The Audrey Hepburn lookalike was also gone. I wondered if Kett knew her. It was too much of a coincidence otherwise.
Drake wandered out of the front doors of Sayers’ apartment building, grinning like an idiot. The back hem of his Scotland hoodie was torn.
“No sorcerers,” he pronounced as he sauntered over to us.
“You understand what covert means, right?” I asked.
“It was Kandy’s idea.”
I turned to look at the green-haired werewolf. She grinned back at me, but in an edgy way, not friendly — like some tension was underlying the expression. “I just mentioned that the corner looked climbable,” she said.
“That’s like giving a thirteen-year-old the keys to the kingdom.”
“What are these keys?” Drake asked eagerly, completely proving my point.
“I have no freaking idea,” I snapped.
“Well, it’s not nice to mention them like that, then.”
Kandy started laughing again. Everyone had seemingly taken some sort of happy pill, and I was pissed they hadn’t shared.
“Why is your hoodie torn?” I asked Drake, hoping there weren’t any bodies to clean up in the fledgling’s wake.
“Dog,” Drake answered with a shrug.
“A dog laid tooth on you?” Kandy asked. Then she actually doubled over to laugh louder.
Drake grinned at the werewolf. His ego was so huge it was hard to even poke at it … or maybe it was that nothing ruffled him, like life was a grand playground.
I could use some of that attitude. Right after I hunted down my sister, and hopefully rescued Mory — though why Sienna would drag a fledgling necromancer around for three months I don’t know. Right after I took care of Sienna … stopped Sienna … killed Sienna.
“Phantom dog,” Drake elaborated. “Cool spell, but he didn’t have the window covered, just the front door. So I didn’t see it coming.”
A phantom dog had appeared and bitten a fledgling guardian dragon in the ass while he was leaving the apartment he’d already broken into by the window.
I started laughing, then. I couldn’t help it.
Thank god Drake was here. Otherwise, it would just be all blood-magic, demons, and doom all the time. A girl could get lost in that darkness … a girl had gotten lost in that darkness. My sister. My best friend.
I stopped laughing.
Kandy flung her arm around my shoulders. “You need chocolate, Jade.”
“I so do.”
Grinning, Kandy held the iPad up so I could see the screen. It displayed a Time Out London app page for Melt, an artisan chocolate shop.
“Hot chocolate blocks, melt bars, and sea-salted caramel bonbons,” Kandy said.
“Where is Notting Hill? We need to be there, like now,” I declared. “But we should probably leave a note for Sayers.”
“Sure,” Kandy said, agreeably. “How about on his fridge? After we sniff around for the black witch.”
“The fridge seems rather aggressive.”
“Exactly.”
“We don’t even know him.”
Kandy shrugged. “He’s the last sorcerer on the list.”
“How about on his front door?” I countered. “We’ll mention we were concerned for his safety, hence disturbing the wards.” I glared at Drake. He grinned proudly. “I can tell from the hallway if Sienna’s been around.”
“Whatever,” Kandy answered. The green-haired werewolf spun away and crossed to the apartment’s front door.
I sighed. Was I the only one not interested in creating an international incident? Gran would be seriously displeased if I pissed off the sorcerers’ League. And the League would never believe that Sayers’ had potentially been in peril from a witch, no matter how black.
∞
Hotel-freaking-41 was freaking amazing. And it wasn’t just the six thirty-gram melt bars going to my head. I mean, I was buzzed, of course, but the hotel was freakingly amazingly insane.
Okay, part of my awe might have been the chocolate overload. Melt’s smallest bars came in milk chocolate — one with raspberry and one with hazelnuts — then dark chocolate — one with mint and one with orange — as well as a white chocolate strawberry and tarragon bar. It certainly wasn’t my fault that the milk chocolate with passion fruit, the milk chocolate banana, and the sea-salted caramel bar only came in the forty-five gram size. So I had to try those as well.
I mean, I wasn’t completely insane. I saved the love bar, chili bar, and popcorn bar for later … they were ninety grams each. After all, a girl had to show some control. I wasn’t going to count the peanut-butter-and-jelly, white-chocolate, raspberry-and-mint, apple-crumble, or champagne bonbons either. They were tiny tastes of utter heaven, handmade fresh daily … in freaking London, England. I picked up three boxes of eighteen as well, as gifts for Gran, Scarlett, and … well, me.
Yeah, I was aware I was speaking rather quickly and much louder than I needed to when checking us into the hotel, but I was having a difficult time modulating myself. According to the front-desk clerk, Kett hadn’t returned yet, though if he didn’t want to be noticed coming and going a human certainly wouldn’t see him. Kandy was off in one corner of the lobby texting, and giggling. She’d consumed twice what I did. Drake was the only one of us who seemed unaffected, but maybe that was just because he was always bouncing off the walls anyway.
Everything in the hotel lobby was either oiled dark wood — wainscoting, bookshelves, art niches — or black and white — tile, carpet, linens. Even the duvets, once we got to the room, were black-and-white checked. You name it, and it was black and white, not either/or.
Kett had booked us into the conservatory suite, and after seeing its glassed ceiling and the early-evening sky view, I was super glad this wasn’t going on the credit card Amber had dropped off for me. Yeah, I’d left gold and the witch had taken care of the plastic. The dragons dealt in gold coin. Drake and I got allowances, like actual kids. After seeing Amber’s reaction, I had a good idea that dragons didn’t have much concept of money, or of what each coin was worth in the human world.
Anyway, we’d picked up our key cards at the front desk, all without anyone asking for money, so Kett must have it covered.
Funnily enough — seeing as this was where Kett booked us — there was nothing magical about the hotel. No other Adepts. No incidental glimmers of residual magic in the halls or rooms. This felt off to me — empty. I’d become accustomed to being inundated by magic, I realized.
Kandy was continuing to text like a mad woman — she had been all the way through finding the chocolate shop, then driving to the hotel — as she wandered behind Drake and I on our way to the suite. She barely glanced at the room before she dropped her bag in the front closet and announced, “I’m out.”
At least she had a bag to drop. Drake and I were still in leathers covered by gas station hoodies. We’d hidden our swords underneath the back seat before we valeted the SUV.
“What do you mean, ‘out’?” I asked.
Kandy shrugged. “You know, pub out.”
“You’re going on a date? Now?”
“I need to eat. You know, real food.”
“But —”
“We’ve got over eight hours until midnight. The vamp is still MIA. You two need to sleep, and I’m hungry.”
“We should be scouting, hunting. I thought —”
“Nothing is going to happen in the next four hours. Shower, sleep, eat. Wait to hear from the vampire and this Sayers sorcerer. You can’t rush a demon summoning.” Kandy said this last bit with a smirk.
I just stared at her. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around her just leaving. “You’re just leaving.”
“You don’t have exclusive rights over leaving, Jade.”
“I’m sorry, are you referring to me saving everyone’s asses by dragging the demon through the portal?”
Kandy bared her teeth at me. Anger edged the sharp line of h
er jaw and cheekbones. “I’m referring to you not coming back until you felt like it.”
Drake, having finished inspecting every nook and cranny of the suite, sidled up to me. He peered at Kandy over my shoulder.
“I wasn’t … that’s not how … or why,” I said.
Kandy grasped the door handle and yanked it open. “Don’t worry, I know my duty. I’ll be back before anything goes down.”
“The wolf is angry,” Drake said.
Kandy curled her lip at both of us, then walked out of the room.
The door slowly swung closed on its hydraulic hinges and then clicked shut.
“Did you know she was angry?” Drake asked.
“No … I didn’t realize …” Kandy was angry that I hadn’t walked back through the portal with Desmond and Kett three and a half months ago. Well, so was I. But with the memory of Chi Wen’s vision still seared into my mind, I knew I’d had no choice.
“I had to be careful. To plan. To make sure I didn’t accidentally fulfill …”
Drake patted my shoulder. “The wolf will understand if you tell her.”
I nodded and clenched my right hand into a fist. I could still feel the slick blood that had coated my skin and dripped off my hand in the vision. I could still taste Sienna’s malignant black magic as it spread into the fresh blood of my dead or dying friends and family …
“The wolf is a warrior. She will fight by your side without you asking,” Drake said. “If you want her there as a friend, you will need to make the request.”
“Thanks, baby Buddha,” I said, putting as much snark into my tone as I could muster against the darkness of my memory.
“Food?” Drake asked.
“Yes,” I said, and I shook away the feeling of blood coating my hand. “Let’s order room service. That way, we can eat far too much and no one will notice.”
Drake grinned. “I want a hamburger and fish and chips.” He held out the room service menu to me, open to the page he was referencing. So he had found something valuable during his investigation of the suite.
“Good,” I answered as I crossed to the phone where it sat on a side table, painted in a harlequin diamond pattern. “And I’m not ordering a salad …. well, maybe on the side of fries.”
∞
Drake slept, but I didn’t. Neither Kett nor Kandy returned to the suite. I’d exchanged a few texts with Gran and Scarlett, updating them on our lack of progress, but I hadn’t heard back from the sorcerer, Peter Sayers.
Before Drake nodded off, he and I had snuck into the underground parking and retrieved our swords. I didn’t like being without mine, which was odd seeing as I’d only had it for a few days. I sat with the sword across my lap and tried to meditate, but to no avail. Branson had given me the scabbard privately after my father, Yazi, had presented the sword itself. The leather of the scabbard was black, but it was etched with a dark green floral design. It was a whimsical choice coming from the sword master, but it suited me perfectly.
I wasn’t remotely worthy or ready to wield this sword.
I could feel the trickle of Blackwell’s spell that I’d channeled into the sword underneath my fingers. The magic, now contained, felt almost benign.
This was the sword I was going to kill my sister with … not in a cave outside of Portland, and not with my jade knife. That was the only way I knew how to stop Chi Wen’s vision of the future … except to just leave Sienna alone, which I also couldn’t do.
This was the sword I was going to kill my sister with … I’d known it the moment the blade had been handed to me, the moment my fingers curled around the hilt.
And with that terrible thought acknowledged, I slept.
∞
Two hours later, with Kandy and Kett still MIA, and Drake still crashed out and snoring like a small volcano, I wandered down into the hotel restaurant.
I had a crazy craving I still hadn’t quite satisfied. Yeah, I got that it would probably never be satisfied until I got my life sorted out, but I still enjoyed the act of feeding it.
I avoided the Leopard Champagne and Cocktail Bar — I really wasn’t dressed for it, nor did I want company — and settled into a comfy barrel chair at a linen-swathed table for two in the empty lounge. They served dinner until 10:00 p.m., so I was just under the wire, but I wasn’t there for food.
The server, who was a couple of years younger than me, sauntered over with a grin. Yeah, the place was dead and he was probably just a few minutes away from going home when I showed up — but most heterosexual men turned on the charm when confronted by my blond curls and ready smile. Even paired with the dumpy hoodie, I felt sure the laced leather pants were getting his mind whirling.
“Evening,” the server said. His British accent was clipped and not as broad as Clark’s had been. “Are you a guest with us, or are you waiting for a guest?” His smile widened invitingly.
I peered up at him. I couldn’t quite figure out what he was suggesting with the second question.
His smile dimmed. “I apologize, I was just requesting your room number. We’re encouraged to address our guests by name.”
“Jade,” I answered. “We’re in the conservatory suite.”
“I see.” His smile dimmed further. I gathered that staying in the conservatory suite made me seem less available.
“I’ll have one of each of these,” I said, pushing the transaction along beyond the pleasantries and pointing at the dessert menu.
“Excuse me? One of each?”
“And a hot chocolate, unless it’s made with a powdered mix and water.”
The server stared at me for a moment, then he grinned as if he thought I was joking. I wasn’t.
“Forget the cheese plate, but I’ll have the melon créme brûlée, all six flavors of ice cream, the coffee ice cream sundae …” — I ran my finger down the dessert list just to make myself clear — “… forget the fruit, definitely the white chocolate parfait, and the baked cheesecake with the raspberry coulis.”
The server was blinking rapidly at me. I should have stayed up in the suite, but I’d needed to take a couple of steps away.
“So?” I asked. “Is the hot chocolate made from a powdered mix?”
“Ah, no,” he replied. “Chocolate sauce, house made. Ah, whipped cream?”
“Made fresh or from a can?”
“Fresh.”
“Fine. Good. Thank you.” I tugged the cloth napkin out of its fan shape and placed it on my lap.
The server hesitated, hovering around the second place setting. “Are you expecting …”
“No, thank you.”
He quickly gathered the other setting and hustled back to the computer at the end of the bar.
So I wanted dessert? So freaking what? I inhaled as I fought to not go ballistic over something so trivial. Of course the server had reacted like that. Who wouldn’t? Well, except me, of course. Or any of the shapeshifters … or dragons. Dragons adored sweets. They just never seemed to have any chocolate around …
A brown-haired man wearing a well-tailored suit stepped through the arched entrance of the lounge and stopped to scan the room. His hair was cropped short to look effortlessly styled, but I could tell it still took him fifteen minutes to fix every morning. He stood a couple of inches over six feet and had recently been wearing a tie. His buttoned-down shirt collar was designed to be worn with one, and the buttons were now undone.
He took one look at me and the pleasant smile he’d been sporting — the kind that made it look like you belonged wherever you were currently going, no questions asked — slid from his face.
He was in his early thirties, and good-looking in a pale English sort of way … meaning he was tall but too slim for my tastes, and my cheekbones didn’t need the sort of competition his would offer.
He was also a sorcerer. Oh, he wore something to disperse or diffuse his magic — a personal ward maybe, because I hadn’t tasted his diluted Earl Grey tea magic
until I’d seen him — but he was powerful.
He hadn’t moved an inch as he continued to stare at me. The server, who’d turned to greet him, was getting twitchy and exchanging questioning looks with the bartender.
“Peter Sayers,” I said invitingly. My voice carried easily across the room.
The sorcerer shook his head. Then, realizing the gesture probably looked like a denial of the name, he grinned sheepishly and bobbed his head in a nod.
He only tripped once as he crossed to me. The server, who was at Sayers’ heels, almost ran into him, and then paused to straighten the table the sorcerer had bumped.
“Jade Godfrey?” Sayers asked when he got to within two steps of me.
I nodded, and for some reason — now that he was near — I reached underneath the table, pulled my knife out of its sheath, and laid it across my lap.
Sayers noted my movement and nodded in acknowledgment of it.
“Will you be joining the lady?” the server asked, much more brusque than he’d been with me.
Sayers looked to me.
“Yes, please do,” I said. “Something to drink?”
“Macallan’s ten. Water on the side,” Sayers said as he sat across the table from me. He didn’t take his eyes off me.
The server nodded but hesitated to leave. Yeah, something was off about Sayers … in that perfectly pleasant, well-groomed serial killer way.
I smiled at the server. “Still only one fork though,” I said. He laughed and then headed back to the bar.
Sayers was still gazing at me as if I was some sort of gift from God. And maybe I was. Just not for him.
“I could sense your magic from the lobby,” he said.
“I doubt it was solely mine. I’m not the only Adept staying here.”
Sayers’ eyes widened. Then he nodded as he got my underlying message — I’m not alone.
“You’re still not what I expected,” he said.
“I get that a lot. You spoke to Clark, then?”
He hesitated, then nodded. I wasn’t totally sure that was a ‘yes.’
“Why do you wear a diffuser?” I asked. “I doubt it contains your abilities — because that would be stupid — so it just tones down the taste of your magic. Why?”
Treasures, Demons, and Other Black Magic (Dowser Series) Page 12