Page 82 of Contested Crown

“Summer’s magic,” he whispered as though reading my mind.

“We don’t have much time.” Summer twisted her hair around her finger, looking at the surrounding camp.

“You said you’d pay,” said the woman who’d helped us.

“In the bag,” I said to Cade. “Give her some of the money.”

Cade unzipped the bag, frowning at something he saw before taking out a few twenties. He handed them over to the woman.

“Take our clothes back to the thrift store. And I would probably clear out for a while.” I thought about what the wolf had said. They didn’t want cops. They weren’t going to get cops, but I wasn’t sure a House Morrison strike team was any better.

I grabbed the bag when Cade handed it to me. Wincing, I realized we would have to abandon everything in it. There was too much of a chance that they had done something to it.

Cade seemed to have the same thought and gestured for me to put it down.

When I did, he reached out for my hand. I clasped his immediately, no hesitation, and the warm pull I felt on my arm made me shiver. His magic slid off my skin, crawling up his arm.

He was wearing an oversized T-shirt advertising a beer brand I was sure he had never even heard of. His tattoos slid back up his arms, decorating his skin.

He frowned down at the bag. “I can’t cleanse the whole thing, but maybe a few pieces. Take out anything that you want to save.”

I dropped down, unzipping the bag and taking out the cash, the small wooden box, the IDs we bought from Krista, but that was it. Clothes, the books, everything else could be sacrificed.

I put the money and the box next to Cade, and he extended his hand, his black tattoo swirling around the duffel bag until only ash remained.

He turned to me again, placing his palm on my chest, peeling away the last of the magic. Then he reached down, covering the box and the money. Sparks glinted between the sharp, thorny lines of his magic.

I smelled burning, and fear twisted in my stomach. I couldn’t lose the last bit I had of my family.

When he pulled back, the tattoos returning to his skin sluggishly, everything looked the same. I tucked the cash into my pocket, the box I managed to shove into the sweatshirt pocket against my stomach.

“Ready?” I asked Cade.

Glancing over, I blinked in surprise. Summer was gone—disappeared completely.

Well, at least that was one less problem for us to deal with. Although something nervous twisted in my stomach. I worried about her. This had been her plan, her decision, but we had brought her with us. We had taken her from a place where she was loved and cared for and dropped her in one of the most dangerous areas of the city.

Shaking my head, I grabbed Cade’s palm in mine. “Let’s go.”

ChapterTwenty-Seven

This was a part of Los Santos that I knew with as much familiarity as my apartment in the city. I knew the streets. I knew the flow of people and traffic.

When I first escaped Flores to Los Santos, this was where I had ended up. This was where Declan found me, after I flipped one of his dealers, stolen enough from him that Declan himself came down to find out who was threatening his sovereignty in this patch of city unruled by cops or law.

The apartment building I led Cade to was an apartment in name only. In reality, it had been abandoned by whoever owned it long ago, stripped of anything of value, and now it was a hideout for people on the run, a drug den for someone looking to get high but not be on the street, a brothel for girls who worked the street but weren’t expensive enough for a hotel room.

Most of the apartments had lost their doors, and walls had been kicked in or blown out, leaving the entire building a warren of places to hide. Pulling my sweatshirt hood up, I tucked Cade even closer, urging him to duck his head against my chest.

The way we were walking, Cade stumbling, me shuffling along, no one gave us a second look. As many people as probably called this place home, there wasn’t enough stability in residents for anyone to notice us.

We passed a room full of people high on Reaper, screaming and shoving at each other, the drug making them overly aggressive. I could see the bulging of their necks, the thick veins trailing down their chests.

Quickly, I ushered Cade up the stairs. We had to watch out. Every few steps, one was missing, or someone had left a used needle.

I found myself hoping that Summer hadn’t ended up somewhere like here. Hopefully, she had somewhere else to go, her own escape plan that didn’t involve an apartment building with no electricity, no water, and no hope for anyone who ended up in its walls.

The top floor was quiet, but I heard the shift of skin, a soft moan from down the hall as a working girl made enough money for breakfast. Checking to make sure it was empty, I pushed Cade into a small apartment, the walls covered in layers of graffiti so thick that you couldn’t see the original paint color.