Page 69

FIVE

Sorsha

“This really isn’t necessary,” I said as Ruse guided me down the street with his hand shielding my eyes.

“Oh, no, I think it is,” the incubus said by my ear in his chocolatey voice. “Since you met us, we’ve lost you your apartment, your friends, and practically your life on multiple occasions. The least we can do is give you a proper birthday celebration to make up for it.”

He said “we,” but as far as I’d been able to tell, he’d been doing all the actual planning. While Omen had stayed at the wheel of the Everymobile, Ruse had confiscated the hellhound shifter’s phone to do some research on the city, with Thorn looming over him offering not much more than uneasy humming sounds. Once the incubus had worked his charm on the last two guards we’d been able to track down, he’d given Omen directions that the hellhound shifter had accepted with a long-suffering sigh.

I wasn’t sure how much of a birthday celebration I wanted in the first place. Normally I’d have gone out with Vivi and maybe a couple of the other younger Fund members to chow down and let loose, but the thought of the friends I’d left behind made my gut twist now. It was hard to say no to the incubus when he was charging full speed ahead with all his charming enthusiasm, though.

Now we were at our first destination, although I couldn’t tell where the heck that was since Ruse had insisted on escorting me over to it blind.

“You could at least let me see where I’m going,” I groused.

The incubus chuckled. “But making it a surprise is more fun.”

“Maybe to some humans. I prefer a full view of my surroundings.”

“Don’t worry, Miss Blaze. I’m sure the lunk here is doing enough scanning for danger to protect us all.”

The “lunk” let out a wordless grumble. “You look ridiculous,” Thorn said. “I really don’t see why?—”

“Oh, the mortals around will understand how we’re playing. We’re fine. And… ta da!”

Ruse whipped his hand away from my eyes. For a few seconds, I could only blink at the mass of lights gleaming against the deepening evening across the face of a… tiny palace?

No, not an actual palace, but a restaurant in the shape of one. Regal Thai said the sign that was almost lost in the glow over the arched doorway.

A hint of curry drifted to my nose, and my mouth immediately started watering. Maybe a little celebrating wouldn’t be such a bad thing if we were going to do it in there.

Ruse ushered me inside while he sang the restaurant’s praises. “It’s just opened—with a top chef who spent ten years running a four-star establishment in Bangkok—and as you can see, they’ve pulled out all the stops with the décor too.”

The smells grew even more enticing when we stepped inside. I managed to keep my drool in my mouth, but it was a near thing. Columns painted in what I assumed were traditional Thai designs of gold, red, blue, and green stood in rows down the eating area, marking off sections filled with booths painted the same hues.

The hostess ushered us to an alcove where we settled onto seats padded with scarlet silk cushions. Sweet silver sand dollars, the fabric was so soft it felt like a crime to sink into it.

Our server gave Ruse’s cap a bit of a side-eye, but he’d exchanged his typical baseball one for a subdued black number that gave the impression of religious significance. I couldn’t have told you what religion or whether that religion even existed outside of the incubus’s imagination, but it was convincing enough that the woman didn’t comment.

Thorn rubbed his hands together in the fingerless leather gloves that hid his knuckles as he contemplated the menu. Ruse snatched it from under his gaze. “I believe Sorsha should do the ordering. She’s the one who’ll get the most satisfaction out of this meal, after all.”

Just a glance over the offerings had me drooling all over again. “I can order us a perfect feast,” I promised, and started making a mental list of all my favorites.

When the dishes arrived, they were delicious, but the best parts of my birthday dinner had nothing to do with the food. There was watching a warrior angel—excuse me, wingéd —attempt to manipulate the traditional spoon and fork between his massive fingers, and the look of awe Omen quickly tried to disguise when he lowered himself to tasting the pineapple fried rice. And what could be better than letting an incubus offer a morsel of fried banana while his hazelnut-brown eyes lingered on my face, as sweet as the dessert tasted?

By the time the last dishes had been cleared, my stomach felt as if it’d expanded to about ten times its previous size, but the ache was more satisfying than painful. I leaned against the silky cushions and patted my belly. “Okay, you did well, Ruse. Just as long as Omen’s not going to roast me now that you’ve stuffed me.”

“Don’t tempt me,” the hellhound shifter said, but the slant of his lips was almost a smile. We’d come a long way from the early days when he nearly had gotten my ass roasted taking on his tests.

Ruse grinned and pulled out a handful of cash that I was probably best off not asking the source of. “Better to support good food than the putz who contributed this,” he said to me with a wink as he set the money on the tray with the bill. “And we’re not done. You’re going to peel yourself off that seat so I can stuff even more fun into this evening.”

I groaned. “I’m not sure I can walk at this point.”

Thorn glanced up with a hopeful expression, looking pleased to have found some way he could contribute to the party. He moved as if to scoop me up in his bulging arms. “I could convey you back to the vehicle, m’lady, if that would?—"

I miraculously found the motivation to shove myself onto my feet after all. “No, no, that’s totally okay, thank you all the same.” As much as I enjoyed the feel of those muscles against me, I’d like to keep a little of my dignity.

I wouldn’t have thought the night could get much better, no matter what the incubus had planned next, but my heart leapt when the RV pulled up at our next stop: a karaoke bar decked out with neon lights. Not that singing was my most favorite activity—it was the thought of watching my companions take a shot that had me grinning.

“We’ve got to take equal turns,” I announced as I bounded to the Everymobile’s door. “No one sits out, or you’ll have a very sad birthday gal.”

“We wouldn’t want that, now would we?” Ruse said with amusement.

My demand worked on two thirds of my shadowkind crew. Omen plonked down in a corner of the private room Ruse had booked and refused to do anything with his mouth other than scowl. But it was pretty easy to ignore his lack of participation when I got to belt out “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” to Ruse’s enthusiastic whooping and Thorn’s applause, followed by the incubus strutting around with the microphone as he instructed us all, “Don’t you forget about me.”

The highlight, though, had to be Thorn gruffly but gamely giving “Sexual Healing” his best shot while he held the mic as if he expected to need to club someone with it at any moment. Believe me, you’ve never seen any performance to top that.

I nearly exploded holding in my laughter, but the flush that darkened the warrior’s tan face made me want to offer him a little sexual healing to his ego after he’d finished. I wasn’t quite so wanton as to get down and dirty in a karaoke booth, so I settled for planting a kiss on him long enough to bring a rumble into his chest before I went to pick my next song.

When our hour there was up, it turned out Ruse wasn’t done with us yet. “One more stop,” he said, with an affectionate tap of my chin. “But you can stay there as long as your feet will hold you up.”

I understood what he meant when Omen parked the RV across the street from a dance club. A dance club with a sign in the window gleefully announcing that tonight was ‘80s night. The smile that sprang to my lips brought a bittersweet pang with it.

It was impossible to indulge in my love of all things ‘80s without thinking of the woman who’d passed on that love to me. Before I’d really had friends, when we’d moved from city to city so often I didn’t have the chance to get close to anyone, my birthdays had been spent eating ice cream cake that Auntie Luna glamoured glittering sparkles onto and having private dance parties in the living room of whatever house or apartment she’d managed to arrange for us in that town.

She should have been here to celebrate more of those birthdays—to see the woman I’d become. The Company had stolen her in a way I could never get back.

Ruse obviously hadn’t realized the connection I’d draw. His own smile faltered when he took in my expression, which must have shown a little of my sense of loss.

“It’s great,” I told him before he could think I was at all disappointed with his choice of activity. “It’s perfect. Just brings back some memories.”

I’d dance for Luna and amp myself up to strike tomorrow’s blow against the organization who’d caused her death.

Thorn studied the building’s front with obvious hesitation. “I don’t know if it would be wisest for me to?—”

“Nope, no backing out now—I want to see all of you on the dance floor.” I grabbed his hand and tugged him toward the door. “If you’re not sure what to do, just shuffle from side to side a little. No one’s going to dare to even think anything judgemental when they take a look at you, I promise.”

Omen stretched where he was still sitting in the driver’s seat. “I’ll come, but only to keep an eye on the rest of you fools.”

“The fool is often the one who sees things most clearly,” Ruse informed him with a smirk that practically twinkled, and led the way across the street.

It wasn’t that late in the evening yet, but the place was already packed. I squeezed into the center of the dance floor and let the familiar music wind around me. Ruse kept pace, his hands grazing my waist, my hips, and my arms as he moved with my rhythm.

Thorn, well… Thorn did a very good job with his side-to-side shuffle. He even bobbed his head a little with the bass line. I gave him a thumbs up when I caught his eye, which I figured he deserved for the effort.

Putting in absolutely no effort at all was our defiant hellhound leader. After a few songs, I shimmied on over to where he’d staked out a spot by the wall between the pink-lit bar and the coat check.

“All right,” I declared. “Onto the floor with you. You’ve been around umpteen centuries—you’ve got to have at least a few moves.”

Omen didn’t budge. “It might surprise you to hear this, but the fact that it’s your birthday doesn’t put you any more in charge than you were before.”

“Maybe it does. How would you know? Shadowkind don’t have birthdays, do they? Maybe it’s a rule you just never heard about.” I prodded his arm and then, with a rush of boldness fueled by the synth-pop beat, grabbed the front of his shirt, willing myself not to notice the sculpted muscles of his chest my fingers brushed or just how far I’d stepped into his aura of dominance.

The song playing over the speakers gave me the perfect lyrics to spin to my purpose. “Get up on your feet,” I sang with a teasing edge, giving him a tug. “Yeah, step up, don’t cheat. Boy, what, will you flee?”

Omen’s eyes flashed, whether at being called a “boy,” accused of turning tail, or simply because of the way I was manhandling him, I wasn’t sure. He gave me a little shove backward—but he followed, to the fringes of the crowd.

Content with that victory, I did a spin and sidestep, daring him with a glance to keep up with me. His eyes stayed narrowed, but his body started to sway with the rhythm. When I swung closer to him again, he caught my elbow and added a little heft to my whirl. His touch left a tingling heat coursing over my skin.

This was playing with an entirely different sort of fire, but taunting flames had been one of my favorite pastimes. I sashayed around the hellhound shifter, trailing my fingers across his back, wanting to wake up more of the passion in him. Where he ended up aiming that passion, well, we’d just have to wait and find out, wouldn’t we?

“Like what you see?” I asked with a waggle of my eyebrows, turning so he could check out the whole package. My gaze slid over the crowded floor—and caught on a glint of golden hair with a stutter of my pulse.

The jolt of emotion only gripped me for a second. It wasn’t Snap—how could it have been?—but a young woman with gleaming curls twice as long as those the devourer had sported. But the momentary association had already sent me tumbling back through my memories to the night a few weeks ago when Ruse had set up an impromptu ‘80s dance party in my apartment living room.

Snap had joined us then, with a sinuous, unself-conscious style that had fit his godly beauty perfectly but would have looked awkward on anyone else I could think of. No one around me now could match it, that was for sure.

All these people dancing away with no clue or care what torment was being inflicted on all sorts of beings from beyond this realm…

A ripple of a much sharper emotion raced through me, propelled by my inner blaze. It surged up so suddenly I lost my breath, my skin seemed to crackle—and a couple dancing next to me leapt apart with a gasp and a scream as flames leapt across both their shirts.

My heart lurched, and my arms seared from wrists to elbows. Other dancers spotted the fire with more cries of alarm. As the girl sobbed in pain, Omen grabbed me with a solid arm around my waist.

“Let’s get you cooled off,” he muttered, his breath tickling over my cheek, and hauled me toward the exit.

“But—” I started to protest. It was my fault. I should do something. What, I didn’t have the faintest idea—and one of the bouncers was running over with a fire extinguisher, already taking care of the catastrophe I’d almost sparked. As the hiss of escaping foam melded with the music, Omen dragged me out of the club.

The hellhound shifter didn’t let go of me until he’d yanked me into the alley beside the building. He let me go so abruptly I stumbled into the wall. As I whipped around to face him, he rounded on me.

“What kind of crazy stunt were you trying to pull in there?”

I gaped at him. “I didn’t do that on purpose. Do you think I’m a total idiot? I just—it just came out, out of the blue. I don’t even know why.” I’d barely even been aware of feeling anything like the kind of anger or panic that had riled up my powers before. “This is why I’ve been balking about using my powers. They keep doing crap like that.”

Omen leaned in, his proximity and his dry sulphuric scent sending my pulse into overdrive all over again. As his gaze pinned me in place, an orange light flickered in his eyes. “If this is some stupid move to convince me not to push you to get your act sorted out…”

“Of course it’s not,” I snapped. “I didn’t want to set random people on fire, for fuck’s sake.”

“Well, maybe if we hadn’t been spending the whole night wasting time on inane mortal pursuits, you wouldn’t have had to worry about that.”

Was he kidding me? “None of this was my idea. If you have a problem with tonight, take it up with Ruse.”

Omen let out a growl that left my skin quivering in ways somehow both eager and unnerving at the same time. “He was busting his ass to please you . You seem to think you can have us all wrapped around your finger and doing whatever you want, but what I say still goes here, and you’re not shirking your part.”

The quivering had brought back the sting in my arms. I wrenched them up to thrust my forearms between our faces. “I’m not shirking anything. I’m trying not to be the fucking disaster you keep calling me.”

Even in the dim light, the reddened, blistered skin made my stomach lurch. I hadn’t realized I’d burned myself quite that badly this time.

The sight seemed to stop Omen in his tracks too. He paused, taking in the burns. With surprising gentleness, he slipped his fingers around mine to lower and turn one arm and then the other, studying both sides.

“Why would you do this to yourself?” he demanded, but the accusatory note had left his voice. He sounded almost… concerned. About me? Let demons sing “Hallelujah.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It just keeps happening now. Maybe… Maybe I wasn’t meant to wake up those powers after all.”

“No. You don’t get a gift like that unless you’re meant to use it.” He raised his head to peer into my eyes again. I wasn’t sure what he was searching for. He might not have been quite as stunning as my original trio, but there was no denying he was a looker too—and doubly so when his icy mask fell away.

“Would have been nice if it came with an instruction manual, then,” I heard myself saying, and miracle upon miracles, something that might have been a smile tugged at the hellhound shifter’s lips.

He was still holding my hand. His thumb stroked across my knuckles in a firm caress. “We’ll figure it out,” he said. “Lucky you—you’ve got the expertise of three incredibly skilled shadowkind to help guide those shadowy powers. Four, when we get back our devourer tomorrow.”

“Assuming I don’t incinerate us all while we’re trying to accomplish that.”

“I don’t think you need to worry about that.”

I restrained a grimace. “Because you don’t believe it could get that bad?”

“No, because I’m saying you don’t have to try to use them. In fact, consider that a direct order. We’re taking your ‘charming’ approach tomorrow, and if anyone ends up needing to be destroyed, you can leave that to Thorn and me.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t expected him to give in that far, even after this incident. “Well, er, thank you.”

His mouth twitched. That was definitely a smile now. “So polite when you get your way.”

I did grimace at him then, but it didn’t diminish the weird fondness that was rising up in me. “I mean it. I…”

I didn’t know how to express my appreciation of this non-dickish side of him other than to push off the wall and brush my lips against his.

I couldn’t tell you what kind of response I was anticipating. Omen’s hand shot to my hair, and I started to brace myself for him to yank me away—but instead he jerked me closer, taking the kiss from a peck to a branding in an instant.

A fire I didn’t mind at all flared all through my body at the hot crush of his mouth. I would have reached for him in turn if he hadn’t ripped himself away a second later.

The orange glow faded from his eyes, but his tawny hair had become thoroughly mussed without my even touching it. His jaw clenched at a harsh angle. There was Mr. Ice again.

He swiveled on his heel as if we hadn’t been twined like lovers just a moment ago. “We’re gathering up the others and getting out of here. That’s been enough commotion for one night. We’ve got a shoe museum to scuff up come tomorrow.”