On a background of her pitiful wails, I keyed up my Comwatch and radioed dispatch. “SEB277 for transfer of custody. Code 10-12.”
“Copy that, 277. Stand by.”
I watched the girl as I waited. She cried as if her life were over. Maybe it was. But I hadn’t been the one who turned her to the dark.
We live the consequences of our decisions until they kill us. Some of us quicker than others.
A beep from the flexi-cuffs indicated the transfer had been initiated. Georgina Lewis was still sobbing when the magic cloaked her and took her away from the cliffs to a cell downtown.
A loud silence followed her departure. I didn’t like that I’d brought violence into the longhouse, but I didn’t like it in the manner of a girl who’d veered so far from her home path, she may as well have been on a different planet.
Look at that. Didn’t have to shoot her. I holstered my gun. Drew it. Didn’t have to use it. I called that a win.
I couldn’t say what I heard in that moment that turned my attention to the door beyond the long house. My fae sight still shone through the darkness, turning the dark space inside and outside into a glowing, mid-day blue. A soft huff of air, possibly. The faint, acrid scent of smoke. Not cigarette smoke; not really. Tobacco, yes, but laced with something headier and sweeter. Clove?
I backed against the wall, turning my gaze on the door. The angle gave me full view of a man’s profile: he leaned against the façade of the longhouse, one foot against the wall, his knee crooked, a cigarette glowing dimly from his lips. Casual, like he spent all his time loitering outside abandoned pueblos in the dark.
“You’ve caught me,” he said sardonically. The lit end of his cigarette bounced with his words. Sickly-sweet smoke drifted toward the roof of the cave.
I’ll admit, it takes a lot to fluster me. The fact he knew I could see him in the dark from inside the pueblo baffled me.
He slithered away from the wall, shadow melding from the shadows, tinted blue by fae sight. Faster than any human should have been able, he stood in front of me.
Well, fuck. Guess I wasn’t going to survive the night without using my gun.
I whipped the Taurus up and leveled it on his face. The gentle glow of his cigarette screwed with my fae sight—one of those faults in design. I could see a lean, muscular torso, long legs beneath his black pants, bare forearms corded with sinew. But the cigarette glow distorted my fae sight, leaving his face insubstantial and blurry.
He batted my gun away. “Stop that. I’m not here to hurt you.”
“Oh, yeah?” I stuck the gun right back in his face. “Wanna tell me why you were creeping outside listening to my apprehension?”
“Apprehension? Like you’re the police, or something.” He chuckled. His voice was deep molasses, slow and thick with an ambiguous accent that placed him from nowhere and anywhere.
“I am the police.”
“No, you’re an embassy-trained dog of the Reina.” He sucked in a lungful of smoke and spoke as it drifted from his lips. “She’s brainwashing you to take care of the shadow touched, when you need to be focused on why Senka’s protection is dimming and how we can stop it.”
He didn’t sound like a normal shadow touched. He lacked that hollowness, the faithlessness that came from turning to the dark side. He sounded almost…logical. Matter-of-fact. He wasn’t human—no human could have moved like he did, so quick I couldn’t follow.
But he didn’t feel fae, either.
“Who are you?” I asked, sighting the gun.
Slowly, he took his cigarette from his lips and tossed it to the dirt at our feet. The little pinprick of light that had interfered with my fae sight extinguished, and suddenly, I could see him. All of him.
He ground the stub beneath his toe and met my gaze with eyes blacker-than-coal.
Fuck. He was shadow-touched. And he was gorgeous.
“Warren.” He flashed a grin like a beacon in the dark. “And I’m going to save your life.”
I lowered my gun. “What?”
Then the earth began to shake beneath our feet.
2
Warren grabbed me roughly by both biceps and jerked me against him.
I slammed into a wall of muscle and strength. It should have put me on alert; I should have reacted as if he had stabbed me, then shoved my gun between the delicate piano of his ribs and pulled the trigger. Instead, a thrill shot through my body. We molded together, his hard chest against my breasts, our thighs interlocked. For a brief instant, as I gazed up into his black eyes, I forgot about the earthquake. I forgot about Georgie Lewis and the longhouse and Senka Hollow.
The world shifted. I fell through space with nothing but a stranger to cling to in the madness. Colors and sounds ramped up until I couldn’t see or hear anything but noise and chaos, though Warren’s warm hands remained firmly pressed into my back. We were one with the universe, among the stars — maybe even stars ourselves — and the eternal dance of life cradled us as if the dancers had waited forever for our arrival. I was flying, but I was rooted by his hands on my skin. The sensation lasted forever and not nearly long enough.
Suddenly, everything righted itself.
I clutched Warren’s arms. My body wanted to continue swirling but the solid earth beneath me didn’t.
We stood beneath a purple desert sky as stars began to wink awake. The mesa towered behind Warren; the campfires haloed him so that I couldn’t see his face. Again. But I remembered it, all sharp angles and huge eyes illuminated by the magick of my fae sight.
I stepped away from his embrace and opened my mouth to ask what the hell had just happened.
He placed a finger to my lips. “Shh. Give it a moment, babe.”
I tried to ignore the heady scent his clove cigarette had left on his skin. I also tried not to enjoy the way his finger trailed away, more like a lover’s caress than an admonishment. Because it wasn’t bad enough he’d shushed me, but he’d called me babe like some common ho.
The low murmur of voices reached my ear. Instead of punching him in the nuts to make a point, I tuned in to the conversation.
“Georgie, no!”
“Interfere and sign your own death warrants!” a voice snarled.
No. Not a voice. My voice. My raspy, Res-accented voice.
What the actual fuck?
A blur of motion crossed the desert floor, headed toward the pueblos. Georgie, in her too-big khaki cargos and sweatshirt, stumbled for the cliff—fast for a pint-sized sorority girl. Behind her, a tall, muscular figure raced over the dirt, ebony hair flying like a cape.
Me.
I gaped as I disappeared into the pueblo after Georgie, then I leveled a sharp gaze on Warren.
“What did you do?”
He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and shook one out, a grin spreading across his face. He flipped the dark brown stick between his lips and illuminated a lighter I never saw him retrieve.
“Saved your life.” He lit his cigarette and took a long drag. He stared at me thoughtfully. “You’re prettier than I expected.”
“Do I know you?” I asked, exasperated at his cryptic phrases and enigmatic smile.
“No. Not yet.” He grinned wider and exhaled a stream of smoke.
Darkness enshrouded him, masking half his face in shadow. His messy mahogany-brown hair stood on end, defying gravity but looking soft to the touch. One black eye gazed at me in flickering firelight, the other masked by the play of flames and shadow. He closed his thick, red lips over the cigarette and pulled.
I focused on his eyes to fan my own flames. The sight of him sucking on his cigarette did things to my nether-parts. My nether-parts were not supposed to be actively involved in apprehension work. Nether-parts were counterproductive.
His eyes helped: the iris and pupil were the same inky shade. The black nexus occupied more of the sclera than in a normal human or fae, leaving only a small window of white—the tell-tale sign of a shadow-touched.
“How long
do you think that apprehension took?” he asked me.
I raised an eyebrow. “Minute. Minute-and-a-half if we’re including you. Why?”
“You’re quick. Impressive, actually. I can’t figure out if it was dumb luck that led that girl to a dead end, or if you nudged her there.” He tapped the side of his forehead. “Smart.”
“I appreciate the compliment. I’d appreciate it more if you told me how you knew about the quake, how you happened to be outside the longhouse, and how you can travel through time.”
“All in due time.” He grinned at his awful pun. His black gaze focused on the horizon. A faint rumble began to grow beneath our feet. The quake. He nodded. “There it is. Listen—” he exhaled another stupid stream of smoke that smelled like sex and a summer night, “—it’s been real. But I have somewhere to be, and you have a long night ahead of you. I’ll see you again real soon.”
He winked. The shadows around him shifted, melted, swarmed him… and he was gone.
Night had fallen completely by the time I curved my bike into a spot in the parking garage at SEB Headquarters.
I’d left three marked units at the mesa, taking a report on the damage to the cliff dwellings. Only a few Rim-dwellers got hurt in the quake; nobody died.
Including me, which I owed to Warren. Supposedly.
Nothing seemed out of place at Headquarters. The quake must have been small on the scale of one-to-holy-shit.
Headquarters consisted of more than just the SEB. We shared a single building the size of a city block with most of the Hollow’s important agencies: The Sapiens Enforcement Agency—the human equivalent of the Bureau; the offices of the government, which consisted of the Rein, the Reina, and our thirteen human and fae council members; Population, the Hollow’s jail and prison systems; and the morgue. The best of the best and the worst of the worst crossed this threshold, and sometimes the line between the two was very unclear.
I cut the engine and kicked the stand down, my movements heavier than usual. Uneasiness dragged my limbs, and I wasn’t certain it had anything to do with Warren and his disappearing act.
My Com rang. I paused beside my bike to answer. “Yeah.”
“Where the hell are you? I’m starving,” my twin brother complained. For such a skinny sonofabitch, Rice could eat like a hobbit.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m running late.”
“Clearly.”
“The skyscraper didn’t collapse during the quake, did it?”
Rice laughed. “No, unfortunately. Maybe we wouldn’t have to listen to Mrs. Vincente’s television all night if it had.”
“Everything in the apartment okay?”
“Couple broken dishes. Otherwise, good. It was small.”
My brother’s voice leveled my nerves. He’d always had that effect on me, as if my mother’s body had given him all the calm, easygoing genes, and I’d gotten the neurotic, semi-sociopathic leftovers.
“Have you even made it to the restaurant yet?” Rice asked.
“Sure. All taken care of.”
“You’re a terrible liar,” he told me. “Why do I trust you? They close in twenty minutes, Maurelle.”
“I know, Maurice.” We tended to fall back on the full names we hated when irritated with one another. “I just need to check in with Population and secure my prisoner, then run by the Reina’s office. You call in the order, and I promise I’ll get it before they close. Okay?”
“You come home without my noodles, I’m changing the locks.” He hung up.
The Population desk occupied a corner of the first-floor lobby, behind which an electronic door led to the jail. A uniformed Population guard sat behind the wooden counter, watching the multiple security screens that monitored the interior. He looked up as I approached.
“Agent Nez. You’re lookin’ fine this evening.” Moriarty leaned back in his plush chair and whistled softly, his blue-eyed gaze trailing down my dusty jeans and tank top. He was a good-looking man, but a little too shiny, a little too smarmy, hair a little too coiffed. “Get into a tussle? Was the other girl naked?”
“I loathe you.” I slapped Georgina Lewis’s file on the counter. “She ready for my signature?”
Moriarty tapped on his keyboard for a moment and nodded. “Yeah. They booked her on Sub-4. Hearing is tomorrow morning.” He slid the electronic sig pad to me, and I scrawled my name with my index finger.
Sub-4. Something inside me panged. If I thought I had any empathy left, I’d have figured it to be sadness. Sub-4 was smoke and mirrors. You got assigned there, you weren’t leaving alive.
Better the Population team get the dirty work of killing her than me. Too many more deaths by my hands, and I would drown in the blood.
Moriarty slid the electronic pad back into place. “You sure you don’t want to go out sometime, Nez? I’ll even pay.”
“I like girls,” I tossed over my shoulder as I strolled away. He knew I was lying.
“You’re breaking my heart!”
I had a thing about elevators, so I took the stairs two at a time to the fifth floor and shoved through to the Reina’s personal offices, where the fae half of our leadership ran the Hollow.
Her assistant—the nighttime girl, Carla—glanced up, saw it was me, and went right back to her magazine with a distracted, “Hey, Relle.”
“She in there?”
Carla turned the page. “Isn’t she always anymore?”
I thumbed the code to my best friend’s office and entered.
The Reina of Senka Hollow, Lila Lear, sat behind her massive desk, her head in her hands and her long blonde hair trailing over the messy surface. She didn’t bother to emerge from the cocoon of her palms—only two people in the Hollow knew the code to her office, and one of them was her husband.
“Did you come in the back?” Lila asked, voice muffled behind her hands and hair.
I sank into the chair in front of her desk and propped my legs up on the desk. “Yeah. Why?”
She finally glanced up through her curtain of soft curls. Her emerald eyes were bloodshot, and her nose was red as if she’d been crying.
Unfortunately, not an uncommon sight for Lila.
“Fuck. What happened?” I put my dusty boots back on the floor and leaned forward to pat her hand awkwardly. “Is it Everett?”
She snorted, but it was more half-sob than sound-of-irritation. “Not even the half of it. Are you busy?”
“Do I look like I’m busy? It’s nine-thirty on a Friday night, and I’m in your office.”
Lila tinkled with laughter. She shoved her chair back and grabbed a handful of tissues. As she gingerly dabbed around her eyes, she said, “I punched him in the nose.”
“I’m sure he deserved it. Why?”
“I don’t know. We were arguing.” She blew her nose with an inelegant duck-like honk that made me adore her even more. “He said something dumb about my ass. I insulted his sexual prowess. You know how it goes.”
“You’re the most dysfunctional couple in the entire Hollow.”
“Thank Senka we aren’t the ones in charge. Oh, wait…” She cracked a half-smile that faded quickly. “Forget Everett for a minute. I need to show you something.”
Her long white skirt swished prettily around her thin ankles as she padded across the office in bare feet. Lila was beautiful the way the ocean sounded in the night—discreet and soothing, like divinity come to life. She had an ageless face and an innocent smile, but I’d seen her spear her fingernails into a shadow-touched’s eyes with vicious, grim determination. Petite beauty aside, she was a lioness, and I never underestimated her.
I was rather fond of my eyes.
Lila tapped the down arrow for her private elevator.
I made a face. “Do we have to?”
“You are a grown woman. This fear of elevators is ridiculous. And yes, we have to. We’re going below.”
“I’m not afraid of elevators,” I argued as the bell dinged, and the door opened. “I just prefer solid ground be
neath my boots and full control of my person.”
“That’s why you’re my sidekick,” Lila joked and touched the B2 for Basement Level 2. “I float around somewhere in the stratosphere, weighted securely to your concrete slippers. You keep me grounded.”
Neither of us spoke as we drifted steadily beneath the sands of the Hollow, down to the level where our princess lay in cold and silence. Senka’s grave was a shrine in the Hollow. To visit her meant being granted special permissions by the Rein and Reina, who were fearsome guardians of our priestess. The cavern in which she lay was as protected as a National Heritage site of old. More protected than the cliff dwellings where my ancestors had birthed, lived, and died.
The moment the elevator slid below ground level, Senka's presence was all around. I imagined the humans who attended church felt in their pews the way I felt while near our princess.
The bell dinged. Lila placed her hand on the bio sensor—the secret passcode to enter Senka's tomb—and the doors swished open to admit us.
Only a dim blue light illuminated Senka’s tomb, giving the cavernous room an underwater glow. The ceiling soared high above us, shadowed in the stillness. My boots echoed with every step across the marble floors. I didn’t make it a habit to come here, mainly because either the Rein or Reina had to be with me, and they were busy enough without giving unscheduled tours. But when I did get a chance to visit, the weight of my existence faded surrounded by Senka’s hallowed peace.
“Did you feel the earthquake?” Lila asked as she led me to the shiny silver railing that overlooked the grave one floor below.
“I did.” I neglected to mention Warren, time-travel, or the possible destruction of an ancient pueblo cliff dwelling while on duty. Lila had enough on her plate without adding my crazy-ass night to the mix.
“Look what the quake has done to our princess.”
I stepped up beside my reina and wrapped my fingers around the cold metal bars. Far below us, Senka’s grave lay split open, as if the earth had offered her to the light and the light had declined. The dark fissure hissed and smoked, so deeply black it appeared to go on forever.
The Shadows and Sorcery Collection Page 2
