All That Falls (26 page)

“He’ll be back soon. How’d you get in? I know Griffin didn’t give you a key.”

“I was his publicist and one of the few people he knew in the Etherlin. Why do you think he wouldn’t have given me a spare key?”

Smudges of heat spotted her cheeks. “I just don’t believe he did. You’re Ileana’s brother, and it’s her building, maybe you got a key from her…or took one.”

He closed the desk drawer and turned slowly. His dark eyes narrowed, but his voice was mild when he spoke. “I’m sorry that things didn’t work out between us, Jersey, but it’s been over such a long time. Are you going to mope around and give me wounded looks forever? Don’t you think it’s time to grow up and move on?”

She shouldn’t have given a damn what he said, but it still stung. She turned off the burner under the kettle. “I
was
over it until I found out what you did.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked impatiently as he walked to the tall bookshelf and ran his hand over the top. She wondered again what he was looking for. Whatever it was, if it was valuable or important he wouldn’t find it. She and Hayden had searched every inch of the apartment for Griffin’s songbook. There wasn’t anything hidden left to find.

“I talked to your assistant, Courtney, a couple of weeks ago.”

“My
former
assistant Courtney. The one who’s extremely angry that I fired her,” he said casually, but Jersey noticed how rigid he went at her mention. “No one smart would believe anything she has to say about me these days.”

“She has a pharmacy receipt. The date was the day after you asked me to get an abortion and I said no. You told her the abortion pills were for Ileana, but Courtney never believed that. She thought it was strange that you flew out to see us in Phoenix when you were in the middle of Etherlin Council meetings. She wanted to know why I had to be rushed to the hospital after the show. She’d heard I’d had the stomach flu and dehydration, but wanted to be sure.”

His jaw hardened. “And what did you tell her?”

“Maybe I didn’t tell her anything. Or maybe I told her the truth. That I had a miscarriage and almost bled to death.”

“Are you asking me if I poisoned you, Jersey? Can you really accuse me of such a thing?”

“Yeah, I can,” she said, glaring at him. “Griffin was planning to fire you. Why? I never told him anything about you and me. I never told anyone. I always kept it a secret like I promised to, but Griffin said he had to get you away from us. Those were his exact words. He said there were too many shadows around you. I didn’t know what he meant, but something must’ve happened to make him not trust you. What was it?”

Troy folded his arms across his chest, glaring at her. She gripped the counter next to the stove, holding herself steady. She knew she should stop talking, but now that she’d started she couldn’t bottle her fury anymore. She had to confront him.

“I died last night,” she said. “Right before I did, I met an angel, and the light around him was like looking through a diamond. Ever since I woke up, I’ve seen shadows and light surrounding people.” The darkness around Troy blackened further. “You’re all covered in muck, Troy. Your skin looks almost gray.”

His pursed lips turned white with rage. It was satisfying to see him upset, but as an oily film slithered outward from him across the floor and toward her, her muscles locked and her breath caught.

“During your near-death experience, you must have suffered some brain damage,” he said coldly. “Let’s hope you recover.”

“Get out of here, and stay away from us.”

He eased toward her, the darkness advancing with him.

Air chilled her skin, raising gooseflesh.

Don’t let it touch you!

She backed to the other side of the kitchen. Her breath fogged the air in short bursts, fear twisting her belly. She kept her eyes locked on him. He did the same. For a frozen moment, neither of them moved, then he sprang forward. She spun and darted away, but his palm slammed between her shoulder blades. She fell, crashing to the floor. The impact drove pain up her arms and knocked the wind from her. She scrambled to escape, but his hands on her throat strangled her and a knee in her back crushed her against the floor.

She strained to reach up and back, clawing at him as her eyes bulged and tongue thickened. He banged her head on the ground, and pain shot through her head in a blinding fury. She smelled licorice and rotten eggs, retched against a closed throat, and then ceased to hurt anymore.

“Feel it?” Cerise asked with her right hand over Lysander’s left on the gear shift.

He nodded and shifted.

“Perfect. See? No one with your reflexes and coordination should drive an automatic.”

“When I said I didn’t know how to drive a manual transmission, I didn’t mean that I drove the other kind. Normally, I go the way of the wind. If I need to travel by car, I’m driven.”

“Like a child,” she teased.

He rolled his eyes. “Like someone born before there were cars.”

“What about horses?”

“Yes, before those, too.”

She smirked. “I meant, did you ever ride horses to get around?”

“Occasionally.”

“You don’t want to keep up with the times?”

He shrugged, shifting again. “I follow mankind’s progress. Sometimes I take advantage of it. I have a computer.”

“Do you use it?”

“I download music.”

“Do you have an email account?”

“I do,” he said, then laughed. “And a website that Merrick created for me when he was a teenager. Get-me-out-of-here-dot-com.”

She barked out a startled laugh.
That’s hilarious.

“The email username was Fallen_guy.”

“Subtle.”

Lysander nodded. “And after soliciting a promise that I would check the account, he proceeded to send me pages of junk mail.”

“Did you get pissed?”

“No, I got even. I filled his shower with sand.”

“Sand?”

“To the top. He had a date with a girl he’d been pursuing. He opened the door and the sand spilled out.”

“Wow. The shower must have been unusable.”

“It was.”

“Did he miss his date?”

“No, he got ready elsewhere, but he was late. And afterward he couldn’t bring her back to his place.”

“There must have been sand in everything for weeks. Did he have to hire a plumber to fix the shower?”

“Certainly.”

“Did he stop sending you spam?”

“No, he sent twice as much. But then it only made me laugh because I knew how mad he was when the sand came pouring out. He cursed at me in three languages, including one he doesn’t speak.”

She smiled, charmed by the thought of the pair of hardened killers participating in a lighthearted one-upmanship.

He shifted gears. She glanced at his hand.

“It’s a crime for this car to be sitting in Alissa’s garage with no one around to drive it. And she needs her own car. Cars are freedom.”

“She can’t drive it,” Lysander said. “Her sight was damaged when she opened the portal to your ancestors.”

“I
knew
there was a problem with her eyes. What’s being done about it? Has she seen a specialist?”

“I don’t think so. Her vision’s returning slowly. It was fully restored with the Muse’s Wreath, but she wouldn’t keep it. She felt the Wreath would better serve the world from the Etherlin.”

“What would serve the world best is if one of its most powerful muses brought her magic back to the Etherlin. Do you think Merrick would move to the Etherlin if things there were
different? If there was no risk of him being imprisoned? Or does he like being a mob boss in his own territory?”

“I believe what Merrick liked about his territory was its proximity to Alissa. Now that she stays with him, I doubt he cares where he lives.”

“Then why is he in the Varden when they’re being hunted by the ventala syndicate and that bitch Tamberi Jacobi? If they’re not going to be in the Etherlin, they should live in New York or the Florida Keys or Paris. Some writer-friendly place for Richard and Alissa’s aspirants.”

“They can’t leave the area yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because Merrick has an obligation to fulfill.”

“What obligation?”

“His promise to fight with me when the time of the prophecy comes.”

“Ah.” Cerise paused thoughtfully as she parked in front of Troy’s house. “Actually, Alissa may have the right idea anyway.”

“About what?” he asked, making no move to get out of the car.

“About leaving the Etherlin. I don’t know what our grandmothers would think of the Etherlin these days. They created it as a community for them to live and work together, to enhance each other’s powers of inspiration by their close proximity. And this spot was idyllic with its snowcapped mountains and ice-melt lakes, evergreens and cherry blossoms. It’s stunning. Each generation of muses became more powerful and world famous, but as we got more focused on our work and only our work, the Etherlin Council sucked up more and more control. The community needs money to keep it running. Since money can be a corrupting force when it comes to creativity, the muses signed over their earnings to the Etherlin trust. There were stalkers and vampires and ventala to contend with, so Etherlin Security had to become more protective and more formidable. Now between the EC and ES, we’re like dolls living in a dollhouse, flanked on all sides by men who want to protect and control our images and our lives. So much has changed in a couple of generations.
Too much.
The muses a few generations back were fiercely independent. Maybe they didn’t accomplish as much in
as short a time as we do, but they also didn’t live their lives in some sort of weird perpetual adolescence. They weren’t prisoners in their own homes.” She glanced over at him. “They had affairs with whomever they wanted.”

“I can think of no one better suited to follow her own instincts than you, Cerise. And I don’t only say that because it’s in my interest for you to decide to have an affair with someone your community deems unsuitable.”

“I’ve played the rebellious teen for way too long. I’m closer to thirty than nineteen. It used to be simpler to keep secrets than to face resistance and EC scrutiny. And Griffin wanted our affair to be kept secret, so I’d sneak out of the Etherlin like a teenager climbing out her bedroom window. But this isn’t a game, and it’s time for all of us to grow up.

“The community and my family in particular have been on edge for weeks. Ever since Alissa left without warning or explanation. There was speculation that Merrick was controlling her somehow or had abducted her…seduced her into doing something she would later regret. But he didn’t. I know Alissa feels like she can’t come home. And we’ve been made to feel it’ll never be safe to visit her and that she somehow betrayed all of us by getting involved with Merrick, when in fact all she did was fall in love and be true to herself. That can’t be wrong,” Cerise said. “Now Ileana’s out there with someone dangerous. If she hadn’t tried to keep her relationship with the guy concealed, maybe one of us would have realized what he was.” Cerise shook her head. “I don’t owe anyone blind obedience, and they’ll never get it from me. But I do owe them the truth, even if it leads to an exhausting fight that costs me plenty.”

He smiled at her. “I admire in you the same things I admire in Merrick.”

She raised her brows in question.

“Consequences cannot deter you the way they would deter lesser men and women.”

She smiled. “The consummate warrior approves of us fighting. What a surprise.”

He laughed softly, grazing his knuckles over her forearm, raising gooseflesh. “Heaven may not have given men the courage of lions, but what it put in mankind’s heart is just as noble. Perhaps more so, since fighting must be chosen.”

She liked that perspective, liked everything about him. Her gaze fixed on his mouth for a moment, temptation curling through her. “There’s no time right now for me to fully reward you for your restraint against the ES officers, but there’s time for a kiss.”

“Good,” he murmured, leaning closer. “Take one.”

She traced his lower lip with the tip of her tongue, mingling their breath. Moments stretched along with their bodies. When she finally lifted her face, he looked at her with eyes the color of the murky depths of the sea.

“I’m glad I never kissed you before last night.”

“Why’s that?” she asked, her heart tattooing a beat against her ribs.

“Because if I’d known how you would suit me, I would’ve been tempted.”

“Tempted to?”

“To always have you this close.” His mouth curved, wicked and sweet. “Becoming bound to you might not have been the result of an accident. I’d have considered seeing it done on purpose.”

She pressed another kiss, hard and rich, onto his mouth. Drawing back, she added, “Careful. If you spend too much time around human beings, you’ll become as reckless as we are.”

He sighed ruefully. “That is a danger.”

After a quiet moment, she exited the car. He followed suit and they went to Troy’s front door. About to slam his shoulder into it to force it open, Lysander stopped short at the sound of Cerise’s ringing phone. He tilted his head.

“Check who that is,” he said.

She cocked a brow, but pulled the phone out. “Amazing instincts,” she murmured when she saw Alissa’s name displayed.

“Hey,” Cerise said when she picked up the call. “Are you guys all right?”

“We’re fine,” Alissa said. “Merrick negotiated an end to the violence. At least temporarily. How’s Lysander?”

“Alive and kicking.”

“I never doubted it. My father wants to tell you something. He insisted that I call. Do you have a moment to speak to him?”

She glanced at the door, wondering how long it would be before ES marshaled its forces and made another run at Lysander. “Sure. We’re a little busy, but we can make time for Richard.”

Lysander nodded in agreement.

“Okay, Dad, Cerise is on the phone.” There was a pregnant pause and she heard Richard speaking in the background.

“What?” Cerise asked.

“Sorry,” Alissa said. “He’s talking something over with himself. Dad, Cerise and Lysander don’t have much time. Can you please talk to her now?”