3. Chapter Three
Chapter Three
I never run.
I don’t back down.
Ever.
The man hanging from the ceiling by his arms, his hands discolored from lack of circulation, groaned as I punched him in the stomach. His busted lip dripped blood on my hand as he keeled forward, and I sneered at the sight of it.
What the fuck happened last night?
I wiped the red from my thumb with a handkerchief I’d have to throw in the bin after this. This man was supposed to answer a question—I was trying to get information out of him—but now I couldn’t even remember what I asked him.
Good luck getting rid of Rook now.
Has he lost his mind?
I don’t know, I thought he was kind of sexy. Can’t say I blame him.
“Shut. The hell. Up,” I grumbled, trying to block out the nosy dead. The pulverized man lifted his head slightly, giving me a look through his swollen and bruised eyelids: I didn’t say anything.
I sighed. That was the problem—they never wanted to say anything. I wiggled my fingers and my knuckles ached from beating him to a pulp. An evening of violence was supposed to drive Rook right out of my head, but physical pain, and causing it, didn’t do a fucking thing.
It wasn’t the first time I’d kissed a man. I found men and women equally appealing. Why limit myself?
But him?
This was a bloody disaster.
The man I tortured shivered in front of me from chill and pain. I rolled my eyes. It wasn’t working!
I hadn’t slept the night before; didn’t even doze off for a minute or two. I stared into the dark and listened to the voices add their two cents until well past midnight, when I jammed a pillow over my head and stared at the wall like it might have a useful answer.
The door creaked open and Gray stepped in, footsteps silent like a cat’s. I took one more look at the sack of meat stinking up my basement with his blood and fear and urine? Did he piss himself at some point while I beat him?
I turned to Gray and shook my head. “Find out what he knows.”
Then I stepped past him and stomped toward the stairs.
I took the lift from the lobby of the building to my penthouse and stripped out of my soiled clothes.
My chest tightened at the sight of my blood-speckled shirt as I held it to the light.
This was why I didn’t do the dirty work myself.
I shoved it in the bin under the sink and turned the shower on hot.
When I stepped under the spray, I tilted my head back and let the scalding droplets roll across my shoulders and down my back. Steam filled the room.
He thinks he’s going to wash away all his problems.
That won’t help.
If you want my advice…
“I don’t want your advice! Can a man not get some fucking privacy in the shower?!”
They fell silent, and then it was just Rook burrowing into every corner of my head and making his presence more than fucking known. Where was he right now? Was he laughing with his friends about how I failed to kill him? Or did he obsess over what transpired the way I did?
Whatever he was doing, he wasn’t dead.
I fucked up.
I closed my eyes, raking water through my hair, and tried to determine the exact shade of blue in those eyes that pierced through me at the moment of his death. Cerulean. No, aquamarine. Azure? I pounded my fist against the slick shower wall and cursed his fucking face.
This wasn’t working either. Would I never find relief from him?
Surely he wasn’t at his club or wherever he slept at night thinking about how I nearly ripped his life away and lost myself in a brutal moment of attraction instead.
He was probably celebrating my failure and planning more ways to take my city and make my sleepless life miserable.
I shut off the water, toweled off, and swiped my hand across the foggy mirror. I looked like shit as I raked a comb through my dark hair—bags under my eyes, paleness that made me look ill.
I sucked in a deep breath. I had three options.
One, kill him. I would not fail a second time. Next time I’d stab him in the back or strangle him from behind. Maybe I’d bring him back here, hang him in the basement, and let Gray cut him into a thousand bloody pieces. I wouldn’t have to lose myself in those eyes a second time while I killed him.
Two, ignore him. Let him have his tiny chunk of this city and run his little club and stay in my own lane.
Three, kiss him again—
No.
I turned away from myself in the mirror and ground my teeth.
I folded my towel neatly, draped it over the towel bar, and made my way to my bedroom.
I threw myself at my bed and sprawled out naked, staring at the ceiling like I was glaring up at some divine being who had decided to throw Rook into my path and make my life hell.
Because that was what he was going to do. Make my life hell for the foreseeable future just by existing and knowing he fucking won.
No, not if I ignored him. I would pretend he didn’t exist and hope someone else came along to do what I couldn’t. I’d go about business as usual, and no one would ever know what happened last night. Rook wouldn’t tell anyone, right?
***
“The final price is $1.4 million.”
The only reason I knew the man across from me disliked the price was the slight widening of his eyes and the way his fingers almost, but didn’t, curl into a fist on the top of my desk.
“That seems a little unreasonable,” he said. “Surely you could lower that price, as I am a regular customer.”
I steepled my fingers and leaned back in my chair. “I have many regular customers, Mr. Kristoffer, and I can get more than that amount at the next auction. If you are not interested in this piece, someone else will be.”
I put the emphasis on someone else. James Kristoffer didn’t know what he really had in half his collection; he just liked knowing he had it and someone else didn’t.
Some of the wealthier magicians—and humans—in this city collected rare magical artifacts simply for status and exclusivity; the knowledge they had something special.
“I’ll remind you that this stone is the only one of its kind,” I said. “A ruby, diamond, and gold, blended through alchemical processes that have been lost. Its properties are numerous.”
There it was. A thin sheen of sweat across his brow.
My phone rang, buzzing against my desk.
Unknown number.
I was polite enough not to answer it during a meeting.
It stopped. Started up again.
Unknown number.
Anyone worth answering would leave a voicemail. Otherwise, they were Gray’s problem. He set up these meetings. I was just the face that made them sweat.
I stuck it in my desk drawer and folded my hands, waiting for Kristoffer’s answer. He swallowed hard, and I watched the ball of nerves wriggle down his throat.
“I’ll tell you what,” I said, sliding the jewel toward me on a silk cloth. “I’ll give you three days to decide. You know how to reach my assistant.”
As if on cue, Gray opened the door and waited for him to leave. The man hesitated in the chair across my desk until I narrowed my eyes and made one quick, shooing motion. He scampered up in a way that was rather undignified for someone of significant status and gave Gray a wide berth as he left.
I sighed and rubbed my forehead as the door closed.
“You okay, boss?” Gray asked, hovering on the other side of the room.
“Fine,” I said, leaning back in my chair and staring at the closed door. “He’ll come around.”
“Wasn’t actually what I meant…”
I lifted my eyebrows and waited for Gray to insert himself into my personal business the way he had a habit of doing.
I would have fired anyone else, but I’d made Gray a promise years ago.
His wife had just kicked him out when I met him in a dirty gambling den.
I swore if he could beat me at a game of cards, I would give him a job.
I hadn’t expected him to win, but he did, and Gray was the type of man down on his luck enough to do any job, no questions asked.
Now? I could not have run my business so easily without him. He was the one employee who was absolutely indispensable.
“You haven’t been sleeping enough.”
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” I told him, which reminded me I needed to get him out of my office so I could work on my other project. The clock ticked endlessly, and though I had planned to sleep tonight, I’d neglected this project for months and needed the time to catch up.
“That will be sooner than you think if you don’t fucking sleep.”
I sighed and rubbed my fingertips across my forehead. If only he knew.
But no one could know why death wouldn’t stick to me. I always ended up revived and pissed off, but that was the price of success, and until I reached one very important goal, I wouldn’t consider myself successful.
“And you’ve been…messier…than normal.” He frowned and flexed the split knuckles on his right hand, no doubt from gathering the information I needed the night before.
I brushed off his observation. “Sometimes aggression needs to be filtered somewhere useful.”
“Did you go to Rook’s club?” He hovered near the door still, his posture just as hesitant as his question.
“Rook is no longer a threat,” I lied. My stomach curdled. Was he a threat? He kissed me back. I hadn’t considered that he might retaliate. Perhaps I should have put extra security on the building.
“You killed him?”
“I…came to an arrangement.” Let the brute have his little sliver of this city. I could spare it.
My skin prickled at the thought. I didn’t share what was mine, but as I reviewed my three options—none of which were ideal—ignoring him still seemed like the best course of action.
Gray opened his mouth again.
“I’m a business man,” I interrupted. “I can make a deal with anyone, even Rook. I am working late tonight. See you in the morning?”
“Goodnight,” Gray said, then turned to head home to the upscale apartment I provided him with for his services. I hoped he would get some rest. One of us had to.
When the door closed, I lifted a hand and turned the lock with a quick bit of magic before I slid my laptop toward me on the desk and turned it on. The screen made my desk glow in the dim light as I navigated through a series of folders to one buried deep, protected by a password.
Project Mori
I opened it and brought up photos and documents.
Humans had the dark web, a seedy place of unsavory online dealings, but magicians had our own version, deep in the recesses of the internet, sealed in spells and dark magic.
I logged on to what was known as The Looking Glass and navigated to a bookmarked page I hadn’t finished reading weeks ago.
It was a long-winded explanation of necromancy, which was illegal among magicians, if it was even possible.
This information was theoretical, but it was a starting point.
I wasn’t interested in raising the dead, only in studying what happened when they died.
I’d exhausted every resource I had to learn about death rites and beliefs about the afterlife.
Heaven and Hell and ghosts and spirits. The saved and the damned.
The ones who think we just turn to energy and float about in space.
And not a damn thing mentioned her.
Not exactly.
Grim Reaper came closest, or maybe the Angel of Death.
I didn’t care what they called her.
I only cared about how I could kill her.