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TWENTY-EIGHT

Sorsha

I approached the Big Bad Boss the same way our charmed guard had said delivery people did—and you might say I was delivering something to his doorstep. Chaos? Hocus pocus? Retribution? A little of all three, really.

Of course, I’d imagine his typical deliveries didn’t arrive at five in the morning, but that might have worked in my favor. When I brandished the courier envelope I’d slapped several Priority stickers on for emphasis, the lobby security dude gave me a slightly glazed look before waving me on to the elevators. Then it was simply a matter of punching the button for the top floor the main elevator let out onto.

As the elevator car hurtled upward, I stuffed the empty envelope into my purse and palmed the ring Snap had procured—round setting, 1-carat diamond, white gold. With something that simple, I could hope the big boss’s own memory wouldn’t be so exact as to notice any tiny differences. Sweet summer sandwiches, let him not have gotten the original one engraved.

The wig didn’t itch now that I’d fixed it on properly, but I couldn’t shake my awareness of its weight on my head. I resisted the urge to tug at it and rocked on my feet instead, singing a little tune to keep my energy pumped up. “If I blow there will be rubble; if I slay there will be double. So come on my little foe.”

The elevator dinged, letting me out on the sub-penthouse floor. The blaze of light from the glaring panels set all across the ceiling made my eyes water. Strips of more fluorescent light beamed along the baseboards, and the seamless floor was polished like a mirror to reflect all of it. What the hell did a regular delivery person make of this funhouse hall?

It was a good thing we’d been prepared for this in advance. My shadowkind allies who’d snuck with me onto the elevator unseen would have been shit out of luck for darkness to conceal themselves in out here—if it wasn’t for the skill our night elf possessed that Omen had scoffed at.

Gloam could produce his own darkness. As I walked down the hall to the private elevator at the far end, a streak of shadow trailed along the edge of the floor, long enough to accommodate all my allies but so thin I could barely see it unless I looked hard. Here was hoping that meant it wouldn’t show up on the security cams mounted at intervals along the ceiling.

One of those cameras was pointed at the spot directly in front of the private elevator that only moved between this floor and the penthouse above. Our new friend had told us that one of the two guards always on duty would be keeping an eye on that feed at all times.

To catch that dude’s attention, I gestured wildly, setting my face in a fraught expression. Then, as if frantic to get my message across, I snatched a paper out of my purse and pretended to scrawl a message I’d actually written ahead of time. I held it up to the camera with both hands and a pleading gaze.

I MUST SPEAK TO ISAAC. IT’S ABOUT CARMEN. PLEASE!!!!!

Very important to add the multiple exclamation marks. Each one could serve as a little jab of guilt over my apparent desperation.

I held my breath. If the strangeness of my arrival and the message wasn’t enough to prompt the guard to wake up his boss and ask for guidance, and instead the guy came down to chase me off without checking in, the situation would become ten times more complicated. But our charmed guard had said that his boss didn’t like them taking their own initiative, and this time that worked against the head honcho rather than for him.

I waited there, holding up the sign and waggling it now and then, for long enough that my shoulders started to twinge from keeping them in position. Mr. Big Bad would have plenty to think about, faced with my message. How had anyone connected his real first name to the condo where he didn’t even let his direct employees identify him as anything other than “boss”? How had I found out about his long-ago fiancé? What could I possibly know about her that would bring me to his doorstep?

He might be wary, but we were counting on the questions eating at him too deeply for him to dismiss. He had no reason to suspect that this intrusion could have anything to do with the gore-and-fire-happy monsters who’d ransacked various laboratory facilities belonging to the Company in cities far away.

Finally, a thrumming sound carried through the wall. I lowered the sign, my body tensing.

The door opened to reveal not the silver-buzzcut, square-jawed guy our charmed guard had described as his boss, but a muscle-bound woman who looked only a little older than me. She pointed a gun at me, her other hand at a whip hanging in a coil from her belt, and jerked her head toward the shiny elevator car she was standing in.

“Get on. The boss will see you. No funny stuff—hands to yourself, avoid sudden movements. Understood?”

I nodded meekly. We’d expected the process of roping in the boss man to go something like this. I might have piqued his curiosity, but he’d want to indulge that curiosity in the comfort of his well-shielded home. The real trick was going to be convincing him I had a legitimate enough cause to get him out of that home and vulnerable enough for us to make our move.

Leaving my shadowkind allies behind, I stepped into the elevator. They couldn’t follow me up into that realm of silver and iron without it shattering their disguises and their strength. However much monster I had in me, I was still that much human.

As the door slid closed, the guard patted me over from shoulders to feet. She rifled through my purse too, but I’d emptied that of anything unusual. Finally, she motioned for me to open my mouth and peered into it. Satisfied I wasn’t carrying weapons anywhere accessible on my person, she wiped her hands together and pressed the control button.

A faint vibration ran through the polished floor as the elevator whisked us upward. Its doors whispered apart, and I found myself face-to-face with Isaac, last name unknown, grandmaster over the North American Company of Light.

From the guard’s description, I’d expected his jaw to be a little squarer, his buzzcut a little more severe. The man of fifty-something years who was staring at me somewhat blearily could have passed for a college professor easier than the military general I’d pictured him as. The clearly hastily-thrown-on button-up and slacks, rumpled where he’d stuffed the former into the waist of the latter, didn’t help.

But then, as he looked me up and down with a tightening of that jaw, I caught a steely vibe that removed any doubts about this guy’s claim to authority.

One of the most important things he’d have been watching for was how I reacted to entering his condo. The sheets of silver and iron I knew were built into his walls didn’t affect me at all, as he could no doubt observe.

I hugged myself as if nervous for totally normal human reasons, still clutching my sign. Isaac’s gaze dropped to it, and his shoulders went even more rigid. He’d worked very hard to keep so much of himself private from his employees. That worked in our favor now too. What did he want to protect more: his identity and the details of his past, or his current presence from whatever threat he thought some shivering stranger might pose.

“You checked her over?” Isaac asked the guard standing next to me. Another, a middle-aged man, stood behind his boss in the entry hall.

The woman gave a brisk nod. “I wouldn’t have let her up if I found anything to be concerned about.”

“All right. Retire to the surveillance room—both of you. If she comes any closer to me or I move to leave the hall without first giving you the okay signal, intervene. Otherwise, leave us be.”

The man looked startled. “Sir?”

“You heard me. This is a matter I need to handle on my own.” A hint of a sneer curled his lips as he looked me over again. “And I think I should have no trouble handling her at all.”

Was that so? He was lucky he wasn’t meeting my cat burglar, pyromaniac self just yet.

The guards left without another word. Obedient sorts, obviously. No doubt he’d picked them with that criteria in mind. One more choice that would no longer work in his favor.

I’d gotten the hook down his gullet. All that was left was to reel him in.

The boss man waited several seconds after his lackeys had vanished to give them time to get out of earshot. Then he said, low and curt, “Who are you?”

“A friend of Carmen’s,” I said.

A muscle in his cheek twitched. “That’s impossible.”

I let the words spill out as if in an anxious rush. “You thought she was dead. They wanted you to think that, the horrible creatures. Some of them can cast illusions—you know that, don’t you? Ones that can fool all sorts of people for ages. That’s all it was.”

“And how would you know this? How did you know to come here? What is it you want ?”

I gazed at him from beneath my fake black waves with widened eyes. “They had me too. She told me everything. How much she wished she could find her way back to you. The bond she still felt must have mingled with their magic somehow—she started having visions; she saw this building. We managed to break free and come here, but she’s ill. I’m afraid to try and move her, so I told her I’d come get you.”

“Then she’s here? She’s waiting—” He shook himself, and his tone hardened again. “No. It can’t be. I buried her.”

“You buried an illusion. I swear it. She needs you, now.” I held out my hand, showing him the ring. “She gave me this so you’d know it was her.”

Isaac froze. Then he reached out and took the ring from me, holding it up to the light. His throat bobbed. “She really… She managed to hold on to this all this time?”

“Nothing meant more to her,” I said softly.

“And those monsters—" His voice shook with more fury than it could hold.

An answering anger flared inside me. What about all the monsters he’d ordered tortured and slaughtered who’d never harmed a single mortal? Did none of their lives count while he acted out his revenge for the savage one that had ripped his fiancé from him?

Heat prickled through my chest—and I yanked it back with a hitch of breath I couldn’t quite hide. Cool waves, a salty breeze, the rhythmic hiss of the ocean. Focus on that. Focus on that and keep my fire in, or so many more monsters would die under this man’s orders because I’d screwed up our one chance to stop him.

My emotions settled with an ache around my heart. I could do this. I could stay in control. At least as long as I didn’t need to fling any fire around and could keep all of it inside.

The big boss was watching me again. “Are you all right?” he said carefully.

“I’m not totally well either,” I said as if embarrassed to admit it. “But it’s Carmen who kept me going all this time—I had to do this for her. Will you come to her? She’s nearby—it won’t take five minutes. I don’t want to leave her too long. If she sees anyone but you, I think she might run.”

So don’t call up someone else to handle this. You don’t really want to anyway, not when it shows so much of the life you’ve tried to keep away from all your colleagues’ eyes.

Resolve flashed in his eyes. Something I’d said or done had gotten through. He spun on his heel and hollered to his guards. “Is there anyone at all in the lower hall or any report of trouble from the lobby?”

An intercom crackled. “No, sir,” the woman replied. “It’s been totally quiet all night except your guest.”

He wavered but only for a second this time. Then he gave a brisk nod, made a gesture toward the camera, and strode off. He returned moments later pulling on a suit jacket that he stuffed a phone into the pocket of. Something about the way it hung on him pinged understanding in my brain.

“That’s a good one,” I said, eyeing the jacket with feigned approval. “It’s got strips of silver and iron sewn right into it? I knew a lady who had a dress made like that.” I patted the lapel, just a brush of my fingertips to prove to him that I didn’t shy away from those metals. And to get a feel for the fabric. Sooner rather than later, I was going to have to wrench this thing off him.

“I believe in taking every precaution,” he said. “Let’s go. You and Carmen will be safe from the fiends in here. I can bring in doctors and whatever else you need.”

He opened the door to the elevator, leaving his guards behind. Leaving them watching the surveillance feeds. Fresh tension wound through my body as I followed him in.

We’d thought he might bring his lackeys with him, so that Thorn and Flint would need to bash their helmeted heads right off their bodies when we emerged into the hall. It looked like we wouldn’t be able to stage our ambush there after all. If we attacked just him, the guards would see and come running to the rescue.

The others would have to wait until we were out of the hall below. Actually, better that we weren’t even in the building, since I knew for sure he had his phone. We couldn’t rely on this going so smoothly that the building’s own security wouldn’t notice and interfere.

Ruse would be relying on his read on my emotions to tell him all of that. I concentrated on the worry of them acting too soon, my longing to be somewhere out of the cameras’ view. Not yet. Not yet. And woven through all that was my hope that he’d understand.

The elevator door slid open on the brilliant hall of light. No shadowkind leapt from their constructed patch of darkness. And how terrible it would be if they did just yet. I let that horror fill me all the way to the second elevator, even as I studied Isaac from the corner of my eye. To get the jacket off him as quickly as possible, I’d need to stand—yeah, just like that would be fine.

No one had used the main elevator since I’d gotten off. The door opened the second he pushed the button. We stepped on, and I kept the same anxiety racing through my veins. Oh, to be out in the open air, away from any potential prying eyes.

We descended without interruption. I hurried through the lobby a step ahead of the big boss, both to maintain my story that I was worried about the supposed Carmen and to get on with the part of the plan that didn’t rest entirely on me.

“This way,” I said on the sidewalk, hustling a few buildings over and then ducking away from the streetlamps down a driveway currently closed off with a thick chain. A tarry smell drifted in the darkened air.

When I paused, Isaac came up beside me. His head swiveled. “Is this where she was? We have to?—”

As he spoke, I placed myself at his right flank, braced myself, and let relief and urgency wash through me. We’re in the clear. Let’s do this!

My feelings must have pealed through loud and clear. Ruse, Snap, Thorn, and Flint sprang into being around us.

The boss man startled with a fearful cry, and I grasped his suit jacket by the collar. With one sharp yank, I’d pulled it to his elbows—but then he connected one of those elbows with my forehead.

The impact radiated through my skull, sending my thoughts reeling. I clung on, but he was twisting around to strike another blow, and while he had the jacket on him my allies could barely touch him?—

I could use my fire. I could control it enough to have it do my bidding down to the letter. I could .

Through a hasty swell of ocean imagery, I coaxed my flames from my hands and into the fabric of Isaac’s jacket.

He let out a hiss of shock. The wool melted into cinders, the sagging strips of metal pattered to the pavement—and there he was, naked of protections, the fabric of his dress shirt only faintly singed.

The emotion that hit me then was nothing less than elation. I could have hugged the dude I’d just traumatized for staying uncrispified if he wouldn’t have tried to punch my nose in again.

Ruse shot me the swiftest of winks, already talking with the full force of his power thrumming through his voice. “We’re so glad you could join us, my friend. We have the answers to destroying the monsters you wish to exterminate. Unfortunately, you’ve been helping them rather than hindering them. Because of you, so many more young women like your fiancé have fallen.”

The big boss pressed his hands to his head. “What are you talking about? I’ve—that can’t be true.”

“Oh, but it is. We’ve been watching, and we’ve seen. What you don’t know, what your bosses don’t know, is that the entire Company of Light is a trick dreamed up by the monsters themselves. They set this whole thing in motion, made the first crusaders feel they had to come together to fight back. But the truth is that they need your anger and fear to continue passing into this world. Every bit of evidence about them you take down in your computers, every order anyone gives to capture or kill them, it allows the pathways between the realms to remain strong.”

“I can show you,” Flint said with that voice like a roll of thunder. He fixed his gaze on Isaac’s. An eerie light flickered into being in the depths of his eyes, and the color drained from our target’s face.

We hadn’t been sure if even Ruse’s charm could win the boss man over convincingly enough. But Flint—Flint could show him the supposed horrors the Company of Light was enabling in vivid reality, as if he were standing in the midst of the worst of it. We’d determined that his ability could work across great distances as long as he could look into the other person’s eyes. As soon as we got the biggest boss of all on the phone, Ruse was going to cajole him into a video call.

By the time the vision the second wingéd stirred up had faded away, Isaac was trembling. He swiped his hand across his mouth, looking as though he might vomit. “I never realized—I had no idea…”

“None of you did,” Ruse said with false sympathy. “The worst of it is, you’re the only ones left who even understand that the monsters exist. If you stopped all your activities around them, wiped clean all the data you’ve collected on them—their pathways to this world would close up, and they’d never threaten another mortal again.”

The key, Ruse had said once, was to give the person you were charming what they’d wanted in the first place. Those ideas took hold like nothing else. And what Isaac wanted more than anything in existence was to rid this realm of monsters.

“My God,” he said. “We have to—I’ll do whatever I can, but I don’t have control over everything. I’ll start reaching out?—”

“First,” Ruse said smoothly, “we should talk to the man who gives you your orders. Otherwise he may not understand and might even stand in your way while you try to set this right. You have the means to contact him, don’t you?”

The boss man dragged in a breath. “Yes. I have a way to indicate to him that I need him to call me. He’ll want to know immediately.”

As he fumbled for his phone, Ruse caught my gaze over Isaac’s shoulder. The corner of his mouth quirked with the start of a smirk, his eyes glowing with triumph. I couldn’t help grinning back at him.

We had the Company by the throat, and in just a few minutes, we were going to snap its neck so hard not one piece of it would ever rise again.