Shadowfae (8 page)

His eyebrows lifted, and he stuck his hand back in his pocket, awkward. “I was thinking of rogan josh and a mango lassi. Is that what they all say?”

I blushed, warm. Him, awkward. With me. Imagine that.

The thought of spicy food made my mouth water, and I had to admit the thought of the company did, too. Absently I rubbed my wrists, where the thrall bangles already itched and moaned. I should have been thinking about how I was going to fool DiLuca. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

He shrugged. “Angelo’s finding someone for me. It can wait.”

I wondered what he was doing for Ange in return, and decided I didn’t want to know. “But—”

“But they itch?” He grinned, cheeky, stunning. “Sure. So does a mosquito bite. Doesn’t mean you have to scratch it right away.”

Pleasure glimmered in my heart at the prospect of defiance, even for an hour or two. I mustered a grin in return. “Okay, then. Your shout.”

6

I
stretched out on tasseled white floor cushions, my stomach pleasantly full, the wonderful aroma of Indian food still drenching my taste buds. Oil wicks burned in copper lamps by the ceiling, the flames flickering gently in the breeze that fluttered through the open doors, and our low linen-covered table was littered with empty copper rice bowls and a ceramic handi smeared with the remnants of our glorious rogan josh. We’d eaten with our fingers, scooping up yellow saffron-stained rice mixed with toasted cumin seeds and chunks of spiced lamb so tender, they melted in my mouth, flavor exploding.

It was late. We were the last ones here, and the place was closed, the rest of the cushions tidied away and the tables wiped. The fat little owner seemed to know Rajah, who chattered away with him in Hindi or Urdu or whatever it was and convinced him to let us stay.

I’d been to the ladies’ and washed my face, so at least I didn’t have ruined makeup caked to my lashes and black streaks down my cheeks, even if my face was still puffed up like . . . well, like my best mate had just died.

I flexed my bare feet, aware of Rajah watching me, dark and inscrutable, his long legs relaxed as he stretched out next to me like a big lean cat. He hadn’t tried to hit on me, or touch me. We’d had an ordinary, funny, charming conversation about the food, the cricket season, this never-ending summer, the places we’d lived, and the times we’d seen.

He’d talked with glittering animation about Lahore before the Raj, when the Mughal Empire ruled the world from the gleaming marble court of Shah Jahan and the demon lords fought spectral battles in warm lamplit corridors. His dark eyes danced as he described intrigues with poison-fanged efrits and black-hearted djinn, and he laughed with me as I reminisced about Havana in the fifties, watching Sinatra in the ballroom at the Hotel Nacional with Meyer Lansky and Charlie Luciano, back when hellbound gangsters still had manners and knew how to show a girl a good time.

I hadn’t mentioned Nyx, and Rajah hadn’t asked, content to let me say what I wanted to say. He didn’t ask why I’d been crying. He didn’t even mention last night, but he didn’t seem embarrassed or avoidant. It was like he’d forgotten about it. But I hadn’t. I still felt him on me, the delicious heat of his body, his fingers clenched in my hair, his lips hungry on my throat. And I still saw that brass soultrap bubbling with angry Valenti energy, and Kane’s clueless expression when I told him about it.

I drained the last of my lassi, the milky liquid cool and sweet in my throat. “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”

Rajah shrugged, easy, licking icy kulfi remnants from his spoon. I liked watching his mouth, the way his lips moved, sensual, deliberate. Even the split and the swelling bruise just made them more riveting.

I cleared my throat. “What are you really doing with Nino’s soul?”

He paused for a moment and put down his bowl, considering, averting his eyes. “If I were to say
‘odium, primordium, terminus, animus,’
would it mean anything to you?”

My heart skipped, and I laughed, nervous. I knew the story, had read the words carved into my bangles a thousand times. I’d never let myself think about it too much. “That’s a myth.”

“Is it?” He looked up, capturing my gaze with his, and such longing burned there that rapture awakened moaning in my soul. My skin flushed and tingled, and surely the air around me shimmered, but he didn’t seem to notice or care. “Have you explored this city, Jade? You’re so young, I wish you could taste this air like I do. It’s fresh, clean, new, there’s power brewing in the sky like a storm. Even the water stinks of magic. Haven’t you noticed the fae glow brighter here? The banshees’ song is sweeter? Vampires go longer without blood? And the rapture . . .” He licked his lips, shifting on his cushions, and laughed, a handsome flush staining his skin. “The rapture is like it used to be, when I was young. It takes me places I barely remember. Surely you’ve noticed everything’s different here. That’s the taste of freedom. If it’s anywhere, it’s here.”

Sweat burned my forehead, slick, my pulse swelling. Freedom. To cast off this thrall, to leave Kane and his never-ending power games and go anywhere in the world I wanted, do what I wanted, be with whom I wanted. To die in peace, without hell’s coarse whispers in my soul. Surely the magic words were a myth, and freedom an impossible dream.

I swallowed, my voice hoarse. “How? How do you do it? Tell me.”

He leaned close to me, tempting, but calculation glinted in his eyes. “Why?” he murmured. “Why should I? Why should you even want to be free? You’re glorious, smart, captivating. Why not live for a thousand years?”

“To end it.” The words rushed out, thoughtless, and I caught my breath, mesmerized by the potential and the sight of his precious lips, only a few inches away. No matter that I’d been wondering exactly the same thing about him. “To be rid of it all. Why else?”

“Why else?” He laughed again, lost, and took my hand, pressing it to his warm chest where his heart beat, rapid and strong. Brightness animated his face. “To live, the way I was meant to. A mortal life, a family. Not to spend ten centuries dead at another’s whim, my heart not my own. I’m sick of watching people die around me.”

“But . . .” I couldn’t concentrate, not with my hand there, his flesh hard and tense beneath my fingers. “But without the thrall, you’ll die soon enough. Why not just wait it out, if you’re so desperate for mortality?”

He tightened his grip, sliding deft fingers between mine. “The year 1615, Kane cast these bangles on. Do you see any tarnish? Any cracks? What do you think happens after those thousand years?”

I swallowed. “Kane said I’d be free to die.”

“And you believed him.”

Horror twisted my guts. Kane always seemed so matter-of-fact, too ingenuous to carry off such a big lie. Truth is, sometimes I forget he’s a demon, and on that one I had believed him.

My hand started shaking, and Rajah gripped it tighter. “I won’t take that chance,” he insisted. “I’ve nothing to lose by trying. Four words, four souls. It can’t be worse than this.”

Longing swelled my throat. It sounded so easy, the way he said it. But nothing was that simple. “You’d damn four innocent people to be free?”

He brushed his lips over my knuckles, leaving a hot, damp trail. “Wouldn’t you?”

I thought of all the people I’d already sent to hell. Men and women, old and young. All willing, all seduced by the rapture, their souls bleeding out in their final deadly ecstasy. Most of them on Kane’s shit list through every fault of their own. Liars, murderers, greedy parasites with no care for those they crushed to make their way and no kind thought for anyone but themselves.

Four more seemed insignificant.

My blood burned, and I pulled my hand away, letting my head fall forward to hide the hunger surely apparent on my face. My hair brushed his arm, tangling over the thrall bangle, and I swear I heard him catch his breath. “Tell me. What must I do? Those words, they’re nonsense to me. How did you know it was Nino you needed?”

“Odium.”
Rajah’s hot whisper tingled my scalp alive. “That one was easy.”

“Odium,”
I repeated softly, closing my eyes. “Hatred. I don’t understand.”

“Neither did I until a few weeks ago. It’s the moment, get it? Not just the person. You have to pick the moment when they truly hate you. I’ve probably missed a thousand chances in four hundred years. But in this city, you can see it. It shines around them like—”

“Like an aura.” I could barely hear my own words for the thudding pulse in my head. In my mind I saw Killian Quinn, face twisted, pistol cocked in his thick hand, his body glimmering with swirling gray light. If anyone truly hated me with every straining fiber of his body, it was Quinn.
Odium.
The first key to my freedom, within my reach.

Rapture burst within me, flooding my nerve endings with hot sensation. I gasped, my muscles rippling, tension wrenching deep inside, like an imminent orgasm that just wouldn’t break.

“Jade? Are you okay?”

I didn’t dare look at his face, his swelling lips. My hair touching his arm was bad enough, his spicy scent thick and delicious on my tongue, every slight movement of his body so close to me an agony. But it was Quinn I burned for, vile Quinn I longed to subdue, crush, devour with every seductive wisp of glamour I could muster. I didn’t care that I loathed the thought of touching Quinn, of letting him touch me. I wanted his soul, and my mouth watered.

Rajah’s warm fingers brushed my chin, the briefest of caresses. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen. Come on, I’ll walk you home.”

Sensation shot through me where he touched me, along the skin of my throat and down to my breasts, a promise of pleasure and release. I jerked away and scrambled to my feet, my face hot. “I can find it, thanks. I’m not lost.”

“I know that. But you’re not going alone, not after what Angelo did to you. He might be watching for you.”

That was kind of sweet. I felt sorry I’d snapped at him. But I didn’t want Rajah at my place, not tonight, not while I shuddered and yearned. Too easy to embarrass myself. I tried to step around him. “I’ll be okay.”

He blocked my path, stuffing his hands in his pockets with a disobedient smile. “I can argue until the sun comes up. If you want any sleep tonight, you’ll have to submit.” Still I hung back, and he grimaced. “Believe it or not, I understand what you’re going through. Look, no hands. Three feet away at all times. I’ll walk you to the door and disappear. I won’t even kiss you good night. Good enough?”

Like he would have wanted to kiss me good night, if I let him? I scraped a hand through my hair and sighed. “I’m sorry, okay? It’s just—”

“I know. You don’t have to explain, remember?” And he stood back and held the door to let me out ahead of him.

This part of

Brunswick Street

was closing up this late on a Sunday night, the restaurateurs and café owners switching their lights out and locking steel grilles closed over their windows. The pub on the corner was still open, the smell of beer drifting, the band’s thudding bass vibrating onto the footpath. A drunken troll hunkered in the gutter at the traffic lights, snoring, his horned head lolling on one leather-clad shoulder, his curled black toes twitching.

Heat haze shimmered the air above the road, the concrete tram tracks sparking as a tram clunked past toward the city. I walked along, sweating and silent, my arms crossed, my blood cooling only slowly. My hair stuck to my neck in strands, itchy, and my fingertips stung with the need to touch someone, anyone. Another shower for me when I got home, this time a cold one.

A pair of seagulls pecked squashed chips and fallen figs off the concrete on the corner of CarltonGardens. HugeMoretonBay trees loomed in the dimness above sun-browned lawn, fruit bats circling in the streetlight’s halo. A sunflower-hued water sprite hung from the streetlight, swinging lazily from one translucent long-fingered hand, dripping sweet-smelling silver droplets from her rippling wings onto the footpath. Her soft song floated on the still air like dust, lonely. I thought of Nyx, and my heart ached.

I glanced across at Rajah, who was keeping his word, walking on the footpath’s outer edge, not looking at me. I realized I didn’t know where he lived, and I wondered how far he was going out of his way for me. The least I could do was say something. “How do you do that, anyway?”

“How do I do what?”

“Disappear.”

He shrugged, sweat gleaming on his arms. “Barely. It’s a mortal trick I learned from a
jaduwala
in Kabul. A magician.”

“You learned magic?” I was intrigued in spite of myself, dread tightening my stomach. I’d dabbled in a bit of witchcraft once, when I was young and stupid.

“It’s what got me into this mess. I was irresponsible. I lusted for more power than I could handle, and I got careless. A student of mine . . .” Rajah’s eyes stormed briefly, dark. “He watched me, I let him get too close. He stole everything I had, my power, my reason, my dignity. He traded me to Kane in return for some tricks.” He shook his head, damp black hair sticking to his cheek. “I never wanted immortality. It’s funny how things work out. How about you?”