Chapter Eight
Nirav and I march with purpose to our next destination.
I awaken Pax with a pitcher of cold water thrown in his face.
“What the—PAH!” Pax sputters. Shakes his head. Swipes his eyes. “What is it with you and tossing liquids about?” I fight a grin—I really want to chuckle at his fumbling, but I need answers.
He sits up in bed. It’s early morning, the sun not fully over the horizon. The water has soaked him, and it glistens down over his bare chest. I avert my eyes.
Law, chile, those abs!
Could scrub some skivvies clean on those, now, couldn’t ya?
I ignore those voices. “Why are you still asleep? It’s six thirty.”
Pax half grins at me in a way that makes my stomach tighten. “Rising before noon is for hard workers, not smart workers.”
Pax crouches down in his bed, forcing me to make eye contact. His grin is devious. “Look at us. We just met and we’re already wishing each other good morning. That usually doesn’t happen for me until the fifth or sixth meeting, at least.”
“Get up,” I say, flustered by this knowledge. “You need to see this.”
“How did you get in here? See what?”
“Come on.”
Pax stands. He’s wearing only undergarments.
I burn with anger or embarrassment or… something. My cheeks flush and I close my eyes. When I reopen them, Pax is still there. Lingering a moment, wearing nothing but his skivvies and a smile. Chin lowered. Eyebrows raised.
He is putting on a show and he knows it. And I? I cannot breathe.
“Get dressed,” I say through gritted teeth.
Finally, he stops teasing me and wraps the sheet around his waist. He ducks behind the dressing screen. But I can see his silhouette donning trousers and an undershirt. Spirit wolf whistles.
No. This is not…
No.
I have to leave.
I duck into the apartment’s parlor—his apartment has a parlor—and wait with Nirav. I shift about on the silk settee, my mind replaying what just happened. Nirav peers at me sidewise, shooting me an Are you okay? look. I ignore it.
Pax’s voice travels from the other room. “I’m not an ‘I told you so’ sort of fellow, but honestly? I knew you’d come around. I’m not boasting here, but I usually do get what I—oh!”
He rounds the doorframe into the parlor and stops short when he sees a young boy seated beside me.
But I have to hand it to him. He adjusts to this new scenario quickly, beaming at Nirav. “And you are…?”
I thrust the painting toward Pax, impatient for answers. “This is Nirav. He painted this.”
Pax blinks the 6 a.m. from his eyes and tries to focus. He takes the canvas.
I watch as he scans it, realizing it’s him and me and this stranger, Nirav.
I see his gaze linger. Harden. Goose pimples rise on his bare, tanned arms.
My skin reacts similarly. I know this sensation. This is my Team of Light alerting me, pay attention.
And then, the shadows. A darkening, a thickening of air, swarms Pax. Swallows him like storm clouds. His face changes, gloom and anguish cutting across it, and he grimaces until he looks almost animalistic. Wolflike. His aura is lightning bolts.
I take a step back. That kind of intensity is seductive. I’ve lost myself to that kind of power before. Never again.
Pax dusts his fingers lightly over the canvas, then withdraws them quickly, as if his fingertips burn after they pass over one of the faces. As if the evil in that face is contagious.
Pax jabs at Nirav’s canvas.
“This is Max Blanck. The owner of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Do you know…?”
Pax cannot even finish the question, his voice a fist in his throat.
Max… Blanck?
Oh, I know.
My heart lurches.
My stomach lurches.
My vision darkens on the edges, like smoke encroaching. Pax’s shadowy darkness sneaks around me, too.
“Are you certain?”
Pax’s jaw is taut, his teeth clenched. “Oho, I am certain. I’ve fantasized about pressing my thumbs into his fat neck, crushing his windpipe.”
Max Blanck is the sonofabitch who kept the doors of his sewing factory locked so his workers wouldn’t take advantage of their breaks.
Max Blanck is the sonofabitch who killed 146 workers when that factory caught fire.
Max Blanck is the sonofabitch who killed Daisy.
And?
Max Blanck is the sonofabitch who
GOT
OFF
SCOT-FREE.
(And I am as guilty as the one who lit the match.)