CHAPTER NINE
Myra
Stepping into The Lion’s Den felt like walking into another world.
Every place I'd ventured in the Playground before was as seedy and sordid as the neighborhood itself, but this?
This was like walking into luxury I couldn't comprehend—at least not on land.
The walls and ceilings were painted a deep, near-black blue shade that made it seem smaller than it was and oddly more inviting.
The lighting was soft and beautiful, coming from both above and the perimeter.
Golden tables peppered throughout the room gave a rich contrast to the darkness, as did the velvet-covered chairs surrounding them.
But it was the nefarious-looking males seated in them that had me on edge.
“You look nervous, little mermaid.”
“That’s because I, unlike you, am not an arrogant idiot. Only a fool wouldn’t be intimidated in a place like this.”
“But didn’t we just establish that that’s exactly what you are with your little stunt by the fountain?
” he countered as he spared me a sideward glance.
“How convenient for me.” When I glared at him, he smiled in response.
“Just hide that Riff Raff, tough-girl persona behind a facade of bitchy seductress and you’ll be fine. ”
“You’d better hope so, or you’re never going to find Jemma—”
He yanked me by the arm into his body and bent down to growl a warning into my ear. “Do not say her name in this place again, understand?”
“That’s gonna make it pretty hard for me to get answers about her, isn’t it?”
“Once you’ve done your job and gotten Damian alone downstairs, you can use it all you like, but not here.” His head lifted enough to scan the crowd. “Names have power, especially with the wrong people, and this place is filled with them.”
“Hmm, that’s comforting. Thanks for the pep talk. Now, which of these assholes do I need to cozy up to long enough for him to do my bidding?”
“Far left corner of the room,” he said without looking in that direction. “White-blond hair shaved on the sides. Black button-down shirt. Nose that enters a room before he does.”
I used Yael’s body as a shield and peeked over his shoulder to scour the shadows for Damian.
It took only a moment to find him. He was exactly as described, plus a large and imposing presence that I in no way wanted to fuck with on purpose.
But that choice had long since been taken away from me, so fuck with him I would.
“I’ve got him.”
“Good. Now it’s time for you to keep up your end of the deal.”
“I guess so,” I muttered under my breath as I pulled away from him. “This is the part where you wish me luck.”
“You don’t need luck; you need skill, little mermaid. Let’s hope you have enough.”
Without another word, he plucked a mixed drink off a server’s tray and handed it to me before slipping past me to head in the opposite direction.
He disappeared seamlessly into the crowd of well-dressed men, leaving me to fend for myself.
Thankfully, I’d had a crash course in that from the day I landed in the Playground.
Drink in hand and neckline tugged down low enough for the girls to garner attention, I wound my way casually through the tables, stopping now and then to feign interest in order to avoid suspicion.
I needed to get close enough to Damian to touch him if I wanted my compulsion to have any effect at all.
Though that wasn’t how the magic was supposed to work, I’d realized quickly after my arrival on land that the power of the Siren’s Song no longer carried as it once had.
I needed to channel it directly into the recipient with my palm firmly grounded against their skin.
Yet another hard-earned lesson, courtesy of the Playground.
I walked past a poker game that had some commotion around it, and I tried to slip around the fray as a brawl broke out over what I could only assume was an accusation of cheating.
I was nearly clear of it when something heavy and hard crashed into my spine, sending my drink flying through the air and me sprawling to the floor amid the frenzy.
I scrambled to get to my feet, but the floor was slick with alcohol, and I was jostled between those embroiled in the fight.
Some massive male staggered backward to catch his balance and stomped on my calf, forcing a scream past my lips.
But it, too, was swallowed in the melee—not that anyone there would have cared if I was trampled to death.
Angry voices sliced through the din as I cursed Yael’s name and tried to drag myself out of the way, while one by one, the males fighting around me seemed to disappear.
I capitalized on the reprieve and pulled myself up on a nearby craps table so I could get my bearings and assess just how much danger I was still in.
“You okay?” a raspy voice called from my right. I pushed my curtain of black hair from my face to see Damian standing there, assessing me.
“For someone who nearly got un-alived trying to watch a poker game,” I said, forcing a flirty smile to overtake my angry expression, “I’m solid. Thanks for asking.”
That icy blue stare raked over my body, lingering on my now even lower neckline, courtesy of my floor-time shenanigans. “I’m glad… woulda been a shame to have to dispose of such a beautiful corpse.”
I faked a laugh and pushed off the table to take a step closer to him, but the second I put weight on my injured leg, a tiny scream escaped me as it gave out and sent me crashing into him. Not exactly how I’d thought to get close enough to use the Siren’s Song, but effective nonetheless.
“Whoa, there,” he said, easily catching me around the waist, “that leg doesn’t seem so solid.”
“Yeah, they must not be sturdy enough to be stomped on by ogres.” Before I could try standing on it again, he scooped me up and started walking toward a staircase along the wall he’d been posted up against earlier, winding his way through the tables with ease.
Games had resumed as though a war hadn’t just broken out in there, and I couldn’t help but wonder if that was just business as usual—not unlike Ravi’s bar.
“Well, this is surprisingly chivalrous of you, but I think I can manage.”
“Didn’t look like you could manage a second ago,” he argued as he neared the stairway. My arm was slung around his shoulders, and my hand flexed near his neck as I debated my next step. I didn’t want to use my power in a room full of supernaturals, and it seemed like I might not have to.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere private so I can look at that leg. Seems broken.”
“Are you a doctor?” I asked playfully as he started down the darkened stairway.
At that, he laughed. “Hardly. But we have a healer on staff for rough nights. I can get him if you need him.”
“No!” I blurted out without thinking. He looked down at me, and I panicked.
I quickly schooled my features, doing my best to look scared.
“No healers. I… I don’t trust them.” He finally hit the landing in the basement, a black labyrinth of doors lit only by literal torches on the wall.
If my partner in crime kept up his end, he’d be lurking behind one of those doors.
“Is there a room I can just rest in for a minute and you can look at my leg?”
“Yeah,” he said, eyeing up the nearest door on the left with a half moon etched out in silver.
“This one will work.” He turned the knob and pushed the door open, exposing a tiny room lined with mirrors and furnished only with a couch.
On it sat a scantily clad redhead—right on Yael’s lap.
My eyes went wide with surprise, but he looked calm and cool as could be.
“Get out,” Damian barked at them. The hostility in his tone had the petite ginger running out of the room in fear, collecting her clothes along the way, while Yael casually unfurled his tall frame from the couch as though the situation held no urgency for him. “I told you to get out.”
“I heard you,” Yael replied, unfazed as ever. His sharp stare drifted to where Damian held me under my legs, fingers spread wide across my thigh. “I’m just ignoring the directive. Actually, I’m questioning why you’re giving me one at all. Thoughts on that, little mermaid?”
“Wait a minute… I know you. You’re—”
I clamped my hand around Damian’s neck, cutting him off.
“You’re going to put me down carefully and answer his questions without saying anything else.
” My sing-song tone echoed through the room, and I soon found myself standing on one leg beside him, using my grip on him for balance as Yael looked on, eyebrow quirked with curiosity. “Things got a little crazy upstairs.”
“I see that.” Dark amusement clung to his response, but it fell away the moment he turned his attention back to Damian. “Tell me where my sister Jemma is.”
Damian didn’t even flinch. “I don’t know.”
Not a promising start.
“She was with you the night she disappeared,” he said, inching closer, “in this very building. Tell me why.”
Damian’s brow furrowed as though he were concentrating hard on the question—or trying to evade it. “She came to meet with someone. I didn’t see her until that meeting was long over.”
“Who was the someone?”
“She didn’t say, and I didn’t ask, but she was acting weird,” he said, a note of genuine concern in his tone. “Weirder than normal.”
Yael stepped closer, eyes trained on Damian like lasers. “Weird how?”
“No offense, man, but your sister is fucking crazy at the best of times—it’s what I like about her.
But she looked feral, eyes all wide and talking nonsense about one more job, then it’s done.
” One more job, then it’s done? I opened my mouth to ask what that even meant, but something about the way Yael’s expression hardened when Damian spoke those words kept my question at bay.
“That’s the last thing she said to me before she kissed me on the cheek and walked out the door. Haven’t seen her since.”
Sweat was pouring down Damian’s face, and the temperature in the room seemed to increase with every passing second I held him under the Siren’s Song.
“Where was she headed?” Yael asked.
Damian squirmed under my hold, jaw flexing wildly as he tried to withhold the answer.
“Tell him,” I said, pressing more magic into my voice.
The strain in his expression turned his pale skin red as he fought my compulsion. “To see a witch,” he forced out through gritted teeth.
“There are many of those in the Playground,” Yael replied as he stepped closer. “Which. One?”
Damian’s skin grew uncomfortably hot to the touch, but I held fast to his neck, channeling my magic deeper to force the information from him.
“Maimee.”
Yael stopped cold. “For what reason?”
Every muscle in Damian’s body went rigid at the question as he fought not to answer, but it was a futile endeavor.
I clamped my other hand around his bicep and dug my nails and my magic in deeper still.
“Answer him!” My voice boomed through the dimly lit space, shaking the walls and the floor and the being in my grasp.
He looked at me with wild, terrified eyes that bulged from his face.
Heat poured through his skin until I could no longer hold on because of the burning in my palms. “Something’s wrong,” I whispered as I took a step away from him in horror. “We need to get out of—”
I never did get to finish that sentence.
The horrific sound of Damian exploding cut me off.