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Atlas was long gone. That, I could sense in my bones, his presence vanishing with a small part of me.
“You would be wise not to return,” Mac informed me, shoving me out the back doors of the casino and into an alleyway, unfamiliar to anywhere I’d been previously.
“I don’t—” I started to say, but the metal security door shut in my face before I could finish my sentence.
They had already forgotten about me. Just like that.
For a moment, I just stared at the building, a part of me tempted to march around the front and try again, but I wasn’t that stupid. Desperate, yes, but I didn’t want to tempt fate. Atlas had spared my life. For what?
Now I had no money, and I had to sneak back into the compound, hoping that Jesse hadn’t noticed I was gone.
Maybe Dahlia’s regained consciousness,I thought hopefully, though I put little stock into my naïve thinking. She’d been in the same coma for three days, and despite Jesse’s fae healers working on her, she wasn’t improving at any great rate of speed.
She wasn’t getting any worse, either. Or she hadn’t been when I’d left her.
I shouldn’t have come, but I had to do something before Dahlia regained consciousness and Jesse moved his plans forward. I was worse off than when I’d left.
Why didn’t Atlas help me?
The unbidden question was petulant and childish. I had no right to ask it, yet as I slipped along the shadows toward the bright, garish lights of the strip, I couldn’t shake it. He was an immortal, one of the originals. It would have taken nothing for the wolf shifter to bat a paw and end Jesse and his slimy hold on us and everyone else before going to breakfast in the morning.
The real question was, why would Atlas help me? I was no one. Little Bianca Barrett from the wrong side of the tracks, scouring the trash pits for scraps for Mama’s art pieces to sell. Atlas had probably seen and ignored hundreds, if not thousands, of hard-luck stories like mine. Powerful beings like him didn’t give girls like me second looks, regardless of whatever I thought I’d felt surging between us in that stinky, frigid basement. If he had cared, he would have ended Jesse and taken care of my problem in seconds.
He didn’t owe me anything, though. I tried to steal from him, and he let me go without killing me. I guess that was the best I was going to get.
There would be no knight in shining armor to protect us from Jesse. I should have learned that a long time ago. Our father had shown us that men couldn’t be trusted. When would I ever learn?
Pursing my lips together, I quickened my pace, curling my arms against my chest, keeping close to the buildings until I was almost running toward the outskirts of Covale City. As I made my way farther from the bustle of the gambling district, the streets grew quieter, more residential, apartment buildings dark and silent as normal families slept in preparation for ordinary days ahead.
Gods, I wondered what it would be like to be one of the girls, snug in her canopied bed, secure behind one of those walls. How easy it would be for me to vanish among the endless, vast streets of this town. I was too old for those fantasies now, my childhood far behind me. But without ever having a chance to experience such a life, I couldn’t help but imagine it, even at the age of twenty-three.
If it weren’t for my injured sister counting on my return, I would have seized the insurmountable urge to run and never to look back.
The walls of the city loomed ahead, and my gait slowed. I’d have no trouble crossing them. I just didn’t want to. No one ever had a problem leaving Covale City. No one wanted what lay beyond the high stone walls that currently served more as a symbol than protection, but their function was the same.
This was Atlas’ city. It had been for a millennium. I bit down hard on my lip and surged forward, knowing I’d wasted enough time doing nothing and worsening my position.
There was a distinct shift beyond the walls of Covale City, indefinable with words, but to say that there was a shift in temperature wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t a simple matter of hotter or colder because it wasn’t one or the other, not really. A stickiness permeated the city limits that hadn’t been there only a few feet before, and yet there was also a chill simultaneously.
They called the area Forny. It covered a radius of gods only knew how many miles in any direction. Every area had its own rules, none of which made any sense to anyone inside or outside. Jesse seemed to believe he bore a modicum of control of Forny, but anyone who knew the truth knew that the tiger shifter let all hell break out and relished the chaos.
That was how it seemed to me, anyway.
It was darker on this side of the wall, a fact I took as a blessing that night. Most of the time, I found the bleakness of Forny daunting, settling into my soul like a blanket of ash and soot. I was sure it would never be fully scrubbed from the depth, even if I ever managed to escape.
All I knew now was that certain areas were ruled by those who were strong enough to harness them. Jesse handled most of Forny, and Atlas owned all of Covale City, but their systems of government were day and night.
Forny was wild and poor. The area was home to trashy places where wealth only fell to those who hoarded it, males had all the power, and females were at their mercy. Those who were lucky enough to be a part of the glitz and glamor of Covale City had more of a fighting chance at democracy.
Jesse’s compound sat near the city walls, a fact I hadn’t really noticed before. I wondered if Jesse had purposely set up his place so close to Covale City, like a reminder of what he could have.
The thought almost made me laugh. Jesse working. He wasn’t Atlas. What the hell did he know about building up an empire?
Jesse’s guards were as useless as he was, easy to avoid as they chatted with each other. No one noticed when I scaled the wall in my lupine form, my skinny, gray legs spanning the barrier to land me on my worn pads. Then I immediately morphed back to my human body, making my way to the small building that Jesse called our “house.”
It was a shack at best. Even the trailer we’d lived in with our mom had more class and elegance than this stinking, ill-kept structure that was bound to fall down with a serious gust of wind.
I swallowed hard at the memory of my mom, blinking quickly before unbidden tears could form in the corners of my eyes. This wasn’t the time to think of Mom. I had to focus on Dahlia.
