I supposed it beat lycanthropy, although Baltimore had plenty of that to go around.
“Alexa, they want you to wear formal attire?”
Yep, Rob was definitely excited. His voice wavered with his ill-disguised emotion, which he confirmed moments later by tapping his toes on the floor like an eager child.
“You’re ridiculous. This isn’t a good thing, Rob! What am I going to wear? They didn’t exactly schedule time for me to go shopping.”
I was already supposed to have eaten and gone to sleep instead of spending the time lying on the couch while Rob satisfied his protective instincts.
“They’re testing to see if you can fit into elite society.”
“You’re joking, right? Me? Fit into elite society? Have you forgotten I’m an unawakened? Or a fringe- rat? You’re crazy.”
“You’re a fringe rat who happens to live in one of Baltimore’s most exclusive residences with, if I do say so myself, one of the city’s most desirable bachelors. You are above mere caste labels now, my darling.”
I could trust Rob for a lot of things, and the emergence of his egotistical side was one of them. “You are not Baltimore’s most desirable bachelor.”
“I’m hurt, Alexa. Why would you say such a thing?”
I huffed, pulled free of him, and hopped to my feet, keeping the blanket in place. Two could play at the possession game, and I’d win the argument for once by staging a quick escape after laying my claim. “Perhaps you’re desirable, but you’re not a bachelor. You’re also a self-proclaimed scoundrel. To conclude, I’m pretty sure you’re my property, Mr. Lucrage. Don’t you forget it.”
I made my retreat before he could turn the tables on me and steal my victory.
Rob found my frustration with wearing formal attire to work funny, and I glared at him in my effort to squelch his amusement. His eyes sparkled with his mirth, and his mouth curved in his best smile.
I wore my workout clothes to both spite him and remind him I wasn’t a high-classed woman. My effort only seemed to amuse him even more, and his delight was written on his face for the world to see.
Maybe I should have let him speculate until the early hours of the morning. At least that way, I would have learned something. Instead, I witnessed Rob’s more lecherous side, and it amazed me how much lust and desire a man could display without taking off a single stitch of his clothing.
Once upon a time, Kenneth’s mouth had fascinated me, but Rob’s enthralled me and silenced any desire to scold him for enjoying my plight. He was smiling, and I didn’t want him to stop, which confused me almost as much as his enthusiasm over what I would wear to the police station so I could shoot a gun.
While I gawked and floundered like an idiot, my temporary advantage and victory rendered null and void by Rob and his damned mouth, he headed to the closet and pulled out my best—my only—dress and held it out in my direction. “My lady is stunning in her gown.”
I remembered the night I had gotten it—and my katana—all too well. I had been stupid, venturing out into Baltimore on my own to test how well I had healed. It had resulted in the destruction of a store by feuding dae. When I had been trying the dress on, it hadn’t been studded with precious stones.
I had found it in a fringe department store.
Magic—or the spontaneous eruption of mythical beings into pink powder—did strange things to clothes, including decorating them with gemstones worth more than I was.
I had wanted to find a dress to avoid embarrassing him—and myself—when giving him a present to thank him for all his help.
In a way, I missed the months I had spent recovering from my close and painful encounter with a skyscraper. The shopping trip resulting in the dress, my katana, and Rob’s dagger had been the first time I had left my apartment on my own since breaking my ribs and rattling my brain around in my skull.
Rob had found me midway through the chaos, and I was still amazed the dress had survived the store’s demise and his enthusiasm the instant we had made it back to my apartment.
The fact I hadn’t been blamed for the destruction amazed me. It hadn’t been all bad. The dress came with shoes, a purse, and the phone I hadn’t been able to use thanks to my caste.
Rob still wore the dagger I had given him, and with a faint smile of my own, I disarmed him while ignoring the dress he held. “You’ve clearly taken leave of your senses. That dress is far prettier than I am.”
“Nonsense. I’m not sure I want all of those police to see how ravishingly beautiful you are in it.”
I prodded the dae in the ribs with his dagger. Because I liked him, I reversed the blade in my hand and used the pommel instead of the business end of the weapon. “You need an eye exam.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my eyes. Obviously, the one with the defective eyesight here is you. I stand by my claim. When you wear this dress, you are ravishingly beautiful. I should know. You weren’t wearing it long before I ravished you.”
I blushed because it was true.
“They really asked for formal attire?” Rob wrinkled his nose, staring at the dress before staring at me.
“They did.”
“The discs are trackers.” Rob hung the dress from a hook on the wall and ran his hands over the blue material and its sparkling gemstones. “They want to know where you’re going.”
“How do you figure?”
“I found one on you when you were at my office yesterday. I had one of my team tear it apart. It’s a GPS tracker. Didn’t find a mic. Didn’t find a camera, either. Just a memory chip, transmitter, and GPS chip.” Sighing, he turned to face me. “Someone wants to know what you’re doing.”
“Earlier, you wanted to speculate.” Crossing my arms over my chest, I perched on the couch’s arm. “That’s pretty confident for speculation. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“You’ll wear this dress tonight. We’re going shopping, and we’re going shopping where people will see you.” Rob stretched his fingers before running both hands through his hair. “I’ll see if my team can come up with a way to fry the discs so we can limit how many times I have to strip search you. Wait, I take that back. I like strip searching you.”
“Funny, Rob.”
Rob’s smile warmed me in so many ways. “You like it. Go make yourself pretty, Alexa. We have clothing to buy. If we’re going to lose sleep tonight, we may as well have a night on the town. With luck, you’ll come home with a few new friends. Then the real fun can begin.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what he was talking about. “Fun for who?”
“Me.”
Chapter Fourteen
Venturing into Baltimore after dark both thrilled and frightened me. The dangerous dae roamed the streets at night, and both Rob and Colby seemed at home on the streets.
That my macaroni and cheese roommate openly hopped along worried me. It wasn’t registered, as far as I knew, and the last thing I needed was to have to explain the fact my dinner had developed a severe case of sentience during the Dawn of Dae.
“Relax,” Rob chided, linking his arm with mine. “We’re only going to do a little shopping. Maybe we’ll get a drink after.”
How could he expect me to relax when I wore a fortune in jewels and couldn’t sit without a gemstone poking me in the ass? “I don’t see why I can’t just wear this tomorrow.”
“Someone is tracking your movements, and appearances matter. We’re shopping because you work for the elite, and the elite expect this behavior. If Smith is the one tracking you, it also serves our purposes.” Rob leaned towards me and kissed my cheek. “It doesn’t hurt I like dressing you up.”
“I’m not a doll.”
“You’re not. Think of it as a game, Alexa. You need to prove you’re better than them, so you have to dress better than them, look better than them, do everything better than them. They think you’re just an overachieving fringe rat. No, don’t glare at me, darling. We both know it’s true.”
“Mommy,” Colb
y grumbled.
I loved my roommate. The scorn in its tone appeased me far more than Rob’s words. While I knew he was right, pretending I was entitled to flit through the same shops and social circles of the elite unnerved me.
It didn’t feel real.
Then again, little did in a world filled with dae.
“I’ll show you just how beautiful you are,” Rob swore, pulling me along with him as we headed down Baltimore’s main shopping venue for the wealthy and entitled.
I had no idea why Rob had decided my silence was a challenge, but I arched a brow and wondered when he had abandoned his senses and put blinders on. “You’re crazy.”
Snorting, Rob dragged me into a glass-fronted store featuring feminine mannequins clad in gowns suitable for a ballroom.
Before the Dawn of Dae, shopping had been perilous enough; every little scrap of money I managed to gather somehow slipped out of my hands, leaving me with barely enough to feed myself. My awareness of value hadn’t changed all that much despite Rob’s attempts to integrate me with elite society.
The first price tag I saw dangling from a leather coat was sufficient to feed me for four or five years. Rob didn’t give me enough time to gawk, pulling me straight to the counter.
The blond-haired woman looked human enough, which worried me even more than the fact I was shopping in a district I was technically banned from. I couldn’t smell any sulfur, which hopefully eliminated her as a fire breather. I tensed, and Rob untangled his arm from mine, sliding his hand over my back to nudge me forward.
“We’re looking for formal attire,” Rob announced.
Sky blue eyes looked Rob over before turning to me. A chill ran through me at the intensity of the woman’s stare. “Occassion?”
The temperature dropped several degrees the instant the question left the woman’s lips. My eyes widened.
Dae with an affinity with fire were common. Ice, on the other hand, was about as rare as a double rainbow on a sunny day without a scrap of cloud in sight.
I wondered which one of us was odder: her for her cold powers, or me for my lack of powers.
Maybe I’d check the police database just to satisfy my curiosity.
Rob didn’t seem to notice or care what the woman’s powers were, flashing his best smile at the other dae. “Show her she’s beautiful.” Taking out his wallet, Rob placed a card on the counter. “I will require a matching suit for every outfit we acquire for her.”
Taking up the card, the woman tapped it against a sensor embedded in the counter. The only sign of her surprise was the slight widening of her eyes. “Yes, sir. Please come this way.”
This way proved to lead to a door located at the back of the store, and after checking to make certain there were no other customers, she waved us inside. Instead of clothing on display, an elevator waited. Like every other shop in the area, it was part of a skyscraper complex. Instead of up, as I expected, the elevator headed several floors down. When the doors opened, the murmur of conversation warned me of the presence of a lot of people—dae.
Self-preservation dictated avoiding as many dae as possible, and I tensed.
“Perlissa will aid you with your selections. She will find you,” the woman said before retreating back into the elevator. My one route of escape closed with a swish and a ding, leaving me alone with Rob.
My mouth dropped open at the sight of a cavernous space filled with dae, clothes, and every accessory I might ever need. Jewels glimmered in the bright lights, and the pleasant scent of leather oil teased my nose. Someone had decided the twenty foot ceiling meant a second layer of shopping could be installed; a wealth of clothing and other goods hung from the ceiling, and winged dae flitted through the selection, leaving the ground floor for those without the ability of flight.
Not all werewolves had pink wings, and a rainbow of feathers drew my eye.
It was among the werewolves and jeweled dragons I saw my first angel. She hovered at the end of a clothing rack, searching through dresses. Her pale skirts swirled around her legs. Her wings fluttered, not beating nearly enough to keep her aloft, though she defied gravity all the same. Liquid gold swirled in the shape of feathers, and golden light radiated from her equally liquid hair.
Her eyes were large, larger than any human’s, but her radiance drowned away the color. She was light personified, and Rob sighed at my side.
“Hers is a sad dream,” he murmured, taking hold of my hand.
I gawked at the regret in Rob’s tone, wondering how he could pity someone so far above me. As though sensing my thoughts, the dae turned to me, and the corners of his mouth quirked into a smile. He said nothing, and I wondered what thoughts lingered behind his bright eyes.
“What do you mean?” I demanded.
Instead of answering, Rob pulled me down one of the aisles, glancing over the assortment of dresses, gowns, and other attire. “I’ll explain later. While I’d love to be out with you all night long, it’s a talk better for home.”
Home had never meant much to me; apartments were places to sleep, and in the fringe, they never lasted long. When Rob said it, there was an inflection in his voice that meant so much more than a place to rest. It wasn’t just his home.
It was ours.
“Mommy?”
I blinked down at my roommate, wondering at the worry in its tone. “Colby?”
Rob nudged me with his elbow. “You were staring off into the sunset, darling. I’ll pay far more than a penny for your thoughts when we’re home. First, we have clothing to buy.”
Rob procured the assistance of six dae to help him buy me clothes, and my mouth hung open as shock settled in and refused to let go.
Did I really need the help of six dae, Colby, and Rob to buy clothes? Apparently, I did.
Perlissa was a pegasus, and her wings were made of silvered glass. She fanned her feathers, and my reflection gawked back at me.
My mostly naked reflection, which was drawing far, far too much attention from the other elite browsing the store. My face burned, and I wanted to make a run for the exit. My slack-jawed image with wide eyes and red face matched the bright red lace lingerie Rob had insisted I wear.
Rob handed my bejeweled gown to one of the helpers. “Be careful with it. It’s one of a kind.”
“Just like your lady,” the pegasus replied, and the tinkle of wind chimes accented her words. “She wears red well.”
“She wears everything well.”
Rob was the master of smooth deliveries; I had to give him that much credit. With so many elite staring at me, I couldn’t force myself to stammer a single word in protest or reply.
I could scale a skyscraper, shoot a gun, read, calculate, and scheme, but in the limelight of elite dae fashionistas, I was at such a loss of what to do I froze, turning my stare to Rob for help.
Ignoring my silent plea for a quick escape, Rob conferred with the pegasus before turning to the racks. He said a few clipped words in a different language.
The dae scattered, leaving us alone in the aisle.
In view of the entire store, Rob ran his hands over my shoulders and arms, tugging me to him with a sly smile on his lips. I blushed as his hands slipped around to my back and skimmed over my skin. With a triumphant huff, he pulled something off the back of my neck.
He held a skin-colored disc between his fingers. “There you are, you little snot. Colby, check her over for others.”
Before I could do more than gasp, my roommate shimmied up my leg. A shudder ran through me. Rob covered my mouth with his to smother my squeal at the wet, gooey sensation.
Beating Rob’s chest did nothing to stop either of the dae from having their way. Without Rob’s intervention, my screams would have echoed from the ceiling.
Cold macaroni and cheese up the spine should have classified as a cruel and unusual punishment. Only when my roommate had finished his search did Rob release me. I whimpered, grabbing hold of his suit jacket to stay standing still. “That was horrible.”
“I thought you wanted me to be bugged.”
Rob dangled the still intact disc in my face. “This one is fine. Colby’s just helping me get rid of the extras. They’ll reassign the ones on your gown to a few dae to drive the owners of the primary sensor absolutely insane.”
“You planned this?”
“Alexa, Alexa. Haven’t you learned yet? I plan everything. So, where do you want it?”
“How about nowhere?”
Rob peeled another disc off my bra. “It’s a game. First, we will demonstrate we are aware of the fact you’re bugged. Second, we will demonstrate we are willing to toy with whomever is doing it. The transmitters are useless if a lot of people are wearing them. By the time we’re done tonight, we’ll have dozens of these things floating around Baltimore. If we’re really lucky, hundreds.”
“You call that lucky?”
Rob smiled. “Come on. It’ll be fun. Who knows? Maybe we’ll figure out who is doing this, how, and why.”
I sighed my surrender.
Every time Rob requested a new outfit like some sort of voyeur on a power trip, I ended up with a selection of new discs. Rob’s cohorts carried them away as soon as Rob peeled most of them from my clothing. Colby took care of the rest, and by the time he decided we had gathered a sufficient number of them, I was the not-so-proud owner of seven new outfits meeting formal attire criteria.
I lost count of the number of shirts, jeans, skirts, and slacks Rob had added to the pile of clothing he was purchasing just because he liked me in them. Instead of my bejeweled dress, I was wearing one of the more casual outfits Rob had insisted on buying, blending a business-appropriate blouse and sweater with a sinfully comfortable pair of matching slacks.
“Where are we going to put them all? How are we going to even get this home? Rob, this is insanity,” I rambled, pointing at the pile of clothing the clerk was ringing up. The dae might have looked human, but the instant I caught a glimpse of his pointed teeth, I swallowed to keep from drooling.
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