I swore, checking my phone. Sure enough, Lucen had called. I must not have heard the phone among all the commotion at Shawna’s.
“Can I get you anything?” Paulius asked.
Whiskey, a double sounded good, but I shook my head. My nerves were frayed, but drinking in Shadowtown did not feel wise. Not tonight when I half-expected retaliation at any moment.
I took to a quiet corner and listened to Lucen’s message. He didn’t say much of anything that Paulius hadn’t related, although he’d expressed far more concern and outrage on my behalf. Whatever he was up to with Dezzi, I got the feeling Lucen was out to kick some sylph ass.
Sighing, I hung up. Dezzi would talk him down from his righteous anger and probably attempt to speak with Assym. Assym would want to know why she cared. It could be an interesting conversation. I wished Lucen had waited for me so I could take part.
But you’re not a member of the council and wouldn’t be allowed to participate. Dezzi is making that clear.
Scowling, I sent Lucen a new text, telling him to let me know when he was back. Then I called Steph. If I couldn’t be surrounded by satyrs who had my back, I wanted to be in another neighborhood.
An hour later I met up with Steph at Kilpatrick’s pub for dinner. Guinness and greasy fish ’n’ chips made excellent comfort food, and I deserved some comfort.
“I hope I didn’t make you leave Jim behind,” I said. “I wouldn’t have minded if he came.”
Steph coated her fries in ketchup with an annoyed face. “He was thrilled that you called. One of his friends is hosting a poker night, so now he can go without feeling like he’s ditching me.”
“Good.”
She stuck her finger in my face. “Not good. If he loses money, I’m blaming you.”
“You realize that’s terribly unfair. It’s not like you were going to stop him from going in the first place.”
“I might have tried, but you sounded upset, so I couldn’t say no.”
“Yeah, there’s a reason for that.” I peeled excess batter off my fish and chewed slowly, wondering how much to divulge. “I was attacked by a few sylphs today while following a lead on Eric’s case.”
Steph smacked her beer bottle against her mouth in surprise. “Are you okay? Why didn’t you say something on the phone?”
“Because I’m fine, relax. I just needed to get out of Shadowtown for a while until my head cleared.”
“No kidding. I told you not to live there.”
“Yeah, you did. But I’ll be fine.”
She rolled her eyes. “Of course you will. That’s why you’re not there tonight. Because you feel totally safe surrounded by preds.”
I am a pred. But I swallowed down that thought with my beer. “I’m no less safe around preds who have it in for me than I am around humans who have it in for me. The really bad news is that I lost my lead, although in retrospect, I’m not sure she was much of a lead. The sylphs used her as a lure to get to me.”
“What do they want with you?”
“Everyone wants me. I’m that cool.”
Steph snorted. “Please. If you’re not going to be serious about being attacked, then give me an update on Eric’s case.”
That much I could do without reliving my afternoon, so I shared everything that had happened since the last time we’d talked. It wasn’t much, and Steph figured that out pretty fast.
“So you’re telling me they have nothing. It’s been almost a week, and the Gryphons have nothing.” Steph shoved her half-eaten burger away.
I played with my fork, drawing swirls in my ketchup and searching for an explanation. “It’s not nothing, but it’s moving slowly. For whatever reason, Eric didn’t seem to have a written contract with his goblin. It happens. Either that, or the goblin destroyed Eric’s copy to keep us from finding it. But we will find out who it was, and we will make them pay for it.”
“But it might be too late by then. Your Gryphon friend said there was a limited window to get his soul back.”
So Bridget had, and I had nothing to say to make Steph feel better about that. I also suspected mentioning to Steph that I was working an angle with the goblin Dom would only infuriate her more. “We’re trying.”
“I know you’re trying. I don’t doubt you.” She let out a frustrated cry and finished her beer. “I just hate it, Jess. I hate them. Every single damn pred. Why can’t we kill them all like the Gryphons used to do way back when? They’re all in Shadowtown. Just raze the entire fucking neighborhood, you excluded. They’re all evil parasites, and it’s not fair that we’re supposed to play nice with them when they don’t treat us the same way.”
I winced. “Some are bad, yeah, I won’t argue that. But…”
“Nuh-uh. No buts. Jesus, Jess. Three of them tried to kill you today. Why are you defending them?”
“I’m not defending those three. I’m just saying evil is a strong word. Evil suggests they like being cruel.”
“They turn people into fucking addicts. They feed off of suffering. That is the very definition of evil.”
Steph’s anger burned hotter with each word, and I couldn’t blame her. She was upset about what happened to Eric, worried for me and…wrong. Just wrong too.
I couldn’t help but think of Lucen, and not only how he was good to me, but how I’d seen him take care of the homeless ghouls wandering Shadowtown, and how he told me he thought it was wrong to let that happen to addicts.
I thought of my conversation with Devon too. How he claimed that most people had no idea what they were getting into when they changed, the longing in his voice when he’d commented on how lucky I was that I didn’t need addicts to survive.
And Angelia, brutally attacked by humans but still determined to make sure people didn’t get hurt with her magic.
Yes, their power hurt people, but I could not accept that they were all evil. Once I’d have agreed with Steph, but not anymore.
I wrapped my hands around my beer. “Evil suggests they enjoy being cruel. That’s not true of all of them, just like it’s not true of all humans. Some are evil, and some aren’t.”
“Bullshit. You’ve been spending too much time with that satyr so-called friend of yours, drinking their pred-flavored Kool-Aid. I’d have thought working for the Gryphons would counteract it, but it’s like you forget that you’re human just because you’re not as vulnerable to their magic.”
“I’m not human.” The words tumbled out of me by accident, a simple, automatic correction to her false statement.
Fuck.
My eyes opened wide. This was not how I’d planned to confess. I must have been too lost in my thoughts to hold my tongue.
Across from me, Steph blinked. “What?”
Blood rushed to my face, and I pressed my sweaty hands tighter around my beer glass to cool off. I had a choice. I could go on and tell her the truth, or I could keep lying. It would no longer be a lie of omission at this point. It would be a calculated, deliberate deception to my best friend of ten years. It would—no way around it—be a shitty thing to do.
Whatever I chose, this wasn’t going to end well. I might be able to smooth things over temporarily with a lie, but when I did admit the truth one day, she’d have every reason to be furious, and I would deserve her wrath. Shit, I deserved it now.
So screw it. It had already been an awful day. I might as well continue down that path and be a better friend even if I regretted it later.
I took a deep breath. “I’m not human.”
Steph’s anger was receding and fast, overwhelmed by confusion. “I heard you. What does that mean?”
I choked down a laugh. What could it mean except for exactly what it sounded like? She was in denial and no wonder. I’d been, too, when Gunthra had told me the truth.
“It means I’m not human. I’m…” Deep breath. “I’m a satyr.”<
br />
Steph’s face went as blank as her emotions went numb. Then she was the one who laughed. “Is this a joke to make me repent and rethink my opinion on satyrs? Because it’s not funny. I know about your gift, but you don’t have horns, Jess. You don’t have addicts. I’ve known you since the day the Gryphons kicked you out of their stupid Academy. You were wearing their uniform that night. You can’t possibly be a satyr.”
I swallowed. “And you know why the Gryphons kicked me out—my gift went rogue. They didn’t understand it, they thought it was vanishing. But it didn’t vanish. You know that too. It became a satyr’s power.”
“Yeah, but—”
“No buts, remember?”
Steph pushed her hair behind her shoulders. “Stop it. You’re not a satyr. Preds are a threat to you. They can work their magic on you. They can’t do that to other preds, and besides—you don’t have fucking horns. You don’t have addicts. You can’t arouse lusty feelings in people by standing next to them. Just because you were cursed—”
“I wasn’t cursed. I was wrong about that. I’m an anomaly, like a satyr subspecies that you’ve never seen before. And there’s so much more I could tell you about what I can do and how I got this way, but I don’t know if I’m allowed to because it’s really complicated.” I paused to gulp for air and reached for her arm. “But you deserve to know the truth.”
Steph snatched her arm away, and my stomach fell to the sticky floor beneath me. “No, don’t do that. I don’t understand what you’re telling me or why, and I don’t like it. You are not one of them because they are evil, and you’ve always been a good person.”
“I am one of them, and we are not all evil.”
“Do not say we.”
So conscious of every one of my breaths, I tried to gauge her emotions, but Steph was unfathomable. Her emotions were too wild, too screwed up for me to dissect them. But they were unhappy, that much I could tell, and it drove home how much of a pred I was. Breathing her in, I could get high enough to run circles around the city. It wasn’t like when I’d fed on the sylph’s power earlier, but it was close enough.
And it made me ill. The hurt and confusion and denial in her eyes sat in my gut like poison.
“Steph…” My voice trembled, and I searched for the right words that would help her deal. But what were they? I had a hard enough time dealing myself.
Eventually, she exhaled a slow, loud breath. “You’re telling me the truth.”
“Yes.”
“You’re a satyr.”
“I am.”
“Shit.” Steph reached into her wallet and threw a twenty down on the table while I watched, frozen. “Sorry, Jess, but I need time to process this.”
Then she got up and left, and I slumped in my seat, feeling more alone in the world than ever.
Chapter Twenty-Three
After Steph left, I stared into space. How many minutes ticked by, I couldn’t say, but I watched people come and go at the bar, listened to different voices laughing and swearing at the pool table, and smelled my dinner as it congealed on my plate. My stomach was too twisted to eat any more.
Well, I couldn’t say that had gone any worse than I’d feared. I could only hope that once Steph had a few days to think things through she’d get over it.
Like I’d done. Who was I kidding?
Cursing under my breath, I pulled out my phone. It would be nice if I had a message from Lucen, telling me he was back at The Lair, but naturally that didn’t happen. Why should anything good happen? That would be someone else’s life.
So where did I go? I didn’t want to head home and pace about my lonesome apartment, jumping at every noise and wondering if sylphs with straight razors were going to invade. I could go to Gryphon headquarters, I supposed, and resume my research for Gunthra. That made the most sense, except my head was spinning. The ability to concentrate was not something I had in abundance. And that left me where?
When I was younger and in this sort of mood, I sometimes went to Purgatory to dance off my stress. Maybe that was what I needed then. Not Purgatory, per se. I wasn’t dressed to get in, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to run into Devon two nights in a row, but physical activity might do me good. Boston was a great city for walking.
I finished settling the tab and left. The night was warm and humid, and I kept a brisk pace. It wasn’t long before my mood improved, and my heart beat a steady rhythm. Fear and angst were like a toxin that could be cleansed through a good sweating.
I wandered aimlessly and until my feet hurt, only stopping to check my phone at various crosswalks in case Lucen had gotten back to me and I hadn’t heard it over the traffic. But he didn’t, and after a few crosswalks, I quit checking, content to be left alone.
The night was alive and vibrant, filled with the rush of cars and a thousand lights lining the streets. I reveled in the anonymity. Here I was one face among many, not a freak but another twenty-something, so easily overlooked and forgotten.
At the next turn, I followed a group of men and women about my age as they crossed the street, and I realized I’d ended up along the row of clubs and bars where Purgatory resided. Outside the buildings, lines of impatient people snaked down the pavement, and Purgatory was no exception. Only the clothes people wore and the unnatural colors of their dyed hair distinguished them. I could hear thudding bass from the various establishments, and taste the tang of alcohol and smoke that clung to the air.
Exhilarating as it was, however, my feet were getting sore. I’d easily walked a few miles, and though the city seethed with negativity and excitement to keep me fueled, turning around and going home might be wise. Or it would be if it weren’t for the sylphs that could be waiting.
But maybe Lucen… I checked my phone for the first time in a while, but I had zero messages. Damn.
Sticking my phone away, I was suddenly irked by the laughter and good moods surrounding me. A woman in line at Purgatory screeched with delight about something, shattering the last defense I had against the darkness of my day. So much for my exercise-induced euphoria. I was crashing and burning, doomed to feel every last blister forming on my feet during the long walk home. Plus my stomach was realizing that I never gave it much for dinner.
“Jess?”
Lost in my sour thoughts, I jumped as a clove-scented arm landed around my shoulders. “Just who I was hoping to find.”
I stiffened, then extricated myself from Devon’s hold. “Were you? And what are you doing out here? Club’s that way.” I jerked my thumb behind us.
“I’m aware of that.” He adjusted the sleeves on his sports coat. “Dezzi’s got Lucen and a few others busy with the sylph issue, and we wanted to make sure you weren’t…” he examined me up and down, “…going to do anything stupid. You have a history, if you recall.”
Mostly that history involved sneaking into Purgatory and doing things Devon disapproved of. Fortunately, that wasn’t on my to-do list tonight. “Your faith in my good behavior is sweet. What could I possibly do?”
“I don’t know—stick that knife of yours into Assym?”
I ran my hand over Misery. “Tempting, but that would assume I knew where to find him. I was hoping Assym would be cowering from me in some dark hole, actually.”
“That’s conceivable. He’s a coward. As for me, since you asked, I just got here. When I sensed you nearby, I went looking. And here you are.”
This wasn’t the first time Devon had indicated he could pick my emotions out of a crowd. Lucen could do it too. According to Paulius, there were a few possible explanations. Either the two of them were simply that damn powerful, or they noticed me in a way they didn’t notice other people. Like how you could pick a friend’s voice out of background noise.
“I was out for a walk,” I said, wiping the sweat off the back of my neck. How bad did I smell? “A crappy day required exercise. But I’m lea
ving now.”
“Why don’t you come in?”
I pulled at my T-shirt. “I’m not exactly dressed for it.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re with me. You’re tired. Have you eaten?”
“Yes.” My traitorous stomach rumbled. It didn’t consider a few bites of my fish to count. “Sort of, but I’m fine.”
Devon held out a hand. “Come along, little siren. Isn’t that what Lucen calls you? Why is that?”
“It’s a long story.” Actually, it wasn’t, but I didn’t like Devon calling me by Lucen’s pet name.
“You can tell me about it while you eat, and also tell me why you’re in such a bad mood.”
I crossed my arms. “Do you have to pry into my head like that?”
“No, but I do enjoy it.” He waved his hand in front of me, urging me to take it. “Lucen should be free in about an hour. I don’t think you want to hang out by yourself, do you?”
I silently cursed preds and their emotion-reading abilities. There, make you happy, Steph?
It didn’t make me happy, and I relented with a sigh. No, I did not want to be alone. “Yeah, okay.”
Devon took me around back, and we entered through the kitchen. “What is it?” he asked again after requesting food and wine be sent up to his office.
The commotion and normality of the scene weirded me out. “I’m remembering that the last time I was in this part of the club, it was deserted and one of Lucrezia’s addicts was holding me at gunpoint.”
“Oh, dearest Crezi. Fun, wasn’t she? I wonder how she’s holding up in prison.”
“Badly, I hope.”
Devon unlocked a door that opened into a dimly lit stairwell. “Someone’s feeling vindictive.”
“She tried to kill me. Plus someone’s in a bad mood.”
“Noted. Maybe I should have requested multiple bottles of wine.”
[M__M 03] Misery Loves Company Page 22
