“Your lyrics are beautiful.”
“My lyrics are fine, but I was hardly Leonard Cohen. Fuck, I was pretentious.” He polished off his cheeseburger and lay on his side, propped on his elbow, inching his hand up my thigh.
I snorted my laughter, pointing at the screen. “Oh my God! They did make you guys take dance lessons!”
He sighed and flopped back against the bed in resignation, pulling a pillow over his face to hide his embarrassment and deter further questions until the interview finished or I changed the channel. And it would have been the perfect night, cheeseburgers and lyrics and me and Rohan, all wrapped up in a warm bed with good jokes and music, except that’s when the Man in Black broke in.
19
A balaclava obscured his features and black leather gloves covered his hands, but this guy had to be Rasha. He had the build and that familiar coiled tension. His presence wasn’t random either, because he went straight for Rohan as the greater threat. Ro held his own, the two of them grappling for a hold on the other with a flurry of punches and kicks.
Magic would only escalate the situation and I wasn’t about to have him unleash some unknown power. I grabbed the wooden toy bat.
Rohan slammed a fist into the attacker’s body. He grunted, his entire frame curling around Ro’s punch but recovered pretty damn quickly, slamming both hands to either side of Ro’s head. Rohan’s blades flickered out for a second, snapping back inside him under the thin coat of ice that formed over his skin.
I swung the bat at the back of the attacker’s head but the weapon froze and splintered before contact. The Man in Black turned on me with a menacing smile. Still deep-freezing a struggling Rohan, he grabbed my arm, wrenching it up my back.
Ice filled my veins. Literally. My heart stopped and my blood crystalized into miniscule sharp-edged snowflakes. The world crackled black.
He dropped me on the floor and cracked Rohan’s skull into the wall. Once. Twice. Frost slithered down the wall. “One warning. Back. Off.”
He stepped over me and left.
I curled in a ball, dragging in a deep breath. Big mistake. I shook with a wracking cough, air hitting my half-frozen, tortured lungs.
Blood dripped out of Rohan’s ears as he knelt over me to scoop me into his arms, the drops falling in slow motion. Each plump droplet hit the carpet with a rumbled thud before fracturing, staining the fibers.
He ran the water in the jacuzzi in the bathroom, only letting go of me long enough to strip us of our clothes, before lowering me into the tub braced against his back.
“Cold.” My words came out a garbled mumble. My teeth wouldn’t stop chattering.
“Here.” He shifted for maximum skin contact, wrapping his legs around me.
There was enough hot water in the tub that feeling seeped back into my toes. I cried out, breathing through the blazing agony of having what amounted to my entire body coming off the world’s worst brain freeze.
Ro’s tears hit the water in pretty pink streaks. “Don’t cry,” I said, my chest tightening at how upset he was over my injuries. No, he wasn’t crying. It was blood. His hair was matted with it. My too-tight ribcage convulsed with fear. The water was only a few degrees below boiling and if he was concussed, hot water was a bad idea.
I peeled myself off him. “Out.”
“Yeah.” He climbed out of the tub and collapsed on the floor.
“Ro? You okay?” Still trembling and seeking heat, I slid further into the tub until only my mouth and nose peeked out above the water. I didn’t have the energy to move. Defrosting took a lot out of a girl. Now I finally understood why my Chickeny Delight always tasted so exhausted.
“Dizzy. Need a sec.”
Eventually we recovered enough to throw on our evening clothes, grab our stuff, and get the hell out. Rohan had cleaned up any traces of his blood and had reached the end of his patience with me checking his pupils for a concussion.
“Hey.” Ro took my purse from me. “You’re shaking.” He pressed a hand to my skin. “Are you still cold?”
“No.” My reflection in the burnished gold elevator doors showed a rosy cheeked Nava. I stabbed the elevator button, storming inside the empty car when it opened with a ding. I curled my hands around the metal railing, trying and failing to get my fury under control. “They tracked us here tonight. Came after us, trying to scare us.”
“The further we go down this road, the more the Brotherhood will be gunning for us. We won’t even be able to properly watch our backs, because it might be a friend who sticks the knife in.” Rohan tilted my chin up to face him. “You heard the guy. One warning. Do you want to stop? Walk away?”
“We can’t. And I wouldn’t. Would you?”
He shook his head.
I slid my hand in his. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“You were fighting the guy but it wasn’t because you were trying to protect me.”
The elevator opened into the parking garage, revealing the Shelby. Ro had snagged a spot right by the elevators.
“Slugger, you didn’t need protecting.” He unlocked my door and placed my bag on the floor mat.
“Still,” I said. “Thank you. We need to be smart and way more stealthier from this point on.”
“Plans C through Z. Be more careful. Told you.” Rohan blocked me from getting into the car. He brushed my damp hair out of my eyes. “You’re hooking into me, Sparky and I want to be caught for a long, long time.”
The words didn’t scare me this time. He wasn’t saying them because he was under the influence of a demon drug or even because of the Man in Black. Our night together had shifted something between us–stripped us down and gently deposited us here–a place of cautious optimism.
I curled my toes, rolling onto the sides of my feet. “You’re hooking into me, too.”
Rohan glanced down at the ground, a pleased smile tugging at his lips. “Well, all right, then.”
The first person we called back at the chapter house was Kane. Rohan and I had holed up in my room, leaving our Brotherhood phones downstairs. We used my burner phone and called the landline in Kane’s hotel room in Osoyoos, a small town in British Columbia’s interior.
“Sorry to disturb you.” I put the call on speaker, the cell sitting on the mattress between Rohan and me. “But we’ve got a situation.”
Kane yawned. “This better be an emergency. We’ve got a gong show on our hands between the demons and this flooding.”
“Put your cell in the bathroom and turn on the shower,” Rohan said.
Kane muttered about paranoia but did as he was told. “Speak freely.”
I told him what had happened.
“What do you need?” He sounded wide-awake.
“What Rasha has ice magic?” Rohan said.
“Hang on. Gotta get my laptop.” We heard Kane moving around and keys clacking.
“Is it secure from Brotherhood prying?” I asked.
“Don’t insult me.” More typing. “Hold off on telling your brother about this, babyslay.”
“Why?”