Chapter 37
The subway car to Fever Dream rumbles along like the ride to a funeral.
Reid sits next to me, hands braced on his knees.
He tells me in hushed, comforting tones how much he missed me, how he thought of me every day.
He knows I’m angry. That I have about a thousand questions to ask once we’ve gotten Hound and my things and are back in his protected cottage.
Deacon stands to my left, towering over the other passengers from his mammoth height, icily quiet. Sophia’s red wig itches my neck.
When Reid realizes he isn’t getting anywhere, he turns away and my eyes can’t help but dart back to Deacon.
He hasn’t glanced at me once since we left the school.
I feel like him—I want to poke or prod. Annoy him with my obstinate beliefs on not murdering people or wager that hunters can see better than demons in the dark.
Play with me, I want to beg. Make another terrible joke. I won’t laugh, I promise.
Like I’d assumed, there are no Brood waiting for us outside Fever Dream.
We slip inside, and as I remove my wig, I’m greeted with a waft of stale alcohol and cleaning solution.
But all it smells like to me is safety. Like the way a moat around a sparkling castle might smell of stagnant water and the algae that grows on the crocodiles’ backs.
It’s the scent of mirage. The false image of what exists here.
“I’ll wait downstairs,” Reid tells me, hanging back.
“Not coming up for a drink, brother?” Deacon asks.
Some of his swagger has returned, as I expected it might.
This is his domain. He’s got a hometown advantage in this concrete acropolis.
Even more, I’d imagine, upstairs in his residence.
He doesn’t even seem fazed by the fact that I’m leaving him for good, which ruptures something in my heart.
Reid frowns. “It’s seven thirty in the morning.”
“Exactly,” Deacon muses. “I’m behind schedule.”
Upstairs, Penny rushes me almost as fast as Hound does. His whimpers and her repeated Oh my god, oh my gods are wonderful and heart-wrenching and also a little overwhelming. I pull her into my arms and hold her close. Gardenia and acrylic paint fill my nose.
“What’s going on?” she asks into my hair. She knows I don’t hang on to a hug for this long without alcohol or tragedy.
“I’m leaving,” I tell her, fighting the sting of tears in my eyes. “Reid is back. He’s okay. And he’s got a way for us to stay at Harker without the Citadel hunters knowing. But it’s riskier than I want for you. So we’re going to get you a one-way flight, out of Astera, out of the country—”
“No way,” Ward says, rising from the couch. I hadn’t even noticed he was there. It looks like there’s another rom-com on the television and…I sniff the air like Hound. Stale popcorn? Flat soda?…Kissing?
My eyes pop. “Did you two have a slumber party?”
Penny’s cheeks go the kind of ruddy only a green-eyed, blond-haired baby doll’s can. Ward covers his smile with a broad hand.
“It’s a long story,” she mutters.
I can’t even gape at her. I spent the night in a closet with my missing boyfriend’s shirtless brother. Jesus, there is no good way to spin that.
“Pen’s not going anywhere,” Ward says, coming to her side. His cheeks warm with something besides afterglow. Something focused and definitive. Undying protection. A wolf’s protection.
I sigh. Today has already been a lot, and it’s not even eight. I take Penny’s shoulders. “There’s no reason for you to stay here now. Finn knows Deacon was keeping me here. You’ll be safest abroad. You can go on that Euro tip for real. Maybe call Claude?”
“Fuck that,” Ward snarls.
I bite my tongue. Should have known better. “Pen?”
Penny nods her agreement, but her fingers wind fretfully around one another.
“Penny?” I push. “What?”
She peers up at Ward, and I wish Deacon was here to witness the hell that’s freezing over in his living room. Where did he even go?
Ward gives Penny a You can do this look of encouragement, and when she meets my eyes again, there’s a resolve there I haven’t seen since that night outside Fever Dream when she told off the same werewolf who’s standing next to her right now. “I want to stay.”
“Yes, I put that one together.”
But I can’t help it. I’m proud of her. Something about the time she’s spent here, and at Harker, has turned my shy, people-pleasing best friend into someone who is willing to speak up for herself. I feel I owe some kind of thanks to Ward too, but I wouldn’t know how to articulate it.
A laugh cracks out of him at her defiance, and Penny seems to visibly relax. “I’ll be safe at Fever Dream. Finn’s not going to break his father’s hundred-year-old rules. And…I like it here. Hound likes it even more than I do. Last night he slept in Deacon’s bed.”
“Christ, who let that happen?” Deacon rounds a corner, smooth and at ease.
His hair is freshly wet and slicked back, and for a moment all I can think of is when he was soaked through with ice-cold water, holding my naked body against his own in my shower.
My eyes wander down and I notice he’s back in his white T-shirt and those low-slung gray sweats.
The sight guts me. He’s already called a girl to come over?
Why do you care? I hiss at myself.
“You showered.” It’s the weirdest thing to say. Even Penny shoots me a questioning look.
“That jacket smelled like…” I can almost hear his teeth grinding, fighting some kind of instinct or urge. “It was making me a bit nuts.”
The jacket I’d slept under all night—I’d forgotten about his bizarre revulsion to my vanilla shampoo. Embarrassment heats my skin. “Hostile much?”
His eyes remain dark and cool. “You leaving?”
I cut one glance to Penny, who looks absolutely torn apart. Her fingers twitch toward Ward’s. “Yeah. Hound and Pen are going to stay until this is all over, one way or another.”
“Fine by me.” Deacon pulls out the cigarette from behind his ear. “Penelope is always welcome here.”
Did I walk through a mirror or something? Why is everyone being so fucking odd? “Fantastic. Excuse me.”
My clean, cozy room with its creamy sheets, fresh red roses, and breathtaking view of the city might as well be a shack infested with maggots when I storm inside. I’ve never wanted to leave anywhere more in my life, and I was once stuck in a garbage truck with a goblin corpse for nine hours.
I throw everything I brought here into my duffel bag with the speed of a much less tired woman.
I want to be out of here for good. Back with Reid.
At Harker. Where I belong. I toss in the bag from the archive with that book on Sumerian relics, and the spool of film I pilfered topples out. La Douleur Exquise.
A gift I’d taken for Deacon.
My anger wars with sorrow, like firelit oil spilled into the sea. Placid and furious at once.
I collapse face-first into the duvet with a groan. In the quiet, sun-drenched daylight, face full of clean cotton, I try to regain myself.
I missed Reid and fought for him, and maybe even more importantly, he fought for me.
Finn tortured him for my name but Reid never gave it.
That’s about all that stood between my mom and Nora being in the crosshairs of this disaster.
I’m not going to throw away everything we had because of an attraction I developed to his brother. And that’s all it is. Attraction.
Images flood my mind of Deacon’s warm chest and his hard length pressed against me this morning.
The gutted look in his eyes that night in the Fickle Thicket when he thought those mermaids had hurt me.
The strength of his hands around me in my shower.
How he always tips so generously and the way he talks about film and the reverence with which those closest to him regard him.
I think of laughing surprisingly hard at his wit or reluctantly agreeing with his cunning.
But Deacon is an untamable force. A hurricane of moods and whims and treachery.
Too powerful for his own good, too strong to be tethered.
A white-haired wolf among rabbits. It’s only human to be sucked into his commanding orbit.
But nothing more, I tell myself. Nothing more.
I owe it to Reid and myself both to get through every awful thing we’ve suffered and come out the other side with a shot at something real.
With that case settled by the jury of my mind, I grab my bag and stalk down the hall toward Deacon’s bedroom.
From the living room I can hear Ward telling a story about accidentally shifting during a doctor’s appointment and Penny’s laugh ringing off the walls like the peal of a bell.
Baz puts down his game of cards with Hazel to ask about ordering breakfast, and Piper, the teenager Deacon and I saved last night, offers to cook instead. Mirror realm indeed.
At the precipice of Deacon’s room, I hesitate to knock. If he’s already tongue-deep in some girl…Or maybe that’s just what I need to jump-start this new resolve: exposure therapy.
But when he wrenches open the door, he’s alone. His hair is rumpled in a way I’ve never seen before. Stuck up on one side like he’s been tossing and turning. When he gestures wordlessly for me to come inside, my nerve falters.
In all the weeks I’ve been staying at Fever Dream, I’ve never seen his bedroom.
He looks at me like I just grew a third eye, and I shuffle inside before he can ask why I’m behaving strangely.
I don’t know why I imagined his room would ripple with darkness. Human skulls, bonfires, a chained hellhound barking, all slobber and fangs…Deacon may have plenty of wicked, onyx-colored cruelty streaking through him, but I know better now—I know he’s more than that.
Though the walls are indeed painted black, his bedroom is…like his eyes. An inhale of crisp, clean air after months stuck underground. The blue of pale starlight, the blue of dawn. Refreshing and peaceful and pure.