Chapter Sixteen
The statue of Coraline LeMort stared down imperiously at Kierse from the steps of the MET.
She was on her third black-and-white cookie from her favorite bakery on the Upper East Side.
With Rosh Hashana coming up, the bakery had been packed, and she’d been “talked into” a round loaf of challah in addition to her favorite cinnamon babka.
Coraline was just a benefit to Kierse’s afternoon pickpocketing tourists and mulling over Lorcan’s words. This was her favorite place to think in the city. It held a reminder of the war but also hope.
Coraline had been the spark that started the whole thing.
A vampire visionary who ignited the fire to bring all the monsters out into the light.
Vampires had come out first, and one of the top companies in the city, Visage, hired humans as blood donors.
And it had fallen apart so spectacularly.
But at one of her own rallies, Coraline had been killed by a rival werewolf.
The entire thing had gone to shit from there.
But what she stood for still warred in her city.
Still warred in Kierse.
Monsters and humans lived together in the world now. For a few short years, they’d lived almost peacefully. But now when she spotted a pair of Men of Valor wings on a sign nearby—they were getting bolder above ground, too—that was being threatened. Just like her new spot in this world.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she reached for it as she shouldered her bag and headed into Central Park.
Laz named the chat Heist Group Chat.
Kierse snorted. Of course he did.
Laz: texted boss man already. meeting in an hour.
Gen: Team Holly activate!
Schwartz: This is the lamest name.
Laz: admit it. u fucking love it
Walter: Why am I here? I hate group chats. I’m going to leave this immediately.
Lyra: Wait, are we having another heist? I have rehearsal in an hour, but I can get out of it.
Laz: yeah. deets incoming.
George: I am with the boss now. He wouldn’t say it, but he is confused why he is not included in the Heist Group Chat for the heist that he himself orchestrated.
Gen: Did he say that?
Schwartz: Doesn’t sound like him.
Walter: If Graves isn’t here, I don’t have to be here either.
Laz: i got u boss man
Laz has added Graves to the chat.
George: That isn’t what he meant but is equally hilarious.
Graves: …
Kierse chuckled. The last heist had been a group effort to break into Monster Con and steal the cauldron.
They’d succeeded, and it had been incredible to watch Graves open up about his plans and let other people in on the action.
Now she had a bigger family. In addition to Gen and Ethan. She’d missed them.
Laz: see u in an hour
Gen: Can’t wait! I made Team Holly T-shirts!
Walter: Baseball caps by any chance?
Gen: I could make you one!
George: You should see his face right now.
Laz: I would kill for that. take a picture
George sent a picture.
Kierse opened the image and saw Graves bent over his phone with a book open in his lap in the back of his limo. He had a grimace on his face.
Schwartz: You’re the man, George.
Lyra: I’m saving this. Don’t ask questions.
Walter: We shouldn’t share unauthorized images online.
George: He’s still upset about the merch.
Graves: We’re not wearing merch.
Kierse: I’d wear merch.
Graves: We’re not wearing merch.
Gen: Okay, maybe not Team Holly for you, Graves. But I sketched out Anne Boleyn and think she’d look great on a black shirt. I’ll get that in your size.
Kierse actually cackled out loud at the thought of Graves wearing his black cat on a T-shirt.
She passed the mer, who congregated in Central Park Lake.
Only this summer, the lake had been full of tourists riding the little boats out on the lake, but now it was empty.
No one dared to engage with the mer after a man nearly drowned in the water.
Kierse jogged up the steps to the Mall as she headed leisurely toward Graves’s brownstone on the Upper West Side.
Graves: I actually have no words.
Laz: what else is new?
Schwartz: That sounds cool as shit.
Walter: I’m putting the group on mute.
Lyra: Put me down for an Anne Boleyn shirt, too. I’d wear that literally everywhere.
George: I’ll wear it under my uniform.
Graves: …
Kierse pocketed her phone and felt so much of the last couple days slide off her back knowing her friends would be in one place. The chill from them put her own worries to the backseat. A place she was happy to have after the angst of Lorcan fucking Flynn.
Somehow, she still made it to back to the brownstone before anyone else arrived, pushing through Graves’s wards with ease as she stepped inside to the empty house. She found Isolde baking in the kitchen.
“Hello, dear. I heard that we’re getting the team back together,” she said, pulling out a loaf of bread from the oven.
“Yep. It looks like everyone is back.”
“That’ll be so nice for the house. It’s been so quiet.”
Kierse agreed and hefted her bag of goodies. Isolde took them and promised to slice them all up for the party. Even though Kierse couldn’t convince her it wasn’t a party.
“Oh, this came for you as well,” Isolde said.
She slid a cream envelope with no return address across the counter. It was addressed to Kierse McKenna with Graves’s Upper West Side address. She had never received mail at this location. Truthfully, she had never really received mail.
She turned it over, and her heart stopped. A gold wax seal was stamped on the back of the envelope. Inside the stamp was an arrow through a pair of wings. Not good.
Inside was an invitation.
The Men of Valor presents:
Wings & Arrow
A monster gala
Hosted by Gregory Amberdash
Saturday, September 27th at 8:00pm
It went on to list the location as the Amberdash building on 5th Avenue, proper black-tie attire, and a place to RSVP. It was only ten days away, and nothing was explained as to why she would get this invitation.
He’d ordered the hit on Nate and had been the reason that Nova silenced one of her oldest friends. Gregory knew that that alone would put them on opposite sides of this impending war.
So what was he thinking? Did he wish to recruit her? It was almost laughable. There was nothing he could offer to join him.
She squinted at the last line that read, “This invitation admits one. Nontransferable and no plus-ones.” Ah, the catch.
“Did Graves get one of these?” she asked, holding the letter up.
Isolde shook her head. “Not that I know of.”
“Did I get one of what?”
Kierse found Graves striding through the front foyer and into the kitchen. Her heart stuttered back to life at the sight of him in his all-black suit and tie, his gloves firmly in place. The look of the villain she had made a bad deal with on his too-beautiful face.
“Where were you this morning?” she asked.
“Research.”
More time spent looking for a way to break the bond. As if last night’s endeavor had rejuvenated his search.
“Anything new?”
“Same old. Same old,” was all he said as he pushed her hair behind her ear like he always did. Only this time he stalled. “Your ears.”
“Oh,” she whispered.
“Do you have your glamours back?”
“No. Lorcan…”
His face shuttered closed at the mention of his enemy. “Ah,” he said slowly. “You saw him.”
It wasn’t a question because nothing was with Graves.
She should find a way to get the words of confusion past her lips.
To let him know that of course she loved him and chose him and the thing with Lorcan didn’t mean anything.
But he’d seen into her mind in Edinburgh, he knew about the bonds across time, and so she couldn’t lie to him, either.
The thing with Lorcan—despite her best efforts—was complicated.
“Anything new?” he mirrored her question.
“Same old. Same old.”
He searched her eyes as if trying to read her in that glance and immediately not liking what he saw. “All right.”
She swallowed and drew the invitation between them. “This came for me. You didn’t get one.”
He took it from her, skimming the letter. “Hmm…well, I’d like to see what he has planned. Someone will be there to watch your back.”
“You’re the boss.” She barely suppressed a snicker. “Boss man.”
“Not you, too,” he groaned.
A commotion at the door drew their attention, and they separated to find Laz, Schwartz, and Gen standing in the doorway.
They said their hellos and then headed up to the library where Walter was already seated behind a computer screen.
Gen stood between the two men, elbowing them as they all laughed at whatever had been said.
Laz was of average height with dark hair.
He was always wearing khakis and a white button-up like he was some adventurer.
Just missing the giant brimmed hat. He was your average Jewish human man who sat next to his best friend, Schwartz, an enormous mer of Haitian descent.
His father had been human and his mother a mer.
He had the physique of an Olympic swimmer, skin the color of onyx, and locs down his back.
He’d been their security detail during the heist and was uncomfortably good with explosives.
“You did not bomb a shipping barge in California!” Gen argued.
Schwartz shrugged. “Maybe we did, maybe we didn’t.”
Laz laughed and clapped Gen on the back. “Maybe it’s better you don’t know.”
“Maybe it’s better you’re not active criminals.”
Laz and Schwartz burst out laughing.
“We’re all criminals, Gen,” Kierse said as she came up behind them. “Hence the heist part of the heist group chat.”
“That was sweet, wasn’t it?” Laz asked.
Laz slapped George’s hand as he slunk into the room behind the pair. “That picture was priceless.”
George shook Schwartz’s hand next. “He’s needed that group chat for years. Keeps him more human than monster.”
“More man than menace,” Laz agreed.
Schwartz shook his head. “Nah, he’ll always be terrifying, but it is fun to poke fun at it.”
“So long as he doesn’t turn the terror on us,” Laz said.