Chapter 24
Quinn
Torrent’s body went so rigid against mine that I scrambled right off him. I had no idea what Crag’s announcement meant, but everything about the men’s demeanor and the atmosphere that’d abruptly descended over the boat made my nerves clang in alarm.
My hand automatically shot to snatch up my messenger bag from where I’d set it on the storage bin. I slung it across my body in case they were going to need me to make a run for it by land or air rather than by sea.
“Who’s Rollick?” I asked. “Or what?”
Torrent pushed himself to his feet with a heave of his tentacles, his gaze flicking from the gargoyle toward the docks and back again. He barely seemed to have heard me.
“Where is he?” he said tightly, all the warmth I’d found in him seconds ago vanished.
“I noticed him near the marina buildings,” Crag said. “I didn’t speak to him—I thought I should tell you first. But he wouldn’t be here if he didn’t know that we are, would he? Did you call him in?”
Torrent’s face had darkened. “No. Not—not recently enough to have given him this location. But I’m sure he has ways…” He glanced at the navigation console, his fingers twitching as if he were thinking of starting the engine right now.
None of this made much sense to me. Why were they agitated about someone they knew, who Crag thought Torrent might even have summoned here on purpose? My pulse skittered with my growing panic.
I smacked my hand against the wall to try to get their attention. “Who is Rollick? What’s the big deal? Why are you upset?”
“I’m not upset,” Torrent snapped at me, the ice in his voice turning that statement into an instant lie. He shook his head, rubbing his temple. “Sorry. We can’t just— We have to talk to him.”
Crag frowned. “But he?—”
Torrent shot him a pointed look. “He didn’t know any details. He hardly knew anything. And I’m not even sure what his intentions were.”
“He said?—”
Torrent cut him off again, even more firmly. “Do you really think we could simply run away, if I was willing to do that?”
My heart was thumping faster with every exchange. I didn’t think I wanted to meet this Rollick guy, but I had to do something to stop them from ignoring me.
I marched over to the cabin entrance. “Well, if you’re not going to tell me who this guy is, I guess I’ll go find out for myself.”
Crag leapt in front of me with a spurt of a roar that made my nerves jump, even though the swing of his head suggested he was aiming it at potential threats rather than me.
“Quinn,” Torrent started, and then Lance blinked into being at the edge of the deck, carrying two bulging plastic shopping bags.
His head wove from one side to the other, his eyes sparking more wildly than usual, which was saying a lot. “Rollick’s coming up the dock. You told him?”
He kept his usual blasé tone, but there was an edge underneath it not that different from how he’d sounded when he’d been bouncing off the trees in blatant distress by the sorcerers’ house. My skin started to creep with deeper uneasiness.
“I didn’t,” Torrent said sharply. “But he’s here, so let’s see what exactly he wants. We owe him at least that much.” He glanced at me. “There’s a lot to explain, and not much time. He’s a very powerful shadowkind, a demon, and we’ve worked for him. Just… come with us, but stay back and keep quiet. We’ll sort this out.”
He and the others had worked for this guy? They didn’t seem to like him very much.
I followed them across the yacht’s deck to the dock. “What if he’s in league with the shadowkind who’ve been hunting me down?”
Torrent shook his head. “I’m sure that’s not the case.”
“How can you know?”
“I just do,” he said tersely.
He stepped onto the dock and then hesitated, tucking his supporting tentacles behind his legs. There weren’t any other marina-goers nearby, but I could see a woman in a floppy sunhat a few rows over, and an older couple farther off than that. Maybe from that distance Crag’s stone jaw would look like a very thick five-o’clock shadow, and Lance could keep his claws curled mostly out of view, but there wasn’t any way for Torrent to easily disguise his bodily crutches.
It turned out he didn’t need to. He started to move forward after all, but before he’d gotten more than a couple of steps, another figure shimmered out of the shadows around the neighboring boats, less than ten feet away. The three men froze, so I did too, even though the man sauntering closer to us didn’t strike me as particularly intimidating.
He was good-looking. Even in my anxious state, I couldn’t avoid noticing it. Not in Lance’s ferally gorgeous way—more like a clean-cut, all-American celebrity, polished to perfection. The kind of guy you’d expect to see flashing his teeth at you from film posters and magazine covers.
The kind of guy you wouldn’t expect to look that polished and perfect in real life without the help of photo-editing magic, only this dude could have stepped straight out of a movie trailer, bringing all the special effects into reality with him.
He was tall and well-built by human standards, though no match for Crag’s height and bulk. His tawny hair was cropped close to his smoothly handsome face, artfully ruffled. He was wearing a dress shirt, slacks, and tie that seemed overly dressy for a stroll along the waterfront, but his grin was all casual warmth, bringing out smile lines at the corners of his lips that were obviously well-worn.
If I’d encountered a guy with those movie-star looks at another time, my heart might have skipped a beat. But I was too wound up to appreciate the view. I scanned him for any evidence of his shadowkind status and came up with nothing, but then, Torrent’s original monstrous features weren’t obvious, only the additional ones he brought out on purpose. I hadn’t been able to spot anything that marked Sorsha or her canine shifter friend as shadowkind at a glance either.
There was a confidence to the guy’s posture and grin that sent another rush of apprehension through me. Whatever he was, he held himself like a man who thought he was in charge. Who knew he was in charge, and that he could step over anyone who got in his way.
When he came to a stop near the stern of the yacht away, Torrent confirmed my suspicions with a nod. “Rollick. You were able to figure out our location.”
Rollick cocked his head and raised his eyebrows. “It did take some doing. What happened to the phone?”
Torrent grimaced. “Broken in an early skirmish, or I’d have used it. I turned to the most discreet alternatives available to me.”
“You kept it quiet enough. I suppose it’s a bit much for any plan to go perfectly smoothly. Especially in a situation that’s become this frenzied.” Rollick’s gaze slid to me where I was peering at him from between Crag and Torrent, half-hidden by Crag’s massive arm. “So this is the girl. She doesn’t look like much for there to be such a commotion around her. But I suppose it’s not really about her, only what’s beating in her chest, isn’t it?”
He knew about my heart—about the other shadowkind wanting it. And I didn’t like the way he spoke about me, as if I was a painting he was considering buying and not a person who could hear him perfectly well. My mouth got away from me.
“You don’t look like much either,” I retorted, which was true by shadowkind standards. “Who the hell are you?”
Since none of the guys seemed to want to tell me, maybe the man himself could give me a clue.
Rollick simply chuckled, with a coolness to his amusement that sent a shiver up my spine. “She does have some spirit, clearly,” he went on, still as if I wasn’t there. “Well, let’s get out of here. Florida is not the type of mortal atmosphere I prefer to absorb.”
“I’m not—” I began, but Torrent held up his hand, still tense enough that I obeyed the gesture.
“What do you want with her?” he said, low but steady. “What are you going to do?”
Rollick shook his head chidingly, as if Torrent should have known better than to ask. “Once you hand her over, it’s my business from there. No need to concern yourself with it.”
“Well, this once I am concerned. I’d appreciate you enlightening me.”
Crag shifted on his feet as if to add his substantial weight to that request. Lance’s claws clicked together in a vaguely threatening sound.
“I don’t think this is the time or place for that,” Rollick said, obviously dodging the question. I couldn’t think of any good reason for him to do that.
Neither could Torrent, clearly. He squared his shoulders. “You don’t need her or her heart. If you knew—if we could talk about it first?—”
“I know everything I need to about her and her value to me.” Rollick took the three of them in and tsked his tongue. “Are you staging a mutiny? Over some mortal woman? Come on now, the bunch of you—this had better be a joke. Let’s finish the job and go.”
Though he didn’t sound particularly worried, a dark edge had crept into his tone. But it was the words themselves that made my stomach lurch. “What job? What are you talking about?”
Torrent had said they’d worked with Rollick in the past, but not— This guy couldn’t mean?—
“Quinn,” Torrent said, like a warning or maybe a protest, but anything he might have added was lost in Rollick’s rolling laugh.
“You didn’t think this bunch came to your rescue out of the goodness of their hearts, did you?” Mr. Movie Star’s grin widened as he focused on me. “They came out to this hellhole to protect what I meant to be mine. And now I’m going to claim it. I’m afraid you don’t have any choice in the matter, but it’ll be less painful for you if you hop along and don’t make a hassle of it.”
“You’re not taking her,” Crag growled. “Not if you’re going to hurt her.”
His words washed over me, barely catching hold. He hadn’t denied what Rollick had said. None of them had.
What did it matter if the gargoyle was making a little show of protectiveness now if all the rest was true? All this time they’d sworn they wanted to defend me because it was the right thing to do, because they thought I deserved to live… and really they’d only been waiting to serve me up to their demon master.
Icy fingers wrapped around my gut. I stepped back from the men I’d thought were shielding me toward the edge of the dock, closer to the boat. One hand closed around the strap of my messenger bag over my chest; the other dropped to the hilt of the knife in my pocket.
All the things I’d wondered. All the little pieces that hadn’t quite added up. I’d dismissed my minor uncertainties when it’d seemed like my protectors were working with me, but I’d never gotten a full explanation, had I? Why they’d so conveniently been there to leap to my defense. How Lance had seemed to know my full name. Their lack of concern about finding a long-term solution until I’d pushed for it.
Because this bodyguard job had never meant to be long term. They’d only been waiting for this guy—their boss?—to show up and take me off their hands.
I’d thought they’d had some kind of honor. I’d thought they cared about me.
Oh, God, I’d been so fucking stupid.
My jaw clenched. They were monsters. They’d told me that from the start, and I’d let myself think it didn’t count when it came to them, not enough to scare me away. They’d dragged me into a trap pretending it was safety, and even now, Torrent was simply discussing the details like it was a business negotiation.
Rollick’s next words rang through the frantic thump of blood past my ears. “If she complies, it can be perfectly painless. I only torture beings who’ve wronged me. You know me better than this. Bring her over, or I’ll?—”
I wasn’t interested in what he meant to do. I just needed to get out of here.
My gaze flicked along the dock, and my instincts honed by years of urban exploring hurtled me into action.
I leapt onto the edge of the yacht, the lip that protruded just a few inches out from the railing, and darted along the narrow strip. I meant to dash right past Rollick and sprint on down the dock. But as I shot past him, he grabbed at me with a flash of his bared teeth that looked more monster than movie star in that moment.
His fingers closed around my wrist. Shouts had risen up behind me, but I couldn’t focus on anything but my shrinking window of escape.
I whipped the dagger out of its sheath and rammed the blade toward Rollick with all my strength.
In my panic, I didn’t aim all that carefully. Everything Crag had told me about weak spots went out the window. But Rollick was in human-ish form, and most of the human rules applied. I did have the wherewithal to aim lower than his ribs, and the dagger plunged right through his shirt and into his gut like a knife into softened butter.
That smoky shadowkind blood stuff gushed up between us. His hand on my arm spasmed as a strangled sound of agony burst from his lips.
I wrenched my wrist free, and the demon snatched at me again, faster than any human would have been able to. I dodged, losing my grip on the dagger—but better I kept my life than it.
Hurling myself away from Rollick and the monstrous men who’d claimed me for him, I pelted down the dock toward civilization as fast as my legs could carry me.