He cleared his throat and looked morose. “I was in Vincula for a month after your sentencing. I needed to thank you for saving my baby girl, but had I known you’d be released, I would have waited.”
Rory reared back. If she found out another person went to prison for her, she would lose it. “Why would you do that?”
“You deserved to know that people on the outside admire you,” he said with enough conviction to make a knot form in her throat.
Rory looked back at her friends, who stayed quiet. “Did anyone else go?” she demanded.
Kordie shook her head. “Not that we know of.”
“Thank theSeraphim,” she muttered. “If I go back, don’t come for me.” She made eye contact with everyone, daring them to object. “Bruce, what can I get you to drink?”
He opened his mouth to protest, but Keith cut him off. “Don’t bother. She’s rich now and won’t take no for an answer. Killing pays.”
Kordie slapped her boyfriend in the stomach, Bruce smirked, and Rory blanched. “A whiskey and dark cherry soda please,” he replied.
“Petal pusher?” she asked Sera, and the woman grinned with a nod.
As Rory stood waiting for a bartender, she glanced around. She’d seen some customers at the underground market before, but to her knowledge, none of them were black souls. If they had been, they wouldn’t be here, and her kill list would be longer.
“What can I get you?” The bartender placed a napkin on the bar, but his smile wavered when he saw Rory’s face.
She looked away and rattled off her order, and the man’s voice shook a little when he asked for her mystic card. When she handed it over, his eyes scanned her information quickly. It was amusing to see the relief flit across his face.
Handing back her card, he smiled kindly. “Coming right up.”
She looked over her shoulder and jumped. “You scared the shit out of me,” she hissed at Lauren, who stood right behind her. “I thought you stayed with the others.”
Leaning leisurely on the bar, Lauren eyed the crowd. “Get used to it.”
Once back at the table with everyone’s drinks, they pushed twotables together to fit their large group, and Rory slid onto a chair next to Dume.
She sat quietly as the group slipped into easy conversation as though nothing had changed, and gratitude filled her heart, along with something else. An unexplainable longing.
Her mind drifted to her faceless friends in Vincula, and the pang of sadness she felt surprised her. Lauren looked at her knowingly and leaned over. “Enjoy your life here, Rory. Everyone wants that for you.”
She nodded and turned back to her friends, listening as they talked about recent events she had missed. She felt like an outsider looking in, and they couldn’t ask her about what she’d been up to because she didn’t remember.
After a few weeks of being back, it would feel normal again.
At least, she hoped it would.
9
Rory stared at her ceiling,begging sleep to pull her under. When it was clear that would not happen, she sat up to grab her new sleeping potion. Potions were her least favorite things to put in her mouth, and that’s saying a lot. But if she wanted to see Not-Bane again, she needed to choke it down.
The instructions on the bottle said to fill the cap once and chase it with water. Tiptoeing downstairs to avoid waking Lauren, she slipped into the kitchen, took a shot of the potion, gagged, and then chased it with water.
When she settled into bed, her eyes closed, and she quickly drifted into the shadowy abyss.
“You came,”a man’s voice said behind her. Rory whipped around and came face to face with Bane, or Bane’s look-alike. She still didn’t know.
Looking around, she noticed they were in the woods near the old treehouse she’d found with Dume and her sister as a kid. It was aplace filled with memories, and she walked toward it, touching the old wooden ladder.
“What is your real name?” she asked without turning around.
Goosebumps spread across her skin as he approached, his dominant aura wrapping around her.
“You called me Bane before. What’s changed?” Curiosity laced his words, as did something else she couldn’t decipher.
