I have never had a job consume me. Never had a job where the life and wellbeing of others rested on my shoulders. Then again, all the jobs I’ve had have been meaningless. Just one paycheck after the next to keep me from having to ask my parents for money. Once I left for the day, I no longer worried about it. I was free to go out and let my hair down. Literally. Dance until my feet hurt. Drink until I got a nice enough buzz to help me forget about the day. But now, my life seemed consumed with fear and concern and a glaring sign of my own inadequacies.
And all my decisions affected someone else.
‘What if’ had been playing on repeat in my head since I left Marta’s house—all the different chances and opportunities whirling through a movie-like montage with me at the center. No matter how I looked at the situation, no matter how many ways people tried to convince me otherwise, I knew I was at fault. And with this new mission, if I didn’t get my shit together, I could be responsible for someone else suffering again.
I stopped at a crossroads, looking at my two possibilities. Going to Devlin’s seemed like a wise decision. After all, all I had to do was get dressed in the morning and I’d be at work. But then there was Alek. If I could just shake this overwhelming need to be around him, could somehow not be attracted to him, then everything would be fine. Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. My feelings for him ran deep, burrowing their way into my heart and soul.
So, I drove home.
I parked in my lot and climbed out into the heat. Glancing up at the sky, I noticed a red haze had settled over one of the clouds. The sudden desert-like dryness in the air reminded me of the conversation I’d had with Hathor earlier. She said she’d missed the desert, but she also said it took a great deal of heat to restore power. Had she lost some saving me? And if so, was she trying to restore it? Funny how all the questions I had wanted to ask had become lodged in my throat when we encountered each other in the convenience store parking lot. But now, I had no way of finding out unless I hunted her down.
Music filled the neighborhood. The bar down the street was still open, giving the last few patrons the illusion that they didn’t have anywhere to be tomorrow morning. I used to be among the partygoers. Now, it was one long day after another. Don’t get me wrong—I really did like working with Devlin and the team—but sometimes, on nights like this, I missed my old carefree life. Living in a constant state of oblivion is comforting, especially after you learn the monsters are real and walk among us.
The streetlights blazed, cutting a swath of light into the darkness. As I walked toward my building, a strange, uncomfortable feeling settled over me. I peered into the night, remembering the last time I’d trekked to my building, and spotted Set’s silhouette standing in the rain, watching me. While there was no rain now, the same sort of uneasiness crept up on me. I should’ve run inside and hidden. But I knew there was no hiding from a being who could appear anywhere.
I studied the empty street, expecting to see him. As I stood there, peering into the night, two cars raced by. My heart slammed into my chest, and I sucked in a frightened breath.
Dammit. I was standing here, working myself up into a fright.
I shook my head and turned away. Something pulled my gaze to the sky again. I’d never seen a fat red cloud before. The longer I stared, the more it seemed to expand. Before I could avert my gaze, it shot across the sky, quicker than what I’d believed possible. I stilled, mouth agape, and stared at the phenomenon. A meteor? No, that couldn’t be right. Meteors existed in space. Not in the night sky over Tulare.
I took a step toward my building and a blast of heat rushed down and blew across my body. I gasped as the waves of warmth rolled across my skin in a torrent. It felt as if I were being cooked alive. My knees buckled and slammed to the ground. I tried to pull air into my lungs but couldn’t.
The phoenix wings unfurled slowly inside my head. My protective mark was coming to life. Power surged through my veins and adrenaline rushed inside my head, cutting off all the surrounding sounds. With one mighty beat of the phoenix’s wings, the current of heat stopped—leaving me on my knees, covered in sweat.
I shifted from my knees and sat down on the asphalt. My lungs still burned, and while I wanted to go inside to get some water to ease the sting, I also needed a moment to catch my breath. I chanced a look at the sky. The cloud no longer hung over me. Just the usual fat rain clouds still holding onto their water.
The need to act weighed on me, but I needed time to think. My mark wouldn’t have reacted if someone or something hadn’t tried to attack me. Yet, the nature of the assault made no sense and took little effort to stop. Which meant, while magick in nature, the heat wave could have been a simple inquest or probe. My skin wasn’t cooked. My hair hadn’t been singed.
And I was not going to solve this sitting on the dirty ground.
I slowly climbed to my feet, dusted myself off, retrieved my purse, and continued making my way inside.
Maybe Devlin would know since he was an elemental mage.
I stopped at the wall of mailboxes near Mr. Wan’s apartment and stared at my box, drumming up the courage to open it.
Packages weren’t the only things Ronald sent. He also sent long, flowing letters recounting in explicit detail our intimate encounters—giving me a glimpse inside his mind of the few times we had sex. They read like journal entries and, recently, had gotten more and more macabre to the point he had started recreating our time together in a fantastical, fictional way that always ended with me lying in a pool of blood.
I swallowed the fear and opened my mailbox. The mailman had stuffed it to bursting. I no longer got mail for the previous tenant, but I got enough junk mail to wallpaper my apartment. Mr. Wan set a trash can near the boxes when everyone had complained, loudly, near his door about the unwanted ads.
After shoving the junk mail inside the trash, I studied the three letters Doc had sent. His handwriting had an elegant, almost old-fashioned, way about it. I could picture him sitting at a desk, quill in hand and bottle of ink by his side, as he wrote out the madness inside his head—thinking his ramblings perfectly sane. How had I not seen this?
Sitting in his office at Tribec, reciting the many oddities I’d noticed during my interview, he’d tried to convince me not to leave. While doing so, I’d seen a glimpse of mania in his eyes as he pounded back glass after glass of Asbach Uralt brandy like it was water. I’d dismissed that look because of his obvious hatred for his family and believed his drinking was an act of rebellion toward them. He’d told me in one of his earlier letters that the reason he drank so much that day was the urge to kill me had been too great, and the only way to suppress it was with alcohol.
He’d drunk even more on our first and only date. And the sex had been intense and brutal. This revelation had drilled home that I’d barely escaped death.
One of the bulbs in the hallway leading to my apartment had blown out, creating a pool of darkness near my front door. I stopped, letting my eyes adjust as I scanned the small space. I’d left the gun Devlin gave me at his house. I didn’t want to take it to Marta’s and have one of the kids find it. When no immediate threats presented themselves, I continued to my apartment, hurriedly opened the door, and rushed inside, only to be deposited into more darkness.
I scraped the walls with my keys as I fumbled around the plate trying to turn on the light—heart ramming inside my chest. The click of the light being switched on echoed around the room, and my apartment flooded with illumination. I blinked a few times to stop the sudden sting in my eyes and just stood there, waiting for the fear to stop its march through my body.
Why the hell was I so damn scared?
“Okay, Nicole, you’ve never believed in the boogeyman, so don’t start believing in him now!” I yelled at myself.
Except I had a real-life boogeyman: Set.
We still needed to find out who had freed him from the Ark and what ritual they used to do it.
During the confrontation with the Stewart family, he’d pulled me out into the rain and tried to convince me to give him my magick. When I refused, he’d dug into my chest to take it. Ezra and Hathor had stopped him in time. I’d spent days healing from what should have been fatal wounds. I hadn’t seen or felt him in weeks. But I had caught his acrid desert scent a few times when I’d been home alone.
I sniffed the air to make sure Set hadn’t been here, then pushed off the wall and went into the kitchen. After drinking two bottles of water to ease the dryness coating my throat, I went into my bedroom and retrieved the shoe box under my bed. Fifty letters lined the inside, all but five of them unopened.
I stuffed the latest three inside and shoved the box back under my bed. I was doing that a lot lately. Hell, all my life—shoving the things I didn’t want to deal with out of sight, so I could avoid the reminders.
I needed so much damn help.
My copy of The Land Guarded by People of Colour sat on the dresser along with the letter from Steve it came with. Louis Badet had learned enough about the Old Ones and the creation of Tulare that he’d written a record of it.
They found him dead soon after the missive, once believed to be a poem, had been written. Steve had given me a copy that Luisah had entrusted him with a week before his death. I had refused to open his letter to me until five weeks ago. If I had, I would have known all of this sooner. And would have definitely figured out that Jordin Cisco was an Old One.
It would seem I had a pattern of not reading letters.
It felt strange being home alone. I’d grown used to the sounds of others moving around in the background. Their daily routines became a soothing sort of white noise that put me at ease. I used to crave my solitude—believed that it was the only way to keep myself grounded. I still hated crowds. But I’d learned recently, I hated being alone even more.
I stared down at my unmade bed, wishing Alek was there to help warm my sheets. To hum his melody while he held me in his arms. And the only thing keeping that wish from coming true was me.
My gaze travelled around my small room, taking in the half-hearted attempts on my part to decorate. I’d painted the walls a cream color, only to change my mind and add a green accent wall later. It didn’t look right with my dark burgundy sheets nor my dark wood furniture. It was if I couldn’t make up my mind what I wanted the room to look like.
The clothes on the floor of my closet caught my eye. I went over and started picking things up. I really needed to get rid of most of these things, especially the clothes I bought for Tribec. I wasn’t a business dress suit sort of woman. And my current profession would call for me to dress in leathers and boots. But Tulare was too damn hot for that shit, so I’d stick with jeans and tank tops. I would, however, get one of those superhero belts Devlin, Rachel, and Kara wore.
When my clothes were all hung up, I looked around the room and noted a thin layer of dust coating my dresser. Might as well get that out of the way, too.
An hour later, I’d cleaned my entire apartment and was still no closer to sleep. Fuck I was stubborn. I knew I wanted to go back to Devlin’s, and all I had to do was walk out the damn door, climb in my car, and drive over there.
No. I could do this! After a quick shower, I got in bed and turned off the lights, only to end up turning them on again. I lay there, unable to sleep, debating my options. My sole reason for staying away was fear of me and Alek getting any closer than we already were. Fear that I would just give in. And then, when I was happy, he would leave. Because I knew I would end up fucking it up, eventually.
“I can’t keep doing this to myself,” I said aloud.
My phone dinged, and I picked it up and read the text.
Hey…
Alek.
I jumped up and put my clothes back on.
After grabbing a few items from my drawer, along with my basket of laundry, I turned off my bedroom light and headed out, reasoning with myself it would be easier for me to get up in the morning if I was already there. And it had absolutely nothing to do with him sending me a text. Yeah, it was bullshit. But it sounded nice in my head.
On my way to the front door, the acrid scent of sand filled my nose.
I froze.
A shimmering silhouette filled the space in front of me. Adrenaline flooded my body, and my heart pounded in my chest as my mind went through a series of ideas on what I should do. When it finally settled on, ‘Get the fuck out of here,’ the smell dissipated, and the silhouette vanished as if it had been pulled back out of existence.
I got the fuck out of there.