Chapter 39 #2
“I’m gonna get us drinks,” I tell them. When they don’t hear me, I yell it twice more until my vocal cords ache.
The bar spans the entire leftmost wall of the club.
There have to be fifteen bartenders holding down the fort on a night like this.
The back bar is the same rough concrete of the floor and columns, bottles sitting on uneven shelves that appear to be carved directly into the original stonework.
But the bar top is a glimmering celadon glass that lights up the space a little and draws partiers over like insects in search of nectar.
My body tingles slightly, and I realize that somewhere in this thrumming, rapturous mass is another deviant.
“What’ll it be, Snow White?”
It’s not the first time my dark hair–pale skin–light eyes combo has earned me the nickname. When I’m not in Sophia’s white gauze two-piece set and back in my usual black, I also get Morticia, Elvira, and Betty Boop.
“Original,” I deadpan, turning from my scan of the crowd.
When I face the bartender, my spine buzzes like there are fireworks under my skin.
The punishingly handsome man before me has dark skin, razor-green eyes, and the charming, winning smile of that guy in school you could never get to look at you.
Though his neck is bare of any Brood mark, I’ve clearly found my deviant.
Two, by my count, employed here alone. Either Reid purposely lied to me, or he doesn’t know as much about this place as he claimed to. I pray it’s the latter.
The bartender’s lean muscles bulge beneath his shirt as he leans forward with a curve of his lips to say, “Did you want a drink, or…?”
“Two tequila sodas,” I manage. “And a white wine. Please.”
The bartender nods to himself as if it’s not the first time a club girl got lost in his eyes.
Maybe Fever Dream has long been a breeding ground for the nefarious and hell-born, under the radar of me, my dad, and all the Harker alums. Maybe what the dean said was truer than I realized—the Elders, for their own mysterious reasons, have allowed this place to continue its business, purposely leaving it unknown to even the hunters they train.
Either way, I can’t take down this bartender now any more than I could Baz the bouncer.
I have bigger fish to fry. I need to find proof that Kitty and Lyra were taken by someone here.
While I wait for my drinks, I scan the place from this slightly better-lit vantage point.
Now I can see a few things I missed when we arrived: For one, behind the DJ, way in the far back, is a square pool glowing an otherworldly aquamarine.
Even with my hunter vision, I can’t tell if the people wading in it are clothed, but I can make an educated guess.
Behind that, I spy a spiral staircase that curves around one of the sky-high pillars and disappears into the wall.
Some kind of second floor built into the side of the building.
And in the other direction, at the end of the bar closer to the club’s entrance, is an archway that’s been funneling partygoers in and out.
No red rope, no security to be seen, so nothing clandestine nor off-limits.
Given the scent of weed and cigs emanating from the people who are coming through, I can assume it leads to an outdoor smoking space.
That’s where I spot him. A man trying just a smidgeon too hard to look trendy. He’s sweating, eyes shifty. Packing some kind of pistol in his leather jacket, with a briefcase I know from my Windsor days to be bulletproof steel. Not your usual clubbing clutch. It’s as good a lead as any.
I’m off before I can pay for the drinks.
Pushing through the crowd, I hurtle after him as he slips through the archway, down an echoing pitch-black hall and out a heavy stone door.
The November cold licks up my skin, and my eyes adjust to the club’s semicovered garden patio.
Heat lamps help to dull the chill of the night air for the clubgoers who laze in antique Grecian chairs beneath hanging ivy and rough stone fountains.
There are hookah pipes and cigarettes in every hand, the medicinal scent of smoked poppy in the air.
A thick haze of drugs and tobacco stings my eyes, and I blink rapidly, but there are too many people back here, and I’ve already lost the man with the briefcase. God damn it.
I scan the crowd like a nocturnal beast. I pick up every bracelet glint and ice cube clink.
And a door somewhere creaking closed. Hunter instincts send me toward the trimmed hedges, where I see one section of leafy green is moving.
A false door in the organic garden wall.
It’s a calculated bet—that the briefcase man went in there, wherever there is—but I take it.
Without thinking twice, I slide through the opening before it seals and hope I’m right.
I topple into a luxurious back office. Rough stone walls, like all of Fever Dream.
Dim cast-iron lamps, a huge black leather couch.
Concrete coffee table that I just know would take eight of me to lift.
The scents of clove and dry tobacco mingle as if someone makes a habit of hand-rolling cigarettes on the broad, dark wooden desk in the center of the room.
A literal man cave by way of Restoration Hardware.
And my body—my bones—are humming like I’m radioactive.
The only other person in the office is a hulkingly tall, broad-shouldered man in a white T-shirt, facing away from me.
I know without a kernel of doubt that he’s a demon.
No lesser deviant has that kind of height and muscle.
It’s not the guy with the briefcase, but judging by the crisp white of this demon’s hair and the debauched elegance of his clandestine office, I’m going to go out on a limb and say I found my Stag.
I take a few steps forward to get a better look and see he’s standing in front of some kind of marble counter.
I hear the twist of a cap and glug of liquid over ice and realize it’s a bar and he’s pouring himself a drink.
Then I hear the tap of fingers on a screen.
A sip followed by a low chuckle. He’s texting someone.
“Why hello there.” His voice is a deep rumble. Cruel and sensual and subdued.
I open my mouth, heart in my tonsils, but when he turns, clear drink swirling in hand, he’s holding a phone to his ear.
He grins at me, and the beauty of his flawless face stalls the air in my lungs.
“Hi, Daddy,” a woman’s voice coos over the line.
I fight the instinct to make a yuck face.
The riotously handsome, enormously tall demon motions for me to take a seat on the couch, as if a girl breaking into his back office is a common Friday-night occurrence. I do as instructed, grateful for the opportunity to buy some time.
“You know you’re bothering Daddy at work, right?” he says into the phone.
If he really is the White Stag, he’s younger than I expected.
Of course, he’s likely as old as Reid, but he looks about thirty-two.
In fact, he looks like the type of criminally hot guy you’d find in a Babylon coffee shop: cigarette behind his ear, bleached-blond hair, plain white T-shirt, and loose black jeans with a chain on them.
On either side of his neck are two tattoos.
Similar but not identical, both in some ancient text I can’t read.
There’s something inherently foreboding about the way they curve down his throat and beneath his shirt.
A silver chain, which I have to assume is actually white gold or some other metal, hangs around his neck beside the tattoos.
I don’t see any brand, but he’s got to be the White Stag.
And he’s a demon. Which must mean he’s in the Brood, right?
“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you,” the woman on the phone purrs. “Can I come over?”
“Sorry, sweetheart,” the demon says, gaze fixed on me. “I have an unexpected meeting.”
I scan for my exit strategy. Besides the desk, the bar, and the couch, the room only has chic stone shelving with stacked decorative books in dark neutral colors. No windows. No other door. No way out.
“Remember our last meeting in your office?”
That gets a dark chuckle out of the demon and a dry heave from me as I scoot to the very edge of the leather couch. I will be sanitizing every inch of my body and burning Sophia’s sparkling two-piece—sorry, Soph.
“Not sure. You’ll have to remind me sometime. Bye, now.” He ends the call before she can respond. The demon’s moonstone blue eyes gleam as he studies me.
“I lost my earring,” I say in my best drunk party girl voice. “Last time I was in here.”
A quick, hot flash of red sparks in his gaze. “Is that so?”
“Yep,” I hum before making a show of running my hands over the soft leather of the couch in search of it. I try not to think of all the human DNA I’m caressing. Did I say sanitize? I meant fumigate.
The demon only wanders closer, towering over me like scaffolding. He is offensively tall. His eyes sweep over my body. “What did you say your name was?”
I cross my legs in an effort toward casualness. I need to get out of here. Now I know where to come back and search for proof, but I can’t do that if the White Stag kills me first. “Jenny.”
Is that a common has-sex-with-nightclub-owners-in-their-offices name? Here’s hoping.
“I think I’d remember you, Jenny.” He says it like it would be a true shame if he didn’t. The more my mouth twists in disgust, the more his curves in deadly amusement. “How about the truth?” When I falter for words, he adds, “Come on, sweetheart. Don’t make me force it from you.”
I fold my arms across my chest to put space between him and my racing heart. He already knows I’m lying. “It’s Viv.”
“There you go.” He nods to himself, as if somehow that fits me better. “Vivienne?”
“Just Viv. But I really should get going.” I stand on wobbly heels. “My friends are waiting for me.”
I move to step around him, but he blocks my path just as smoothly.
In fact, he takes one step closer, and I can smell the hints of black cherry on his clothes and the tobacco on his skin.
My stomach flips over itself with unease.
“What’s the rush? You didn’t break into my office just to chicken out, did you? ”
Does he know I’m here for Lyra? Or does he think I’ve come to seduce him?
That phone call notwithstanding, I get the vibe I wouldn’t be the first girl who came here to get laid by the White Stag.
But I think back to when Reid got the better of me that first night we met.
Brood demons are another breed. And Reid doesn’t even take souls…
I won’t be able to best this guy alone, and no way will he let me slip my phone out and call Sophia.
Through the stone walls of the office, the beat from the club drifts in with a muted pulse.
A death knell—I have to get out of here.
“I changed my mind,” I say. “Not feeling it anymore.”
He flashes a Cheshire grin. I get the distinct feeling that for him, this exchange is like finding twenty bucks in your back pocket: a skittish girl in minimal clothing for him to torment. “Well, now I know you’re a little liar.”
“Someone thinks highly of themselves.”
That incredulous grin would be knee-weakening if his eyes didn’t flicker with the promise of cruelty. “It’s as if you have no idea who you’re talking to.”
I scowl. “The White Stag?”
His gust of laughter surprises me. “Now, that’s disappointing. Another journalist with some tepid piece on Half City crime.”
I try to swallow and find that I can’t. He’s given me a much better cover than a girl who came here to get laid and was disappointed by what she found. “What gave me away?”
“The outfit’s a little try-hard.” A filthy smile curves his lips. “But I’m not complaining.”
“Shall I add sexual harassment to drug dealing and murder-for-hire services?”
His face hardens. A misstep. “Sexual harassment would be me demanding you get down on your pretty knees.”
His gunmetal-blue eyes blink white. Like that night with Reid and the couple on the moped…He’s trying to glamour me, but hunters can’t be glamoured. He thinks I’m mortal—
And I don’t have much time to decide between going along with the ruse or exposing myself as a huntress. But I’m here to destroy this fucker, certainly not to blow him, so I slide my daggers out of my bag in one smooth motion and drive them toward his heart.