Page 36

Calisto

After my moment of clarity where I’d realized that if I didn’t pass on the message to Griffin, I might never get the chance, I’d returned to mulling over the decision I’d made. Thankfully, Asher taking my hand and towing me along with him meant I could follow on autopilot.

I’d had my hand on Janessa’s soul, a hairsbreadth away from pulling it across the divide and joining it to the dead girl, when some sixth sense had told me to listen. A sixth sense, or Gezgomar whispering in my ear? I couldn’t discount the latter, Gezgomar seeming able to exist in both worlds, just as I could.

Whatever had prompted it, all it had taken was understanding O’Reilly’s intentions toward my family for everything I’d always believed about myself to be proved wrong. I’d let go of Janessa’s soul and I’d wrapped my fingers around O’Reilly’s instead.

She’d felt me. I could see it on her face, and in the way she’d immediately stopped talking, her hand going to her throat. “You won’t get your hands on my family,” I’d told her, even though I knew she couldn’t hear me. “They’re annoying and they’re too much most of the time, but they’re mine. And despite their faults, I love them. Even Margarita. So if I have to do this, I have to do it. You’re done tormenting people. John. Bellamy. Ben. Griffin. Asher. Cade. And all the other nameless people you’ve maimed and murdered over the years.”

And then I’d ripped her soul from her body, the effect instantaneous, all vital signs immediately ceasing. I’d stood for a moment, breathing hard and trying to collect myself, the soul in my hand cold and viscous against my skin.

“Give it to me,” a voice had instructed, this one definitely Gezgomar. I had, doing my best not to listen to the sounds that had followed as he’d done as promised and devoured it. And then he’d laughed, the sound chilling. Whether from enjoyment or at my downfall, I couldn’t say.

There would be no coming back for Abigail O’Reilly.

I’d made my choice, and I’d murdered her.

And I was still struggling with how I was supposed to feel about that, the things that had happened since a blur involving guns, conversation, and Asher alternately pushing and pulling me in different directions.

“Calisto?” The edge in Asher’s voice said it wasn’t the first time he’d said my name.

“Yeah?” At some point, our backdrop had changed. We were in a different flat, this one looking like a flat should look with dated furniture and wallpaper, and no dead girls.

“What’s wrong with him?”

That was Ben’s voice. He’d taken up a stance by the door, gun raised in case anyone came in.

“Shock,” Asher said. He pulled me to face him, palming my cheeks with both hands so I had no option but to look at him. His eyes really were beautiful and I could feel the connection now. It was just a shame I’d had to see it to believe it. “Normally, I’d make you a cup of tea with lots of sugar, but I can’t do that until we get out of here. And I need you with me in order to do that. Can you do that for me? We can think about… other things later.”

Other things. He knew. He knew what I’d done. Yet, he was still looking at me the same way he always had: with love in his eyes that said I could massacre an entire village and he’d be right there by my side. Unconditional love was a heady emotion to be on the receiving end of.

“How much longer?” Ben asked. Another conversation had evidently occurred during my preoccupation with other matters.

Asher ripped his gaze from mine. “Four minutes.”

Ben nodded. “And then what?”

“The corridor will be clear for sixty seconds. Enough time for us to access the flat opposite this one. Its occupant will be in the bathroom taking a shower. In the jacket hanging up just inside the bedroom, he has a keycard to the lift. We have two minutes to get our hands on it before he comes out of the bathroom. Then we take the lift down three floors.”

“Why only three?” Ben asked. “Why not take it to the ground floor?”

“If we do that, our arrival will coincide with a team of six men, all armed to the back teeth and looking for retribution for their fallen queen. If we take the lift down three floors and then go down two flights of stairs before getting back in the lift, we miss them and they sail straight past us.”

Ben contemplated Asher’s words for a moment. “It must have been one hell of a detailed vision.”

“It was,” Asher said. “Unusually so. Do you trust me to get us out of here in one piece? Because if you don’t and you hesitate too long in one place, it won’t work.”

Ben’s pause before answering said that putting his life in someone else’s hands didn’t come easily. “Yeah, I trust you. After all, you didn’t need to be here.” His gaze flitted to me. “Neither of you did.”

“Two minutes,” Asher said before returning his focus to me. “Are you with me, Calisto?”

I reached up to cover the hands on my cheeks with my own, Asher’s skin reassuringly warm. Not ice. Not when you looked below the surface. Just a calm, immovable island in a sea of swirling chaos. “Always!”

Something about the way I’d said it had him studying me. I attempted to transmit everything I didn’t have the time or the words to say with my eyes, realization dawning on him after just a couple of seconds. “You feel it?” he asked, his voice barely more than a whisper.

I licked my lips, desperately searching for saliva in a throat that had gone way past dry. “I feel it. I saw it. I’m sorry I was ever in denial about it.”

Asher’s smile was beatific and lit up his entire face. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does. But I’ll make it up to you.”

Ben cleared his throat. “At the risk of ruining a beautiful moment, what’s the time check?”

“Thirty seconds,” Asher said, his hands reluctantly dropping from my face. “Are you going to be okay?”

I nodded. I got what he was trying to say, that he needed to concentrate to get us out of here, that he couldn’t do that if he had to drag me around like a useless doll. As hard as it might be, I needed to let go of what I’d done to O’Reilly, until such a time where it was safe to think about it. Then I could wallow. “I’m fine.”

After a probing look, Asher nodded. “Is Baxter here? We could probably use him.”

“No. He’s…” More emotions threatened to swamp me, but I mentally batted them away. Because there was something else I’d done during the haze of pure rage, something far more ill-advised than killing O’Reilly. And current evidence would suggest it hadn’t worked out the way I’d intended.

Sensing a story, Asher frowned. Before he could ask, I jerked my head to the door. “We must be on a countdown from ten, right?”

“Yeah.” He spun round and headed for the door, Ben stepping out of his way. Asher paused with his hand on the handle. “Everyone ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Ben said.

“Yeah,” I confirmed.

The next ten minutes were like a well-choreographed dance, Asher proving time and time again that the vision truly had shown him the route out of here. That didn’t mean there weren’t a few close calls, Ben and I constantly wiping sweat from our brows while Asher stayed as cool as ever. When the lift reached the ground floor without incident, instinct told me to run for the door and the cool night air I couldn’t wait to feel on my overheated skin.

Asher’s fingers wrapping around my biceps meant I got no further than a step. “Not that way.”

“But…” The door was right there, tormenting me with the illusion of freedom.

“Eight men,” Asher said, most of his instructions stripped back to words rather than sentences.

“Where, then?”

He led us back into the building. The ground floor lay in rack and ruin, forcing us to step over piles of rubbish and discarded drug paraphernalia. A door hung skew-whiff, the room it revealed looking like all the graffiti artists in London had convened there to show off their work, each one painting over what had come before. Someone had apparently used another flat as a squat before O’Reilly’s time there, the living room packed with dirty mattresses.

“Fire exit,” Asher explained as he kept going. Sure enough, when we turned the corner, there was a door. What were the chances of it being unlocked? Asher didn’t even try it, using the brick he’d picked up earlier—Ben, and I having shared a confused glance when he did it—to bludgeon the lock until it gave way.

And then we were out, and I was gulping in air that had never tasted so sweet. That wasn’t the best thing, though. The best thing was the familiar white van parked at the end of the alley, Asher and I urging Ben into a run as soon as we spotted it.

The door slid open when we were halfway there, Cade’s concerned face a beautiful sight. No sooner had we clambered inside, than the van took off, Jeremy’s expertise apparently extending to being a getaway driver. Only Asher’s steadying hand on my arm stopped me from falling as the van accelerated sharply. Cade almost suffered the same fate as he wrestled with closing the door, with the van already in motion.

Asher dragged me down onto a seat, Ben seeming happy with the floor. When I finally mustered the energy to lift my head, John and Bellamy were staring at me. “Did you do that?” Bellamy asked.

“Did I do what?” My voice sounded cracked and dry. Cade unearthed three bottles of water from somewhere and handed them out to his new passengers. Unscrewing the lid with hands that were far from steady, I drank half of its contents in a series of swallows. It was warm, presumably from sitting in the van all afternoon, but that didn’t affect my enjoyment of it. Cade could probably have passed me neat whiskey and I would still have drunk it.

John waited until I’d screwed the lid back on the water. “Did you give that bitch the big adios?”

The directness of the question took me by surprise. It shouldn’t have done because it was John. For once, Bellamy didn’t rein in his boyfriend, his slight lean forward saying he was just as keen to hear the answer.

“I…”

I didn’t get any further, Asher pulling my head into the curve of his neck and cupping my nape protectively. “Why don’t we save the questions until later? It’s been one hell of an evening and we both need food.”

“And a shower,” I said, burying my face deeper in his neck and not caring what anyone thought. Asher smelled of sweat with a slight tinge of this morning’s cologne, neither smell unpleasant.

“And a shower,” Asher agreed. “And a moment of damn peace without being interrogated.”

I held up my half empty bottle of water. “I’ll drink to that.” And then I closed my eyes, letting Asher’s warmth and the rocking movement of the van as we sped god knows where lull me into a state that wasn’t quite sleep, but something pretty close to it.