“I want my daughter to get into the Royal Academy of Arts.”
A.k.a., the supernatural equivalent of Juilliard. It’s a performing arts school that caters to students with special abilities.
The Bargainer whistles. “Last I heard, almost all the slots for next year’s incoming class were full. I’d have to pull a lot strings …”
“You know I’m good for it,” the man says.
I hear the gentle lap of water as it brushes against the buoys and the walkways down here.
“And what will you give me?” the Bargainer asks.
The man clears his throat. “I have information on a series of ley line entrances that the House of Keys is considering destroying.”
The House of Keys is the supernatural world’s government. It didn’t matter if you were American or Argentinian or Australian, so long as you were a supernatural, you had to follow their laws first and foremost.
“Mmm,” the Bargainer says, “I need you to do better than that if you want the deal. I need you to prevent that legislation from getting passed in the first place.”
“There’s no way,” the man says. “It’s public sentiment. People are worried about their homes, their neighborhoods. There’s been a rise in the changeling population—”
“Best of luck with your daughter’s future.” The Bargainer places a hand on my back and begins to steer us out of there.
I guess shutting a bargain down is as simple as that.
Behind us, the man blubbers out some more excuses and explanations.
We’re almost to the stairway when we hear it.
“Wait—wait! Fine, I’ll do it.”
I cast a side glance at Des. A nefarious smile spreads across his face.
“Then we have a deal,” the Bargainer says, not bothering to look over his shoulder. “Make sure that legislation doesn’t pass. It would be a shame if your daughter didn’t get in to any of the schools she applied for.”
And with that, the two of us leave.
Back out on the streets of Venice, I reappraise Des. “That was pretty cold,” I say as we begin to walk, my boots clicking against the cobblestones.
“That was business, cherub. If you want to come along with me, you better get used to it—and worse.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re a bad dude.”
He nods to my bracelet. “One day you’ll have to pay all those back. Are you scared now?”
A little.
But when I look in Desmond’s eyes, I get the distinct impression that he doesn’t want me to be scared. That despite trying to frighten me, he doesn’t want to push me away.
I guess that makes two of us.
“I would be if you weren’t wearing your hair in a girly little ponytail,” I say, reaching for the ends of his white hair.
He catches my hand. “It’s not good manners to taunt a fairy. We have notoriously thin skin.” Despite the threat, his eyes spark with excitement.
“I’m sorry,” I say, “your ponytail is very masculine. I feel like I’m going to grow a beard just looking at it”
“Mouthy thing,” he says endearingly.
We walk along the Grand Canal, passing tourists as we go. I watch boats move down the canal. Looking out over it are gift shops and restaurants, their warm light spilling out onto the streets.
Venice. It’s even more wonderful than what I imagined it would be like.
“Before we go, can we take a gondola ride?” I ask.
The Bargainer’s upper lips curl when he sees one such boat pass by us. “Why would I ever—?”
“And can we swing by one of those gift shops so I can get a mask?”
I’d also like some gelato—and perhaps a blown glass bottle—but I won’t push my luck too far.
He groans. “Haven’t you ever heard the expression ‘Don’t mix business with pleasure’?”
A sly smile spreads across my face. “Aww, are you suggesting I’m pleasure?” My heart is thumping way too loud.
He frowns severely at me. “I’m definitely rubbing off on you.”
He really is.
“C’mon, it’ll be fun,” I say, grabbing his hand and tugging him towards a little area along the canal where several gondolas wait.
Behind me the Bargainer says, “I’ll only agree to this if you do me one favor—”
Me do him a favor? “Yeah, anything.”
“Please give me my balls back at the end of the evening.”
Present
Even after we land in front of Des’s home and Eli is a whole body of water away from us, the Bargainer doesn’t immediately release me. Instead, his claw-tipped wings brush against my hair as they wrap around us protectively.
“Des?”
His wings twitch.
He lets out a shuddering sigh. “I kept thinking that something was going to happen to you,” he whispers, his voice hoarse. “I kept seeing that animal turning on you. I feared I wouldn’t get to you in time.” His entire body trembles.
Right now I feel oddly vulnerable with him. Maybe it’s the raw honesty in his words; Des has always been careful to bury his feelings under wit and wiliness. Maybe it’s that I felt that same fear when I saw Eli lunging for him. And maybe it’s simply being held in his arms after choosing this life, and not the one I left back at my house.
I lean my forehead against his, placing my hand against his cheek. “Thank you for coming for me,” I say.
I fear what would’ve happened if he hadn’t.
“Cherub,” he says, his voice serious, “I will always come for you.”
We stay like that for another minute, unmoving. It’s actually kind of nice under these wings of his, but eventually I get antsy to put my own two feet back on the ground.
“Des,” I say, “you can put me down.”
Reluctantly, he releases my legs, letting me stand, but he keeps my upper half still caught up in his arms. His wings pull back, but they won’t fold nicely behind him. Instead, they keep spreading and retracting, spreading and retracting, looking agitating.
“He visited you during one of the Sacred Seven,” Des says. “He thought of you as his mate, and he knowingly put you in danger.” Now his wings billow out around him, flapping angrily, those talons of his looking particularly sharp. Des releases me. “He is no true mate if he thought to do that.”
Des is right of course, but I’m not even thinking about me at the moment. All I can see when I close my eyes is Eli charging at Des. He would’ve killed him.
And then another thought strikes me.
“Oh God,” I say quietly. “We left a fully shifted werewolf in a residential neighborhood.”
“I already contained him; he can’t venture beyond your property for the night. Hopefully by morning he’ll have gotten control of himself.” Des looks at me apologetically. “I’m sorry about your house.”
I’m just relieved he can’t hurt anyone else for the moment.
And then another horrifying thought hits me.
I won’t be able to go back home tonight.
Not unless I want to chance another encounter with an angry werewolf.
I rub my face. I glamoured and then spurned an alpha werewolf.
Once he was back in his right frame of mind, he could put out a warrant for my arrest. Even if he decided not to press charges, he’d do something to punish me for glamouring him, spurning him, humiliating him. The alpha in him would demand nothing less.
He knows exactly where I live, and earlier he made it more than clear that a locked door wouldn’t stop him from entering.
Tonight I can’t go back, but could I go back tomorrow? Or the next night? Or the next? Would I feel safe knowing how easily he broke in and how quickly he shifted?
Des’s eyes are sad. “Cherub, my home is your home,” he says, reading my thoughts, “for as long as you need it.”
I look over my shoulder, at the sprawling house behind me. All that furniture Des had me purchase, it had all been to furnish a single guestroom in his house.
A room I’d now likely stay in.
And when he confronted Eli, Des hadn’t acted surprised or confused by any of what happened back at my home. And the only reason for that would be …
I swivel back to him. “You knew,” I say, remembering how he taunted my ex earlier. “You kissed me that first night knowing I was with Eli.”
My anger’s rising.
The Bargainer knows my heart; he knew I’d never settle for being romantic with two men at once. All he had to do was plant the seed—brush a chaste kiss along my lips and suggest that he and I would be intimate. Easier than snapping his fingers, I’d broken up with Eli.
And now there’s a room in Des’s home just waiting for me.
I feel like a fly caught in the Bargainer’s web. I’m playing right into his hand.
I went from a controlling man to a scheming one.
Des’s jaw tightens. “Callie—”
“Do you do this for all your clients? Force them to break ties with their boyfriends? Furnish a room in your house just for them?”
He steps up to me, his eyes bright with life. “I’m not doing this with you. Not tonight.”
“No, you won’t, will you?” I challenge. There’s fire in my veins, fire that’s been building from the moment Des reentered my life. “You’ll just run like you always do.”
He catches my face. “Does it look like I’m running, Callie? Does it look like I’m trying to leave your side?”
“But you will,” I say fervently.
How did this conversation become me airing my own insecurities?
“You want to speak truths,” he says hotly, “here’s one for you: this isn’t about the dog, this is about us.”
“Will you stop calling Eli that?” I say.
The Bargainer releases my face and squints down at me. “You defend him even now?”
“He still means something to me.” And I hurt him. Deeply.
A muscle in Des’s cheek feathers.
The Bargainer steps in close, his lips curling up in a sardonic smile. “You have over three hundred favors to repay me. By the time we’re done, you will realize that Eli and all those other men were just a dissatisfying dream. That this, and only this, is real.”
Chapter 11
January, seven years ago
I lay back on my bed and play with my bracelet. “Do all your clients get bracelets?” ask the Bargainer. I smirk at the thought of some criminal with his dainty string of black beads.
Leaning his back against the foot of my bed, Des flips through the Magic & Science magazine he picked up from my bedside table.
“Nope.”
I hold my wrist up to the light, twisting it this way and that, trying to get my overhead light to reflect against the polished beads; it seems instead like the beads absorb the light deep into them.
“What do your other clients get?” I ask.
Des flips another page. “Tats.”
I sit up. “Tats? They get tats?” Absently my eyes move to the two Venetian masks hanging on my wall that Des and I picked out in Venice—one with the beaked bill of a plague doctor and the other with the painted face of a harlequin.
“Why didn’t I get a tattoo?” I ask. The bracelet that a moment ago I thought was so cool now seems like a lame substitute.
The Bargainer closes the magazine and set it aside. “Do you want a tattoo instead?”
“Of course,” I say absently, missing the warning note in his voice.
A tattoo would be so much edgier than a flimsy bead.
Des turns himself so that he’s facing me at the foot of my bed.
And then he climbs onto it.
The Bargainer is prowling up my bed—and up me while he’s at it.
I can’t breathe. I legit don’t think I can breathe.
The dangerous look in his eyes shuts down all coherent thought. This might be the moment when our relationship goes from a strange sort of friendship to something more.
I’m so frightened of that possibility. I’m so eager for it.
He straddles my waist, his powerful, leather-clad thighs trapping me between him. Leaning down, he takes my hand, the one that isn’t wearing the bracelet.
My heart’s going to escape my chest. It’s galloping away like crazy. I’ve never been this close to Des. And now I’m pretty sure I’m never going to be satisfied until it’s natural to be this close with him.
My skin begins to glow, and Des is kind enough to ignore the fact that I’m pretty much turned way the hell on.
He runs a palm along my wrist and my forearm. Beneath his touch, inked tally marks appear on my skin, rows and rows of them. “You would rather have this than beads?” he asks.
I drag my attention away from Des to get a better look at the markings.
They’re … ugly. Vile in a way I’ve never considered a tattoo to be.
“You can wear my ink on your skin,” he says, his voice coaxing. “Just say the word, and I’ll transfer it all over. It won’t even cost you a bead.”
Des waits for me to answer. When I don’t, the markings fade until they disappear altogether.
“That’s what I thought.” He releases my hand and pivots himself off of me. Resituating himself against the foot of my bed once more, he picks up the magazine and resumes flipping through it. “I’m not going to mark you up like some common criminal,” he says over his shoulder, “and you shouldn’t want that anyway. The Politia looks for that kind of thing. They’d have an aneurism if they saw a teenage girl with over a hundred marks.”
“Why?” I ask, holding the wrist he just touched. “Is that unusual?”
He doesn’t answer for a moment, but I can tell by his stillness that he’s no longer reading.
Finally, he tosses the magazine aside and stands. He runs a hand through his hair, avoiding my eyes. “I need to go.”
That’s all the warning I get before he turns on his heel and heads to my door.
“Wait!” I scramble to my feet and grab his arm. As usual, a small thrill runs through me at the contact. “Don’t go, please.” Without meaning to, I’ve begun to glow in earnest now, my glamour accidentally slipping into my voice.
Des’s eyes are on my hand, my hand that’s really fucking enjoying the feel of his corded arm.
“Cherub, you’re surrounded by over a thousand people your age. I need to work and you need to get better friends than me.”
“I just want to be around you.”
“Why?” he says, his eyes searching mine.
Because I can’t control you. Because you know my secrets. Because you make me feel normal.
Because in spite of all logic and reason, I think I might be in love with you.
“Please,” I say.
But it’s not enough. Gently, Des pries my hand off his arm, and then he’s gone.
Present
Just when I think the Bargainer is going to proclaim his true feelings for me, his face shuts down.
He leads me inside, the two of us tense. I’m rattled by Eli, by this evening, but most of all by Des.
I walk ahead of him, plopping down on one of his barstools. “So, I’m staying here for the night?”
Des saunters in after me, leaning against one of his cupboards. “Unless you’d prefer I drop you back off at the dog run your house has turned into.”
I just give him a look. He returns it, his heated gaze moving over me. His wings are still out. The siren in me really likes that. So does t
he woman.
I slide off the barstool and open his refrigerator. “So, when are we—” I let out a little noise, distracted by the food in the fridge.
The thing’s filled with all my favorites—samosas, pizza, pasta, pie, fried rice, macaroni salad. Out of curiosity I open the freezer.
Ice cream, mini quiches, ice cream cake—what?—taquitos.
I throw the Bargainer a squinty glance. “You so prepared for this.”
He lifts a shoulder, but his eyes are laughing.
I turn back to the fridge. “You’re going to fatten me up like a Thanksgiving turkey,” I mutter.
Seriously though.
I grab the container of cookie dough ice cream and pull it out, setting it on the island bar. “Spoon?”
He opens the drawer next to him and tosses it to me. I barely manage to catch the thing before it takes out an eyeball.
I’m about to scoop out a bite of the ice cream when I catch sight of a white paper bag next to him.
No. Effing. Way. “Are those … ?” I can’t even ask it.
“French macaroons from Douglas Café,” he finishes for me.
Forgetting about the ice cream, I get up and head over to Des. “Douglas is far away.” Half a world away.
“Ley lines, cherub,” he says.
“Can I?” I ask, indicating the bag.
“They’re for you.” He watches me as I reach around him.
He so planned on me being here tonight. I wonder if he planned on the evening turning out the way it had, or if he had something else entirely up his sleeve. Knowing what a trickster he is, I wouldn’t be surprised on the latter.
His eyes flick to the ice cream. It lifts off the table, floating towards the freezer. One of the sleek, stainless steel refrigerator doors open, and the ice cream slides in. The spoon soars back across the room, the drawer opening in time for it to clatter inside.
Seeing all this brings a cozy warmth to the pit of my stomach, the kind that comes with happy, familiar memories.
Rhapsodic (The Bargainer Book 1) Page 11
