Feather (Angels of Elysium Book 1)

by Olivia Wildenstein

  As I walked alongside him, I caught movement in my peripheral vision. A man dressed in a black suit detached himself from the shadows and threw a bladed glare our way. Tristan nodded to him, and the man ducked back into obscurity. Another black-clad figure prowled the opposite wall. I was suddenly incredibly thankful for my chance meeting. I wasn’t sure how I would’ve gone about entering Jarod’s domain if it weren’t for the man beside me.

  “New York,” I finally said.

  He knocked twice on a nondescript door. “And how old are you?”

  “Old enough.”

  His lips quirked.

  What had prompted me to answer that? Nerves. I was nervous.

  A man clad in a bespoke suit filled the door frame. “Back so soon, Tristan?”

  “Do I ever truly leave?” my escort answered good-naturedly.

  “Unfortunately not.”

  Tristan chuckled.

  “Who’s the girl?” the big man asked.

  “A friend,” Tristan said slowly. “A friend who’d like an audience with the boss.”

  The man studied me a long moment before stepping back to let me through. He nodded to my bag, which I opened to prove no weapon was stashed inside.

  He grunted. “Elle est mignonne, celle-là.” She’s cute, this one.

  My spine tingled from the derogatory comment. “Celle-là parle le Français.” This one speaks French, I shot back.

  The man’s lips flattened. “Your bag. It stays here. As well as your phone. Muriel!” he called out.

  A woman sporting a fitted, knee-length dress and auburn hair coiled in a sleek twist parted a set of heavy curtains.

  The guard nodded to my outfit. “Tu t’occupes d’elle?” Can you get her ready?

  Muriel’s heavily made-up eyes glinted in the dim lighting of the vestibule as she looked me up and down.

  “See why you didn’t have to worry about your outfit?” Tristan whispered into my ear, making goose bumps spring across my collarbone.

  I almost took off running.

  Almost.

  Asherceleste.

  I stashed my phone inside my bag before handing it over to the burly guard.

  He didn’t take it. “Muriel will put your belongings away. Follow her.”

  “I’ll wait out here,” Tristan promised.

  I was about to tell him he didn’t need to wait but thought better of getting rid of this man who seemed part of Jarod’s inner circle.

  Muriel ushered me through the burgundy velvet curtains and into what looked like a shop of oddities had exploded inside an old British parlor.

  She pulled open a deep drawer. “You can leave your bag and clothes in here.”

  I dropped my bag in.

  She looked me up and down. “You’re what?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your clothing size.”

  “Oh. An eight.”

  She went toward a rack of clothes packed with women’s clothing and pulled out a dress made of black leather and lace.

  “Um.” I cleared my throat. “Do you have anything . . . with more fabric?”

  Muriel smiled, revealing a gap between her front teeth. “This is the most conservative one I have available.”

  “What sort of party is this?” I blurted out.

  She lowered the hanger, smile waning. “Ma chérie, if you don’t know what’s happening inside, why in the world are you here?”

  “Because I need to talk with Monsieur Adler.”

  She contemplated me almost a full minute before hooking the dress back on the rack and selecting a more modest one. The slit in the skirt would still hit mid-thigh, but at least, this dress wasn’t made of leather—it was, unfortunately, the color of my eyes. In other words, very green. Where I didn’t mind my irises being that shade, I minded my body being that shade.

  “You don’t have anything . . . else?” Something that wouldn’t make me look like a houseplant.

  Muriel shook her head.

  Ugh. “Is there a changing room?”

  Muriel turned around.

  I guessed not.

  “I won’t look,” she said.

  She must’ve looked though, because she pushed my fumbling fingers off the zipper that ran the length of the dress’s back, tugging it up before circling me to adjust the cap sleeves that fell off my shoulders.

  Whose dress was I wearing? “Where do all these clothes come from?”

  “Various boutiques. I’m in charge of buying them for Jarod’s parties when his guests’ attire don’t meet his expectations.” Her heavy black makeup had run into the wrinkles edging her ocean-colored eyes.

  What sort of person cared so greatly about what others wore?

  “It looks like it was made for you.” Muriel gathered my hair and tucked it over my shoulder where it unraveled like spun copper, then glanced down at my feet. “Pretty shoes.”

  “Thank you.” I smoothed the satin that felt spray-painted onto my skin. “Is he as horrible as everyone says he is?” When Muriel raised an eyebrow, I added, “Jarod Adler. I heard he wasn’t very nice.”

  “I’ve been at his service for twenty-five years.”

  “Twenty-five?”

  “Yes. Twenty-five. I was hired the day he was born.” She stepped toward a basket sitting on a shelf. “People don’t seek him out for his kindness.”

  Yet, that’s what I’d come for.

  Muriel fished out a black filigree mask, which she tied around my head before ushering me out of the weird closet. “Why don’t you go make up your own mind about him?”

  When I burst through the curtains, Tristan interrupted whatever discussion he was having with the surly guard. “Perhaps, bringing you inside isn’t such a great idea.”

  “Why not?”

  He slid a mask from the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled it on with the deftness of someone used to wearing them. “Because I’d much rather keep you to myself.”

  “Oh.” I touched the base of my flushing neck, suddenly grateful for the mask ensconcing part of my face.

  The brawny guard grunted as he walked to an ornate wooden door so thick that when he opened it the slow, sultry melody inside the room soared out. Tristan offered me his arm, which I was hesitant to take but reminded myself that he’d gotten me in.

  And it was just an arm.

  Latching on, I entered a room so dark it took my eyes a moment to distinguish anything. And when I did, I snapped my lids shut and lowered my head, certain that what I’d just seen would cost me feathers.

  Perhaps, all of them.

  Chapter 9

  At some point, I opened my eyes so I didn’t step into anything or on anyone. Although I kept my gaze cemented to the glossy parquet, I unfortunately couldn’t shield my ears from the symphony of grunts and moans that overlapped the bewitching melody eddying through the room.

  My heart struck my throat in time with the plucked harp strings accompanying the singer’s chanting. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine myself willingly attending a party where guests were in various states of undress and doing things to each other I’d never even read about in my wickedest romance novels.

  It felt like I’d traveled an entire city block before Tristan stopped walking. A pair of shiny black dress shoes bumped into the pointy tips of my stilettos, reflecting my pale, masked face.

  “Who’s this?” The voice was deeply masculine and deeply blasé.

  “Leigh,” I supplied, still unwilling to look up.

  “And you are here why?”

  “She has a project for you,” Tristan said.

  A finger curled under my chin and tipped my head up. Although he was masked, I recognized his eyes—dark and rimmed with lashes so long they could curl all the way around my pinky.

  My pulse hammered my veins as the twin pools of darkness drank me in. Over the mixture of musk and spice swirling through the room, a new aroma reached my nostrils—mineral and green, like fig leaves after a rainstorm. I breathed in deeply, almost ch
oking on Jarod Adler’s scent.

  He must’ve seemed certain I wouldn’t look away, because he lowered his finger. “Who recommended my services?”

  Bodies writhed in my peripheral vision. “Is there somewhere more private we could go to discuss this?”

  A corner of his lips twitched. “I don’t take payment in kind.”

  Revulsion surged through me. “I’m not a prostitute.”

  Although the mask hid his expression, it didn’t conceal the curve of his lips which tempered at my fiery retort. “What’s your last name?”

  “It’s not important.” I didn’t have one. “You wouldn’t know my family anyway. They’re all in America.”

  “I don’t clean up messes outside my country’s borders.”

  “The job isn’t overseas.”

  He dipped his head, and a curl of dark hair fell over his mask and into his eyes. “What sort of job is it?”

  “I told you. I don’t want to discuss it in here.”

  He locked eyes with Tristan who suggested, “We could go into your study.”

  “You have five minutes of my time, Leigh.” He emphasized my name. Instead of lay, the single-syllable came out as leh, which meant ugly in French. Was that his intent? To cut me with my own name?

  Tristan laid his palm on my forearm that was still speared through his. “Come.”

  “She surely doesn’t need your assistance to walk, Tristan,” Jarod said.

  “Surely,” he responded with a defiance and ease that had me pondering the nature of their relationship.

  Cousins? Best friends? Did a man like Jarod have friends?

  Jarod turned and took off at a clipped pace through the crowded room, sidestepping a couple eating each other’s faces off. At least, that couple still had most of their clothes on.

  As we trekked across the dark room, I focused on the line of Jarod’s body, taut and lean. “Are you related?” I found myself inquiring.

  “Do you find we look alike?”

  “No, but everyone around here seems to know you. And the way you talk to him . . .”

  Tristan’s gaze settled on the back of Jarod’s head. “We grew up together, but we’re not related.”

  I was curious to know more, but we’d caught up with Jarod, so I stowed my questions for later. Jarod opened a set of doors that led to a black-and-white checkered marble hallway with a wide, curved staircase. Did he live on the floor above, or was this just his place of business?

  A bodyguard stood beside the doors we’d just come through, and another guard stood by the ones Jarod was wrenching open.

  He flicked a switch. Floor lamps and copper sconces flared to life in the markedly masculine space that smelled of antiquated vellum and wood varnish. Sculpted mahogany bookshelves lined every wall and forest-green velvet covered the four plush armchairs that stood at the center of the room with no coffee table to separate them.

  Jarod dropped down into one of them, then gestured to the one across from him. I detached myself from Tristan to ease myself gracefully into the proffered seat, a feat considering my straitjacket of a dress.

  “Take off your mask,” he said.

  Even though a please would’ve been nice, I removed it and placed it on my lap where my satin dress stretched so tight I worried the fabric might rip.

  Jarod inspected me through his black mask. “Tristan, pour our guest a drink.”

  “I don’t drink,” I said.

  “We’re not going to drug you, Leigh,” Jarod said, bruising my name again.

  My fingers clenched around the ties of my mask. “Still, I don’t drink.”

  Jarod stared at me again, his gaze seeming to harden behind his mask.

  “And my name is pronounced lay.”

  “Wasn’t that how I was saying it?”

  “No, you were saying it differently.”

  The smile ghosting over his lips proved he knew full well how he’d been pronouncing it. “Tell me about your project.”

  I twirled the silk ribbon around my index finger. “Will you take off your mask? It’s making me uncomfortable.”

  Jarod leaned back, his tuxedo sleeves straining, gleaming violet-black in the low lighting. “No.”

  I blinked.

  “I don’t care if it makes you uncomfortable. Right now, I don’t care much about you, and you only have”—he checked a shiny, octagonal-faced watch that looked more expensive than the oil portrait of a frisky bay horse hung between two sets of curtained French doors—“three minutes left to make me care, so you better start explaining what it is you want me to do for you.”

  I wound the ribbon so snugly around my fingertip I cut off my own circulation. I let go, let it unravel. “I’m here because I’d like to understand what it is you do.”

  The slight jerk of his head told me he wasn’t expecting that answer. “Understand what I do?” he all but choked out before his eyes became mere slits. “Who do you work for? The DGSI?”

  “The DGSI? I’m not sure what that—”

  Jarod swung around in his chair to look at Tristan who was pouring himself a glass of some transparent spirit. “Where did you pick this girl up?”

  “On your doorstep.”

  Jarod wheeled back around and glared at me with a fierceness that made my vertebrae lock up. “What the fuck were you doing on my doorstep?”

  I nibbled on my bottom lip, wondering how to phrase my intentions. “I came to help you.”

  “Ah. Help me.” His expression eased back into contemptuous amusement.

  I tried to square my shoulders, but my dress was so stiff I could hardly move.

  “Let me guess. Your project is salvaging my soul.”

  My lips pulled apart.

  Did he know what I was? I peeked over my shoulder to make sure my wings hadn’t made an impromptu appearance. What was I doing? Humans couldn’t see them even if our feathers were shoved in their noses.

  “I’m not interested in what you’re peddling. I’m perfectly content with the life I lead.” He rose and strode back across the room. “Tristan, take the little zealot out of my house and make sure to inform my staff never to let her cross the threshold of La Cour des Démons.”

  I blinked. “But—”

  “Get out.”

  Heat shot into my face. I got up and trounced over to him. “You are everything they said you were, Jarod Adler.” My voice trembled. I hated how it trembled. “I just came here to help you.”

  “Liar.” He took a step closer, looming over me like the monster in the children’s stories Ophan Pippa used to tell us when we still lived in the nursery. Monsters made of sin and flesh. “You came here to help yourself.”

  I sucked in a breath. “I’m not a liar, but you’re right. I did come here to help myself.”

  His eyebrows shot up behind his mask. “You’re admitting to it?”

  “I told you, I don’t lie.”

  “Everyone lies.”

  “Not me.” I held his hard stare, then plodded out into the silent marble foyer.

  “How does helping me help you?” he said.

  I glanced at him over my shoulder. “I can’t tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you wouldn’t understand my reasons.”

  “Try me.”

  I shook my head, sealing my lips shut.

  “To better your soul?”

  “No.”

  “To get a promotion?”

  “No.”

  “Tell. Me.”

  “Why should I? You just said you never wanted to see my face again.”

  He nodded to his bodyguards. “They won’t let you out of this house until you do.”

  I balled my fingers. “You shouldn’t use your power to trap people.”

  “Let me walk her out—” Tristan started, but Jarod clapped his friend’s chest to hold him back.

  “What should I use my power for then, Leigh?” There he was again, making my name sound so unpleasant.

  “You should
use it for good.”

  Jarod had the audacity to smirk. “Let me impart a little secret. When I make some people’s lives worse, I make others’ lives better. I restore the balance.”

  “Why don’t you leave restoring the balance to people whose job it is?”

  “Let me guess. This is when you tell me about God and how I should try to find him . . .”

  “There is no God.”

  His eyes flashed behind his mask. “What is there then?”

  “Nothing. There’s nothing,” I growled, not about to tell this human with a king-complex about us. Not that I was allowed to reveal our existence.

  The feeling of something sharp nicking my shoulder blade made me wheel around. Grinding my molars, I readied to tell the guards to back off but found only empty air behind me.

  Chapter 10

  Something glimmered on the square of black marble underneath me. Although my lips parted again, no sound came out.

  I’d lost a feather.

  Shock washed over me.

  My vehemence—or was it my lie?—had cost me a feather.

  The silver barbs shivered and then began to blur as tears snaked behind my lids. The desire to retrieve it and clasp it against my chest surged, but four humans crowded me. Crouching to scoop up air would make me seem like the lunatic they already believed me to be.

  I swallowed hard and lifted my stinging gaze off the floor. “I’d like to leave now,” I murmured hoarsely, an unbidden tear rolling down my cheek. I wiped it away with my knuckles. I’d come to earn feathers, and here I was losing them.

  Without taking his eyes off me, Jarod said, “Take her home, Tristan.”

  Tristan stared at the young mob boss before nodding and clasping my elbow gently, as though my meltdown had somehow reduced my trash status. Or perhaps, Tristan was gentle with me because he had the organ that was clearly missing from Jarod’s system—a heart.

  I whisked away another tear as I retreated into the dark, orgiastic den, tracking the lines between the floorboards.

  I didn’t utter a single word as Muriel escorted me inside the cloakroom and helped me out of my dress. If she was thinking anything, she didn’t let on. I gave her a watery smile that made the wrinkles around her eyes crinkle with what resembled worry, but why would she worry about me? If she’d worked for the Adlers since Jarod’s birth, her loyalties lay with him.