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The waiter returned and opened a bottle of Dom Pérignon.
“To our partnership,” Jane said, holding up her glass, dollar signs dancing in her eyes.
I clinked my glass to hers thinking only of Ambri.
“To hope.”
seventeen
I finished the most surreal lunch of my life, then went to Jane’s posh offices in Mayfair before heading back to my dingy, dark basement flat. I itched to call Lucy and tell her my news, but it didn’t seem right. Ambri was responsible for every shred of success thatwas coming my way and he needed to hear it first. But my phone was silent, and if I showed up at Jerome’s desk again, he’d think I was a stalker.
The rain had picked up again as I leftJane Oxley & Associatesand now lashed at the windows like an animal. I heated a cup of noodles, mindlessly jumping from one YouTube video to another. My life didn’t magically feel all that different now that I had what I’d been dreaming of—someone who believed in my work. Something was still missing.
Maybe give it five minutes before you start needing more adulation?
But it wasn’t adulationI needed.
I checked my phone again. Nothing.
With a sigh, I shut my laptop, stowed it on the floor, and huddled in my bed. Despite the howling wind and cold air seeping in from the cracks, I drifted off and dreamed of the Blackfriars Bridge.
I stood at the rail, staring into the cold, black water. As I watched, it rose higher and higher until it was washing over the stony ground beneath my feet. It swirled around my ankles, then climbed higher and higher, to my knees, then my waist. The scent of brackish, rank water filled my nose and my chest constricted with cold and panic. All around me were paintings of Ambri. Those I’d sold at the Art Faire and those I hadn’t painted yet. The paintings for Jane’s show. They were all ruined and floating away from me like postage stamps.
“No!”
I sat up shivering with cold, that same brackish smell of the Thames following me from my dream.
A cry fell out of my mouth. My flat was flooded with water, at least a foot high. It gushed down the stairs that led to my door and poured in from under it.
“Shit! Shit shit shit!” I tore out of my bed and threw on my glasses and boots. Panic made it hard to think, and I turned a useless circle, trying to decide what to grab first. My stuff, my portraits from Uni, my laptop, my supplies…
“Ms. Thomas!” I screamed. “Ms. Thomas call emergency services!”
Then I remembered my landlady had left town to visit a sister in Cornwall.
Water was still coming in and showed no signs of stopping. The old building creaked and swayed, threatening to collapse on my head. I grabbed my coat, leaving everything else, and hurried out, nearly slipping on the steps that gushed water as if a pipe had broken.
On the street, other people who were similarly flooded out of their places, huddled in the deluge, making calls to 999. I searched for a place to seek shelter. The rain smattered my glasses, breaking the night into a chaos of rushing water and lightning.
“Mr. Matheson?”
I spun around. A black SUV was parked at the curb, and a man in a suit had climbed out of the driver side and was gesturing me toward the passenger door in the back.
“This way, please.”
I stared, water plastering my hair to my cheeks. The tinted window rolled down, and Ambri peered at me through the downpour. The demon’s lips curled in a smile. “How about this weather, eh?”
Even shivering with cold and drenched to the bone, a flare of warm desire shot through me. “What are you doing here?”
“Rescuing you. Is that not obvious?” He cocked his head. “What is it with you and water, anyway?”
The driver held the door open for me.
“But my stuff—”
“Is replaceable,” Ambri said. “Get in.”
I hesitated. Sirens wailed and white and blue lights flashed. Help was coming to the others on my street. There was nothing I could do, not even call Ms. Thomas who had refused to give me—“a veritable stranger”—her sister’s number.
