Stiletto by Emma Savant

Author:Emma Savant [Savant, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-06-20T05:00:00+00:00

24

“Don’t worry,” Alec said, putting a hand on my arm. “We’ll be there to protect her.”

Brendan brushed past us in the darkened alley outside the mesmer club, checking Alec with his shoulder.

“Sorry,” he said, clearly without meaning it.

I grabbed Brendan’s arm and whirled him around to face me. My grip was stronger than I’d planned, and his eyebrows shot up.

“What?”

“This,” I said, waving a finger between him and Alec. “This thing here, whatever this is? It has to stop. Now. My mother was just murdered. I don’t have time to referee some stupid competition, especially when you both seem to think I’m going to end up as the prize.”

I’d been trying to play nice with the two of them for too long. I didn’t have energy to keep it up. Politeness was for people who weren’t about to send one of their best friends into a vampire nest.

“I’m no one’s prize,” I said. “Got it? Not yours. Not yours. So either you two figure out how to work together or I’m calling this whole thing off.”

Cate clapped slowly. “Well said. Keep it in your pants, boys.”

“You can shut up,” I said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Rowan?”

“I’m ready,” she said. She was dressed simply and wore no glamours.

It wasn’t like glamours would have helped; Sienna could recognize us all beneath them. But I was nervous, knowing she was going in there without even the pretense of a disguise.

No, not nervous.

Terrified.

I could recognize the fear. I could give it a name. But I couldn’t give in. If I stepped back now, I’d never find it in myself to step forward again.

“Cate?”

“Headed to the back exit.” She gave me a finger-gun salute that would have been stupid coming from anyone else. She slipped down the back of the alley and melted into the shadows.

“Boys?” I said, mimicking Cate’s tone.

“I’m ready,” Brendan said. “I’ve been ready all day.”

Alec just nodded. The tiny camera hidden inside one of his shirt buttons winked at me, but only because I was looking.

It was a Humdrum technology—not the kind of thing the Daggers usually used and not the kind of thing Sienna would be on alert for. I checked my phone, made sure the low-quality feed was live, and ducked back into the cover of the shadows. Rowan stepped out onto the street, Brendan and Alec behind her.

I waited for a few long breaths. Cherry and Saffron, the two remaining Cardinals, were the only ones who knew where I was.

If this went south, they had instructions to get the rest of the Daggers out and into hiding.

I didn’t know what kind of hiding, and I didn’t know where. That was up to them. My not knowing meant they’d be that much safer if I ended up captured.

I sank to the dirty alley pavement with the brick of the building against my back, put in my headphones, threw up a quick glamour of darkness that would hide my phone’s light from passersby, and watched.

Rowan spoke to a bouncer outside a nightclub that had neon pink and purple signs in the windows.

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