"You hired my associate to blow up a building that Ruby was in. We were very specific in the wording of our contract. If you were not as careful in the reading of it, that doesn't concern us." A muscle twitched at the side of Grey's mouth. "You wouldn't want to be negligent in paying us. You won't like what happens."
"Are you threatening me?" Mr Grey might think himself a powerful man but no one had more clout than Jacob. God himself communicated with him.
"I don't make threats." Grey stood up and outstretched his hand. "I want my money now, as agreed. Five hundred thousand dollars cash."
"You will get your money when the job is completed to my satisfaction."
Jacob's heart rate pick up. Grey's steely stare felt like it could pierce metal objects. Still, he refused to back down. He hadn't created his empire by being a wimp.
"I want to be very clear on a subject. I work with very dangerous people. Folks who can't go out in public because they are wanted on every imaginable list. One of my clients firebombed a coffee shop for you today. If you think I'm not capable of exacting the most excruciating of punishments on you then you don't understand who I am."
Jacob stood slowly. "If you do anything to me, the wrath of God that will assault you will be the stuff of legends."
Grey took two steps forward. "And you are so sure that the almighty is on your side?"
"Entirely."
The other man rubbed at his chin. "I guess we'll see, won't we? You can expect to hear from me one way or another."
Temper surged through Jacob's veins. He had tolerated enough of this insolence. "Finish the job."
"We'll certainly be finishing something."
Grey exited the room, back stiff, his arms hanging straight at his sides. The man didn't make a sound when he walked.
When the door closed firmly behind his unwanted guest, Jacob dropped to his knees.
God? He prayed fervently. Please hear my prayer.
* * * *
At least when the whole yucky scenario had ended, Sebastian would no longer have to listen to Jacob Talbot whine and pretend to give two shits about it. Now he wanted him to—what?—smite the person Jacob paid to blow Ruby up?
No, this Grey person happened to be just the kind of person Sebastian wanted around when he took over. No morals, nothing to make the man want to fight back against so-called objectionable things.
Jacob's problems with Grey were entirely human issues and nothing to do with Sebastian.
His little preacher could spend all day on his knees, praying about this one. Maybe the actual God would answer him. But probably not.
Sebastian turned his attention back to Colin Knight. The man hadn't moved from where he'd put him earlier, which was good. He turned his consciousness into the room. Thousands of miles away from Maine, Colin languished, attached to a machine designed for torture. A small house on a street otherwise occupied by much more extravagant homes, no human would ever imagine that the center-hall colonial held a torture chamber in the basement. Just the way he wanted it.
As he floated around Colin, he wondered if the Outsider had any idea that he wasn't alone.
"I do know you're there. I've always been aware of your presence."
Sebastian laughed, letting the sound resonate around the room. He could have spoken directly into Colin's head but considering his presence hadn't surprised Colin, he might as well not waste the energy of telepathy.
"Then how did you let yourself get caught?"
Colin had been downright easy to imprison. He'd expected more. In fact, disappointment reigned supreme when all he'd had to do involved plucking the Outsider up and depositing him in the basement. If only he could have simply burned him to death. Or shot him. Or done any number of things to end Colin's pathetic life.
But Outsiders were ridiculously difficult to kill. They healed really well from things that would kill regular humans. He'd learned his lessons with Drew and Samuel. It made no sense to kill and walk away. Outsiders had a way of turning up again when they were supposed to be dead.
This one he would keep—locked up and drained—until he could end all of them in one final act of destruction that not even the blasted creatures could survive.
"I had my reasons for being easy prey."
Sebastian didn't like that answer, not one bit. He blasted energy into the device holding Colin to the ceiling. The Outsider screamed out in pain. A surge of pleasure passed through Sebastian's soul. Yes, this was what he needed. Torture.
"I'm afraid you're going to have to be more specific than that with me, Outsider. I don't want to know that you had reasons, I want to know what they are."
Blood dripped from Colin's ear and down his cheek. His head hung weakly from his neck. Sebastian had blasted him hard. Information would not be as forthcoming if Colin had to heal.
Which begged the question—did he really want to get intel from Colin, or did he just want to hurt him?
Laughter erupted from his core. Pain. That's all he really desired.
* * * *
"Did you get the money?" Raquel extinguished the blaze in her hand with a blink of her eyes before jumping off the banister where she'd lodged herself an hour earlier.
Grey had better have gotten the dough. She didn't need another night of cheap motels. Not when she could be in Boston in less than two hours and staying in luxury.
"You didn't complete his job." Grey shook his head, narrowing his eyes at her. She hated that look, had always despised it. As a person without parents, or at least without any that she knew about, she should have been exempt from having to put up with "I'm disappointed with you" faces.
She fisted her hands at her side. "I hope you told him the contract was for the fire, not the deaths."
Grey cleared his throat. Not a good sign. "I told him."
"And…?"
"He didn't buy that argument any more than I do. People pay you to make fires to kill. I don't care which way you spin in it in your head. That's what you do."
"No." She could feel the flames lighting up inside of her, and she quickly tempered them. Losing control had been a problem of her childhood, not since she'd gained rule over them as an adult. "I get paid to make a fire. If people don't die, it's not my problem."
"But here's the problem, sweetheart." Grey took a step toward her. He might not have superpowers like she did, but he happened to be one scary man. She shuddered. He hadn't gotten to run an empire controlling professional bad guys by being any kind of pushover.
"What problem?" She swallowed, hoping she'd managed to maintain her façade of cool, considering she wanted to cower in terror whenever he got angry with her.
One day he'd get too mad, and then she'd end up as all of his former associates did…dead in the ground.
"None of your fires ever lead to death. Ever. It's almost like they seem to go out of their way to not strike anyone fatally. Why is that?"
Raquel's whole body clenched up. He'd noticed. Of course he had. She'd always known it would simply be a matter of time until he added two plus two and got to four. She couldn't kill, not again. There had been so much death in her childhood. How could she do on purpose what she'd struggled so hard not to do for so many years?
"Look, he wanted a fire. I gave him a fire."
"A clear non-answer." Grey nodded. He stepped away from her, walking down the street. "I'll get you your money from the preacher. But this will be the last job I manage you on. I don't like to be fucked with."
Yeah…I've gotten that impression.
Raquel swallowed hard. She really, really wanted to go home. But there was no home anymore. It had burned to the ground—and it hadn't even been her fault. She closed her eyes at the memory. All of her power and she hadn't been able to do a thing when it had mattered.
* * * *
Leonardo stared down at Marina's still body in the hospital bed. The sound of beeping and loud conversations filtered into the otherwise quiet room. Jason had done what he could for Marina. Before the
Outsider's healer had left—it seemed too dangerous for any number of them to be in the same place for too long if they weren't on the Outsider island—he'd pronounced her physically healed.
She would recover; she just needed to wake up.
He sighed and walked over to the window to stare out at the night. They'd had so many near misses lately.
He pressed his palm against the glass. That day's nightmare hadn't even ended yet. Drew still hadn't reported back in, and Leonardo's anxiety increased with every minute that the other Outsider stayed missing. Drew would never disappear, not if Marina's life were in any danger. The mysterious man might not show all of his cards on the table all of the time, but any fool could see how much he adored his soul mate.
"Damn it," Leonardo said aloud. Maybe the sound of his voice would rouse Marina, and they could do something productive, like get out of the hospital and discover Drew's whereabouts.
"I need you to wake up." He swung around until he faced where she slept. "None of this works without you. I won't go back to the way it was before. I can't."
They'd not been close growing up. He'd stayed with Kal and then after Kal had distanced himself from the group, he'd remained mostly on his own. Charma had been, seemingly, too fragile to handle the difficult stuff while Marina had been the right hand of Veli, the Outsider who had raised the four of them. Leonardo had never trusted Veli, and it had turned out he'd been right.
Eventually, Leonardo had killed Veli in what had amounted to the worst day of his life. But he'd really underestimated Marina. She'd turned out to be sharp, trustworthy, and loyal, sometimes to a fault. He couldn't handle his role as de facto Outsider leader without her.
It all amounted to nothing if he didn't have his best friend's support.
"Look." He stormed over the bed. "I might be a selfish bastard. Hell, there's no might about it. I am a selfish bastard. I can't even let you rest for ten minutes. I know. I should just shut the fuck up and leave you alone. But I can't do this alone, Rina. Everything is just so…wrong."
"Knock-knock." Isabelle tapped the door as she said the words. Marina hadn't moved or awoken.
Leonardo dabbed at his eyes, turning his back on Isabelle. The moisture beneath his fingertips startled him, and he wiped his hands on his pants. Shit. Had he been crying?
He motioned toward Marina. "She's still out."
Isabelle sighed, stepping closer in the room. He hated that she'd delayed her entry. It most likely indicated that she'd known he had been flipping out. Or maybe she'd even heard him talking to their unconscious friend.
"Jason told us she might need to sleep for a long while. The kind of healing he did…it takes a lot out of both of them."
He hadn't thought about Jason's struggle. Well, he supposed they could chalk that up to another way in which he failed as a leader.
"Is he fine? I assume Charma's got him under control."
Charma and Jason might have taken a long time to find one another, but they were as bound as any two soul mates he knew. One never went very long without the other. Watching them both amused him and made him feel sick to his stomach. Maybe it would turn out to be a good thing that his soul mate, Alexa, fell into the murdering, betraying, having sex with the demon category she did. He might never have been able to really "do" the whole totally committed to one another thing.
"He's resting. Charma got him back to the island before he passed out completely. Kal is patrolling around the town, looking for whoever might have been responsible for this."
"We know who did it."
Isabelle shook her head, her black hair shifting as she moved. "We don't know for sure. Sebastian is noncorporeal now. He's not setting fires or blowing up stores. And there's something even stranger."
Leonardo's head throbbed between his eyes. "Something stranger than Marina, Ruby, and Drew getting blown up and Drew going missing?"
Isabelle narrowed her eyes at him. Her thoughts read true in her brown depths. She wasn't in the mood to put up with his attitude.
He cleared his throat. "I apologize. Go on."
Isabelle hadn't been raised with Kal, Marina, Charma, and himself. She didn't excuse mood swings as just being par for the course. Somehow, she actually expected all of them to behave like adults. And, for some reason, they all did what she wanted, most of the time. Maybe it was that look she got in her eyes, the one she used on him now; it said shape up or you'll regret it.
"No one died in the explosion."
Her words didn't resonate in his tired brain. "Say again."
"Dr Leonardo Gregan, are you in there?" She walked forward and tapped at his head. "Do you need to go home and get some sleep?"
"I'm fine." He pushed her hand off him. Sometimes, he didn't want to be touched. The feel of other people's skin on his made him ache, like he had a thousand needles on him at once.
"No one, not even Marina, died in that fire."
"Then everyone can consider themselves really lucky today. Marina is only alive because she's an Outsider and Jason could fix her. We don't even know where Drew is. He could be dead."
Isabelle exhaled loudly. "We'd know if he died."
"How do you figure that?"
"Somehow we would all know that the prophecy had ended. If an Outsider died, we'd feel it."
"I don't share your optimism."
But even if he didn't agree that something remarkable had happened when no one had died in the coffee shop explosion, he had to admit it warranted looking into. Who had blown up that place, and what had been their reason for doing so?
"Where's Ruby?"
Isabelle pointed at the door. "Outside talking to her soul mate."
"That's right. We've found another one. Lose Drew, gain someone else."
"Drew will come back." Isabelle stared down at Marina, her expression now unreadable. "I'm sure he's doing everything in his power to return right now."
"I'm going to go see Ruby. I'll find out what she remembers from right before everything blew up. Can you call Kal? Tell him I need him to get Marina back to the island when she wakes up."
"I don't have to call him, I can—"
He interrupted. "Speak to him telepathically. That's right. I forget."
"I'd speak to you too, if you'd let me."
Shaking his head, he bounded out the door. "I don't need anyone else in my head, Isabelle. There's barely enough room for me in it as it is."
He strode out into the hall, glad to be away from his other best friend's soul mate and her all-knowing gaze. When this all ended and he figured out how to beat Sebastian without ever meeting his intended other half, he'd go someplace where no one knew him. A Caribbean island where he could sit and think. Read a book….
Rounding a corner, he came to an abrupt halt, the soles of his shoes squeaking on the overly waxed industrial floor of the hospital. Ruby stood staring up at a man who he could only presume had to be her soul mate.
They were gazing intently at each other but not necessarily in an amorous way. Ruby's eyes were narrowed, and she gestured wildly. The man shook his head, equally as emphatic.
"Everything all right, Ruby?" In general, Leonardo didn't want to have anything to do with the strange rituals that his fellow Outsiders went through when they found the "one". But Ruby brought out some of his protective urges in a way the others didn't. Maybe it had to do with how tiny she was.
She jumped, turning around to look at him. "Yes, Christophe and I were trying to decide which task we should do. He feels one way, and I'm thinking something entirely different."
Time to meet the newest member.
He shoved out his hand for a shake. "Leonardo Gregan."
The other man stared at his outstretched offering before raising an eyebrow. "Dr Leonardo Gregan?"
Leonardo's stomach clenched. "Do we know each other?"
Chapter Seven
Christophe knew he needed to come up with something smart to say…and fast. Right now, Leonardo had to think him a lunatic.
"I've been searching for you for some time." Even as he spoke the words, he wished he hadn't. A quick glance at Ruby told him she didn't think him nuts, or at least she didn't seem to be indicating that she felt that way…yet.
"Why is that?" Leonardo held his hands out in front of him. "No. Wait. Let me guess. Some ghost told you to come find me. Or a spirit. Or a talking animal of some sort. Or a water sprite."
Christophe cleared his throat. Maybe he shouldn't have been nervous about what to say to the other man. If Leonardo's tone indicated anything, the other man defined the word asshole.
"I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not—"
Leonardo interrupted. "If only I was—"
Christophe cut him off right back. He would not tolerate rudeness. "I've been looking for you since I read the article about you desecrating the magical graveyard."
All expression drained from Leonardo's face. He blinked rapidly for a few seconds. "There were articles written about it?"
"Oui." He smiled, deliberately using the French word instead of English. "In Europe."
Leonardo closed his eyes like they pained him. "Shit."
Christophe actually felt sorry for the man. He hadn't considered that Leonardo might not have known about the reporters. "Listen, it wasn't that many stories. I have had a vested interest in the subject because the graveyard seemed to do what I can do. Not be in one place and then suddenly be there."
"And after you read about me"—he opened his eyes with a groan—"desecrating the graveyard, you thought I might know why you are the way you are."
Ruby pressed closer to Christophe. He loved the citrus aroma wafting off her. God, if he had the time, he'd get lost in the scent.
Ruby said, "I'm sure there is a story I'd like to hear. It's not every day that I find out our esteemed leader destroys gravestones."
"I didn't…"
Ruby shook her head. "We have to go get the cane from Jacob Talbot. And Christophe's brother has been taken by the demon. He's being held prisoner."
Leonardo glanced away from them for a second. Christophe had no idea what the other man thought but, if it was possible, he got even more of a glower on his face. "Any thoughts on how to do that?"