Dangerous Creatures

  “What else, Ridley?”

  Rid didn’t say anything.

  “The other marker. You said there were two. What else do you owe him?” Link didn’t even say his name. She had the feeling he was dreading the answer as much as she had been dreading the question.

  “It was a house marker,” she said.

  “What does that even mean?”

  “When you’re playing for TFPs, it means the house calls it.” She shrugged. “They can ask me for anything, and I’d have to do it.” She took a breath. “I mean, I will have to do it.”

  “Anything.” It wasn’t a question, and she didn’t answer it. He stared down the street into the rain. “For how long?”

  “A year.”

  “What if you don’t do it?”

  “I don’t have a choice. I’m Bound. Those were the terms of the game. I can’t undo it. Believe me, if I could, I would’ve already.”

  “What if I don’t want to be his drummer?” Link asked. His. Nox’s. The unspoken name hanging over this whole conversation. “What if I say no?”

  “I don’t know what would happen to me. I guess I’d find out. One way or another.” Ridley shivered.

  They sat in silence while the rain fell.

  “That’s the truth, Link. Everything. No more lies. Not between us.”

  She reached out and put a hand on his arm. He shrugged it off.

  The rain kept falling.

  So this is what it feels like? To tell one truth? One time? To even just one person?

  See what happens? See what it gets you?

  When Link finally looked at her, Rid knew what he was going to say before he said it. “I can’t, Rid. I can’t do this anymore.”

  This wasn’t a fight. It was something different.

  Something worse.

  “I know.” She looked up into the rainy sky. “I don’t blame you.”

  As she walked off down the Brooklyn street, Ridley realized she had absolutely no idea what she was going to do, or where she was going.

  Only that she had to go.

  Because telling the truth? It gets you nothing. The truth was too expensive. It wasn’t worth it.

  Because right now it felt just as sad, and just as heavy, as a lie. Ridley wondered if regular people knew that.

  CHAPTER 20

  The Divine Wings of Tragedy

  Even through the double glass, the black-painted brick, and the exposed steel girders of Nox’s suite, he could still hear the thump and whine of Sirene’s house music.

  The DJ was going wild, mashing up iconic Caster and Mortal music; listening to his remixes, you would think Madonna was a Siren herself.

  She’s not, but she could have been.

  Nox stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows of his private office, looking down at the empty stage. It was his war room, his command central. Nox was more comfortable here than anywhere else in the world. The main floor of the club threatened too many perilous potential reunions.

  Too many Ravenwoods to watch out for. Too many Incubuses in one place. That’s not even counting the Darkborns.

  He hardly even dared set foot in his apartment now, not since the Vexes had started showing up.

  Nox loosened the skinny retro tie that hung around his neck.

  As he watched, the roadies wheeled the drum kit offstage. It was done. One cog connected to the next, like he was an engineer instead of an entrepreneur. Nox should’ve considered the night a victory, which was a rare pleasure. Something he hadn’t felt since the fateful game at Suffer. When the very first cog began to turn…

  They never learn. Don’t bet against the house.

  His mind flickered to the image of a certain blond, with a certain pink stripe and a knack for trouble.

  She was more than he’d imagined. He wondered if she remembered him. He didn’t know if he wanted her to or not. It had been a long, long time.

  Don’t get attached. You’re almost there. You could finally get Abraham Ravenwood off your back if you deliver the hybrid and the Siren.

  The thought made him ill, so he thought about something else.

  Anything.

  The club. The crowd. The band.

  So many powerful problems.

  A troubled Necromancer. An Illusionist with a secret. An Incubus marked for death. A Darkborn in hiding. A Siren with a past.

  His money was on the Siren.

  She’d taken them all on—if by her attitude alone—and she’d do it again. Nobody could rein her in. Except for the sister. The sister seemed to be an exception to the rule.

  Just as his sister had been for him.

  It was interesting, really. Family, as a concept. When it worked—which wasn’t often, in the Caster world—the bond was like no other Binding in the universe.

  And these two have the bond, he thought. The Siren and the Thaumaturge, if he’d read the younger girl’s powers correctly. It was almost sad to watch. Nox was well aware of what some of his business associates would do with that kind of information. And with the leverage it afforded them.

  Especially the Ravenwoods.

  In terms of his associates and clients, the Ravenwoods were the worst. Some families were like that. You didn’t reign for four hundred years as one of the most powerful families in the supernatural universe without developing a certain coldness, an indifference to suffering, Mortal and Caster alike.

  The whole thing was really a shame. The little Siren was starting to grow on him. It would be a terrible waste to let anything happen to her.

  What choice do I have?

  The Incubus was another story. Nox disliked anything remotely Mortal, and this one was stinking of it. It wasn’t his fault; it was how he was raised.

  Still, that didn’t stop Nox from wondering how it would all play out. He was trapped, just another one of Abraham Ravenwood’s pawns.

  Nox let his eyes flicker over to the cigar box on his desk.

  No. I need to stay out of it.

  There was no reason to get drawn into a battle that wasn’t his to fight.

  Nox pushed himself away from the window and went to sit at his desk. He leaned back in his chair, averting his eyes from the fireplace that lit the central part of his underground office.

  The overstuffed chairs in front of the hearth sat empty, the way they always did. Nox never sat that close to the fire. He didn’t like fire. He didn’t like the things he saw when he looked into it: terrible things, wondrous things, images that tormented him in his sleep.

  It was his gift, and his curse, like the old storybooks said. He could see the world, everything around him, and everyone. How it ended, and when, and why. How they ended, and when, and why.

  Unless it involved him.

  Lennox Gates was gifted with Sight and cursed with blindness—or vice versa, depending on how you looked at it.

  Blindness could be a gift. His Sight had always felt more like the curse.

  But when does power not feel like pain? His mother used to say it to him when he was a little boy. He’d always found it to be true.

  She hadn’t been wrong yet.

  The fire beckoned.

  Nox tried to pull himself away, but it was too late. The flames had taken hold of him. His eyes traveled down to the blue root of the fire itself.

  The blue divided itself into strands of light that moved together and apart, again and again, until they formed shapes instead of lines, and pictures instead of light.

  Nox was nearly overcome by the smell of burning flesh.

  That, and the screaming. A girl.

  The girl. The Siren.

  The screaming was too much for Nox. It was a kind of ceaseless sobbing—a pure expression of death.

  It gave him chills.

  Nox could hear her but he couldn’t see her.

  He pushed and the billows of smoke parted, as if he’d walked through them.

  In a way, he had.

  There she was, surrounded by fire and pinned by a burning beam of wood. P
robably the splintered support of a now-fallen ceiling.

  Now the screaming became distinct words, familiar words.

  Ancient words.

  By the will of the Gods

  By the will of the Gods

  I see everything that happens

  On the known earth.

  I know you see this, Nox.

  I know you see me, right now.

  You told me you could, remember?

  Don’t just sit there.

  Do something.

  Help me.

  Save me!

  The smoke stung his eyes, and he tried to keep looking at her, but he knew it wouldn’t last. The room was caving in around her.

  Soon she’d—

  Soon the screaming would stop.

  So would the vision.

  The dead left no stories to tell.

  At least, not the way Nox saw them.

  Fire, he thought.

  She dies by fire.

  He saw a fleeting succession of images, one after another. A wooden staircase. Flames, reaching into the heavens. The sky.

  Then the wood began to crash around him, and the sobbing was muffled, and with a sudden shock, Nox realized he knew exactly where she was.

  Nox found himself standing next to the fireplace, his hand resting on the mantel. Strange. He didn’t usually move during a vision. He always dreaded putting Necro into that state himself. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to regularly lose control of his body.

  Abandoning your own flesh was practically begging for someone else to take it for a spin.

  Nox didn’t like it, even for a minute.

  He looked up from the grate, where the carved mantelpiece rose into a ceremonial coat of arms over the center of the stone hearth.

  He traced the emblem of his house with his fingers. A bird and a snake, flying directly toward each other. It was the same emblem he’d seen in the last moment of his vision, carved into the burning wood.

  The same wood he was touching now. It was a repeating pattern, carved at least once in nearly every room, throughout the paneled walls of Sirene.

  It’s possible that the Siren is going to die in this very club, he thought with a pang.

  A pang of what? Guilt? Remorse? Curiosity?

  She will die. By fire.

  His last thought scared him: Because of me.

  It was the most likely scenario.

  Nox couldn’t be sure; he could never see his own future. But if she were to die in this room, it would probably be at his hand.

  It was the way the Wheel of Fate was rolling. There was nothing he could do to stop it….

  For the first time in his entire life, Lennox Gates found himself wondering if he could be wrong.

  Or if he just wanted to be.

  CHAPTER 21

  Expendable Youth

  The next day, Lennox stared at Necro across the subway tracks. He needed her one more time. It was cold and damp in these tunnels, yet there she sat in a tattered white T-shirt and ripped jeans. A tattooed coil of barbed wire snaked its way up and down her bare arms. The chain-bound combat boots recalled her inner Necromancer.

  Good. I want her to be tough.

  Nox didn’t take threats from the Otherworld lightly, and that was precisely what he was dealing with here. Even dead Incubuses tended to have friends in low places. Lately, he had taken even greater precautions. He made sure Necro hadn’t been followed. He had sealed off the Underground stop, even from Casters. He’d dragged a broken-down bench over for her to sit on.

  Then he’d compelled the Necromancer out of her warm bed and guided her here.

  He didn’t feel any better about it, but he didn’t have a choice. Who was he to mess with things like vengeance and fate?

  Destiny. There is an Order of Things, even now.

  When the dead called for you, you had to listen. What often started with a message from the other side quickly became a premonition and then a hallucination. By the time the nightmares began, nothing good followed. After his last night, he knew it was time to talk to Abraham. The Otherworld had a thousand powerful connections and reconnections to this one. It wasn’t like Nox could ignore the call, no more than it was his fault that Necro had to take it. There wasn’t another Necromancer in his employ. And she’d displayed an uncanny gift for channeling the Ravenwoods in particular. Not to mention, a willingness to do it, so long as she didn’t have to carry the Ravenwoods around with her, in her conscious mind.

  Nox didn’t know why, but he depended on her.

  The candles were smoking. Halfway melted, down to inch-high stumps of white wax. Necro’s head tipped back, exposing her pale neck.

  Necromancers happened to be the most valuable when they were the most vulnerable. Sleep created the clearest connection.

  He was running out of time. He could only have so many of these conversations before Necro would remember. Besides, the Royal Barbados cigar box on his desk at Sirene was almost empty now.

  His mother had always kept the box full, for those times when Abraham visited, which was probably the reason the cigars were such powerful conduits now. Nox could still recall Abraham sitting on the creaking settee on the veranda of his family’s island home—hovering like a threat over his parents, like the dark cloud Abraham had been for as long as Nox had known him.

  He was the one family friend who most often dropped by, to be anything but friendly. Which was understandable, considering Abraham Ravenwood was so busy being too many other things.

  Say, for example, an extortionist. Or a thief. Or a prison guard. Sometimes even an executioner.

  All the while savoring these nasty cigars.

  Nox stared at the golden cigar paper and touched the tiny crown stamped on its side. Lost in another time.

  If my mother had only listened. If my father had only believed me. If only Abraham hadn’t had the whole Dark world wired to his own puppet strings.

  Even from the Otherworld.

  Hopefully this business would wrap itself up soon, one way or another. Nox needed to move on. There was only so much living in the past a person could stand before they started to lose their mind.

  Particularly when the past was this toxic.

  There was no putting it off any longer. Nox lit the cigar and looked away.

  Better get this meet-and-greet started.

  Almost instantly, Necro’s eyes opened. “Boy,” the voice bellowed out of her limp mouth.

  “I’m right here.” Nox nodded across the tracks. “Like I said I’d be, when you sent that posse of Vexes to rattle around at my place last night. Message received, old man.”

  “You talk a big game, yet you continue to be a disappointment.” Necro’s gold eyes rolled up as she spoke, leaving the glowing white that always made Nox think of the inside of an oyster.

  “You’re still singing that same song, Mr. Ravenwood.” Nox flicked ash from the cigar. The smoke burned in his nostrils. “The song of a dead man.”

  “I’m done singin’. Like I’m done waitin’ for you to fight my battles.”

  “Good. I was getting tired of fighting them. Unlike some of us, I have a life to live.”

  “I said I was done waitin’. I didn’t say I was done with you.”

  “I thought—”

  “You don’t think about anything but yourself and your idiotic clubs. You’re a stain on the Caster race, Lennox Gates. Come to think of it, you have been since you were a little boy.” Necro gave him an angry smile.

  Nox snapped. “If that’s the case, then why I am the one you’re talking to? Where are your own beloved grandchildren now? Because I’d be happy to leave your nasty affairs to them.”

  Necro shook her head, swinging her wild blue faux-hawk. “None of your business. Not anymore. Now that you’ve outlived your usefulness.”

  Nox averted his eyes and blew on the cigar ash, holding it away from his face. “Name one person who still visits your grave. Even one, Abraham.” Nox waited, and smiled. “That
’s what I thought.”

  Then the word came, suddenly and improbably, flying at him from out of the blue. A brick through an unsuspecting window.

  “Silas.”

  Necro smiled as she said it, all teeth.

  The cold seeped through Nox at the sound of the name. He started to say something—most likely, something as bitter as he felt—but caught himself.

  Careful. Silas Ravenwood is nothing to joke about. Watch yourself.

  Nox cleared his throat and began again. “Silas Ravenwood is a busy man. And from what I hear, he’s a whole lot Darker than his son, Macon. More like his grandfather, wouldn’t you say?” His heart pounded. He needed to get out of this conversation, fast.

  “Silas has always done me proud.”

  “That criminal? I hear he’s too occupied with building the biggest Blood Incubus syndicate in the Underground to visit anyone’s grave. If he had time for you, why hasn’t he been dealing with your business instead of me?”

  The answer was a slow, low drawl. “Not everyone has a Necromancer in their employ, boy. Makes you easier to reach than most, from where I sit. You’ve always stood too close to this side of the veil, like you already knew you were a dead man.” The old man’s laughter echoed through the tunnel. “Don’t you worry about Silas. He has a part to play in all this. Unlike you, he’ll be ready to play it when the time comes. In fact, he’ll be stopping by Sirene to give you my regards.”

  The thought made Nox’s stomach twist into a knot. He tried to sound like himself, but he was suddenly having trouble remembering what that was supposed to sound like. “I look forward to it.”

  “If I wasn’t clear enough, boy, that was a threat.”

  “I picked up on that.”

  “You know what you have to do. Make sure you do it, or Silas will.”

  “Another threat?” Nox asked.

  “Your choice. Your coffin.”

  “I’ll take your word for it, dead man. Considering I don’t actually own a coffin, myself.”

  Necro growled. “You will, unless you hand over the people who put me here, boy. Especially the Siren and the hybrid Incubus.”