Page 110

SIXTEEN

Sorsha

“I mean, it’s really no surprise, right?” I said when Omen had finished filling us in on his conversation with the Highest. “We already knew they’re obnoxious and overly obsessed with me.”

“Yes, silly of me to think they might be concerned by news about the re-emergence of a being they’d already decided was so dangerous they put her to death centuries ago.” Omen rolled his eyes toward the Everymobile’s ceiling, but despite the dryness of his tone, I could tell how frustrated he was with the ancient shadowkind that held him in their sway.

“We’ve taken on the Company of Light without any help from the Highest before,” Snap said, stroking my hair where he was sitting next to me on the sofa-bench. “They don’t seem to know much of anything anyway.”

At his other side, Ruse made a vaguely obscene gesture in the general direction of the shadowy overlords. “Hard for them to have much awareness of a realm they’ve never bothered to venture into.”

“Right.” As Pickle curled up tighter on my lap, I scratched his belly with careful fingers, putting on my best impression of being totally okay with all this. The thought of those overbearing beings ignoring Omen’s totally valid warnings—of them declaring me a much more urgent threat than a centuries-old genocidal maniac who’d already been responsible for innumerable deaths of humans and shadow creatures alike—definitely wasn’t stoking the angry fire inside me to uncomfortable heights. And if I decided that fire wasn’t there, then it definitely couldn’t justify their insistence that I be exterminated.

If pretending away reality worked for the Highest, why shouldn’t it work for me?

But heat I couldn’t totally will out of my consciousness prickled under my skin. I jerked my hand from Pickle’s side as a particularly sharp flare seared across my palm. I’d already scorched the little dragon once, and it’d taken days for him to forgive me. If even he wasn’t safe around me…

He was. I had it under control. With a few deep breaths and an image of the ocean I summoned into my head, the flames were retreating.

“No one’s heard from Thorn yet?” I asked.

Omen shook his head. “I’ve yet to convince our wingéd companion of the wonders of cell phones. He did say he might need to lend his former comrades a hand before they’d agree to help us. I suppose we’ll see whether it was worth the bargain when they show up.”

He couldn’t disguise his skepticism, but it was hard to mind when I was pretty skeptical myself. The warrior could take a physical beating without a wince, but from the way he’d looked after his first talk with those two lingering wingéd, they’d mauled something in his spirit. He’d felt so guilty about not being there for the final battle, about not dying there… How much would they shake his faith in himself this time?

“Once he’s back, my hacker back in Paris did turn up an interesting lead we might want to pursue,” Ruse said. “He’s found an interesting pattern of?—”

Cutting the incubus off, a swell of triumphant trombones blared through the RV with a multicolored flash of the overhead lights. As the electric panels blinked from pink to orange to green as if we were in a very cramped dance club, they caught on three figures who’d just appeared by the front door.

Antic hopped up and down with a guffaw at the unexpected welcome. Behind her, Gisele and Bow stared around them, the delicate unicorn shifter and the burly centaur looking equally bewildered.

Uh oh. As much use as we’d been putting the Everymobile to, it actually belonged to the two equines, who’d generously lent it to us to continue our quest. When they’d lent it to us, it hadn’t been sprouting odd instruments from its roof or producing music at random moments. It seemed the vehicle was happy to have them back, but I wasn’t sure how happy they’d be about the way it was expressing that joy.

Omen dashed past them to jab at the buttons on the dashboard, with a deeper grimace when he took in the smashed spot where Thorn had “disabled” the radio not long ago. Gisele’s doe-eyed gaze followed him, her rainbow-streaked hair swishing over her shoulder.

“What did you do to the Everymobile?” she said, her melodic tinkle of a voice rising over the cacophony. “I thought you were going to take it for a road trip, not renovate it.”

Omen managed to shut up the trumpets, but the lights kept flashing strobe-like over us. The hellhound shifter had expressed plenty of disdain for the equines when they’d first joined us, but since then they’d proven themselves capable fighters and generous allies. Worthy of guilty tensing of his expression as he groped for an explanation.

I managed to suppress a smile at seeing him put in his place by shadowkind he’d once sneered at, but I couldn’t help tossing a remark of my own his way. “Yeah, Omen, why don’t you tell them all about what you’ve put Darlene through?”

Bow ran a hand through his thick mohawk mane of chestnut hair, still staring befuddled at his former mortal-side home. “Who’s Darlene?”

Omen shot a glare at me. Served him right for naming things that didn’t belong to him. I leaned back in Snap’s embrace to watch as the hellhound shifter straightened his posture.

“Never mind that.” He waved to the RV’s interior. “We didn’t do this on purpose. We could hardly drive her across the ocean, and… she didn’t come through the rifts quite the same as when she went in.”

“I think the word you’re looking for is, ‘Sorry’,” Ruse supplied helpfully.

Omen glowered at him too, but a hint of sheepishness had come into his expression that looked odd but unaccountably adorable on the powerful shifter’s face. He turned back to the equines. “My apologies. I had no idea what effect the shadow realm would have on your vehicle. It’s a little more… unique than it was before, but I can at least say that it seems to function just as well as it always did.”

“I guess that’s the important thing.” Gisele peered up at the lights, which had finally faded back to their typical white glow. “Maybe some of the changes are even an improvement. I could get into the dance club vibe.”

As if on cue, her partner grasped her hand and spun her around. The unicorn shifter giggled as she twirled, and some of the tension in my chest loosened. I’d forgotten the mood these two set with their easy-going presence—and there was a relief in seeing Gisele fully recovered from the injuries the Company’s soldiers had dealt to her. You’d never have known that the last time we’d seen her, weeks ago, she hadn’t been able to stand up without Bow’s help.

“How’d you manage to track these two down?” I asked Antic. The imp had never met the equines, having joined our merry band after they’d headed back to the shadow realm to speed up Gisele’s recovery.

Antic leapt up to sit on the edge of the table and grinned over her shoulder at me. “It was easy-peasy. I was ping-pong balling all over the place, talking up the cause, and they tracked me down. I figured there couldn’t be any better allies to bring back than ones you already knew.”

Bow popped open one of the cupboards. “We’ve still got our grass and our grass ! I wonder what the trip to the shadow realm did to that stuff.”

Omen cleared his throat. “Maybe not the best time to find out just yet.”

“There are fresh strawberries in the fridge,” Snap offered generously. “They’re very good.”

Bow retrieved the delicacies, and a moment later we were all chowing down tart berry sweetness—except Omen, who watched the whole to-do with his mouth set in a crooked line. The centaur gave Snap a thumbs up while he chewed. “Excellent pickings. Man, did I miss mortal food.”

A bright smile crossed the devourer’s face. He popped another strawberry into his mouth and watched avidly as the equines recounted one of their early battles with the Company soldiers for Antic’s benefit, complete with physical re-enactments of key moments. Snap glanced at me and then Ruse. “It’s good to have them back, isn’t it?”

“The imp did well,” Ruse said with amusement, and gave Snap a nudge to the shoulder. “It’s good to see you looking this cheerful, my friend. Have we not been enough fun lately to keep your spirits as shiny as usual?”

Snap blinked at him with a hint of chagrin. “I didn’t expect this mission to be ‘fun’. Have I done something that bothered you?”

“No, no, not at all. I just remember the good old days when all I had to do was mix up some bubbles in the sink to get that kind of smile out of you.”

The devourer beamed. “I do still like the bubbles. You stopped making them.”

The incubus chuckled and gave the other man’s shoulder another squeeze. “All right, something to add to my to-do list.”

It was good seeing Snap more his sunny self again—and to see Ruse enjoying it too. The incubus might have worried about how much he could pitch in compared to the others, but he’d always felt like an essential part of this group. Maybe he was settling back into that sense of belonging after his moment of doubt.

I enjoyed the comradery next to me for a few seconds longer before the equines brought the conversation back around to our present situation.

“We’d have brought Cori too,” Gisele said, “but after all that time in his cage, he was hesitant to make another trip mortal-side. As soon as we’ve wiped the floor with the Company, we’ll tell him the coast is clear.”

Omen straightened up from where he’d propped himself against the wall. “It may be more difficult than a simple wiping. We’ve uncovered some unfortunate information about the powers behind the Company.”

The unicorn shifter’s eyebrows shot up. “In what way?”

I could tell Omen was reluctant to get into that subject, but it wasn’t as if we could bring our returned allies on board without giving them the full picture. He dragged in a rough breath. “There’s a former associate of mine, a shadowkind of great strength, who’s been pulling their strings behind the scenes. We almost had them beaten, but she intervened in their defense. It seems she cares very little what shadowkind get hurt along the way.”

The fiery fury that had risen inside me when he’d talked about the Highest’s dismissal stirred again. As he went on with his report of everything we’d heard from and experienced with Tempest, the flames danced higher despite my best efforts.

A searing sensation spread across the small of my back. Was that a whiff of burnt leather?

I couldn’t let the sphinx get the better of me—especially when she wasn’t even in the goddamned vicinity. I set my teeth, but every time I managed to settle my inner fire, Omen mentioned some other detail that set it sparking violently again.

He hadn’t mentioned anything about my difficulties with my powers or what I was to the equines. Presumably he was going to keep the most damning aspects on the down low like he had with Antic and Flint. I’d rather not make a vivid demonstration of my habit of setting myself on fire. It wasn’t as if I needed to hear this rundown anyway, considering I’d been there for most of it.

I gave Snap a kiss on the cheek so he wouldn’t worry and got up. The bedroom I’d claimed as my own felt like the safest spot right now. If I moved to leave the RV completely, that would inevitably raise questions.

I might have singed the covers a tad when I flopped down on them, but without Omen’s voice and Tempest’s name in my ears, the heat inside me started to dwindle. It wasn’t much more than glowing embers when a knock sounded on the door.

Ruse’s voice carried through, lightly cajoling. “Miss Blaze?”

I weighed my options and decided I was better off inviting him in than turning him away. For all his carefree airs, the incubus had proven he could worry plenty too, given the right provocation.

“What’s up?” I asked, pushing myself into a sitting position.

He slipped right in through the shadows without further prompting, as I’d figured he would. Shadowkind and their very lax concept of privacy. Snap wouldn’t even have knocked.

When he saw me on the bed, empty-handed, Ruse paused. “Were you resting? I didn’t mean to wake you up. I got the sense you might have left because something had irked you. Not because I looked inside your head,” he added quickly, with a flash of a smile. “I have gotten to know you rather well in many other ways.”

I had to smile back at that remark. A surge of affection filled my chest, drowning out the last of the prickling flames. The incubus did take certain requests for privacy very seriously, knowing how important they were to me, even now that I’d already given him permission to read my mental state once.

He’d wanted so badly to be there for me, to protect me. I didn’t know if it was possible for any of my shadowkind lovers to really do the latter, but maybe I should give him the chance to do the former.

I motioned for him to sit beside me. “Not irked. Well, okay, Tempest as a whole is pretty irksome. But I’m totally okay with feeling that way about her. It’s just, when I think about what she’s doing—all the awfulness she’s caused and still wants to—my powers get pretty, ah, heated up.”

Ruse brushed a few strands of hair back from my cheek, offering so much tenderness in that simple gesture. “I’d have thought that was a good thing. Plenty of fire to rain down on her when the time comes.”

“Well, yeah, but the time isn’t now, and—” Something in me balked at admitting the rest. Sweet simpering sycamores, when had I become a coward of all things?

I forced the words out. “The Highest think I might end up destroying even more than Tempest will. I know Omen’s decided it won’t happen—I know none of you want to believe I could be capable of it—but when all that fire builds up inside me, sometimes I’m not sure they’re wrong. I’m not in control, not completely.”

“Hmm. I’d make a comment about how much I enjoy you letting loose, but I don’t think that’s what you’re looking to hear.”

I elbowed Ruse, and he chuckled. Then he slipped his arm around me and tugged me to him, dipping his head so his lips brushed my temple as he spoke.

“You’ve accomplished a lot of impossible things in the last few months, Miss Blaze. You’ve conjured love in an incubus, desire in a devourer, gentleness in a wingéd warrior, and mercy—along with a few other things, it’s becoming clear—in a hellhound. Proving a riddling sphinx and some stuffy Highest bastards wrong will be the least of your accomplishments when you’re through.”

He spoke so confidently and with such affection that I almost believed him. Enough that even if he hadn’t melted my doubts, I could shove them far enough aside to tease my hand into his hair. “Suddenly I can think of a few things I’d like to accomplish right now.”

As if to punctuate that statement, a panel popped open on the ceiling above us, a plastic birdie on a spring swinging out. “Cuckoo!” it said cheerfully, like a demented clock. “Cuckoo!”

Poor Darlene. Ruse and I exchanged a glance and burst into laughter. With weirdly buoyed spirits, I drew him down with me on the bed, pulling his mouth to mine.

Here was hoping that if I soaked up all of his faith in me, I could make that certainty my own.