I bristle, but he’s not wrong. I have dirt on him, and he has dirt on me. Our swords are poised at each other’s throats. A single wrong move, and we’re both dead.
“If Emi doesn’t want to help,” I warn, “you’ll get someone else.”
He doesn’t hesitate. “Deal.”
I shift forward, offering my hand. “Allies,monsieur?”
Like a Victorian Era gentleman, Brontë curls his fingers around mine. They’re warm and calloused and unexpectedly comforting. My heart stumbles into an uneven rhythm as he lifts my knuckles to his lips and presses a soft, almost reverent kiss to the knobs of bone.
“Allies,” he murmurs against my skin, “Petit Diable.”
MISERY
Brontë
“What’s in the box,monsieur?Booze? Drugs? Random body parts?”
“Technically?” I tuck the package into the crook of my arm and swipe my ID badge from the dash. “All three.”
Poppy’s eyebrows elevate as she tugs off her helmet and sets it on the seat of her sleek silver Kawasaki Ninja parked in the empty lot beside my car outside the medical examiner’s office. “That’s…cryptic.”
I snicker. “Were you going to say creepy?”
“No.”
“Lie.”
“I’m not lying.”
“Mm. Another lie.”
Her arms cross, her brow flatlining. “What makes you think I’m lying?”
I greedily take the invitation to drink her in. The setting October sun gilds her silhouette like an ethereal aura, and I’m reminded of why she’s been living in my mind like a fever dream for weeks. Her bittersweet scent is still lodged in my nostrils from the night we made our bargain. Her fear, too, is still seared behind my eyelids.
For weeks, rage has been coursing through my veins. Rage at myself, for aiming a loaded gun at her head. For giving her a reason to fearme. If anyone deserves to be skinned alive and slapped ontoPride and Prejudice,it’s me.
Poppy isn’t the cold-blooded killing machine I first thought her to be. She’s aperson,with friends she loves and an entire city she’s trying to protect. She isn’t a villain or a vigilante destined for evil. She’s playing the cards she was dealt to the best of her ability while ensuring her world of shadows doesn’t eclipse the rest of us.
Since that night, cold regret has suffocated the hot wrath. Shame’s knife has sunk deep into my guts, tormenting me with the memory of those baby blues shining with terror in the face of death.
“Your voice goes up an octave at the end,” I drawl as I step past her. “It’s impressive, actually, for anyone to be so bad at lying.”
With an impressively dramatic eyeroll, Poppy sighs. “Why are we here, Brontë? Your message was incrediblycryptic.”
Well, she’s pissed.
Très bien.I’d rather her ire than her terror.
My grin drops as reality banishes the surreal haze I seem to lose myself in around her. “You’ll see. Did Emi kill the cams?”
She checks her phone and nods. “We have fifteen minutes.”
“Waste not,” I say, heading for the back entrance.
Poppy watches with curiosity as I swipe my badge to unlock the door then pans her gaze over the empty and lightless office, following as I lead us toward the descending stairs. When I drop off the box at Quinn’s station in the forensics lab, she lobs me a quizzical look.
“Payment for a friend’s favor.”
