“So you’re saying I stand out? Peachy.”
“You’ve always stood out, little siren.”
I grimaced. Though Lucen meant it as a good thing, it rarely had felt that way to me. More than ever, it was likely to be a bad thing. We and our families will be first in line for the slaughter.
Lucen seemed reluctant to let go of me as I took my preferred seat at the end of the bar. In the mirror that faced me, I scanned the room. Dezzi must have left, but a handful of satyrs remained, talking in low voices. Any moment I expected the door to open and Devon to breeze through, but of course that wasn’t happening. As glad as I was that Lucen was attempting to keep some semblance of normality, it was depressing when the normality was all wrong.
He rubbed a warm hand across my back, and I might have melted into the furniture. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing really. Was thinking about Devon. Any change?” Raj had cursed Devon unconscious when the satyrs and Gryphons had tried rescuing me in the Alps, and none of the usual counter-curses had revived him. It was one of the many reasons killing Raj should have been a fist-pumping triumph.
Lucen’s hand tensed then resumed its motion. “Not yet. Azria mentioned earlier that she’s working on a new counter-curse. He needs to stop being so lazy and wake the hell up. This isn’t a good time to leave me with his responsibilities on top of my own.”
Lucen’s tone couldn’t rise to the occasion to match his words, and his attempt at humor fell flat, which was unusual but unsurprising. Devon had been his good friend for ages. However furious I was at Raj, and however upset I was about Devon’s situation, it had to be far worse for Lucen.
“This isn’t just about Devon,” Lucen said, and I didn’t need to read his emotions to tell he wanted to change the topic. “Talk to me.”
Yawning, I forced myself to sit up straighter. Barstools made slouching dangerous. “About what? I’m tired, like I said. It’s been a long night.”
“But a productive one.” His left hand joined the right, and he began massaging my shoulders. “You should be happy, and instead you’re sad.”
“Everything here is right and yet wrong.” Briefly, I shared what I’d been thinking, not only about Devon but about the fake normality.
Lucen let me go, and while I spoke, he went behind the bar. “We’ll get it back to being right soon enough.”
Would we? Theo didn’t think so.
When I said nothing in response, Lucen set an empty mug in front of me. “Coffee?”
I shook my head. “It’ll keep me up, and I really do need sleep.”
Lucen poured a mug for himself, another reminder that the world had gone mad. This time of the night—make that early morning—he typically drank beer if he was drinking. He noted my raised eyebrow with a shrug. “I don’t like you being sad, little siren, but I am glad you’re back to normal yourself.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “What does that mean?”
“After what happened with Raj…” He paused to sip his coffee, and I got the sense he was waiting for me to jump in. I declined, not wanting to talk about Raj. Alas, that was apparently Lucen’s point. “You’re doing it again since I mentioned his name.”
“Doing what?” Getting irritated?
“Shutting down. Going numb. All that nearly manic energy you were—”
“Manic? I wasn’t manic. I was focused. I was excited to be making progress. I had momentum.”
Lucen pressed my twitchy hands into the wood. “You were making yourself move so fast because if you paused to breathe, you would have to deal with what you did.”
I sucked on my lip. “I did what I had to do. It wasn’t anything more than Raj deserved.”
“I wouldn’t claim otherwise.” He released his death grip on my hands and placed a shot glass in front of me. “You’ve never killed anyone before, have you?” It was a statement masquerading as a question.
I hadn’t, not to my knowledge. I’d gotten into fights, tossed curse grenades at people, hit Gryphons with chairs. I’d shot at preds, but they’d lived. Hell, I’d nearly killed a fury once and had beaten the magic out of his serial killer addict. Yet despite that, all of which had been done in self-defense or defense of others, my kill tally was zero.
Funny how I’d never even thought about having a kill tally until tonight.
My silence spoke for me as Lucen poured some top-shelf bourbon into the shot glass. “Drink it.”
“I don’t need—”
“Just do it. Believe me, I’m not recommending you make a habit of treating your moral conflicts with alcohol, but you’re not going to sleep tonight without some help. I’ve seen enough people go through what you’re dealing with.”
I sighed and sipped the bourbon. Lucen had killed people before. He was old enough to have lived through more brutal times, and pred-on-pred violence remained a depressingly regular part of life in Shadowtown and similar communities. Each domus operated like its own little mob competing for addicts and power, and most humans were blissfully unaware of what went on. The façade of peace preds maintained was a shallow one. It existed primarily because they despised the Gryphons and magi more than each other.
That Lucen had risen to his position in such a society was indicative of his intelligence, his ability to snag useful addicts and undoubtedly a willingness to do the nasty things that had to be done for survival. It didn’t make him a bad person exactly, no more so than any other pred, but there was no question that he’d had to have nurtured a hard exterior to protect the generally kind person who lurked within.
In fact, now that my memory was going down this route, it wasn’t too long ago that I’d seen Lucen decapitate a harpy who was attacking us in bird form. It hadn’t seemed to bother him, although I hadn’t known Lucen as well then. Maybe he had gone home and drank afterward. Maybe he did know that of which he spoke.
Regardless, I wasn’t about to let good bourbon go to waste.
“I wanted Raj dead. I wanted to be the one who killed him. But watching him bleed out…” I closed my eyes, seeing red everywhere, then took another sip. “It wasn’t the satisfaction I expected. And I don’t get it. After everything he did, it shouldn’t bother me. So why does it?”
Lucen’s smile was entirely sympathetic, and he gave my wrist a squeeze. “Because you’re a decent person, Jess. That’s what separates you from Raj. Killing others should never be pleasant. Fortunately, or unfortunately, it gets easier, just like most things the more you do them.”
“There is going to be more, isn’t there?” I examined the cuts and calluses on my hands. I was going to have a lovely scar on the back of my right one from when I’d hit the asphalt at the airport. Tough skin. That was what I needed—literally and figuratively—if I was going to survive.
“Before this is over, it seems inevitable.”
I downed the last drop of bourbon. “Do you think we really can succeed?”
Lucen poured a second shot, drank half of it, then refilled the glass and pushed it toward me. “I have to believe it, little siren. I have to.”
Chapter Nine
At his insistence, I spent the night at Lucen’s, though to be honest, he didn’t need to insist very hard. While he closed The Lair, I went up to his apartment and crashed. In spite of his fear that I wouldn’t be able to sleep, I didn’t even notice him climbing into bed. Either he’d been completely wrong about my conscience, or he’d snuck a sleeping charm into the bourbon. I wouldn’t have put the latter past him.
Lucen and others were due at Gryphon headquarters later the next day to discuss plans, but I had to be there a few hours earlier to continue my magical training. I left Lucen in bed, went home to shower, change and eat, then prepared to head out. When I opened my door to leave, I discovered two satyrs standing there.
Gi had his hand raised, poised to knock. Melissa was behind him. They were both decked out in their fu
ll bodyguard gear, looking like a couple of leather-clad badasses.
Human ones. They were both wearing disguise charms to hide their horns as well.
“Um, hi?”
Gi stepped out of the way as I exited the apartment. He didn’t appear badly injured from last night, or if he was, his clothing hid the extent of it. “Forgot we were coming by?”
“That would suggest I’d ever known to expect you.”
Melissa had a smirk on her face as she headed down the stairs, as if my reaction had been anticipated. “Dezzi and Lucen thought there might be retaliation after what went down last night. They want you protected.”
“Of course they do, and naturally they didn’t tell me.” I locked the apartment, not bothering to resist. We’d been through this drill before, and it was easiest on everyone just to roll with it.
Gi took up the rear. “It’s for the best. You’ve heard about what’s going on at the Gryphon building?”
I paused, my gut tightening with worry, then I opened the door onto the street. “Um, no. What’s going on at the Gryphon building?”
Gi’s voice was grim. “You’ll see.”
* * * * *
You’ll see. If that was only the extent of it. Reality was more like you’ll see, hear and be swallowed up by it.
Half an hour later, sweat beaded on my neck, courtesy of my anxiety and the extreme heat that continued to strangle the city. Several dozen protestors had gathered in front of Gryphon headquarters, waving signs and chanting words I couldn’t make out. The Boston PD had set up barricades to provide a safe aisle for people like us to walk down on our way toward the building, but not everyone was respecting boundaries. Without even knowing who we were, a couple people shouted anti-magic slurs at us.
I rolled my eyes and pressed on, and apparently that infuriated one of the demonstrators even more. She ducked under a barricade, but to do what, I never found out. Melissa jumped in front of me, and the woman’s hand snagged the disguise charm my bodyguard wore around her neck, exposing her horns.
The woman’s face turned white, and she shrieked. “Satyrs!”
Shit. I couldn’t imagine how anyone heard her over the noise, but the people nearby did and they repeated her cry. The word and the ensuing panic spread throughout the crowd faster than we could beat it the hell out of there.
Gi wrapped an arm around me, and I swore as the barricades on either side of us came crashing down. On my left, a man about my age grabbed at my shirt collar. I was pretty sure he’d mistaken my pendant for a disguise charm and intended to rip it off, but this was hardly the time to explain that it was actually a tracking charm. The finer nuances of magic—and well, everything else logical—were lost on these people.
Angry mobs weren’t known for their interest in reasoned discussions.
What they did do, however, was provide me with one hell of a hit of magical energy. I smacked the guy’s arm away and shoved him into the swarming crowd with more force than I’d intended. His peppery anger surged as he fell, and a potent lemon fear rose to the surface. Then the particular taste of this one man’s emotions dissolved into the wretched blend of the couple hundred others I had to contend with.
Some people fought to get to us, apparently in an attempt to rip us limb from limb, while others ran away. Gi tried to block my body with his as we continued pushing our way through, but he was in as much trouble as I was. Normally, most humans wouldn’t mess with as imposingly built a guy as Gi, particularly once they knew he was a satyr. But as I’d discussed with Lucen last night, these were not normal times. Angry, frightened people clawed at my bodyguard, tearing off his hat and threatening to expose more of his sun-phobic skin to the afternoon light.
I love humanity, I reminded myself. I used to want to be a part of it, and I want to save these people.
Well, maybe not these people in particular.
Somewhere in the crowd, these people in particular were starting a new chant. I couldn’t make out most of the words, but “kill” definitely caught my attention. Peachy. I did not like the sound of that. If this was the appetizer stage of the apocalypse, I wanted to be drunk off my ass by the time the main course was unleashed.
Alas, drinking my way to the end of the world wasn’t an option for me. Just as it wasn’t supposed to be an option for me to go around punching all the hate-spewing, frightened people who were adding to my stress levels. I was supposed to be playing nice in the hope that it would prevent further violence, but the louder the chanting got, the less inclined I was to hold my fists. The next person who touched me was becoming my stand-in for the apocalypse and getting decked with the full power of my frustration.
“Almost there,” Gi said as I tripped over a fallen police barricade.
I had to take his word on that since I was too short to see above the crowd. Our march through this melee felt like it was taking forever. For every step I got closer to the building, I was shoved two backward.
The police had been keeping people off the building’s massive steps. I was counting on them remaining clear, but I was also beginning to think that was unrealistically optimistic.
“Jess!” Somewhere straight ahead, a familiar voice called out my name. My heart beat faster as I strained to see who it was. When I opened my mouth to yell back, one of the demonstrators whacked me in the back with her sign.
That was it. I was done. Enough with this woman and the sour orange taste of her fear, enough with the reek of two hundred sweaty bodies, and enough with playing nice.
I spun around and snatched the woman’s sign. Cardboard tore in my hands. But instead of trying to hold on, the woman unexpectedly let go of her end, and I stumbled backward into Gi. His body braced me as I swore and fought for balance.
Strangely, the woman who just a moment ago had tried to beat me with a stick ignored me when I glared at her, and she was no longer the only one. People were pointing up, toward Gryphon headquarters. Craning, my neck, I searched for whatever had distracted them, and was shocked to see the sky turning blue. Not blue as in the color the sky was supposed to be, but blue as in someone was spraying down the crowd with sweet-scented blue gas. Dragon shit on toast. Wasn’t this getting better and better?
Fearing the worst, I put one hand over my mouth and used my stolen sign as a bludgeon, swinging it wildly to clear a path toward the building. Only belatedly did I realize I probably should have been running in the opposite direction if the cops were gassing people.
“Jess!” The same familiar male voice yelled my name, and a tan hand reached out to me.
“Andre?”
Agent Andre Pagan helped me up the first couple granite stairs in front of the stately building. Gi was right behind me, and I lowered the sign as the crowd settled back behind us.
“Hang on,” Andre said. He picked up a small canister by his feet, aimed the hose on the end of it toward the crowded sidewalk, and doused the air in more of the blue gas.
Blinking, I glanced around and discovered two other Gryphons with similar contraptions doing the same thing. None of them wore gas masks, and I slowly lowered my hand from my mouth. Whatever they were spraying didn’t seem to have an effect on me either, other than making my nose burn with the powerful scent of gardenias.
“You okay?” Gi asked. His clothes were disheveled and his sunglasses were missing.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
Melissa burst through the crowd a second later, her red lips set in a scowl. Without a word, she adjusted my shirt for me and fixed my necklace. “Can’t risk Lucen seeing you look abused. Some bodyguard I am if I’m the one causing trouble.”
“You didn’t cause it,” I told her. “They did.”
For the first time, I noticed a faint, cherry-like scent from Melissa’s pheromones as she fussed with me. My skin tingled with magically induced lust near her fingers, and it hit me fully how a pred’s magic w
as as much for defense as offense. Yes, we called them preds because they were predators, but they could still be prey. With their power, a pred could subdue one, maybe two, human opponents. But an angry mob? Not so much.
I combed my fingers through my hair and assessed the crowd. Things had quieted to a murmur. A few people had fled, but most were backing up politely while the PD reset their barricades. It was all far less boisterous than it had been before Melissa had been outed as a satyr. “What happened, and what is that blue stuff?”
Andre signaled to a cop and started up the steps. “This? This is my new best friend. I call it kumbaya gas.”
“Some kind of magical tranq?”
I could sense Andre’s apprehension at talking with satyrs nearby, but he nodded as though everything was totally normal. “Yup. We’ve recently been authorized to use it. It won’t work on preds, and we’re covered in glyphs that protect us from it, but it’s better than valium on a regular human. Personally, if this insanity keeps up, I’m pushing to have a liquid version of it pumped into the municipal water system.”
“If this keeps up,” I repeated Andre’s words, my stomach sick with dread.
Realizing I still carried the stolen sign, I tossed it to the granite steps. MAGIC IS UNNATURAL was written on it in bright green letters. The sentiment was as uninformed and ridiculous as what was on some of the other signs, but at least the person who’d created it knew how to spell.
“What is with the mob out front?” I asked. “I thought the demonstrations were being held at the Common?”
Gi opened the main door, and we filed into the safety of headquarters. The four of us paused in the busy lobby, and Andre set down his canister to wipe sweat from his brow.
“People are not happy with the Gryphons today,” he said.
“Why? Most humans practically worship you, especially under the circumstances. They’re counting on you to save the world.”
Andre shook his head. “Gryphon U.S.A. Headquarters issued a statement this morning, specifically not lending their support to the HELP Act. That’s what’s got those people outside riled up.”
Misery Happens Page 8
