Wicked Misery (Miss Misery) (26 page)

“Irrational? Is that what that was?” His voice smiled.

I slammed the Pop-Tarts package on the counter and shuffled toward the window, keeping my back to Lucen. Stupid me had pulled my hair into its habitual ponytail this morning, which meant the flush on my cheeks would be blatant. Damn that half-Irish heritage that made my face into a tomato at the first hint of discomfort.

Not that it mattered since Lucen could read my emotions.

But I wasn’t jealous, so that didn’t matter, either.

I needed more coffee. Or perhaps a lobotomy.

The prepaid cellphone rang, making me jump but sparing me from forming a retort.

Lucen gave me a quizzical look as I picked up. The phone number was unfamiliar. “Hello?”

“It’s Steph. Are you available around noon to talk?”

“Yeah, sure. What’s wrong with now?”

“I’m at work. Hold on.” It sounded like she put the phone down and spoke to someone else. A minute later, she picked up again. “I don’t want to talk from home because I’m paranoid, and I have to give you something ASAP. Can you meet me at that café by the hospital? You know the one I mean, right? We’ve eaten there before.”

I checked the time. Noon was forty-five minutes away. Barely enough time to create a decent glamour and travel halfway across town. “Oasis, yeah. I remember it. What do you have to give me?”

“I don’t know. But it’s better you have it now than me. Got to go.”

And with that most unhelpful information, Steph hung up. I frowned at the phone. “She sounds nervous.”

“Who?”

“Steph.” I took the remaining Pop-Tart before Lucen could eat it, and my debt to him grew by one toaster pastry. Repayment was going to be a bitch. “She wants to meet at noon.”

“Why would she be nervous?” Lucen peered at me over his mug, his face taut.

“How should I know? Because she’s planning to meet with a fugitive?”

“I don’t like this. I’ll be going with you.”

Peachy.

“I wish you’d done more with the disguise,” Lucen muttered as we got off the subway.

I tucked a curl of carrot-red hair behind my ear. “Steph sounded nervous. I didn’t want to freak her out with a totally unrecognizable face.” Truthfully, I wasn’t as adept with the magic as I needed to be in order to create a better disguise in such a limited time. But Lucen didn’t need to know that. Nor that I’d accidentally erased half my nose in the bathroom and it had taken me ten minutes to create a new one that didn’t look like it belonged in a bad sci-fi movie. “Besides, with the new charms Eyff dropped off, plus the two of you, I’ll be fine.”

Lucen shook his head as we emerged into the sunlight, and stuck his hands in the pockets of his leather trench coat. I didn’t understand how he could take the heat, but neither he nor the other satyr who joined us seemed to mind. They were both dressed almost identically.

Gi was the satyr with the lovely effeminate face I’d met several days ago. Devon remained with Scumbag Pete, so Gi was our added backup today. He had a deep, melodious voice totally at odds with his face, but which made my knees weak.

Like Lucen, he didn’t think I was doing enough to protect myself. “You should have insisted she come to Shadowtown.”

“No. I already asked her to do that once, and I’m not doing it again. She may never forgive me as it is.”

The hospital where Steph worked sat near the border of The Feathers. Up and down this strip, intermingled with the usual retail stores, were a variety of restaurants that specifically catered to mixed-race groups.

“There it is.” I pointed toward the hole-in-the-wall café done up with a desert motif.

“Hold on.” Lucen reached out to grab me back. I tensed. His hands hovered not even an inch from my wrist.

“I’m not catching anything that screams trap.” Gi lowered his sunglasses a touch and took in the street with a sweeping gaze.

“Of course it’s not a trap. It’s Steph. For the love of dragons, she helped me break in to Gryphon headquarters.”

Lucen sighed. “Yes, but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious, little siren.”

I strode to the intersection and waited for the light. “Aw, you actually sound like you care.”

“Of course we care,” Lucen said, coming up behind me. “We’re trying to prevent a war.”

“Right. Stupid me.” I stretched out with my gift but detected nothing out of the ordinary anxiety, which was hardly a shock. If the satyrs couldn’t find anything odd, I couldn’t.

The inside of the restaurant revealed nothing more. Oasis called itself a café but was more like a diner with pretensions. Steph must have bought her lunch at the to-go counter because she stood near the cash register with a buzzer in her hand, waiting for her order to come up. Lucen and Gi fortunately decided they’d hang guard by the door while I wove through the lunch line and absurd tropical décor to reach her.

Steph continued to stare at the door as I approached, clueless. Icky, icky spearmint crawled along my tongue. I didn’t think she’d been this anxious even during her jaunt into Shadowtown. Frightened, yes, but this was more diffuse. Worry instead of fear. It wasn’t her fault that I had to taste the spearmint, but I took some delight in tapping her on the shoulder and making her jump. “Like my new ’do?”

Besides the hair, I’d altered me eye color, removed the freckles around my nose and added a good twenty pounds to my frame. Despite what Lucen thought about my disguise, it wasn’t bad.

Steph’s eyes opened wide. “Jesus. Finally got your charms, I see.”

“Yeah, they’re pretty potent. So what’s up?”

“Something weird. I got questioned by the Gryphons yesterday.” She danced from foot to foot, taking in Lucen and Gi by the door. She wasn’t the only human giving them wary glances.

“Sorry.” I winced. Damn it. If they suspected Steph had anything to do with the break-in, I’d be bearing some serious guilt. I already carried around so much it was amazing I could climb out of bed in the mornings. The last thing I needed was to add getting my best friend arrested to the burden.

Steph shrugged as if it were no big deal, but I could tell she didn’t mean it. She jiggled her lighter around in her hand. “From what I could gather, they’re questioning everyone known to have ties to you. I’m simply more suspicious because they discovered I work in IT. But that’s not what’s weird. Here.”

Steph pressed the lighter into my hand, and only then did I realize it wasn’t a lighter. It merely resembled her lighter in size. It was a thumb drive.

I waited for her to take her lunch from the guy behind the counter while I examined it. “What’s this? I mean, besides the obvious.”

“Beats me.” She stepped away from the counter and dropped her voice even lower. “After I got back home the other night, I did a search for your name in the database in case I’d missed anything at first. And I found something.”

“That’s the weird?”

“The weird is that it’s a file, heavily encrypted, but your name is in the file name. Your name, the word ‘Philadelphia’, and the number five. That’s the only bits I could read. So I downloaded it.”

I flipped the thumb drive over. “And put it on here?”

She nodded. “It’s not the only one. After that, I did some real digging and found four more similar files.” Steph stuffed some napkins into her bag and a packet of ketchup. “I don’t know what they are, and I don’t want them on me. The Gryphons didn’t say anything telling when they questioned me, but I think someone was watching my building when I left for work this morning. I’ve got the feeling they’re not done with me. If they come back with a search warrant…”

“Got it. So these are the only copies?”

“Yup, and they closed the hole in their system soon after I downloaded them.”

I wet my lips, which had gone dry without me noticing. Okay, Steph was right. This definitely constituted weird. Almost as weird as what I’d seen in the basement of Purgatory last night, only more troublesome because it involved me.

“Thanks,” I said, pocketing the drive. “I think.”

Steph snorted. “Right.”

“Excuse me.” A jittery customer wormed his way to the pick-up counter. I started to move aside when I caught the first inkling of deception settling on my tongue. Steph’s anxiety rose as well.

She gave me a slight shove. “I think that’s the same guy who—”

I was already going, but by then it was too late. The plain-clothed Gryphon grasped my wrist. “Jessica Moore, you’re under arrest. Do yourself a favor and don’t make a scene.”

My heart skipped. Steph swore. So she’d been right to be paranoid. I could taste her shock and fear—icy and tart. She hadn’t been expecting this any more than I had.

Instead of doing something useful like planning an escape, my frantic brain tried to fit the pieces together. The Gryphon must have followed Steph. Maybe even tapped her phone. How else could he have seen through my disguise?

The thoughts raced through my head in under a second while the world around me appeared to slow down. Somehow I’d unconsciously activated my speed charm. My wicked strong speed charm.

Across the room, someone screamed. The sound snapped me into action. Lucen and Gi had noticed my shot of panic and were plowing through the restaurant. I twisted to the side, and the room blurred with my motion. My fingers dug into my pocket, checking that the thumb drive was safely buried. Then, as if in slow motion, I turned and decked the Gryphon who had my arm.

He fell back and collided with a table, but didn’t let go. Glass shattered. I yanked on my arm and suddenly it was free. There was a great crash of wood, and the Gryphon hit the floor. Lucen was dragging him off me.

“Go!” he yelled.

I charged through the gaping crowd, aiming toward the glowing exit sign in the rear of the restaurant. Fear propelled my feet past the kitchen and the bathrooms. I slammed into the door and stumbled into muggy, outside air.

And into a circle of waiting Gryphons. Shit. How could they have gotten here so fast? I’d been late for my meeting with Steph, but we hadn’t talked for more than five minutes.

I skidded to a halt, certain my identity was plastered all over my glamoured face. Where were Lucen and Gi? The Gryphons closed in around me. They were armed and deadly with their guns and salamander fire-forged blades. Me, they’d keep alive. Any preds who interfered, though, they’d have no qualms about dispatching.

I couldn’t take my eyes from those blackened, shiny blades. Not that I cared about a pred, but I’d never forgive myself if one of those swords took down Lucen.

“Jessica?”

We were in the back alley behind the restaurant, and the Gryphons had brought a van. A dingy parking garage was in front of me, and on the left the alley opened onto a street in The Feathers. I wet my lips, trying to decide. Back through the restaurant, or keep going?

“Jess, come on. We know it’s you.”

The sound of my name a second time brought my charm-hazed world back into focus. Bridget stepped forward, holding a pair of handcuffs.

I balled my hands into fists. I wanted to lash out at her with my magic, wrap it around her head and bring her to her knees. The power buzzing in my throat begged for release. But even if I could ensnare Bridget, it would do me no good to trap her and not the three others.

Dragon shit on toast. Four Gryphons out here. Plus one, and possibly more in the restaurant—that would explain why Lucen and Gi hadn’t come out yet. Was I really such a threat that I needed five or more Gryphons to bring me down?

If I actually deserved that much magical firepower, I’d have found a way out of this mess by now.

The world was spinning. Bridget was talking, and my ears couldn’t process the words as slowly as she spoke. I pinched myself.

“Jess, come quietly, please,” Bridget said. “Explain to us what’s going on. Give us a blood sample. We know you’re not an addict. We can clear this up.”

My feet scraped sandy asphalt as I shifted left. There was a small hole in the circle that way, but I doubted I’d get far. Sure, I had my charms, but they would have charms too.

“So, you think an addict’s behind this?” Where the hell were my bodyguards?

“Yes, we do.”

“Liar.” Honestly, I had no idea if she’d lied or not. My blood pumped too fiercely. Panic clouded my judgment. I couldn’t concentrate on all this at once. I took a step backward and fumbled for the door handle.

“Jess, don’t—”

The rest of Bridget’s command was lost to me as I threw open the door and it hit the side of the brick building with a clang. I darted back inside and bowled over a waiter who was hiding near the kitchen door.

Chaos had descended upon the restaurant. Humans—customers and staff—were fleeing toward the main entrance. Two Gryphons, wielding their blades, blocked Lucen and Gi from reaching me. Each of the satyrs had grabbed a human and were using them as shields to move in my direction. Gi had a gun, and he aimed it at the woman he held in front of him, not at the Gryphons.

Neither of them noticed me amidst the chaos. I snatched a chair and swung it into the back of the closest Gryphon.

His partner—the one who’d originally tried to arrest me—turned my way as the first Gryphon went down. I heard screaming from behind, recognized Bridget’s voice among the others and knew I was surrounded again. But this time I had the satyrs’ help.