I snort out a breath of nervous laughter and think through my options, finally landing on just one. I call a car and head to Habesha Café. Thatorreally did it for me, and I’m not interested in getting my or anybody else’s legs broken.
I call my mom as I sit in the back of the car, the driver giving me weird looks and keeping his mask on as if he’s afraid I’m going to infect him with whatever I got at the hospital. To be fair, with how tired I am and how messed up I look, I appear as if I could be carrying any number of infections. I give my mom a brief update, tell her about Cynthia’s surgery. She thanks me and promises to keep trying Ambassador Min-hyuck, and I promise, albeit reluctantly, to check back in on Cynthia in a day or two.
As I hang up the phone, the car pulls up to a normally well-trafficked city street that’s currently dead, as it’s still pitch black out. I don’t have a key, I don’t have an ID. I don’t even have underwear. I get out of the car shakily, offering the driver an extra tip of a hundred bucks if he’ll wait around the corner for me. He agrees, but when I give him a number to call in case I’m not back in thirty minutes, he tells me he doesn’t want any trouble and drives off.
Thanks, dude.
I stare at the coffee shop door for too long before opening it. There’s a light on in the back and movement coming from the kitchen, but that’s not what draws my focus. My focus instead falls on a giant behemoth of a male seated at a dainty little mosaic table directly in front of me.
“Monika,” he says, his voice low and even. “Have a seat.”
“I think I’ll stand.”
Suddenly, I’m moving—being pushed by an invisible hand. Wind gathers at my back and flings me forward. I land on my stomach onhis sweatshirt on the table, my head hanging off the end and almost in the Marduk’s lap.
His hand crawls over my back, down my sides to my sweatpants pocket. I open my mouth to scream. “Don’t scream.” He speaks before I can follow through on that idea and rips the wind straight from my lungs. I can’t breathe and clutch desperately at my neck while the Marduk reaches over my body and does something to my pants. “Sit,” I hear him order, but at a distance. I can’t hear anything over the sound of whooshing in my ears. And then I’m thrown unceremoniously back.
I land in a hard wooden chair, which tips back on its legs, threatening to fall before righting itself with a bang. I hold on to my seat, my heart pounding, and when I look up into the Marduk’s cold black gaze, he raises a blond eyebrow and releases me.
I suck in air like I’d been drowning. Iwasdrowning. I know this supervillain has power over wind and thunder, but I didn’t think it worked like that.Ssi-bal.
After coughing to clear my throat, I swallow repeatedly, a funny taste in my mouth that I hope never to experience again. I wait, gaze raking over him, trying to pick up clues ... something ... anything! That’s when I see what’s lying on the table between us. What he pulled out of my pocket.
He glances down at my phone. “Why don’t you unlock it for us?”
I can’t do that. We both know that I’m recording all this. I don’t respond.
The Marduk simply tilts his head. “Doesn’t matter either way.” And the phone suddenly explodes from within, bursting apart into thousands of microscopic pieces, never to be salvaged, the recording I’d been taking gone with it.
We wait a moment, staring at each other, before I break the silence. “Nice coffee shop.” I’m still gripping the edges of my chair like it’s the only thing that’s going to keep him from flinging me into Oz.
“I think so.”
“Why am I here?”
“The better question is, why are you late? It’s almost four thirty. We’ll have to do this quickly, and I don’t have time for questions. I know that your little friend is not the key to Taranis’s reversion, unless torturing her a little bit somehow triggered it. I also know that you were there since you took the recording. What caused his reversion?”
I simply lick my lips and shake my head. “I can only tell you what I saw,” I opt to answer, rather than telling him the truth that Cynthia got her legs shattered for—I don’t know. “I saw Taranis torturing Cynthia, electrocuting her while she sobbed. I saw her fall, and then the next thing I know, Taranis is falling beside her and rising up again twice as large.”
“And what did he do afterwards?”
Me.
I feel heat rise in my cheeks but am proud of my even tone as I say, “Panicked. He was out of it. I managed to get him out of the South Korean Embassy and to his car, which took him back to his place.”
“And yours. The two of you live in the same building.”
“Correct.”
The Marduk swipes his sweatshirt off the table between us, and as it falls, he does the last thing I’d have hoped he would. His gaze drops to my clothing. He inspects it for all of two seconds before lifting his nose to the wind. A slight breeze wafts from behind me, pulling in his direction, and his mouth starts to form a grin. “My, my. Monika, do you have a thing for villains?”
I heat further, harder, hotter, all the way down to my toes, which curl into the cold floor. I don’t say anything.
The Marduk leans back in his tiny chair and strokes his beard. His gaze keeps me pinned in place. His arms are tattooed all over in wild symbols that frighten me for reasons I don’t understand. I’ve got chills rushing over every exposed piece of my skin—not that he’s looking at me like that. He’s got a detached, almost clinical way about him that makes me afraid in a way Taranis never has.
“I take it you are his key, then.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
