Afterlife (Second Eden #1) (32 page)

The doors swung open, and the familiar scent of sweat and labor accosted her nostrils. Boxing rings gridded the space between tall iron columns supporting the building’s high ceiling.
 

She unbuttoned her jacket and marched between the rings. Fools eyed her as she passed, some smirking, others arching curious brows. Bentley occupied the center ring, his dark, sinewy shoulders glistening with sweat.

He turned to her, and his lips parted in a porcelain smile. “Ah, the girl has returned. A little early though, aren’t you? Dino said later this evening.”

“Now. I’m ready to train now,” she said.

She bounded through the bands and motioned for the man practicing with Bentley to get out. He growled something, but Bentley raised a hand, and his lips snapped shut. “It’s okay,” Bentley reassured. “We’re done for the day anyway. This girl wants lessons. I’ve got time to teach them to her.”

The fool edged from the ring and watched while others glommed around him. Bentley cracked his knuckles and rolled his shoulders. Amber tossed her coat aside. He smiled, sticking his tongue between his teeth while he circled his mark. “Dino says you’ve learned much, but I look at you and see you still don’t stand like a fighter. You stand like a girl who doesn’t know how to throw a punch.”

He raced forward. Amber spun around to dodge, but his knuckles landed in her side. She flew into the bands as another blow connected with her jaw, sending her crashing to the mat.

The ring spun. The fools watching smirked or shook their heads and whispered. She slapped the mat and bounded aside as his heel slammed down.

Amber vaulted to her feet and raised her fists. Her jaw pounded, her side ached, but she swallowed down the pain and concentrated on her target.
 

He danced left and right and clapped his hands. “Maybe the wraith just isn’t in you, eh girl?”

Bentley sprang toward her. She squeezed her fists and braced for his attack.
 

Liam was supposed to be kind. He was supposed to be good. She thought he would have understood. Instead, he cut her with his words, called her names and cheapened who she was. Then, he pressed his will down on her, forced her to the ground like she was some kind of dog. He tried to violate her, body and mind.

Heat flashed through Amber’s body. Bentley’s fist buried in her stomach. She felt the impact, and yet, she didn’t. The fist barely registered, something more like a gentle tap than a battering ram of flesh and bone.
 

His momentum slammed his body against her, his eyes widening as he realized his blow wouldn’t budge his opponent. She stiffened. His head snapped back, and he crashed onto the mat. Amber touched her stomach. She raised her hand, and as Bentley bounded to his feet, she clenched her fist.

“So that’s how you do it,” she said.

He swung. She pivoted, his knuckles whizzing by her nose. She brought her fist back and plowed it against his chest, and in the most satisfying scream she ever heard, Bentley Diya soared out of the ring. He crashed against a steel column and collapsed onto his hands and knees, gasping for air.

Every fool surrounding the ring gawked at the girl standing in its center. Amber lowered her fist and raised her chin. She vaulted out of the ring, landing spryly before her coat. “Don’t ever call me girl again,” she told him, swinging the jacket over her shoulder.
 

The crowd parted for her passing as she strolled toward the doors. Without another word, she shoved them wide and vanished into the street.

“Wilhelmina’s not exactly the easiest woman to see,” Dino said.

“I’m ready to do whatever it takes.” Amber glanced at her reflection in the windowpane and adjusted her veil. She pulled her silk gloves higher up her arms and fidgeted with her collar.
 

Dino nodded approvingly, angling her hat just a little farther over her face. He threw his leather hood on and shoved his hands deep in his pockets. “Just make sure you keep your head down. The Spider’s not stupid. She knows who you are and she’ll have you pegged the second we step foot in the casino.”

“What’s going to stop her from just kidnapping me right then and there?”

“It’s the Spider. She likes games. I can keep you safe if we play our cards right.”

“That doesn’t make me feel all warm and tingly inside,” she said.
 

“That’s the first time I’ve ever heard a woman say
that
to me.”

Amber rolled her eyes while Dino led her around a corner, sidestepping a pair of blackjackets knocking on a shop door.
 

“They’re everywhere,” Amber whispered.

“And then some. We’re having a hard enough time shifting our forces around when they raid. Six cells were dusted the past two days. Six hundred souls.”

“Six
hundred
?”

“
Shh
.” They turned another corner. “Faye’s been trying to summon me, but I haven’t come. She’s getting desperate, sending her scouts out to look for me instead of worrying about the archduke.”

“But why?”

He smirked, pinching his hood farther over his head. “Because she thinks she owns me. What would you do if your attack dog chewed the leash? You’d try and chain it back up, maybe beat some sense into it before it had a chance to bite you.”

“But you can stop her. Can’t you?”

“Maybe,” he said, and by the way he said it he meant to end their conversation.

They traveled through the Ruby Ring, a wreath of elegant buildings surrounding a glittering lake. Thin minarets capped by tall, pointed roofs poked and prodded the sky. Delicate bridges arched over cobbled roadways. Neon signs in curving letters announced shops of every kind and hotels with every luxury.
 

For a district so steeped in opulence, few walked its streets. Amber strolled so close to Dino their arms rubbed against one another despite the emptiness around them. She felt like each window held a pair of suspicious eyes watching from behind the dark curtains.

“Where is everyone?” she asked.

“Remembering what happened to the wealthy during the Ardent Revolution. This feels much the same. I’m sure half the district’s shoving their gold and jewels under piles of dust or having it slipped out of the district and hidden somewhere they think is safe. The casino will be different. The Spider keeps all the little flies in her web free from harm. That’s probably the one constant in Afterlife. Ah, there it is.”

They turned a corner and passed beneath an arched walkway. The road spilled onto a wide dock lined with lampposts. At the end of the dock, a steamboat larger than anything she’d ever seen bobbed on the placid waters.

Two stories tall and crowned with four ornate smokestacks, the steamboat glittered with golden lights dotting its three decks. Light laughter and tinkling crystal murmured from its interior, and couples strolled upon its deck, smiling as they spoke to one another.
 

“Welcome to the
Beggar’s Glory
,” Dino whispered.

“I’m not a huge fan of boats,” Amber said, tugging at her veil as they passed the bouncers. They strode up the wide ramp leading to the lower deck, their footsteps making the ramp bounce with the rhythm of their walk. Her stomach fluttered as she stepped aboard and was suddenly acutely aware of each minute sway and motion of the vessel.
 

“Really? I’ve always thought they were fun,” Dino mused.

“I just feel stuck on them. And then I start thinking about what could be swimming beneath me and … Never mind. Let’s just get what we came here for and get out of here.”

Dino chuckled. He threw his hood off, pinching his shoulders back and plastering on a grin as his boots clunked on the deck’s floorboards. Amber’s heart shot into her throat, and she grabbed his arm, stopping him mid-stride. “What’re you doing? They’ll see us!”

“Eh, they already know we’re here. Might as well enjoy the air. Come on, I know you hate wearing those hats.”

“And you’re sure it’s okay?”
 

“It’ll be fine. Let them see that pretty face of yours.”

“If pretty faces make them feel better maybe you should put your hood back on.”

“Oh-ho! She’s got jokes! I’ve been rubbing off on you.”

“Maybe you just didn’t know me very well to start with.”

He nodded, his lip curling in the barest smirk. “True enough. Maybe we’re just getting started.”

Their gazes held one another, and although it was only for the twinkling of an eye, it seemed to stretch into an eternity. Then, quick as it came, it departed, and time resumed its normal course.
 

Amber slowly lifted her veil and took a breath. A few people lingered beneath the main deck’s veranda, but they seemed engrossed in their own conversations and didn’t pay much mind to the two passing by. In fact, no one seemed to pay them much mind at all.

Dino led her to the prow and paused before a door guarded by three women. They looked him up and down, each one raising their right eyebrow in unison with the others. One glanced at Amber and winked. Without so much as a word, they opened the door and motioned inside.

She followed Dino into a room with rich, cherry oak floorboards and littered with fine Persian rugs and overstuffed couches. It smelled richly of sage and lavender, and the air was warm and dense.

An enormous, sweaty man nursed a hookah in the corner. Not a hair crowned his bloated head, and his nostrils wheezed with each labored breath he took. He sat on a couch, hands folded in his lap, not so much as a hint he noticed them enter.

Another man played solitaire from his perch behind a wide desk. He had a wild weave of fiery hair and long sideburns that sprouted at the jaw. Freckles splotched every space of skin peeking from his pressed, powder-blue shirt. While one of his hands was pale and freckled like his face, she noticed the other was a dark stained wood, the knuckles and fingernails capped by gold.

The man looked up from his game and measured Dino with a frown, then glanced at Amber with eyes the grey-green of a summer thunderhead and lips puckered like he’d just eaten a sour candy but refused to spit it out. “You’re a wanted girl, you know that?”

The boat’s great horn bellowed, and the
Beggar’s Glory
lurched from the dock. Amber swallowed the bile lurching in her throat and slapped her hand against the wall for support. The man snickered, looking to his companion for a laugh. When the large, quiet man did nothing, his chuckle faded on a grumble.

Dino went to help Amber, but she raised a hand and peeled away from the wall. She wouldn’t let this Scarlet Spider make her look weak. She could do this.

Dino gave her a quick nod and turned to the man behind the desk. “We came here to see Wilhelmina. I know she’s on board, Campbell. Quit playing games and let us through.”

“That’s Mr. McGuire to you, Dino Cardona. You’ve got a big set on you, marching aboard our ship like you own the place. You know we’re in with the archduke. Ms. Hofmeister’s liable to throw you to the lake for the blackjackets and march your little girlfriend to the Black Palace herself.”

“Except you pulled the ship from the dock so the blackjackets couldn’t get to us. Wilhelmina’s probably curious to know why I marched in here like I owned the place, isn’t she?”

Campbell smacked his lips, his glittering eyes flicking to Amber and back again. “Well? Spit it out. We haven’t got all day.”

“I came here to talk to the Scarlet Spider, not the Ginger Goon.”

“Oh, so he thinks he’s got chips to bargain!” Campbell laughed and looked to his silent companion. The man blew hookah smoke from his thick nostrils and blinked. Campbell rolled his eyes and turned back to Dino. “You’ll tell me what you know, then I’ll see if you’ve earned the right to speak with Ms. Hofmeister. She’s a very busy woman, and her duties don’t include rolling in the filth with Errand pigs.”

“Right, like I’d tell you what I know and let Fat Gary dust me when my back was turned. I don’t think so.” Dino folded his arms over his chest and glared at the door behind Campbell. “It’d be a shame if we didn’t get an audience with the Spider. I know she’s a very busy, very respectable woman, and I’ve got nothing but admiration for her. I’m sure the archduke does too. Wonder how that admiration would hold up if word got out the Spider was meeting in secret with generals on the Iron Council? They say the archduke’s not too pleased with them as of late, and what with the relic thief still at large, well, that just might make his eye turn to a certain Spider and her web.”

Fat Gary lowered his hookah mouthpiece, the first noticeable movement Amber saw from him since she first entered the room. Campbell glared at Dino, his fiery brows knitting together over his bright grey eyes. “You’re a smart kind of stupid, Dino Cardona.”

“The boss’ll show him how smart he really is,” Fat Gary finally said, his voice rolling through the tense air like the distant roll of thunder along a wide plain.

Dino cocked his head and waited. He stared over Campbell’s shoulder at the door behind him. “We don’t have all day, Wilhelmina,” he called. “I seem to have taken my hood off when I boarded. Bet your bottom dollar plenty of the archduke’s people saw us on our way to see the Spider, so we’ve got witnesses we boarded. You want your meetings with General Kelly kept private, you should let us have a friendly conversation without Fat Gary and the Goon around.”

The door behind Campbell clicked. Its handle twisted, and the door glided open. Campbell’s lip curled in a snarl, but he kept quiet and motioned for the doorway. Dino bowed, then took Amber’s hand and led her into the room. Despite the queasiness rolling from one side of her belly to the other with each tiny sway of the ship, she managed to put one foot ahead of the other until the door clicked shut behind her.
 

This new room easily swallowed the previous one and made its plush furnishings look positively poor by comparison. Great mirrors lined the walls and glass tiles covered the ceiling. Each mirrored wall held a glass hearth cradling dancing flames while gold candelabras held flickering, glittering firelight that reflected endlessly in the walls, bathing the room in warm gold that refracted into infinity. Crystal vases overflowing with roses littered the room, nearly hiding the couch and two chairs waiting at the far end.