Chapter 24
For better or for worse, I’m getting used to arriving at Fever Dream during the off-hours.
It’s Sunday and still before noon. I’m expecting the quiet millings of bartenders and the cleaning crew preparing for the week ahead, but inside I find a scene not too dissimilar from my friends and me hanging out in the Elkfore commons.
While an acoustic cover of some rock-and-roll song plays through the loudspeakers, Baz, Ward, and two dancers—one I recognize from the night I first came here for help—are sitting around one of the cushioned lounges playing cards.
Penny and Elliot aren’t too far away, grabbing waters from one of the fridges behind the massive stone-carved bar.
The doors to the fortress that is Fever Dream haven’t even shut when Hound smells me and barrels directly into my kneecaps. “Good boy,” I grunt, doubling over. Deacon catches the falling duffel bag from my shoulder seconds before it topples to the ground.
“I thought I’d have to fight you on Hound,” I admit to Deacon as I scratch my pup behind his ears until his tongue lolls out of his mouth.
“I insisted Hound was a nonnegotiable,” Penny says from the bar. “Before I knew you’d already done the same.”
Penny insisted on something?
Ward makes a face at me that says I was as surprised as you were. But there’s something like pride in his eyes.
Hound slobbers kisses all over me, and I inhale his smell and warmth and try not to cry.
Sometimes, as hunters, we witness so much evil, so much death, it can blur into normalcy.
But my father always made a point of not allowing the horrors to stop horrifying us.
It’s the only way to keep us human, he’d say.
It’s what separates us from them. I just can’t help it that sometimes the horrors don’t horrify me until I’m safe and have had a chance to exhale.
To my surprise, Hound abandons me after a few good licks to nuzzle into Deacon’s knees. I peer up at the invincible demon from my spot crouched on the floor and watch as he pets Hound’s head the way someone who doesn’t understand babies might interact with their friend’s newborn kid.
“You don’t like dogs?”
Deacon frowns. “I like my dog.”
“You have a dog?”
“Had. A few lifetimes ago.”
“Well,” I sigh, watching Hound press his face into Deacon’s body until Deacon caves and gives him a handful of generous pets, “my dog likes you.”
“Are you guys okay?” Elliot asks.
“Super-duper,” Deacon drawls, gesturing to his Citadel hunter uniform.
I try to genuinely answer Elliot’s question. Since the Valentine’s party, I’ve been wasted, heartbroken, trapped, stripped, drowned, and nearly executed. And now I’m on the lam and living in a demon’s den. “It’s been a weird day,” I admit. “But yeah, we’re okay.”
I forgot to mention our stop at Shutterbug.
Reid’s photos are burning a hole in my back pocket.
I need to look through them. And I am dreading it.
Before I can excuse myself to bite the bullet, Penny pulls me into a warm hug and my vision becomes nothing but blond waves as I inhale gardenia and acrylic paint.
“How long do you think we’ll have to stay here? ” she asks as she releases me.
I blow out an unsure breath. My eyes find Deacon of all people. “Until we all get what we’re looking for.”
I’d almost forgotten Deacon’s motive in asking me to stay here.
To allow the syrabraxa to grow more powerful inside me so I can track down whoever it is Caspar’s using to keep him in line.
I try not to wonder what will happen if Peter finds a way to get the spell out of my back before I’m useful to Deacon.
I wonder why the thought fills me with guilt.
“I don’t like this, Cernunnos,” Baz says, standing from the lounge.
His violet crow’s eyes flit from Deacon to me to Elliot, who’s sitting at the bar with his sword strapped to his back.
The long-legged acrobat with the tan skin and high cheekbones stares up at him before cutting her eyes to Deacon in concern.
Cernunnos. The mermaids called him that too. I make a mental note to ask Peter what it means.
“Really?” Ward asks from his seat in the lounge, playing cards in his grasp. “I think it’ll be a good time. Buttercup can sleep in my room if she wants.”
“I don’t,” Penny says quickly to me and then to Deacon. “I don’t want to do that, if that’s okay.”
“The women will have their own rooms,” Deacon says. “Obviously.” Then he turns to Baz, who still looks wary. “Do you trust me?”
Baz nods once, unyielding. As if it’s not a matter of discussion.
“Penelope and Vivienne will be safe here, and we will be safe here as we always have been. No harm will come to those within the walls of my keep.”
And then Deacon walks toward that spiral staircase at the back of the club, my bag still tossed over his shoulder, Hound trotting dutifully after him. Penny and I exchange a look and follow in silence.
I’ve noticed that Deacon has a habit of slipping into his old-world tongue on occasion.
When he’s relaxed, he talks like anyone else.
But when heated, he speaks of his club as his keep—a medieval castle or stronghold.
He goes from Howdy and What’s up, baby? to You’ve seen what becomes of those who disrespect me.
I feel as though I’m keeping a ledger—a running list of tells and tricks that will come in handy the day I’m finally forced to defeat him.
The thought brings an unpleasant twist to my gut that I brush away as soon as we come to the top of the stairs.
“Up here is the residence,” Deacon says, guiding us across the balcony I’d seen him on weeks ago. Not a balcony at all, but an open-air hallway with a bird’s-eye view of Fever Dream before it curves through a locked steel door. I brace myself for a version of the Manor: sex, violence, debauchery—
But we’re guided into a warm hall of limestone and blond wood bookcases.
A stone vase filled with undone greenery, minimalist art on the walls.
I remember Deacon’s office looking like a cave on an ancient Greek isle as if decorated by Jenni Kayne Home.
The hallway we’re in is no different—seagrass runner at our feet, olive tree potted in a corner.
Windows lining the side that faces the street, a sprawling view of the Half City in all its urban glory.
“Ward and Baz have rooms one level above. The dancers and the rest of the staff stay down that way.” Deacon points to another hallway, though he steers us past it. “Kitchen, living room, and gym are on the top floor, as is my room. Pool’s on the roof. Penelope, you can sleep through here.”
“Thank you so much,” she says with a shy smile. “And actually…I go by Penny.”
“Don’t even try,” I mutter to her.
She nods her understanding and slips into the room Deacon offered her, which I recognize as the guest room I woke up in months ago, all fixed up after my brawl and window dive.
“Let me guess. I’m in a storage closet?”
Deacon ignores me, but I can see the curve at the corner of his lips.
We take a new set of stairs—these a smoother, lighter stone and carpeted in that same textured seagrass—until we reach the highest floor.
One with impossibly high ceilings and oversized windows that span an entire wall.
But where some expensive Astera penthouses can feel like glass encasements—claustrophobic and far too high up—Deacon’s residence is still…
homey. Lush, creamy curtains drape either side of the dazzling view.
A fireplace roars in the well-lit living room, and two deviant women—acrobats or dancers, I’m sure—are making something in the kitchen that smells heavenly.
Deacon winds us down one last hallway, passing two massive stone doors with uniquely carved handles, before he comes to a stop. “Here you are.”
“What’s in there?” I ask, pointing at the heavy doors down the hall.
“Nothing very interesting.”
I raise a brow. Deacon may be allowing Penny and me to stay here, but he’s still a demon and a criminal.
If there’s something going on in there that needs to be stopped, I’m not going to sleep soundly one room down.
“I’m curious by nature and good with a lock.
You can tell me, or I can break in while you sleep. ”
I steady myself, prepared for his wrath, but Deacon surprises me by simply chuckling. “You ever turn that off?”
“Nope. Not when lives are at stake.”
Deacon turns back toward the imposing doors. “I meant the snark.”
I have half a mind to tell him he’s the only person in my life who thinks I’m snarky.
Cold, quiet, spooky, dour, a black cat, late, chronically late—those are descriptors I’m used to.
But snark and sass aren’t really my thing.
I almost call him out on it, but I can imagine what he’d reply: that he brings out something different in me.
Something feisty and rebellious and playful.
I have no interest in that conversation.
I already don’t like how well I know his devious brain.
When he opens the double doors, I realize they weren’t locked in the first place and shame heats my cheeks. Perhaps I came in a little hot.
“Get to it, crime fighter,” Deacon purrs behind me.
Okay, I came in way too hot. The room is a movie theater.
Five rows of deep-cushioned, blue velvet chairs, each big enough to fit two people.
A screen, a kitschy vintage popcorn machine, and an archway that opens up into a veritable library of titles.
DVDs, old-school VHSs, spools of sepia film that look as ancient as my half-frame.
Inside I flip through title after title until I spy a film reel with a note scrawled across it.
You win this one, D. Birds are more frightening than locusts. —Hitch. My eyes bulge in my head.
I wander back out in a daze and sink into one of the velvety chairs, withholding a moan at the plush comfort. “You’re a…film buff?”
“I like movies.” Deacon scratches at his jaw. “I mean, we also have orgies in here.”