to spend tonight with him had been happy enough to let me take his place, in exchange for a cash incentive on top of his usual fee. And this was what he had told me to wear, so this was what I was wearing. With any luck, the doorman was accustomed to Eddie’s visitors, and would slot me neatly into an existing mental category and wave me through.
“I’m here to see Eddie Ellison,” I said before the doorman could ask. I tried to speak casually, as if I visited the penthouse of the most expensive building in the city every day.
It took the doorman another couple of seconds to tear his gaze away from me long enough to pull out a slim tablet and consult it. All right, I definitely wasn’t liking this attention. It would only take one second glance from the wrong person for me to be recognized. As soon as I was done here, I was burning these pants.
The tablet was a model I didn’t recognize, with a frame that shared the same subtle curve as the design of the building. Probably a Nexegence model. I had never felt the need to keep up with the latest gadgets. Even the small amounts of iron they contained added up. I put up with my smart phone, and did it gladly, for the convenience it offered. But that was as much extra daily discomfort as I was willing to take on.
The man scanned the list, and pointed at a name I couldn’t see. “Sebastian Carrera?”
If that’s what it says on your list, I wanted to say. I nodded instead.
He frowned more closely. “This photo doesn’t look much like you.”
I tried not to let him see me tense up, and kept my voice light. “I didn’t realize you were checking IDs at the door.”
“We take security very seriously around here.” He frowned at the tablet, then at me. “And unless my eyes are failing me, you’re supposed to be blond.” His hand inched toward a walkie-talkie at his waist. Even that device looked sleek and slim, half the size of the usual design.
Shit. Maybe I should have had Skye work some magic on the doorman’s list before I came here. But how was I supposed to know Ellison screened his evening company so carefully? I thought about giving him an excuse and an apology, walking away, and calling Skye. But I dismissed the thought almost as soon as it came to me. I didn’t want Skye’s digital fingerprints anywhere near Eddie Ellison. Especially if Conley had been telling me the truth about him.
No, I would have to charm my way out of this one.
I took a gamble, and leaned in closer to the doorman with an apologetic smile. “You got me. I’m not Sebastian Carrera. He sent me to fill in for him at the last minute. Food poisoning.” I gave a theatrical grimace.
The doorman’s frown didn’t ease. “Why didn’t Ellison notify us of the change?”
“He doesn’t know.” I leaned in closer, dropped my voice a bit more. “Mr. Ellison has a reputation for… shall we say, reacting badly when plans change at the last minute.”
My gamble paid off. The doorman gave me a knowing nod. His face relaxed a little.
So this man had been on the wrong side of Eddie Ellison’s wrath, then. Probably more than once. It was no real surprise, but I was still relieved I had been right. I didn’t know enough about Ellison to have any clue how the man reacted when things didn’t go his way, but I had met enough people with this much money to throw around to suspect he didn’t handle setbacks gracefully. Or give much consideration to the well-being of the people he thought existed to serve him. The rich were a lot like the fae, in some ways.
I pressed my advantage. “Ellison has never met Carrera before. He won’t know the difference. Not unless somebody tells him. Either you let me in, Ellison and I spent a pleasant evening together, and no one is the wiser… or you call him now, and let him know there’s an irregularity.” I shrugged. “I know which I’d prefer. But it’s up to you. Me, I’ve got plenty of other clients. I can survive Ellison’s wrath.” Can you? was the unspoken subtext.
The doorman winced. He had heard what I hadn’t said. He handed me a black keycard with no text or logo. “This will get you up to the penthouse. Welcome to the Seaport Tower, Mr. Carrera.” He paged to a different screen on his tablet and tapped a button. The doors slowly swung open. “I’ll let Mr. Ellison know you’re here.”
I gave him a nod and a smile, and walked through the doors before he could change his mind.
A wall of frozen air punched me in the face as soon as I stepped inside. They didn’t skimp on the air conditioning around here, did they? Anyone from the Winter Court would have felt right at home. Briefly, I wished Vicantha and I were still working together, so I could have sent her into the small piece of the Arctic that was the Seaport Tower in my place. Then I pictured Vicantha’s likely reaction if I had suggested this particular disguise to her. With a wince of imagined pain, I quickly dismissed the thought.
The walls and floor were polished white marble. I idly wondered, as the door swung shut behind me, how many times per day that floor had to be cleaned in order to keep it so pristine, without even the slightest speck of dirt from the streets outside. The subtle scent of lilacs hung in the air—maybe the perfume was there to cover up the scent of the cleaner they were using for all their overzealous scrubbing. A curtain of water flowed down one wall, in a touch reminiscent of Delaney’s new home, but with the cold sharp angles of a modern-art installation instead of the fae mansion’s tropical-rainforest feel. Dozens of tiny teardrops of light dangled from a chandelier above me; they rustled lightly in the rush of air from the outside, making a sound like gently shattering glass.
The ground floor of the tower was arrayed like a shopping mall. There was a black-tie restaurant to my right, with the soft sound of strings wafting through the air as a tuxedoed waiter glided between the tables. To my left, the atmosphere was more casual, a bar full of raucous laughter with a wall-mounted television showing a baseball game. Signs on the wall promised a swimming pool up ahead, along with a racquetball court, a massage suite, and a movie theater screening the la
test James Bond.
I raised my eyebrows at that last one. This place really was an entire city in miniature, just like they had advertised on their website. The subtext, both online and in person, was that no one who lived here would ever have to dirty themselves by laying eyes on anyone who didn’t have millions to spare. With exceptions, of course, for the people serving the food or checking the guest list at the door.
Once, not all that long ago, I could have afforded to live in a place like this. Not that I would have. Too many other people around for my liking. Living that close to others was asking to be discovered. Besides that, there was the quality of the company. Knowing what I knew about the type of people who chose to live in places like this, and what little I had seen of Eddie Ellison in particular, I would sooner have lived in a shack in the woods—or my former apartment in downtown Hawthorne, which had arguably been worse.
I sauntered down the hallway, trying my best to look as if I belonged there. Every time someone glanced my way, I tensed, but didn’t let myself stop moving. I stopped at the elevator, pressed the call button, and struggled not to tap my foot as I waited for it to arrive. I hoped no one would show up expecting to share the ride with me.
No one did. When the elevator doors slid open with a musical ding like the tinkle of windchimes, I stepped inside and quickly hit the button to close the doors. I drew in a tight breath as a familiar ache spread through my body. An elevator was really just a small steel box. I mentally calculated the number of floors until I reached the top, and how long the journey was likely to last, and gave an inward sigh. I should have taken the stairs.
I didn’t press any of the buttons. Instead, I slid the keycard the doorman had given me into the slot below the number pad, and waited. A beam of red light swept over me from somewhere above the door. I flinched back and eyed the doors , wishing I hadn’t been so eager for them to close and trap me in here.
But the red beam winked out as quickly as it had appeared, and next to the card reader, a light flashed green. With a soft whir, the elevator began to rise.
With the soft sounds of Bach in my ears, I stood stiffly in the center of the elevator, as far from each of the walls as I could get. I counted the floors and the seconds. The penthouse was, technically, the thirty-third floor. A lucky number. The trip took a quick four minutes, or at least the tower’s website had described it as quick. I felt every second of it.
When the doors dinged open onto the penthouse, I had to fight not to run out of the metal box and kiss the ground. Yes, I was less sensitive to iron than a full-blooded fae, but that only meant I could tolerate being trapped in a steel enclosure. It said nothing about the quality of the experience.
But I didn’t run. Instead, I straightened my shirt, forced a smile to my lips, and stepped out unhurriedly with my chin up, like the invited guest I was pretending to be.
My breath caught as I took in the sight of Eddie Ellison’s living room. I didn’t expect the wave of homesickness that washed through me. But even though I had lived in a mansion on the beach, and not a city apartment like this one, so many little touches reminded me of home. Like the front wall, which was one giant window. Back home, the window wall of my own living room had looked out on the Hawaiian ocean. And the couch—black brushed leather that I knew would feel like velvet under my hands. Here was someone who understood comfort. So many people with money filled their homes with sharp, angular furniture that looked good in photographs and under showroom lights, but was impossible to actually relax in. Not so Eddie Ellison, whose couch made my entire body ache with the desire to sink in, put my feet up, and take in a movie on the television that took up practically the entire facing wall.
In general, I tried not to dwell on all the things I had lost when Arkanica had framed me and taken away the comforts of my former life. It felt weak to miss my life of luxury, especially since I’d only had that life in the first place because I had taken the selfish path and tried to live for myself instead of hurling myself at one doomed human cause after another. I had thought I had made peace with the fact that I would never have that life again.
But standing in Eddie Ellison’s penthouse… it made me realize I hadn’t overcome that weakness as much as I thought.
I hastily forced to my attention to the parts of the room that bore no similarity to my former life. Like the row of framed magazine covers on the wall—Meet the New Face of Innovation, the closest one read, below Eddie Ellison’s smiling face. His smile looked more like a smirk to me, but maybe I was biased. I took a step forward to peer more closely at the photo. He looked younger than I had imagined. I knew from my research that he was only twenty-six, but seeing a number was one thing; seeing his youthful face smirking at me was another. Twenty-six. A child.
I had expected him to come out to greet me by now. “Eddie?” I called softly, trying to insert a seductive purr into my voice. Or what I hoped was a seductive purr. I was out of practice. Maybe more than I thought, because it didn’t draw him out.
Or maybe I was supposed to meet him in the bedroom. I supposed he didn’t have any reason to keep some pretense that I was here to have a few drinks. I made my way across the cavernous room and down the thickly carpeted hallway. A row of baseboard lights blinked on ahead of me, one at a time.
The bedroom door was hanging open. I peered inside. I expected another pang of homesickness to hit me—it had been a long time since I had slept on silk sheets, or in a bed large enough to accommodate my tossing and turning. Even Delaney’s new house had let me down in that regard—apparently Lady Iliana had preferred a hammock to a bed. The thing had tried to strangle me the first and only time I had attempted to use it. After that night, I had taken to sleeping on the floor.
But although Eddie Ellison’s bedroom was every bit as lavish as I had imagined, I barely took any of it in. The only part that registered with me was the fact that Ellison wasn’t there. The room was empty.
The hairs on the backs of my arms rose. The air conditioning wasn’t responsible for the chill that came over me.
“Eddie?” I called again, louder this time. No answer.
Abandoning my slow casual walk, I opened every door, one by one. Behind each one, I half-expected to find Ellison sprawled on the floor, dead in a pool of his own blood. I didn’t find any bodies, dead or alive. Eddie Ellison wasn’t here.
I checked my watch. Seven forty-five on the dot. According to my information, Ellison was never late for this appointment.
My instincts told me it was time to cut my losses. I listened. I hurried back to the elevator and pressed the call button.
The button lit up red. “OmniSafe by Nexegence, the world’s most advanced home security system, has identified you as an unauthorized intruder,” came a pleasant-sounding female voice from somewhere above me. “This area has been sealed for your protection. Please relax and wait for local law enforcement to arrive.”
Chapter 10
I cursed under my breath. Then, louder, I said, “Does this thing respond to voice commands? Contact the doorman. He’ll work this out.” I only hoped the doorman had the ability to clear whatever alert my face had triggered. Although why he hadn’t warned me about this particular technological wrinkle in the first place was anybody’s guess.
“Seaport Tower security authorized one unscreened guest at seven thirty-nine p.m.,” the voice answered. “OmniSafe by Nexegence, the world’s most advanced home security system, overrode that authorization when a match for your face was found in the Boston Police Department’s database of wanted criminals, the FBI’s database of wanted criminals, Interpol’s database of—”
“I get it,” I growled.
“Please remain calm. This area has been sealed for your protection. Please wait for—”
“I heard you the first time,” I snapped, although that didn’t stop the voice from finishing its spiel. I kicked the elevator, not that I expected it to do much good. I got exactly what should have expected—nothing but a shock of pain t
hrough my foot, both from the impact and the steel of the elevator door. Now I was still locked in, and had a set of throbbing toes on top of everything else.
I searched until I found a slim door marked Emergency Exit. I might as well have saved the time it took to locate it. The doorknob didn’t budge. The key didn’t work, either. And as soon as I inserted the key, the voice came back again. “This area has been sealed for your protection. Please wait for local law enforcement to arrive.”
I didn’t bother trying the windows. Even if, by some miracle, the Nexegence system had neglected to seal them along with the elevator, I was realistic about my odds of surviving a leap from the thirty-third floor. Yes, I was immortal, but my brand of immortality came with an inconvenient period of several hours waiting for my body to heal and remember how to live again. If it had just been a matter of the pain, I would have chosen the jump over waiting around to be arrested. But I had little hope that a body lying in the Seaport Tower courtyard would go unnoticed for the amount of time it would take me to come back to life.
I looked around, ran through my options, and found exactly two. But of the two, only one involved putting someone else’s life at risk. There was a chance Skye could hack the Nexegence system and get me out of here. Maybe she could even do it before the police arrived. But in the process, she would be not only drawing the attention of the Boston police, but also the head of one of the biggest tech companies in the world. Who was possibly also the head of Arkanica—and Arkanica was already out for Skye’s blood.