Chapter Nine
NINE
MABEL
“I really don’t want to do this,” I said with so much petulance in my voice, I flinched, but was unable to keep from feeling profoundly unwilling to be at all helpful.
I figured the few hours of sleep Dawn and I had while Hunter was arranging for a plane had something to do with my crappy mood, but admitted I simply didn’t want Hunter to know the truth about me.
“And I understand that, but if I am to deal with this broker who is threatening you, then I must have all the information. What, exactly, is he blackmailing you about?”
I sighed and slumped into my extremely comfortable, cushy leather captain’s chair, and idly watched as Dawn lay on a matching couch, the burner phone Hunter had bought her in hand as she took selfies of herself in dramatic poses. “I ... I did something I shouldn’t have done a couple of years ago.”
“So I assume.” Hunter’s gaze was steady on me, making me both incredibly aroused and wanting to sink into the earth with shame, which was just about the weirdest combination of emotions ever. “What was it?”
I glanced out of the window, but all there was to be seen were clouds, although I knew we had to be over the North Sea en route to Amsterdam.
“This really would have been faster if we could have taken a portal. And cheaper, for that matter. Renting a private jet has to cost more than three people portaling.”
He looked away briefly. “Dragons don’t portal easily. It’s against our nature.”
“Uh-huh. Maybe you can explain this, then: Why are we taking Dawn with us to confront Papi? If everyone is searching for her, then it seems like we should be finding her a good hiding place rather than taking her to Amsterdam to berate the broker.”
Hunter slid a glance toward her. “Because she’s safer with us than anywhere else until I can arrange for her continuous protection.”
“I told you both that I’m fine,” the woman in question said with a languid wave of her hand as she took another selfie.
“I’m grateful you got me out, of course, but there’s no reason you need to continue guarding me.
For one, I wish to visit my distant cousin Emily in the Fifth Hour, and for another, no one but One-Death cares about where I go and what I do.
Well, my sons care, but they think I’m in the Third Hour with my friend Gil. ”
I jerked at the mention of the Hour, staring at her for a few seconds before I realized Hunter had caught my reaction.
“Speaking of Gil, I’m going to call her and tell her I’m out and about again,” she finished before getting up and moving to the seats at the rear end of the small private plane Hunter had hired for us, speaking excitedly into the phone in a language I didn’t recognize.
“What is it?” Hunter asked softly.
I wanted to melt into the floor, but knew that I had to confess my sins.
“I’ll tell you, but it’s going to ruin everything.
You’ll be so shocked and appalled you won’t want to have sexy times again, and I really enjoyed last night.
I was looking forward to doing all the things to you that you did to me, although I guess I wouldn’t be able to blow fire on your crotch like you did mine. ”
He stared at me with wide eyes for a few seconds before he took my hand, stroking my fingers, which just made my stomach bees wake up and do an excited dance.
“You are unlike any woman I’ve ever met.
I’ve never had a sexual partner who wanted to breathe fire on me, and yet you’re sitting here looking intriguing and infinitely delicious while saying things I did not imagine you’d say. ”
“Oddly enough, I was thinking along the same lines about you,” I told him with a cheeky smile of my own, for a moment aware only of him.
Dear goddess, how was it that I was falling so hard for him after having met him only twice?
Slowly, I pulled my hand back, instantly regretting the loss of contact, but knowing it wouldn’t be safe to yearn after things I couldn’t have.
Not yet, anyway. “I’m enjoying my time with you, too.
You and Derry battling One-Death and his owl gang was seriously badass.
Although ...”
“Now who is letting their sentences trail off?” he asked, a teasing light in his pale green eyes that faded quickly into speculation. “What has you hesitating?”
“Papi,” I said after trying to figure out what I could say that wouldn’t offend him. “Hunter, you don’t know him. He’s incredibly tricky. It’s hard as hell to pin him down without him sliding out from where you think you have him. Ask me how I know.”
He shook his head at me in faux regret. “And to think I was just arranging you on a mental pedestal with the title ‘perfect woman.’ Mabel, you are worrying without cause. I will take care of this broker who forces you to steal other people’s élan vitals.”
“Oh, I don’t want to be on a pedestal,” I told him, trying to delay the inevitable.
I liked talking to him. He had a way of thinking that tickled more than just my fancy.
“That sounds far too lonely. I’d rather be right down here on earth, where I can take my turn making you moan and twitch and think you’re about to die because the orgasm was so good. ”
He smiled a slow, wholly male smile that made my entire body happy. “Tell me what hold the broker has over you.”
“Eh ...” Still, I hesitated. I truly didn’t want him to suffer because of the bad choices I’d made in the past, but I didn’t see any other way to deal with Papi, especially as I didn’t have the sword he’d sent me to steal.
“Yes, I know you don’t want to talk about it, but as I’ve reassured you, I will help you take care of the matter. Assuming you give me the information I need to do so.” Hunter’s fingers were warm on mine despite the edge to his words.
I allowed myself an injured and highly martyred sniff before giving in. “Fine, but if you’re so disgusted by my past actions that you cast the backwards-feet spell, or one that gives me rubber arms, I will mercilessly haunt you to the end of my days.”
He smiled at that, but remained silent, waiting for me to dish.
“I took someone into an Hour that I wasn’t supposed to,” I admitted, wanting to turn away so I wouldn’t have to see the condemnation in his eyes, but stopped myself from being so cowardly.
“Someone who wasn’t dead, and thus a person who should not have been able to access a closed Hour, but .
.. reapers can’t be excluded from afterlives. Any afterlife.”
“Would this have been the Third Hour?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Who did you take there?” he asked, his eyes serious, but not hostile.
Not yet, anyway, a mean side of my mind pointed out.
My stomach bees, no longer happy, formed a solid lump in my gut that made me feel clammy and uncomfortable.
“I thought it was a mage. I was told by Papi it was a mage named Peter, but he didn’t feel right.
It wasn’t until I got him into the Hour that he dropped his glamour and I realized who he was. ”
Bile rose in my throat at the memory of that time, of my subsequent guilt, shame, and fear, and how I’d clung to Papi’s promise that he would protect me from repercussions, little knowing what it would cost me.
Hunter froze, his eyes going frosty. “It was Xavier, wasn’t it? Deus had the ringsel from that Hour a few years ago, saying the lord of the Hour gave it to Xavier, who passed it on to him.”
“I don’t know a Xavier,” I said, swallowing back my need to cry or vomit. Possibly both.
“Then who did you smuggle into the Hour?”
“Bael.” I took a deep breath to keep myself from spewing all over the nice interior of the plane. “I’d never met him before, but the second he dropped his glamour, I realized who he was. I don’t know what he did to the lord of the Hour, but she looked terrified and gave him some object he sought.”
“The ringsel,” Hunter said, his gaze now on the thick carpet at our feet.
His face twisted as he added, “So Bael got it for Xavier, no doubt for him to use against the dragonkin. I will have to tell the wyverns. They won’t be happy knowing Bael was driving Xavier, although that’s what Yrian has told us all along. It looks like he was correct.”
I leaped up, unable to hold back my guilt that had manifested itself into a rejection of the brief breakfast we’d managed while waiting for our rental jet, and dashed for the bathroom at the back of the plane.
A highly unpleasant five minutes followed, during which Hunter repeatedly asked through the locked door if I was ill, and only after I’d emptied my stomach, washed my face, and brushed my teeth and entire mouth three times did I feel like I could face him.
“I’m sorry—” I started to say when I emerged from the bathroom.
He didn’t let me continue. He just pulled me against his magnificent self and kissed me, his lips starting out bossy and domineering, but switching almost immediately to seductive little nips that urged me to allow him in.
“Mo chroí,” he said when he stopped seducing my tongue with his. “You have nothing to apologize about, especially not to me. Bael is known for his ability to pass as others, and you are not to blame if his glamour didn’t allow you to see his true self.”
“It’s against every Akashic League rule to escort people who aren’t dead to underworlds,” I said, so grateful he didn’t damn me that tears pricked behind my eyes. “It’s not just an offense that will result in me being stripped of my reaperhood; I’ll get sent to the Akasha. Forever.”