“Poppy?” Brontë peels back. “Are you all right?”
No, I’m not all right. I thought staying in bed for a few days while nursing a concussion would’ve lessened the chances of another panic attack happening.
But I was clearly dead wrong.
The admission is prancing on the tip of my tongue. I should tell him about my losing battle with anxiety. Not to necessarily confide in him, but to warn him that my slipping mental state could become a liability neither of us can afford while on these covert, high-stakes missions.
“I…” My brain falters as I glance over his shoulder and spy a familiar name scrawled across a box: Bonaparte. “This is getting too weird.”
He follows my stare, grunting in agreement. “Up jumps the devil.”
Unlike Margot’s box, Sebastian’s is empty.
How quaint. Another dead end.
As Brontë drives me home, his focus periodically shifting from the road lathered in dawn’s darkest blues to the Leviathan poppet in my lap, my phone buzzes. I croak a zombified, “Hello?”
“Long night,printsessa?”
My world goes gray. “Nik?”
Brontë brakes too hard at a red light, aiming an apologetic glance at my scowl.
“I heard Kai is dead,” Nik says as casually as if speaking of the weather. “I heard it was you and your sidekick coroner who did it. Is this true?”
No point in lying when that’s exactly what he’s expecting me to do. “It’s true. He left us no choice. Is this a courtesy call before you take your shot, too?”
Nik chuckles, the sinister sound scraping over my skin. “Friday, midnight. Meet me at V and V. You remember which room?”
A coffin unearths from the darkest corner of my mind, cracking open and showing me scarlet blood oozing into gray eyes blazing like silver flames as I choke the life out of my phone. “I remember.”
“See you then,printsessa.”
Click.
I stare at my cell, the screen blurring. Brontë says something, but I barely hear him. His voice is muffled, like I’m underwater. I look up to see him parking us in the lot at Beelzebub’s and turning to me. His hand lands on my bouncing thigh, unease in his frown. It’s almost like he canseethe stress eating me alive.
“Talk to me, Poppy.”
I shouldn’t ask him to help. I don’t need it. I’ve been on my own for so long, serving at Papa’s side with no one else as my sword and shield. I’m no damsel, but even I can admit when I’m scared.
Twice, I’ve faced the Volkovs. Twice, I’ve almost died.
Nikolai is the deadliest of them all.
“What are you doing Friday night,monsieur?”
PHEROMONES
Brontë
Ifuckinghatenightclubs.
They open past a normal bedtime. They’re literally deafening. They’re expensive with no reason to be. They’re filthy, sticky, sweaty; perfect breeding conditions for germs and viruses and diseases to mingle and spread. Not to mention, they’re the public hunting grounds for the true predators of our world: rapists, trafficking mules, murderers.
Voodoo & Velvet is crawling with them like maggots on rotting fruit. I see them now, men and women alike eyeing the crowd hungrily from the shadows deepest in the corner booths and private tables, like they’re starving wolves and the rest of us are fresh meat.
The Kimber in my pocket grows heavy as I resist the urge to slaughter them all. Skin them alive and make them watch me sew their flesh onto the perfect book as they sit in their own blood and shit.
