She took a deep breath, braced her shoulders and turned. She said, “Dragos said I could go anywhere. I need to go out.”
God knew what the expression on her face revealed. It could not have been good, for the gryphon regarded her with a sober face and concerned eyes, quite unlike his earlier cheer. “Can you tell me what you need?” he asked. “I would be more than happy to get you anything you want—”
Her self-control slipped its leash. She went into a meltdown. She whirled and kicked the door, which resonated with a hollow, metallic boom. The sound was kinda like a bomb going off in your face. It was kinda like finding out you’re pregnant when you shouldn’t be. Yeah, kinda like that.
“I need to go out,” she shouted. She pushed against the closed door with her fists. “I am not all right.” Kick. “I need to
not talk about it
. I need for Dragos to leave me the hell alone.”
Kick
. “I need for you to stop asking me questions and just take me where I need to go. Will you fucking do that for me or not?”
Suddenly Aryal was there. Both sentinels moved to stand on either side of her, their faces turning still and watchful. They moved like soldiers, athletic bodies light on their feet. Bayne’s easygoing demeanor had vaporized. He blanketed her in protective male energy and put a gentle hand on her back. “Of course we will,” he said. “We will take you anywhere you need to go.”
“Bayne,” Aryal said.
“Standing orders,” he said to her. The harpy’s lip curled but she said nothing.
Pia’s breath shook out of her. She turned blindly to the elevator. Bayne guided her inside. He kept a steadying hand on her shoulder while Aryal shifted to stand between her and the elevator doors. She wrapped her arms around her middle, staring blindly at a point between Aryal’s shoulders as the penthouse elevator plummeted eighty stories to the ground floor.
The doors opened and they strode out. Aryal remained on point while Bayne moved so close beside her his shoulder brushed hers while his sharp gaze roamed over the large, crowded ground floor. Then they pushed out the revolving doors into sunshine and a busy New York street.
She paused, one hand pressed to her abdomen. She could hardly believe it. They had actually kept to their word and taken her outside the Tower.
Silently Bayne urged her forward, toward a black Porsche SUV that had appeared as if by magic and idled at the curb. Aryal glanced around with a sharp gaze, tangled hair blowing across her angular face as she slid into the driver’s seat. Bayne opened the rear door for Pia. She climbed in, twisted around and barred him from sliding into the seat along with her. For a brief moment his gaze met hers, and the kindness and concern in his eyes pierced through her internal upheaval. Then he stepped back, closed her door and moved to the front passenger’s seat.
“Okay, Pia,” said Bayne. Aryal’s frigid gaze met hers in the rearview mirror. “Where to?”
“Brooklyn.” As Bayne’s hand went out to hover over the car’s GPS system, she said, “I’ll give you directions as you need them.”
The two sentinels exchanged a glance. “All right,” Aryal said.
The Porsche pulled into traffic.
Pia huddled in her seat and stared out the window as they passed the Fifty-ninth Street subway station. Dragos said in her head,
Pia, what are you doing?
She closed her eyes. It had been too much to hope that the sentinels would keep quiet about their outing. What she wouldn’t give for a little privacy right now.
Don’t talk to me
, she said to Dragos.
You left the Tower
. His mental voice was so quiet and controlled it sent a chill down her spine.
You promised you wouldn’t.
She snarled,
I said don’t talk to me, you son of a bitch.
A heartbeat, and then, his calm quite stripped away, he demanded,
What’s happened?
Shut up. Get out of my head.
Pia, goddammit
. When she didn’t answer he roared,
WHAT THE FUCK DID I DO NOW?
His telepathic shout reverberated in her skull. She clapped a hand to her forehead.
Don’t yell at me like that. I can’t think! Give me a minute.
Her body felt numb, her seat belt the only thing anchoring her in place as Aryal suddenly cut across traffic. How could Dragos even ask her that? How could he not realize that she would know, now that she had made the full change to Wyr?
I’m sorry for shouting at you.
He turned coaxing.
Bayne and Aryal won’t say anything, just that you’re upset and they’re taking you where you need to go. Gray’s worried about you. We can talk about anything that’s wrong, can’t we? Pia, please. You’re killing me here.
Whatever else anyone might say about him, he had a wily wisdom that could slip inside a person like a stiletto. She wiped her eyes and tried to process.
You don’t know . . . anything . . . about what’s going on?
I swear I don’t.
His response was strong and immediate.
Whatever has happened, we can fix it.
Could they? How?
Tell me where you’re going,
he said.
We’ll do it together.
Dragos, just give me the afternoon.
She held on to a door handle as the Porsche hit an open stretch and gathered speed.
I need to calm down and think, and I need to find out some things before I can talk to you.
Silence pulsed. Then, quiet and silken, he said,
I could use your Name to call you back.
She sniffled as she stared out the window. She said,
Threats aren’t a good idea right now, big guy.
Seconds trickled by. Then he told her,
You have the afternoon. After that I’m coming to get you.
You’re giving me a whole afternoon of my own time? Gee, thanks. Big of you, said the part of her that was sarcastic with hurt. She managed to bite it back and stay silent.
Then he was silent too and she was alone.
Without him.
R
une and Graydon stood in Dragos’s office, their hands on their hips as they wore identical scowls.
“At least she’s protected,” Graydon said. “She’s got Aryal and Bayne with her.” He did not look reassured by his own words.
Rune asked, “Did she say where she needed to go or what was wrong?”
“No.” Dragos prowled the perimeters of the room. It was too small, closed in. “She just said she needed time. I told her I’d give her the afternoon.”
Rune said, “You’re really going to give her the whole afternoon?”
“Fuck, no. I lied.”
He threw open the French doors with such violence the glass shattered. The sharp May wind whipped through the room. The fresh air lessened his sense of confinement, but he still vibrated with the need for action.
“The witch isn’t answering her phone,” he said. “Find someone to put a tracking spell on this and do it fast.” He held up a fist. It was the one with her pale braided hair on his wrist.
“On it,” Gray said. He dove out the window and changed in midair.
Dragos and Rune regarded each other. Bayne and the harpy were excellent warriors. They were a couple of his finest.
But an afternoon could be a very long time in New York with the Fae King at large and intent on mischief.
An afternoon like that could be a very long time indeed.
P
ia gave Aryal directions when necessary, but other than that the trip to Brooklyn remained mercifully silent. Soon they arrived at the large Brooklyn Wyr health clinic she had used for the last couple years. The clinic was housed in an unadorned square, concrete-block building in a neighborhood filled with pawn and barber shops, liquor and rent-to-own stores and businesses offering paycheck loans. A fugitive dereliction hovered around the edges of the streets, a sense of something sharp and desperate that huddled in shadowed places waiting to show its teeth after nightfall, but the clinic itself was open during the daytime, and it had a professional, caring staff and a high number of half-breed patients, so it was perennially busy.
Aryal pulled the Porsche to the curb and switched off the engine. Both she and Bayne snapped open their seat belts as they scanned the street.
Pia’s stomach clenched again. “Stay here,” she said.
“Sorry, Pia,” Bayne said. The gryphon moved fast. He was out of the car and standing guard before she could get her car door open. Aryal slid around the front of the Porsche and joined him.
She strangled the impulse to yell at them as she climbed out. She looked from one sentinel to the other. Aryal’s expression was stony, Bayne’s eyes carefully blank. She wondered what they thought of their destination, what kind of telepathic conversation might be going on behind those killer faces.
“Here’s the thing,” she said. She pointed at the building. “Nobody in there knew we were coming. You guys are not going to go in and scare the shit out of anybody who happens to be inside, so just guard the entrances and stay the hell outside.”
Bayne pursed his lips as he considered her. She narrowed her eyes and said, “I could have left without you. I really wanted to, Bayne. Don’t make me regret trying to play by your rules.”
Aryal said suddenly to him, “Take the back exit.”
Bayne scowled. “Fine,” he said. He spun on one booted heel and stalked away.
Pia didn’t wait to hear more. She took off for the front doors. She had almost reached them when Aryal grabbed her by the shirt and shoved her against the side of the building.
“What the hell!” she sputtered. Shock ignited into outrage. Her fists came up to knock the sentinel’s hands away.
With almost contemptuous effortlessness, Aryal held her pinned in place with a forearm across her throat.
“Shut up,” snapped Aryal. “I’m not hurting you. You and I are going to have a talk.”
“Let go!” Pia dug in her heels and tried to yank the harpy’s arm away from her throat. Aryal caught her wrist. Slender steel fingers bit into her flesh.
Aryal gave the street a quick scan with blade-sharp eyes. “You have caused more trouble in the last couple of weeks than a street gang of Wyr-rats running amuck,” the harpy said. “I want to know what the fuck you’re up to now.”
“That’s none of your business.”
“It is my business if it puts Dragos in danger again.”
Pia tried to shove the knuckles of her free hand into the harpy’s midsection, but Aryal avoided her with a neat twist of her hips. “I’m not hurting anybody. All you need to know is Dragos promised me the afternoon.”
“And you believed him.” Aryal barked a short laugh. “Good one, genius girl.”
Had he lied? That hurt. She turned a look of dismay onto the harpy and felt like a fool. Her eyes burned. She gritted, “Take your hands off me.”
Aryal released her so quickly she almost stumbled, standing too close between her and the street, crowding her. The harpy wore a leather jacket that gaped open as she put her hands on her hips. Pia caught a glimpse of the sentinel’s shoulder holster.
“You know, I could get over that cheerleader ponytail of yours,” Aryal said, giving her a smile that could cut glass. “It would take me a while, but I could. I could get over the gryphons losing their goddamn minds for whatever reason and fawning all over you. What I can’t get over is this: you broke the law. You endangered the life of the Wyr lord, and by doing
that
, you endangered all of us, and you haven’t been punished for it. So I’ve got to admit, that one pisses me off.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Pia snapped, even as her gut clenched. She rubbed at her burning eyes. She had felt trapped at the time, but could she have done anything differently to avoid what had happened? She felt off balance and stupid and completely at sea.
“What have I got no idea about—that you may or may not be Dragos’s mate?” said Aryal. “Well, cupcake, that’s the intractable problem and why I can’t just kill you.”
Pia’s hands fisted. She said between her teeth, “No, you can’t, can you?” She shot her fist out with such speed she got past the harpy’s guard. She slammed it into Aryal’s shoulder so hard that the sentinel staggered back. “You don’t have to like or approve of me. You don’t have to agree with Dragos’s decisions. You have to do what you’re told. Did he tell you to bring me back to the Tower?”
Aryal glared at her and remained silent.
“No, I thought not. So you have to back the fuck off. You don’t get to question or intimidate me and demand answers like I’m some kind of grunt under your command because I’m not and I never will be.” She strode forward until she was toe to toe with the sentinel, her body combat tense. “And Graydon’s the one who gets to call me cupcake—you don’t. You haven’t earned it. Now I’m going to do what I came here to do. You’re going to do your job or Dragos is going to want to know why you didn’t.”
Surprise flared in Aryal’s stormy gaze, followed by a thoughtful expression.
Pia didn’t wait to see any more. She turned away and pushed through the front doors of the clinic.
Half a dozen people sat around the waiting room. A few were watching
All My Children
on a TV set high on a wall. She went to the receptionist window. A nurse she recognized gave her a perfunctory smile. “Afternoon. What can I do for you?”
“My name is Pia Giovanni. I need to see a doctor or a nurse practitioner,” Pia said, keeping her voice quiet so other people couldn’t hear. Her face and neck muscles ached with tension. She twisted her hands together. “Dr. Medina knows me. I’m sorry. I don’t have an appointment. I—” Her eyes glittered. “I’m afraid it might be an emergency.”
“Oh, honey,” said the nurse with quick compassion. She handed Pia a Kleenex and motioned her through the doors and into an alcove with a sink, a chair and a weighing scale. “All right, what’s going on? Are you sure you should be here and not in the ER?”
“I don’t know. There’s been so much happening.” She swallowed. “I’m a half-breed Wyr so I have an IUD. You know, the one with copper, not the one with hormones, because of not being quite human. And I’m in this new relationship with a full Wyr, and I managed to change last night—”