Awakened Abyss (Firebird Uncaged Book 2)

by Erin Embly

  I shook my head, knowing I needed to tell Adrian something. “I saw faces in the walls. Dead things with hollow eyes, laughing and then screaming. They reached out to me and pulled, and it only stopped when you touched me. Did I move? Because it felt like I was walking down.”

  “No,” he said. “You just stood there.”

  “I think I’m going nuts,” I said, telling him as much of the truth as I could.

  He sighed and softened his stance, his shoulders lowering as he looked down at me. “You should sleep more. Don’t you get up early these days?”

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday,” I said.

  “That’s not the point. Why are you working two jobs?” He dug into his pocket and brought his hand out with at least half of the stack of cash I’d handed him earlier. “If you need money, you shouldn’t be giving so much away.”

  “That’s—” I stopped myself, letting the urge to yell at him pass. “Why do you still have that? It was for spending on the dancers.”

  Adrian finally broke his eyes away from mine, looking down to the side as he held the cash out further to me. “I was saving it,” he said.

  “What the hell for?” I asked as I swiped it from him, flipping through it with my thumb to see how much was left.

  He shifted on his feet when I looked back up at him, a tightness in his jaw that hadn’t been there before. “I thought you were going to dance.” He said it so quietly I almost didn’t hear him, and part of me wished I hadn’t.

  I froze, unable to look away from him, swallowing to avoid saying something I might regret.

  He cleared his throat, steadying his posture as I stared at him. “I was hoping you were going to dance,” he said, louder now. “I wanted to make it rain for you.” He cracked a smile, uneven in its hesitance, and it made me want to catch his crooked lips and right them with my own.

  I bit my tongue instead, hoping the pain would snap me back to my senses. This beautiful bastard had been a lot easier to deal with when he’d been too shy to actually flirt with me. Now that he was getting more comfortable . . .

  I shook my head at him. “If you’re going to make it rain for me,” I said, enunciating every word as I skirted around him towards the waiting car, “it had better be with your own cash.”

  He reached around me to grab the door handle before I could, his face coming dangerously close to mine as he pulled it open for me. “I’ll remember that.”

  7

  I woke up the next morning bursting with excitement. For the first time in a very long time, I sat straight up in bed and threw the covers off before I could even get my eyes open.

  The crisp air engulfed me and sunlight streamed in through open blinds as I cracked my eyelids apart. I didn’t know why my blinds were open, but I didn’t care. The light was beautiful, casting dramatic shadows behind my furniture and making the dust in the air sparkle.

  My stomach growled at me and I put my feet on the floor, standing up with a big stretch. Today was cinnamon-roll Saturday! My favorite day. My . . . Batty hell, this isn’t me.

  “Noah!” I yelled, and he popped up with a mischievous grin from behind the other side of my bed. “We talked about this. Keep your emotions to yourself, please.”

  “It was the only way to wake you up!” he whined happily, but then he closed his eyes and scrunched up his face and made adorable little fists with his adorable little hands. As he breathed out, all the excitement drained away from my body and was replaced with pain.

  My blood might as well be the texture of molasses for all it was doing to keep me upright with open eyes, and my feet had to be standing on knives instead of carpet. I looked down, resisting the urge to collapse back in bed. Nope, that was definitely carpet and not knives.

  “Thanks,” I managed to say in a voice I hoped didn’t sound too unpleasant. “Now, what do we need before we use magic on anyone?”

  “Consent,” Noah said. “But I knew you would want to wake up.”

  “That doesn’t count.” I took a breath, trying not to raise my voice. “You can’t actually know what I want without asking me first.”

  “But Miss Miriam can, right? She told me so.”

  Oof. This was too difficult a topic to handle before coffee and on only a few hours of sleep.

  “Miriam is here?” I rubbed my head, remembering that I’d asked her to come over for breakfast. “Good, okay.”

  Noah sped out of my room like a little squirrel, screeching, “She’s awake!” at the top of his lungs. I pulled on my robe and stuck out my tongue at the raccoon eyes that stared back at me in the mirror. This right here—this was why I hated wearing makeup. Trying to take it off was worse than putting it on.

  When I came out of my room, the spicy sweet scent of cinnamon rolls met my nose. “Noah, did you use the oven without me? That’s another thing we’ve talked abou—” I stopped when I walked into the kitchen to see Dirk in Etty’s apron, standing over a pot on the stove while Miriam messed with my coffee maker.

  I groaned, not ready to deal with whatever was going on there and already wishing I could just get back in bed. I usually worked the night shift at the club on Saturdays so I could spend time with Noah when he was home from school. So at least I had all day to maybe sneak in a nap before I had to be somewhere. I let that thought calm me as Miriam came out of the kitchen and handed me a cup of coffee.

  “You were out almost as late as I was last night—how are you not dead right now?” I asked.

  “I don’t sleep,” she said sternly. “But if I did, I would have made time to wash my face before bed.” She shook her head at me as I glared daggers at her over the rim of the coffee mug. “You’ll get wrinkles and clogged pores like that, you know. And your sheets must be a mess.”

  “Do you even have pores? You look like a giant doll.” I took a sip of coffee, fully recognizing that was the kind of thought I normally would have filtered out before it could make its way to my mouth. “Sorry, what I meant to say is you have very beautiful smooth skin for a . . . swamp monster.”

  “Oh, this?” She touched her cheek. “It’s not skin, but thank you. And I prefer amoeboid.”

  I sighed into my coffee and let the steam billow up against my cheeks. “Okay.”

  Miriam held her hand out with the palm up, where an orange gelatinous blob emerged from underneath her not-skin. She gave it a tickle, and it hopped up slightly with a jiggle.

  Trying not to cringe, I put my coffee down.

  “Come closer, please,” Miriam said. “You still want me to look inside your head, yes?”

  “Yes,” I said even though my gut answer was no. I didn’t want that squishy on me, but I did want to find out just how crazy I was. I couldn’t keep going around not knowing what memories I was missing or whether I was hallucinating.

  I leaned forward for her and held up my hair.

  “Oh, no need for that,” she said. “We can put this on your forehead since you won’t need to hide it.”

  Wonderful. “It won’t take long then?”

  “Just a few hours. You don’t need to be anywhere, do you?”

  “Not until this evening.”

  “Perfect.” She pressed the squishy to my forehead, and I was surprised at how cool and refreshing it felt. Maybe I could nap for the few hours this thing would need to stay on. “Just go about as you normally would,” Miriam continued. “I need to lie down so I can concentrate. I’ll be in your bed.” She sauntered off to my room, taking my hopes and dreams of getting any rest today along with her.

  I picked up the coffee mug again and gulped the rest of the warm liquid down just as Noah bounced his way out of the kitchen with a plate of cinnamon rolls stacked tall. Icing oozed down the sides of the golden-brown buns, and the sweet scent made my mouth water.

  “Are those . . .”

  “I made the real kind,” Dirk said, coming out of the kitchen behind Noah and untying his apron.

  Noah had already sunk into the sofa and begun stuffing his face, and the b
lissful light in his eyes made me swallow all the rude comments in the back of my throat. They did look delicious.

  “You didn’t have to,” was all I could get out before I stuffed one in my own mouth.

  “Yeah, well, you didn’t have to be so loud when you came home at that ungodly hour. I was awake anyway, and this guy kept going on about cinnamon rolls, and you had all the ingredients. Yeast was expired but still kickin’.”

  “This is amazing,” I said involuntarily. The sugar was making me feel slightly human again even where the cup of coffee I’d just downed had failed.

  “I’ve had practice.” He smirked. “Whoever said the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach must’a been thinking about women. For us, it’s actually our—”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I can guess.”

  Dirk shifted his eyes and cocked his head in a gesture that told me he doubted I could guess. Then he rubbed his hands together and said, “Alright, spill it. What’d you find out last night?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Noah, go wash your hands.”

  “Can I have another one first?”

  “Sure, but take it into your room. We have grown-up stuff to talk about.” And maybe I could get Dirk to clean up the aftermath of the sticky fingers later.

  Noah usually wasn’t allowed to eat in his room, because I’d kept as many of Becca’s rules going as I could manage. She was still watching me through her son’s eyes, after all, even though she was technically dead. I knew I’d never be perfect, as evidenced by this moment right here, but I owed it to my friend to at least try.

  The kid jumped up and grabbed the biggest, gooiest cinnamon roll off the plate before running off to his room.

  “You shouldn’t let him eat in there,” Dirk said, and I shook my head.

  “Sorry, did you come here to give me parenting advice? Cause last I checked you needed my help not dying.”

  He threw up his hands in defense. “Okay, okay, just tell me what happened last night.”

  “Soma and I have a history, apparently,” I said, getting right to it. “And he offered me a job. I start tonight at dusk, if I can get someone to cover me at Baz’s.”

  “You work quick.”

  “I’m not sure if I should go,” I said as I licked my fingers.

  “Why not?”

  “I have no idea what our history is, for one. That’s what Miriam’s trying to help with.” I pointed to the orange blob on my forehead. “And I think our case might be linked to their case.” I gestured to my bedroom. “Miriam and Adrian’s, with the people going crazy and the killings in the Metro.”

  Dirk raised his eyebrows and picked up a cinnamon roll, then sat back in his seat and motioned for me to keep going.

  “They were at Soma’s club last night, too, so they must have gotten a lead that pointed them there just like we did. And . . . I found something creepy in the basement of the club.” I kept going, explaining in detail what had happened when I’d found the clay statue, how the vampires were feeding it with blood, how I’d heard the same laughter there that I had in the Metro. Even if my visions of Noah were hallucinations crafted entirely by my own paranoid mind, the rest would be suspect.

  “Huh,” Dirk said when I was finished.

  “That’s exactly what Adrian said.”

  “You told him?”

  “Just about the stuff I saw. Not about us. He totally bought my cover; I was there last night to get ideas to liven up my business.”

  Dirk sighed, putting his head in his hands. “This is worse than I thought.”

  “Why? Are you going to tell me now why you’re still hiding out here? And why are you on leave anyway? You couldn’t tell me what to do while working your regular job?”

  “Look, I thought it was just vampires. Vampires acting squirrelly, maybe some rogue young ones misbehaving we’d need to feed back to the elders for discipline. But it sounds like at least one elder is in on it, and it sounds like they’re working with something else . . .” He grimaced. “A honey goblin statue, really? That’s not a vampire thing, far as I know. And I’m not hiding out here. I just don’t want to go home until this is taken care of. I showed the vamps my badge before they attacked me, so they’ll know where I live.”

  “Why would you show them your badge?”

  “Because I was poking around asking questions at one of the restaurants where a kid disappeared. They jumped me outside after I left. I’d be dead if not for Etty’s dust.”

  I let out a long breath. I really might have to solve this case entirely before I could get Dirk out of my apartment. “Well, Adrian’s looking into it. Maybe you should just go back to work and get his help officially.”

  “No. It’s too hard to keep shit from him. He knows my tells.”

  “If he doesn’t already know you’re a Guardian, I find that hard to believe.”

  “That little tidbit’s never come up between us. Never had to lie about it to his face.”

  I wanted to suggest that we just loop Adrian in all the way, tell him we were doing covert shit and trust him to keep our secret. But I knew what the Guardians would do to him if they ever found out. Plants like Dirk and Miriam were too useful, long-term investments they wouldn’t want to give up.

  Tensions had been rising between the police force and the DSC, with official structural change looming, and it was bound to erupt in chaos at some point. I didn’t know whether the Guardians wanted to prevent that chaos or capitalize on it, but either way they needed their secrecy to do it. “Okay, well . . . we can at least use Miriam as a go-between,” I offered instead.

  “And you. You could lie to that boy all day.”

  “Uh . . .” I twisted my face in confusion, not sure how to respond to that, but he didn’t wait for me to figure it out.

  “Where are you supposed to meet Soma tonight?” he asked.

  “Some address in DC. I didn’t check yet. It’s on a card in my room.” I got up to go get it, then turned when the doorbell rang.

  Dirk sat up straight. “You expecting someone?”

  “No,” I said, my empty hands already reaching for knives that weren’t there because I was still wearing my pajamas. “You sure they couldn’t track you here?”

  “No,” Dirk said with a shrug.

  “Go—get in my room.” I hit him on the shoulder to emphasize I meant now.

  The doorbell rang again while Dirk was standing up, and this time Noah ran out of his room. “Someone’s at the door!” he chirped as my eyes widened in panic.

  “Noah—wait!” I whisper-yelled, practically leaping over the couch to stop him. But he got there before me anyway, with his energetic little legs that had gotten a full night’s sleep and loved mornings.

  The kid pulled open the door, and I was caught standing in my living room wearing a weaponless robe, like a sleepy raccoon in the headlights, when Adrian appeared in the entryway. His hair was messier than usual and the stubble starting to show again on his face, although his eyes were clear and he was wearing the same decently nice clothes he normally wore to work.

  “Hi Noah,” he said before his eyes lifted and landed on me. “Did you just wake up? I need to talk to Miriam.”

  I stayed frozen, my relief that it wasn’t some vampire here to murder us all quickly giving way to the realization that Adrian couldn’t know Dirk was here. I looked behind me to see if he’d made it to my room, and Adrian’s eyes followed mine to see Dirk smiling at us as he jiggled the doorknob.

  He shook his head at me and said, “She locked it.”

  “What are you doing here? I thought you were on vacation.” Adrian shifted his eyes back from Dirk to me. “What is he doing here?”

  Noah grabbed Adrian’s hand before I could answer and said, “They’re doing grown-up stuff. Come on, we have cinnamon rolls!”

  I groaned internally, my sluggish mind unable to come up with a good way to elaborate on “grown-up stuff.” Dirk was quicker than me, coming up behind me faster than I could mov
e anywhere and putting his arm around me.

  Oh bats, what the hell was he doing? I shimmied away from his grip and said, “Why are you touching me?”

  “It’s okay, baby. He’s gotta find out some way.” Dirk put his arm around me again and pulled me against him harder this time.

  I closed my eyes and wished that I could be literally anywhere in the world besides here right now.

  “Find out what?” Adrian said a little too calmly for my liking.

  Feeling sick to my stomach, I followed Dirk’s lead. It was the only thing that made sense, as gross as it was. I tried not to cringe as I said, “We’re dating.”

  Adrian said nothing for a moment, just stared at us while I stared at him, his eyebrows slightly raised and his mouth partly open. Then he shook his head a little, turned to Noah, knelt down and said, “Do you know where Miriam is?”

  Noah pointed to my room. “But the cinnamon rolls are out here,” he whined when Adrian started walking in that direction.

  Something sank in my gut, uncomfortable heat rising in my throat. I wasn’t sure why, but I hadn’t expected Adrian to be so completely unaffected by Dirk’s lie. Maybe I was wrong; maybe he hadn’t actually been flirting with me last night. Maybe the months of me avoiding him had worked as intended and he’d lost interest.

  Before I could think about what I was doing, I removed Dirk’s arm from around me and followed him. “You could have called before showing up, you know.”

  “I did. Miriam didn’t answer. Did something happen to her?”

  “She’s fine, just busy. I meant you could have called me.”

  Adrian gave me a pointed glare and then reached into his coat pocket. He pulled out my phone and handed it to me. “You left it in the car last night. Might want to take some time off. Seems like you could use the rest.” He shifted his eyes, trying not to look at Dirk behind me as he said it.

  “How are you not as exhausted as I am right now?” I asked. Whatever inexplicable force was pushing me to antagonize him, my groggy brain wasn’t equipped to fight it.