Chapter 29
I wake to the smell of burning hair and flesh.
The grip of panic only subsides when I realize it’s the strzyga burning down with the rest of the restaurant and not my burning hair and flesh.
Or Reid’s. We are in the eye of a hurricane of flame, though, and I can feel the heat cooking my skin.
Or maybe that’s Reid’s singed arms, which are looped beneath my thighs and back, scooping me up.
“Come on,” he urges, coughing.
He carries me through the kitchen. The smoke is thick in my lungs and eyes. I bury my face into his sweater and hack until I smell citrus again. Lemongrass cooked on a grill, charred to a crisp. My eyes water as I gasp.
Out in the alley, Reid slams the kitchen door closed with his foot and deposits me against the opposite wall with heart-wrenching gentleness and then takes a second to kneel on the ground and catch his breath.
I do the same. The brick of the bar next door is cool against my back.
The rain has stopped, and all I can smell now is smoke.
Somewhere a siren sounds. First responders work fast up here.
“Are you hurt?” he asks after he nearly coughs up a lung.
I eye the blisters rising on the back of my right hand and up my forearm. “I could use some ice.”
When Reid stands, I can see he’s been burned too.
Some of his cheekbone and brow, but that’s not the worst of it.
His sweatshirt and the tee beneath are seared through to his shoulder, and the skin there is black and still sizzling.
I reach for him without thinking, and when my fingers touch the curve of his skin, he winces.
“Sorry,” I breathe, remembering his instruction, You need to stop doing that. This morning when he uttered the words, all I wanted was to know what he was fighting to keep himself from doing. How much it killed him not to act.
Reid studies me but says nothing. I wonder why we’ve both forgotten how to speak. There’s an immense sorrow in his eyes. Perhaps because someone got hurt on his watch. But he’s said time and again that’s our job, right?
“You glamoured those people,” I rasp.
His nod is grave. He doesn’t like it any more than I do.
“Have you ever glamoured me?”
Reid studies my face, a shadow of hurt crossing his eyes. “Demons can’t glamour hunters.”
Like taking souls, glamouring is another primordial power that harkens back to the old world and keeps demons at the top of the food chain.
Just like the power that allows them a beastly, demonic form…
A chilling thought runs through me. Those scarlet scales on his arms and hands.
Those black-as-night claws sprouting from gnarled fingers… “You really don’t have horns.”
“Legend, mostly.” His voice is low. “No wings, either.”
For a moment we just stare at each other. Ash and blood and rain and barrels full of liquor between the two of us. And something else.
Dean Driscoll was right—I misjudged Reid Graveheart.
This demon saved my life tonight. Twice now, actually.
And though he isn’t kind per se, he’s…virtuous.
A believer in right and wrong. Capable of more good than I gave him credit for.
It’s a shock to the system: Not all demons are purely evil. And like it or not, I need his help.
“I lied,” I blurt.
“What?” He sounds a little hoarse.
“Earlier. In the archives.”
A faint smile. “No shit.”
“I think something strange is happening at Harker. Something…dangerous.”
His eyes narrow, but he remains silent. Smoke is still curling off his skin.
I swallow, throat dry. “A first year named Kitty Briggs is missing.”
Reid doesn’t react immediately. “I know. She was supposed to be in my Field Training class. I was told she dropped out.”
“She left the night of the wraith attack, and there were…” I try to think of how best to phrase it. “Inconsistencies with her disappearance. Then a dagger was stolen from the armory during the spelled lacrosse game—”
Reid’s gaze narrows. “Something was stolen from the armory?”
“It was ‘checked out with professor approval,’ and the name used to check it out was Kitty’s, even though she’d been gone for days beforehand. I looked into a few things in the archives…The garden hidden on campus I asked you about houses this flower…”
“Yeah,” he says, tense. “The asphodel.”
“Right. That, along with the blade that was taken and Kitty’s blood, if she is what we think she is…they’re all ingredients needed to brew a syrabraxa.”
Now his face hardens. “You think someone on campus is trying to brew the deadliest magic on earth?”
“Maybe they don’t know the power it holds.” But I know how ridiculous the words are as I say them. To find the recipe, to go to all the trouble—to be working with a turned witch and possibly other deviants too…
Reid rubs a hand down his face, ash and sweat and rain smearing. “I have to talk to Driscoll—”
“No. One of his teachers could be involved—”
“Lisette, then.”
“No,” I tell him. “She gives me a bad feeling.”
Reid raises an incredulous brow. “You’re cover-judging again.”
I swallow hard, thinking of all that I assumed he was the night we met.
All that’s changed since then. “I just want to see if the flowers have been taken. If everything is fine, I’ll let all of it go.
Maybe the blade will be returned and Kitty will get back to us and I can chalk it all up to paranoia.
” I try to breathe through the tension in my chest. “Nobody else needs to know just yet.”
Torturous minutes tick by. I can practically hear the wheels in his mind turning.
“Fine,” he relents. “I’ll try to figure out where the garden is. But I’m going to look into Kitty first. A student going missing isn’t something I can ignore.”
I heave a grateful sigh. “Thank you, Reid.”
For a moment he just studies me. It’s the first time I’ve ever called him by his name.
And something about this moment makes me brave.
We aren’t just teacher and student anymore.
“Why didn’t you recruit me for Field Training that first week?
” I didn’t realize how much his judgment was nagging at me.
My gaze finds the pavement at my feet. “You’d seen me fight.
You knew how good I was. That I’d only take risks if I had to. To save lives.”
His voice is a bit strangled as he says, “I think that was what scared the shit out of me.”
When I look up, his eyes are sweeping over my face. My mouth, my neck, my injuries. He smells like embers and evergreens. Energy crackles between us. I’m holding my breath.
“Come on,” he says in the end. “I know a place around here with the best ice in town.”
My laugh relieves tension across my body just as a group of guys who reek of beer exit the bar next door and barrel right into me.
“Watch it,” I say before the finance bro turns, and I find myself face-to-face with my own boyfriend.
“Viv—” James eyes the soot on my face. The burns on my skin. “Jesus. What the— What happened?”
“I— It’s—” I am an excellent liar. I’ve been lying my way through all my relationships for over a decade now. But this is a tough one. I told him I was working, and here I am, burned to a toasty golden brown, with some gorgeous guy outside a bar. I draw a complete blank.
“And who is that?” James glares at Reid. “Did he do this to you?”
“No—” Oh god. I’m so screwed. I whirl to look at Reid and find him practically snarling at James. I plead with my eyes. “No, he…he—”
“Your girlfriend saved me, actually,” Reid says. “There was a fire next door.”
My eyes widen a little. He’s a good liar. If I didn’t know for a fact that wasn’t true, I’d believe him. A relieved breath sighs out of James. I offer Reid a look of immense gratitude.
“He’s a colleague at the Windsor,” I add. “Reid, this is James. James, Reid. We were getting something to eat before going back to work.”
“Sorry.” James shakes his head. “I…didn’t mean to bite your head off.”
“Don’t worry about it.” It sounds like Reid’s going to say something else, but he doesn’t.
Behind us, James’s friends are whispering. Nasty, snickering murmurs. They’re making jokes—I guess it’s emasculating to find your girlfriend performing heroic acts while you get shit-faced after work on a weeknight. My cheeks heat with embarrassment.
James scratches his neck. “My family would be happy to pay you for your discretion.”
I can’t help my wince.
Reid’s brows shoot up his face. “My discretion?”
James’s protective hand lands on my shoulder, and Reid’s eyes don’t leave the spot. “Viv’s mother works in some very high places. Any press is bad press, I’m afraid.”
Reid’s snort is cutting. “I tell you she saved my life, and you want to pay me off?”
I can feel James stiffen. “I’m just looking out for her.”
“You’re ashamed of her heroism—”
“I’m protecting my girlfriend and her family. Come on, man, don’t make me get my security team involved. I’m sure you know Fiona Hyde is Viv’s sister-in-law.”
God damn it. James is threatening Reid’s made-up job at the Windsor, and Reid—who does not work at the Windsor, and thus does not know who Fiona is—has absolutely no shot of reacting the way I need him to, which is chastened. In fact, I can’t imagine Reid being chastened about anything, ever.
“I don’t need your money.” Reid’s voice is cold as the night air. “Or your poorly concealed threats.”
James balks. “Threats? All I—”
“Let’s just go,” I tell James, tugging on his sleeve like a little kid. “Reid, I’ll see you at work tomorrow?”
Reid studies me. I can’t tell if he’s disappointed or resigned. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
James rolls his eyes, but Reid pays him no attention. It’s all I can do to nod at Reid, the intensity of his gaze carving right through me. I open my mouth but find no words feel right.
Reid stuffs his hands into his pockets and offers me one last look before he heads out of the alley, past all of James’s snickering friends.
“What a dick,” James mutters once he thinks Reid’s out of earshot. But I know his demon senses hear every word. James cradles me into his chest. “I’m so glad you’re okay. Let’s get you to the family doctor, yeah? Brent,” he shouts to one of his buds, “have the driver bring the car around.”
I don’t hear Brent’s response or anything else James says to me. Something about suing Maria’s or asking why I reek of vodka. I’m frozen, watching the shape of Reid’s back as he walks down the alley, hands in his pockets, until he rounds the corner and disappears into the night.