by Eva Chase
“It’s quite the feat,” I sang under my breath, snuggling closer. “In your eyes, I am so sweet.” And maybe, come what may, that would be enough.
8
Snap
When I woke up, only a faint haze of dawn light showed through the window. Sorsha lay peaceful in my embrace, her red hair providing a bright frame to her pale face. Her fiery sweet scent lingered in my nose and on my lips.
I wanted to hold her like this forever. I wanted to slide back inside her and return to that wonderful, slick melding that had brought such pleasure to both of us. But the first option was impossible while we still had Omen’s jailors to bring to justice, and the second would have meant breaking her much-needed sleep.
Instead, I settled for slipping away into the shadows and reforming outside, meaning to check the car for any food she might have bought and left there that I could offer her as a breakfast when she woke. That’s what I would have done, except Omen was leaning against the car, his arms folded over his chest and his gaze piercing as it fixed on me. I might not have been an expert at reading emotions like Ruse was, but I could tell he wasn’t happy.
“What exactly is this mortal’s draw that all three of you are slavering over her?” he said in a cool, flat tone. “Even you. Are her nether regions laced with heroin?”
I blinked at him. I didn’t like how hard and cold he’d been since we’d freed him. The Omen who’d asked me to help with his quest, the one who’d guided me through our first few ventures into the mortal world, hadn’t exactly been cheerful, but he’d smiled with warmth. Made jokes now and then. Laughed at Ruse’s jokes at least as often as he’d glared. He was angry because of what the other mortals had put him through, this Company of Light, and that made sense, but still, I didn’t like it.
And also… “I don’t know what that means.”
He sighed and pushed himself off the car to straighten up. “Of course you don’t. Never mind. The point is, you’re awfully attached to this woman, aren’t you?”
Did he simply know what we’d been doing last night, or had he managed to overhear some of the things I’d said to her as well? I wouldn’t take any of them back.
“Why shouldn’t I be?” I asked. “You haven’t given her a chance—you weren’t there to see how much she did for us, how incredible she’s proven herself to be. Weren’t your tests enough? Or how she helped us in the ambush last night?”
“That’s not the point. She could deliver us the elixir of life and she’d still be a mortal. No good has ever come of a shadowkind getting hung up on one of them. We’re not the same sort of being—we don’t mix well. It’s a losing game.”
My hackles rose. “It isn’t a game. I care about her.”
He waved a finger at me. “That’s exactly the problem. Caring tangles your fate up with hers. You haven’t been on this side enough to know—mortals are fragile, Snap. Damned fragile. Why do you think they’re always coming up with new ways to try to screw us over?”
“Because they think we’re monsters?” I ventured.
“That’s just the name they invented to justify how they feel. And how they feel is fucking terrified of us.” He scoffed. “They’re afraid of so much, and they want to destroy whatever scares them.”
I paused, remembering a different sort of terror I’d sensed before we’d gotten Omen back. One he might have experienced as much as the creatures who’d left those impressions had. Was that what had changed him?
“I know what they did,” I said quietly. “The Company, in their experiments—not every aspect of it or any hint of why, but we investigated one of their labs. I tasted… over and over again, so much agony to so many shadowkind. It was horrible.”
“You don’t need to tell me that,” Omen growled.
“But I do need to tell you—Sorsha isn’t like that, not at all. She hates the people who did that as much as we do.”
“It doesn’t matter. Even the ones who aren’t outright hostile end up making more trouble than it’s ever worth. The only thing it’s worth doing with mortals is killing the ones out to harm us and giving all the others a wide berth. I guarantee you, she’ll make you regret doing anything else.”
“You don’t know her. She isn’t fragile.” I couldn’t imagine that word ever properly describing Sorsha. The power she wielded wasn’t anything like Thorn’s or Omen’s—or any other shadowkind—but it was still power. I could recognize the determination and resilience in her as surely as I could glean impressions of the past from any objects in my grasp.
Omen had tried to hurt her or to put her into situations where she’d be hurt, but she’d overcome his challenges. Why couldn’t he see?
“She is fragile,” he insisted. “You just don’t understand yet. It always comes out at the worst time. We’ve got too much at stake to risk it.”
“We’d risk a lot more if we stopped her from helping us. And I might not be very familiar with the mortal realm yet, but I know enough to recognize that.”
“Fine. She’s helping us. I haven’t sent her away, have I? Just have a little self-respect and stay out of her bed if you know what’s good for you.” He grimaced and stalked away.
A jittery sensation ran through my body in the wake of his words. The thought of Sorsha becoming fragile, of her breaking in some way, set all my nerves on edge.
I made myself investigate the car as I’d planned to. After a minute, I came up with a gas station store bag still holding some sort of chocolate cake-like confection that I expected would serve well enough, but I couldn’t rouse much sense of victory. I flitted back into the cabin and set the food down on the little table under the window.
Sorsha had dozed on. There was a sort of delicateness to her features when they were relaxed with sleep, a vulnerability in the softness of her skin. When we shadowkind took physical bodies in this realm, we could be gouged and shattered too, but unlike her, we could escape into the shadows to avoid a blow.
I’d already had to dig one bullet out of her. That had been painful—for me as well as her. Perhaps that was what Omen meant about her supposed fragility causing trouble.
The answer was simple, though. It rang through me clear as anything as I gazed at her lovely form.
I wouldn’t let the few who were vicious enough to wound this woman get close enough to do so. No mortal or shadowkind would uncover any frailty in her. She’d saved me from a cage that would have burned me and the searing of the lights in a collector’s home—and I would save her when she needed me to. Over and over, if it came to that. When a battle turned bloody, it wasn’t as if Omen needed my abilities in that moment to serve his purposes anyway.
Whatever other shadowkind he’d known who’d mingled with mortals, they must not have cared the same way I did. She was mine, and she’d called me hers, and nothing had felt more right in my entire existence. He didn’t need to worry about how much she mattered to me precisely because of how much she mattered to me.
Satisfied with that conviction, I eased down on the bed next to her to soak up a little more of her warmth. If I was particularly lucky, she’d share a morsel of that chocolate delicacy with me when she woke up.
9
Sorsha
When I returned after placing the police cap I’d stolen a couple of days ago on the head of a ten-foot-tall horse-and-rider statue in the park, Omen barely gave it a glance, even though he’d given me the challenge. “All right,” he said. “Now let’s see you collect, oh, we’ll say ten wallets. You never know when some mortal cash might come in handy.”
I stopped myself just shy of glowering at him. It was a hazy afternoon, the sunlight filtering through a thin layer of grayish clouds overhead, but warm enough that plenty of people were roaming through the park around us. Nabbing ten wallets wouldn’t be tough. But we really didn’t need cash when Ruse could charm anything we needed out of just about anyone—and at this point I was pretty sure that Omen’s tests weren’t meant so much to confirm my abilities as to arrange my arrest
or some disabling injury. Maybe he’d have liked both.
I’d thought he was done with the Sorsha Trials after yesterday’s ambush, but apparently not. Ellen’s phone call this morning appeared to have set him off. I’d only spoken to her for a few minutes to get the plans for a Fund meeting in an undercover location this evening, but Bossypants had been fuming behind his controlled exterior ever since.
My own patience was wearing so thin you could have severed it with the blunt end of a spork. I also didn’t love the idea of screwing over ten random innocent bystanders who’d just wanted to enjoy the last few days of summer.
I set my hands on my hips and smiled thinly at Omen. “How about I do you one better? I’ll steal the wallets, lift the cash, and return them without the marks ever knowing what they lost.”
“A thief with a heart of gold,” Omen said with a hint of snark. “I’ll be watching to make sure you collect the full ten.”
“I’m counting on it.”
I slipped through the park, focusing on purses left by picnic blankets and on larger gatherings where I could blend in with the crowd long enough to score. I only took a bill or two out of each wallet rather than all the cash, because Omen wouldn’t know how much I’d left behind. When I’d replaced the tenth and walked back to the edge of the park where he’d parked Betsy, I had a hundred and fifty bucks and no intention of playing this game any longer.
“Here you go,” I said when he emerged from the shadows between the trees, and handed him the money. “Buy yourself a better attitude. Somehow I’m guessing you didn’t put the shadowkind guys through half this much work to prove they belonged on the team.”
“I picked them, knowing they already belonged.” Omen grimaced at the bills as if he found them distasteful and stuffed them into his pocket. “You don’t get to decide when we’re done. I’m feeling like a snack. Get me a pie from that shop.” He pointed to a bakery across the street.
Was he kidding me? I opened my mouth to tell him where he could shove his pie… and then realized there was an even better option. Instead, I gave him another smile. “Does it have to be stolen, or can I buy it? And any particular flavor you’d like, boss?”
Really, calling him “boss” should have tipped him off. I could almost hear Ruse’s snicker from the patches of darkness nearby. But Omen either wasn’t paying enough attention or assumed he’d actually persuaded me of his ultimate authority. He waved dismissively at me. “An expert thief shouldn’t need to spend any money, right? And I’ll take apple or cherry.”
So generous of him, giving me two options. I gave him a mock curtsey and strode across the street.
A beautiful cherry pie was sitting on the top shelf of the glass display cabinet beside the cash register. I asked for one of the tarts next to the pie, and once the clerk had opened the cabinet door, “accidentally” knocked her tip jar onto the floor. As she scrambled to grab a broom to sweep up the broken glass and scattered coins, I thought a silent apology at her and liberated the pie. If she’d understood what good use I was going to put it to, surely she wouldn’t have minded.
When I returned, Omen was leaning against his car, looking way too smug. I had the perfect cure for that.
I gave him a broad grin as I crossed the street. “Here’s your pie. Enjoy!” Then I lifted his just dessert and planted it smack-dab on his face.
I moved quickly enough that the unsuspecting shadowkind didn’t have a chance to dodge. He jerked away an instant too late, sputtering as chunks of golden pastry and syrupy globs of cherry filling dribbled down his face and onto the front of his shirt. A couple of passersby snickered at the sight. He couldn’t blink away into the shadows to remove the mess in front of witnesses.
His eyes flashed with the fiery glow I’d seen in the Company’s facility. “You.” With a wordless growl, he snatched my wrist and spun us around to slam me into the car.
The impact radiated all through my back, making my healing shoulder throb, but it was worth it—to see his sneering face covered in fruity gore, to watch his rigid control snap and let out the heated rage underneath. To prove he wasn’t the perfect model of cool authority he liked to pretend he was. As he raised a fist, I stared right back at him, daring him to use it.
My trio ruined the fun. All three of them dashed from the shadows in the same moment. “Omen,” Thorn said in protest, and Snap leapt to my side.
Ruse cocked his head, studying my masterpiece. “You did want her to show she can stand up for herself, didn’t you? You’ve pushed her pretty far. Looks like sweet payback to me.”
Omen’s shoulders had already come down. His teeth flashed as he bared them, and then, with Thorn’s massive form hiding him from view, he slipped into the shadows and back again so swiftly his body only seemed to stutter before my eyes. Just like that, the mashed pie was gone other than the bits that had fallen to the sidewalk. The lingering scent smelled pretty damn good. Almost a waste of a tasty dessert—almost.
Snap eyed the splatters on the ground as if he was thinking the same thing, but he stayed next to me, his arm coming around my waist. Omen glanced around at his supernatural companions, his expression back in its chilly mask but his stance tensed and the ice in his eyes searing.
“I decide when she’s done,” he said, and shifted his gaze to me. “Was that prank supposed to convince me of your self-discipline?”
“No,” I said. “I was just getting the pie to your mouth in as speedy a fashion as possible. But it probably does show my self-discipline too, considering I’d been wanting to do something like that for ages. I’ve met all your challenges. Either I’m in or I’m out, Luce. Or are you not very disciplined at making up your mind?”
A renewed spark of anger danced in his eyes, but he held it in check. His chin rose to a haughty angle. “I was confirming how much shit you were willing to take. Always important to know the limits of those you’re working with. That can be enough for now.”
He didn’t want to find out what he’d get in the face if he started up his tests again. I eased myself off the car and brushed my hands together. “Excellent. I’m glad we got that sorted out. You all can even enjoy a little bro time hitting up that hacker for more dirt while I’m meeting with the Fund tonight. Wins all around.”
As hard as I’d been working to stay part of the shadowkind quartet’s investigations, I had to admit I was looking forward to getting in some human socialization. Of course, I wouldn’t have chosen to be climbing up walls while I did it.
I eyed the rock-climbing gym Ellen had told me to meet the group at skeptically before stepping inside. The vast room smelled like rubber and sweat. Carabiners clinked and voices echoed off the high walls. A pang ran through my still-healing shoulder. Well, I’d grinned and borne it through worse in the past few days.
Vivi was waiting by the check-in desk, decked out in a tee and velour sweatpants—both white, naturally. She bounded over at the sight of me.
“Interesting change in scenery, isn’t it? Come on, sign the waiver and get your gear. Ellen and Huyen booked a private alcove, but we’ve still got to look as if we’re using it to actually climb while we’re talking.”
I laughed. “A workout and a debate in one. This should be fun.”
Vivi hefted a climbing harness over her slim shoulder. “Do you really think they’re going to argue that much about getting involved? These Company of Light people are obviously into some seriously shady shit.”
“Yeah, but I can’t tell them about most of that without giving away how much I was hiding from them before. And you know how a lot of the members are—they don’t want to extend any more effort than showing up to chat at the meetings and writing up a few outraged emails.”
It didn’t appear that all that many members had even made the effort to show up at this new location. In our reserved alcove, Huyen had already scaled nearly to the top of the wall. A few other regulars were poised at various points lower down, their feet braced against the handholds that looked like somethin
g out of an abstract art exhibit. Ellen and one of the younger guys were standing near the edge of the wall, the guy pitching an idea to her in a low, urgent voice.
“We’d raise so much more money that way. It’s not really lying. Okay, so we wouldn’t actually be trying to save the abused dogs in the photos, but we are rescuing some kind of creatures—and some of them are furry!”
Ellen didn’t look convinced. Since most of the mortal population would never have believed the shadowkind existed—and the ones who lived mortal-side weren’t in any hurry to draw attention to that fact—we couldn’t be completely truthful about our goals when we campaigned for donations. Slapping photos of a cause that wasn’t ours to gain sympathy points rubbed up against our leaders’ conscience.
“Sounds like a great idea to me,” I said as I passed them, clapping the guy on the shoulder and shooting Ellen an encouraging smile. Maybe that was how the Company of Light could afford a gazillion people on staff and fancy equipment out the wazoo: pictures of cute fuzzy animals in distress.
“Huyen and I will talk it over,” Ellen said to the guy as Vivi and I picked our spots along the wall. “You know we try to avoid outright falsehoods—it could come back to bite us if anyone follows up.”
Okay, so there were practical reasons to avoid blatant lies too. Knowing the Company as well as I did now, they just offed anyone who poked their nose too far into their business.
As I hooked up my equipment, another sort of hook-up slunk into the space with all the shine of a storm cloud. Leland dropped his harness at his feet and stared up at the wall gloomily.
After spending so much time around my supernaturally stunning quartet, it was hard to remember what I’d found particularly attractive in that boyish face and top-heavy physique. Especially since these days my ex-friend-with-benefits turned even more sour whenever he glanced my way.
