The Queen

by Skye Warren

  A crackle, more interference than sound. “Where are you? Is Avery with you?”

  There’s a touch of relief in his voice, as if he’s glad to have reached me, as if he’s sure that I’ll answer, yes, she’s right here. As sure as I’d been that everyone was okay when I picked up the phone.

  “No,” I say, my voice almost hushed. The situation seems that serious. The luxe penthouse suite suddenly seems that sinister. “I’m in her suite. I spent the night, but when I woke up, she was gone.”

  He curses in a long and foul string, punctuated by crackles and snaps of the phone line. “Are there any calls last night on her phone?”

  Putting the call on speaker, I flip through her iPhone until I get to the recent calls. “Looks like something came in at 1:35 a.m. last night. Or this morning, I guess. A missed call.”

  “That was me at the airport.” Gabriel mutters. “What’s after that?”

  “There’s nothing else.”

  So where did she go? And why didn’t I wake up when she did? I was only a foot away from her in bed, but probably too exhausted from a full course load and working in the kitchen to hear her leave. Guilt eats at my throat like acid.

  He swears again. “I’ll call Professor Wilson. Can you look around the Emerald?”

  Professor Anna Wilson is her graduate advisor and close friend, after they went to a Greek excavation together this past summer. I can’t imagine why Avery would have gone to campus on a random Saturday morning, without her phone, leaving me sleeping in her room. There aren’t really mythology research emergencies. But if she went anywhere near Smith College, Professor Wilson would know about it.

  “I’ll ask my manager,” I promise. “We’ll find her.”

  My mind is still a little sluggish from sleep. I might have thought I drank too much alcohol if we’d had any at all. Waking up in a new place, finding my friend mysteriously gone—it’s all leaving me disoriented. I struggle for good reasons she might have left and come up empty.

  “Gabriel,” I say slowly. “Why did you know to call this morning?”

  It filters in, the flick of a lightbulb, that he had been worried when he first called. That he has a terrible connection, but he still knew to find her. He knew she might be missing.

  He’s silent for one beat, two.

  Long enough for horrible possibilities to fill the empty space in my mind.

  “We talked yesterday,” he says, which doesn’t answer the question. “She told me about your father.”

  It’s that feeling I have when I’m on the right track with a proof, more instinct than logic. I know there are intellectual cogs working in the background, connecting clues before I can formulate the numbers on paper. Or say the words out loud. But right in this moment it feels more like intuition.

  Two people missing. “Do you think they’re connected?”

  “No,” he says, but I’m not sure I believe him.

  The slap of muscle against bone, my heart pumping in wild expansion. “I don’t understand how they could be connected. I talked to her last night before we went to sleep. She even told me I should stay here and wait it out. That I shouldn’t leave.”

  “She’s right,” he says. “You should stay there.”

  But it doesn’t sound like agreement. It’s more like a warning.

  I press my palm to my forehead, feeling like the penthouse is spinning. Or maybe it’s just me. “Tell me what happened. You must have found something. Something to make you worry about her. What was it?”

  “Ask everyone at the hotel if they’ve seen her. Pull them out of bed if you have to. And call me the second you hear anything, understand? I’ll be on the first flight there, but still call me. I’ll make it work.”

  “Gabriel.”

  He makes a hoarse sound. “I always worry. Ever since…”

  Ever since we found out that her biological father had stalked her and hurt her. The same man who assaulted me. Except Jonathan Scott is dead, isn’t he? He’s not a threat anymore. So why do I still feel afraid?

  There are bands around my chest. One for memory and one for fear. And another for watching my future crumble. There’s no pretending nothing is wrong. No Dr. Stanhope and the impossible dream of a different life. The roots of the city run way too deep to really let me go.

  Chapter Eight

  I step out of the cab, blinking at the bright lights shining from the Den’s windows. Pavement pulses with a life of its own, the music from inside its heart. I paid the driver twenty bucks extra to wait while I ran inside Daddy’s apartment, but it was empty. Not a surprise considering he isn’t answering his cell. My stomach still sinks to the bottom of my feet, my whole body jittery and hot.

  I’ve been this way since I found Avery gone, half-wondering if I’ll wake up.

  If all of this is just a dream.

  The Den is a private club for the rich and dangerous men of Tanglewood. I’ve seen the place dark, almost abandoned, with Damon in a half-buttoned shirt and no shoes. And I’ve seen the place glittering like an underground casino prepared for the biggest game of the city.

  But I’ve never seen it look like a nightclub, purple and blue and pink pressing against the windows, smoke winding out of the narrow opening in the door. Two large men wearing black T-shirts stretched across muscle guard the door, a seedier version of the lions who guard fancy libraries. Patience. Fortitude. And a flat aspect in their eyes that makes me uncomfortable.

  I drag my carry-on luggage behind me, thumping down the stone steps to the landing, the door below street-level. The iron railing is slick with dew, because it’s closer to dawn than midnight. The roar behind the heavy oak door shows no signs of stopping.

  “Hello,” I shout over the noise. “I’m here to see Damon Scott.”

  One bouncer looks at me, unimpressed. The other doesn’t even bother to look away from that place two feet in front of his face. Neither of them make a move to let me in. They don’t move to stop me, either.

  “Can I go inside?”

  The bouncer who acknowledged me gives a noncommittal nod. Apparently they aren’t very concerned with a guest list at this party. Or security, considering anything could be in this luggage.

  What on earth is going on?

  I step through the door, half expecting them to spring into action and block me. But I stumble into the dimly lit foyer, the mirror reflecting the light of a disco ball that appears to have been slung from the antique chandelier with rope.

  My eyes struggle to adjust as I stumble over something blocking the path. It’s one of the leather chairs, I realize. The ones that normally sit in uneven circles around the gilt tables, for men to have dangerous thoughts. Now it’s sideways in the hallway.

  And it’s moving.

  In a flash of scattered purple light I see why. There are two people on the other side, half-naked, having sex. Or very, very close. They’re moving in rhythm with the music, making the chair undulate against me, almost as if they’re grinding directly on me.

  I jump back and bump into another group of people in the opposite parlor. Not dancing. They’re kissing. They’re doing a lot more than kissing—having sex in a tangle of limbs and tongues. God, what’s happening here?

  I feel like I’ve fallen through the mirror and ended up in some alternate version of Tanglewood, everything turned around and upside down. Daddy is missing, and now there’s some kind of orgy happening at the Den. Maybe Damon Scott is missing, too.

  Or maybe he’s been pining after you.

  Avery’s voice rings in my ears. What if he withdrew from the Den? From a life of crime?

  He might not even realize what’s happening in this place, how they’ve torn it apart.

  I push farther into the Den, determined to find the stairs. I know which bedroom is Damon’s, a fact that still brings heat to my cheeks despite all the sinful acts being performed around me.

  Through the doorway I can see a dance floor, where a crush of people move to the music that seems to
emanate from the walls. I have one foot on the stairs, the heavy little luggage lifted an inch off the hardwood floor, when I see something in the far corner of the dance floor.

  A little space carved out of the crowd, an invisible velvet rope respected by these people who’ve respected nothing else in the Den.

  I take one step closer, drawn by the mystery of it, the gravity.

  And there’s Damon Scott, sitting in a high-backed leather chair, a devilish half smile on his face, two days growth shadowing his jaw. His suit is past rumpled, as if he’s worn it several days now, but he shows no sign of slowing. Dark eyes survey the crowd like a man looking out over his land—and in a way, that’s what these people are. The valleys and hills of his inheritance, fertile ground being sown.

  In the opposite corner I can see a bell-shaped black-iron cage, six feet tall, with a woman dancing inside. Another one, taller, rectangular, has a muscular man wearing a thong and a collar. Their expressions are as blissed-out as the people dancing around them, despite the hands reaching through the bars to touch oiled skin—or maybe because of them.

  Something small and pink withers inside me. It seems ludicrous to think that he would have pined after me. That he thought about me at all. I must have seemed like a child to him, whether my body had been grown-up or not—as innocent and foolish as a child.

  It makes my crush on him that much more humiliating.

  And it makes my presence here ridiculous. What did I think would happen? That I would find him lonely and halfway in love with me? That I would demand answers and he would give them? That he would magically produce Avery and then confess how much he missed me?

  Half-naked women aren’t dancing on his lap, but it’s close. They’re near him, showing off bodies in lace and satin and leather. The kind of women you see on TV and magazines, too beautiful to be real. People say that there’s an epidemic of Photoshop in the media, but these women aren’t airbrushed. They’re moving with confidence and glamour and unabashed sexiness.

  While I stand in the hallway wearing yoga pants, my hair in a rough ponytail.

  I don’t know how long I would have stood there, debating with myself, hating myself, but Damon glances up. His eyes meet mine. For a moment I see a storm inside them—regret, anger. Accusation. It chills me to the bone, wind lashing me from twenty feet away.

  Then he stands, and I taste something new. Metallic. Fear.

  I don’t know the man walking toward me. My dreams cast him as the savior. My nightmares showed his father as the devil. But those were the imaginings of a little girl, the same as my terrible crush and my private yearning.

  The crowd parts for him, some without even looking back. They feel his energy as strongly as I do, pulsing as if the beat emanates from him. Smoke rises up around him, behind him, framing him in such a demonic light that I know I feared the wrong man.

  He stops in front of me, casual, expectant.

  And I find myself filling the space between us. “I’m looking for my dad. I didn’t realize you were having a party. He wasn’t at home. I can wait until you’re… done.”

  That makes him smile. “Will you wait for me?”

  What if he waited for you?

  My cheeks turn hot. I must be bright red from shame. Can he guess what I dreamed about? Because whether I meant to or not, I have been waiting for him. Living my life in books, in numbers on paper, the smell of wood shavings and chalk in my nose. There haven’t been dates. Not even many friends.

  I have been waiting for this man, the illusion of him. Someone who doesn’t exist.

  “No,” I tell Damon Scott. “We need to talk. Right now.”

  Chapter Nine

  The crowd falls quiet, attuned to us in a matter of seconds.

  Not because he spoke to me. That earned me resentful glances or mild curiosity. What brings the room to a halt is my disobedience, as if I’ve disrupted the entire flow of the party by fighting back. The beat of the music still thrums around us, heavy vibrations on the taut crowd.

  I can hear the jangle of iron chains from someone shackled to the corner, eyelids heavy as they watch me, hips still thrust upward in a gyration never completed. I can hear the slick sound of skin against skin as the tangle on the fallen-over armchair twist to look at me. A cold giggle from one of the girls who’d been dancing near Damon before he came over.

  God, even the silence here is hedonistic and cruel.

  “I’m listening,” he says, cool and sharp as a blade.

  He listens with his whole body, his tall frame relaxed and expectant, his eyes hooded. The rest of the room is listening, too. This is better entertainment than half-naked people dancing in a cage. Than people having sex in a fallen-over leather armchair. This is the show.

  “Well,” Damon says in that showman’s voice. As if he’s the ringmaster, the Den his human circus. “If you have something to say, go ahead and say it. We can’t wait to hear.”

  Every pair of eyes in the Den swings looks at me. I can smell the sex and the sweat in the air, feel the heavy breathing from all around. “I’d like to talk in private.”

  “Would you?” Damon says, circling me. “You don’t look like you have much to bargain with.”

  I’m painfully aware of my slouchy travel clothes, my old ballet flats, the frayed carry-on that I found at a thrift store for five dollars. His dark eyes take me in, all of me, from my appearance to my worry, the fear that I’ve lived in since I woke up in Avery’s empty bed days ago.

  “It’s a serious matter,” I say, proud that my voice doesn’t waver. There are a hundred people looking at me right now, each one of them more experienced than me.

  And then there’s Damon himself, their dark king. Benevolent. Capricious.

  Both a powerful leader and the disruptive force.

  His voice is mocking now. “A serious matter? You better tell me fast, then.”

  There aren’t any words in my head. All the things I’d planned to say to him—where’s my father? Where’s Avery? What have you done to them?—evaporated in the face of his scorching derision.

  “Have you lost a puppy, little girl?” A laugh spreads through the crowd, as tactile as the groping hands and shining skin that undulated to the music minutes ago. “Or maybe you are the lost little puppy. Have you lost your owner?”

  The worst part is that his words make me feel like a lost animal, wandering the streets, desperate for someone to take me in. With my father’s empty apartment fresh in my memory and my second-hand luggage, it’s not very far from the truth.

  I look around at the people gawking, at their delight in my discomfort. They think they know what Damon Scott will do. They think they know him, but I knew the boy before he became a man. I saw him lanky and determined. I watched him trade his own safety to protect me.

  “Where’s my dad?”

  That earns me a small smile, his lids low. “Does he tell you about his day when he calls you? About threatening people for money? About following through?”

  Acid burns my throat, because Daddy never mentions that. And I’m not naive enough to think it hasn’t happened. When I’m in at one of the best colleges in the country, while I live in that dreamworld of numbers and Greek symbols, he’s doing dirty work for a dangerous criminal king.

  “So where is he now?”

  An indolent shrug of one shoulder. “I haven’t seen him. Though I did hear through the grapevine that he started gambling again.” He makes a tsk sound. “That’s never a good thing. Once debts start to pile up, how can I trust him to be loyal? I can’t.”

  My blood runs cold. “Did you do something to him?”

  “Let’s be clear, sweetheart. Whatever happened to him, he did it to himself.” The cold silver of his eyes tells me Damon’s conscience would not ache for even one second over my father’s death.

  “You asshole,” I hiss, unable to hide my anger any longer.

  A man steps forward, someone I’ve never seen before. He’s wearing a suit that’s been und
one in most of the ways it can be, rumpled and pushed aside. I barely have time to register his aggression, his instinctive response to my insult. How does a man obtain that kind of blind loyalty?

  The man reaches for me, his fingers brushing my wrist.

  That’s how close he gets before everything shatters. Damon moves so fast he’s a blur. When he stills, he has the man pressed against the wall, arm twisted at a strange angle.

  “No one touches her.” Damon’s voice is quiet, but it carries through the crowded hall.

  A rustle moves through the crowd, half awareness, half movement. The way they look at me has changed, the hostility faded away, replaced by something else. Maybe deference. Or fear.

  I’m under Damon Scott’s protection now. That’s what he’s just made clear.

  He steps away from the man, leaving him writhing in pain against the wall.

  “I didn’t kill your father,” he says, his voice low enough to be private. What I requested before, if not quite the way I wanted. “I haven’t seen him in weeks. He’s not here.”

  It’s a dismissal, one that I should be grateful for. And if it were only my father, I would leave. I would search the old gambling spots where he used to lose his paychecks. I would find new ones.

  Except it’s not only my father at stake here.

  “What about Avery?”

  Damon Scott doesn’t suck in a breath. He doesn’t widen his eyes or make any kind of movement that might be perceived as weakness. He had those reactions beaten out of him a long time ago. There’s only a blade where a man might have stood, cool and silver and sharp. “What about her?”

  “She’s your sister. Don’t you care that she’s missing?”

  “How long?”

  I know Avery said Gabriel and Damon had a falling out, but how could they not have spoken about this? They were business partners once. Friends in that way that only predators could be, more of a truce and a reserved respect than actual affection. “I can’t believe he didn’t tell you.”

  “How long?” he repeats, his voice even.