Chapter 9
Alice
“Fallon,” I echo, still looking at the small girl in the photo. I try to imagine what she might be like all grown up, if that fierceness in her eyes has mellowed with age or been sharpened into a terrifying weapon by the whetstone of this world.
Probably the latter. “Must be nice to have siblings,” I offer. I glance up from the photo just as Wyatt shrugs.
“I love them,” he says, “but they’re a lot of work. You an only child?”
“Yeah,” I reply, trying to read the expression on his face.
It’s encouraging, almost kind, but he’s seeking—attempting to understand something about me.
Surely a Sector agent this deep would have a fully fleshed-out backstory, so that makes me wonder if he genuinely wants to know about me. “I always wanted a big sister.”
Wyatt’s expression softens, and he lets out a husky laugh. “They’re a commitment,” he says with a wry smile. “Be careful what you wish for.”
I don’t answer, turning everything over in my head as I look around the room.
Twenty or so knives line the wall with military-like precision.
The bone handle of a particularly large one is stained with blood.
About a hundred sigils are carved into the fresh paint of the big bay window’s casing.
An alarming number of them are completely new to me, but I recognize the same one that I spied on the herbal shop and the stairs in the forest. My heart thumps hard against my chest. This all means something—these threads tie together into something greater. Bigger.
I finally meet Wyatt’s gaze, and to his credit, he’s just watching me patiently.
Waiting. Probably expecting me to run screaming or something.
There’s nothing predatory in his gaze, though.
I was a teen girl during the worst parts of the Reformation, which means I can usually spot that shit a mile away.
But I’m still in a strange man’s house in a strange town.
I remind myself that I should feel unsafe, even if my better judgment is betraying me.
“Do I have a choice?” I finally ask. In the wan, misty light leaking through the window, I watch the skin around his eyes crinkle, his dark brows drawing together. “About dinner, I mean? Like…what happens if I say no?”
Wyatt steps back as if I’ve startled him, examining me with an expression that almost looks hurt. “Blythe, what do I look like to you?” he demands with an arch laugh.
He spreads his hands away from his hips, holding both palms up like I’ve just ordered he drop a weapon. The hem of his shirt pulls away from his waistband for a second, and I’m treated to a peek at scarred skin pulled taut over impressive muscles. Heat rises to my face, and I cross my arms.
“You look like a strange man with a bunch of knives in his house,” I say, because it’s the truth. Even if he does make a pretty mean BLT.
“Fair enough. But absolutely nothing’s gonna happen to you if you don’t come to dinner,” Wyatt says, shoving one hand into his pocket, the other rubbing his stubbled jaw.
“You just might not get all those questions of yours answered. If anything, not coming to dinner is the safer thing. Fallon is…well, you’ll see, maybe. ”
I uncross my arms and glance down at the photo again, this time looking at little Wyatt.
He’s got a heaviness to him, a serious slant to the set of his mouth that no kid his age should have.
I don’t want him to think I’m afraid of him—because I’m not, to be honest, and because something tells me his biggest concern is keeping people safe.
It’s weird. I’ll punch a different man right in the goddamn face with no remorse.
But this one? I don’t know. I don’t wanna hurt him, I guess.
So, with a long exhale, I hand the framed photo back to Wyatt, my arm reaching over the space he created between us. Our fingers brush as he takes the photo, and I fight to shove away the sudden fluttering in my belly.
“I’ll come,” I say, forcing myself to meet his eyes. “But you were worried I was Sector just a few minutes ago. Now I’m getting invited to Sunday dinner?”
Wyatt’s mouth—fuck, I have got to stop looking at this man’s mouth—moves into a resigned sort of frown.
“Yeah,” he says, ducking his chin for a moment before meeting my gaze again.
“Pretty sure you’re not. But the thing is, I gotta check you for a Sector tracker before the dinner invite’s official. ”
My mouth goes dry as I think about the bug on Mr. Rabbit’s button eye. What if I missed something from my apartment? What if there’s something sewn into the collar of my coat or tacked to the bottom of my boots, and this man’s rough warmth turns into something else entirely when he finds it?
“A tracker?” I ask, feigning ignorance, though the last bit of his phone call with Fallon replays in my mind.
“Sector tags its agents,” he says. “Always in the same place, though. Left forearm. It’s not particularly comfortable to have someone digging around for it, but I promise it’ll be a hell of a lot better for me to do it than Fallon.”
I resist the urge to wrap my arms around my torso.
Wyatt doesn’t think I’m insane. If anything, he’s more insane than me.
Not only does he subscribe to my fringe conspiracy theory, but he’s also apparently a hedgerider.
I didn’t realize that sort of thing existed outside of folklore.
In my circles, I’ve occasionally seen people make this sort of claim, but it’s always folks who seem more interested in pretending they’re something they’re not than exposing government lies with cold, hard science.
I swallow, pulling the collar of my jacket tighter. Wyatt’s not pretending. Those sigils on the window are the real deal. The titles on the bookshelves are mostly anthropological and folkloric, plus a few worn medical texts. Those knives are well-used.
And he’s…dangerous. Not in the way I’m used to, all cheap suits and tinted sunglasses. Not even dangerous with too much wealth, too much privilege—dangerous like Aston and all the men of his ilk are, because they think the world is theirs to plunder.
Wyatt’s dangerous in another way entirely. One I haven’t quite figured out. One that excites me for reasons I’m absolutely not going to investigate.
“Do you have to, like, slice me open or anything?” I ask with a choked laugh. I try to sound cool, blasé, as if such a thing wouldn’t even bother me.
I absolutely don’t sound that way.
I half-expect Wyatt to mock me, but instead he gives me this little smile that I don’t understand.
I like it anyway. “Nah,” he says with a shake of his head.
“Why don’t you sit down, Miss Blythe?” He pulls out an overstuffed chair clad in chestnut-brown leather and gestures toward it.
“You just gotta hold out your left arm, palm up. I’m gonna press real hard to feel around for the tag. ”
This is insane. I’m in a stranger’s house. He just made me a BLT. A really fucking good one, to be specific, and now he’s talking about Sector and implants and the Fey. Or Them, apparently.
For once, I’m not the craziest person in the room.
“Okay,” I say, sliding out of my jacket and tossing it across the back of the chair. Then I settle down onto the worn leather, swallowing hard.
He gets down on one knee in front of me, his muscular thighs straining against his jeans, and I promptly blush so hard that my face feels a thousand degrees hotter than the rest of my body. “You know, if I were Sector, it would be really easy to kick you in the face right now.”
“Well, Miss Blythe,” Wyatt says, looking at me as I roll up my sleeve, “I’m sincerely hoping you make better choices.” Something glitters in his eyes. My stupid, traitorous stomach flops.
“Good choices are not really in my repertoire lately,” I admit, holding my hand out. I steady my elbow against the arm of the chair.
“That much is obvious,” Wyatt says with a gruff laugh. “Sorta like that about you, though.”
He wraps one large hand around the top of my forearm before I’ve prepared myself. His palm is callused, warm, his fingers strong, and I fail to stop myself from thinking about what his hands might feel like on other parts of my body.
Luckily, pain cuts that daydream short. I let out a gasp, going rigid, as Wyatt presses his thumb into the middle of my forearm with what I assume is a good portion of his considerable strength.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
“You alright?” he asks, his gaze sliding to mine.
It’s too much, the way he’s taken a knee at my feet, how his head is bowed over my body, how I barely remember the last time I slept with somebody sober and actually had a good time.
How I barely remember the last time I felt like I actually had a body, not just a vessel for my brain and all its machinations.
“Fine,” I say through clenched teeth as he pushes deeper, sliding his thumb up my tendons.
I’m caught somewhere between the pleasure of an attractive man’s bare skin on mine and the sharp pain digging its teeth into me.
It feels like this search for a Sector tag takes forever, but then it’s done and Wyatt’s no longer touching me.
For a too-long moment I’m not proud of, I wonder if I’d suffer the pain to feel his skin against mine again.
“Well, not Sector,” he says, straightening to his full height.
“That’s great to hear, because it would’ve been news to me,” I reply, shooting to my feet. “Okay. Your turn.”
I smile and point at the chair. Wyatt looks at me, one brow arching. We just met, so I’m probably wrong, but it almost seems like he’s trying very hard to avoid showing that he’s amused.
“My turn, Miss Blythe?” he asks in a drawl that’s thick and sweet, just like molasses. “You’re in my home. Invited to my sister’s dinner. In my town. On land my family protects.”
“That’s a shame,” I say with a fake pout. “Kinda pegged you as a feminist, you know? Thought you’d be about equality. Seems only fair I make sure you’re not Sector, either.”
Wyatt smiles then, and I like the look of it.
It’s strange, though—it’s almost as though he’s unused to smiling, or if it’s been a long time since he smiled and actually meant it.
I’m probably projecting, looking for further kinship in one of the few people I’ve ever met who doesn’t think I’m absolutely bonkers.
“I suppose fair is fair,” he says with a shrug.
Then he’s sliding out of his jacket, and I realize I’ve made a grave mistake.
Because it’s much harder to keep my attention on my actual goals when I’m assailed by the way his flannel clings to his broad shoulders, how his t-shirt—bearing some vintage advertisement so faded I can no longer read it—stretches across his muscular chest.
Wyatt lays his jacket down on the edge of a big vintage desk and then takes up residence in the seat I’ve just vacated. I chew on my lower lip, tossing my braid over my shoulder.
“Well, don’t keep me waiting, Blythe,” he murmurs as he rolls up the sleeve of his flannel. I swallow, my mouth gone dry. Christ, I didn’t realize how pathetically lonely I was. That’s a lie; I knew it, I think, somewhere in the back of my head. I just didn’t realize what a weakness it is.
“What exactly am I looking for?” I ask, stepping forward. I don’t need to kneel; with him seated, I’m only a head or so taller than him. Instead, I lean over the arm of the chair, desperately trying to keep my legs from bumping into his.
“Feels almost like a coin under the skin,” he tells me, offering me his forearm. “It’s good for you to know this, considering you’re going ’round like a dog on a bone.”
“I’ve been called worse things,” I tell him, reaching forward to wrap my hand around the top of his forearm, like he did to me. My fingers aren’t long enough to meet on either side like his did, though.
“Wasn’t an insult,” he says. I can feel his eyes on me, but I refuse to meet his gaze, instead keeping mine trained on the expanse of his forearm—a map of thick veins and tendons, tan skin and white scars.
“You’ll need to press down harder than you think.
Try to almost get your thumb between my tendons, if you can. ”
I do as he instructs, but it feels like trying to dig my fingertips into a rock.
“Harder than that, Miss Blythe,” Wyatt says. “You won’t hurt me. Promise.”
“Not more than you’ve been hurt before, I’m sure,” I reply, eyeing two long scars that bisect his forearm.
Wyatt recoils like I’ve burned him, yanking his arm out of my grasp.
I stumble back, head snapping up to look at him. “I’m sorry,” I stammer, bumping into his desk. “What did I do?”
I’m surprised and slightly terrified by how much I actually care about his answer.
“Nothing,” he says, dragging a hand through his hair, leaving it mussed in a way Aston and his friends would’ve paid an unseemly amount of money to achieve. “Static shock, maybe. Just wasn’t expecting it.”
I frown. I didn’t feel any static. I almost open my mouth to tell him so, but there’s something in his eyes—something desperate—and I decide to let it go. All at once, there is some kind of a charge, like electricity coursing between us, so strong that my fingers and toes seem to tingle.
“Let’s try that again,” Wyatt says, business-like now, and the charge disappears in a moment, a storm passing through. “Like I said, good thing for you to know. Unless you’re willing to bury that bone and run home.”
I smile at him, though I suppose it’s more baring my teeth than anything. “Not gonna happen,” I reply. “So, tell me exactly how to do this again. Also, how the hell do you get close enough to a possible Sector agent to even look for a tag?”
“Oh,” Wyatt says with a mischievous smile. “That’s usually Fallon’s territory.” He pauses, his mouth parted, his gaze capturing mine.
All of a sudden, I can feel the collar of my sweater brushing the nape of my neck, the stitching on the waistband of my jeans, the weight of my braid down my back. My breath catches.
“I suppose,” he continues, “that I got pretty close to you real quick, now didn’t I?”