The thin, worn-out carpet beneath my bare feet felt rough as I paced across the small living room.I stopped when I reached the window, took a steadying breath, then turned around."Canyon wants me to bring him a token my mom hid in her jewelry box.I found it last night.It belongs to Garion.”I wet my lips, hesitating, and then added, "Garion is djinn.”
I waited for Christian’s reaction, but there wasn’t one.No widening of his eyes or tilt of his head.No question or surprise in his expression.In fact, if he hadn’t frozen so completely, I might have thought he already knew about Garion.But I’d seen him nonreact like this before.It was like he placed himself in a fossilized shell,unexisting for a moment while he absorbed and sorted and rearranged facts and truths in his mind.
“I need to figure out how to outsmart a fey,” I continued.“I came up here to make a plan and…”
Christian grimaced, sank into the couch cushions, then tilted his head back until he was staring at the ceiling.
“What?”I asked.
His chest rose as he filled his lungs with air, then he sat upright again and met my eyes.“Kennedy, your plans aren’t plans.They’re challenges you throw at the universe to see if it bites back.”
I stared at him a good three seconds.Then I laughed and punched his arm.“That’s not fair.”
His echoing smile cut through the tension in the room.I could breathe easier, and the dark storm cloud that seemed to be forever attached to me faded until it was almost gone.
“Luck is the only reason you’ve survived any of your plans these past few months,” he said, his eyes still a bright blue.
“It was carefully planned luck, thank you very much.”It felt good to smile, to temporarily release my anxiety.At the same time, these easy moments scared me.Every time I let my guard down, every time I thought things might finally be getting better—less dangerous and more routine—the world decided to blindside me.
“Any ideas yet?”Christian asked.
I shook my head.“Nora says I have to kill Canyon.Garion says I have to give Canyon the token.I convinced Garion to give me time to think of something, but the best idea I’ve had is to give Canyon the token, then immediately steal it back.”
Christian snorted.“Sounds easy.”
“Piece of cake,” I said, my voice flat.I plopped back down on my spot on the couch and stared at my laptop.The last article I’d read had been about fey bargains, and the only possibly useful information it contained was that once a bargain was called due, the debtor had until dawn to fulfill it.I had no reason to believe that claim was any more accurate than the ridiculous ideas posted to other sites.Nearly every search I tried took me to very inaccurate mythology and more than a few fantasy novels.If there were any answers online, they were buried in so much superfluous information they were impossible to find.Likely, that was intentional.The vampires and werewolves had teams of people whose jobs were to mislead the public.I guess I’d either thought the fey wouldn’t do the same thing or that I was smart enough to find the truth despite the smoke screen.Clearly I’d overestimated my Google-fu.
“You’ll come up with something,” Christian said.Then, very deliberately, he met my gaze.“Ifyou get good sleep and you eat.”
“I am.”My protest was an automatic response, nowhere close to the truth, and of course he saw straight through it.
“The first thing you said when I asked what was wrong was that you shouldn’t have fallen asleep.And this?”He picked up the frozen dinner I’d left on the coffee table.“Even if it counted as nutrition, you only ate a corner.”
I could only give him a guilty half smile.His mouth thinned before he grabbed the not-so-frozen meal, walked to the kitchen, and dumped it into the trash bin.Then he began opening cabinets.
I turned back to my laptop.The Mail icon at the bottom of my screen caught my eye.Frowning, I clicked on it.I had thirty-six new emails.I’d never been an inbox-zero type of person, but I did occasionally mark everything as read.That’s what I’d done when I sat down to research the fey and djinn.Thirty-six was a high number of emails in just a few hours.
I skimmed the subject lines.Then reskimmed them.
What the hell?
“Something wrong?”Christian asked, opening the fridge.
“No?”I’d expected two or three emails from paranormals asking to book a room.Jared must have had an extremely effective communication strategy.Or there were far more vampires in the world than I’d thought and Arcuro had kept them away.
I did some rough math in my head.We hosted anywhere from twenty to thirty vampires a month despite having rooms enough for twice that number.Multiply that by twelve, and on the high end, around three hundred vampires stayed at The Rain each year.Many of those were repeats though.Arcuro deliberately kept the lists small to give himself more influence and power.To make his invitations rare and coveted.
Asshole.
“It looks like something’s wrong,” Christian said.
Staring at my screen, I sucked my bottom lip between my teeth.“Not wrong, exactly.It’s, um, another one of my plans.”
He stiffened.
“I had Jared spread the word for paranorms to submit an email with their info and background if they want to stay at The Rain.”
He shut the fridge with a sharpthunk.“You did?”
