She glared at me a minute, then narrowed her eyes and said, “You sure you know what you’re doing,Saint?”
Considering I’m about to walk away from you again? No, not in the slightest.
“Guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” I winked at her.
She pressed her lips together and sighed, clearly holding back.
“Haley, listen to me. I know I haven’t always… I didn’t…” I struggled to find the damn words. Words I actually meant, even if they weren’t all the ones she deserved. “You said you needed my help getting you into and out of the most dangerous realm in the known universe, and you’ve got it. So everything else you feel about me, everything I did in the past, everything youthinkyou know… I need you to put all that shit aside. Right now, the past no longer exists. Blackmoon Bay, New Orleans, the lives we had before—dead. There’s only this shithole and the things we all need to do to get through it, and one of those things is you trusting me.” I gripped the straps of my pack with both hands, because if I didn’t, I’d grab her instead. “The guys will take care of you. Stick with one of them at all times. You hear me?”
She let out another sigh, but eventually nodded. “Yeah, I hear you.”
“Good. Okay. Right. So, anyway… Yeah. I’ll… I’ll see you soon.”
No response.
I turned on my heel. Heard the change in her heartbeat—the telltale spike.
“Elian, wait.”
I blew out a breath. Turned around, even though I was terrified of what I might find in her eyes next. Terrified she might give me a reason to stay.
But Haley merely smiled at me. A small one, but real. Real enough it almost had me tripping over my damn feet again.
“Be safe out there,” she said. Then, with a new twinkle in her eye, “And for the record? Thom Yorke isdefinitelyfae.”
19
JAX
The three of us left camp a couple of hours after Elian when we figured out none of us could sleep anyway.
The hike kicked off slow and groggy, but things started looking up when we found a freshwater lake. We took turns washing up, doing our best to ignore a group of imps on the shore taking turns flaying one another’s skin off and feeding it to some creature they’d trapped.
Fucking Midnight. Sometimes, it was even worse than hell.
Considering Haley had never set foot in this fucked-up nightmare world, though, she was holding up pretty well.Betterthan well; after the bath, she perked right up, her cheeks pink, her eyes bright as we continued on through the endless night.
About a mile beyond the lake, Hudson took off to scout ahead. Haley and I climbed another rise, and a small meadow opened up on the other side, silvery-blue in the moonlight, streaked with black vines and tiny white flowers—a plant I’d recognize anywhere.
“Corpsevine,” I said, gazing out across the expanse. A small wooded area edged the back side. “Fuck.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Corpsevine is the raw material used to make Devil’s Dream—a potent hallucinogen. Most of the fields are already marked off. This one looks untouched—it probably hasn’t been noticed or cataloged. Which means—”
“As soon as people find it, they’re going to be fighting over it.”
“Exactly.”
“What’s the deal with the drug? Do people smoke the flowers or something?”
“No, they’re dried and processed into pill form. It’s sold in Amaranth City and… Well, New Orleans, primarily.”
She blinked up at me, the pieces clicking into place behind her eyes. “So,that’swhy Saints and Sinners is so popular.”
“One of the reasons, yes.” I turned away from her, looking out again across the vine-laced meadow. “We’re smugglers, Haley. We’ve got people here in Midnight handling production and portaling, and we sell it back in our realm. Everyone gets a cut.”
“Is that how you three met? Dealing in Amaranth City?”
