Darkest Misery (15 page)

World Headquarters. Oh yeah, I'd finally arrived.

Chapter Twenty-One

World's interior was as flashy as the exterior. Sleek, dark marble floors mixed with lots of glass, blue-tinted walls and modern curves to give the lobby an impressive air that was like neither Boston's stately nor Phoenix's southwesterly style. The high ceiling over half the room opened up to a balcony on the second floor, and all those windows let in a refreshing level of sunlight.

For some reason, I'd expected World to bask in the Gryphons' long, historical roots. Perhaps because I expected everything in Europe to be older than the U.S. Instead, the building and its inhabitants gave the impression of a cool, thoroughly modern and efficient magical police force.

Beyond the architecture, however, the layout of the ground floor was all too familiar. After presenting my ID and being waved through the mundane and magical security checks along with Tom, he showed me the floor directory hanging by the elevators. Titles and place names were written in both English and French.

“This building houses the Grenoble Office as well as World Office.” He gestured to the directory. “Upper floors are World. My office is on the seventh if you ever need to find me there. Basements One and Two are the archive levels.”

Tom pressed the button for basement level one, and down we went. The doors opened into a small, well-lit room filled with tables and computers. A partition-like desk ran most of the length of the far wall, and behind it was a set of modern glass doors with a very obvious electronic lock.

A young guy in a wheelchair sat at one of the tables, running a handheld scanner over a book. He glanced up and waved. “Tom,
vous revenez
.”

“With a coworker,” Tom replied in English, apparently deferring to my ears. “Jessica, this is Umut. He's one of our guardians.”

“Guardians?” I asked once I said hi to Umut.

Umut grinned. “Fancy way of calling us librarians. They like to make us feel special.”

“You are,” Marie said. Turning to me, she added, “They go through a rigorous process to be hired.”

I noticed Umut was wearing a T-shirt and khaki pants, not a uniform. Tom wasn't wearing his at the moment either, considering we'd only arrived a few hours ago, but I hazarded a guess about Umut. “So guardians aren't Gryphons?”

“No,” Umut said. “I am a magical deficient, but an interested one. Must do something with that history degree, yeah?”

“Nice to meet you, magical deficient. I'm a magical anomaly.”

Tom's cheek twitched with disapproval. “One of three.”

“We assume there are still three.” With every day that passed since Mitch's abduction, my hopes of the Gryphons and FBI locating him grew dimmer, and the statistical likelihood of ever finding him grew smaller.

Tom had to be as aware of the grim outlook as I was, and he chose to ignore my comment. “Jessica is a Gryphon consultant from Boston. I need her to be given permission to access the archives. It falls under my clearance.”

Umut nodded and beckoned us behind the desk. “Do you have a badge number?”

I pulled out my ID to check since I'd never looked closely at it. “No number.”

“You can use one of the
Le Confrérie
guest ones,” Tom said.

“Off-hours access for the guest.” Umut sounded amused. “Part of that special project you two have been working on?”

“Exactly.” Tom grabbed white cotton gloves from a container on the desk and handed me a pair. “All Gryphons who work for World have access to the archives during open hours. During those hours, there will always be a guardian, like Umut, here to record visitations and provide entry. The doors are always locked. Umut will take biometric data from you today, and you can choose a pin code. If you want access during off hours, those will get you in.”

I twisted the gloves around in my hands. “Off hours? You really are planning on working me into the ground, aren't you?”

“The computers are a card catalog of sorts,” Tom continued, ignoring me. “Put in keywords, dates, whatever it is you think will help with your search. It will spit out a list of possible items that could apply. The code next to each item will tell you where it's located. You can access basement level two once you're inside the archive itself.”

“Yes, sir,” I muttered.

Marie smiled.

Umut called me over so he could scan my fingerprints, and I entered a five-digit pass code into a machine that resembled the sort banks use to encode ATM cards. Afterward, Tom led me to a computer so he could explain how to use the system in more detail, and he showed me the notes he and Marie had been keeping so I didn't replicate searches they'd already performed or waste time looking up objects they'd already dismissed. The whole process took far longer than it seemed like it should, and by the time I was finally allowed to enter the archive itself, my energy had plummeted.

A whoosh of cool, temperature- and humidity-controlled air rushed over me when the glass doors opened. The archive turned out to be nothing so much as a giant warehouse filled with row after row of shelves, each section of which was labeled. It was indeed much like a library, only the shelves didn't just contain books.

Tom gave me a rundown of how the shelves were ordered, and took me into the back where several additional rooms were sealed off. They were unlocked, he explained, but the items inside them had to be stored in unique environments.

“The more dangerous magical objects are on the floor below us,” he said, stopping by the staircase down. “No one will stop you from going in there, but removing items from their rooms does activate the security system. You'll have to explain why you need to do it.”

“Odds of finding a Vessel in one of those rooms?”

He shook his head. “First places I thought to search. There is nothing in the archives labeled as a Vessel or any variation thereof.”

The next couple hours were spent with Tom and Marie, going over what they'd researched, how they'd done it and what new strategies we might want to try. My eyelids continued to droop, and finally Tom either took pity on me or realized he wasn't getting anything else useful out of me today.

“It's about eight,” he said, closing the book we'd been staring at. “Maybe it's time to take a break.”

“Eight? No wonder I'm beat and starving.” Even as I said it, I yawned. “It's been…” I attempted to do the math in my head and gave up. “Way too many hours since I last slept in a bed. I'm missing most of a day, or is it a night I missed?”

Tom rubbed his temples. Though he feigned wakefulness well, his eyes were bloodshot. “I should get home. It's been a while. We can get dinner first if you like. I don't have anything to eat at home at this point.”

I wasn't sure I wanted to spend more time in Tom's company, but I wasn't up for exploring on my own when I was exhausted. Better to let him direct me to a decent restaurant.

Marie bade us good night, so it was just the two of us. The place Tom took me to must have been popular with the Gryphons because the owners recognized him even without his uniform. Sadly, I barely tasted my food, and the wine Tom insisted I have with it only made me sleepier. After deciding on a time to meet tomorrow, I practically crawled my way to my hotel room.

Tossing my phone on the bed, I groaned. I hadn't unpacked a damn thing, and I knew I should contact both Steph and Lucen before I went to sleep. Hopefully, the time difference meant it was earlier there. My brainpower had been sucked dry, and I could no longer be sure how these pesky time zones worked.

I yanked my boots off and flopped on the bed. I hadn't been able to get a signal in World's basement, so I'd put my phone in airplane mode to avoid the battery draining. When it reconnected, I discovered several emails and missed texts.

One of the emails was from Steph, and I opened it first.

Those goblins and their 20th-century computer were using 20th-century encryption. I'd have expected better from them. Doesn't greed extend to technology these days? Got a bunch of files for you. I'll assume you know what they mean. They're attached.

Don't get dead, you owe me.

XO, Steph

“You're a genius,” I told her. Then, because I wasn't so tired that I'd forgotten she couldn't hear me, I emailed her with the same praise.

Rather than try opening the files on my phone tonight, I sent them to Tom and prayed the information we needed was in them. Tomorrow, I'd find out.

Next, I went through my texts and responded to those from Lucen asking me to let him know I'd made it safely.

He wrote back almost immediately.
Took you long enough. Talk later. Meeting started.

So that was that. By the time he got out of the meeting, I planned to be asleep. Might as well get on with the plan.

I found my toothbrush and started to the bathroom when someone knocked on my door. I froze, and fear trickled down my spine. The other side of the door was an emotional void, meaning either preds, magi or addicts. But that shouldn't have been possible. The only people who should know where I was were Tom and Marie.

The hairs on my neck rose. Putting the Atlantic between me and any potential goblin assassins was supposed to keep me safe. So much for that. I dropped my toothbrush and reached for my knife.

“Jess, for sin's sake, I can feel you in there. Stop contemplating ways to kill me, and open the door.”

The fear left me in whoosh of breath, replaced by annoyance. Cursing, I chucked the knife away and threw open the heavy door. “What are you doing here?”

Devon stuffed his hands in his pockets, looking smug despite his hair not lying in its usually perfect black waves or his shirt remaining wrinkle-free. “All in good time. But honestly, when someone knocks on your door, consider asking who it is before you begin contemplating ways to dispose of their bodies.”

“I have reason to worry, or did you forget I was attacked yesterday?” I frowned. “Wait, was it yesterday anymore? I'm so lost and tired.”

He rested his head against the doorframe. “Please tell me you're not too tired. I spent the last hour tracking you down. I need you.”

“For what?”

He gazed at me with pleading, puppy-dog eyes, an expression that suited his face far too well when he wanted it to. “You remember the conversation I had with you a couple weeks ago about how the pred-addict bond works?”

“You mean how you need to dump your excess emotions on your addicts? I'm not likely to forget. Your point?”

Devon cleared his throat. “When the bond gets stretched thin, say by distance, say by an entire fucking ocean, using it becomes challenging.”

“You traveled here without an addict?” I hated myself immediately for thinking of a human being like a travel accessory, but clearly from Devon's point of view, one should have been. Even Claudius had brought two addicts with him to Boston.

“I left on short notice. Bringing someone would have delayed me. Besides, they could have gotten in the way while I was here.”

“So you need…?”

“A good fuck. Probably several. I'm starting to lose my mind, and since you know what that's like thanks to Lucrezia, I thought you'd be sympathetic.”

I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. “There's a whole city of people out there.”

“And yet I sought you out.” He smiled pitifully. “Don't make me remind you that you owe me two favors.”

I wanted to bang my head against something, preferably before collapsing in my bed. Yet I couldn't deny there was something endearing in the fact that Devon had looked for me instead of finding a random stranger. It wasn't as though a random stranger would—or could—turn him down. A satyr with as much power as he had could magic the vestments off a priest.

“Fine,” I said, wondering if anyone in the close-by rooms had heard this conversation. “But this counts toward one of those favors.”

The charming mask slipped from his face. “Come on, that's mean. It's not like you don't enjoy it.”

“Yes, but I'm exhausted.” I grabbed his shirt and pulled him into the room.

Devon didn't bother to argue. He barely bothered to close the door before pressing me up against the wall and kissing me so hard I forgot to breathe. His power didn't gently roll over me. It nearly bowled me over with its strength and ferocity. My exhaustion didn't stand a chance. I went from painfully tired to unbearably wet in seconds.

Good thing because Devon gave no hint of letting up. He kissed me like a man starved, and in a way, he was. But he clearly hadn't been exaggerating about the effects distance from his addicts had on his body.

Unbearable and excruciating were how he'd once described what it was like to be a pred with no addicts on which to dump emotions. Unfortunately, as he'd noted, I had a good idea what it felt like to have a body raging with insatiable lust. Lucky for him, too, that I could empathize because this was not going to be the best sex of my life.

Devon was too needy, too desperate for release to do more than pay cursory attention to my body. He knew it too. I could see in his eyes how genuinely distressed he was. Whatever his faults, not striving to please me had never been one of them.

“I'm sorry, Jess,” he murmured into my ear. His hands fumbled with my jeans button, and I sucked in a breath as he shoved my pants and underwear to the floor.

In spite of the strangeness of the situation, my body didn't care. I could feel myself growing wetter, my skin begging to be touched and my ache longing to be filled. He didn't have to tease me to make me as hungry as he was. The clove scent of his power was intoxicating, and his lack of restraint more so. Our roles were always reversed. It was satyrs who drove people mad with lust. To see one driven wild by his own was a surprising turn-on.

Fingers, one then two, slipped inside me. My knees shook, and I moaned, dying for more than that, but Devon's breath hitched. “Damn it, Jess. I'm sorry. I need you now. I can't…”