Broken Shadows (26 page)

“That son of a bitch.”

I looked up to see Sebastian, Malik and Jackson close behind him. He looked like he’d had some trouble getting through the narrow tunnel—his wings were covered in dust and cobwebs. And he looked furious.

“What was this place?” I said.

“It’s an original,” Sebastian said, his voice uncharacteristically soft. “This was one of the first real speakeasies in the city.” He put a hand flat on the wall. The rest of us were quiet, watching him, and then he exploded into action.

The table of plants closest to him went over with a crash. He ripped the irrigation system out like a lion tearing the entrails from a wildebeest. Water sprayed everywhere; soil and shattered plastic littered the floor. The next table went, and then the next. The lights went out as he tore extension cords out of outlets. There was silence for a moment, and Jackson conjured up an orb of light. It illuminated Sebastian, fuming and stone-still in the middle of the destruction.

“Burn it,” he said. “All of it.”

“Will do,” Jackson said.

* * *

After we’d cleaned up the remains of Simon’s drug operation, we went to the bar and drank some of Simon’s liquor. The speakeasy was closed—had been for days—and I didn’t like seeing it dark and lifeless.

“Who’s going to run this place now?” I asked.

“Interesting you should ask,” Sebastian said. He’d calmed down considerably since he’d lost it in Simon’s indoor garden. The bags of trash we’d hauled out of the place had seemed to cheer him up. We’d found a second entrance, probably the original, but it had caved in at some point, and the passage was blocked with crumbled cinder blocks and earth. We’d decided to leave it as it was.

Malik leaned forward on the bar and rocked his glass of whiskey back and forth. “Simon didn’t exactly have a last will and testament. We’ve been talking...” he shot sideways glances at Seb and Jackson. “What about you?”

“Me?”

“I don’t see Jackson taking it over, and he’s the only other logical option.”

“But it should be you,” I said to Malik. “I don’t get it. You’ve been running this place—why not you?”

He grimaced and rubbed his shaved head. “That’s the thing—I got a new job. I’m presenting my thesis in December, and this local nonprofit wants to take me on to run their equal housing program. Lobbying and writing policy—all that stuff. Sheree’s got another year in her residency, and we’re thinking we want to stay. If we can swing it.” He tapped my shoulder. “Somebody’s gotta take this place over, and I think it should be you.”

“You’d have free rein,” Sebastian said. “I didn’t charge Simon rent, just fifteen percent of the profits.” I goggled at him, and he shrugged. “My job’s easier when there’s a place for shadowminds to congregate. Helps me keep tabs.” He smiled in his predatory way.

“I don’t know.” I looked around at the sea of bottles behind the bar, the bar gun, the CO2 canisters, the chest fridge stocked with beer. “This is a lot to take on.”

“Hello?” Malik said. “Haven’t you been running your uncle’s B&B since you were twelve or something?”

“That’s different.”

“It’s close enough.”

I looked at Jackson. He hadn’t spoken yet, but he was smiling.

“What do I have to lose?”

* * *

When I got back to Jackson’s place that night, there was a note on the coffee table that simply said
Roof.
Puzzled, I picked it up and set down my purse. I’d spent all day closeted with Malik and Sebastian, taking notes on things like standing liquor orders, electricity bills and who we knew on the San Francisco police force. It was going to be complicated.

I was going to love it.

Jackson and I had planned to have dinner—a celebration, he said, of my new business. So I picked up the note, walked out of the condo and took the stairs to the roof.

I hadn’t realized there was a terrace up there. It was floored in redwood planks and tricked out with planter boxes and comfortable upholstered couches. The San Francisco skyline stretched out on all sides, the lights soft through a thin veil of fog.

Jackson was standing at the far end of the deck, surrounded by tiny lights. I didn’t realize it at first, but as I got closer, I realized there were pyrokinetic light orbs, tiny flares of energy fueled by his powers. They shifted as I came close to him, swirling to surround us both.

“Wow,” I said, and he smiled.

“I made dinner. Come on.”

We ate in the heart of the San Francisco skyline, fish and asparagus and potatoes and wine. He asked me about the speakeasy, how I planned to go forward. We talked about his freelance jobs and how much he would have to travel. He’d bought cheesecake from a fancy bakery. Caramel topping. When I’d taken the last bite, Jackson pulled a small wrapped package out of his pocket and handed it to me. I raised an eyebrow at him, but he just said, “Open it.”

The paper was dark red and thick, satisfying to tear. The cardboard box beneath it was the kind my mother had kept jewelry in. White cardboard embossed with a subtle texture. When I opened it, I found a freshly cut key on a silver keychain. Attached to the ring was a pretty red stone, the same color, I noticed, as the dress I’d worn that first night I’d played. I rubbed it with my thumb.

“I know you want to keep your apartment,” Jackson said, and I looked up. He did? “I know you need your own space. But I want this to be your space too.”

I stared at the key, rolling the stone around in my fingers.

“No one’s ever asked me to move in with him before,” I said.

“I can’t say I’m sorry to hear that.”

I gripped the keychain in my fist, stood and walked to the railing surrounding the deck. The fog was growing thicker, obscuring some of the farthest buildings. Jackson followed, standing a few feet away from me and leaning on the rail.

“You’re making me nervous over there,” he said.

I turned to him, smiling. “I’m just wondering if there’s a hardware store around here that can make a copy of this.” I pulled the old-fashioned key to my apartment out of my pocket. “I mean, if I’m going to have the key to your place, you should have the key to mine. Unless you’d rather just pick the lock?”

Jackson closed the distance between us and caged me with his arms. His dark hair fell forward as he leaned down, and the heat of him was like a windbreaker against the fog.

“I’d rather have your key,” he said. “If you want to give it to me.”

I tilted my head to meet his eyes. “It’s going to be hard. I can stop the grounding, but not while I’m asleep. Are you sure you want this?”

“I could ask you the same thing. Are you sure you want to be with a man when you have to concentrate every time you touch him?”

I laced my hand through his, focusing to keep the transfer at bay. It was getting easier. I didn’t know if it would ever be easy. “Some things are worth the struggle.”

“So that’s a yes, then.”

“Yes. That’s a yes.”

He leaned closer, and the anticipation of the kiss to come welled up in me, a hectic joy. I wanted to lose myself in this moment, but I didn’t want to see those beautiful lights go dim. They swirled around us, congregating into a bright cloud, and then winked out.

“I’ll make them again,” he said, and found my lips in the sudden dark.

* * * * *

About the Author

A.J. Larrieu grew up in small-town Louisiana, where she spent her summers working in her family’s bakery, exploring the swamps around her home and reading science-fiction and fantasy novels under the covers. At one point there really was an alligator in her backyard, but it was a small one. She attended Louisiana State University, where she majored in biochemistry and wrote bad poetry on the side.

Despite pursuing a PhD in biology, she couldn’t kick the writing habit, and by the time she graduated, she had an addiction to writing sexy urban fantasy and paranormal romance. The first book in her Shadowminds series,
Twisted Miracles
, was a finalist in RWA’s Golden Heart competition.

A.J. lives in San Francisco with her family, where she works as a biochemist by day and writes sexy supernatural stories by night. She loves to chat with fellow book lovers, so please drop her a line at
[email protected]
, follow her on Twitter at
@ajlarrieu
, or visit her at
www.ajlarrieu.com
.

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ISBN-13: 9781426899478

Broken Shadows

Copyright © 2015 by A.J. Larrieu

Edited by Deborah Nemeth

All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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