Loren wasn’t sure how to feel; whether she should feel flattered that he cared what she thought, or if she should be worried that he was playing games with her. And it cut her deeply to consider that she was perhaps no different than the other girls who fawned over him—no different thanJessa. Her childish behaviour was the only reason he’d come in here just now; the only reason he’d sought her out instead of leaving to go and meet up with that Darkslaying Viper. To not come home until the morning, surely allowing him to forget about everything for the night, including her.
She couldn’t believe herself. She should never have let her emotions rise to the surface like this. Her skin was burning all the way from her forehead to her collarbone.
“Forget about it, Darien.” She forced a smile. “Honestly, I don’t know what got into me. What you do is your business, not mine. Besides, we’re just friends.” That word hung like the crackle of a storm between them, and she swore something like pain entered his eyes. Loren’s lungs suddenly felt like they were being stepped on, squished, pulverized. “Aren’t we?”
Darien pushed to his feet. “Of course.” He was so tall, Loren had to tip her head back to meet his eyes—and she saw that every trace of emotion in his features was gone, leaving behind nothing but a cold and careful mask. “Just friends, baby.” The ticking of his watch was the only sound as silence dragged between them.
As that pet-name he’d called her clawed at her heart.
She was all too aware of how close he was standing to her, that nearness a storm that was realer than the crackle of that awful word.
Friends.
It made her feel sick inside. And the thought that she would eventually have to return to a life without him in it…a normal,boring,no-Darien-around life—
“You don’t want to leave, and I don’t want you to leave either,” Darien said softly, his rich voice cutting through the panic enveloping her. “So why don’t you come back downstairs and shoot some more bullets with me?” He held out a hand to her, his scarred palm facing up. “Okay?”
Her mind was screaming at her not to touch him, to walk away from what was sure to be a disaster, but her heart won the argument.
When she placed her hand in his, the warmth that spread through her from the skin-on-skin contact was excruciating. The feeling had her heart swelling with joy—her utterly foolish and hopelessly romantic heart. That heart of hers might as well draw a dotted line on itself where it was sure to be broken in half.
Stamping those thoughts into nothing, she whispered, “Okay.”
Darien looked like there was something else he wanted to say, but his phone started buzzing. Loren stiffened as he dug it out of his pocket, keeping his other hand wrapped around hers. When he looked at the screen, his expression betrayed nothing.
Horrible thoughts sliced through Loren’s head, most of them images of a phone screen with that name displayed across it:Jessa. The very worst of those images consisted of Darien’s tattooed hand fisting in a girl’s hair as she knelt before him.
“Are you going to answer that?” she whispered. It had rung so many times, it would probably go to voicemail soon.
Darien still didn’t let go of her hand as he swiped to answer and lifted the phone to his ear. “Cassel.”
The room was so silent, she could hear a familiar male voice say on the other end, “Get your asses down to the National. I’ll meet you by the freeway.” The line went dead as the graverobber disconnected the call.
Darien frowned. “Put a jacket on.” He slipped the phone into his pocket. “Sounds like we’ve got a walk to take.”
—
Loren stood between Travis and Maximus in the very heart of the higher elevations of Angelthene National Forest as Darien sifted through the loose dirt of a grave, empty apart from the casket within—also empty.
The hole in the earth, nestled in a copse of oak woodland, reminded her of the mouth of a great beast. Night had fallen some time ago, the sprawling maze of old-growth trees awash in deep shades of blue.
“What do we have here?” Darien murmured as he retrieved something from the soil beneath the casket. Aside from Travis and Max, Benjamin was the only other person here, his owl Familiar perched on his shoulder. Loren squinted to better see the object Darien was holding up in the moonlight trickling through the trees, but she couldn’t make out what it was.
Darien leapt out of the grave and came around to show her. In his gloved palm was a small, dirt-covered bone.
Not a bone, she realized. It was a single tooth.
“Is it enough?” she asked him. Enough to finally figure out who this mysterious ancestor of hers was. Benjamin and his robbers had located this grave upon looking into the ancient burial ground nearby, where a now-extinct species of High Demon was said to have been entombed in the earth below a Mournful Tree. High Demons were another term for the Nameless, sometimes used interchangeably to describe creatures like the Window and the Pale Man who lived at the various Crossroads scattered throughout Angelthene. Those creatures had the ability to fulfill wishes if the person asking for them had something worthy enough to trade.
“Enough to run a post-mortem DNA test,” Darien said. His eyes were alit with the same anticipation she could feel coursing through her own veins. But along with the anticipation she was feeling, she was also scared. Scared she wouldn’t like whatever answer they found.
Maximus said, “Arthur will be pleased to have a new challenge.”
Darien’s answering smile glinted in the moonlight. “Oh, I know.”
Benjamin crossed his rail-thin arms and said, “Nice to know a whole skeleton is being carted around the city.” Darien had made sure to grill the robber with a series of questions to see if he had indeed found this grave exactly the way it was now.
“Demineralized bone powder doesn’t last forever,” Darien told him. “A lot of people are looking for Loren, which means most of that skeleton might already have been used up in their efforts to find her.” It was to Loren that he added, “They can’t hunt you forever, Lola.”
