“Not sure what there is to talk about with you,” he said, brushing me off, his tone threaded with annoyance. “This is between Oakley and me.”
“Is it?” I nudged. “Because I’m pretty sure she made it clear she wants to be between all of us.”
A ribbon of powdery sugar wafted through the darkness.
Got ya.
“I suggest you shut your mouth before you end up pinned to one of these trees and I go get them myself.”
Guess someone isn’t ready to be honest yet.
“You forget I can see how you feel even when you don’t want to acknowledge it.”
The hand gripping my shirt tightened its hold. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I sensed the lust coming from you when she showed us that illusion.” Unlike Oakley, Atlas’s lust was less powdery and more like a chocolate chip cookie straight from the oven. Warm. Decadent. “You liked it.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He cleared his throat. “I was only feeling that because I was fucking the witch I love, who happens to be Desire-blessed.”
“Oh, she was full of desire. And you.” I winked in the darkness at my own humor. Someone had to make this impatient guy less uptight. If we had any chance of getting them out of The Casket, we’d need to keep our heads on straight. “It’s okay to admit it was hot to see her with us.”
The cavern began to rattle, shaking beneath us, and the hand clutching my shirt tightened once again, bunching the fabric in his fist, as if worried he’d lose me.
What the fuck was this?
“If it fires you up and our witch is satisfied, who really loses in that situation? No one,” I continued, trying to steady my own feelings more than anything else since I had no clue where we were going.
The floor beneath us began to loosen, like we were sinking deep into it.
“She’s notourwitch,” Atlas deadpanned. “She was mine first.”
“What are we, toddlers?” I asked, chuckling in the darkness. “What are you so afraid of?”
The ground shook again, settling wherever we were.
“We’re here,” he said, releasing a breath, like he’d never been more grateful to be done with…whatever sort of magic this was.
“Never thought to let us use this when we had to go to headquarters?”
This would have been much less annoying than flying mortal airlines between states.
“Only Archons and a select handful have access to these transporters. No one else is supposed to know about them.” He pressed a button, holding his finger on it until a door slid open to the basement of headquarters. “One of the perks of the job.”
“Of course it is.”
I mean, it made sense. It was easier to get between territories with some secret system. But it would have been nice to share the perks when we’d been away those few weeks to work on the case.
We walked for a while, turning down hallways and moving through stairways until we got to Atlas’s office. It was huge, overlooking the bustling Salem District. Highways tangled around each other, swerving off into different neighborhoods. Arbor Sanctum perched up in the distance, where Oakley and Hazel had grown up. Billboards and skyscrapers poked up within the cityscape—including a large one for Pierce Protections that I recognized by the large silver star on its side.
Atlas sat at his desk, pulling out drawers, looking for something. “Explain to me where Oakley is exactly and what is The Casket? What goes on there? We have only been told things on anas-neededbasis.”
“The Casket is where in-depth interrogations are done…” I swallowed thickly. “Torture.”
“Are you telling me that the mother of my son is being tortured right now?” A crimson swirl lashed out like a smoky snake, wrapping around us.
“I don’t know,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Until we get closer, I won’t be able to sense her emotions. And even that could be hazy because I won’t be able to pinpoint that it’s Oakley until I have eyes on her.”
“How do we get there?” He laid the blueprint of the building in front of me. “What’s the layout?”
