The phone line was quiet for a moment. “Well, Bastian is really the manager there.”
“I’m tired of folding towels, and I’m sure the owner could put in a good word for me.”
“Val, take me off speaker.”
Valiance did as he was told, prepared to get an earful.
Instead, Violet only said. “Keep her, please. You don’t meet a girl every day who can just fall into violence and still be confident enough to backtalk the Prima of a city.”
“She doesn’t know—”
“Keep her. Sounds like you’ve got some pretty good backup. But if you really need help, send up a flare, and I’ll be there.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Valiance hung up but looked down at the phone in his hand.
“What didn’t I know?” Esme asked.
Valiance licked his lips as he prepared his words. “Violet’s not just a coffee-shop owner. She’s the most powerful Wanderer in the region. Possibly in the country.”
“And?”
“You just told her she needed to get you a job.”
“And?”
Valiance smiled. “You’re just nothing that I’ve seen before.”
“I’m nothing anyone has ever seen before apparently.” Esme flashed him a smile as she continued down the highway.
ESME PARKED ALONG the curb. It was an older neighborhood she had never been to before. Just another example of her universe expanding this evening.
“Welcome to my second home,” Valiance said as he pointed to the shop across the street. Emilio’s Antiques was a restored home in a long line of restored homes turned into shopfronts. If this looked like a normal shop, she wondered how many other places her grandmother had dragged her to were also run by things that went bump in the night.
Suddenly, Valiance turned to stone in the passenger seat next to her.
“He’s here, isn’t he?” she whispered, as if Mondrian could hear them.
“Yes,” Valiance said. “I wasn’t able to feel him like this before. Forgot how much of an effect we have on each other.”
“Which means he knows we’re here, too. So much for the element of surprise.” She sighed. “What about me? Can you feel me in your head since I’m supposed to be magical or something?”
He looked over at her. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “My head’s a little funny around you anyway.”
Esme bit her lower lip and suddenly found the edge of her jacket very interesting. This was now officially the worst best date ever.
Valiance turned to her in the car. It was a bit comical, his long legs twisted up in the front of her VW, as he reached down by his boot to unlace a bowie knife from his calf. “When we get in there, your only goal needs to be getting your abuelita out of there.”
The skin tightened along her shoulders as his perfect accent caressed the familiar word.
“Do you understand?”
“Yes, but how?”
“You’re going to knock on the door.”
Esme laughed. “You can’t be serious.”
“Completely. You knock on the front door, and I’ll go in through the back door.”
“And if he’s got both covered somehow?”
“You hide. I’ll fight. Now take this.” He shoved the leather-sheathed knife at her. “He will get violent. Ultimately, he wants me to come back with him—”
“Which means he doesn’t care about me and abuelita.”
“Exactly.” Valiance sighed.
“So we protect ourselves and leave you to the wolf?”
Valiance looked into her eyes. “I’ll survive.”
“I don’t want you to survive. I want you to live with all your parts in place. I’m not leaving you in there like a coward. If I’ve discovered anything about myself in the past four hours, it’s that I am not a coward.”
Valiance blurred before her, and his lips were upon hers before she could finish her thought. His lips were warm but hesitant. He slid his hand up to hold her jaw but didn’t deepen the embrace.
Her body hummed like a fluorescent bulb. Energy danced along her skin with the novelty of being kissed in the front seat of her car like a high schooler, something she hadn’t actually had done as a high schooler.
She kissed him back, taking in more of his soft lips, tasting the slight copper of him. She burned the taste of him into her brain, the warmth that pulsed against her. Their warmth, she thought again. Her bravery had brought him back to life.
He was the one who pulled away, and when he did, she knew he was different, changed from the moment before to the moment after. Everything she’d ever read about warriors flashed through her mind, and she had half a notion to give him a token as he went off to war.
Valiance licked his lips, leaving them shiny in the moonlight and completely distracting. “You knock on the front door. I’ll go in through the back, and we’ll meet in the middle.”
Esme looked ahead and tried to focus on the plan. Knock on the door and sneak in. But as she shifted in the seat again, his arm brushed against hers, and all she could think of was his lips on hers and how she wanted to do that again.
“Esme?”
She could feel his breath on her neck. “Yes?” She gulped as she stared at the steering wheel.
“I think you’re glowing.”
She looked down at her hands, held out before her. They looked like her hands, all normal and small. “I think you might be seeing things.”
“I don’t think so.” He turned the rearview mirror toward her, and she could see what he had seen. Like someone had sprinkled her with candlelight, there was a slight illumination to her skin. And there was a sparkle in her eyes that wasn’t normally there.
Her gaze snapped over to Valiance. “What does that mean?”
Valiance shrugged and put the rearview back where it had been. “I only know one fairy.”
“And does she glow?”
“Only when she’s happy.”
Esme looked away but fought the urge to bury her hands in her face. “So much for being dark and exotic and not pathetic at all.”
“Dark and exotic has nothing on you.”
Esme tried to bite back the smile that accompanied the butterflies in her stomach. She didn’t think that one human could feel so much in one moment. Fear for her grandmother, embarrassed that he could see right through her, and complete admiration for the man in the seat next to her.
But then again, she wasn’t all human, so maybe this was just par for the course.
“We’d better get going.”
He hurried out of the car and swooped around to the driver’s side to open her door for her. He offered his hand to help her out. She knew that she shouldn’t be smiling, but she did as she slid her hand into his. It was warm, soft, and gave her just enough support as she exited.
It was a horribly outdated gesture, but effective. It gave Esme the distinct feeling that this was still a date. There might still be some hope, providing they survived the night.
Chapter Six
VALIANCE STILLED HIMSELF at the back of the building and drew the darkness around him. It was an old talent he hadn’t used in a while and the power, the glamour, was hard to hold.
He locked his eyes on Esme. She’d taken a position at the front of the building and was leaning against the wall, her head against the brickwork as she prayed. He watched her cross herself and close her eyes. Her rose lips muttered a prayer
For the first time in a century, Valiance prayed, too. It wasn’t to God or anything. It was just to the wind and the dirt. He didn’t know any blessings or anything. He kept it simple. Keep Esme safe. If you gave her this power, then keep her safe so she can learn how to use it.
The wind carried Esme’s floral scent to him, and for a moment, he thought maybe the wind had heard him. Maybe the wind was at their back. Maybe the earth was a fan of grandmothers as well.
Esme let out a long breath and fluttered her eyes open to look back at him. Despite his cloak of darkness, Esme waved and gave him a thumbs-up. With a soft smile, she slipped around the front of the building.
She was going to be something amazing, and every ounce of him wanted to be there when it happened.
Valiance squared his shoulders and turned the hilt of his sword over in his hand before finding a grip. He walked softly up to the back door and surveyed it. Carefully, he reached out and touched the door handle. No electrical charge. Not iron. No precautions.
Did Mondrian want to get caught? Was a part of him asking Valiance to kill him to get it over with? There was only one way this was going to play out. One.
He closed his eyes and listened, with a capital “L,” for Esme to knock on the front door.
The sharp rap on the door echoed through the building. Valiance counted to ten before he turned the knob and pulled open the door.
The explosion lifted him up and off the ground. The flames burned his jacket, and his fair eyebrows were forfeit.
The chain-link fence at the back of the property cradled him like a wiry catcher’s mitt, and he rolled forward onto the ground. He landed on his knees, and his lungs smoldered as he tried to catch his breath.
Mondrian wasn’t going to give Valiance those brief seconds to recoup. He charged toward Valiance, his sword slashing out before him. Valiance had moments to flatten himself against the ground to avoid the edge of the blade.
Valiance grabbed Mondrian’s leg and jerked him to the ground. Mondrian crashed, and his sword was knocked out of his hand.
Valiance shook the ringing from his ears before he went on the offensive. He jumped to his feet and darted to where his own sword rested in the long grass. The sword vibrated in his hand as if agreeing to his purpose.
It took Valiance one thought, one flash of a second to let his power consume him, let his energy enhance everything about him, heal his burns, and adjust his eyes to the dim lighting in the yard. The thought that this energy was Esme’s fueled him further; that he was doing this for her made him stronger
Mondrian still searched for his sword. “Didn’t peg you to come alone. Thought you’d have that p**sy Prima of yours.”
Valiance waited. His brother might have taken the wrong path, but he still deserved an honorable death. “You’re stalling. You always get mean when you stall.”
“I’m not stalling. I’ve got ’til dawn to convince you to come home.”
“My home is here.”
“Our place in Atlanta is amazing. The old family seat, Valiance. It really would be Thomas Valmont coming home.”
Atlanta. The memories were so far gone that Valiance’s mind fogged trying to recall them. For a moment, he saw himself happy. He saw himself with his family, with his grandmere on the porch, her soft sweet smile as she hummed into her needlepoint.
Valiance shook the memory from his head. His grandmere was dead. The house had been burned in one bout of violence or another. There was no home for him there anymore because there was no family there anymore. He wasn’t Thomas Valmont anymore.
Just as Valiance was about to say that, Mondrian slammed into him. Valiance doubled over the man’s shoulder and rammed the hilt of his sword into Mondrian’s spine. The man cried out and crumpled beneath him.
Valiance kept hold of his sword as the fight became a twisted mesh of swinging arms and wrestling legs. Once they regained their footing, Valiance always had the upper hand; his sword did not fail him. Mondrian’s grunts punctuated the heavy staccato of metal on metal.
Valiance spun Mondrian’s sword off into the darkness, only adding fire to his fury. As Mondrian set up for another attack, Valiance watched as his friend, his brother, disappeared and was replaced by a monster. Valiance would mourn later, only after he’d put him out of his misery.
Valiance cried out into the darkness as he ran at the man. There was another exchange of blows. This demon was fast, but Valiance was smart. He tasted blood, smelled blood, but his energy, her power, was a fire that ran through him.
The sound of a car door distracted Valiance for a moment, and in that one moment, Mondrian pinned him to the ground. His lips were pulled away from his sharpened teeth, and his eyes burned with a dark fire. A kind of dark Valiance hadn’t seen since, well, since the demon he and Violet had taken out six months ago.
Until Violet, he had never known true darkness.
Until Esme, he’d never known true light.
“I will never go back.”
Mondrian’s Master spoke. “What have you got that’s worth dying for?”
For the first time, he was honest with his brother, and the wind and the stars that shone down on him. “Hope.” Hope in her. Hope in his city. Hope that someday he could be that man.
“Pfft,” the Master said. “Hope is a city in Arkansas.”
“Hope is a thing with feathers.”
Mondrian’s blade flashed above them. The sword made a sickening thud as it sank into the back of Mondrian’s neck.
The man reared up and spun on his invisible attacker.
Esme screamed and ran.
Valiance jumped to his feet. He grabbed the handle of the sword and pulled it out of Mondrian’s neck. The force pushed Mondrian off balance, but he still stumbled in Esme’s general direction, his claws lashing out into the night, his head dangling by his windpipe.
Using gravity and the sheer need for this to be over, Valiance swung the blade over his head to deliver the last strong blow to Mondrian’s neck.
Blood sprayed the small yard as Mondrian’s body fell lifeless to the ground. His head rolled but found a resting place in a soft patch of weeds.
Valiance’s chest heaved as his heart raced. His arm dangled at his side as he looked at the still body. For the second time that night, he found himself praying. Keep him. Take his energy back into the earth and remember him, remember what he was.
That’s when Esme started screaming.
Valiance dropped his sword and rushed to her. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”