Chapter 10
TEN
Icarus cursed the phone vibrating on the bedside table.
He wasn’t ready to get up yet. Two rings, then it stopped.
Didn’t seem he had a choice. Thirty seconds, then, to wake the rest of the way up and activate the secure call channel.
He peeled open one eye, then the other, wincing at the bright room.
Midday already, judging by the ambient light that leaked in around the bedroom curtains.
A longer than intended rest, but it had been a few days since he’d last slept.
He snagged the phone off the charger, activated the secure channel, and was ready when she called back.
He ignored the video request and lifted the phone to his ear.
“I just woke up,” he greeted. “You don’t get to see this face. ”
“Eww!” she sputtered, and he could practically see her recoiling. Could imagine her curls whipping back and forth as she frantically shook her head. “As if I’d want to.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.” Chuckling, he shifted onto his side in the bed and sank back under the cozy comforter he’d quilted. “It’s my first rest in days, and I haven’t eaten yet.”
“So you look like death warmed over.”
“Not even warm.” He pulled the comforter higher, flipped the phone to speaker, and laid it on the pillow beside his head. “What’d you find out?”
“That you probably shouldn’t be sharing any kind of morning face with the Devil.”
He sighed and flopped onto his back.
“Wait,” she squawked. “Did you already? Is he there?”
“No, but the word ‘inevitable’ comes to mind. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to fuck someone so badly in my life. It’s bizarre. I hardly know the guy, I know he’s dangerous, but the raging hard-on is real.”
“Don’t you have a whole assortment of cock cages? Have one on next time you see him. I’ll hack it from here. Make sure you keep that dick locked down.”
He half laughed, half groaned. “Yes, I have a whole collection. No, I don’t think I’ll ever use one again. They’re ruined for me.”
“Aww. Poor Icarus.”
He pouted to no one over the loss of the toys and the inevitable bad news she was about to deliver. He retracted his jutted-out lip and ripped off the Band-Aid. “Tell me about Adam.”
“Not much to tell.”
“I thought—”
“The fact that he’s so well-erased, his alias and his real name too, whatever that might be, and Deborah and David too, means he really doesn’t want to be found. Someone who can pay for that good a scrub has something to hide. Something major.”
“What did you find?”
She sighed, louder than his before.
“Come on,” Icarus needled. “Surely you didn’t think I was just going to give in?”
“A girl can dream.”
“A zebra can’t change its stripes.”
She blew a raspberry over the line, and he covered the ache in his chest with laughter.
He missed seeing and talking to her in person, missed sharing these moments together.
Missed falling asleep to the sound of her rapid-fire keystrokes, the same sound that filled his room now, his phone screen lighting up with documents she pushed through.
“House is owned by a shell company, which is owned by a shell company, yada yada. Was purchased five years before the Rift.” As Icarus had suspected. “The only person on the record is the attorney who set up the shell company—who set up all the shell companies—and he’s dead. In the Rift.”
YB had lost half its population in the Rift, most unfortunate victims in the wrong place at the wrong time, caught in the magical crossfire or pulled under the waves or into the earth that had cracked open.
The number of fatalities in the Canyon Lands alone had been staggering.
The half that had survived had continued to dwindle in the thirty years since.
Three decades. Icarus ran the math in his head, coming back to the same conclusion he’d reached at Adam’s house the other night. The years weren’t adding up. Adam wasn’t adding up. And the Cirillos were mixed up in the equation too, somehow.
“Any connection to Vincent or Paris Cirillo?”
“They’re just as scrubbed clean,” she answered. “How’d you get mixed up with them, anyways?”
“Pretty face with a ready supply of Daylight.”
“I told you that shit would get you in trouble.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He flapped a hand in the air, waving her off despite the fact she couldn’t see him. “I don’t even fucking want it. I’m fine being a hermit during the day, but it doesn’t hurt to have an emergency supply.”
“In case you have to rescue a certain someone during daylight hours.”
“Worth it,” he didn’t hesitate to reply. It was the last time he’d seen her, for a few too-short hours. The time in the daylight with her was worth it, but even more worth it was keeping her safe. Worth every penny of the fifteen grand he owed to Paris—correction, Vincent—Cirillo.
“He’s getting it from the warlock?” she asked.
“Probably,” Icarus said. The serum that allowed Icarus’s kind to withstand the sun was the sort of magic only a handful of warlocks could wield.
And those that could generally wouldn’t, which made Daylight exceedingly hard to come by and exceedingly expensive.
Unless you had a warlock as powerful and morally bankrupt as Atlas on standby. “He’s in their thrall.”
“That’s odd.”
“No shit.” Everything about the current predicament was odd.
“And you’re sure the Cirillos are humans?”
“Brown eyes, and no, they’re not contacts.”
“Hmm.” Keystrokes resumed, and a snapshot of computer gibberish appeared onscreen. “Also odd, this trace on the IP address you gave me for the warlock. It’s bouncing all over the place. There’s something else going on there, but I’m not sure what yet. I’m digging into it.”
“Not a surprise. Atlas is all smoke and mirrors.” He threw off the comforter and sat up, scrubbing a hand over his face.
“Speaking of smoke, anything on the Talahalusi fire?” Another bunch of documents came through.
Police and hospital records. “Summary, please,” he said.
“Recall, I lack blood and a shower. Not awake enough yet.”
She laughed. “When you get right, start with the Tal Gen Hospital records. There was a John Doe admitted to the ER there on the day of the fire. I think it’s your guy. Third degree burns all over his body per the admitting report, but then he was discharged the next day, no treatment indicated.”
“No burns on him that I could see.” He stood, tiptoed around the sun dappling the floor, and grabbed his robe off the back of the bedroom door. “And the police reports?”
“As thin as the news article on details. The officer from the scene died. The case was assigned to Officer Cormac Kelley, who closed it after a respectable time of doing absolutely nothing.”
“Is Officer Kelley still alive?”
“Detective Kelley now, and yes, he works the cold cases for the Talahalusi Sheriff’s Office.”
Had he been shuttled there because he was good at his job or bad at it? “Anything else on him?” Icarus asked as he snagged the phone off the pillow and went in search of food.
“He’s local. Good cop by all accounts. No complaint charges filed against him. Asked for the cold case gig. Kind of a loner. Unmarried, no kids, lives on an outparcel of the family vineyard outside of Talahalusi proper.”
“Which vineyard?”
“Monte Corvo.”
Icarus almost dropped the vial in his hand. “No fucking way.”
“That mean something to you?”
Crow Mountain? That couldn’t be a coincidence.
“Maybe. You got a picture?”
He gulped down the meal and waited for the picture to load.
Once opened, he spread his fingers across the screen, examining the man in uniform.
Light tan skin, black eyes, black hair. Maybe it was the raven shifter from the other night.
It had been dark, and Icarus had only seen him from behind, had only gotten a glimpse of a dark eye turning violet before he’d shifted.
The man in the picture could be him or just as easily someone else with tan skin, black eyes, and black hair.
But still . . . Crow Mountain, plus the case, plus a cop . . . Adam’s partner, maybe?
“His what?”
Shit, he hadn’t meant to muse that last part out loud.
“Former partner.” He tossed the vial in the bin and left his phone on the far end of the counter, farther out of earshot as he prepared for the worst. “Adam used to be a cop,” he confessed with a preemptory wince.
“Icarus!”
He winced more as the banshee was unleashed on the other end of the line. He pretended not to notice. “What was that?”
She saw right through the facade. “Don’t play dumb with me. That was important info.”
“Which would make you panic, hence—”
“Hence you should have fucking told me.” She muttered a few curses, then the keystrokes started again, fast and furious. “What else didn’t you tell me?”
Feeling like his eardrums were relatively safe from further damage, he retrieved his phone and ambled to the couch. “He drives a vintage Camaro and orders whiskey like it’s tap water.”
The typing stopped again, followed by a muttered, “Holy shit.”
“Babe—”
“Don’t fucking ‘babe’ me.” She growled at him some more, and Icarus imagined she’d run her hands through her hair a dozen times by now, flattening the lovely curls. “I love you, you know that, but you are way out of your fucking league here.”
“I’m starting to get that.” He stretched out and clutched a pillow to his chest, ignoring the Adam-shaped hole that lingered there, that piqued his curiosity and hadn’t dampened his desire for the man one bit, despite all the red flags.
Same as before, she saw right through his silence—saw right through him, period—and offered a tempting, impossible alternative. “Come home.”
“You know I can’t.”
“Just meet me here, and then we’ll go. I’ve got enough saved up. Enough for us to get settled somewhere else, then you can find work, and so can I.”
He almost caved, but there was a reason he’d left Portola in the first place, a reason he only chanced seeing her when her life was in danger—at least, from someone other than him.
He was powerful enough to protect her, but also dangerous enough to hurt her or those around her.
“The last thing I want is to put you at risk.”
“And the last thing I want is to lose you for good.”