Darksider: Reveler Series 3 (2 page)

Ms. Bright held up her be-quiet hand again. “Their access to the Agora has been rescinded. Should they appear there, they are to be apprehended immediately.” The Agora was the aggregation of all commercial Rêves and legal shared dreaming policed by Chimera. “If they should contact you, you are to notify the lead on duty without delay.”

“Noted.” His heart rate had dropped back to normal. This meeting was a warning.
How ’bout that?
The panel
knew
he was friends with them. Maybe they thought he would help Coll and Rook with whatever criminal activity they’d undertaken. He did have an interesting skill set, but he was certain it had been redacted from his Army records as his abilities ran counter to a number of resolutions in the International Pact on Shared Dreaming.

“We’ll take your questions now,” Ms. Bright said.

Any explanation from them would be worthless, so Harlen had only one thing to ask.
Thank you, James Dugan for the tip.
“Am I being charged with anything?”

“Not at this time.” Another threat. Fine.

He stood and strode to the door, was just yanking it open when the phone in his pocket buzzed. As he crossed the long hallway, he glanced at the screen, but knew not to take the call now.

The number wasn’t familiar, but he could guess who it was.

Son of a bitch. They were
all
going to end up in prison. The pisser was that Harlen had been left out of the fun that got them there.

***

“Hi, Wayne.” Sera Rochan had a Bluetooth headset stuck in her ear, a dead cobia fish in her hand, and a two-week-old migraine that had stopped responding to ibuprofen.

She needed sleep. Like, eighteen uninterrupted hours. A quick pee. Then eighteen more.

“Sera-
fina
!” Wayne liked using her full name, though she’d asked him to call her Sera about a hundred times since she opened Marina de Sel three years ago. “I hoped I’d be getting a call from you.”

“You did?” she asked. Her assistant Gil usually handled the accounts, but today he was at the restaurant’s second location waiting for the stoves to be delivered. The contractors’ banging and sawing had been too much for her head.

She looked around for a place to put the fish, but her desk was covered with papers and blueprints were stretched over the little table. Exhaustion must’ve been why she’d carried it from the kitchen down to her cubby-hole of an office. Her brain was going to mush. The smell would linger the whole time she was trying to reconcile accounts later.

“Well, I hoped,” he said. “Congratulations on the second location.”

Ah.
Idiot thought she was going to give him the new contract? With this fish stinking up her day? Dreamers irritated the hell out of her.

“I called to invite you to come by,” Sera said as cheerfully as the throb in her head would allow. The cobia was excellent motivation.

“I’d love that.” His voice had warmed.

She hated flirts, too. “Well, I’d love to cook for you. I’ve got just the fish.” She glanced at it. “Its eyes look like my ninety-year-old grandma’s cataracts.”

Fresh fish had clear eyes, and nothing about this thing was fresh.

“Serafina! I-I don’t know what could’ve—”

Baloney. “Lunch service just started, and I’ve got a meeting with the investors in five minutes. If I don’t have my fish—and I’m talking
beautiful
fish—in fifteen minutes, I swear I will fillet you in its place, douse you in sautéed butter and shallots, and serve you up with a sprig of tarragon between your balls. You got me?”

She ended the call. Looked at the fish. Still couldn’t find a place to put it down.

She was just so damn tired. The nightmares had to stop,
would
stop, just as soon as the other location opened. Which was in four months.

It was normal to be a nervous wreck. But, damn, menus and signage and blueprints were supposed to be the fun parts.

She pulled out her Bluetooth earpiece and dropped it on her desk. She climbed the stairs and had to shimmy sideways to get into the kitchen where Michael, her sous chef, was already at the grill and Natalia, a line cook, was just grabbing some mussels from the walk-in.

Handing the cobia to Natalia, she said, “Prep this for Wayne, will you? He’ll be stopping by shortly.”

Natalia smiled. “With pleasure.”

After washing her hands, Sera stepped into Natalia’s empty spot for a little therapy. Taking a chef’s knife from the rack, she rocked the blade back and forth, precise and clean; the rhythm of the cuts and symmetry of the sprigs soothed the pounding in her head. As executive chef, she didn’t have to do the chopping, but technical work helped keep the visceral textures and smells of her ingredients bright in her mind.

She loved food. She loved feeding people and making them happy. Cooking was a simple and pure calling; it was that pesky ambition that was driving her crazy.

Two
locations? When was she ever going to cook again?

Except—a glitter of happiness tingled in her heart like champagne on the tongue—two locations!

Natalia returned. “Umm…?” Seemed like she wanted her station back.

Sera surrendered the spot and knife, smiled at the little pile of brunoised leeks. Some days she wanted to go back to working on the line, but then she would also have to surrender dictating what went on the menu. Tough call, but she’d take the menu, thank you very much.

“Chef!”

Sera looked over at Michael.

He cocked his head toward the dining room. “They’re here.”

That would be Antonio and Octavio Adria. Once upon a time, they were “the money,” now they were her partners in crime. The restaurant business was not a sound investment; it was a passion, a madness, a calling.

Her apron came off, she straightened her skirt, and she walked out into the dining room—three quarters full for Friday lunch. Tonight there’d be a line out the door.

Her partners were at the front of the house—Becca hadn’t seated them yet. The sun glared a little through the plate glass, but that was just migraine light sensitivity.

With a big smile on her face, she strode between the tables—the patrons seemed happy—and she nodded when she finally caught Antonio’s eye.

No, she would not be naming his favorite dish
Canard de Rêve
. Her duck was real, not a dream.

She came around the reception podium with her arms out. The Adrias were huggers.

It was when she pulled back that she saw
him
through the front glass of the restaurant—the man from her nightmares.

Her heart clogged, and her brain pulsed with excruciating pain. She couldn’t draw a breath.

He’d leaned into the glass, bright sunshine pouring down one side of his body, making him half invisible, but the side of him in shadow, almost a caricature, was clearly her stalker.

That son of a bitch!

So he wasn’t a figment of her imagination, wasn’t her anxiety taking some weird nightmare-stalker form. He was real, and he’d been tormenting her sleep for months.

Why she didn’t go for the door would perplex her for some time after. Exhaustion. Insanity, maybe. But the reason she hadn’t called Harlen for help when the nightmares had started? Yeah, that was pride.

She lunged for the man directly—through the plate glass. She didn’t feel a thing until she hit the sidewalk outside.

CHAPTER TWO

Harlen rapped twice and then slowly exhaled the breath he’d been holding since he’d stepped out of the apartment building’s elevator. He was used to uncertainty—his job was made of it, especially with the stuff going down today—but not from Sera.

He would come if she needed him, regardless, but her cryptic message had made him come fast. With all the rumors and evasions going on at work, he wore a sense of unease like a second, itchy skin. He wouldn’t have answers until he met with Rook and Coll tonight, Darkside, a meeting they’d set up directly after the hearing this morning. But they’d just have to wait.

Sera’s timing—after how many years?—was unreal.

She opened the apartment door, her free hand gripping a long, broad knife, but it was the aroma billowing from the kitchen behind her that struck his senses. One pull of air and—
goddamn
—his mouth, throat, and tongue rushed with a primal wet ache to taste, to consume. The sensations mocked him with the simple fact that there was nothing in the world as good as what was in that kitchen, and she was its mistress.

But then Sera had always had that effect.

He didn’t even get a good look at her, just a swing of her thick brown hair, bound in a ponytail, when she turned and headed back down the short entry of her loft’s great room toward the kitchen.

She did a little whoop-de-do wave with her knife in the air, the blade flashing with reflected light. “Thanks for coming.”

She didn’t sound thankful. She sounded angry.

He crossed the threshold, shut the door with a backward tap of his heel, and followed his nose. Then he got angry, too, when he got a better look at her face, which was tipped slightly down as she aligned skinny stalks of green leafy something on a butcher’s block.

Not one for a lot of makeup, she usually had a face clear and bright as day. Today, gauze was taped to her forehead, a reddish-black blotch seeping through. And she had small scrapes across her cheeks. Her eyes, trained downward just now, were ultra-blue…and swollen from crying.

What happened to her? When?
And who, goddammit?

Restraining his reaction, he dragged out a counter stool and sat down to watch her work. “Of course I came.”

Whatever was going on with Rook and Coll officially didn’t matter anymore. They’d just have to rot in prison by themselves. He’d join them next time.

The knife flashed again into position. When she rocked the blade back and forth, little bits of veg separated from their stalks, each cut exactly the same size as the one before. She was a woman who knew how to use a weapon with precision.

Her lower wrist was covered in a bandage, too, but it didn’t seem to impact her mobility.

He glanced away to clear his mind and get a grip on himself, but his stomach growled audibly, and he hadn’t even known he was hungry.

When he looked back, Sera’s mouth had pulled into a slight, knowing smile. She was a witch in the kitchen, so he let her enjoy the moment. If he gave in to impulse, he’d want to shake her and demand what had happened.

Based on past experience, she’d tell him what happened when she was good and ready.

She reached behind her for a wine glass of blood-dark fluid, dragging the base a little on the counter. Seemed like it wasn’t her first glass of the evening. Her throat worked as she took a deep drink, almost bottoms up but not quite.

Lowering the wine from her lips, she made a toast gesture. “Want some?”

The ridiculously wonderful smells coming from the stove called for it. But, no. “I’m guessing that I’m here in an official capacity?”

Why else would she call him? She’d said she’d never wanted to see him again.

A flush took her face. The hand holding the wine glass trembled. Whatever made
her
surgeon’s hands shake had to be bad.

“Why don’t you tell me about it while you cook?” Miracle that he sounded so calm.

Almost seven years had passed since they’d been a couple, three since he’d last argued with her, but some things never changed: Sera was most comfortable in the kitchen, and she seemed to need the distraction badly. Before he left tonight, however, he’d make sure she looked him in the eyes and gave him the answers he wanted.

She turned her back on him again to put her glass down. “I’m working on a new menu.” Her voice sounded strained. “Mind being my guinea pig?”

“It’d be my privilege. Whatever is simmering on the stove, please.”

“You sure? I’m not at my best. Might poison you.”

Even Sera’s worst was wonderful. “I’ll risk it.” If it killed him, he’d die a happy man.

A quick flash, and she scooped the green stuff onto her knife, brought it to the stove, and slid her finger down the flat of the blade, the green dropping into a pot.

She opened the fridge—his was stocked with take-out leftovers—and drew out something wrapped in white paper. Though he’d fallen far from culinary grace since they’d been together, he could recognize the orangey-pink fish.
 

As a kid, he’d hated salmon. His ma had liked to make it on Sundays for something special. In Sera’s hands? He’d enjoy it every day of the week.

He knew she talked best when she worked, and she got right to the point when he baited her. To get her started, he glanced meaningfully at her bandages and said, “You taking up street fighting?”

An expression flickered on her face. He hoped it was humor. He didn’t know what he’d do if she cried. Take her home with him, maybe. Lock her up in his room. Stay there with her until the world ended.

Pausing, she reset her grip on her knife. “I tripped this morning. Went through a window.”