Chase the Dark (20 page)

Piper backed silently into the bedroom and straightened. She bit her bottom lip, feeling vaguely uncomfortable—like a voyeur. At the same time, her opinion of Ash softened a little. It was nice to know he could grin like a normal person, play around with his pet, and even show affection. He wasn’t as cold as he appeared. Maybe that meant he wasn’t as dangerous either . . . but she doubted it. She’d already seen him in action.

Ruthlessly burying the mental image of that profile page and its condemning number five, she shook her head to clear her expression and banged the door loudly as she strode out of the bedroom.

For some reason, she was expecting a change in Ash when she appeared—an embarrassed flinch or an accusing glare. Instead, he glanced over casually, still sitting on the floor with Zwi in his lap, and gave Piper’s appearance an assessing onceover. Apparently she passed, because he nodded and returned to staring out the window.

She stood there stupidly, not sure how to react. Most of her wanted to throw her hands up and stalk away, screw him and his stone-faced reticence. But then she thought of his grin when he’d faced off with Zwi. There was a nice guy behind those walls. Somewhere.

So she crossed the room and sank to the floor beside him. He gave her a questioning look.

“How’s your stomach?” she asked. “I never thought to ask if you healed all right.”

“It’s fine,” he said. His expression darkened slightly. “Thanks to Vejovis, of course.”
The bastard.
He didn’t say it, but she could hear the words in his tone.

“He was weird,” she commented. “Is he immortal?”

Ash shrugged. “Who knows? Either way, he’s ancient with unrivaled healing skills. I was knocking on death’s door by the time he showed up but he still managed to bring me back.”

“Same as the last time, huh?” she said softly.

His jaw tightened. He didn’t look at her. “He told you about that?”

“He said he saved your life once before but you hated him for it because . . . because he saved the wrong life.”

Ash said nothing.

She could tell he didn’t want to talk about it, but curiosity got the better of her. “Whose life didn’t he save?”

His jaw flexed again and he looked away as Zwi chirped in a concerned way and head-butted his stomach.

“My sister,” he whispered.

Piper sucked in a sharp breath. “I’m sorry.”

Ash stared at nothing, seeing memories. “If that bastard had left me and taken her instead, she wouldn’t . . .” He shook his head sharply. “It was a long time ago.”

“That doesn’t make it hurt less,” she murmured. “How long ago?”

He shrugged. After a moment he realized she was waiting for an answer. “A couple years,” he muttered. “Maybe a few more than a couple, I guess. I was fifteen.”

Fifteen. So young to have been prepared to die so his sister could live.

“How old was she?”

An even longer pause this time before he answered. “Thirteen.”

She nodded sadly and looked down, studying the bruises on her knuckles from punching ugly haemon faces. She touched one of her brutally short fingernails and heard a long-ago voice chiding her for chewing them. Knowing he didn’t want to talk about it, she offered a painful memory of her own in return. Yay for sharing.

“My mom left when I was eight,” she said. “She walked out and never came back after a big fight with my father. She died a year later. I never got to say goodbye.”

A bit of the stiffness receded from his posture at the change of subject. “You didn’t see her at all after she left?”

“No. She didn’t come back and I had no way to contact her. She never called or anything.”

“That must have been some argument.”

She nodded. They sat in silence, lost in dark thoughts. Then with a crash and yelp, Lyre careened through the doorway, his sexy outfit spoiled by his obvious fear.

“Uh, guys?” he panted. “We’ve got company. Squad of prefects just broke down the main door.”

. . .

By the time they dumped all the file folders except the one about the Gaians in the oven for burning, grabbed all their stuff and hid it under a bed, and snuck out the door, the prefects had searched the entire main floor. There were ejecting all the non-fugitive residents into the street as they went along.

Piper, Ash, and Lyre rushed silently down the hall toward the far staircase—but not fast enough.

“Stop,” Ash hissed. “I hear them in the stairwell.”

A rumble of voices at the other end of the building warned them another group of prefects had reached the second level.

“Do we fight?” Piper whispered, remembering Ash blasting a dozen prefects out of his way.

Lyre shook his head. “When I was scouting, I saw two more prefect cruisers and a SWAT van on this block alone. If we put up a fight, we’ll have all of them on us.”

They turned and rushed back down the hall, but now they were caught between two groups. Jumping out a window wasn’t an option if there were prefects in the street. What were they supposed to do?

Half in a panic, Piper grabbed the nearest door. It was locked. “Damn it,” she hissed.

Ash grabbed the handle. Magic sizzled in the air. He yanked the door open and Piper swore again. It was a utilities room. A big furnace type thing and a bunch of pipes filled almost the entire space except for a spot right in front of the door.

Voices echoed up the hall and they heard the prefects banging at the first apartment.

Lyre threw a frantic look over his shoulder then dropped to the floor and crawled underneath the boiler thing. It was barely large enough for him to squeeze his shoulders through.

“Hide,” he barked over his shoulder. “And lock the door again!”

With a wild look at Ash, she backed into the tiny square of floor space. Ash squeezed in with her and pulled the door shut. It locked with a loud click and they were submerged in almost complete darkness. Only the flicker of a pilot flame deep in the furnace offered any light.

“Ouch,” Piper hissed when Ash stepped on her foot. “Where now? We can’t just stand here. They open the door and we’re caught.”

“There’s an open space at the back of the room,” Ash whispered. “Can you get to it?”

She turned awkwardly and almost fell over. Ash grabbed her shoulders, his elbow hitting something metal with a loud clunk. He would have a bruise from that. His body was warm against her back and already she was starting to sweat from the airless heat in the room. At the far end, beyond a tangle of pipes and equipment, she could in fact see a dark blob that might have been a shadowy square.

“You first,” she whispered. Voices outside the room were drawing closer.

“Hurry up,” Lyre rasped from his hidden spot under the boiler. “Curse Moirai’s luck, this is uncomfortable. And hot.”

She and Ash did a sort of slow dance turn until she was pressed against the door and he was able to squeeze between a set of pipes and climb over some other metal junk as he worked toward the back of the room. Piper gingerly followed. Her heart pounded in her throat and it was so dark she could hardly see what she was climbing over. When she reached the “open space,” she almost cried from frustration.

It was a tiny box of an opening with piping running everywhere and only enough space for Ash to cram into the corner. Where was she supposed to go?

A male voice yelled something, so close the prefect could have been standing outside the door. The boiler hummed too loudly for her to make out the words, but the authoritative tone was unmistakable. With no other option, she squeezed into the space and folded up pretty much on Ash’s lap. There was nowhere for her legs, so she stuck them under a jam-packed cluster of pipes that were only six inches above the floor. Her boots hit something hidden underneath that made a crispy crunchy noise like dry straw. Terror swept through as she waited for a horde of rats to swarm her legs but nothing happened.

“Well,” she muttered, “this is awkward.”

“Don’t complain,” came Lyre’s voice from off to her right, slightly breathless. “I think I’m getting heat stroke under here.”

“Quiet,” Ash hissed.

Piper bit her lip and listened. There were voices right outside the room. The door handle jiggled as someone tried it. Another jumble of dialogue, then the voices moved away. Ash relaxed—and Piper blushed as every one of those muscles she knew he had flexed under her.

She licked her lips and tried to think unsexy thoughts. Since when did she have this problem with Ash? She’d thought Lyre was her kryptonite.

In spite of the massive discomfort of being scrunched in a stuffy room full of hot metal pipes with spider webs everywhere, she couldn’t ignore Ash behind her. Like,
right
behind her. As in, her back was pressed against his chest, his breath hot on the side of her neck, his thigh flexing under her like he was uncomfortable—which he probably was. And, somehow in spite of the icky musty room, she could smell him: a delicious, warm, fresh scent like sun-heated mountain air. How could he smell so damn good at a time like this?

For a solid five minutes, they sat in silence listening to the distant sounds of the prefects dismantling the apartment level. She wondered what they’d make of the oven full of magic-roasted papers. Maybe that kind of thing was normal around here. At least the prefects didn’t have any magical trackers or they would have walked straight to correct door instead of searching each suite.

Her train of thought was interrupted when Ash abruptly jammed his hands under her butt and heaved her a couple inches off his lap so he could straighten out his leg. He settled her back down again with a sigh of relief. She took several deep breaths and tried to pretend her heartbeat hadn’t kicked up to a gallop—or that she was inappropriately aware of his hands, now resting casually on her waist.

“So,” Lyre whispered conversationally, “you do like your closets, don’t you, Piper?”

“Oh yeah,” she hissed back, heavy on the sarcasm. “This is my favorite one yet. Machinery is so totally my thing.”

Lyre snorted. “I think my favorite closet was the first one. Remember?”

“Remember what?” Ash asked. His breath on her neck made her shiver. She didn’t want to be thinking about past closets right then.

“I zapped a haemon with aphrodisia,” Lyre explained. “Sort of riled up Piper a bit by accident.”

“Lyre!”

“What? It’s the truth.”

“You don’t have to tell everyone.”

“Ash isn’t everyone.”

“If that was the first closet,” Ash interrupted, “what was the second one?”

“Ah, well.” Lyre paused. “Not as interesting.”

“Lyre was riled up too,” Piper mocked.

“Was not!”

“Then why did you kiss me?”

“I—well—um.”

Piper bit her lip. Thinking about kissing was not a good idea. Maybe Ash thought so too, because he shifted a little under her. She bit her lip harder.

“So is this the third closet then?” he muttered. “Or were there more?”

“Uh, no, this is the third.”

“No kissing happening in this hellhole,” Lyre grumped. “If I stop answering, I’ve passed out from the heat. Just FYI.”

They fell silent as the voices came closer again. These prefects were awfully chatty considering what they were doing. Piper strained her ears. Her leg was starting to itch annoyingly. She twitched it ineffectually; she couldn’t reach it to scratch when everything from her knees down was under those damn pipes.

The prefects were now having their discussion right outside the door. The handle jiggled again. Now that they’d searched the whole floor without any luck, they were checking the less likely places.

Ash had gone rock-hard with tension but Piper was having trouble focusing because it felt like something was tapping her leg above the top of her boot and she was about ready to scream from the itchy, tickling feeling. She jerked her leg but the tapping merely moved to her knee. Momentarily forgetting about the prefects, she shoved backward until she’d squashed Ash flat into the wall, creating just enough extra space to get her one knee out to scratch it.

Her knee came out from the under the pipes—and she screamed.

Ash clapped a hand over her mouth at the last second. Her muffled squeal was covered by the crunch of metal as the prefects broke the lock on the door. Ash clamped his other arm around her middle like a vice.

“Hold still,” he hissed in her ear.

The door to the utility room flew open.

An electric charge of magic rushed through her, coming from Ash. He whispered something in another language. The shadows around them thickened and darkened—but not enough to hide what was sitting on her leg.

The hugest, freakiest spider she had ever seen was lounging on her knee, tapping its two front legs against her jeans like it couldn’t quite decide if they were edible or not. It was a dirty white color with yellow joints, skinny long legs, and two huge fangs that wiggled around like it was chewing something. Huge fangs less than an inch from her skin. She didn’t think her jeans would stop them.

She probably should have been concerned about the prefects shining flashlights all around the room or Ash nearly crushing the air out of her to keep her still, his hand tight over her mouth. Instead she was frozen, staring at the spider, petrified. The urge to leap up screaming was almost too much.