If I had been standing one inch closer, the slamming door would have bloodied my nose.
FIVE
IT’S JUST AFTER 10:00 P.M. when I pull into my apartment complex and turn off the engine. Physically and emotionally exhausted, I climb the steps to my second-story apartment and unlock the door. My place is tiny—a six-hundred-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment in a bad part of town—but it was renovated just before I rented it, and I can actually afford the rent without help from the fae. It’s mine—so is the used car I parked outside—and there’s something satisfying in knowing that I can make it on my own.
“Sosch,” I call after closing and locking the front door. The kimki has been living with me these last three weeks. I’m not sure if that’s by choice. He showed up in the hotel suite I was staying in a few days before I moved out, and since a fae hasn’t been in my new apartment, Sosch has been stuck with me. The only way he can get back to the Realm is by piggybacking through a fae’s fissure.
I expect to find him curled up on my couch. He’s not. He’s on the kitchen counter—a place where I’ve explicitly told him not to be half a hundred times—and he’s glaring at me like I haven’t fed him in a week.
“I fed you this morning,” I tell him, grabbing a box of Goldfish out of the cabinet. I pour the crackers into a bowl on the floor. Sosch still doesn’t look pleased. He holds grudges worse than any person I know.
Whatever. I’m too tired to cheer him up. I leave my keys on the counter, then walk to my bedroom door.
My closed bedroom door, I realize only after I’ve already started to push it open. I never shut it.
Instinctively, my muscles tighten, bracing for someone to come barreling out at me. The someone doesn’t. He doesn’t because he’s tied spread-eagle to my bed.
What the hell?
The man is awake, his mouth is duct-taped shut, and he’s glaring at me with murder in his left eye. His right eye is swollen shut. His lower lip is split, and I’m pretty damn sure I see blood on my sheets. He’s had the crap beaten out of him, and I don’t know whether I should cut him free, take the rag out of his mouth, or just leave him completely alone.
Something clatters to the floor in the bathroom on the other side of the wall. I curse under my breath, quickly pull the bedroom door shut, then dart to my couch, where I’ve hidden the sword that Lena insisted I keep. I get it unsheathed and spin toward the bathroom just as the door opens.
Lee, a human who quickly ended up on my shit list when I met him a month ago, steps out. He stops when the point of my sword touches the middle of his bloodstained shirt. His dark brown eyes look at the long blade, then his gaze meets mine.
“How did you find me?” I demand. “And who the hell have you tied to my bed?”
His eyes narrow. I have no idea why. If he thought he was going to just show up and tie a man to my bed without me asking questions or taking precautions to protect myself, he was wrong. He’s lucky I didn’t skewer him on sight.
“There’s no need for that,” he says, indicating my sword with a duck of his chin. When he makes a move to swat it out of the way, I turn the blade so that its edge, not its flat end, meets Lee’s hand. Fae keep their swords sharp. It cuts into his fingers even though his touch was light.
He pulls his hand back, cursing and clenching it into a fist.
“I think there is,” I tell him, pressing the blade’s point forward. Lee’s a quick learner. He takes a step back to prevent me from drawing blood again; and then, he sways. That’s when I notice he’s keeping his right arm pinned against his side.
“I’m hurt,” he says, moving his arm just enough to make me look closer. It’s the perfect distraction. In my peripheral vision, I see his other hand reaching behind his back.
I could shove my sword forward, aiming between his ribs. A two-handed thrust with my body weight behind it would slide the blade all the way through. The thing is, I hate hurting people, and I am not, by nature, a killer. Lee must be gambling on that because he doesn’t look worried when he pulls out a gun and levels it at my chest.
Alarm spikes through me. It’s so sudden and potent I’m disoriented for a moment. Having a gun pointed at me makes my heart rate go into overdrive. It takes no effort, no skill to pull the trigger and end a life, but logic tells me Lee doesn’t intend to kill me. He’s here because he wants something, so I don’t have a reason to be this worried. The fear moving through me isn’t entirely my own.
“What do you want?” I ask, trying to shut my emotions off from Kyol.
“Is this the way you want to have this conversation?” Lee counters. “Or would you rather put away the weapons and have a seat?”
His forehead is covered in a sheen of sweat. I look at his side again, to the arm he has pressed against it. There’s more blood on him than on the man in my bed. Lee wasn’t lying about being hurt.
“Fine,” I say, lowering my sword. “Let’s talk.”
I almost choke on that last sentence. Kyol’s here. Well, not here, but he’s in my world, in Vegas. Back in the hotel room I used to stay in, I think. I never told him I moved.
I’m fine, I try to project. Kyol should be resting and recovering from his injuries; he shouldn’t be here in a city filled with tech. Go back to Corrist.
My emotions must not be speaking clearly. He doesn’t fissure out. He’s on his way to find me, using the bond like I used it in the Realm to find him.
I let out an exasperated breath, making sure he feels every ounce of my annoyance. We’ve been apart for, what? Less than two hours? How much trouble does he think I could get into in that time?
I think calm, safe thoughts as I make my way to my couch and sit, hoping he’ll figure out I don’t need him.
Aside from a cheap coffee table and the even cheaper breakfast table with chairs, the couch is the only piece of furniture in the main living area of my apartment. Lee puts his gun away and makes a move to sit on the couch’s other end. Sosch beats him to it.
Lee rethinks sitting.
“What is that?” he asks. He’s breathing hard. I think he’s trying to act like he isn’t as hurt as he is. I refuse to acknowledge the sympathy that wants to bubble up in me. If Lee wants to pretend he’s not seriously injured, I’ll let him.
“My guard dog,” I tell him. “Who’s in my bedroom?”
Lee raises an eyebrow in my direction, maybe to see if I’m joking. I’m not really. Sosch has, in a roundabout way, saved my ass a couple of times, and it’s clear he doesn’t like Lee. He has good taste.
Realizing I’m not going to elaborate, Lee finally grabs a chair from the breakfast table and all but collapses into it.
“He’s a vigilante,” Lee says. My grip tightens reflexively on the hilt of my sword. Lee’s father is—or rather, was—the leader of the vigilantes. Nakano’s other son, Naito, who’s a human shadow-reader like me, killed him in Boulder a month ago. It was revenge for killing Kelia, his fae lover and the first rebel I considered a friend, but Nakano was a cruel man bent on eradicating the fae. He’d gone so far as to create a serum that gives humans the Sight so he could build his own personal army. He didn’t give a damn that the serum kills anyone who takes it six months later.
Lee has less than three months before the serum kills him. And my friend, Paige, has only a little more than that. Lee injected her with the serum because she was my friend. He knew I was involved with the fae, that I could lead him to his brother, and he didn’t care who he had to use to get what he wanted. He was determined to kill Naito so that he could finally gain his father’s approval.