Tick Tock, Darling (Dark Ever After Fairytales #5)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Caspian

I popped the cork and sprayed champagne across the two lovelies in my private cabin aboard the Ticking Tide. Twins. Charity and Chastity. Somebody’s mother had a sense of humor. I’d have bought her a spiked eggnog.

Platinum blondes, ample tits, cheap perfume over clean skin. Both of them dressed to be unwrapped. The perfect Christmas present for me.

A witch with no makeup on and enough power to level this boat came into my head. I put her right back out again. Off limits. She'd told me so more than once and I'd heard her every time.

Charity came as Santa — red velvet, white trim, a hat she hadn’t taken off. Chastity had gone elf, green and short, with the shoes. Charity shrieked and arched into the spray. Her sister took it across one bare shoulder and laughed, low.

Six weeks hauling Santi cargo up from the Gulf with the wards sweating in my hold.

Six weeks feeding like a man who couldn’t afford a mistake — small, cold, out of a cup.

Last crate went ashore at dusk. Money was clean by nine.

The twins were paid for by ten, twice over: once for the bed, once for the wrist.

Christmas was a couple weeks out and I wanted some fun. No, I wanted a lot of fun. Needed it. Two willing women, a locked door, and nothing on my calendar but them.

Charity sauntered over and dragged her fingers down my chest. “Caspian.” She kissed me on my neck.

Her mouth was warm. Everything was, from where I stood.

Her heart came through the kiss, quick and close and shoving blood up her throat past mine. My fangs pressed down against my own gums, patient, waiting to be let out. And when she swallowed I heard the champagne go down — every inch of it, wet and bright and hers.

Six weeks. I ran the number like I’d run the manifest: one swallow off the wrist, two if she laughed about it, and stop before the room started to swim. Go past that and I’d be sloppy for a day, and sloppy was how men ended up explaining themselves to Angelo with their hands on the table.

I kissed her back and waited to stop thinking. That had been the entire point of her, and it wasn’t working.

Hands settled at the small of my back, cool from the bottle. I hadn’t heard her cross the room, which meant she’d meant for me not to.

“You’re so sexy.” Bored. Flat as a ledger.

Better than her sister’s mouth. Charity was having a wonderful night. Chastity was working — watching my jaw, counting my teeth, doing sums she’d repeat to somebody by morning — and I wanted to know what she’d charge and who else was buying.

Two women, a clean deck, and the Ticking Tide riding empty under us for the first time in six weeks.

“You’d know what I like, gorgeous…”

Charity twirled her finger in my long hair. “Anything you want, handsome.”

I slipped my hand around her neck and the silly Santa hat fell off. “A back rub.” I scraped my fangs across her neck. God, she tasted hot and spicy.

A rapid knock hit my door. “Captain?”

What could possibly be wrong? I told the Crocodile I didn’t want to be disturbed. We had just docked less than twelve hours ago.

“Excuse me, ladies.” I tilted up Chastity’s face and bit her lip. “It will only be a moment.”

Charity followed me and wrapped her arms around my waist. She slipped down to my jeans and unbuttoned them, quick, and I forgot the door entirely.

I opened it. “What?”

Crocodile shrugged.

Behind him stood Angelo Santi. Dark suit, hands loose at his sides, no expression at all.

Enzo Di Salvo hung back where the deck lights hadn’t reached. He didn’t need to be seen. He never has.

He made me. Pulled me off a deck I’d bled out on and gave me this instead, and I’d been his ever since. His and Angelo’s. One long debt with no bottom to it.

Angelo brought him when the talking was finished.

And Dimitri Dragan had already found what he was looking for — his eyes went to my waistband and stayed there.

My fangs were still down. I pulled them up slow, the muscle of it stiff from six weeks of not using it right, and every second of that was a second Angelo watched me do it.

Charity’s hands were still on me. I didn’t move them. Moving them meant admitting where they were.

Six weeks of clean runs. Last crate ashore at dusk, money clean by nine, nothing on me and nothing in the hold that shouldn’t be. Angelo doesn’t come to the dock. For him to come, something was up—to deliver bad news.

I ran the manifest again anyway.

“I see you’ve been a good boy.” Dimitri smirked. “Christmas came early.”

Christmas. Two weeks out and he’d said it like a date on a calendar.

Nobody laughed. Angelo didn’t look at him, didn’t look at Charity, didn’t look anywhere but at me. Dimitri never made a joke he wasn’t sure would be allowed, and he’d made that one on my deck, in front of my crew, with my fly open.

I buttoned my jeans.

So it was already decided. Whatever they’d come for, they’d settled it before the launch left the wharf, and this was the part where I found out.

“We need to talk now. I’ll be in your office,” Angelo said.

Something dropped through me and kept going. Cold, low, all the way down, and my heart went with it—hammering hard enough that I knew Enzo could hear it from where he stood.

Fear. Say it plain. I was afraid of him.

My office. He said it like an address he’d been given.

He was already turning. Not waiting to see whether I followed — that had never been in question, and he’d known it before he came up the gangway.

I’d been careful. Six weeks careful. It hadn’t mattered.

“Ladies.” I didn’t turn around. “Get dressed.”

I followed him. Enzo and Dimitri were on either side of me. I felt like I was being escorted to my execution. I didn’t even know what I had done.

Sometimes Angelo was as infuriating as he was terrifying. He didn’t care if he ruined your plans. There was never a I’m-sorry-I-interrupted-you.

No—Did I come at a bad time?

No—Embarrassment on his face.

Just an order that he demanded to be obeyed. Arguing with him could lead to punishment, a vampire punishment. Being locked in his special little room wasn’t on my agenda.

My office was just a short walk from my cabin.

Crocodile opened the door for Angelo, who walked in like a king.

But then again, he was a king—the vampire mafia king.

His word was law. The only one who had any influence on him was his mate—Serenity.

She had won his heart and he would do anything to please her.

Fated mates were good for other people like these three. But I liked all women and being tied to one had never tempted me.

Angelo gestured for me to sit at my desk. Now, why would he do that? Something was up and I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like it. Dimitri and Enzo stood behind Angelo while Crocodile was behind me.

But it didn’t mean anything. Those three could overpower us easily.

I eased back in my chair, waiting for Angelo’s orders.

“We have a problem.”

We meant it was just as much my problem as it was Angelo’s.

I waited. Interrupting him was never a good idea.

“Peter Pan has escaped.”

Shit. Every ward Stefan Gabor put on that cage, and the Fae walked out anyway.

What the hell? Pan should have been locked away forever. Damn, Gabor. He was a reaper and one of the Archangel Michael’s chosen. I gripped the armrests. “How?”

“Your twin sister showed up.”

The name went into me like a hook. Wendy. Fuck. She was still under his spell. Willing to do anything for the bastard.

She was my twin and we’d always been close until he seduced her and turned her into his fucking love slave. Something I would never forgive. Some day I’d rip the bastard’s black heart out.

If he had a heart…

“So you came here to tell me that?” He could have called.

He gave me a curt smile. “That’s not why I came. Apparently, Pan has an agenda. He wants to get his shadow back. It’s in Neverland.”

My fangs came down on their own. It had taken magic to separate Pan from his shadow. If he retrieved it, he would be nearly unstoppable.

I wanted to ask where Wendy was, but I didn’t. I wanted Angelo to hurry up and tell me what this had to do with me—besides me wanting to hunt down Pan and put him out of his misery for what he did to my sister.

“I can’t allow him to retrieve his shadow. Not only could it destroy the Elder Dimension, he would wreak havoc on Earth, threatening my daughter.”

Noelle. Everything always came back to his daughter.

“Since I can’t leave my family, I have contacted Tinker Bell.” Her name in Angelo's mouth. In this room, on a night like this, with Enzo standing in the corner. I kept my face where it was and hoped to God nobody in that room could hear what my heart just did.

“She is retrieving a shard of the Christmas Star at St. Christopher’s Church.”

Tinker Bell somewhere in the dark on her own, doing it alone because she always does it alone. No backup. No help. Jeans and a T-shirt and whatever she could carry in.

She could do it. If anyone could, she could. That wasn't the problem. The problem was she was the one woman I couldn’t have. And she drove me crazy.

I didn’t look at Enzo. That was answer enough for a man who’d made me.

Angelo locked his gaze on mine. “She’ll perform a spell to seal the portal. It has to be done by the Winter Solstice.”

“That’s less than a week.”

He shrugged as if that wasn’t his problem. “Your task is to protect her. The spell must be completed.”

And Pan would come to the portal, because the shadow was on the other side of it. He’d come, and he wouldn’t come alone, because he never has.

Wendy would be standing right there. Maybe Tinker Bell could break the spell linking her with Pan. I wanted to get my sister back.

Angelo hadn’t said her name twice. He didn’t have to. He’d put me between her and the only thing she wants, and he’d waited to see whether I’d notice.

“Done.” A smile spread across my face.

I wanted to see Pan's face when he couldn't get through that barrier. Wanted to watch him stand there with his shadow on the other side of it and nothing he could do about it.

And then I wanted my sister back.