Chapter 27
Later that day, I try and fail to nap. Look at my photos of Reid, recount our most intimate and meaningful memories.
The first time we slept together, under the dim exhibition lights of the Windsor.
The night he carried me out of a burning restaurant.
I toss and turn in my magnificent bed and dream of jack squat.
No amount of watching Penny paint or working out in Deacon’s pristine gym helps the restlessness inside me.
I call Fiona, who has no updates—the Elders have only told her that they have their best men on the hunt for me.
None, I’d imagine, more than Landon and his bruised ego.
I FaceTime with Sophia, who’s in Peter’s dorm, researching what the Mer said.
She tells me how Dawnmere stomped her foot straight through the floorboards in class when she caught someone cheating.
I’m barely listening. All I really want to do is hunt.
When the day has slipped by and I know Deacon will come soon to collect me for Simon and Son’s, I give up on sleep and join Penny on the couch to watch a movie. I tell myself I’ll try again tonight.
I lie on the sofa next to Penny and wonder what Deacon did all day.
If he oversaw arms trades or executed mob hits or pleasured beautiful women in his office downstairs.
The morbid curiosity bleeds into guilt that sends my knees up to my chest so tightly that Penny asks if the scene we’re watching—a pair of coworkers pretending to be a couple on a family trip—is making me anxious.
But it’s only making me angry. I don’t know why I give a shit what Deacon’s doing.
If my interest in Deacon’s life is anyone’s fault, it’s Reid’s.
He’s the one who left me here without him.
He’s the one who sacrificed himself for someone as undeserving as me.
Maybe I’m not a murderer or a monster like I once thought, but lately I sure feel guilty of something.
Something thorny and curious and conflicted.
Reid’s the one who lied to me about his complicated brother in the first place.
One of many lies he’s told me, by my count.
Lies I may never get the chance to ask him to explain.
Tangled up in that spool of shame and frustration, I finally drift off.
Reid stands, bathed in early-evening streetlight. He’s in an alley, trash lining the ground at his feet. Someone is talking to him. Rushed, hurried words. A man with a brand on his neck, shifting from foot to foot. He has a narrow face and burnished hair.
“I’ve asked everyone I know,” he tells Reid. “Finn doesn’t even know where the thing is. There’s nothing more I can do.”
“I refuse to accept that,” Reid murmurs. “What about Reynolds? He tells him everything.”
“Reynolds is dead, man. You’ve been gone a long time.”
“You think he travels with it?”
“I don’t fucking know if he even owns it,” the man snaps, shoving Reid back into the wall behind him.
Reid’s skull rattles upon impact, but he doesn’t fight back.
Killing this man won’t help him in his search.
And time is running out. “What does it matter if he does? You can’t pick pocket the fucking High Thane. ”
“I will do whatever it takes,” Reid breathes. He doesn’t know if it’s a plea or a threat.
“I’m sure there are other relics that can do whatever this one can.”
But he’s wrong. If there was another way, Reid wouldn’t be in the position he’s in right now.
He knows every minute he’s gone is a minute away from her.
The decision weighs heavy on his shoulders, so he leans against the graffitied wall behind him to think.
Only then does he notice what the imagery is of—two white, powerful antlers.
Reid’s fury crests in him like a wave. Resolve fortifies his response. “It has to be this one.”
The man shakes his head. Exasperated. “Your best shot is to wait a couple years until all this aeon business is over.”
But that’s just it. By then it will be too late.
“Wake up, sleeping Beauty,” a rumbly voice growls.
I blink into consciousness and find Reid hovering over me. I sit up with so much force I nearly smack my head into his. “Shit,” I gasp, pressing my hand to my racing heart. “Reid?”
“What?”
I search for his churning blue eyes but find only pale, nearly silver ones staring back at me. Gleaming, icy. Like glaciers. Not Reid. Deacon.
“Nothing,” I mumble, rubbing my head.
The sun casts a honey-orange glow across the living room. Ward and Penny are talking in the kitchen. Deacon’s watching me, curious glint in his eyes. Reid’s unyielding determination sinks through me as I get my bearings. His tangled wants and needs. Every minute he’s gone is a minute away from her.
The dreams—the syrabraxa…It’s getting worse.
I stand from the couch without a word to Deacon and stalk off to my room. Ward says something to Penny that sounds like “What’s gotten into her?”
But I’m somewhere else. I’m in that alley, listening to Reid. He’s safe and free and out and missing me, I know he is, but there’s something else. Some relic he needs…
He’s hunting something down. Trying to get something from his uncle, the High Thane—
I’ll always come for you. No questions asked.
The pain surprises me. I know those trash-lined streets.
I know that White Stag graffiti. All this time I’ve been crying myself to sleep over him and he’s been on campus, and here, in Astera.
Everywhere I was. I’m not sure what’s worse, the rejection or the humiliation.
No. I shake my head so hard I swear it rattles. Ground myself against the surge of emotions and the paranoia. Reid loves me. He’s trying to get back to me. Whatever he’s doing, it’s to protect himself. I have to believe that.
By the time I climb onto Deacon’s familiar bike and we speed north behind Ward, I’ve managed to talk down the syrabraxa inside me. I just have to get to Simon and Son’s. Figure out why Reid sent me there. Maybe I’ll discover what he’s looking for.
We reach the Camelot District—the first neighborhood North of the Chasm—by five p.m. sharp, and I force myself to act natural.
I don’t want Deacon to ask me what’s wrong.
I don’t want to have to tell him I dreamed of Reid.
That I was deeper inside his mind than I have been in any dream yet.
That the syrabraxa is beginning to mess with my grip on reality.
Simon and Son’s looks just like it did in Reid’s photos.
The nicest spot on a somewhat lackluster street, surrounded by coffee shops and mid-range women’s clothing boutiques.
Camelot lacks the refinement of the neighborhoods farther north, as well as the artistic edge of Babylon.
It’s upper-middle-class affordable, mundane, and filled with tourists due to its proximity to the Chasm.
Which means the restaurant is a madhouse.
Families and couples and groups of friends on vacation to the big city crowd the poor, lone hostess.
Funky music blares from the speakers. Waiters rush past one another, trays piled high with crispy fries and sweating beers.
Two different servers bump into me. The scents of butter and sizzling meat fill my nostrils.
Ward slips over to us from around the hostess stand. He only just beat us here. “Hostess hasn’t seen anyone who looks like Reid.”
My chest tightens. He didn’t send me here to find him. “We need to ask for Simon’s son,” I tell them. That’s what the photos were saying, zooming in on the second half of the restaurant’s title.
“Nicco?” Ward questions.
“You guys know him?”
Deacon nods, eyes on the busy host. “He’s a djinn—and a broker of sorts.”
Djinn are sort of tragic deviants. All the power in the universe—the ability to be or do or create anything the mind can cobble together—and none of the control.
They can only use their abilities when granting a wish.
Other than that, djinn aren’t too far from Disney’s depiction of genies: three wishes per master, no wishing for more wishes, etc.
Though in the real world, djinn are indebted to those who release them from any kind of bind, physical or even emotional.
Guess lamps were simpler for six-year-olds to understand.
Djinn move through society in secrecy, though, and I don’t blame them—it’s not something I’d want to wear tattooed on my forehead, either. Forced to grant the deepest desires of anyone who helps me out, even if they’re greedy hedge-fund jerks or vindictive PTA moms? No thanks.
Though perhaps this guy isn’t quite as under the radar if he’s doing shady deals with crime lords. “What kind of items does he broker?”
Deacon’s lips purse as he studies me. I wonder if he can tell from my tone that I’m not in the most stellar mood. “Antiques.”
Antiques. Sure. Whatever that means. “What could that have to do with Reid?”
“Let’s find out.” Deacon pushes past the patrons crowding the hostess stand.
Some balk and argue, until their necks crane up and they notice exactly who they seek to argue with.
Then, like mice at the feet of a wildebeest, they scurry away.
I wonder how much of that is because they know who he is; how much is due to his skyscraper height and subtle, sophisticated nineties-grunge aesthetic; and how many can just sense they are in the presence of someone mythically powerful.
“Hey there,” Deacon says to the flustered hostess. That half grin could knock down a brick wall. “We’re here to see Nicco. Could you tell him it’s the White Stag?”
Her entire freckled face burns up until she’s as pink as a radish. “Are you actually him?”
Deacon leans close, full mouth quirking up just a smidge. His voice lowers an octave. “I’ll let you guess.”
Not equipped to withstand the force of a Nordic-looking six-six demon with a voice like warm honey and eyes as cold and deep as a winter lagoon, the hostess staggers forward a bit before catching herself on her stand. “Right this way,” she chirps. Poor gal didn’t stand a chance.