Chapter 27
The Heart That Fed
Malachy knew exactly what he was walking into when Cora led him by the hand inside the Emerald Club. She had claimed she wanted to show him the finished repairs before the grand reopening, but the mischievous smile she shot over her shoulder was a poorly kept secret.
“How many people did you invite?” he asked.
She stopped in the dim hallway and pivoted to face him. “I don’t know what you’re— All right, fine. I only invited the gang, the people you’ve pre-selected to tolerate. And Julian.”
Malachy huffed an irritated breath. “He smiles too much. It’s a wonder he doesn’t pull a facial muscle.”
“Oh, lighten up, Mal. He wants to celebrate your birthday and non-imprisonment as much as everyone else.”
This statement failed to reassure him.
He pulled her into his arms. “Let’s celebrate in private,” he murmured against the shell of her ear.
“We will.” She wrapped her arms around him. “Afterwards. I have two gifts for you.”
“Two gifts?” Slowly, he walked her back until she was pressed between the wall and his body. His lips feathered along her jaw as his hands trailed down the front of her trench coat to grasp its belt. Despite the sultry summer day, she was still clad in a long coat. “Is one of my gifts under this?”
With a tug, the belt loosened. She stilled his hands.
“Anticipation is its own reward.”
“Very well.” He shook his head, chuckling, and reached for her hand. She hesitated before pulling away.
“I’m not ready for people to know about us yet. Some of the gang still treats me like a contagious disease. They’ll judge me even more if they think you’re playing favorites.”
“You are my favorite.”
In the hallway’s gloom, she blinked up at him. His low, adamant words wound around the corners of her mouth and lifted them in a beaming smile. Malachy couldn’t help it; he smiled back.
She threaded her arms around his neck. “You’re my favorite.”
They kissed soft and slow, in the shadows. When they pulled apart, her plump lips glistened.
“Promise,” she whispered.
“Anything.”
Her husky laugh curled in his ears and around his heart. “Promise you’ll keep us a secret for a while longer.”
“Us.” Malachy tasted the word, a rich promise on his tongue.
He would like to keep her and this new, nameless thing between them a secret, not out of shame but selfishness.
He wanted to keep her safe and to himself for as long as possible.
His hands spanned her back, holding her close.
“I can keep a secret. But these things have a way of coming out whether you’re ready or not. If Anita knows, soon everyone will.”
“Luckily Anita has been swept up in a whirlwind romance with a fellow Sanguimancer. Some bloke she only refers to as the Maharaja. She’s been short on details, even the lurid ones, which is very unlike her. They’ve been scarce all week, off on a Parisian rendezvous.”
The only blood mage with an Indian title that Malachy was aware of was the Master Sanguimancer himself, who had thankfully been absent during his trial. For Anita’s sake, Malachy hoped he was wrong. He would make sure Anita was safe, or there would be hell to pay.
Malachy was on the thinnest ice yet with the Tribunal.
They had begrudgingly waived his death sentence after he threatened to expose the demon conspiracy with his recordings.
Upon his release, they had informed him in no uncertain terms that he was one small transgression away from execution.
Malachy would need to be more careful; more than his life was on the line.
He curled a wayward lock of chestnut hair behind Cora’s ear.
Fear for her had driven the color from his own hair.
He was now more silver at the temples than dark copper.
Though Ghose had well and truly died—for good, this time—paranoia dogged Malachy’s steps like the clicking talons of a beast. He checked the veil between Realms for a breach every day, like a religious rite.
With a cold wave of clarity he realized there was little he would not do to keep Cora safe. His heart, black and scarred and lovesick, beat in her hand. Where she went, he would follow, tethered by the thread woven between them.
“Do you promise not to draw attention to us?”
“I promise.” With a final kiss, he followed her into the club’s unlit interior where a dozen people were doing a poor job of hiding, crouched at awkward angles behind the golden bar. “Hello, everyone,” Malachy said before they could surprise him.
Shocked gasps and irritated grumbles greeted him. The new electric lights flicked on—a costly upgrade from gas without an Electromancer on staff. His gang blinked at the sudden brightness as they unfurled from their hiding positions.
“What gave us away?” Ravi said, rubbing his lower back.
“Did you tell him, Cora?” Sloane accused. “It’s supposed to be a surprise birthday party. You’re even worse at keeping secrets than Anita.”
“I didn't tell him, Sloane.”
“She didn’t need to,” Malachy said. He turned to Cora. “You have an honest face.”
Cora held a hand to her chest, expression softening. “Aw. Thanks.”
“It wasn’t a compliment. Well, mates, don’t just stand there. Let’s drink.”
A collective cheer rose up. Bottles of his finest champagne flowed freely. Crisp gin and smooth whiskey filled their bottomless glasses as the night bloomed with laughter.
“Happy non-imprisonment, Mal!” they chorused.
“Happy murder acquittal!”
“Happy birthday!”
Champagne splashed over their clinking glasses.
“Just how many years are we celebrating, mon cheri?” Yvonne Archambeau twirled the antique locket on a chain around her neck. “Nearly a decade we have known each other, Mal, and I did not know when your birthday was until recently.”
“Thirty-six years,” Malachy said. After seventy years as a thirty-five-year-old, death’s hourglass had been unstuck from time’s sap and resumed its inexorable fall, grain by grain of sand. He caught Cora’s eye; his heart had never felt lighter.
“To a hundred and one more.” Cora winked and held up her champagne. Together, they raised their glasses and toasted.
A hundred and one years alive and never had he imagined that after losing his family he could find another.
Yet here he stood, surrounded by people genuinely happy that he was not only alive but walking free, and not solely because he was paying them.
They drank and danced and laughed until his face hurt from smiling.
This second chance at life Cora had given him glowed with possibilities.
While he certainly wouldn’t be good in this bonus life, he would be better. For her.
Not all the gang was there to partake in the revelry.
Sloane had slipped away, quiet as a shadow, when Julian mentioned Ari Razaq.
Earlier, Malachy had offered the downtrodden Umbramancer a Portal Key to one of his properties, to get away for a while.
A grimacing smile had been Sloane’s only response.
Ari Razaq, the studious zealot lurking in the shadows, had proven himself dangerously persuasive. The Protean Society hung off the Egyptian Umbramancer’s every soft, adamant word. Malachy would keep a close eye on Razaq and his horde of mage supremacists, backed by an unknown number of Masters.
Julian, however, was undeterred by the mention of Razaq.
The Lumomancer’s charming chatter was even more effluent with a hundred quid’s worth of expensive booze to lubricate his silver tongue.
Malachy kept half an ear for Julian’s stream of chatter as his thoughts remained fastened on the mystery of what awaited him under that long coat.
Cora had remained in her coat despite the summer heat.
They stood apart so as not to draw unwanted eyes, yet his own eyes couldn’t leave her alone.
They took in what his hands could not—the curling tendrils of her hair, the blossoming flush on her cheeks, the sway of her lithe body as she serenaded them with a bawdy piano tune to uproarious laughter.
When the song trailed off, she glanced up. Their gazes connected. His brow unfurrowed. His scowl smoothed. Cora’s lips rose in a growing smile, and his followed, tugged by the invisible threads between them, until they were smiling at each other across the club like a pair of lovestruck idiots.
Julian caught the direction of Malachy’s attention. A grin sauntered across the Lumomancer’s wide mouth. “Mmm, like a tall glass of water, isn’t she? Makes a man just want to drink her up. Would you share a drink, Mal, if a man were dying of thirst?”
Malachy shot the American a hard look. “I envy those who have never met you.” He left before Julian could inflict further conversation upon him. He was refilling his glass at the bar when a presence materialized behind him.
“What are you brooding about over here?” Her husky voice was a welcome reprieve. They hadn’t spoken in what felt like hours.
“Julian will be a problem.” He topped off Cora’s glass. “He’ll try to seduce you next.”
She snorted. “Doubtful. You know what he said to me the other day? He gave me this frowning onceover, then declared, ‘So pretty, and you just don’t give a damn.'”
“That’s reassuring, how?”
A mischievous smile curved her mouth. Her voice lowered to conspiratorial undertones. “Is the Realmwalker jealous?”
“No. But if another man touched you, I’d kill him and make you watch.”
“Gruesome,” she said approvingly. “You know, I feel a bit sorry for Julian. He’s terribly in love with that actor everyone’s going on about—Laurence, something? Poor Julian could have anyone except the one person he really wants.”
“That’s precisely why he wants him. Forbidden fruit. Like you. Although,” he mused, “I could deter Julian not with a threat, but with a fact.”
“And what’s that?”
“That you rotted the stones off the last man who touched you without permission.”
“You conniving bastard.” She grinned.
He grinned back. Over the rim of his glass, his gaze slid over her. Wild hair and mile-long legs, her willowy body wrapped like a present under that long coat. “When are you going to stop tormenting me?”
“Never.” Her broad smile was almost diabolical.
“Cora.” His voice was a low plea. “It’s almost midnight. I am terribly curious about these birthday gifts.”
“Patience, old man. Patience.”
“I’ve spent decades being patient. Not tonight.” He announced to the club at large: “I’m leaving. You can stay.”
A few people bid their farewells on their way out while the others raised their full glasses in a last toast. Following Malachy’s whispered instructions, Cora waited in his office to maintain the illusion they were leaving separately.
After he stood there saying goodbye for what felt like an age, he made his way to his office, to her.
He opened the door. Cora sat behind his desk with her heels kicked up.
“Finally,” she said as she rose to stand.
“Finally.” He crossed the office to capture her in a crushing embrace. Their lips met in a ravenous kiss, tongues sweeping and feasting, hands clawing and grabbing.
“Home,” she said between breathless kisses.
“Home,” he agreed.
Together, they fumbled the Portal Key into the lock and staggered in a twist of limbs over the threshold. He kicked the door shut after them. Between rough kisses and the scrape of her nails, he navigated them up the stairs, into his bedroom. Anticipation skittered up the rungs of his spine.
They stood before the massive four-poster bed, an ocean of feather soft pillows and crisply made sheets. His hands found the belt of her coat. In his eyes waited a question.
“I spent a long time thinking about what gifts to give the man who already has everything.” She pulled a roll of parchment from her pocket.
“This is the first gift. I hope you don’t mind.
You mentioned regretting you didn’t get to say goodbye to Lazlo.
So I communed with Master Lyter and shared your regrets.
I brought this Death Parchment with me. It’s the only corporeal object that can pass in and out of the Death Realm.
Lazlo wrote to you from the grave. Here. Take it. If you want it.”
Malachy stared for a long moment at the parchment. The edges curled inwards, as if hiding a secret.
“If I’ve overstepped, if you don’t want it—”
“I want it.” The Death Parchment was bone-dry in his hand. Scrawled upon it was his oldest, dearest friend’s handwriting. Tears burned his eyes. “Thank you,” he whispered. “How… how was Lazlo? When you communed with him.”
“Peaceful.” Her fingers carded through his hair. “Lazlo died in his sleep, surrounded by his children and grandchildren. I even found a way to fuse his Deathscape with his wife’s. They’re together again, at last and for always.”
Tears threatened to spill from his eyes. He blinked them away and lovingly set the Death Parchment atop the armoire. “Thank you, Cora. I’m glad he’s at peace. I’ll… read this later.” There was no way he could read Lazlo’s final words without blubbering.
“It, er, now occurs to me that I may have put my gifts in the wrong order.”
Malachy glanced up. In the middle of his bedroom, she fretted the belt of her coat. A bolt of arousal narrowed his entire focus to the play of her fingers on that strip of fabric.
“And what is your second gift?”
Her gaze rose. Vivid pink suffused her cheeks. She unbelted her coat. It dropped to the floor.
Malachy tried not to stare. Tried, and failed.
Entire lobes of his brain seemed to have sloughed off.
His gaze trailed down the beautiful length of her body, draped in the finest black silk lingerie, along the sumptuous curves and dips he longed to explore, to taste.
At the tops of her sheer stockings teased a little pink bow he could tug undone with his teeth.
“Me.”