“I went to Peel Academy for one more year,” I begin, “ and that’s when I met my best friend Temper.”
I swear I see him react to even that one little detail. He once held the prize position of my best friend, odd match though we were.
“She got me through that last year.” I don’t need to elaborate for him to understand that the thing I was getting through was him.
The hand that still hold my wrist now tightens.
“On graduation night Temper and I left the UK. We moved to L.A. and started our own business.”
“Ah, yes, West Coast Investigations is it?” he says.
My eyes widen before I can help it. “You know about it?”
He releases my hand. “I’m the Bargainer, I know all about your little business.” He says that like he keeps tabs on everyone. “Seems I’m not the only one extracting secrets these days.”
I can’t tell whether he’s pleased, or annoyed.
“Does that bother you?” I ask.
“It pleases me. And it angers me that it pleases me.” He frowns, folding his arms over his chest. “I never wanted you to end up like me.” All the trickery is gone from his voice when he says that.
“I didn’t realize that you cared one way or another.” Is that bitterness my voice? I think it is.
He gives me a rueful smile. “Tell me about your business.” He says this innocently enough, but I still feel his magic on my tongue, forcing me to answer.
“Temper and I are in private investigation. She uses her spells to catch criminals, find missing persons, and”—scare the living crap out of people—“other things. I use my glamour to compel people to confess, or to act against their base nature.” I think of Mickey, my last client, as I say this.
Des clicks his tongue. “Callie, Callie, making a business of breaking the law. My, how this is sounding familiar.”
So I modeled my business after his. Big deal.
“Copying is the sincerest form of flattery,” I say.
The Bargainer leans forward. “Cherub, this is perhaps too sincere. Though, like I said, it does please me … You are taking precautions to guard yourself against the authorities, aren’t you?”
A.k.a., you’re not going to get caught anytime soon, are you?
I swear it sounds like he actually cares. All this coming from the third most wanted man in the supernatural world.
“I’m fine.” I pull out one of the barstools in his kitchen and sit down. “That’s what I’ve been up to for the last seven years.”
I spin myself on his barstool.
“You’re omitting some details,” he says, rounding to the other side of the bar I sit at.
He doesn’t need to tell me that for me to feel the magic pressing down on me, demanding I say more.
“What have I missed?”
Des leans against the island in his kitchen, his eyes unwavering. “Your personal life.”
I can feel my face flushing even as I give him a strange look. Why would he, someone who spurned me long ago, care about my personal life? I’m just a client.
It’s the magic that compels me to speak. “You want me to tell you about all the relationships I’ve had within the last seven years? There’s nothing to tell.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You’ve been with no one in all that time?”
Jesus, this is worse than telling my gynecologist about my sexual history.
“What about you?” I demand. “Who’ve you been with?”
“I’m not asking about me, and you still need to answer the question.”
The magic sinks its talons in, tightening my throat.
“Eight. Okay? I’ve been in eight ‘relationships’.” I air quote the word because my idea of a relationship really is a joke. None have lasted longer than six months.
I have commitment issues.
Des’s magic still has me in its grip.
“And some flings here and there in between,” I say, my face heating as I speak.
God, this is embarrassing, considering I’m telling this to the object of my teenage infatuation. And the longer I’m around him, the more I think he wasn’t strictly a teenage infatuation. No, the more he stares at me with those bedroom eyes of his, the more I feel the armor around my heart crumbling away, like it was made of nothing more than papier-mâché.
As I talk, Des’s face hardens. I get a little thrill at the possibility that he’s actually upset at the idea of me being in a relationship.
“Did you love any of them?” he asks.
I tilt my head at him. “That’s none of your business,” I say, more confused than anything.
“Au contraire, so long as you owe me, it is my business.”
“You’re really going to make me say this?” It’s a rhetorical question; I can feel the magic dragging my answer up my throat.
“No, I didn’t love any of them.” Finally the magic releases me. “Are you happy?”
“No, cherub,” he says, his expression flinty, “I’m not.”
I eye him up and down. This entire repayment has been a farce. A kiss, some furniture, and a couple confessions. That’s all he’s asked for so far.
I’ve seen this man single-handedly force a politician to change supernatural law as repayment. I’ve seen him drag secrets out of men who would rather die than confess.
I lean my elbows against the granite countertop. “Why have you come back into my life—and don’t tell me it’s just because you randomly decided I needed to pay my debts.”
He leans forward as well, our faces no more than a foot apart. “I didn’t randomly decide that, Callie. That was very, very deliberate.” He says this like the words themselves are weighty.
I search his face. “Why, Des?”
He hesitates, and I see the first crack in his façade, something that’s not angry or bitter or aloof. Something … vulnerable.
“I need your help,” he finally admits.
Des has made an empire on secrets and favors. Surely I can’t offer anything he can’t already get elsewhere?
“The infamous Bargainer needs my help?” I say this sarcastically, but I’m intrigued.
“There’s something happening in the Otherworld,” he explains, “something even my secrets can’t uncover.”
Otherworld. Just the mention of it raises my gooseflesh. It’s the realm of fairies and other creatures too cruel for Earth. All supernaturals know of it, and those with a lick of sense fear it.
“How can I possibly help?” I ask, as his fridge opens behind him. Already I’m dreading what he might say.
A bottle of sparkling cider floats out from the fridge. Just as the door closes behind it, a bottle of wine slides off the far countertop. A moment later, a cupboard opens and two wine glasses levitate out of it. All four items land in front of the Bargainer, who then begins to pour us drinks.
“I need you to get some information out of a few of my subjects.”
He slides a glass of sparkling cider across to me. I frown at it but take a tentative sip of it anyway.
“And you can’t?” I ask, my eyebrows rising.
He shakes his head, his eyes far away. “I can, to a point. Beyond that point … they die.”
“They die?”
Jesus. What is this man talking about?
“Like you, I can compel people. But there is one key difference between our two abilities.”
There was a whole lot more than one key difference between our abilities. Des didn’t happen to glow every time he used them, nor did he try to dry hump the object of his glamour like the siren in me did, that horny bitch.
“Your glamour doesn’t give your target the ability to refuse orders,” he continues. “You want them to talk—they talk.
You want them to dance naked in the streets, they dance naked in the streets. There is no other option.”
He slides his wine glass back and forth between his hands. “With my power,” he says, “a person can choose not to be compelled—but it will kill them. So, if they wish, they can choose to die fully clothed rather than dance naked in the streets. Or they can choose to die silent rather than spill a secret.”
I’d never realized …
“But you get everyone to talk,” I say.
The Bargainer takes a long drink of his wine before he answers. “Most people want to live.”
I let that revelation sink in. “So your subjects are choosing death rather than sharing information?”
He nods, staring at his glass.
Yikes. I can’t imagine what secret would be worth dying for.
“There’s one thing wrong with your plan,” I say. “I can’t glamour fairies.”
His eyes rise to mine. “I’m not asking you to glamour fairies.”
That gives me pause. “Then what are you asking?”
His moonlit eyes are just as mysterious as they’ve always been. Making some sort of decision, he rounds the bar and, grabbing another barstool, pulls it up close.
“Things in the Otherworld are … amiss.” His voice is softer, like he needs to gently ease the words out. “My kingdom is restless—as are the others. There have been disappearances—many, many disappearances. Soldiers vanishing without a trace. Only the women have … returned. I need to find out what’s happened to them.”
“Why don’t the women just tell you themselves?” I ask.
“They can’t.” Des’s expression is agonized.
“They’re dead?”
He shakes his head. “Not quite. They are neither alive nor dead.”
I swirl my glass of sparkling cider. “I still don’t understand. What do you want me to do, Des?”
“The fae won’t talk to me.” He chooses his next words carefully. “But fae aren’t the only ones that live in the Otherworld.”
All at once I understand.
“The changelings,” I breathe. Humans snatched up by fairies and taken to the Otherworld. Most lived there as slaves.
“I need to protect my kingdom.”
I stiffen. It’s rare to get Des to talk about the other half of his life, the half where he’s not just some thuggish phantom in the night. The half where he is actually a king, one that rules over all those creatures that go bump in the night.
“So you want to take me into your world,” I say. “And you want me to glamour your slaves—”
“They’re not slaves,” he growls.
“Don’t play me for a fool, Des. Just because it’s all they’ve ever known doesn’t mean they’d choose that life if they could.”
“None of us get to choose our lives,” he says, and his eyes are a little too penetrating.
“You want me to force the truth out of the humans that live in your kingdom, even though it’s unethical, and it will probably get them worse than killed.”
“You’ve never cared about the ethics of glamour before,” he says.
“Because none of the people I’ve glamoured have been victims.” They’d all been criminals of one sort or another.
I continue. “Haven’t you ever considered that if the King of the Night, with all his tricks and promises, can’t get these people to talk, that we should leave them alone?”
“Callie,” Des says, leaning forward, “fairies are dying. Humans are dying. Something’s happening to the Otherworld, and it’s happening right under my nose.”
“What if I told you no, that I wouldn’t do this?” I say.
He studies me for several seconds, his jaw tightening. “I would make you do it, regardless.”
That’s what I thought. He’d prefer my permission, but he’d use my abilities either way.
“Then it’s no choice at all,” I say. “I’ll do it.”
And just like that, I’m back to working alongside the Bargainer.
Chapter 8
December, eight years ago
“So, what do you do when you’re not making bargains?” I ask Des, who is sprawled out on my floor, flipping through one of my textbooks.
He has a pen in hand, and I’ve seen him scribbling stuff in the margins. I’m seriously afraid he’s drawn dicks inside my textbook, but when I take a peek, I see myself instead. He’s drawn a sliver of my face, and damn, he’s a really good artist on top of everything else.
“Besides ruining the mind of a little siren?” he says.
“Besides that,” I say, smiling softly.
In the hall outside my room, I hear some of my floormates laughing as they run off to dinner. They knock on the door next to mine, inviting Shelly and Trisha to dinner with them. I hear their footsteps coming towards my room, and a small part of me hopes they’ll knock on my door, even though Desmond is here.
Their footsteps pass my door without pause.
“They can’t hear us, you know,” Des says, not looking up from his work.
I didn’t know, but I had wondered why no one on my floor had asked about the male voice coming from my room. The walls here are paper thin.
“That was kind of you, Des,” I say.
“I like my privacy. It had nothing to do with you.”
“Right.” God forbid the Bargainer actually gets a reputation for kindness.
“And my name is Desmond—not … Des.” His voice drips with disdain.
So the name bugs him? Goody.
“I’ll stop calling you Des as soon as you stop call me cherub.”
He grumbles at that.
I take a seat at my computer chair and watch him work for several seconds. And as I sit there, staring at him, I feel my stomach flutter.
If I close my eyes, I can pretend that we’re not in my shady dorm room, that I’m not paying the Bargainer off to keep me company, that Des likes me every bit as much as I like him.
But then I remember that I get to hang out with him for no more than four hours of his day. I live for those four hours, but what about him? I’m probably just his equivalent of paid vacation.
What does he do when he’s not stealing secrets or collecting debt? What is this man’s idea of fun?
Probably stealing candy from babies or something awful like that.
“What do you do in your free time?” I ask again.
He flips another page of my textbook. “This will cost you,” he says.
I shrug. I already have two rows of beads. What was one more? “Add a bead.”
I catch sight of my wrist just as another dull, black bead forms.
“I rule.” He doesn’t even look up when says it.
I wait for more, but it never comes.
“Oh, c’mon, that’s it?” I say. “That answer was two words.” I deserve a better answer than that, considering the price I will eventually have to pay for the favor. In all likelihood, someday this bracelet of beads will turn into a very real version of Fuck-Marry-Kill.
“So was my name. You didn’t complain then.” He begins drawing in my mouth.
“You didn’t add a bead for that answer,” I say.
“A generosity I’m not interested in repeating.” His words are clipped.
I grind my teeth together.
Dropping down to the floor next to him, I snatch the pen from his hand. “What exactly do you rule?” I demand.
The Bargainer rolls onto his side, propping his head up with a hand, a smirk on his face, a wisp of white blond hair falling into his eyes. He studies me for a second, then gives in. “I’m the King of the Night.”
“The King of the Night?” I repeat dumbly.
What kind of title
is that?
“In the Otherworld,” he elaborates, taking the pen back from me.
The Otherworld.
I stare at him.
The Otherworld.
Holy crap, this dude is a fairy. No, not just a fairy, a fae king. A leader of one of the most ruthless races of beings.
And I’ve been mean to him.
“So you’re … really important,” I say.
He inclines his head slightly, still looking amused. “A bit.”
Well fuck me good, I hadn’t realized.
I take in his unruly white hair, his staggering frame, tatted arm, and black-on-black attire.
“You don’t look like a king,” I say.
“And you don’t look like the kind of girl that makes deals with the Bargainer, cherub. Your point?”
He has me there.
King of the Night. Just the name sounds badass.
“Where are your wings?” I ask.
He levels me an annoyed look. “Away.”
Des must realize I’m going to keep pestering him because he closes my textbook and sets it aside.
Having the Bargainer’s full attention is like catching a tiger’s eye. All you wanted to do was pet the creature, but as soon as it turns its gaze on you, you realize it’s simply going to tear you apart.
“Tell me, cherub, would you like to visit my kingdom one day?” he asks, his voice soft like velvet.
Is this a trick question? I feel as though I’m about to walk into a trap.
“You’d take me?” I ask. I try not to sound too excited, or frightened for that matter. Everything I’ve learned about the Otherworld terrifies me. But the idea of the King of the Night giving me a guided tour of his realm is impossibly appealing.
“Oh, I’ll take you,” he promises, he wicked glint in his eyes. “One day I won’t give you a choice.”