Shit.
I pound the door. “What the hell is going on?”
Mrs. Divs doesn’t answer or doesn’t care, her door shut tight.
“I know you can hear me,” I yell. “Don’t act like you can’t.”
“Kit Franks?” says a deep voice at my back.
I yip and spin.
Two men stand on the steps below, both around Dad’s age, with authoritative menace blazoned all over them. Enactors for sure, or higher-end thugs.
That was fast. The power’s gone, so, of course, it has to do with me.
Hell, it probably does.
Screw that.
I don’t think, I swing. Catch one smack on the chin—jutting square and hard as stone. My fingers scream, bones creaking.
Or maybe his bones. Lord, I hope so.
They move in a blur, suited arms and dark hair. Grab my fist and twist it behind me. Push me to my knees. The flash of a dosing tube, a sting at my neck.
“Seriously?” I say. “You’ve got to be—”
Wake up. It’s time, come on.”
A quick pain high in my arm, breath on my cheek. I’m lying somewhere . . . hard? My head throbs. It’s dark. When I open my eyes, it’s still dark. Everything is dark.
What. The. Hell.
“That’s it. Can you sit?”
“Niles?” I ask. It’s his voice. His palm under my shoulder, helping me rise.
“Look at me. I need to check your pupils.”
I blink. It’s him, the outline of him. Cheeks pale in the dimness, hair shadowed and lost. Fingertips spreading my eyelid apart as he peers in, face close enough to kiss. So I do. Taste the wear of the day and the humid dark, the warmth that sears his very skin. He burns with it, a desperate hum of tension and wire that curls my ribs and pulls even as he pulls away, anchoring us apart with a palm to my cheek. His thumb skims my lips where his just were, soft as air.
“You’re here,” I say.
“Yeah.”
My words soft, his cracked.
My head’s heavy but not cloudy, muscles sore without screaming. I don’t feel good, but not so bad, either. My neck hurts the most. I rub the assorted holes and scratches. I’ve got quite the collection. “Who dosed me this time?”
He laughs. A breathy, silent, mirthless thing that wanes as he stares into the dark. “I found the bracelet.”
“What?” I search his face, but even this close it’s hard to see. “Wait, how—”
“Decker.”
Oh shit.
“What the hell were you thinking?” I push closer, feel for wounds. “You went alone? Did you get caught? I know Decker doesn’t look like much, but—”
“I’m fine, Kit.”
He doesn’t sound fine. Or not fine, for that matter. His fingers dig holes in my skin.
I wince. “Ow.”
“Shit, sorry.” His hold evaporates and we separate. He stays close but doesn’t touch. I hear him, though, the pull of his breath before he finds words. “The bracelet. There’s nothing special about it.”
Something’s wrong.
I scan behind him, but it’s just black. What light there is doesn’t seem to come from anywhere. The air’s stale, without breeze or exhaust fumes. Enclosed. If I yelled, it might echo.
We’re alone in a hole in the dark.
If we are alone. I have my doubts.
I lean close, lips to his ear. “How bad are you hurt? Can you run?”
His cheek presses into mine a heartbeat, less. He doesn’t whisper back. “I’m not hurt, Kit.”
Not yet.
The Brinkers must have jumped him outside of Decker’s. Or maybe this is Decker’s doing.
“I told you to be careful, that they drink death like wine.”
His forehead breaks into wrinkles. “What the hell does that even mean?”
“When you’re clear, look it up.”
And he will be clear. I’ll make damn sure.
I stand in one swift motion, hand braced on his shoulder as the dizziness hits, and yell into the dark. “Niles doesn’t know shit about the bracelet! He never even met Mom. Lord, he never met me until a few days back—and look how that’s worked out for him.”
Niles’s tension could suspend cables. “Kit.” Almost inaudible.
“You want to ask me something?” I call. “You ask me. And you won’t get shit for answers until he’s clear.”
“In that case,” says another voice entirely.
A harsh finger snaps and light flares. Spotlights, not overheads. Blue-tinged, battery-powered backups aimed straight for my skull. I flinch, try to blink sanity back into my retinas.
We’re in some kind of large room or hangar, walls sketchy beyond the spotlights.
A man steps into the blue glare, flanked by two others. Not the Brinkers with backup or even Decker with thugs, but a broad-shouldered, sleek-suited man. Tall and oozing power like grace.
The Prime.
The Head of the Enactors, the most powerful person in our House apart from the currently lost bloodling Heir and the wife of the late Lord, stands not six feet away and smiles.
Oh . . . shit.
My nails bite Niles’s shoulder. He doesn’t make a sound.
“You,” I say.
His smile widens, and there’s something oddly familiar about it. Resonant.
“Me,” he says.
And not just him. The flanking Enactor on the right has the ghost-pale skin and glaring eyes of the power technician.