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“You can’t tell him.” She swallowed the bile burning her throat. “I want to forget about this, okay? I don’t want him to know. I don’t want him to have to hear about what she showed me, or he’ll—”
“Alright, alright.” He reached out and rubbed her shoulder. Travis didn’t seem like the type to show affection, so she appreciated the gesture. “Just breathe, okay?”
She did, just like he told her to.
“Breathe,” Travis said again.
Loren pushed away from the table and made for the staircase. “I’m going upstairs.” Her voice sounded as weak as she felt. When she reached the first step, she grabbed onto the handrail and pulled herself up.
“Do you need me to do anything?” Travis called.
“I think I just need to be alone. Thanks, Travis.”
She surprised herself by making it into Darien’s suite and out onto the balcony. For a long time, she breathed the jasmine—scented air, every sweet lungful burning her aching throat. She somehow managed not to break down, but the images Valary had forced her to see were seared into her mind, as if they had been put there with a branding iron.
They were all she saw.
10
“Nice place you got here, Art.”
Hands in the pockets of his brown leather jacket, Maximus tried to keep his feet light as he followed Dallas through the cluttered building, his elbows nearly taking out beakers and small cauldrons that were balanced precariously close to the edges of tables.
The flooring had to be ancient. It protested his every step, squeaking and groaning like a cat in heat.
One step later, a floorboard sank under his weight. A sharp crack rang through the room, and when he glanced down he saw a thin line split through the wood, as if he were standing on thin ice.
Max froze. “Something tells me I should wait by the door.”
Arthur J. Kind sat at a table in the middle of the room, surrounded by stacks of books, bundles of herbs tied with twine, an assortment of laboratory glassware too complicated to name, and test tubes containing iridescent liquids.
“Nonsense, Maximus,” Arthur said without looking up. With a wrinkled hand, he gestured to Dominic, who was the first to make it to Art’s table, followed closely by Blue, who was staring wide-eyed at the many things to see in Witchlight Alchemy and Archives. Dallas was taking her time; she’d got out of school early and demanded to come with, eager to see Arthur’s new place of work after all that garbage had gone down at Lucent Enterprises. Art went on, “If this winged gentleman can make it across the room without falling through the floors or blowing up the building, so can you.”
“Did you hear that, Max?” Dominic looked over his shoulder with a smirk. “He called me a winged gentleman.” When Max scowled, Dominic turned back around, shoulders shaking with laughter. “Max wishes he was as graceful and light-footed as me.”
“When did you start working here, Arthur?” Dallas asked. She leaned over one of the tables that were pressed up against the left wall and tapped the side of a condenser, long red nail clinking against the glass. Afternoon sunlight filtered through the grimy window behind the table, turning her hair molten copper.
Max couldn’t help but notice the way her back curved, her round ass rising up in the dusty air. Her breasts dipped low, threatening to knock over a collection of glassware. She was still in her school uniform, an outfit he’d been meaning to fuck her in for a while now.
He looked away before his dick could get hard.
“Ah, what day is it again?” the old man mumbled, mostly asking himself than anyone else. “Monday, it was. Monday was my first day.”
“Do you like it here?” Dallas kept walking through the room, gazing up at the oil paintings covering every inch of the walls.
Max started trailing behind her again, flinching every time a floorboard squeaked or popped. Was he really that heavy?
“I’d say it’s the perfect place for me to spend some time before I officially retire,” Arthur said. “Look at me—I can barely take my eyes off my task to entertain you lot.” He finished off whatever he was doing and closed the book that was open on the table in front of him, pages snapping together with a cloud of dust. He folded his hands on the cover. “Now then, what brings you here?”
“We have a new friend,” Max said. He’d managed to catch up with them without falling through the floor, their group now huddled around one end of Arthur’s table. “Her name’s Blue.”
“Blue?” Arthur looked her over, glasses sliding down his nose. She shrunk under the attention, angling her willowy body so that half of her was hidden by the Angel of Death looming like a deadly shadow at her side. “Did the name or the hair come first?”
“We don’t really know,” Dominic began. The girl looked up at him, appearing lost. Dominic kept his eyes on her when he spoke, and Max didn’t miss how the Angel draped a comforting wing across her shoulders. “Max, Lace, and Tanner found her by the river last night. She only speaks Ilevyn, so we haven’t been able to find out much about her except her name.”
Dallas elbowed the Angel in the abs. “Dom insists that he knows how to speak Ilevyn, but the only thing he could translate is that she was with a group of people looking for a colored bird.” She snorted. “Think it was a macaw or a parakeet?”
Max couldn’t help it; he wheezed a laugh that pushed Dallas over the edge. She started snorting, eyes watering.
