“If you change your mind…”
I stepped into the elevator and turned to smile at him. “I won’t.” I watched his face disappear as the elevators closed and sagged with relief. I wasn’t in the mood for dodging Oren’s advances, not that I ever was.
I dug out my keycard and opened the door to my room. It was small and sparse, but it was home. Considering I’d spent most of my life at campsites in the mountains, I was still adjusting to life in a casino hotel room.
I spent extra time in the shower washing off the stink of training and injury. I dried off and changed into boxer shorts and a T-shirt. Although I didn’t tend to get tired, I still needed sleep to recharge and fully heal. Emil took the edge off, but my father had always warned that if I pushed myself too hard, I’d crack eventually.
I crawled into bed and punched the pillow a few times to get the lumps in the right places. I stared at the ceiling for a few minutes, pretending that it was the open sky. With its glittering lights and thriving tourism, Atlantica City was a bustling metropolis compared with the mountains, but I wasn’t really a bustling metropolis kind of girl. I missed the mountains. I even missed being a guide to the desperate and determined with all its perils and rustic accoutrements. Travelers still needed assistance whether I was there or not. In that region, the area between human-controlled cities had become a danger zone inhabited by wild fae, werewolves, and the occasional feral vampire.
I had a hard time relaxing tonight. I assumed it was because of losing to Evadne. The tri-brid was powerful. Why I thought it was a good idea to fight her, I had no idea. Nathaniel would say it was because I never shrank from a challenge. I turned on my side, wondering how the werewolf was faring. Nathaniel had other associates aside from my dad and me; it didn’t stop me from worrying though. I considered him family and I had no doubt he was worried about me too. He hadn’t been completely on board with my decision to come here in search of my dad’s killer. He also knew me well enough not to try and stop me.
My gaze drifted to the red poker chip necklace now resting on the bedside table next to my phone. My trip with Saxon to a supernatural prison in Baltimore had yielded the information I’d desperately wanted—that Canute, the demon that murdered my father, had acted alone. My father and the travelers had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The poker chip that Canute had been wearing signified a debt that he owed to a man named Elliott Rosemont, but that debt had nothing to do with Quinn Wendell and Rosemont died two years ago. Still, I wanted to know more about it. Why would the demon have left a Baltimore prison and immediately head by himself to a desolate area like ours? Something about his actions didn’t make sense to me.
I closed my eyes and willed myself to sleep. I had to report for a nine o’clock training session with Tate tomorrow morning, so there’d be no chance to sleep in if I failed to rest during the night. I was someone who had to eat in the morning before I could function, unlike my father who’d been capable of lasting until lunchtime without provisions. I would’ve eaten the bark off the trees if I’d had to wait hours to eat.
I turned on my side and tried again to get comfortable. Sometimes I tried to influence my bedtime thoughts so that I’d have good dreams and decided tonight would be one of those nights. As much as I loved my dad and missed him terribly, I couldn’t stomach another nightmare that forced me to relive his grisly death. It only reminded me that he was gone and that I’d been too late to save him. At least I’d managed to kill Canute. I took some solace in that.
After an hour of tossing and turning, my breathing finally slowed and I welcomed oblivion.
Despite my best efforts, I dreamed about my father anyway. Thankfully, it wasn’t his death at the campsite but in a motel room. I was fourteen and trying to establish my independence, which meant choosing my own clothes.
“Callie, your back is showing.”
I craned my neck to look—a futile gesture because the only way I could see the mark on my back was with the help of a mirror. “I thought this shirt was long enough.”
“It’s the way it’s cut,” my father said. “You’ve got those slits in the back so the fabric doesn’t completely cover it.”
I groaned. “Is it such a big deal? How much can anyone see?” The entire mark consisted of a five-petaled red rose in the middle of a golden cross against the backdrop of a five-pointed star. No one would know what it was if only a couple points of a star were visible.
“Lark.”
At the sound of my nickname, I knew I’d lost. He’d never once let me walk through the world with an inch of bare skin on my back exposed and he wasn’t about to start now.
“You know how it goes,” he continued. “Someone glimpses the mark and they’re intrigued, so they ask to see more. Or the breeze is stronger than you expect and blows your shirt high enough to see the rest.”
The door of the room burst open and a gust of wind rushed past me, forcing my eyes closed. When I opened them again, I was in a different room. A familiar figure stood poised in front of a canvas with a paintbrush in his hand. Even though he faced the canvas, his black and grey wings were a dead giveaway. I didn’t recognize the room, although the window revealed a lovely view of the moonlit bay. If I was in a dream version of Pride headquarters, it wasn’t somewhere I’d been before.
“Saxon?”
The handsome hybrid turned to look at me, a quizzical expression on his face. “Nice dress.”
Dress? I glanced down and realized I was now wearing a hip-hugging red dress with black heels—a far cry from the boxers and T-shirt I’d worn to bed.
“Sorry about your beatdown today,” he said. “Abra probably should’ve nixed it.”
“No, I wanted to test her.”
His mouth twitched. “More like she wanted to test you. I think you made her nervous after you managed to take down the Tzitzimime demons and Supai. She’s used to being the most powerful.”
“No worries there. She still is.” I’d be a fool to say otherwise after my earlier experience.
He cocked his head. “Why didn’t you use your fangs? You could’ve at least tried to even the playing field.”
I balked at the mention of fangs. “We agreed never to talk about that again.”
“No, we agreed never to tell anyone. We never agreed not to discuss it between us.” He grinned. “Besides, this is a dream, right? There’s no safer place for a conversation you don’t want anyone to overhear.”
He had a point and, truth be told, the memory of tearing into Supai’s flesh with fangs I didn’t know I possessed still rattled me. I’d considered confiding in Harmony, but that wasn’t possible now.
“I don’t know how to use my fangs.” Even uttering the phrase my fangs sounded foreign to my ears. “I’m not sure how I managed it the first time.” It had been a critical moment in the fight against Supai. I’d seen Leto dying…Ugh. I couldn’t bear to remember it even now in a dream state. “It just happened.”
“Supernaturals don’t suddenly grow fangs for no reason. Maybe you learned a spell when you were younger and forgot about it.” I could see his mismatched eyes in the glare of the artificial light—one blue and one green. Both beautiful.