The Pale Waters (#1 Reclaimed Souls) (2 page)

I follow the robot through a pale blue door
that leads us through a long yellow hallway that, eventually, ends
at a wooden bridge that arches over a large crack in the floor.

It’s like the floor ruptured at some point
in the past and, with no precise way to fix it, someone decided to
place a bridge there instead. One wrong step and I’d slip away and
never be found. A small chill runs through me.

The robot, probably not built to traverse
wooden bridges, turns and leaves me here.

The sense of being watched assaults me
again. Everything beyond the bridge, which is a wide-open space
with dozens of closed doors, is dark. Anyone could easily hide in
those black-hole shadows.

I should wait
, I tell myself,
and
see what comes out from the shadows
.

Stepping onto the bridge, I look down into
the vastness. I can’t see anything, but based on what I smell—the
hint of battery acid—I know it’s black water. It’s worse in
Skyscraper City. How or why, no one knows. It’s like a great sin
started here and it only needed someone to unlock the mystery of
its beginning.

Why a river runs through the Palace is
puzzling.

Echoes of splashing and crashing below reach
my ears, though the sounds aren’t loud enough to drown out a
metallic silence that reverberates around me.

“Lovely, isn’t it, Ms. Plesti?” a dark voice
says from the other side of the bridge. A woman, tall, sleek, with
eerie cat eyes that move and
don’t
move at the same time,
approaches. “And to think that a thousand years ago this water was
liquid diamonds. Now, black silk.”

I am more interested in why there’s a crack
in the building, but perhaps I’m missing something that’s well
known.

I shrug. “I don’t know if I would call it
black
silk
. It was never this bad back home,” I say absently
without realizing what I’d said. I planned to be cool, detached,
remote. Something about this room—this woman—has made me a bit
foggy.

“Home? You are a great deal away from home,
then. Are you in the PPS service?”

Am I a Personal Pleasure Servant?
Who
is this woman?

“No,” I say calmly as I push back the hood
from my fabriskin robe and smooth my right hand over the faux black
silk scarf wrapped around my hair. My hand comes away wet.

The woman inspects the black scarf. In fact,
she hasn’t stopped inspecting my whole person the entire time. I
wonder if she has perfect vision. It wouldn’t be the first time
someone was
enhanced
. Her voice purrs as her eyes dissect
me, layer by layer. I have a feeling I’ve passed some sort of test.
Or she plans to eat me for dinner.

“Of course,” she murmurs. “My mistake. I am
Cat Evinas, Roland’s chief of staff.”

Roland.

I shudder, tingle, and sweat the second she
says his name. Roland. I want to pour the word from my mouth, drink
it, bathe in it. It’s always been this way.
He
is the reason
for my journey to the city.

Roland Rexus. Powerful. Hungry. Dangerous.
Some called him the Dark Prince; others, a Devil. I didn’t care
which I met tonight.

Her eyes move to the bag under my arm.

“Please excuse the invasion,” she says
before I realize she’s talking again, “but I must inspect your
belongings.”

In a flash, she’s an inch from me and I’m
handing the bag over. I see no reason to resist. I’m close enough
to see the brilliance of her amethyst eyes as she examines the
benign contents of my bag, then, without warning, a dark shadow
crosses her face. She looks up, studies my face for a full minute,
looks down again, and, just as quickly as it darkened her features,
the shadow disappears.

The exotic woman places the bag’s loops up
my arm and over my shoulders.

“Everything satisfactory?” I ask. I don’t
know what to make of her behavior, so I keep my voice neutral.

“Why wouldn’t it be?” she asks in a
challenging tone, turning away from me. “This way, if you please,
Ms. Plesti,” she calls over her shoulder. Her tall legs pull her
away from the bridge faster than I could ever catch up. Cat walks
to one of the far doors and leads me into a cleaning chamber. I can
smell the antiseptic as she opens the door. “Perhaps you would like
to freshen up.”

***

Peeling off the wet robe, shirt, and
trousers, I stack and fold them neatly on the granite counter. If
I’m dismissed, I’ll be able to come back for these on the way out.
I pull out a well-used, dressier-looking black fabriskin robe from
my bag, slip it over my nude frame, and close up the toggle clasps
that start at my breastbone and go down to just below my sex.

Inspecting myself in the mirror and still
finding myself lacking—the black silk wrapped around my hair really
doesn’t do much for me—I carefully apply coral lipstick and exit
the cleaning chamber.

The woman waits patiently near the door.

“Shall we continue on?” she asks.

“Yes, thank you, Ms. Evinas.”

“Don’t thank me just yet,” she says. As she
straightens my fabriskin robe, Cat smiles seductively, as if she’s
left prey for a hunter. A silver fingertip lingers near my neck,
scratching me slightly—and moves away from me. I involuntarily
shudder. She’s good. She’s
very
good. I have a feeling that
Cat Evinas will complicate everything.

Before I notice it, we’ve moved into another
chamber. I spot a large, active fireplace and two richly
upholstered chairs nearby.

The room turns darker, even with the fire,
as Cat walks me deeper in. A soothing, a soft music reaches my
ears.

She smiles and leaves my side.

“Wait…” I call out. Surely she’s the one
interviewing me. She slips through a door near the fireplace. As I
watch her go, I realize one of the chairs is occupied.

“Hello Rahda,” a baritone voice from the
furthest shadowy chair says. Long fingers play on a delicate
armrest, perhaps keeping melody with the music I heard only seconds
ago. “Thank you for coming this evening. It’s not often that I
summon someone. I know that all of this must seem strange to
you.”

Strange and exciting and seductive,
I
think. I can scarcely stand still – or breathe – because I am only
a few feet away from
him
.

I stand there like an idiot, racking my
brain for a coherent reply. I can hardly respond with what I’m
thinking. Roland Rexus is talking to me. Roland Rexus is talking to
me
.

“Forgive me,” he says suddenly. “Please
sit.”

“Thank you for inviting me.”
Dear
Goddess, I’m sitting near Roland Rexus.
“It is a pleasure to be
here, Prince Rexus.”

A small laugh comes from his dark corner. I
have yet to see his face; not even the firelight reaches him even
though it
should.
Why does he hide? I imagine his eyes are
crinkled; that’s the way the laugh sounded, and slowly I thaw,
relax.

“A pleasure to be here? I wouldn’t be so
sure of that, Rahda.”

THREE

I WATCH AS HE LEANS OVER and hands me a wine
glass filled with dark, red liquid. He moves faster than I could
have ever imagined someone doing.

My teeth worry my bottom lip.

If I’m with Roland Rexus—even thinking his
name does unspeakable things to me—then maybe he won’t turn me
away. Much depends on him
accepting
me. I try not to get my
hopes up.

It’s rumored that Roland has but four
employees who work and live in the Palace Skyscraper. It’s
doubtably untrue. How could anyone run a city with just four
employees?
Will I be the fifth?

I expect him to ask questions about my
research qualifications, my chemistry, biotechnical, and alloy
resurfacing skills, or, at the very least the customary, dull
questions about the weather, why the birds never came back, or why
the water is black.

He stares at me instead. Granted, I can’t
see his eyes, but I feel his intense gaze strongly, like a magnetic
pull.

The matching glass in his hands sparkles
ruby red as he drinks from it. I drink from mine, a tiny sip,
almost in unison.

“When can you start?” he asks, his voice
clear. Decisive yet shielded. There’s more there, hidden. I long to
learn of it, discover it. Discover
him.

“I—”
don’t know what to say.

“Expected an interview?”

“Yes,” I say somewhat louder than I had
anticipated. I don’t know why I’m feeling combative, maybe because
I thought I knew what would happen. I never expected to be hired
without so much as being asked one question.

“You will be relieved to know that you
conducted three interviews. The summons, my chief of staff, and
just now, with me.”

This was silly. It can’t be this easy. Waltz
in. Meet the intensely reclusive boss. Get hired for the most
exclusive job on the continent.

“How do you know I’m the right applicant?”
Why the hell are you questioning him, Rahda?

“You’ll find that I have a way of knowing
who should and who should not work for me. Up until you, no one
passed my three distinct interviews. Not one.”

I feel the urge to challenge him.

“Did I pass all three
interviews
?” I
ask somewhat defiantly. I shouldn’t have been so bold, and I
shouldn’t have asked a question I didn’t know the answer to. I
should have just thanked him, answered the question, and shut
up.

Roland laughs again. This time, I catch the
edge of his jaw; the firelight bounces off him for the briefest
second. I expect smooth skin, a handsome chin, a full mouth. Like
how I remembered it from my youth. Instead, his square jaw is
puckered, pink, and scarred. He moves back into the shadows before
I discover more.

Suddenly a lot of things make sense.

Roland Rexus didn’t remember me… and why
would he? I was but a child and he was already a man back then. He
is only hiring someone with my particular talents.

“No,” he says thoughtfully with a touch of
playfulness. I could tell he was enjoying this. “You only passed
two.”

FOUR

I HEAR HIS LAUGHTER ONCE MORE, and I wonder
if he can read my thoughts. Surely he thinks I am the stupidest
person alive.

“You never answered my question, Rahda.”

I shake my head, thinking. “Which question
is that, sir?”

“Sir!” he barks out. “None of that here.
Call me Roland.” I believe my insides will melt if I say his name
out loud. “When can you start?”

“Oh!” I say quickly, forgetting that he
asked that. I still have a hard time understanding that I am
actually in front of the man who I have been dying to see again,
and here he is, asking me when I can begin my work for him.
Did
I throw all of that training out the window? What about common
sense?
“Immediately.”

His hands clap.

“Excellent. Now, there’s a matter of
weapons.”

Dear Goddess.
Absently, I rub my lips
together.

“Weapons?” I repeat. Maybe the man
can
read my mind.
I own only what you see me wearing
right now
.
An inferior, though thick, wool fabriskin robe
and a scarf I bought yesterday with the last coin I possessed. What
do you see when you see me?

“Did I stutter?” The playful voice is
replaced by a hardened tone, one a lifelong criminal would confess
to. His legs uncross and then cross again. How would he know? How
could
he know?

A small sigh escapes his lips, and I feel
the urge to know what those lips look like, feel like on me.

“I am not in the habit of carrying weapons.
I don’t exactly have a place to carry them.” This is a lie, and he
knows it. I could easily hide something as large as a crossbow
under these fabriskin robes.

“Take off your scarf.”

I shake my head. “This is ridiculous.”

Another sigh comes from his dark corner, and
his hand moves. Something clicks on. A silver communicator tablet.
“Cat, please escort—”

“Wait!” I practically yell, yanking the
black scarf off my head. I stand up as I do so and in the process,
I end up several feet closer to Roland as the whisper-thin black
fabric falls to the ground and my dark hair, finally loosened from
its prison, falls around my shoulder blades.

Roland, head bent down, hiding, quickly
grabs the scarf and recedes back into his corner. I see more of his
jaw, the scars, the unnatural skin. My own skin shudders.

“Do not ever contradict me, Rahda.” His
voice could cut glass. It could, and probably will, cut through me
if I am not careful. I nod my consent. This job is too important to
suddenly lose it on the first day and in the first hour. “Where is
your weapon, Rahda?”

“I don’t have one—”

Instantly, he’s on his feet and, while he is
mostly shadows, he is nearly on me, inches from touching me, and
I’m not sure if it is the fire or Roland that has my skin
burning.

“Are you going to make me do this?” he asks,
his voice biting its way into my head. Tilting. Turning. Confusing.
I don’t know how I feel, but I don’t feel sane right now.

“Do what?” I whisper, swallowing. My throat
is paper thin because of his nearness. He is so close. Suddenly, my
shoulder is on fire. I turn to inspect. His hand is there, through
the metallic fabriskin robes, heavy, burning, marking me. I try to
find his eyes, his mouth, anything but that damn scar on his right
jaw, but I see nothingness. Shadows. An outline of a face—once
handsome—a downturn of lips, heavy threaded eyebrows, dark eyes,
dark hair.
A beastly prince.

I am repulsed by the changes just as much as
I am aroused by them.

His voice is husky when he says, “Take off
your clothes.”

FIVE

“WHAT DID YOU SAY?” I WHISPER. He is close
enough that I can smell the fragrant wine on his breath. He stands
in front of the fire, a black silhouette. Now his
other
hand
is on my
other
shoulder. Scorching. Hot.