Darksider: Reveler Series 3 (9 page)

He controlled his exultation by mocking her with a lifted brow. “You can actually move?”

Her expression went fretful. “It’s just I want—”

“That’s okay,” he said. He wanted that, too. “I’ll help.”

***

“So,” said Sera, clearing the dishes from the bar. The blood in her system had transformed to liquid euphoria. Every motion felt surreal. She ached all over—and on the inside, too—but it felt so good that she relished every sensation. It was like flying, or like dreaming. “I can make more crepes.”

For lunch, apparently.

Her T-shirt was still in a heap on the floor. She’d grabbed other clothes when they’d finally stirred from the bed.

Harlen was half-dressed, too, rummaging in his coat pockets. But at the mention of crepes, he lifted his gaze and shot her a scorching look.

Her body tingled all over in response. “Or a fat stack of pancakes?” A little heartier.

“I’ll leave it to your discretion.” He lifted his mobile phone and frowned.

Her spirits sank. She could guess who’d called him—Steve Coll or Malcolm Rook. “What now?”

“Three missed calls from Ma.”

“Oh.” Sera had met and liked his mother. His mom had once even taught her their family’s secret recipe for gnocchi. Sera didn’t cook much Italian, but when she did, it was a modification of Eleanor Fawkes’s formula. They’d been on a first-name basis. “Anything wrong?”

He shrugged. “I dunno.” He held the phone to his ear. Waited. “Not picking up.”

Sera put the pan she’d been holding down, disappointed. “Do you have to go?” She’d hoped for a whole day ignoring the world before the hell tonight.

Harlen was tapping out a text but said, “If I go, then you do, too, sweetheart.”

Which is how they ended up in his car, hungry, driving over to his parents’ house to make sure nothing was wrong. He’d used to ride a motorcycle. She’d even had a helmet of her own. Now he drove a black Mustang.

“Work tonight will be a little tricky.” Harlen exited the freeway and turned down Via Roja. The route was semi-familiar, though she couldn’t quite remember each turn. His parents had to be living at the same place, where he’d grown up. “I can’t bring you in to the Agora’s Chimera center,” he said. “I’m going to find a Rêve with an open spot, and I’ll keep an eye on you from there.” He made a face at the road. “You should know that Agora keeps a record of all participants, so your stalker, if he is Chimera, might be aware that you are present.”

“Okay.” She’d decided not to be scared. Angry was better. It had more teeth. “He won’t try anything with so many people around.” Would be stupid.

“Right,” Harlen said. “The best case, actually, is for you to spot him, though I doubt we’ll get that lucky. But if you do, I’ll take it from there.”

Or, alternatively,
she
could take matters into her own hands and kick the guy’s ass.
 
Except that would only bring Harlen more scrutiny, and he’d said Chimera was already closely watching him at work. “You know, Harlen, I don’t want you to get into trouble over him.” That included the business with the crazy people from Maze City, as well. Sera was much more worried about that.

Harlen winked at her. “Let’s see how it goes. Play it by ear.”

Sera rolled her eyes. Noncommittal BS. She’d do what she’d do, period, and Marshal Harlen Fawkes would just have to deal.

They pulled up in front of his parents’ house, a small two-story in the Craftsman style, with a red-and-orange fall wreath on the door. The garage to the side of the house was open, someone bumping around in there. It was a big guy, Harlen’s dad probably, so it was unlikely that the three calls from his mom meant anything serious.

“Hi, Pop!” Harlen yelled, walking up to the front door. He let himself inside, Sera following, as if he still lived there. They’d actually had sex in the basement once.

His mom came around the corner—she’d gone auburn with blond streaks, and it looked good on her—and had some kind of tool in her hand.

“Hi, Eleanor,” Sera said.
Surprise!

Eleanor stopped in her tracks. Glanced from Sera to Harlen, her mouth drawing into a tight line. “If you were seeing someone, why did you let me set up a date with Isabelle Rhoades?”

Sera’s smile faded. His mom had embraced her before but apparently no longer.

“Oh God, the tennis teacher,” Harlen said. “That was last night.”

Tennis teacher?
Sera shot him a sideways scowl. When he’d told her last night that his mom had been setting him up, she hadn’t considered that he’d been “taken” for the evening already.

Eleanor turned and stalked back to where Sera knew the breakfast nook was located. Sera leaned to the right and could see that the room had been taken over by plastic storage containers with drawers, each labeled. The table was covered with papers and an open laptop. Looked like the nerve center for her new jewelry biz.

The front door opened again behind them, this time with a rush of energy and sound. Smallish kids—Sera had no ability to gauge their ages—ran inside. One was crying, the other was hollering for Gram.

Harlen grabbed the tearful kid up. “What’s up, sugar?”

“Cookie.” Looked like some of that cookie was brown mush on the little girl’s chin.

Two seconds later, Harlen’s sister, Jessica, came in the house. She took one look at Sera—who tried her smile again—then transferred her attention to Harlen. “I was going to chew you out, but this—” she waved toward Sera “—trumps all.”

Jessica put her arms out for the little girl, who refused to budge and buried her face in Harlen’s neck, slobber notwithstanding. Harlen got
all
the girls.

Jessica sighed. “Please don’t spoil her. She’s crying because she ate her cookie. That’s right. Because she got a cookie and ate it.”

“Give her another one,” Harlen said.

“No,” his sister answered. “How are you, Sera? What’s with the—” She gestured to the bandage on her forehead.

“I was clumsy.”

“Hmm.” And that was the end of the pleasantries. “Are you two a thing, then?”

Sera blushed. “We’re just barely reconnecting.” But, yeah, she was sticking as close to Harlen as he was to her.

“Then I’ll need a word with you.” Jessica was smiling, but it was scary. “I’ve had it ready for a long time. Practiced it even. Almost hunted you down, but Harlen said you’d left for New York—”

Sera was spinning. Why was Jessica so mad at her?

“Jess,” Harlen cut in. “Stop it. It’s not like that.”

“If you’re
reconnecting
, it is like that.”

Nothing made sense. Not even what Jessica was saying. New York? As in Hyde Park, for culinary School?

“This is my life,” Harlen said. “Stay out of it.”

Jessica stepped up to him. “Your life happens to include a family who cares about you. Sucks, but there it is.”

Sera’s face burned. Her heart was pounding. They all hated her. Like,
wow
. No one had ever really hated her before. Felt like she was on fire, and covered in acid.

“Seems like everything is fine here.” Harlen detached the little girl from his neck. The kid bicycled her feet in the air to get back to him but ultimately, had to writhe and suffer in her mom’s grasp instead. “Please apologize to Isabelle for me.”

Sera felt Harlen take her by the arm and propel her toward the door. She had half a mind to go back and endure whatever Jessica had to say just to find out what she’d done. The breakup had been hard on
both
of them. They had to understand that much.

But Harlen had her on the front walk already. She’d get her answers from him just as soon as they were in the car. “Don’t go inside, Pop,” he yelled toward the garage. “Ma and Jess are dangerous. Head to the cabin. Run for the hills.”

***

Harlen was driving, but he had no idea where to go. He couldn’t take her to his apartment. Per Chimera regulations, his residence had to be unknown to all and secure, so that when he was Darkside working, he wouldn’t be vulnerable while sleeping. So he took the on-ramp to head back to Sera’s place. Everything had been fine at Sera’s place.

A sideways glance found Sera deep in thought, an expression of consternation on her face. “She said that you told her I’d gone to New York. She had to mean culinary school, right? When we broke up? That was a
mutual
decision. Did you tell them that I broke up with you?”

Gah.
She wasn’t going to let it go. “No,” he said. “Besides it was
years
ago. Years.”

“And you were already gone by the time I left for CIA. So…”

Fine.
This was stupid and unnecessary, but she was going to pick at this until she knew, anyway. He gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were white. “I came back.”

“But you
did
join the Army.”

“Yeah, just a little while later.” The Army had been his original plan, before he’d decided that he couldn’t live without Sera. Afterwards, he’d had no idea what else to do. He’d figured,
Might as well.

“So why was Jessica going to go after me in New York and give me a piece of her mind?”

“It was
years
ago. Water under the bridge. I’ll talk to them.”

“If you won’t tell me, then stop the car so I can go back and hear Jessica out.”

Fuck it.
“Because I made a jackass out of myself.” There. “Dropped out of the program. Got my Gram’s ring from Ma and went to propose like an idiot. Ma and Jess were ridiculously excited about it. But you’d gone.”

He’d said it. Couldn’t look at her, though.

“I didn’t know you went to propose.” Her voice had gone husky. “How could I have known? I wasn’t there.”

“Exactly.” So could they drop it now?

“Then why are they so—” She went quiet for two seconds. “They read the note.”

Yep. The note.

Sera’s voice was laced with panic. “What did it say?”

“You’re the one who wrote it.”

“It was six,
seven
years ago. I don’t remember!”

He glanced at her. The look on her face told him she seemed to remember the basics, though. He was pretty sure Jess could fill her in on the details. The note was all he’d come back to his parents’ house with that day. And yeah, it had been a bad day, the first of many.

He wasn’t going to think about it. She was sitting next to him right now. He’d just spent the better part of the morning
inside
her.

She broke into a sob. “I was so angry and sad and mean.”

Oh God.
Tears. He gripped the steering wheel tighter and wouldn’t have been surprised if it warped under his grip. “It’s not worth crying over. I’ll explain to them, and it’ll be fine. It was years ago.”

“Stop saying that! Of course they hate me.
I’d
hate me. You went to
propose
?” She’d put a hand to the bruise on her head. It must’ve been hurting her.

This was too serious too fast. Even he knew that. He exited the freeway again while she did that breathing thing that girls did to fight crying, even though it never really worked.

“Do you still have it?” she demanded.

He pulled into a gas station to park. “Hell no. I don’t have it.” When the car was stopped, he faced her. “The point is, I knew what you meant in the note. You needed to go to cooking school. It was the right decision. And I was all about Rêve, which you
hated
after Francie died.”

The sleep study program’s first casualty. Chimera hadn’t existed then to investigate properly. The university almost closed the program, but then they’d found ecstasy in Francie’s system. The report said she’d gone under high and OD’d Darkside.

Now that he had experience, he figured Francie had gotten lost in the Scrape. Lots of people went Darkside high.

“How could you have
come back
, anyway? Did they let you leave the program?”

“My work with the Army is really none of your business.” If he didn’t cut her off there, she’d find a way to blame herself for everything. He’d gone as far into Rêve Special Ops as he could. Another mistake.

She’d managed to suffocate the tears and had gone stony.

Why had he parked? He needed to move or he’d lose it. He backed out of the parking space and took to the road again.

“Where are we going?” Her voice was thick with tears.

“Back to your place.” Maybe they could find their balance together again. Make it work.

There was a short pause, then she asked, “Can you take me to the restaurant instead?”

That was the obvious alternative, the wedge between them. “Yeah. Sure.”

CHAPTER SIX

The word
proposed
rang in Sera’s mind.
Proposed.
She was still putting the chain of events together and wouldn’t be satisfied until she understood exactly what had happened.

If he’d left his program, that meant he’d intended for her to have it all. That had been part of the argument: there was no way she could follow him, but he could’ve come with her to Hyde Park or worked in the city. Done something with Rêve there, if he’d needed to.