Darksider: Reveler Series 3 (14 page)

“Don’t take it.” Seemed as if she knew who was behind it, too.

“I turned him down.” He just hoped Lambert didn’t know what he could really do.

“Then are you thinking of running, like Rook and Coll?”

Harlen looked at the bright sky and the trees. Sera was here. His family was here. He was vulnerable anyway. Plus, there was a good chance that Lambert hadn’t seen him in the blowing winds amid the monsters of the Scrape. He might even suspect Travis Clayton of being the proxy. Lambert had voiced the concern to James that Travis might be playing both sides.

“I’m thinking of staying,” Harlen said. “I think I’d be of more use to Chimera here, but I’ll need some help.”

“Name it.”

“I have Marshal Travis Clayton trapped Darkside. He can’t be permitted to report back what he knows. If it helps, he’s been breaching the Agora for going on a year, and Dugan has been covering up for him.”

Her lipsticked mouth made a thoughtful moue. “Can you tell me why you have him trapped? And how?”

“No,” Harlen answered. “And it’d be better if you don’t ask him or listen to him, either.”

“Is that for my safety or yours?”

“Both.”

She nodded. “Done. Deliver him to me tonight, and I’ll take care of him. I’ll send you the access to a secured Rêve where we can meet.”

“Will do.” Harlen didn’t want to know what she was going to do with Clayton. “Tonight, then.”

She stopped him with a hand on his arm. “How are Rook and Coll?”

He told her the truth. “Rook’s missing.”

“Damn. Can you tell me more?”

“How much will you tell me?”

She let go of him. Held her hand up in peace. “Slowly then, together.”

Yes, that’s how it had to be. “I have one last question, and then I better go. Have you heard of the Sandman?”

“You mean from the song?”

“No. Sandman is someone—” he thought of Lambert’s threat to James Dugan “—someone powerful.”

Her gaze went flinty. “I’ll look into it.”

“Carefully,” he cautioned her.

“How do you think I’ve survived this long?”

***

By the time Sera finally went home, she’d chopped, diced, and julienned half the vegetables in the restaurant’s walk-in. Her eyes were grainy, her head hurt, and her stitches itched. But it was nothing compared to the hollow in her chest.

Harlen had gone to Chimera. She had a feeling he’d survived, and she was slightly disappointed, but only because she wanted to tell him,
I told you so
.

She smelled the sauce the instant she got out of the elevator—garlic, olive oil, and ripe tomatoes. The Fawkes family recipe. She’d know it anywhere.

Walking down the hallway to her front door, she knew she was going to cry again. And it would be the extra ugly kind of crying, because she’d be smiling, too. The combined effect would be just tragic for such a sweet gesture on his part.

She wiped her eyes before opening the door. Tried to compose her face but she could feel her goofy expression in her aching cheeks. She opened the door anyway and the smell hit her like a blast of angels’ trumpets. Her mouth watered. Stomach rumbled. This was heaven.

“Dinner’s almost ready!” Harlen was in the kitchen, apron tied around his waist, red splatters dribbled down the front. The pot of marinara sauce simmered on a back burner of the stove, while another full of water looked like it was just coming to boil. The hand-cut gnocchi waiting to be cooked were perfect, identical yellow-white discs of pillowy goodness.

There was no way on earth Harlen had managed that, which meant Eleanor Fawkes had to have been here. And that meant Harlen had talked to her and all was well with the Fawkes women. Food meant love.

“Smells delicious.” Sera dropped her purse and jacket on a chair.

He winked flirtatiously at her. “I thought I’d cook you dinner for a change.”

He was so full of shit. She and Eleanor would have a good laugh about it later. His mom probably had made the prep look effortless when gnocchi was anything but.

“I should hire you to work at Marina.” Big guy like him would knock everything over.

“I’d love to, but I’m still with Chimera.” He glanced at her, not so surreptitiously.
 

“And is everything okay there?” She didn’t know how it possibly could be in that corrupt den of reveler-eating monsters.

“Turns out I have a friend in the system.”

“Oh?” The one for whom he ran out on her this afternoon.

“We’re going to keep an eye on each other. Lambert’s been harassing her, too, but the wily old broad is onto him.”

Old broad
was not nice, but since Harlen was faking making dinner, she’d forgive it.

“It’s dangerous to stay,” Sera said. He’d bought a good bottle of wine, she noticed. And she spotted an empty plastic bag with the swirly logo of her favorite gelato place.

He was pulling out all the stops.

“It’s dangerous regardless,” he said. “If we run, Lambert will know for certain it was me.”

We?
She swallowed another lump in her throat.

“But if I stay, and have crepes every other morning…”

She laughed and came around to stand beside him. He was about to dump the gnocchi in and attempt to look like a brilliant chef doing so. She wondered how he planned to get them out of the pot once they were cooked.

“Then maybe we can get through this,” he said.

“It’s not going to be that easy.”

“Sex makes up for a lot of work stress. You’re going to need it if you’re opening a second restaurant.”

His arms went around her waist. She went up on tiptoe. And they kissed, deep and true, with enough friction to threaten the timing of the dinner.

She was debating letting his grand gesture wait, when she laughed out loud.

“What?”

“Your mom forgot her reading glasses.”

EPILOGUE

Jordan Lane hugged the brown bag of Chinese takeout—smelled amazing!—and counted out bills to pay for it. “Thanks so much!”

Pushing out the door, she checked her watch, subtracted three hours for time zones, and figured she and Rook had thirty minutes to do as much damage as they could before they were expected Darkside.

New York City hummed around her with energy and movement. Even this late, the sidewalks were full of pedestrians, sound, and light. Latin music rocked out of a window overhead. The air was thick with exhaust and street funk. And the signage on the street was bright and inviting. Chinese here. Deli there. Indian food there. Ristorante across the street.

Running away with Malcolm Rook should’ve been frightening. They had powerful people after them. But so far it had been the adventure of a lifetime.

She was in love. Not that she’d told him yet. It wasn’t the right time with everything else going on. Adding Harlen to the team was hopeful, however. Seemed like he had some skills to contribute. They’d get Lambert yet.

She turned on what she’d affectionately come to call a Maisie street. It was dark, with older brick buildings. Lots of character and scary pockets of shadow, too. Jordan could imagine the Maze City meeting room in any one of the walkups that fronted the street.

They were staying in an efficiency apartment—about ten square feet total—that belonged to a friend of a friend from Malcolm’s old days.

The noise behind her faded until her own footfalls dominated. She sped up to match her increasing heartbeat. Nothing like a little waking world jitters to end the day. Never a moment without excitement. Two minutes and she’d be back home.

Out of the shadows stepped a man. He grabbed her arm.

The Chinese food dropped to the pavement. Jordan used his grasp as leverage and kneed him in the groin. He doubled over.

“I’m trying to help you,” he ground out.

The voice was familiar. “Vince?”

Vince Blackman had once tried to manipulate her into being sucked into Didier Lambert’s organization. She’d sent him deep into the Scrape for it. But he’d survived. Harlen Fawkes had even said Vince had killed one of those creatures during his escape.

His face looked thinner. His stance more predatory. But still good-looking, in spite of his ordeal. Not like Rook though.

“You can’t go back,” he said. “They took him.”

She flushed with all-over cold. They’d taken Malcolm?

Suddenly, the building seemed taller, the darkness deeper. For the first time since they’d had to run, she was scared.

She let her vision slide out of focus as Malcolm had taught her. Revelers had a blurry quality, as if drawn in pastels and then smudged. She peered down the street with her Darksight, but she couldn’t see anyone.

Not even a smudged Malcolm.

“They came ten minutes ago. If you go any farther, they’ll have you, too.”

She could see no one. Which meant either Vince was lying or the people who took Rook were gone.

Or maybe the people who took Rook weren’t revelers. Maybe they were waking world bad guys.

“No one knows where we are,” she said to him.

Except Vince Blackman, obviously, who was standing a block and a half from her building.

“How did you find us?”

“I found
you
, Jordan,” he said. “I didn’t even have to look. I was pulled right here. We have a connection.”

That was nuts. She didn’t want Vince “pulled to her.” She was already connected to someone else. Vince could go right on back to the Scrape. She’d be happy to help him make the trip.

“Why should I believe you?”

“Because I’m sorry I tried to hurt you. I lost my father because of it.”

She’d heard about that. His father had been fed to the kind of monster she’d fought herself.

“Jordan, you have no reason to believe me, but I swear to you, Rook was taken. Don’t go back there now. Come with me. I’ll help you.”

Malcolm wasn’t there.

She should’ve told him she loved him.

She would, still. She just had to find him first.

THE END

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Continue reading
Night’s Deep Hush
, book four in the Reveler series...

CHAPTER ONE

Jordan skimmed her fingertips down Malcolm’s bare chest to his stomach, tickling his sensitive skin. The quick flash of his finely toned abdomen and his low, masculine chuckle was exactly what she’d craved. The man’s body was a perfect machine, just now idling between one show of force and the next. And there was always a “next,” which made this whole strange adventure an exercise of intense highs of fear and ecstasy, and these mellow lows replete with boneless bliss.

His fingers laced into her hair. “How are you holding up?”

She raised her face to him. He had such pretty brown eyes, so dark they were almost black. A two-day scruff grew on his face, making an already handsome man look ruggedly dangerous, too. She used the pad of her thumb to play with the stubble on his chin. “I’m worried about Maisie. She acts tough, but she is a softy inside.”

Malcolm tried to bite her thumb but missed. “Coll won’t let anything happen to her.”

Malcolm meant Steve Coll, the Chimera who’d been recruiting Maisie when everything went to hell. The same Steve who was not quite all the way human. Who was, in fact, of the same breed as the evil Didier Lambert. “He’s part nightmare. How can that be good?”

“It bothers me, too,” Malcolm said. “But I’ve known Coll a long time. And now that I know
how
he’s different, he makes more sense to me, not less.”

Jordan scoffed. Nothing made sense.

“As screwed up as this whole situation is,” Malcolm continued, “I’d rather have him on our side, at my back, than anyone else.”