Chapter 15
The air is scented with chalk and blood. Sweat cools on my skin. Light filters in through the columns of the coliseum.
Reid is there. He’s slinging a pack of weapons over his back.
As I watch him pack up, my heart gives a shocking, unexpected, achy tug.
Just as I can see blood in a demon’s eyes when they’re ready to devour a soul, I can see something pained in Reid’s.
I wonder if, even though he could best the whole class without a second thought, he’d rather be cheering along with us. Fighting as one of the good guys.
The image shifts. Ripples like raindrops on a still lake. We’re in his cottage. It’s warm. My arm hurts and my heart races.
“You don’t want to be a demon any more than I want to hunt,” I say.
His eyes lift to mine, and in the depths of them I find only suffering. “Why would I?”
I move for him. Lift my hand toward his face. I can change the past. I can fix what’s broken—
But the room dissolves again.
Warps and bends until we’re in a hot, cramped bar. Packed with toothless, bald, and tattooed patrons. It reeks of beer. The din is deafening. I know we’re very far South of the Chasm. But I’m not there. Just observing, somehow. It’s not a memory, this place. It’s something new.
I’m observing Reid, in a corner, hoodie pulled over his head. Eyes shifting. Taking in every grunt and belch and laugh. On alert.
“I can’t believe you’re still here,” someone with a beard and crinkled eyes says to him.
“Where do you suggest I go?” Reid growls, eyes still scanning the room. Whoever he’s talking to, he doesn’t want to be seen doing so.
“Cuba?” the bearded man says. “The Alps? I hear the Canary Islands are nice this time of year.”
“You haven’t heard that.”
“No,” the bearded man agrees, sipping his beer. Foam coats his moustache. “I haven’t. But you gotta boogie, kid. You’re on borrowed time.”
Reid’s sigh is pained. I know that sound as well as my own heartbeat. “You know what I’m looking for. Can’t go anywhere until I find it.”
“What about the aeon girl?”
This time Reid doesn’t sigh. He doesn’t frown or wince. He only looks at his drinking companion with bored disinterest in his eyes and mutters, “What about her?”
My head slams onto the keyboard on my desk at the Windsor with a weighty thump, waking me from the dream. “Ow.”
“You all right?” Fiona calls from her office.
I fight to hold on to any fragments I can, but the image of Reid in that bar, of his utter callousness as he spoke of me, of those memories of our past, of his hatred of deviants, of himself…all of it slips through my fingers like mist.
“Viv?”
“Yeah, I’m fine!” I call back to Fiona. It’s not entirely true.
I haven’t slept in days. I’ve spent every spare hour combing through the halls and basements and bathroom stalls of Harker, looking for Reid on campus, to no avail.
All the while, a clock ticks down the hours until I eventually lose my mind from the spell carved into my back unless the High Thane’s murderous son gets to me first and uses me for world destruction.
It hasn’t been the most relaxing few weeks.
“You almost done out there?”
I glare at the screen, where I’d been messing with the gala seating chart before dozing off. “Think the mayor can sit next to the chairman of Astera Hospital if I put Penny’s mom between them as a buffer?”
“No shot,” Fiona says, strolling out of her office. She’s in a cashmere turtleneck and Hermès plaid pants with low heels and her signature oversized glasses. Her fair red hair is curled just at the ends. “We’d need at least three more buffers to stave off a rehashing of the yachting incident.”
“Damn, Fiona. You look great.”
“Thanks,” she says, smoothing the pleats in her pants. “I’m sorry you and Penny can’t come.”
Penny’s still staying out of the city—and away from her family, for their safety—under the guise of her Euro trip with Claude. Peter’s even taken to photoshopping pictures of her under the Eiffel Tower and along the canals in Venice to keep her parents from worrying.
But even though a fundraising luncheon for the Windsor gala with my family at Penny’s parents’ house would be my own personal underworld, the thought of disappointing my mom turns my stomach inside out.
And disappointing her because I’m still too upset about our fight to show up where she expects me?
My eyes find Fiona’s office down the hall, where my mom and I argued months ago.
It just feels so manipulative. She’d been trying to be honest with me that night for the first time in who knows how long.
“Maybe I could go just for an hour? Show face with my mom. If we leave discreetly and take your car over the hill, I could be back at Harker before dinner.”
Not only do I feel guilty about missing it, but going to this luncheon might be the best way to take my mind off waiting for the camera film to be developed.
It’ll be another week before I have the film, and I’ve been as successful at trying not to think about its contents as I have been at finding Reid on campus. Which is…not at all.
Fiona makes a face as she takes this into consideration. More guilt swims in when I remember that she thinks I haven’t left Harker’s campus or the Windsor since that day after the docks.
“You really think the Brood could find me at Penny’s parents’ house?” I push. “They have no idea that I have any relationship to the Pines. Our apartment and all our bills have always been under her name.” I’ve never been so grateful to have such terrible credit.
Her mouth twists in thought.
I take a steadying breath. Time for the big guns. “I’m trying to work on things with my mom.” There. That’s about as vulnerable as I can get. I give myself a mental pat on the back.
“Fine,” Fiona says. “Go back to campus and change so your mother doesn’t have a heart attack.
” I look down at my cozy black long-sleeve tee and matching yoga pants.
I don’t usually work Sundays at the Windsor, given that the museum is closed, but two months out from the gala means Fiona is in robot mode and the locked museum is as safe as Harker grounds.
And while I’m still making up for missing the exhibit last year, I basically show up whenever I’m called.
“I’ll meet you in the lobby and we can take the alley exit. ”
An hour later, after I change into my good little Abbot costume, Fiona and I embark on our tense drive over the hill to the Hesperides. I keep my eyes glued to the road, looking for Finn the entire drive, until Fiona tells me I’m frightening drivers in the lanes beside us.
I haven’t been to Penny’s house since James and I were dating, which is strange, given that in some ways I grew up in their flawlessly decorated Architectural Digest dream home as much as I did down in Lethe hunting deviants with my father.
Still, I feel uneasy when I arrive. Within minutes I know there are no Brood at the event, but I can’t fight the strange sinking feeling in my stomach. All I can do is tamp it down and focus on the task at hand. I just need to show face with my mom and get back to Harker.
I mill through the party, past Botoxed wives and suspender-wearing husbands, before I find my sister, snipping at a cater-waiter. “Those canapés are cold. Either reheat them or don’t serve them at all.”
“Hi, sunshine.” I squeeze her shoulders. “You know you aren’t hosting this one, right?”
She pulls me into a quick hug and then sighs like everything, including her designer tote, is a burden. “It’s my job. I can’t turn it off, you know?”
All too well, in fact. “Where’s Mom?”
“Chatting it up with Stan Pine and Caspar Harlock.” Nora points toward the tented backyard and the fifteen hundred hydrangeas gathered in vases. It’s nicer than my sister’s wedding. “We should head over.”
“Grant me strength,” I tell her.
“Just don’t say something dumb,” she says with as much encouragement as Nora is capable of.
We walk out of the foyer, where I turn down not one but three offers of lukewarm crab puffs.
A couple of seated musicians are playing light jazz and the heaters keep the space warm but not toasty on this winter afternoon.
And yet I find myself discreetly wiping sweat from my brow.
Something is wrong, I just don’t know what.
The scar tissue in my back is starting to ache.
“Mom,” I say, coming up to her, Penny’s father, Stan, and Caspar. They’re standing beside a fountain filled with cherubs. “This all looks beautiful.”
“Darlings.” She smiles at us. Not her prim, public-facing grin, but something real. Something genuine. To me she says gratefully, “You showed up.”
And I’m glad I did. This event—while stuffy and over-the-top—means so much to her.
She’s announcing her bid for mayor at the gala this fundraiser is for, and everyone here is a potential vote.
All she wanted were her two kids beside her, not bickering, wearing clothes that were all in one piece, and we’ve delivered. Hoorah.
“Viv,” Stan greets me, round belly nearly bursting through his suitcoat. “You look lovely. What a nice dress.”
It’s simple. Black, cap-sleeved, with a collar. Paired with sheer tights, platform Mary Janes, and the pearl earrings Nora gave me last Christmas, which elevate it from Wednesday Addams to old money blue blood. What can I say? I’m happy Stan is happy. And I cannot wait to leave. “Thanks.”
“Viv, you remember Caspar Harlock,” my mother says.
“Of course.” Do I ever. CEO of media empire the Harlock Group, billionaire behind my mother’s mayoral campaign, and possible new stepdaddy if it were up to him. But my mom told me they weren’t dating, and assuming she’s a liar isn’t going to help us repair our relationship.
Caspar’s sapphire eyes sweep over me with little interest. “Hello.”
I’m used to that expression from my mother’s peers. I study my shoes and wish I could tell him the feeling’s mutual. “Beatrice,” he says to my mom. “I’d like you to meet my nephew. He’s a preeminent businessman here in the city and recently joined the board of the Windsor.”
Eyes still downcast, my heart stops when my skin begins to sizzle and pinch. Starting with the scar down my back and working its way through my chest and lungs. For a brief, terrible moment, all I can see is antlers and all I can smell is clove.
“Deacon, this is Astera’s DA, Beatrice Abbot, and her daughters, Nora and Viv.”
“Vivienne?” Deacon’s voice is choked.
When I look up, he’s staring down at me, as much shock on his perfectly carved face as I feel in my shuddering bones.
But I don’t look at him for long.
As my heart thunders in my chest, all I can see is Caspar.
That handsome grin I’ve sat across from so many times at Penny’s dinner table—those hollow cheeks that I should have known reeked of millennia alive. The ferocity that glints behind his eyes.
My mouth runs dry. My fingers tremble.
Caspar Harlock, billionaire CEO. My mother’s suitor. Deacon and Reid’s uncle.
All along, right under my nose. The weight of it enough to crush me.
Caspar Harlock…High Thane of the Brood.