Feather (Angels of Elysium Book 1)

by Olivia Wildenstein

  “It’s Jarod’s favorite,” she answered.

  That made me level a narrowed look on Jarod who was busy watching his wineglass being filled.

  Muriel wasn’t staying for his money. At least, not only for his money. Did he truly not see this? Did he really believe everyone had an agenda?

  Before I could refuse wine, my glass was filled. As the waiter twisted the bottle with a flick of his wrist, his gaze drifted over me.

  “Eyes up, Sylvain,” Jarod barked.

  The boy snapped his gaze to the tapestry, cheeks flaming.

  “Get out,” Jarod said.

  He backed up, almost tripping over the burgundy and forest-green patterned rug, and then scurried away.

  Jarod clutched his fork. “Fire him, Mimi.”

  My lips parted. Was he serious?

  Once Muriel and the second waiter had retreated and sealed me in with Mister Moody, I asked, “Because he looked at my hair? You looked at my hair, Jarod. Everyone looks at my hair. It’s really not worth firing someone over.”

  He stabbed his chicken and pushed a bite into his mouth. After swallowing, he said, “Don’t tell me how to run my household, Feather.”

  I sat up a little straighter. “You touched my hair; he didn’t. He didn’t even comment on it.”

  Jarod finally raised eyes so black they looked made of onyx. “He wasn’t looking at your hair,” he said before taking another bite. “He was staring at your tits. Then again, they’re spilling out of your clothes, so maybe you wanted him to stare.”

  Like the waiter’s, my cheeks blazed. My cleavage was on display but not purposely. I didn’t say anything and neither did Jarod. We ate in a silence so tense I could feel it on my skin, sticky like molasses.

  Once he’d scraped his plate clean, he seized his wineglass. “You should try the wine.” His voice wasn’t loud, yet after the quiet, it felt like he was speaking through a megaphone. “It’s a 1978 Chateau Lafitte.”

  I lined up my fork and knife on the side of my plate and drank some water. “I told you yesterday, I don’t drink.”

  “This isn’t a drink, Feather. It’s history in a bottle. Liquid gold. Ambrosia of the gods.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Try it.”

  “Jarod, I can’t.”

  “Try it, or I’ll spend the next hours in my room while you squander them sitting down here alone.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Explain it to me, then!”

  “My faith forbids alcohol.”

  “Your faith is senseless. One sip won’t kill you.”

  I bit my lip, not because I was hesitating but because I was growing angry with him for being so pigheaded and was worried about saying something that might cost me a feather.

  “I won’t tell,” he said.

  I gritted my teeth. “I. Can’t.”

  He pushed away from the table and rose.

  When he started for the door, I said, “You’re not being fair!”

  “Stop expecting me to be fair. I’m not a fair man. What I am, though, is a man of my word. I will leave if you don’t at least sample my wine. I’m not asking you to get wasted. I’m asking—”

  Tears pricking my lids, I snatched my glass and gulped down its dark content. I tried hard not to taste it, not to enjoy the velvety texture coating my palate, not to savor the sweet and earthen flavors draping over my tongue.

  I tried hard to hate it but couldn’t. So, I decided to hate the man who made me break the rules. “You’re a cruel man, Jarod Adler.”

  He returned to his seat. “Wasn’t it delicious?”

  “I hated it.”

  The jabbing pain I’d expected for drinking wine hit me now. I clenched my molars and slammed my glass down. The stem shattered from the base, nicking my palm, but the flesh wound was nothing compared to the agony of having lost another feather.

  Tears dripped off my chin as the silvery piece of down fluttered to the rug. “Coming back here was a mistake.”

  I needed to leave before I was plucked like the bird I’d just eaten. My throat closed in time with my eyes, and tears streamed down my cheeks, fusing with the spilled wine that wet my shimmying thighs.

  Chapter 14

  Fabric was wrapped around my sliced hand. I opened my burning eyes to find Jarod crouched beside me, tending to me.

  Even though I trembled with anger, it struck me that it wasn’t the taste of the forbidden that had cost me a feather but the lie that ensued. At least, this was my assumption. Sick of assuming, I took Jarod’s still full glass and drained it.

  And then I waited.

  And waited.

  Nothing happened.

  Nothing. Happened.

  That just soured my mood further, because I couldn’t blame Jarod for the damage to my wings. It was all on me.

  “You didn’t hate it, did you, Feather?” His light tone incensed me.

  “Don’t ever threaten me again,” I whispered indignantly. “If I say no, it means no.”

  His breath caught on an inhale. “Pardon.”

  The knot in my throat loosened. Out of all the answers I’d expected from him, sorry was not it.

  The doors of the dining room flew open, and then quick commands were exchanged. A moment later, Jarod tightened the napkin around my hand and delicately rested it atop my lap before moving aside so the waiter could sweep away the broken glass and mop up the table.

  As I watched the stain spread like fresh blood on the white dishcloth, I heard Jarod ask, “Mimi, tu peux aller lui chercher quelque chose à se mettre? Et un pansement.” Can you get her something to wear? And a Band-Aid.

  “Non,” I said. “To the dress.”

  Both Jarod and Muriel looked at me.

  “It’s black.” Even if wine had soaked into the fabric, it wouldn’t show.

  “It’s also wet,” Jarod said.

  “It’ll dry.” I wasn’t putting on one of the dresses from his closet of oddities. Even though mine wasn’t the most comfortable, it was mine. It hadn’t touched some other woman’s skin; it hadn’t absorbed some other woman’s perfume. “I’m sorry I broke your glass,” I said mechanically. “Let me know how much I owe you.”

  The heavy fluted crystal would probably cost me my entire allowance. Everything in Jarod’s house struck me as expensive.

  “I have enough wineglasses to last me six lifetimes.”

  Not that he would get a single more if he didn’t amend his ways. I made a deal with myself: if I lost one more feather, I’d leave.

  No more lying for me.

  “Would you like dessert, Leigh?” Muriel asked. “I made chocolate mousse for the staff this afternoon.”

  Even though my stomach felt like a giant knot, I murmured, “Sure.”

  She came back a few minutes later carrying a single crystal bowl filled with mousse so dark it resembled Jarod’s eyes. After she placed it in front of me on a fresh table setting, she demanded to see the cut. I hesitated to show her, sensing my skin was healing. What if the flesh had already hemmed shut? How would I explain where the blood had come from? I thumbed the slender wound, wincing as I coaxed the skin apart, then raised my hand.

  Delicately, she unwrapped the napkin and sprayed my palm with antiseptic, blowing to lessen the sting before affixing a Band-Aid. No one had tended to me since I’d developed wing bones, and her careful ministrations stole some of the despair of having lost another feather.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  She smiled as she gathered up the soiled napkin. “Let me know what you think of the mousse.”

  When she was gone, I asked Jarod, “You don’t want any?”

  “I don’t like dessert.”

  I frowned. “How come?”

  He shrugged, lifting his freshly filled wineglass to his mouth. “Just never did.” He closed his lips around the rim and tipped the glass. I watched him swallow, watched his spiky Adam’s apple jump in his elegant throat.

  Before he could cat
ch me staring, I turned to the mousse, which was so airy it weighed nothing. I slipped the bite into my mouth and all but moaned when the lush chocolate hit my tongue. I’d often wondered why chocolate wasn’t a sin. Not that I was complaining. If it had been, I would’ve had to live without it, and what a drab life that would’ve been. I took another spoonful and buried it inside my mouth, sealing my lips, so no embarrassing sound escaped this time.

  After swallowing, I licked my spoon clean. “You’re missing out. This is divine.”

  He swirled his wine, then lifted it, but before taking a sip, he said, “More for you.” The timbre of his voice had turned huskier, as though the alcohol had chafed his vocal cords. “I’m trying to decide how old you are.”

  “How old do you think I am?”

  “How about you just tell me?”

  “Twenty. I’ll be twenty-one soon.”

  “Where were you born?”

  “I was born . . .” I was about to say in Elysium but couldn’t speak about my first home to mortals. “I grew up in New York but was born somewhere I have no memory of.” Not a lie, since I’d been carried into a guild the second my umbilical cord was severed.

  “Do you have siblings?”

  “Two sisters. One who’s fifteen and another who’s my age.”

  A small groove appeared between his eyebrows. “So, a twin?”

  I patted the mousse with the back of my spoon, evening out the top. “Sort of. We’re not blood sisters.” When he frowned, I added, “We grew up together. In an all-girls boarding school.”

  “Because your parents are missionaries?”

  “What?”

  “Tristan told me they were preachers.”

  “Oh. Uh. Not preachers. More like guards. I don’t have much contact with them.” My parents were both Abaddon Erelim—sentinels of the celestial underworld.

  He set down his wineglass, and a drop sloshed out. “Who do they guard that they had to toss you into a boarding school?”

  Jarod’s inquisitiveness made avoiding lying difficult. It reminded me of the neither-yes-nor-no game I used to play with Celeste when I helped out in the guild’s nursery, the one that, without fail, she would beat me at.

  I went with: “My parents guard a prison.” Which was sort of true since they patrolled Abaddon.

  He let out a low grunt that, coupled with his disapproving stare, made my spine stiffen.

  “You don’t get to judge them, Jarod.”

  “Perhaps, but you do. And you don’t seem to be bothered by having been abandoned.”

  “Because I don’t see it as abandonment.”

  “What do you see it as?”

  Instead of locking horns, I turned the tables on him. “So, you grew up with your uncle? Was he a nice man?”

  “Uncle was the founder of La Cour des Démons, so no, he wasn’t a nice man.”

  “Was he nice to you, at least?”

  “He was good to me. He gave my parents a roof when they had none, adopted me after Mom passed away, and then left me all of this.” He gestured to the house.

  “How did he die?”

  Jarod hooked his foot on his knee and jostled it. “Didn’t you look my family up? It was all over the tabloids.”

  I should’ve, but in my haste to arrive here then forfeit this mission, I hadn’t.

  “He was in a car accident.” He stared at the sleepy courtyard and the lit fountain beyond his window. “Which was no accident.”

  His confession didn’t shock me. Mob bosses had many enemies and didn’t meet kind ends. Jarod would incur the same fate if he didn’t change professions.

  “Aren’t you scared of getting killed?”

  He shot me a withering smile. “I’d rather die from a bullet than from boredom.”

  “Normal jobs aren’t all boring. Especially if you find something you’re passionate about.”

  “Let’s talk about you again.”

  “I don’t like talking about myself.”

  He linked his fingers behind his head and leaned back. “What are your favorite sexual kinks?”

  My cheeks felt like they’d been torched.

  “You don’t need to blush, Feather. I’m the last person who’d judge you.”

  “That’s not why.” I dropped my gaze to my mousse. “I just don’t want to discuss sex with you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t know you.”

  “Is that the reason?”

  “It’s one of them.”

  “What’s the other?”

  Ugh. Tristan said he was a pit bull but so was Jarod. “Because the discussion won’t bring me any closer to my goal.”

  “I thought your goal was getting me to perform one kind act.”

  “It is.”

  “How about I perform it in the bedroom?” He picked up the long-stemmed glass of water beside his wine and drank long and deep.

  I gaped at him, and then, once I recovered from his lewd suggestion, I said, “First off, that wouldn’t count. And secondly”—I’d lose all of my feathers because sex out of wedlock is a sin—“I’m saving myself for marriage.”

  He sputtered, choking on his water. I didn’t think anything could stun Jarod Adler, but preserving my virtue apparently could. I supposed the women who ran in his circle weren’t the sort to care about virtue and vows.

  He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, then ran a slow finger around the rim of his glass, making the glass sing. “How interesting.” His dry tone belied he didn’t find it interesting in the least. Inane, outmoded, heinous, but most definitely not interesting. “My offer stands for the duration of our tryst—in case you feel like reconsidering.”

  “I just told you, I’m not having sex before marriage.”

  “The best part of sex isn’t penetration, Feather.”

  Heat shot through my veins, blotching the rest of my skin.

  He grinned at my discomfort.

  I shook my head. “Stop trying to get under my skin.”

  “Oh, I’m not trying to get under your skin. Just under that dress.”

  I wondered why he was so intent on disconcerting me, and then it hit me. “You get a kick out of intimidating people, don’t you? It makes you feel powerful.”

  He didn’t speak. Didn’t move. Even his chest seemed to have grown stiller. He hadn’t expected me to figure him out.

  “I’m not scared of you, Jarod Adler.” Not anymore. I didn’t delude myself into thinking that his bite wouldn’t sting as much as his bark, but I couldn’t be killed, and as long as I didn’t lie or swear, I wouldn’t lose another feather.

  He uncrossed his long legs and got to his feet. “Well, you should be.”

  When his back was turned, I reached for the feather that had deserted my wings earlier.

  “Hi, I’m Leigh.”

  Trevor swung his gangly legs over the dizzying precipice below us.

  “Your parents are really worried about you.”

  He eyed me before snorting and returning his gaze to the blue-gray river rushing underneath the metal railing we were perched on.

  “They have a lot of people out looking for you.”

  He kept his gaze on the Hudson. If he’d truly wanted to jump, he would have already. The fact that he’d been sitting up here since nightfall and it was almost dawn told me he didn’t want to end his life.

  What he wanted—I’d learned it from his holographic file before heading downtown—was to end the sorrow eating at him since his kid brother ventured into a swimming pool while Trevor played video games in the living room.

  “How did you find me?” he finally asked.

  I squinted at the hint of lavender flaring on the horizon. I couldn’t tell him I’d been given his precise coordinates but I couldn’t lie either. “Ending your life . . . it won’t bring Sam back.”

  “How do you know about Sam?”

  “I read about him.”

  The accident of the little boy found floating in a swimming pool had shaken the ent
ire city, raising controversies about parents entrusting younger children to their older siblings.

  Trevor’s red-rimmed gaze dropped to the river below us.

  “Your parents love you.”

  I touched his arm, and he flinched.

  “No, they don’t. I killed my brother.”

  “You didn’t kill him.”

  “I did!”

  I recoiled from the harshness of his tone.

  “I was supposed to watch him, and instead I was—I was playing Fortnite.” His voice broke, in volume and in strength. And then his shoulders hunched, and he started to shake. “I can’t go back.”

  “Accidents happen.”

  “He died because of me.”

  “Do you believe in life after death, Trevor?”

  The shadow of facial hair lined his trembling upper lip. He was only a year younger than I was, but grief had lent his boyish face a grave edge.

  “Because I do,” I said. “And I believe your brother was collected by angels and brought to Heaven.”

  He watched me without saying a word.

  “I believe he’s looking down at you and wishing you wouldn’t feel so much grief and guilt.”

  Trevor leveled his glum gaze on the horizon.

  “I believe he’d want you to get away from here and find your parents.”

  “I told you . . . they hate me.”

  “They don’t hate you, Trevor.”

  “Stop saying that. You don’t know them! And you know nothing about me!”

  I knew everything about him and about them. I knew he was worth six feathers, which was more than most twelve-year-olds. I knew jealousy had earned him his first sinner point—he’d peed in his cousin’s field hockey trophy. He’d netted the other five points for having left the patio door unlatched and wearing headphones to play his video game, thus missing the loud splash.

  He grabbed my shoulders and shook me.

  Wait . . . no. That wasn’t possible. The only time he’d touched me that day was to take my extended hand, finally allowing me to help him back up onto the iron railing.

  He’d never shaken me.

  “Feather?”

  I blinked up into a set of eyes shadowed by so many lashes it was impossible to tell what they hid.

  “Are you okay? You were swaying.” Jarod stopped shaking me, but his palms remained on my shoulders as though he was worried that if he removed them I’d keel over.