10. Aries
Aries
“W hat’s wrong?” Paige is on her feet instantly, rounding the desk and rushing toward me. “Are you hurt? Did something happen in the book you were searching—”
“Nothing happened.”
I catch her wrist in my hand then thread my fingers through hers. Feeling her skin against mine calms the beast enough to gain control of the bloodlust.
“Aries?” Her worry is evident, and while I want to soothe it, I can’t.
“Oliver knows which book I’m from,” I say quietly. “Which means it wouldn’t be that difficult for him to figure out Hoc didn’t bring me here as an employee.”
She pulls away, paling, her worry turning to fear. “What? How?”
“I don’t know how, but he confronted me with some bullshit about having read a story about a dragon prince. He said I remind him of the character, but we both know what he means.”
“Aries.” Her demeanor changes, and her brow arches. “That’s hardly proof that he knows anything. Besides, he’s human, which means he could only read books accessible to the human realm. Yours is here.”
“It was my story, Paige. He’s masking his motives beneath this fake friendliness, but he’s playing us. There’s more to him than meets the eye.”
“Like what?”
“Like manipulation. Secrets. He’s not safe. I can feel it.”
“You can feel it,” she repeats, and her tone makes it clear she doesn’t believe a word I’m saying.
“Paige, listen to me—”
“No, you listen to yourself. Look, I know there’s a lot going on, and it’s overwhelming trying to keep it all going, but we can’t start looking for problems where there are none.”
I start to argue but she cuts me off.
“Oliver has already kept our secret from Tawny, the woman he’s supposed to be allied with, which I think proves he’s more than trustworthy. In fact, if he does know you didn’t come here as a new hire, why hasn’t he told Tawny about it yet?”
I scowl. “I don’t know. That’s what I’m worried about—”
Her gaze narrows. “He’s on our side, Aries.”
“He’s playing you.”
“He’s helping me.”
“He’s trying to get close to you,” I growl.
She blinks. When she speaks again, her voice is quiet. “Jealousy is one thing, but if you don’t trust me —”
“It’s not jealousy.” My growl explodes, sending my voice far louder than I intended.
Paige falls silent, and I huff a breath, knowing full well my plan of talking so quietly Oliver can’t listen in just went out the window. Right along with getting Paige to see that I’m right.
Fuck.
“I need to get back to work,” Paige says finally.
“Me too.” I yank the door open and stalk out, relieved that I don’t immediately see Oliver lurking nearby as I go. Mostly because, if I spotted him now, there would be no stopping my dragon from taking his head off.
But more than my desire to rip him apart is my disappointment that Paige refuses to see his treachery. That means, whatever game he’s playing with her, it’s working. And I’m going to have to find another way to stop him.
Rather than return to the apartment alone, I head for the break room where I can only hope Mag has come through with a large pizza and maybe even some ale to go with it. Then we can get this last mission over with and put an end to this miserable damned day.
What I want most is to go to Paige, snatch her into my arms, and leave this place and its threats behind forever.
But I already know she’ll refuse. She won’t leave the battlefield before the fight is over, and while I respect that trait in a warrior, I hate that it means she’ll be surrounded by danger even a moment longer.
Because, one thing’s for sure, now that Paige trusts him, Oliver Stark is absolutely a threat of the worst kind. He’s the danger she’ll never see coming.
* * *
An hour later, I stand in the basement beside Mag and walk through the portal that will take us into our last search for the day. He’s exceptionally cheerful, considering we’re both exhausted and this morning's search was so fruitless.
The world we enter is bustling with traffic and noise.
Instead of trees or vegetation, we are surrounded on all sides by tall buildings like the ones I can see from Paige’s apartment window.
The air is slightly stale with some kind of chemical and full of the presence of other creatures—shifters, mostly, from what I can sense.
From the moment we turn out of the alleyway where we arrived and onto a walking path, I’m immediately distracted by a stream of human-looking pedestrians that nearly mow me over in their single-minded haste to get by. Every single one of them has a shifter signature attached to them.
“What is this place?” I ask, both awed and horrified by the machinery and cold steel.
“It’s called a city,” Mag says, amusement lacing his words.
“Whoa, watch it,” I mutter as yet another shoulder bumps mine.
Mag snorts.
“What?” I demand.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” Mag drawls.
“What the hell does that mean? You know I’m not—”
A loud whir drowns me out, and I glance up in time to see a large, wheeled box of machinery speeding straight toward me.
Jumping back, I nearly stumble onto my ass to avoid being run over by it.
Catching my footing, I straighten just as the giant machine screeches to a sudden halt beside us.
I’ve seen them before from Paige’s window and even from the skies above the library when I’ve secretly flown there.
But up close, it’s even more confusing—and impressive.
I sense no heartbeat or life force in the thing, and yet it moves and hums.
I can only assume some kind of magic is behind it.
Two men sit in the front seats, one of them with a hand dangling from a wheel that’s been mounted to the inside of the contraption.
“Who the hell are you?” the man holding the wheel demands.
“I’m Mag. This is Aries. And you are?”
Mag’s cool demeanor doesn’t do much to relax me. I stand, tense and ready to fight should it come to that. Though, I have no idea what the machine’s weaknesses are.
“Dutch. This is Grey.” The man holding the wheel eyes me coolly. “You got a problem?”
“What’s the name of your machine?” I ask.
“My...” His forehead wrinkles. “You mean my car?” He glances from me to Mag in bemusement. “You want its name?”
“My friend’s new,” Mag says simply, and I watch as the passenger, Grey, assesses everything with eyes that I suspect don’t miss much. Something tells me, of the two, he’s the one in charge.
“You two aren’t from Indigo Hills,” Grey says.
“How do you know?” I can’t help but ask.
Their quick arrival reminds me of Anastasia, the woman from the world we visited earlier. She’d appeared seemingly out of thin air, though, while these men apparently prefer this box of metal as their transport.
“There are hex wards set up all over town, alerting us of any newcomers,” Dutch explains. “You want to tell us what you’re doing in our town?”
“This kingdom belongs to you then?” Mag asks.
They exchange a look, and Dutch shrugs as he turns back to us. “You could say that. What did you say you were doing here?”
“We’re looking for a friend of ours who was taken,” Mag explains.
“We haven’t had any other male visitors,” Dutch says.
“Female then?” I say, and Grey’s eyes immediately narrow.
“What the hell is it to you?” he asks in a low voice, and I realize I’ve hit a mark I wasn’t aiming for.
“We’re just looking for our friend,” Mag interrupts, casting me a look that says ‘shut up’ to which I roll my eyes. “He’s a troll. Big guy, you can’t miss him.”
“We haven’t seen him,” Dutch says, and my dragon’s senses tingle with an awareness of certainty. While they’re clearly keeping secrets, I don’t think Hoc is one of them.
“This looks like a big place,” Mag says, “Mind if we look around just to be sure?”
“We do mind,” Dutch says, eyes narrowing. “Matter of fact, we mind a whole damn lot.”
The tension increases, and I wonder again about the female visitor Grey alluded to and whether his resistance has anything to do with her.
“Look, we just need to be sure—” I say.
Both men exit the car. They step onto the sidewalk, forcing Mag and me to back up a few paces. My dragon strains beneath my skin at the silent threat they pose, but I remind myself of our rule against doing harm.
“This is my city,” Grey says, his eyes flashing with a possessiveness I recognize as belonging to a king or ruler. “I know everyone who comes and goes, and I’m telling you, your friend isn’t here.”
“If you insist on looking, we’re happy to give you a close-up look at a prison cell,” Dutch adds smugly.
Mag takes another step back. “Not necessary. Thanks for your time. Come on, Aries.”
I don’t move, my gaze locked on Grey’s. There’s an integrity in him that surprises me because he’s clearly hiding something about the female he mentioned.
But, in this moment, his gaze is clear and direct.
Something tells me he’s not lying about Hoc, and my ability to sense the truth has yet to lead me wrong.
“Aries,” Mag says again, and I finally nod.
“Thank you,” I tell Grey. “We’ll take our leave.”
Grey nods back, and then I turn and follow Mag back into the alley.
“We’ll have to come back later,” Mag says quietly when we’re out of earshot. “I don’t trust them, and this city is huge, so I say we search for ourselves.”
“No need,” I tell him confidently.
“What?” He cuts me a look.
“He’s not lying.”
“How do you know?”
I shrug. “My dragon has a gift.”
He stares at me. “A gift.”
“I can sense the truth in him.”
“And where has this truth sensory been in every other world we’ve searched?” he demands.
“It’s been there.”
He scowls. “Why didn’t you tell me before? I’ve been losing sleep over the idea that we might have missed something in the books we’ve searched in the past.”
I smirk at him, feeling a bit of satisfaction as I say, “I guess it’s like the library protocols you never told me about. It didn’t matter until now.”
Mag mutters curses to himself that blend right into the foreign words he utters to take us home.
At our backs, I can feel the two men watching us, but I don’t turn around as Mag conjures our portal and we step through it, leaving the world of Indigo Hills and its secrets behind.