Chapter 8
On Friday, I wait until Professor Lisette has gone into her office hours before I slip out the doors of the Windsor, alone.
Wind whips around the high-rises and Christmas carolers chime down the block, and I’m surprisingly grateful to be without my goonie squad.
Even if I could leverage Deacon’s need for my new syrabraxa-induced abilities into bringing my friends, I think Ward might have been onto something with his anger over finding Penny at the Cineplex.
Every time I involve them in any of this, I’m putting them in danger.
Plus, it’s not like me to lean on others.
I’ve been a one-woman show since my dad died.
But at some point during my first semester at Harker—meeting Sophia, Peter, and Elliot; opening up to Penny; losing Reid—the atoms of my makeup changed.
Realizing I wasn’t so alone has made me softer.
More vulnerable. I can’t bring that version of myself to the Manor tonight.
A motorcycle engine revs as I walk down the snowy street outside the Windsor until the sound draws so near that I angle my head sharply toward the source, only to find the bike stalled right behind me, a hulking silver-blond demon straddled atop it. Of course he rides a motorcycle.
“Need a ride?” Deacon hums.
He’s in his usual neo-nineties-refined-grunge uniform: well-worn dark denim, white Chuck Taylors, and a plain white T-shirt that no matter how big he buys them can’t hide the lethal muscles concealed beneath.
He’s got a Dickie’s workwear jacket on and a cigarette hanging from his mouth.
The silver-colored chain around his neck has slipped beneath his shirt.
Deacon’s bike isn’t a Harley-Davidson—the kind you’d associate with the Hells Angels, puns abound—but rather something sleeker.
Futuristic clean lines, intricate metalwork detail.
A piece of chrome-and-titanium art, with a leather seat and set of handlebars suitable for Deacon’s huge hands.
I wonder, absently, if it was designed for him. It fits his enormous body like a glove.
“How’d you know to find me here?”
Deacon shakes his head like I’m the silliest gal in the city. “You really think I don’t know where Harker is? Deep in the supersecret storage room of the oh-so-prestigious Windsor? I lived in this city before the Windsor was even built.”
Deacon knows Harker’s location?
Pure shock wars with the horror that he could find me and my friends should our temporarily aligned goals ever shift. Then I remember that he has no way into the impenetrable school and try to release the tension coiling through my body.
“I lived here when that building”—he continues, motioning toward the Romanesque architecture of the museum, its points and arches and grand, sprawling sandstone stairs—“was just a monastery with a grassy knoll where Arthur and I played tabula.” I cock my head in confusion, and he clarifies, “You call it backgammon now.”
I roll my eyes. “No, who’s Arthur?”
“King of Camelot? Round Table? Holy Grail?” He takes the cigarette from his mouth and releases a cloud of smoke. “God, do they teach you anything there?”
I cross my arms over my chest. “That was the Middle Ages. And in England. And fictional.”
“Close. It was 1130 AD when he was first written about, and although we lived in England, that happened on Asteran soil. As fictional as the dragons we rode over the sea to get here.”
“You were not a knight of the Round Table. They stood for honor and chivalry and courage.” We actually learned quite a lot about them this semester. Many of the knights were hunters—early soldiers against evil.
Deacon only makes a weighing gesture. “That, and drinking mead and fucking maidens while their husbands were asleep in the next room. Something for everyone.”
When I make a sour face he chuckles and I have the new thought that perhaps he says grotesque things like that just to get a rise out of me.
I make an oath to myself not to give him any satisfaction tonight at the party, where surely there will be no shortage of material for revolting innuendo and off-color remarks.
“You getting on, or…?”
“I’m not riding with you.” I’d rather fall down three flights of stairs than sit that close to Deacon Graveheart.
“You’re my whore, remember?” His grin is feral. “We show up together.”
My stomach twists. The last thing we need is to be denied entry because they see through our lies and for Reid to suffer at the hands of Finn for another week, month, year…
“God damn it,” I curse. “Fine.”
“That’s the attitude.”
I slide my leg over the seat behind Deacon, my thighs clasped tightly around the body of the bike.
I don’t let a single fiber of my winter coat touch even the back of his jacket.
My thigh muscles haven’t failed me in Pilates, nor in outrunning hellhounds, so I pray they will keep me upright on his bike.
I won’t be wrapping my arms around the worst man I’ve ever known.
“Ready for it?” he growls over the roar of the engine.
“Yeah.”
“Say Yes, Deacon, I’m ready for it.”
“Go fuck yourself.” So much for not letting him get a rise out of me.
His chuckle reverberates through the bike and we take off into the Friday evening rush.
Deacon cuts the engine on a nondescript street not too far from where I grew up in Lethe.
It’s Friday night in STC—South of the Chasm—which means Main Avenue, the street that juts through the city like the vein of a leaf, is bustling and bleeding noise into seedy side streets such as this one.
Voices ring out, cars whizz by, and music spills from restaurants.
I climb from the bike and shrug off my coat, welcoming the bite of winter on my skin.
“Jesus,” Deacon says, hungry eyes sliding along my body. They eat up every curve and dip and stretch of skin until I fidget.
“What?” I snip, defensive. “Was I not supposed to dress the part?”
I’d put on the most whorish thing in my closet—a strapless black minidress and ferociously high platform heels that made my legs look miles long.
With the addition of a thin velvet choker and the locket I never take off, I probably look more like Posh Spice than a high-paid escort, but this was all I had in my arsenal.
I wasn’t going to ask Sophia for help and risk showing up in a nightie.
“It’s fine,” Deacon says gruffly, rubbing at his jaw. His gaze hasn’t wavered, though. Those sharp blue eyes linger on my bare shoulders and along the length of my collarbone, then roam down to my thighs. His chest rises and falls.
“Hello, pervert.” I snap my fingers at him. “Still me. Still your nemesis.”
When Deacon’s eyes meet mine, the spark of attraction fades instantly and his hand drops from his face. “Why’d you have to ruin it by talking?”
I stalk through the street and up the brownstone steps to the old brick building. Pansies dusted in snow slump on the windowsills overhead. A welcome mat at my feet has been generously tread upon.
“It doesn’t look like much of a brothel.” I’ve walked past my fair share of women backlit by red lights living in this city. The Manor blends in far better with the other middle-class homes on the block. Though perhaps that’s the point.
“It’s not a brothel.” Deacon rings the sleek marble doorbell. He’s slung off his jacket, and crowded together with him in the entry, I can smell the cigarettes and clove of his skin. “It’s a party.”
“For people to have sex at.”
“For people to do anything.” His eyes glint with moonlight on that last word. Anything. For some reason I don’t think he means needlepoint.
“What happens when they realize we’re here to find Reid?”
Deacon adjusts the low rise of his jeans. “They’ll turn us in to Finn, who’ll kill you. And try to kill me.”
I trust my own ability to infiltrate this place one hundred percent. A sneaky, precise, tactical mission? I was born for it. It’s Deacon who I have no faith in. The thought that my life—and Reid’s—are in the hands of this psychopathic, impulsive creep sends my pulse ratcheting.
“Why are you breathing so much?” he says roughly. “Relax.”
Indignant, I open my mouth to respond, but the keyhole opens first. Deacon crouches down so his mouth is level with the eye that peers through.
“Tartarus,” Deacon says. Tartarus—the deepest region of the underworld. For the most malicious criminals and debauched sinners. My chest constricts and I touch the dagger at my hip for peace of mind.
“And the girl?” a voice asks.
“My escort for the night. From Sheila’s, transaction number three six three four two six three.”
I gawk at him but the door clicks open and we’re swept inside.
The music pulses so loud it takes a moment for my overwhelmed hunter brain to make sense of the wormhole I’ve just fallen through. Darkly lit, warmed by bodies. But once my eyes adjust, I gather I’m somewhere between a swanky Babylon cocktail party and Dionysus’s most extravagant bacchanalia.
Wealthy couples sip red wine and chat new media not a foot away from a man being flogged by a woman in skintight latex.
Two shirtless men pummel each other, noses bloody.
Girls dance topless to the sensual song that thumps from the speakers while men touch themselves from the luxury of deep-cushioned velvet couches.
I avert my eyes only to spy someone strapped to a bull’s-eye with an apple lodged in their mouth. A few feet away, partygoers toss darts.
And more, and more, and more…low-burning candles, snorted white powder, furtive thrusting, raucous laughter, cries of pain and pleasure that peter out with the seductive notes twisting through the speakers.
“Fun, right?” Deacon purrs in my ear.
My stomach turns even as my pulse thrums at the sight. At the exhilaration. “Excuse me if hurting people isn’t my idea of fun.”
Deacon swipes a cocktail off a server’s tray. “Clearly you’ve never flayed anybody.”
“Let’s just get this over with.”