I woke up with the crackle of an announcement that the plane was about to begin its descent and opened my eyes to find the incubus gazing down at me with an almost fraught expression. It was only there for an instant, and then he was jerking his gaze away before returning his attention to me with a more typical sly smile and possibly the faintest of blushes coloring his pale cheeks. “Rise and shine, Miss Blaze.”
Ruse had told me he loved me for the first time less than an hour before our last mission. It’d obviously been difficult for him to reveal that emotion, even though I’d returned the sentiment. We hadn’t had time to settle into any kind of new normal afterward—maybe he was feeling a bit awkward about that still.
I squirmed upright with the swing of the seat back and reached over to grab his hand. “You’ve been awfully sweet the whole flight. Trying to give Snap a run for his money now that he’s honing in on your usual territory?”
Something flickered through the incubus’s expression and vanished just as quickly. He shrugged, a familiar twinkle lighting in his warm hazel eyes. “It’s the least I can do.”
“Well, your efforts have not gone unnoticed… nor will they go unrewarded.” I winked at him and walked my fingers along his jaw to draw him into a kiss, wishing I could slip them right under his cap to grasp his horns the way he liked without exposing them for all the regular mortals around us to see.
With the seatbelt lights already on, I couldn’t make that reward a membership to the mile-high club, but maybe that wasn’t what Ruse would have wanted most anyway. At least one woman he’d cared about in the past had shown she only cared about how well he could get her off in bed. Instead, I rested my head against his shoulder, nestling closer when he put his arm around me.
It was hard to feel all that sour about the bounty on my head when this whole mess had also brought the most fascinating, thrilling, and delectable men I could have imagined into my life.
Once we’d departed the plane, a few texts with Omen directed us to a quiet spot off the road between Paris and Versailles where he and the others had parked the Everymobile to wait for us. As we got out of the cab across the road from the RV, I couldn’t stop a startled laugh from spilling from my lips.
“What in sweet Satan’s name happened here?”
Maybe to someone who’d never seen it before, the Everymobile in its current state wouldn’t have looked that odd. But the trip through the shadow realm had definitely made an impact.
In its current tour bus form, bright purple polka dots spotted the lower edge of the vehicle’s otherwise dark walls with their sweeping yellow—made-up—logo. A crooked antenna I’d never seen before protruded at an angle over the windshield. And toward the rear end, a propeller I couldn’t figure out the function of was spinning wildly as if in a brisk wind, although the cool evening air around us barely moved.
The door opened, and Omen beckoned. “Stop gawking and get your asses on here.”
I reeled my jaw back in, but I stayed where I was. “What did you do to Darlene?” I said, intending to rankle him by using the name he’d given the vehicle despite it not really being his.
He let out a short huff of breath. “The transition through the shadow realm may have had a few side effects. She still runs just fine. Are you coming or did you fly all this way just to park yourselves here?”
I rolled my eyes at him with a teasing smile. “Excuse me for asking.”
We tramped on board. In the dining area, Snap promptly pulled me onto his lap where he was sitting on the sofa-bench and planted a possessive kiss on my mouth. The engine started up with a sputter and... a sound like distant bells ringing?
“Keep any commentary to yourself,” Omen grumbled from behind the wheel.
“All I have to say is, you definitely can’t blame this vehicular mishap on me.” I made a flourish with my hand toward the road ahead. “Next stop, Versailles!”
7
Sorsha
I’d prowled around quite a few opulent mansions in my time, mostly to separate shadowkind collectors from their cages of lesser beasties, but none of those sights had prepared me for the Palace of Versailles. “Palace” was definitely the word for it, to the power of one million.
Staring up at the three stories of sprawling, ornately carved and gilded walls, my jaw went slack for a few seconds before I managed to recall it and myself.
“I see what you mean about extravagance,” I said to Omen as we crossed the vast, shadowy courtyard, keeping my voice low. There wouldn’t have been visitors here this late in the evening anyway, and from the signs we’d passed on our way in, the sphinx had contrived some way to shut down the estate to visitors, but I couldn’t quite shake my well-trained thieving instincts. We were guessing that she’d ensured an absence of security guards as well, but we hadn’t confirmed that yet.
Omen matched my subdued tone. “If Tempest is anything, she’s a hedonist. The trouble for most other beings, mortal or otherwise, is the things she tends to take pleasure from do the opposite for everyone else involved.”
“A hedonistic sadist with no concern for consent. I can’t wait to meet her.”
The hellhound shifter gave me a sharp look, as if I hadn’t laid on the sarcasm doubly thick. Or maybe because of the sarcasm. “I know restraint isn’t your strong suit, but if you could manage to let me handle most of the negotiations, it’ll work out better for all of us. She’ll ask you some direct questions, so obviously answer those, but… don’t give away more than you need to.”
“Funnily enough, I do have some experience dealing with dangerous shadowkind.” I poked him in the arm.
He bared his teeth at me, but, shocker of all shockers, it looked more like a grin than a grimace. The closest thing to a good-humored smile I’d gotten from him since he’d dragged me off and chained me up. Maybe I’d earned myself a few more points in the Keep Sorsha Alive column without realizing it.
“Considering that your main approach to ‘dealing’ with me is to provoke my temper in every possible way, I’m going to suggest you take a different tactic here,” he said.
“Where would be the fun in that?”
“We’re not here for fun, Disaster.”
“I know, I know. I figure after you’ve literally had me in chains, I should be allowed to tug on yours a little to even the score.”
As soon as the words fell from my lips—because, I admit it, I really did have a bit of a problem of shooting my mouth off without quite as much forethought as might be wise—a flicker of panic shot through my chest. Had I gone too far, reminding him of the actual if magical chains the Highest had him in? I hadn’t meant to imply anything about the bonds that obviously rankled him more than anything in his existence, but that was the problem with not thinking before you spoke.
Omen merely rolled his eyes skyward with a wordless sound of exasperation, so I guessed I wasn’t ending up back in my own chains over that affront.
Just as we reached the door, it swung open. Thorn peered at us from the other side. He and Flint had joined us for this meeting so we’d have extra muscle along in case talking didn’t pan out so well, and Snap was lurking too, having refused to hang back. With my thieving past, I couldn’t help envying the shadowkind ability to slip right around doors and unlock them from the inside as need be.