by Sarah Tobias
Gwyn didn’t spare a glance at the West Village crowd as she stepped out of the SUV and impatiently waited for me to join her on the sidewalk. We began our stroll of slime-shame, turning onto 7th Avenue South.
Jeez, she was stone-cold uncaring of what anyone thought of her.
“There’s a mud wrestling bar around here?” I heard someone ask as I trailed behind Gwyn. “I want in!”
“Looks like you rolled in diarrhea,” someone else called as they passed. I kept my eyes down, my cheeks flushing under all the stickiness. Despite superpowers and battles and eating fae, as well as all the other things that would make me strong and scary to drunken college boys, I’d always hated being the center of attention.
“You shoulda chosen the clear lube like the other girl,” someone else said.
I picked up my pace to keep up with Gwyn as she dove between crowds, people more than willing to duck out of her way. Probably out of fear, because even though I got the back of her, it wasn't difficult to imagine the scowl on her features.
She turned left again and I followed, using only human speed as I weaved around the crowds and ignored all the comments and looks of surprise as we walked by. I was thankful when we reached her brownstone, taking the steps two at a time as I followed her inside.
After Gwyn unlocked the main door, we took one flight of stairs before reaching their apartment, the key slipping in her slimy grip only once before she inserted it and let us in.
I felt him before I saw him, as I always did, that familiar wave of electricity flowing down my spine. Asher sat at the circular wooden table centered in the main room, hunched over and nursing a steaming mug. His attention was on the dark liquid in his cup, as if he were trying to read shapes in the dancing, curling steam.
As soon as we shut the door, his eyes shot up, and they scathed.
“You screwed up, Gwyn,” he said, pushing back from the table.
Gwyn shrugged, but her body was tense, unsettled and highly strung as she attempted to stay calm. “You weren’t giving me the credit I deserved.”
Asher’s attention darted over to me. “And you brought her into this?”
It was the first time I’d heard him yell, his fury snapping loose like broken electrical wires. I flinched as my charged connection with him reacted with sparks.
Asher’s focus centered on me, taking in my disheveled state. He pointed at my torso. “Is that what I think it is?”
My nose was immersed in licorice for the past forty-five minutes, to the point I was desensitized to the smell.
“Goop from a monster, yes,” I said, my voice cracking with every word I forced out.
Asher was terrifying when he was angry.
“I didn’t bring her anywhere,” Gwyn argued. “She walked into it.”
“So, Emily was walking around the most deserted part of Brooklyn and tripped over you? Where were you, Gwyn? Why did you block me?”
Asher shifted away, releasing a thousand tons of weight from my shoulders, and instead paced toward Gwyn. “Don’t tell me you did this in the city—in public. If you were that stupid … why do you refuse to listen? Is she hurt? Did Emily almost die because of you?” Asher drew closer, his voice rising. I pressed against the wall behind me, thankful his temper wasn’t directed at me. But holy moly, it hurt my heart.
“No!” Gwyn said, flicking me a glare. “Look at her, she’s fine. Of course it wasn’t in the city! Ash, you think I’m so stupid, all the time. I wanted to show you I don’t always have to be the one in the background. I’m just as strong as you.” This time, it was she who stepped up to him. “And as clever. You have no idea. The boy who knows everything had no idea what I was doing—for once. The one time I got to think for myself.”
Asher had become so stiff with anger, waves of it came off him. I had to force myself not to run far, far away from that predatory gaze.
“And that, right there,” he said, his voice deadly quiet, “is why I always put you in the background.”
“How dare—”
“Keep this up, you’re going to die, Gwyn, and take us all with you.” He paused for a mere second before his voice rose again, this time crackling underneath the strain. “I can’t protect you when you do this!”
“I actually go there to think,” I offered up in a small attempt to remind them I was still here. “I wasn’t lured anywhere,” I added.
The room was thick with tension, and those stone eyes of theirs were just as scary when they were directed at each other and not at me.
Asher's stone softened as he took me in and assessed the damage.
“You’re not hurt,” he said, not as a question, but more as a reassurance to himself.
I shook my head slowly.
“Good.” Asher turned back to Gwyn, his temper replaced with concern. “Don’t make me have to live with your death, Gwyn.”
Gwyn trembled, but only I caught it with my heightened senses. The energy around her wavered like a cloud. “I wanted to prove to you I could do it. That I don’t need you constantly in front of me, protecting me.”
Her voice was no longer as strong, her stature not as confident. Gwyn had deflated under his words.
“Right. Because it never occurred to you I’m your brother and it would kill me if something happened to you.”
Anger forgotten, the electric charge Asher caused ebbed and flowed like a flowing river as he calmed down.
“You sure you’re okay?” Asher seemed as though he wanted to step up to me and pat me down, searching for injuries. In that instant, I wanted him to cup my face, to feel his hands as they glided over my clothes.
My body jerked, enough to remind me she was in there, glowering. He is not safe.
Asher’s jaw tensed at my continued silence. In his mind, I must’ve come across a monster of nightmares, never before encountering a creature of such supernatural, disgusting deadliness, and I should be hysterical by now.
They know more about you than you think, my dark flame whispered in my head.
“Emily,” he said, his voice as warm and spicy as hot honey.
Gwyn's hooded stare came back to me. “I blacked out, Ash. She says she … wounded it.”
Gwyn’s voice changed when she said those words. Morphed to glass. I recalled what she'd said when I was curled up in the bed upstairs so many nights ago, sick and afraid.
We don’t even know what she is…
“Not many people would have done that,” Asher said to me. “That was pretty brave.”
I decided to nod in agreement, unsure how to react under Asher’s very sexy but very alert scrutiny. “Like I said, I was walking. I like to wander in the evening before work, and Gwyn screamed. I ran over and saw her on the ground. I just reacted. Kind of like you did in the coffee shop.”
Asher’s lower eyelid twitched at my last statement. I wanted to melt under his gaze, yet I couldn’t ignore the silver blades underneath. He was watching. Considering. I had to be careful.
“Gwyn brought me here because she said you had the answers.” I paused, aiming for terror. Awe. “What the heck is going on?”
Watch him as you would a fellow predator, my dark flame whispered.
Gwyn was certainly eyeing me, her mind whirring like a machine despite her blank expression as she glanced between Asher and me. All of us stood in a triangle in the middle of the room.
Asher spoke. “I’m sorry you were put in that position and you had to see that. It must’ve been …yeah, I’m sure you have questions.”
I wasn’t sure if Asher was patronizing me or if he meant it. With him, it was impossible to tell. It was all so carefully controlled.
“It was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen,” I said. “I hope to never come across one of those again.”
“Do you understand that what you saw wasn’t a normal part of this world?” Asher asked me.
The dark flame dove and spread, her heat unwinding at my center.
“I understand that something’s going
on this city,” I said. “Was that what you meant at the park? When you said this city was in trouble?”
Gwyn raised a brow at Asher. “You two had a little pow-wow in the park?”
“Yes,” Asher replied, though he didn't direct his answer to Gwyn. She crossed her arms over her chest.
“There are more,” I said, my gaze never leaving Asher’s.
“Yes,” he said.
“Am I in danger?” I asked.
I wanted so badly to tell Asher what I knew, to compare our facts, to ask him what I was, but my throat wouldn’t work. I scowled, thinking it was her preventing me from speaking, but no, it was my own instincts warning me against such a snap decision.
Asher’s mouth thinned, his only tell of emotion. “It’s seen you. You hurt it. It’ll come after you.”
No, it won’t come after me. I ate it, I wanted to say, but again, stopped myself.
“What are they?” I asked instead, even though I knew the answer. I didn’t know Asher and Gwyn’s answers, however.
“Monsters,” Asher said, his voice flat.
“But … where do they come from? What do they want?” I made my voice rise higher, as if in panic, channeling the scared, innocent waitress they expected. Or at least I hoped they expected. Gwyn wouldn’t stop her study of me. It threw me off. My instincts screamed to leave this apartment, but with clues so close, how could I?
“They came to take over, of course,” Gwyn said, her dripping with sarcasm. “And we moved here to stop them.”
I glued my gaze to the floor to prevent them from noticing the answering shimmer of gold in my eyes. I want to stop them, too.
“It didn’t seem like Gwyn was preventing anything,” I said instead. “The goo-octopus was winning.”
My tactic worked. Gwyn fired up, which meant her focus became displaced. “Like you know anything, Emily. I had it under control. You shouldn’t have even been there. You can’t know these things.”
“But I do,” I said, daring to move closer and invade her space. “You fumbled. I was in the right place at the right time, and I saved your life, and now I know there are things in this world that shouldn’t be here. What exactly can you do about that?”
“Easy.” Gwyn tipped her chin up. “We’re going to kill you.”
Chapter 25
The dark flame surged with hate.
My insides blazes, but I kept my innocent mask in place. My cheeks burned with inner fire, but I tried to pass it off as emotion coloring my skin.
“Humans can’t know what’s real,” Gwyn continued as if she hadn’t just threatened my life. “It’s our job to maintain the balance. Except, now you’re in our house, questioning and panicking. If it were up to me, I would’ve killed you the second you came within my radar. There’s something about you, Emily, that’s upsetting the scale of good and evil.”
Fuming, I called upon whatever acting talent I possessed to seem traumatized when I cried, “But I did nothing to you! I don’t know what any of this is!”
There was truth in those words, adding an unexpected warble to my voice as I continued. “You two have come into my home, where I live, and act like you own it. I saw a—monster—with my own eyes, and you’re telling me there are more of them, that this whole city is in danger. And you’re focusing your attention on me? I'm pretty sure your anger is better directed at something more pressing.”
“Oh, calm down, girl,” Gwyn said, her smile fickle. “I said if it were me I would do those things, but unfortunately, it’s not my decision. Asher refuses to allow anything to happen to you.”
I blinked, pushing down my fury and the sharp joy that Asher could want to protect me.
“Is that true?” I asked Asher.
His jaw clenched, either in anger at Gwyn’s outburst or at the fact that Gwyn had just spewed forth information I wasn’t supposed to be privy to. “Yes.”
Through the smoking embers of my chest, my stomach flipped.
“Gwyn’s right,” Asher said. “When she says there’s something about you. A … strength. I’m not sure where you belong in this.”
At last, our minds finally met. “Me neither, Asher.”
“We’re not going to hurt you,” Asher said. He glanced at Gwyn. “And that’s the end of it.”
Gwyn scowled and crossed her arms.
“W-What is it that you do?” I asked, still trying for fearful.
Were these two good? Evil? Did they kill humans? I had the sudden wish that Derek were beside me. He’d figure out the right questions, the right actions to take. He’d know how to get answers.
“We can’t tell you that,” Gwyn said, moving into my line of vision. “Then Asher would have no choice but to kill you.”
A muscle in Asher’s jumped, but he didn’t refute Gwyn’s statement.
“You’ll just have to trust me,” Asher said. “We’re here to help.”
“And stay out of the way.” Gwyn swiped her hand across her forehead, scowling when she realized clear slime still covered her. That, in turn, reminded me I’d been standing here, a sopping, blackened swamp monster on the Benedict’s very beautiful hardwood floors the whole time. Then again, what danger could such a gooey person pose? It was the slime on the inside carrying the true menace. My slinking, rippling dark flame. She’d calmed down now that the threat of my dying was removed, but she slithered even now, creeping behind my eyes.
“I gotta get this crap off me,” Gwyn said, pulling at her shirt. When she passed by, her shoulder almost brushed mine. There was a kick in her features, an uptick of amusement as she sidled into my comfort zone.
Do not let her touch you, the dark flame hissed.
I shrank away, transmitting fear. I accepted the indignity of pretending to cower. So long as Gwyn didn't connect my wince to almost connecting with her skin.
The corners of Gwyn’s mouth curved up in amusement as she strode around the corner. I’d succeeded.
Asher watched her go, his expression inscrutable. Our volcanic connection was undeniable, but avoidable. Asher could ignore it if he chose. We had the ability to leave these desires behind, sacrifice out wants for the greater good.
Though sometimes, even the good can’t be pure.
He turned back to me. “Gwyn’s angry I’ve let you know anything at all.”
“Well, she couldn’t exactly avoid it when I wandered into her battleground,” I said, then bravely added, “But, why have you? You had no such obligation to explain anything.”
“You’re different. For one, you haven’t passed out with fear. Or denied what you saw. You faced me and said, in no uncertain terms, that you stabbed an obviously supernatural creature.”
“Goo octopus,” I corrected.
Asher moved closer. His proximity popped against my skin. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like you. And I’ve come across a lot of people in my life.”
The dark flame stilled, its flames banked against my own blaze of loneliness. A desolation so deep my eyes were desert dry.
She didn’t have to whisper any warnings. I understood, as much as I was getting to know my own dark flame, that I could never touch Asher without putting my life in danger.
For if I did, he’d know.
“You look so sad,” Asher said. He stepped forward once, twice, near enough so his lips were a breath away. The tiny hairs on my arms pulsed with an unseen charge, his body a magnet to my own.
Asher raised his hand, cupping the air as he brought it to my face.
I angled away, slowly, so as not to alert him, though I yearned for the contact. The back of my head hit the wall. My shoulder blades pressed hard against the plaster. And my fingers trembled with the urge to wrap around his torso and hold his scent against my body. An elixir of leather and wood, all male and all him.
How potent would it be if we kissed? We could bring down the city with our misfortune and fire.
“I-I’ve been through a lot today,” I said, oh so close to his lips. “I should probably go hom
e, get cleaned up.” My heart quaked and would no doubt turn to dust if I remained within his reach, unable to confide, to touch. “Explain to my boss why I didn’t show up to work. Oh—not actually explain, I mean. I’m not planning on telling her about all this stuff. These f—monsters.” I was babbling.
Asher nodded, shifting aside, emptying the space in front of me. I crossed my arms over my chest, shivering as Asher took the heat of our electric charge with him.
“You can’t go into the subway looking like that,” he said. “Shower here, first.”
Let’s see, be naked in a home with air so heavy it had to be filled with beckoning warning? Expose my skin, allowing more surface area for my golden monster to show herself?
Tempting, but no.
Not to mention ... having all of me stripped bare, wet under the spray, with Asher only one meager, plastered wall away. Imagining him soaking in the shower with me.
“I’d rather go home,” I said, but to soften my rebuff, I added, “Gwyn'll probably steal all the hot water anyway, in anticipation of me needing it.”
His lips twitched, his small gift of mirth. “I’ll get the car. Drive you home.”
I was still pressed up against the wall. I peeled myself away with as much grace as I could muster. “Thank you.”
I couldn’t go outside looking like this, and most especially smelling like this. Any fae would know what it was, and I wasn't itching to face anything down on the partying streets of the nighttime West Village crowd. How Gwyn and I made it to their apartment without confrontation in the first place was a miracle.
Unless she was deliberately tempting fate.
“Wait at the bottom of the stairs. You’ll see me drive up,” Asher said.
He opened the front door, descending the steps. I followed, taking the stairs delicately so as not to spread any more guck on the very expensive-looking refurbished staircase than I had to.
What Asher had done was not lost on me. Whatever these two siblings were, if they were part of the Tryne or had formed their own small alliance against the fae, they were serious.
