This is just laughable. Get some food in your stomach, have a drink or two, go to sleep and all will be good.
I thought of mentioning these concerns to Brady, who was silent for the first few minutes as he followed Google Maps trying to get to SkyLounge. But there was no way he’d understand the first point as a man, unless he was getting the same looks—which, actually, he was. The more I saw people glaring at us, the more I pretended they were looking at me. Besides, I’d heard girls say my brother was attractive. Maybe he just stood out a bit more in Amsterdam.
Sonya, listen to your gut. Come on. Don’t deny it just because you’re not on the clock.
The second point, the stomach pain, I’d already expressed to him and had gotten nothing. Besides, I didn’t need Brady’s help if things got bad. Even if I never unleashed Ebony and Ivory, I had plenty of skill in Muay Thai and Krav Maga to kick any perverted dude’s ass.
“So are you going to tell me now what Carsis said to you?” Brady said as we reached the far east side of Amsterdam Centraal, approaching a hotel with the SkyLounge perched on top of it, about fifteen stories up. The hotel, a Doubletree Inn, stood just across a canal and a short bridge. The glass paneling on the side didn’t quite fit with the architecture of the rest of Amsterdam, but as the only building on its little island, that mattered little.
“Sonya.”
“Sorry,” I said, grateful for the briefest of distractions. “He… he just basically said to you what Richard and Nicholas said to me.”
“Which was?”
Damn. CIA agent at its finest.
“He said that I should be careful about smoking stuff that heavy. He said you had to carry me home. He said that without you, who knows what would have happened.”
“I see,” Brady said, his body language showing that he had no belief in anything I said. Does he know? He has to. Carsis said the same stuff to him. How much does he know?
“Don’t be jealous that I already got to experience the most hardcore part of Amsterdam,” I said, hoping to deflect—
“I want to know what you saw and felt under the drug,” he said, completely blowing past my snarky remark.
Well, shit.
I hated this. He would press me, like the brother he was, until I told him exactly what happened. It’s what made me love him most of the time and want to punch him right now.
“No judgment,” I said.
“None,” he said, true affirmation in his voice.
Convinced that he was being honest with me, I outlined everything I saw. I told him about the demons, the Cerberus, the serpent in the sky, the demonic scream from the prostitute, and the general atmospheric feeling I got of being in hell. I tried to describe everything in vivid detail, but I also made sure that we had reached the back alley leading up to SkyLounge before I got into the grittiest of details. I didn’t need a creepy tourist thinking that he could hit on a possibly deranged dirty-blonde woman because she was talking crazy.
“But I’m pretty sure it was drugs, really, I’ve read crazier stuff from users,” I quickly added at the end of my reminiscing. “It was an experience for sure, but it’s not one I’m likely to go down again. There’s a fine line between a relaxing high and a nightmarish high, and this one didn’t just cross it, it demolished it. I couldn’t even see that line by the end.”
“That would be for the best to not do it again,” Brady said, not making eye contact with me as we walked through a snazzy hotel lounge. “We need to talk about this later. But not here.”
So… did Brady agree with me here? Did he believe what I’d said? Did anything I say make sense, or was I just a lunatic of a sister now? If he did believe me, why was he delaying such a talk? The demons and monsters I saw sure seemed dangerous.
I actually felt glad that he’d made that statement to focus on dinner. It allowed me to drop the subject. Still, I couldn’t help but notice that he double-checked to make sure he had his guns when we reached the hotel. He knows. He thinks it’s real. Maybe by keeping me out of it… he’s trying to protect me?
I don’t know. I just need to get out of my head. Eat some steak, drink some vodka, forget this day.
When we rode to the top of the hotel and emerged from the elevator, I felt slightly underdressed compared to the crowd. I still had on my black leather jacket, dark jeans and white t-shirt underneath to go with my black boots, not to mention my two closest friends by my hip—but being with my brother, as a tourist, gave me the justifiable excuse.
I was impressed by the sight. It reminded me of a Vegas nightclub, with the dimly lit lighting, the purple hue, the music, the waiters and waitresses dressed to the ten, the temporarily unoccupied DJ booth, the seductively inviting red couches, and the outdoor patio where people could talk before making moves on the dance floor. I looked to Brady, who generally disliked high-class establishments like this, but even he seemed to enjoy it.
I looked to the balcony, which extended out about twenty feet and had a few tables. On the far side, three couples overlooked Amsterdam, by now a gorgeous potpourri of colors and buildings set against the evening sky. The sun had set just about a half hour ago, giving the city about another fifteen minutes of dusk before it would descend completely into nighttime. I waved Brady over, and the two of us leaned against the railing, taking in the sights.
“Oh, cheers, look who showed up.”
I gazed right, and my heartbeat accelerated as I saw DJ, dressed in a sexy suede suit, approaching with a whiskey glass in his right hand.
Chapter 4
“DJ!” I said, deliberately keeping my voice steady.
“Hey DJ,” Brady said, his voice back on guard. I just shot him a look that said, “I’m fine,” but he didn’t look at me. To be honest, though, I appreciated having the distraction from the previous couple of hours. “How was your tour?”
“Marvelous,” DJ said.
It killed me to admit how he was so hot and his accent put him over the top. But though I may have had trouble controlling emotions, I didn’t have that much difficulty controlling my actions. Of course I liked the guy and, to some extent, thought about him in an arousing way, but if I acted on every guy I was attracted to, well, I sure wouldn’t be a CIA agent. If anything, I had to learn to use a man’s hormones to my advantage, not fall into them, though I hadn’t mastered that yet.
“I went to the Van Gogh Museum, it was fascinating learning about him. As a fellow artist, I always like to study the best, and I really feel like by studying—”
“Aren’t you a writer, not a painter?” Brady asked, his voice a bit cold—and, I thought, unfairly so.
“Oh, I am, but all artists are the same at their essence. We try and be in touch with the human experience and convey it in as beautiful a form as we can. I do it with words, Van Gogh did it with pictures.”
That sounded familiar.
“If you say so,” Brady said, but a quick glance back saw his shoulders on the decline from a shrug.
“Have you two picked out a spot for dinner and drinks?” DJ said, making eye contact with me and only me. “I’ve got myself a table and just ordered myself an appetizer of oysters. I could do it alone, but would love the company of some fine Americans.”
“Sure,” I said without hesitation, drawing a cough from Brady. DJ was clearly inviting us to free food and a place to sit. Who was I to pass that up?
“Well, I’ll tell you what, Sonya, you go ahead, I’m getting myself a drink,” Brady said.
I didn’t hide my confused look, even as DJ knowingly smiled. On the one hand, my hawk of a brother was disappearing, allowing me to engage in playful banter with DJ—while making clear, if he pushed too far, that I did not want anything. To put it simply, he’d become too much of a fantasy for me to think I could just hook up with him and leave it at that.
But on the other hand, why was Brady suddenly giving up the parenting role? Did DJ’s presence fluster him that much? I knew he liked to withdraw when angry, but still. This seemed
unusual, to say the least.
“You got quite the thing there, you two,” DJ said as Brady stormed off.
“What, my brother and I?” I quickly said, feeling like the statement was somewhat accusatory.
“Yeah, the way you two interact. I don’t have any siblings, but if I did, I don’t know that it would quite look like that.”
“Yeah, he likes to play the role of father instead of brother. I sometimes have to bring him back down to Earth, but you know, we get along. We’ve had a wild past together that would prevent us from ever splintering.”
DJ just smiled at me. God, damn, those white teeth and those dimples… was there anything physically about this guy that wasn’t great? I suppose in a perfect world, I would’ve preferred a more clean-cut look, but somehow, standing here, seeing his shaggy hair and his thick beard, it somehow seemed even… sexier. The clean-cut look might have worked for a true boyfriend.
But in Europe, I would not have a true boyfriend. I would only have passionate…
No! Sonya, don’t let yourself fall into that trap. As soon as you start thinking about it, it’s over. So no.
“Are you going to ask me something, or just look?” DJ asked teasingly. “Cuz I’m not just a talking mannequin.”
“I’ll get to it,” I said, trying to sound cool, but the man had me off guard. “So, author, huh? That sounds cool. Tell me about it.”
“Oh, darling, it’s a good life, that’s for sure,” he said, completely ignoring the look I gave him at the word “darling.” “But, see, while I’m glad you asked me a question, that’s not what I’m interested in. I’m more curious about you. You have a mystery around you that I picked up on the minute I walked out of the shower.”
As if I needed reminding of that moment.
Sonya!
“What’s your story?”
“Well,” I said, preparing a story I had told so many times that I would sometimes dream about the lifestyle I said I lived. “My brother and I are from New York. I’m an investment banker for Morgan Stanley, and he’s a consultant for Bain & Company. It can be hard, with the hours and all, but I’m just glad we managed to get a month off to come and travel for a bit.”
“Only a month?” DJ said, but he said it as if expecting that response from me. “Darling, you don’t get to travel enough. I can see it in your response.”
Actually, I travel too much. I just don’t travel enough for pleasure.
“Don’t call me darling, I’m not—”
“You should just throw off the shackles of your job at, ahem, Morgan Stanley,” he said, using the company name with just enough sarcasm that I suspected he knew I was lying. But how? “You know, I am on a year-long tour across the globe. I started in New York with the ceremony, but as soon as I landed here yesterday, I decided I needed to travel with someone. Someone beautiful, someone who feels like a heroine from a novel come to life. Someone with long blonde hair, someone with glasses. I think you should come.”
I just laughed and turned away. What the hell was I supposed to do? He was cute and funny, so I wasn’t going to slap him. But I wasn’t a pushover who would say yes to a dinner date, let alone a year around the globe with a stranger.
“Me,” I said, curious to see how far he would push this. “That’s awfully bold.”
“The saying isn’t ‘fortune favors the cautious.’”
OK, so he was smart and witty. But that didn’t change anything. He could turn out to be this Yevon God in human form, and I would say no. I just wasn’t looking for anything, not with us leaving here in a few days and all our other stops no longer than three nights.
“Come travel with me. You know the best benefit of being an author, right? Travel the world and get to write stories about it. I might just write something about my adventures here in Europe.”
“Oh, well, in that case, that is quite tempting,” I said, noticing that DJ had closed the gap between us, going from about three feet away to maybe—maybe—a foot away. “But you see, there’s a problem with that. One, I don’t have any interest in appearing in a book anytime soon. Two, you may have the freedom to travel for a year, but I don’t. And besides, I like my job.”
Shit. I’d forgotten one of the rules of conversation as an agent. Only say enough, never more.
“Do you now?” DJ said, immediately picking up on my gaffe, even if he didn’t know it was a mistake. “That’s funny, because most people I meet on my travels who worked in finance said they did it only for the money so they could retire super young. And the ones who do like it don’t travel. They stack up cash and work their lives on the job.”
And my cover is blown.
Let’s just pretend and see how long we can go before the truth gets out.
“I mean, hey, if you do, more power to you. I suppose there’s an exception that proves every rule. But you, darling, are too cheerful, too optimistic, and too pretty to be working in finance.”
I crossed my arms, but DJ was beating me at my own game of owning the conversation. He listened too well, a rather unusual complaint about a hot man standing before me. My body seemed to know it, too, because some of the more exotic thoughts popped back in, though I quickly quelled them.
“And what does that mean?”
“I would think you would know exactly what I mean,” DJ said, his hand going to my elbow as my arms fell to my sides. “You work in finance, you get wrinkles in your 20’s, sleepy eyes immediately, and fat within the first six months. You are none of those things.”
I’m also barely into my 20th year. But he’s right.
“You don’t have to tell me what you do, that’s fine,” he said with a knowing wink. “But there is so much more about you I would like to know, Sonya. I—”
“You got someone asking for you, DJ.”
I felt oddly disappointed to hear my brother’s voice about ten feet from us. I enjoyed the mental challenge of trying to stay one step ahead of DJ and hated that Brady had interrupted our flow. But if DJ felt the same way I did, he didn’t show it.
“Come, let’s eat,” he said, slowly removing his hand from my elbow, making sure that his hand brushed against my forearm. It was unnerving how relaxed and confident he was. Not even foreign dignitaries had this kind of composure.
Clearly, DJ wasn’t just any ordinary hot dude. At least the danger of him being a dumb jock had vanished.
Inside, DJ waved to a waitress, who escorted him to a circular table right by the dance floor, about ten feet to the right of the bar. I found that mighty convenient and wondered how much he’d tried to set up. When I sat down, I saw three other empty seats.
“Expecting company?” I asked.
“I did invite Nicholas and Richard along with you two. It would be rude for me to get a table and not have space for them.”
“How polite,” I said, to which DJ once more just merely smirked.
When we sat down, I tried to find Brady in the crowd, but could not. I shrugged as the oysters were placed right before us, having come so quickly it felt like fast food. Of course, when I ate my first one, it felt like fine food, not fast.
Then, just as I reached for a second one, Brady sat down.
With a woman.
“Gentlemen, this is Nadia. I didn’t want to be the third wheel here, so I decided to make this a double date.”
I smiled politely at Nadia as she said hello in a thick German accent, but I did kick Brady under the table. He shot me a look that I ignored. He knew how I felt. I didn’t need to return the gaze to confirm it. But it didn’t stop him, because less than a second later, Brady leaned into Nadia and told her something about our upbringing in New York I tried to tune out. I saw the cocktail waitress behind Nadia and had never felt so happy in my life to see someone like her.
“Excuse me, hi,” I said. “Glass of Jenever gin, please.”
The waitress paused a second to let anyone else order, but as Brady and Nadia already had a glass and DJ had his whiskey, she left.
; The distraction was short lived, because Brady suddenly intensified his flirting with Nadia, putting his hands on her back and laughing excessively at her jokes. DJ hardly seemed to care, eating more oysters. Didn’t he have a snarky remark to push my brother away or something?
“Good oysters, aren’t they, darling?”
“Quite,” I said pointedly.
The gin came out, poured almost to the top of the glass, right as I finished the last of the oysters. I downed the gin like it was water in the Sahara, and for the first time all night, DJ showed some surprise. When I put the glass down, I looked at Nadia and Brady, who had their hands on each other’s face. And that’s my cue.
“I’m gonna go to the bathroom, I’ll be back when I don’t have any jealous distractions,” I said.
I took a leave without waiting for anyone’s reaction and headed to the ladies room. None of the stalls were used, but I didn’t need it for that. I just needed a chance to relax and refocus. Brady had gotten under my skin—why did he care so damn much that I was even talking to DJ??—and it was enough to push me away from the table. I splashed cold water on myself, reminding me who I was.
You’re Sonya Ferguson, badass CIA agent, independent woman. You’re strong, you don’t take shit, and you call things out as you see them. If Brady is being obnoxious, call him on it. If DJ is… well, doing whatever he is, call him on it. Do it, Sonya. You got this.
“You should run, Sonya.”
The deep, masculine voice came from nowhere and seemed to echo in my head. I looked around, trying to find the perv who would stash himself in the women’s room and know my name, but I saw no one.
“You have placed yourself in a situation in which you should not have,” the voice said, and now my aggravation had turned into anger. I looked all over, not wanting to speak for fear of being exposed as a lunatic—at least, not more than I probably already was.
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep your nose out of things that you shouldn’t be involved in.”
Magic Awakening: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Spirit War Chronicles Book 1) Page 5
