Chapter 28
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
I didn’t tell Cassander to keep moving, instead grabbing his elbow and tugging him through the gym as quickly as possible, getting us both out on the street and back into Mom’s car before speeding toward city limits.
We didn’t speak until Desert Flower faded behind us, becoming small buildings on the horizon, nearly a mirage. I spun the wheel, pulling down a dusty side road that didn’t even have a name, just a gap in the fence on someone’s property. Mom’s brakes gave a squeal as I slammed them, and the desert dust surrounded us in a plume that slowly fell back to the ground.
I got out of the car, pacing back and forth, my shoes kicking up dirt and rocks.
Green Scales had enough of a hold on the SPA that Iris, some local gang leader, could call the director, and he would answer on the first ring. Iris Milner had given me a three-day deadline to either hand over Cassander or go to war. I was apparently burning from the inside out when I got mad. And my mom could hear ghosts.
Cassander got out more slowly, squinting up at the sun, shading his eyes only for a moment before looking back toward Desert Flower. He pulled his sunglasses off his shirt and put them on.
“You should do it.” His words brought me up short, and I turned to stare at him.
“What?” I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts that, at first, I had no idea what he was even talking about.
“You should do it,” Cassander repeated. “Give me up. It will get you your life back, your family safe, and it’s the better of the two deals offered.”
“No, the better deal is that Iris Milner stays on her side, we stay on ours, and you stay”— with me —“safe. Those men—the Green Scales assault team that tried to shoot you up in Paris? They aren’t there to take you to brunch at the Waldorf. I hate to be the one to tell you, but there is no farm in the country. You’re about to go sleep with the fishes, wind up as dead as a doornail, say hello to the Archangel Michael.”
“I understand. But me, my life in exchange for the safety of all that you care about, in exchange for the life that you built for yourself away from here—that is a deal worth considering.” Cassander pulled down his sunglasses to meet my eyes, and the desert sun painted his skin gold, his eyes flashing silver, everything about him sharpening into a blade.
I gaped at him, my mouth working for a long moment before I shook my head again. “Maybe you’re not understanding me.”
“Maybe you aren’t understanding me . This is a deal I would take. If Iris Milner was offering me my crown in exchange for your life, I would take that deal.” Cassander’s words slapped me across the face like a sandstorm tearing skin from bones.
“Maybe you aren’t understanding me ,” I repeated. “I’m not a guy who does that to my friends.”
“Is that what we are?” Cassander looked distant. He was even more of a stranger to me than he had been before we met.
“We are, Your Majesty. What would you call us?” I kept my words flat, neutral, trying for hard, but only the night before, Cassander had called me precious and said he wanted to cherish me for the rest of his life.
“Your Highness,” Cassander corrected. But I could see the cracks now, the way he looked away, the tells that littered his reaction to my words. Underneath all his bravado, underneath the lie that he would have done exactly the same thing, was the bare honest truth: Cassander was afraid.
“I think we’re more than that now,” I said, softer, finally putting voice to what I’d been aching to say. “Don’t you?”
When Cassander looked away, pushing his sunglasses back up, I stepped forward, crowding him against the side of the car. Carefully, I removed his sunglasses, tucking them back into his shirt. I placed both hands on the hood of the car. The metal should have been scalding hot. Desert sun plus a hot engine didn’t mix well.
But I didn’t even feel it on my palms. Instead, I focused on Cassander, the curve of his lips, the downcast look in his eyes. When he looked at me, there was something there, a fluttering emotion that left me wanting him all the more.
“Cass?” I pressed into him, feeling his body against mine. I was so hot that he felt cold as ice, soothing the ache in my body. “Are we just friends?”
“No.” Cassander murmured the word against my lips, and I shivered, as though he had drawn an ice cube out of a cold drink and pressed it against my tongue. “How are you doing this to me?”
But he didn’t sound angry, not even mad; there was something like wonder in his voice. Then he reached up, and I shuddered at his touch against my neck. He brushed his fingers across the side, drawing a line down, and I would swear his touch left a burn on my skin.
“Cassander.” I groaned the word, leaning into his fingers. “What’s happening to me?”
Because there was no way this was natural. Maybe Iris had another magical artifact. Maybe when I had absorbed the magic from the artifact trapping Cassander, I’d absorbed something else with it.
Cassander answered me with a kiss, his lips spreading a cool balm through my body. I shivered, reaching up with one of my hands to press him tighter to me, draw him closer against me.
I was made of flame, and the simple touch of his skin doused it, giving me the relief I needed to think clearly. I drew back, gasping against his lips, and he smirked at me.
“I know your sample size is small, but a greeting like that does go beyond friendship.”
I laughed hard, drawing in gasping breaths until Cassander was laughing with me.
Turning, I leaned next to Cassander against the car. The metal was hot against my spine, and I shivered, enjoying the sensation. “We need to get out of town. Three days was a warning shot across the bow. I don’t trust her to give us the full amount. And now that the SPA knows where I am… We need to pack up everyone—my mom, the kids, Candy and Brad, even Betty. If Iris hasn’t already taken them out.”
“She won’t,” Cassander said. “The three days isn’t time for you. It’s time for her.”
I blinked at him, the frown on my face growing as I tried to consider it. “She doesn’t need three days to gather a war party. You saw how many of her guys were coming in and out. All she needs is a phone call.”
“Not for magic. Three days, three nights. You need at least that much for a spell of this magnitude to work.” Cassander blinked at me, then shook his head. “My brother took three months, three days, three hours, three minutes, and, I assume, three seconds to gain the power to kill me. Three days and three nights is a magic number. Whatever she’s planning, she needs that time.”
“So she has, what? Fae? Under her command?” I squinted off. The land was barren, the sort of bleak emptiness that could only occur this deep in the desert where water was so precious that people almost couldn’t believe it would fall from the sky.
Small scraps of plants grew from the ground, cactuses that were more alien than from Earth. Everything out here looked dangerous, and, in comparison, Cassander looked even more so.
Cassander nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, possibly. A fae or another creature that uses magic offensively. A dragon, perhaps.”
He looked around again, and I was reminded of the night before, when the whole world had been revealed to me, and for the first time, I’d seen pixies and sprites dancing through the desert.
“Wait.” I turned to look at him, crossing my arms over my chest. “You said that the local dragon should have kept the pixies in check.”
Cassander nodded. “Yes. I assumed that perhaps they were lazy.”
“What if they’re not lazy?” I raised both eyebrows. “What if Iris Milner has them under her control? She’s going to force the dragon to perform the magic. Although why she needs magic to take care of us… A few well-timed bullets would do the trick.”
“No. Your whole family has magic. Bullets might kill you, but it would not end well for Iris Milner and anyone associated with her.” When I looked at him blankly, Cassander frowned at me. “Do you really not see it?”
“Pretend I don’t,” I said shortly.
“Your mother speaks with ghosts; the ability to see through to the immortal plane is a rare talent. To take such a gift out of the world would cost Iris Milner a tremendous price. If I’m any judge, your sister or one of her offspring has already begun to inherit your mother’s abilities.” Cassander reached over and pressed a hand to my chest, practically pinning me against the metal, and I felt my body go slack, relaxing into his touch. “You are the most rare creature I have ever seen. You think magic does not react to you, when in reality, you absorb it, collecting it. To kill you and let that magic disappear into the ether would be foolish. And Iris Milner does not strike me as a fool.”
“How would she have even known about that?” I asked.
Cassander looked at me, eyebrow raised, and I put it together instantly.
“The SPA. She knows because the SPA knows.” I shook my head.
“Likely not the whole SPA, but someone there informed Green Scales. Perhaps that was their long-term goal before we… ran into each other in Paris.” Cassander’s fingers tightened against my chest.
“So maybe that was Green Scales’ goal all along. They get me to go undercover with their organization, and then they own me for real. Since that won’t work anymore, you think she’s going to try and find a way to collect the magic I’ve been absorbing,” I said. “That sounds dangerous. Although, no more dangerous than working with your brother.”
Cassander looked at me sharply. Then he looked down, his lips pulled straight.
“She could simply want me because of what I am. A fae is a valuable prisoner. If she already has a dragon, I would fill in any gaps in her magical needs.”
“Or Green Scales exists in the same in-between space as every other supernatural creature.” I waited for Cassander to look up, his silver eyes catching mine. “And they made a deal with your brother. Which involved you dead and them more powerful. In order to help her complete her magical Pokémon set, you would have to be alive. There were enough bullets being sprayed around that I don’t think that was ever the intention.”
“If she is working with my brother, she is definitely a fool, but a fool who sees the benefit of magic.”
I shook my head, pinching the bridge of my nose. “So, Green Scales doesn’t just own the SPA, it also is in bed with your brother? Figuratively, I hope.”
“My brother is a generous lover, but even he would hesitate to take so many mortals into his bed,” Cassander said wryly.
“Getting out of town won’t be enough. Green Scales is everywhere. There’s nowhere we can run that they won’t be able to track us down.” I glanced up at the sky, the sun moving toward the horizon with the inexorability of time. “And my mom might have enough IDs to get us out of the country, but the SPA could still track us down.”
Cassander and I stared off into the distance again. Far enough away, the heat made everything wavy, distant plants seeming to dance. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a streak of color, but by the time I turned my head, the sprite had already disappeared, the desert heat too much for it.
“Can you do magic in three days?” I asked finally. “Three days and three nights. What could you do? Something that could stand up to a dragon?”
I felt Cassander shift against my arm, felt him gasp a breath. “Dragons are old creatures. Older than the fae. Their magic runs deep and is intrinsically linked to whatever they hoard. If she’s taken the dragon away from his home, away from his hoard, there is a chance that I could overpower it.”
“And if she hasn’t?” But I could already feel the answer in the way that Cassander had phrased his words, dancing around the other possibility.
“If the dragon is still connected to its hoard, if whatever it treasures is still within its grasp, then I would need more than three days to face it.” Cassander was pale. “I regret…”
But I wasn’t sure what he regretted because he trailed off, looking down, opening and closing his hands before rubbing his knuckles.
“Okay. So, we have three days to figure out how we’re going to go up against a dragon. I know exactly how I want to start.” When Cassander looked at me, I smirked back at him. “With a drink.”
The sign for Honeyrock didn’t look any better in the daytime. A few cracked circles indicated where someone had tried to shoot out the sign, although the fading said it had been a while ago.
When I pushed open the door, Betty was behind the bar, wiping at something. It was quiet, a weekday afternoon crowd that included a couple of drunks in the corner arguing too loud about soccer rules and the teenagers who had almost gotten my face pounded in by Trucker Hat and friend.
The teens grinned at us, raising a hand in a wave, and I nodded before settling at the bar, laying my face down on the cool wood. Betty came over, drying a beer glass with a mostly clean towel. I watched her from the side, the angle odd enough that finally I sat up.
She raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“I need a drink.” The words came out petulant, and Betty rolled her eyes before looking at Cassander.
“I take it parlay didn’t go well?”
“How does everyone already know my business?” I asked.
“Desert Flower phone tree, how do you think?”
“Candy?” I asked.
Betty nodded, then crossed her arms, waiting.
“It didn’t go well. We have three days.” I tried to force a smile, but there was no lipstick that would make this pig any prettier. “After that, it’s war.”
Betty whistled. “That’s a tight timeline. Do you already know what you need?”
I nodded, even though it was a lie, and from Betty’s expression, she knew it was a lie too.
“Let’s get you your drink.” Betty sauntered down the bar, pouring three pints of beer that she brought back. Then she stepped onto a chair, pulled down the bootleg liquor bottle, and poured us each a shot.
For a few blessed minutes, we drank in silence. Someone pushed open the kitchen door, but instead of the chef, Leonard sauntered out, wearing a bar apron and a shirt with Honeyrock’s logo emblazoned on it. He walked over to the table of drunks, putting two plates of appetizers in front of them, and when he turned to face me, his brows drew together.
“Damian Reyes!” He pointed at me, beginning to unlace the apron. “I’m going to kick your ass.”