Plus, Dahlia was still out there, still stuck in the Dark. And if Violet did try to go back without telling Poppy about the encounter in the Underground, she would ultimately have to go alone. Again.
Lalura said I should, a voice whispered in her mind.
She scowled at the inner voice – and that was when she noticed the silence.
She looked up and found herself caught in the hard, knowing gaze of two ice blue eyes.
“You weren’t listening to me at all, were you?” Poppy shook her head and reached across the table to pick up Violet’s coffee cup. It was completely full. She sighed. “Okay, what gives? Are you even really here? Or did you cast some spell I don’t know about that lets you be in two places at once?”
Violet took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’m just distracted.”
Poppy studied her for a moment. “Is it your sister?” she asked, all hint of teasing gone from her tone.
Violet came to a decision. Knowing Poppy, the girl would figure it out eventually anyway. “Well, yes it is. But also there’s –” She cut herself off as someone approached their corner table. It was a young man, probably somewhere in his early twenties, with the remnants of acne from his earlier years, and brown hair shaved a little too close to his head. Violet had never liked haircuts like that. They were lazy haircuts, devoid of any character whatsoever, and there was nothing there for a woman to hold on to during sex. As a Tuath, she regularly thought of sex, even if she didn’t want to. It was the only way for a Tuath fae to recharge his or her powers – to share that particular pleasure with someone just as powerful, if not more so.
He wore a polo shirt in salmon, which to her was probably the least attractive piece of clothing ever designed, aside from basketball shorts. His jeans were designer, and a tattoo of Greek letters on the inside of his left wrist designated him as a frat boy.
As if every single other thing about him hadn’t done that already.
He opened his mouth to say something – but Poppy cut him off. She turned in her chair, placed her hands on her knees, and looked him straight in the eyes.
“Dude – we were talking. And we’re absolutely not interested,” she said slowly and clearly. “Not in any way, shape or form. Not in you or any of your frat boy friends.”
The young man’s eyes grew wide, and color drained from his face.
Poppy’s eyebrows arched. “I’m sorry, you’re surprised by this?” She laughed, exchanging glances with Violet. Then she turned back to the young man. “Really? You honestly think it’s odd that woman might not be interested in a boy who thinks polo shirts are sexy, and whose entire college education, not to mention, his pickup, is paid for by his daddy?”
She waited a beat, then continued. “You’re shocked a girl might not be attracted to a guy whose idea of a romantic first date is chicken wings at a sports bar while he barely realizes she’s alive because he’s more interested in the game going on through the television screen over her shoulder but then thinks he’s entitled to a blow job from her?”
Now he simply stared at her, eyes popping, lips parted, body frozen as she stripped him down mentally and revealed him for everything that he was. And wasn’t.
Poppy leaned forward conspiratorially, and her voice dropped into a very loud whisper as if she were imparting something secret. “You know, women don’t actually enjoy giving guys blow jobs at all. Yeah, shocking, huh?” She nodded, tilting her head and leaning further in. “The truth is, we actually hate sticking dicks in our mouths. It’s not only foul in both taste and smell, but your penises actually make us feel like throwing up when they touch the backs of our throats. So, yeah – what probably turns you on to no end literally makes us want to vomit. It’s hard to enjoy sex that makes you nauseated. Of course, looking at the rest of you, I somehow doubt it would take giving you a blow job for that to happen.”
She smiled sweetly and blinked. Just waiting.
Several long, silent seconds followed, and Violet peered surreptitiously around the room to find that everyone was watching them, despite the faux whisper Poppy had used to dismantle the young man.
Finally, he shuffled his feet a bit, straightened, and shoved his hands into his pockets.
“Whatever,” he said, shrugging as if he didn’t really care. “Fuck you, bitch.” He turned, strode to the front doors of the coffee shop, and shoved through them with unnecessary force.
“You were positively brutal,” Violet whispered.
“Bullshit. He deserved it, trust me. Now what were you going to finally divulge before we were so rudely interrupted?”
Violet tried to center herself, tried to focus. But now both the encounter Underground and Poppy were distracting her. “I… well, I mean –”
Another person approached, and a shadow fell over their table.
Poppy spun in her chair. “Jesus!” she exclaimed in another loud whisper. “What is the effing deal? Can’t you people see that we’re –” But she cut herself off this time, and blanched a little. It was an old man who had approached. A very old man. Dressed in a tuxedo.
Violet could feel waves of magic rolling off him that were stronger than almost anything she’d ever felt. Only Lalura Chantelle had magic that felt like that.
And also the man she’d met last night in the darkness.
“I apologize for my intrusion, ladies,” the man said in the most proper, gentlemanly manner possible. It was beyond obvious that he’d had years and years – and years – of practice honing his etiquette. His tone was schooled, and his words precisely pronounced. He spoke softly, yet sounded clear as a bell. “I have a delivery for Miss Violet Kellen.”
He looked at Violet, and powerful eyes pinned her down. She swallowed hard, felt strange, and said, “I’m Violet.”
He smiled knowingly, but in a friendly way, and gracefully held out a small box wrapped in black paper. It was tied with a black satin bow.
Violet took it gently from his hands and nodded. “Thank you. Who is it from?” There was no card and no note. The box was blank, and though it was meticulously, perfectly wrapped, there was no indication of what it was or who it was from.
“I am not at liberty to share this information, I’m afraid. However, I assure you, it is harmless, and the sender’s identity will become clear in short order.” He smiled, bowed slightly at the waist, and turned around to leave. Violet watched him exit the coffee shop, tall and painfully skinny, with magic trailing thickly after him.
“What… the… hay?” asked Poppy, as she turned back around and looked from the box to Violet. Her eyes narrowed, and her lips pursed. “This has to do with that thing you aren’t telling me about, doesn’t it?”
Violet didn’t answer. Instead, she shrugged and pulled the satin ribbon loose. It fluttered to the table top. She unwrapped the box next, revealing another black box within it, this time the plush velvet that was so obviously a jewelry box.
“Holy shit, girl. Jewelry.”
“Hush,” Violet hissed. She popped the top open and gazed down at the pendant that lay shimmering on the black satin pillow. “Crap.”
Poppy leaned forward. “What is it? What’s wrong?” She none-too-gently turned Violet’s hand so that she could get a look at what lay inside the box. “Whoa!” It was an understandable reaction. But, a moment later, her expression also became confused. “But… an acorn?”
The small, perfectly formed acorn was clearly composed of pure diamond. It shimmered with impossible dimension where it rested at the end of a shimmering platinum chain.
“Yes,” she said numbly, as her mind tumbled end-over-end down a one-way hall that was deep and dark and filled with inexplicable desire. “An acorn.”
Chapter Six
I am anything and everything in the shadows.
Keeran Pitch lifted his chin, reading the line over. He hadn’t meant to write it. His thoughts were simply flowing, and sometimes when they did, what he was thinking automatically materialized on the screen of his computer.
br /> He took a deep breath, clicked his mouse, and erased the line. Then he logged off the game he was testing, looked up from his screen, and pushed out his chair before moving to the bookshelves at the right side of the room.
The bookends were wolf heads, black with emeralds for eyes. He glanced at them, curled his fingers over the marble edges of the shelves, and braced himself as he leaned in, dropping his head. “Focus,” he told himself softly.
Focusing isn’t the issue, his inner voice responded. You’ve been focusing plenty. Just on the wrong thing.
The room behind him was taller in height than it was wide, and three of the four walls sported marble book shelves. They contained a selection of books that ranged in the thousands. It was something none of the millions of people who played his games would ever have guessed about him.
He straightened from the shelves and looked up and around, his gunmetal eyes reflecting the light of the chandelier overhead as he scanned the books lining the walls. The titles on their spines reflected journeys he’d taken over the many, many years. The turns-of-phrase encased within their covers were the words he’d used to escape the darkness of his own mind and enter the colors of another’s. This familiar trek that freed the soul from the bonds of reality, this letter-laden path that walked it into unfamiliar fantasy – it was his only friend.
Except…
Keeran closed his eyes, and the moment he did, he saw hers. He’d only ever seen eyes like that once before in his long existence. On some level, they were like his own, but only in so far as gray reminded of gray, the way fog was like steel. Where hers were silver and purple and deep charcoal, multi-faceted beyond imagination and prismatic like smoky diamonds, his were closed off, like mirrors that reflected a searching gaze back at a stranger and never let anyone in. His were the eyes of an animal at midnight, caught by the light of the moon.
He read the universe in her gaze. Her frightened gaze.
Her brave gaze.
Without realizing he was doing so, he smiled at that thought. He’d never, in his long, long years, sensed a will quite like hers. Not even in….
Keeran frowned and pinched the bridge of his nose. The world moved around him in a flash, and he jerked his head up to find that he’d transported across the room and was standing in front of the massive marble fireplace that took up one entire wall. On its mantle rested a large painting. He’d covered it up with a black velvet drape long ago.
He hadn’t meant to transport like that, trailing wisps of black shadow behind him as he vanished and reappeared somewhere else. It was something he sometimes did without realizing – when he was lost in himself.
Choosing not to fight it this time, he pulled the cover off the painting. It slid away and pooled at his feet. The image was expertly rendered and exquisitely detailed, depicting a woman with a shy smile and a demure composition. She wore a coy expression, as if she’d just been trapped in a painting by her lover the morning after spending the night with him. Her hair, while beautiful and shimmering, was loose around her shoulders, and her blouse was untied at the neck.
He’d painted it himself long, long ago from the images in his mind. Shortly after, he’d decided he no longer wanted to look at it.
The woman in the painting was a radiant being, small and perfect. And it was her eyes Keeran peered into now. Those eyes… yes, they were so very much like Violet Kellen’s. But they were different, too.
Violet was small and perfect like the woman in the painting, and yet she bravely delved into the crevices and corners where the rest of existence feared to go. There was an inner strength there that called to Keeran. It was a missing ingredient, a vital puzzle piece.
He knew who she was now. He’d done his homework on the little warlock. He’d learned she was searching for the door to his kingdom in order to travel through it and into the Dark. And she was going into the Dark to save her sister.
As if he would let her into the Dark. But that was beside the point.
It wasn’t only her willingness to venture into such places that impressed him. It was her methods, her knowledge. It was her darkness.
That was why their eyes were different. That was what the woman in the painting had been lacking: Darkness.
Keeran thought of Violet’s particular darkness now, that deep and rare understanding of the hidden secrets in things, and it made him feel strange. He leaned against the fireplace and closed his eyes as a wave of something unfamiliar moved through him. It caused his blood vessels to open up and his nerve endings to tingle. He grew warm, uncomfortably so.
What is this? he thought. But he had a inkling that he knew. He was only reluctant to believe it. Because he’d been so very certain that of the Thirteen Kings, it couldn’t happen to him.
“My lord?”
Keeran straightened and opened his eyes. The shiny, smooth black marble around the hearth in front of him reflected his figure, very tall and very dark. His naturally wavy hair fell just shy of his shoulders, jet-black to the point that it seemed to become one with darkness. It framed a hauntingly handsome face, as pale as a vampire’s. His eyes were just as unnatural, reminiscent of an animal’s eyes in the moonlight, mirrored and reflective. Beneath that mirrored shield, they were a deep, charcoal gray ringed in quick-silver. Even he could admit there was beauty in them. But he hadn’t seen the color in his eyes in some time.
The last thing he caught sight of in that telling reflection was the pair of elongated teeth that rested threateningly against his bottom lip.
He forced them back into place.
“What is it?” he asked without turning. His tone was low, and his pitch perfect. But it failed to hide his irritation at being interrupted just then.
“I’m sorry to bother you sir.” Of course, Keeran recognized the voice as belonging to Bones, his servant. “But you have a visitor.”
Keeran ignored his reflection and glanced at the fire itself. The flames were crackling merrily and rising high, but they were unlike normal fire. These flames were blue.
He straightened and turned to face the door. “See him in Bones. And I apologize for snapping at you.” The edges of his words were laced with an accent, though few would be able to place it. It was the accent one acquired from every dark corner of the world.
The servant in the doorway of the office smiled. His given name had been lost long ago to the annals of name history; he’d been a gentleman’s gentleman since men were capable of gentility. Keeran simply called him “Bones” because from afar, the tall, overly thin, and exceedingly pale man looked as though he were composed solely of them.
“No apology whatsoever is needed, my lord. You may snap at me any time you see fit,” Bones assured him in his calm, gentle, but crackingly old voice. He bowed low and left the room, shutting the doors quietly behind him.
Keeran knew who was there, in the waiting room on the other side and down the hall. He could feel the man’s magic. Keeran could feel every kind of magic that stepped into his realm. He could feel everything and anything his shadows touched. The king of the kings had come to speak with him. He even had an inkling he knew what it was about.
He pinched the bridge of his nose again and moved to his desk to peer down at the screen of his laptop just as the door opened once more, and Roman D’Angelo stepped into the room. An unseen cloud of vampire magic wafted in with him. It was indescribable; it was just the way vampires felt. They were the offspring of warlocks and Akyri, and as such, they were wrapped in a miasmic melting pot of their parental power.
Without looking up, Keeran addressed him. “D’Angelo. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Chapter Seven
But Roman didn’t answer. So, Keeran looked up from the desk.
The Vampire King was looking around the room, taking in the décor. He was clearly at ease with himself, unhurried, and curious. Keeran let him look.
The furniture in the office was black. He favored the color, and the dark leather of the plush sofas and love seats w
as well tended by his butler. The marble bookshelves carved into the walls were equally dark, but this oppression was contrasted by the thick white rugs interspersed throughout the room.
“I’ve never been in this room before.”
“You’ve never been in this realm before.”
Roman smiled and finally made eye contact with Keeran. “Fair enough. To put it mildly, you’re not exactly on the map.”
Keeran actually smiled at that. He closed the lid of his computer, crossed his arms over his chest, and leaned against the desk. “What can I help you with?”
Roman moved further into the room and Bones quietly left, closing the door to shut them in together. The Vampire King’s gaze fell on Keeran’s work desk and the electronics splayed across it. “I didn’t realize you could get a connection here.”
This time, Keeran actually laughed. He couldn’t help it. “You’re assuming that because the Shadow Realm is all but invisible and more than a little misunderstood, it’s also outdated.” It was a common mistake. Keeran wagered that only Thanatos, the Phantom King, lived in a realm people knew less about than his own.
Roman gave him a discomfited smile.
“But I assure you, I know what a microwave is, and what it does, and that there are no tiny men singing inside my stereo.” He frowned, then added, “Unless we’re having another outbreak of gremlin shadows, that is.”
After a moment, Roman cocked his head to one side, and the humor on his face melted away. He seemed to look through Keeran.
The Shadow King straightened, throwing up mental walls out of habit and self preservation.
Roman shook his head. “It won’t do you any good. I wouldn’t try to read your mind, Pitch. I know better than that and have no desire to go off the reservation just now. But I don’t need to read your mind to recognize what’s going on with you.”
Keeran’s gaze narrowed. “And just what is that?” What had the vampire come here for? Was he in the Shadow Realm to accuse Keeran of something? “Spit it out.”