41. Harlow
HARLOW
I step inside room three and close the door behind me, pausing with my hand still on the knob, my gaze fixed on my husband.
Out of the corner of my eye, Shane tugs frantically on the ties at his wrists. At least he’s still breathing.
Henry is perched on the bed, his dark eyes burning into me. I can tell he’s been back to Carrenwell House because his hair is neatly combed and he’s changed into clean clothes.
He crosses his arms, and his biceps strain against his black dress shirt.
I’m not afraid of Henry, but an alarm bell rings in the back of my brain, warning me to run.
I release my hold on the doorknob and turn slowly to face him. “My wolf, what a truly unpleasant surprise. How did you know how to find me?”
“This is your favorite bar,” Henry says. “With your favorite bartender.” His gaze rakes down my body, pausing on my breasts before sliding down to my right leg and the hip-high slit. “What the fuck are you wearing?”
I swish from side to side. “A very expensive dress from an exclusive Lunameade designer. I’m glad you like it.”
“If that’s a dress, surely it’s unfinished. ”
I tug on the neckline. “If you don’t like it, I’m happy to take it off.”
“Don’t.” The word is a threat, a challenge, and an invitation all at once.
Adrenaline races through my blood at the menace in his eyes. Good. I’m angry, too. Even in Lunameade, I can’t escape my unwanted husband.
“Mere days into this marriage and you’re already inviting another man up to your room?” Henry asks.
I purse my lips. “I didn’t think you’d be so sentimental.”
A muscle in his jaw twitches. “It’s not sentimentality. It’s pride. You don’t shame a man like this.”
“Or? What will happen?” I ask, pushing my lower lip into an exaggerated pout.
I shouldn’t push him, but making him crazy is one of the few joys left in my life.
Shane shifts the chair forward as he tries to yank his hands free. He only succeeds in drawing Henry’s attention.
“I didn’t know she was married. This is clearly a private conversation. If you untie me, I can see myself out,” Shane says.
He looks terrified. Divine know what Henry said to him before I arrived.
“Are you feeling more talkative and less handsy now?” I ask.
He glances warily at Henry.
“Don’t mind my husband. I’m sure he would love to hear about your correspondence from Rochelli. I want to hear more about what you were talking about downstairs.”
Shane tugs on the bindings around his wrists and looks from me to Henry. “Yes.”
“You work with the rebels?” Henry says slowly.
Shane nods.
“And you thought you would talk to Harlow Carrenwell about your spy work?”
I sigh. So much for not killing him. Henry just ensured I can’t let him leave this room.
Shane’s head snaps toward me. “I thought it was a glamour. I didn’t think you were actually a Carrenwell. Lots of the—professional women just do it for the fantasy. I didn’t know. I?— ”
His words aren’t slurred anymore, but he doesn’t seem entirely sober either. Hopefully, this is the sweet spot for interrogating him.
“Relax, Shane,” I say. “I’m not going to sell you out. I just want to know what you know about Rochelli and the missing women.”
Henry’s eyebrows shoot up.
“I don’t know anything. I was just drunk and bragging,” Shane says.
Henry sighs and shakes his head. “Come now, Shane. You clearly had a purpose in bringing my wife up here. I can tell you the one thing that gets her going is information. Isn’t that right, lovely?”
I don’t want to share all of this with Henry, but I’m almost positive from the way his aura is shifting and the look in his eyes that he’s holding himself back from killing Shane immediately with great effort. If I don’t ask now, I might never get a chance to.
“It’s so sweet how you pretend to know what gets me going,” I taunt. His aura presses wider, but I ignore him and focus on our captive. “Do you know who Rochelli is, Shane?”
Shane laughs and shakes his head. “No one knows who he is. Some people think he’s a group of people. Some think he’s actually a she and that no one would suspect a woman because men of Lunameade underestimate women’s intelligence.”
I think of Bea again, but I can’t fathom how she would do it, or how she would have kept it from me until now.
“They’re not wrong about that,” Henry says. “Men here are very foolish. If you don’t know who Rochelli is, how do you communicate with him?”
Shane shifts, subtly tugging against the bindings on the chair. “Letters. A note comes to my house with the number of one of the public mailboxes in the city and the combination to unlock it. It’s different every time—never in the same quadrant and no rhyme or reason to the numbers.”
My stomach churns. As the Poison Vixen, I rent a few mailboxes around the city and rotate them each month to avoid being caught. The women who vet clients for me give our clients a mailbox number and a code just like this. The process is alarmingly close to the one I use—the process Bea suggested.
“Why did you get recruited?” Henry asks. “What makes them trust you? ”
Shane looks toward the door and then back at Henry.
“I don’t have a blessing, but I manage accounts for several of the high magical houses.
I think I was invited because I have access and because I spoke out openly at a city meeting about the second monthly blood tax.
My mother technically qualifies, but she has a bleeding disease.
While the healer can heal the wound, it’s costly for us to pay them twice a month, and it’s a risk for her every time she’s cut.
I got especially heated at a meeting six months back, and that’s when the first message arrived at my door. ”
I frown. “And you just went with it?”
Shane shakes his head. “I didn’t believe it at first. I thought it was a trap.
But I followed the instructions. It was simple enough.
I just had to leave some healing supplies—gauze, alcohol, a tincture for pain—with a woman at a bar.
I didn’t know anything about her and she didn’t know anything about me.
I simply went to the booth I was told to go to and she was waiting for me.
I gave her the package and left. The next day, there was a pouch of coins left in my home mailbox. ”
“But you’re so quick to give him up now?” I challenge.
Shane shakes his head. “No, I don’t know enough to give him up.
I think that’s how this has gone on for so long.
No one knows enough. I met different people and dropped things in different locations.
I think they wanted me because I work with a lot of people who come in and out of the magical houses, and I myself visit them quite a bit.
Some people I’ve met claim there are meetings around the city, but I’ve never been to one of those. ”
“Then how did you know about the women?” I ignore Henry’s eyes on me.
Shane tries to itch his nose on his shoulder and then gives up after an awkward attempt.
“One of the men I met tonight when I was making a drop was talking about it. I was running late and he’d clearly been drinking while he waited.
He just started gossiping about how the missing women weren’t an accident—that they were payment to stave off the Drained. ”
Henry’s aura pulses out wide. “What do you mean?”
Shane nods to his vest pocket and wiggles his hands. “He had a note from Rochelli. I swiped it.”
I cross the room and pat his vest pocket, only vaguely aware of Henry coming closer. I pull out a small piece of parchment and unfold it. The penmanship is remarkably neat, but also distinct in the swoops of the letters.
These women are not merely victims of the thirsty Drained. They are the payment the Carrenwells offer to keep these evolved monsters at bay and ? —
Henry swipes the note out of my hand.
“I was reading that—and it’s evidence,” I snap.
“I’d like to see what you earned with that dress,” he says.
I reach for the letter, but Henry spins away from me. His eyes rapidly scan the page, and he dodges two more of my attempts to grab it. I trip on the hem of my dress and pitch toward the fire. Henry grabs me around the waist.
The scene plays out in slow motion: Henry releases the parchment to grab me. The letter flutters directly into the fire.
I stare at it in disbelief as Henry pulls me upright. He follows my gaze and curses.
The ink bubbles and the paper turns black. Just like that, the one piece of evidence we had is nothing but ashes.
Henry has been, at all times, annoyingly graceful for someone I expected to be a burly mountain oaf.
But that was uncharacteristically clumsy.
I try to contain my suspicion. For months I’ve believed that Rafe is the only viable option for Rochelli, but Henry snatching the note and fumbling it feels convenient.
“What is wrong with you?” I snap.
“With me?” He takes a step toward me, and I step back. “What’s wrong with you ? Going out with no glamour in that indecent dress and inviting a man to go upstairs with you. Interrogating him yourself? What if he had tried something?”
I glare at Henry. “He did try something, and oh—look at that. I’m fine and he’s tied to a chair.”
“I wasn’t actually going to do anything she didn’t want to do,” Shane interjects. “I just made some incorrect assumptions about why she brought me up here.”
Henry shoots a murderous look at Shane. “Oh, and what did you think, Harlow? How were you planning on getting information out of him?”
It would be wiser not to press him when he’s angry, but I’m angry too. “I was planning to do whatever it took to entice him. ”
Henry grabs my arm and drags me toward the bed.
I grunt. “What are you?—”
He sits down and yanks me down on his lap, facing away from him. He hooks my legs outside of his and the slit in my dress rides up so high, my lace undergarments peek out. I try to pull my arms free, but Henry has them trapped behind my back, between our bodies.
Shane watches us, torn between curiosity and fear.