Playing with Fire

Gabriel wasn’t happy, but he said nothing as we slipped through the door and up a narrow flight of stairs. There was a small room off to one side that served as a lobby and reception, although the room was barren of life. The detritus of people who had lost all hope lay scattered on the floor and stairs- empty bottles, fast-food wrappers, crushed cigarette packets and butts, torn fragments of lurid magazines… we picked our way around all of it as we crept up the first flight of stairs. The air in the hotel was foul, stale with smoke and urine and rodent droppings, and other, less-palatable scents that I refused to identify or acknowledge. Cyrene’s trail here was sporadic as well, as if she’d been dragged up the stairs. Two clear sets of her footprints stood outside one door on the second floor, however.

I glanced at Gabriel. ‘‘Can you go through walls?’’ I whispered.

He shook his head. ‘‘I can’t interact with anything, nor can I travel through solid substances. Doors have to be open for me to go through them.’’

‘‘Then I’ll just have to open this one.’’

‘‘May…’’ He frowned. ‘‘I do not like this. You should wait until I can come to help you. This blackmailer is clearly dangerous. You could be harmed.’’

His words washed over me with a warm, comforting sensation. No one had ever worried about me when I was out on a job-it never seemed to occur to Cyrene that I could be harmed, and Magoth… well, Magoth didn’t particularly care what happened to me so long as I succeeded.

‘‘If you were here, I’d spend all my time kissing you and we’d never get Cy rescued,’’ I told him with a smile. ‘‘Don’t worry, I’ll shadow as soon as the lock is open. This hallway is dim enough to hide me if anyone is standing on the other side of the door.’’

He didn’t react to my light flirtation, just stood watching me with worried eyes as I persuaded the lock to open.

‘‘Well, I guess we were worried about nothing,’’ I said a few moments later as Gabriel straightened up from where he had been kneeling next to the crumpled form on the floor. ‘‘Is he dead?’’

‘‘I believe so. I can detect no signs of life, although I would have to be able to touch him to know for certain if he could be resuscitated.’’

Unwilling to touch the body, I used my foot to nudge it over onto its back. ‘‘Agathos daimon! It’s Porter.’’

‘‘The thief taker?’’ Gabriel asked, frowning down at the twisted face of the dead man on the floor. The handle of a knife emerged from his chest.

I avoided looking at the grimacing face and examined the handle as best I could without touching it. It was silver, carved with runes I couldn’t identify. Something about it tickled the back of my mind. ‘‘I think I’ve seen this before.’’

‘‘Where?’’

‘‘I don’t remember. It just looks… familiar.’’ I steeled myself and laid two fingers across the man’s neck. The body was cool to the touch. ‘‘No pulse.’’

‘‘If he’s dead, then where’s your twin?’’ Gabriel asked.

I rose and looked around the room with him. One corner held a grimy bed, a chair, and a three-legged table. A filthy, rust-stained sink hung crookedly off the wall on the other side of the room, below a mirror that was missing most of its glass. ‘‘That is a very good question.’’

I had come out of the shadow world to examine the body of the thief taker but slipped into it again to look for signs of Cyrene.

‘‘There,’’ Gabriel said, pointing at the window.

‘‘Why does no one ever use doors to exit rooms?’’ I grumbled, moving over to the window to examine it. It was pushed down, but not latched from the inside. Sure enough, there was a footprint on the windowsill. ‘‘Looks like we’re going out onto the fire escape.’’

‘‘I hate to contradict a lady, but alas, there are times when duty must take precedence over ma

I spun around to find Savian the thief taker in the doorway. His gaze swept around the room, pausing on the body of Porter for a moment before continuing its perusal. ‘‘I see you’ve had a bit of excitement, Mei Ling. Why don’t you step out of the shadows so we can have a little chat about it.’’

I froze. Although it was daytime, the room was dark enough that unless I moved, Savian wouldn’t see me.

Before I could think of how to respond, he leaped across the room, straight for the window… and me.

‘‘What’s this? Leaving? You wound me, Mei Ling, you truly do,’’ he said, grabbing at me. This close, he could no doubt see a shadowy image of me. ‘‘I thought we had something special between us.’’

I deshadowed, snarling something rude under my breath as I jerked my arm away from him.

‘‘Take your hands off my mate!’’ Gabriel bellowed. He rushed at Savian, forgot he was insubstantial, and zipped right through the thief taker.

Savian looked momentarily disconcerted. ‘‘What was that?’’

‘‘I am not a what!’’ Gabriel snapped, stalking over to Savian to stand before him, glaring. ‘‘I am the silver wyvern, and you have just touched my mate.’’

I raised my eyebrows a smidgen at Gabriel’s show of possession. For some reason, it amused rather than a

‘‘Volatile?’’ Savian repeated the word, his brows scrunching up together. ‘‘Was that intended to be a compliment about my virility?’’

My gaze shifted from Gabriel to his. ‘‘You can’t hear him?’’

‘‘Hear who?’’ Savian asked.

I looked back to Gabriel. ‘‘How can I hear you if he can’t?’’

‘‘You are my mate. He is not,’’ he answered with a growl, his eyes burning as they fixed on Savian. ‘‘Who is this man?’’

‘‘Savian the thief taker, meet Gabriel Tauhou, wyvern of the silver dragon sept,’’ I said, gesturing toward Gabriel. ‘‘Don’t let the fact that you can’t see or hear Gabriel confuse you-he’s in the shadow world, but he’s very much here. Er… sort of.’’

Savian’s gaze rested on me with speculation. ‘‘A dragon in the beyond? Didn’t know it could happen.’’

‘‘This seems to be the day for impossible things,’’ I said, crossing my arms tightly. ‘‘What is it you want? Other than to haul me back to the committee, that is?’’

‘‘Well…’’ He smiled. It was a particularly charming smile, one that held a good deal of humor in it, and I thought for a moment or two that if I’d never met Gabriel, I might have followed up on that smile to see what sort of a man was behind it. ‘‘There is the matter of that little offer you made me.’’

I froze again, this time horrified as the memory came back to me. ‘‘That has nothing to do with anything,’’ I said, glancing at Gabriel.

‘‘Oh, really?’’ His gaze flitted around the room, and I knew for certain what he was going to say before he said it. ‘‘You don’t think propositioning me in order to get me to let you go has any pertinence to this situation?’’

‘‘You’re a rat,’’ I told him. ‘‘That was downright mean.’’

‘‘I know,’’ he said, his smile widening. ‘‘But you have to admit, as rats go, I’m fairly charming.’’

Gabriel’s silver-eyed gaze shifted from Savian to me.

‘‘I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I said that I didn’t actually proposition him in order to get him to let me go?’’ I asked him.

‘‘I believe you,’’ he said without hesitation. ‘‘You are my mate. You would not be so if you did not respect and honor me as I do you.’’

An odd sort of constriction gripped my heart. His words were so heartfelt, they touched deep, dark parts of my soul.

‘‘I did proposition him,’’ I said, needing to admit the truth to him. ‘‘And he took me up on it, but I couldn’t go through with it.’’

Gabriel was silent for a moment, his eyes shadowed. Finally, he nodded. ‘‘I would expect you to try to use whatever method you had available to free yourself. That you did not betray me to do so does not, however, surprise me.’’

‘‘It was a close thing,’’ Savian said with a wicked grin.