Chapter 26
Deacon is standing on a balcony. It’s the dark, rare, silent hours of the night when even Astera is quiet.
He’s shirtless, leaning over the glass railing, a bottle of water in his hand, cigarette behind his ear.
His chest still heaves with exertion. Sweat dries on his brow.
His hair is damp, growing cool in the winter air, but he isn’t cold.
He takes a sip of his water, gaze fixated on something—
It’s a window he’s watching. Studying the light that emanates from a town house across the street.
An older man is up too. Typing away before the blue light of his computer.
His glasses are smudged. An old prescription, from the way he squints.
His hair is thinning. Deacon wonders if he’s trying to write the next great American novel.
Behind on grading papers. Yelling at strangers on the internet.
He doesn’t know if he’s doing this right.
Doesn’t know what exactly he should be looking for in this man.
But Deacon doesn’t avert his gaze. He wants to see what she sees.
I wake with a start, the image of Deacon’s solemn features seared into my head.
This dream was different. Different from my nightmares. Different from my dream of Reid.
I was…inside Deacon’s head. I could feel his thoughts. His emotions. His curiosity.
The sun is still ripening and floods my new bedroom in tangerine light—I probably slept a total of three hours. When I catch my reflection in the bathroom mirror, I know I look as depleted as I feel. I could go grocery shopping with the bags under my eyes.
After I shower, I find Penny, Ward, Baz, and the elegant acrobat from the card game, who I’ve learned is a turned were named Hazel, watching some movie about a blond girl in a taxi being chased down by Matthew McConaughey.
“This is my favorite part,” Penny tells them, bundled up in a blanket. I am not surprised that she has adjusted to the living situation so quickly. Penny could befriend the Grinch.
Baz shows no interest, face as emotionless as usual, but Ward is fully engaged, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “If she doesn’t forgive him I’m going to break the TV.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Penny admonishes, like he’s one of her students and not a werewolf capable of making good on the threat. “Just watch.”
“You guys are up early,” I note.
Hazel’s eyes have welled up, glued to the screen. “Ward woke us all up with his morning run.”
I don’t ask her to clarify if that’s a drug run for Deacon, a four-legged run, or a jog through the city streets. “Deacon too much of a film snob for rom-coms?”
“He’s working,” Baz says coolly.
“And he’s seen this one too many times,” Hazel adds, sniffling.
I’ve crash-landed into a circus performance of my life.
I make coffee as the movie plays in the background—replete with Penny’s squeal when the blonde does, in fact, forgive McConaughey.
The latte is pleasant on my tongue, but I find it doesn’t help shake the vividness of my dream.
Had that been my own psyche, conjuring Deacon’s contemplative mood?
A memory of his? Was it a vision of him, last night after his workout, like he’d told me I might begin to have?
“Hey, Baz,” I say tentatively as the credits roll. “Can I ask you something?” When Ward and Hazel peer up with interest, I add, “About the…hot water. In my room.”
The look of irritated disinterest in his violet eyes could shrivel roses. “I’m not your plumber, huntress.”
I understand he doesn’t want me here, but the diminutive name only makes me think of Reid. “It’ll be quick, I promise.”
With a sigh as bleak and mournful as you’d expect from a six-three, dead-eyed vampire, Baz stands from the couch and follows me back to my room. I close the door behind us and look up at him without malice, despite how my skin churns in such close proximity to a deviant.
“Anything you tell me I’m going to tell Deacon.”
I frown. Not that I put so much effort into the hot water excuse, but I don’t love how easily the people in this house can read me. “Who said anything about keeping things from Deacon? I just wanted to ask you about your friend from the 1700s. The syrabraxa host.”
Cold distrust seeps from the vampire. “Deacon told you about him?”
For some reason I feel defensive. I swallow the urge to say Yeah, I’m staying in his fucking house, he’s told me a lot of things. This is why aeons do not Win Friends and Influence People. “He did. Anything more you can share about what I could…expect, would be appreciated.”
Baz only scowls, a slight sneer creeping up his face.
I stiffen. “Look. I know you don’t like me. Or trust me. And you don’t want me staying in your home. But I’m trying to help Deacon. I only wanted to talk in private because I don’t want to freak Penny out.”
Baz seems to weigh this, sharp brow lifting.
I already knew he’d do anything for Deacon, but if I weren’t so confused by the notion, I’d say somehow the Penny angle has helped my cause too.
Has this human encapsulation of literal darkness developed a soft spot for Penny? In one day? She is a miracle worker.
“There’s not much to tell,” he says in the end. “The aeon was fine at first. His lust for the kill was heightened when he was rageful. He could sense deviants down to what they were wearing or what they’d eaten. By their scents or essence. Like you.”
Damn. So he and Deacon really do share everything. The thought of the two of them discussing me over a cold one—body or drink—sends my limbs vibrating.
“That desire to kill got worse after some time,” Baz continues.
“More painful. More…insistent. He began to kill humans. Friends. I didn’t much mind that, but he found it…
distasteful.” A sparkle of delighted horror in those deadly violet eyes.
I clock my daggers on the bedside table.
“Eventually his sanity left him.” Baz’s face holds an age-old sorrow.
“He disappeared. I’d heard a demon got him.
Others said he drowned himself in the Seine. ”
Awesome. A great end to a great story that is probably my future. “What about the dreams?”
Baz glowers. “What about them?”
“Weeks ago Deacon asked if I was having dreams yet. He told me yesterday if I think about someone enough I’ll dream of them. I need to know more if I’m going to help him find Odette.”
At that, Baz’s eyes flicker. “Are you seeing her already?”
I try to answer the question without giving too much away. As soon as I help Deacon find this woman, he won’t just take Caspar and Finn out. He’ll have no need for a loose end like me, either. “I can’t tell. Do you know what makes the dreams occur? Or what exactly I’m supposed to be seeing?”
“I told you. The ability to sense deviants became more specific. It got to the point where if the aeon thought enough about someone, usually with a great deal of emotion, he’d see them in his sleep.”
My heart kicks up speed. “Like visions? Or fabrications?”
“No, these were very real,” Baz muses. “He could know where someone was, what they were doing.”
I could kiss the gloomy vamp on his hollow cheek.
What I saw last night really was Deacon.
And while guilt threatens to pull at me that somehow I fell asleep with stronger emotions around Deacon than Reid, I don’t dwell on it.
I’d just caught him in a very personal moment.
And after the lagoon—seeing those scars on his back, realizing I don’t want to see him killed by mermaids—I’m going to cut myself some slack.
Now that I know how to hack my own system, I’ll dream of Reid tonight.
And until then, I have the photos. That’s two real leads, when a week ago I had none. “Thank you, Baz.”
He nods, just as disinterested as he was when I first dragged him in here.
I grab my blades and the 35mm film and open the door to leave when I realize now’s as good a time as any to try to channel my own Penny-ness. We’re going to be living together, after all. “Is Baz short for something?”
“Balthazar,” he says as he walks past me and out of my room. “It means lord protect the king.”
I finish my coffee and head down to the club, which is empty and, like always, smells of sweet liquor and that swirling saltwater pool.
I make a beeline for the enclave at the far edge of the bar and slip through the psychedelic smoking garden until I find the vine-covered door of Deacon’s office.
I knock once, and then again when my teeth begin to chatter.
“Come in,” Deacon calls.
But the door has no handle.
“It’s me,” I say. Baz and Ward must have some key that I don’t.
A minute later, the door slides open like one you’d find hidden behind a bookcase in Clue.
Deacon’s office is smaller than I remember it being, and now that I’ve seen his home—his warm, earth-toned kitchen; his hallways full of art; his glittering theater—this back room is somehow cozier.
It’s still built of stone and leather, still masculine and sophisticated, but I notice things now that I didn’t when I was fighting for my life.
The half-melted candles, smelling of vetiver and clove.
A vase of vibrant poppies, a coffee table book on Color in Cinema.
Deacon’s at his desk, typing away, listening to someone rant on speakerphone. He mutes himself to say, “Good morning, Vivienne.” Then makes no move to take the call off speaker for my benefit, so I perch on the armrest of the couch across from him and wait.
“We’ve been at this for hours,” Deacon says, eyes back on his computer. “Are your vocal cords not aching? Because my eardrums are.”
“…flippant, smug son of a bitch. This is millions of dollars we’re talking about, here—”
“That you forfeited when your shipment was light.”
“Light? Light! I—”
“Calm down. You’re going to give yourself a heart attack before I get to rip it out of you.”
Silence on the other line. Silence and furious, ragged breaths.
“Listen to me,” Deacon says, patience thinning. “Deliver double the agreed-upon amount before end of week, and you can keep my business and all necessary organs.”
The guy utters a beleaguered “Fine.”
Deacon ends the call without another word, but his eyes stay on his computer. “Sleep well?”
“Shipment of what?”
“Guns,” Deacon says, typing something. “Some poppy too. Not enough, though. He’s a shiesty fucker.” When his eyes leave the screen and meet mine, they’ve darkened. His nostrils flare. “What’s that scent?”
My eyes dart around the room as I try to figure out what he means. My wet hair clings to my neck, and I realize with mortification he means me. I gather the damp, glossy strands into the back of my sweater. “My shampoo has vanilla and something else in it. Rose, I think.”
“Interesting.” His lips press into a displeased line.
Irritation prickles at me. He knows what he’s doing. “So what, you buy guns and poppy and sell them at a higher cost here at Fever Dream?”
“That’s the idea.”
“Who do you sell them to?”
“Llamas.”
“Deacon.”
“Who do you think? Anyone who can pay.”
“You don’t care if they’re used to kill innocent people? If that poppy is the cause of some teenager’s overdose?”
Deacon stands from his desk, and I remember he’s practically in a different altitude. “You need to stop looking for morality in me, Vivienne.”
It cuts deeper than I expect. Anger that he’s right—that he knows something about me once again that I didn’t know about myself.
Disappointment to find Deacon Graveheart is still the criminal, creep, and murderer he always was.
Confusion at why I’d assume anything had changed.
And shame, deep enough to graze the marrow, that I even care.
I remind myself why I came down here and toss the photos from Reid onto Deacon’s desk. “I think my next clue to finding Reid is at this restaurant. But I can’t figure it out. I know you’re done searching for him, but will you just take a look?”
Deacon’s eyes rake over me like he’s flipping through the pages of my soul.
It sets my teeth on edge. Then he picks up the photos, face unchanging.
I shift on the couch, inhaling tobacco and clove and the scent of my own vanilla shampoo I’m all too aware of now.
After a minute he says, “It’s Monday, like the newspaper.
We’ll get there at five. That’s what the clocktower’s for. ”
“We?”
His icy glare could freeze embers. “You’re certainly not going alone.”
As much as I hate being babysat, I have to admit it’s not a bad time in my life to have very powerful backup. I’m ready to retreat upstairs and spend the day sleeping and trying to dream of Reid when something strikes me. The image of Deacon standing over that balcony last night.
“You were on the phone with that guy for hours?”
“Yeah?”
“And you were up working out in the middle of the night?”
“Stalking me like the subjects of your photos?”
“Do you really not sleep?”
His features soften. It almost looks like shame.
“Oh.”
“Fuck off,” he says casually, without any bite. But there’s a current of pain in the words. One I recognize a bit too well. I can only imagine what haunts a man as unafraid as Deacon.
“I get nightmares too.”
But he’s already sitting at his desk, back to work. I’m at the door when he says, quietly, “I had so many it was easier not to sleep at all.”