Page 61

TWENTY-EIGHT

Sorsha

Omen watched me climb onto the motorcycle behind Ruse with obvious reluctance. I gave him an optimistic thumbs-up. “Don’t worry! We’ll take care of Charlotte.”

“I don’t think you’d enjoy finding out what’ll happen if you don’t,” he retorted, but he turned away rather than continuing to stew about the situation. This plan required only Ruse and me, and as much as the hellhound shifter might have wanted to tag along to supervise from the shadows, it didn’t really make sense to put anyone else at risk. The Company people were a hell of a lot more likely to notice us in the city than way out here in the middle of nowhere.

In my attempt to avoid drawing their notice, I fit the helmet the incubus had been kind enough to obtain for me over my head, where a black knit hat already hid my red hair. Ruse sported a helmet himself, a situationally appropriate way to disguise his horns. He gave Omen’s retreating back a salute, patted my knee to confirm my position against him, and gunned the engine.

It was way easier to relax against the incubus’s lean back than when I’d been clinging to Omen yesterday. For one, Ruse didn’t drive the bike like a, well, demon. He might not have been the smoothest at lane changes, but he was concerned enough about keeping a low profile to stick to the same speed as the cars and avoid any flashy moves.

And considering how intimate we’d gotten on multiple occasions, I didn’t have a whole lot of modesty left when it came to having my arms wrapped around his chest or my thighs pressed against his hips.

He followed the directions I’d given him to Leland’s townhouse without a hitch. The sight of the narrow, gray building on the end of the row made my chest constrict.

How many times had I rung that doorbell ready for a quick jump in the sack—a dozen? Twenty? It had never felt like anything other than scratching an itch, and then even that enjoyment had turned sour with Leland’s caustic disappointment in me.

My current feelings toward him went well past sour and into “raze it to the ground” territory, but I wasn’t here to mess with his living space. At least, not yet. We’d see how this visit went first.

I knew my ex-friends-with-benefits’s schedule well enough to have anticipated that he’d be at the gym on a Sunday afternoon. We left the bike a couple of blocks over and slunk into Leland’s backyard, Ruse sticking to the shadows now. As I waited for him to slip inside and unlock the door for me, I set my shoulders, gathering my chutzpah.

We had a plan—one that should get us to Snap if the Company had grabbed him. No uncomfortable memories were going to shake me out of accomplishing that. Leland had no idea what he’d set himself up for.

Ruse opened the door with a little bow, and I marched inside.

Had the place always held this stale grease smell? Maybe I’d never been close enough to the kitchen before to notice it. Wrinkling my nose, I passed through the space with its tarnished steel appliances and into the living room off the front hall where I intended to wait.

I clearly hadn’t spent enough time on the first floor in general, or the framed photographs along the mantel would have been a tip-off that this guy wasn’t worth my time even as an easy lay. Each of those photographs was of Leland, on his own: posing at an amateur weight-lifting competition, leaning over beneath the open hood of a car I doubted he had the slightest idea how to fix, giving a victory sign on the deck of a speed boat. He might as well have built a little shrine to his ego—a testament to how much he thought the world should revolve around him alone.

Ruse ambled over to contemplate them closer up. “Such a catch,” he teased. “What a mistake you made in letting this fine specimen go. At least, he clearly thinks he’s the finest specimen around.”

“No kidding.” I socked him lightly in the shoulder. “No need to rub it in. I did find the good sense to move on to greener pastures.”

The incubus wiggled his eyebrows. “And I’ve been delighted to plow you.” As I choked on a laugh, one of those eyebrows arched higher. “Speaking of which… I take it you got something other than grumbles and glowers out of our Incredible Hulk.”

My interlude with Thorn. A faint flush crept up my neck. “We tried to be quiet.”

“Don’t worry your lovely head about that. I have especially keen senses when it comes to my area of expertise. I lent a little magic to give you the privacy I figured you’d want to have.”

“Oh. Thank you.” I paused. “That didn’t require you to be in the room, did it?”

Ruse held up his hands. “I enjoy participating in the act, not so much watching it from afar. Consider the favor my contribution to the public good. Thorn’s needed a good lay for at least a few centuries, I’d estimate.”

I socked him again, but his banter had helped distract me from my uneasiness in this place. When Snap and I had gotten close, the incubus had told me that he was happy for me to seek pleasure wherever I could find it. It sounded like that applied to the warrior as well, as much as their attitudes tended to clash.

The gaudy brass clock standing between the photos showed it was quarter past three. “Leland will be here soon,” I said. “You’d better stay out of sight until I give the signal that his badge is off.” I didn’t know whether he’d be wearing it just to walk around the city, but after screwing us over as badly as he had yesterday, I wouldn’t be surprised to find him extra cautious.

Ruse nodded and vanished. I prowled around the living room until I found an ideal spot where I could crouch beside a side table. The position gave me a clear view of the hall so I’d know what I was dealing with before I sprang into action, but should hide me from a casual glance. Then all I had to do was wait.

As the minutes ticked by, I twisted a lyric and sang softly into the silence. “Waiting for that final woe sent, you’ll say the words that lie and prey.” Leland would probably claim siccing our enemies on us had been a heroic act. Well, he’d lost any hope of screwing me months ago, and now he was going to lose any chance of screwing us over again.

Ruse blinked into the physical space just long enough to say, “He’s coming down the street,” and then vanished again. I tensed in my hunched pose. My fingers curled toward my palms.

A key clicked in the lock. Leland strode in, all puffed up on an endorphin high from the weights he’d have been hefting. As he tossed his gym bag to the side of the hall, his shirt shifted, and I caught a glint of silver at its V neckline. He was wearing his protective badge pinned to an undershirt like I often did. No other metallic gear gleamed on his person.

That was all I needed to know. I sprang up and leapt across the few feet between us.

Leland stiffened in surprise—wrong reflex, dude. “Sorsha,” he sputtered, and I was already on him, smacking his defensive hand away with a quick swipe while I yanked on his shirt. With one swift jerk, the badge snapped off the layer of cotton underneath. I flashed it through the air to signal Ruse.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Leland snapped, lunging at me. Too bad he spent all his gym time bulking up and not developing his inner Jack Be Nimble. I darted out of the way just as Ruse materialized in the space between us.

“Hello, my friend,” the incubus said in his most cajoling tone, so strung through with supernatural power I could feel the vibration of it in the air. “As you can see, we’re all going to get along here. We came out of concern for your well-being—you need to listen to us or you could be in grave danger.”

Leland swayed on his feet, his boyish face tensing. The voodoo hadn’t totally enraptured him in one go. “You’re one of the shadowkind she’s working with. I don’t think you should be here. Either of you. You?—”

Ruse held up his hands in a placating gesture. “We’ll certainly leave as soon as we’ve settled things with you. You’ve been in contact with very malicious people, and we couldn’t bear to see you get hurt because of that. I know you and Sorsha have had your differences, but can’t you see how much she still cares for you?”

I fought back the urge to glare at him for that remark and gave Leland the sweetest smile I could summon. Which probably wasn’t very sweet, since I was also inclined to puke on the jerk’s shiny trainers at the idea of caring about him, but it appeared to be enough to smooth Ruse’s spell along.

“I always knew she must, somewhere in there,” Leland said, peering back at me with his own smile, which was so self-satisfied I nearly did puke.

Thankfully, Ruse stepped in before any expelling of bodily fluids became necessary. As he nodded, a sly thread crept into his voice. “And you must care about yourself enough to prioritize your safety, no? Look at this magnificent display of your past achievements.” He motioned to the photos on the mantel.

Leland’s gaze followed the gesture. “We have to celebrate our victories,” he said. “Pep ourselves up to take on even more. Or to step in when other people are going too far.” He glanced back at me, drawing himself up with a pompous air. “You were ruining people’s lives. I couldn’t stand back and let that happen.”

I bit my tongue to avoid pointing out that he’d potentially ruined dozens of lives by enabling the Company’s attack and preventing us from freeing their captives. As much as he’d pretended to care about defending the shadowkind, their lives clearly didn’t mean all that much to him. Maybe he only saw them as worth protecting when they were small and inept. Maybe it’d always been about gaining a sense of magnanimity and never about kindness at all.

Ruse grinned. Confident he now had the other guy completely under his sway, he pointed Leland to the photos again. “I need to see just how dedicated you are to yourself before I know how we can help you. Take your favorite image and give yourself a kiss.”

“ Ruse ,” I whispered in protest. We had more important things to do here than goof around with my ex on puppet strings.

The incubus ignored me, and it was kind of satisfying watching Leland rush to grab the photo of himself on the boat deck and give it a hearty smooch. My lips twitched despite myself.

Ruse applauded. “Perfect. Now, do you think you could show us a headstand? It’s very important for ensuring we give you the most helpful strategies for protecting yourself…”

Leland was already bending over to set his head on the rug. He braced himself and heaved his bulky legs into the air. They flailed this way and that for a few seconds before he toppled over onto the rug with an audible whoomph . Then he was leaping up again as if ready for another go.

I elbowed Ruse. As much as I’d like to watch my ex make a fool of himself for hours, we were here on business, not pleasure.

“All right, all right,” the incubus said, and motioned Leland over. “Just one more thing I’d like to check. If you wanted so much for Sorsha to offer you the full girlfriend experience, why didn’t you romance her like a boyfriend would? An honest answer, please.”

Leland’s expression turned vaguely puzzled, but he was charmed enough to answer without balking. “Why should I have to put in that work first if she didn’t appreciate what she already had? I didn’t hear any complaints about our hook-ups. I’ve got a good job, I work out—I’m a goddamned catch. I’m not going to chase someone who can’t be bothered to give me a foot massage or cook up a meal to pay back what they’re getting out of me. She obviously has delusions about deserving all kinds of fawning. I bet that’s how these creepy shadowkind sucked her in.”

That time I bit my tongue so hard I winced at the jab of pain. What I’d been getting out of him? Last I’d checked, he’d gotten off at least as much as I had from our hops into bed. Was I supposed to have been so honored that he’d stuck his dick in me that I’d decide to play merry homemaker—and without a single indication he even wanted that until he started sulking that it wasn’t happening?

Ruse had my back in his own way. “I see,” he said. “You really are a prickish piece of work, aren’t you?”

Leland faltered. “What? I?—”

The thrum came back into Ruse’s voice. “Say it—that you’re a prickish piece of work. Like you mean it.”

“I’m a prickish piece of work,” Leland said emphatically.

“Wonderful! Now let’s get down to work. These people on Wharf Street I assume you contacted—how did you reach out to them? It’ll help us so much to know.”

Any uncertainty that had crossed Leland’s face with the past instruction faded. “I wasn’t sure I’d get someone in charge if I just called. It seemed like the message should go to someone higher up. So I went right down there.”

He’d gotten a look at the building? “What did they do when you got there?” I asked.

“They were pretty tense about the whole thing.” Leland frowned. “I guess it makes sense they would be when I showed up out of nowhere. When I told them I had vital information, a different guy came out to talk to me in the yard.”

Ruse’s eyes gleamed intently. “You didn’t go inside?”

“Nope. I told him that I had reason to believe a woman working with some hostile shadowkind was going to attack his operations tonight, and that they definitely knew about the Wharf Street location and a few others—the ones the Fund checked out. Do you think that’s why they’d be out to get me now—because I was involved in doing that research, even though I realized what the right side was?”

“Could be,” Ruse said sagely. “Although if you went back there now that they’ve foiled the attack and seen you gave them good intel, maybe they’d be more friendly and let you in on their plans.”

Leland dashed any hopes we’d had of sending him out into the field as an unwitting double-agent with a chuckle. “Oh, they’re not at that place anymore. They were pretty upset about what I told them, and I heard one guy say to another as I was leaving something about having nowhere to move now except Gorge Avenue. But I have no idea where on Gorge Avenue they were going. That wasn’t an address the Fund had.”

No, it wasn’t. I hadn’t seen or heard anything about Gorge Avenue before—but it sounded like that was where the Company would have taken their prisoners.

“Did you overhear anything else? Anything at all?” I pressed.

Leland shook his head. “They shooed me off pretty quickly. Even the guy who made that comment shut up really quickly afterward. And now they’re after me? I was only trying to help them. I thought—” His forehead furrowed as he tried to connect what he’d believed before to what Ruse’s charm was forcing him to feel. “Have they actually been hurting people? It wasn’t just Sorsha getting caught up with the wrong sort of shadowkind who wanted her to think that?”

“Unfortunately for you, these people are the worst of the worst, and it turns out they didn’t appreciate that help,” Ruse said in his most apologetic tone. “But I’ve determined that there’s a simple way you can ensure they don’t interfere with your life one bit.”

Leland breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you so much. I was trying to take the hassle out of my life by cutting off Sorsha’s false crusade, not add to it. She’d already gotten the Fund too tangled up in all that. I never should have started investigating… Well, I guess if this Company of Light really is part of some kind of conspiracy… But that’s more than I’m prepared to deal with anyway.”

Right, because God forbid he experience the slightest discomfort while shadowkind were caged and tortured. He didn’t sound even slightly regretful that he’d turned us in to people I’d warned him repeatedly were up to no good. I glanced at Ruse curiously.

The incubus rubbed his hands together in a way that would have tipped off anyone not under the spell of his charm that he was up to no good. “It’s very simple. You must fix a pair of your underwear on your head and keep it there like a hat for at least three days. Oh, and only drink coffee that’s as dark as you can brew it with no cream or sugar, left to cool for two hours first. Finally, call in sick from work while you’re undergoing these steps and be sure to tell your boss exactly what you truly think of him.”

I had to clap a hand over my mouth to hold in a laugh. The puzzled crease returned to Leland’s forehead, but Ruse’s voodoo gripped him tightly enough that he didn’t argue. “Thank you. These people work in strange ways, I guess. I’ll do all of that.”

“Excellent. Don’t mention we were here or your visit to Wharf Street to anyone. And may you find a romantic partner who’s everything you deserve!”

The stairs creaked as Leland headed up to his bedroom to obtain the boxers that would serve as a hat. Ruse held in his snicker until we’d reached the back door.

“I’d have come up with a more public humiliation,” he murmured to me, “but I think it’s best if we don’t call attention to our magical meddling.”

“You didn’t have to do any of that,” I said. “All we needed was the information.”

He made a skeptical humming sound. “Just be glad the defending of your honor was done my way and not Thorn’s. I had plenty of my own bones to pick with the jackass at this point, you know.”

“Fair.” A twinge of affection shot through my chest. “And thank you.”

“Think nothing of it, Miss Blaze. You’re worth a hundred thousand of that putz.” Ruse looked in the direction we’d left Charlotte. “What do you say we take a detour along Gorge Avenue?”

“Sounds like the perfect next step.”

Once we’d reached the outer reaches of the suburbs where Gorge Avenue was located—nowhere near any actual gorges we could toss our enemies into, sadly—it wasn’t long before we realized that Snap had left us with one last gift. The motorcycle crested a low hill, and at the sight of an estate that sprawled across the entirety of the next block, I squeezed Ruse’s arm.

It was a mansion of gray brick with a turret on the right-hand side, the one Snap’s victim must have guarded in times past. And from what Leland had overheard, the Company had nowhere left to run if we came for them here.