“I’ll be right here,” Io whispered from some far-off place. My fingers curled around the object that was as much a part of Midheaven as I was, clutching it to my chest like it was a life preserver. In some ways, I knew, it was.
My soft, velvet thoughts veered sharply then, a roller coaster downslope that plunged my veins into fire. My ears took on a frantic buzz, like I’d stuck my head in a hive as I dropped farther…and then suddenly I was sailing upright, walking on my own two legs through a heavy fog, like a spongy night in London or some other place that wasn’t arid with desert heat. The haze was disconcerting, and I waved a hand before my face to push it away, still “walking” until lights appeared in front of me. The liquid boil of my blood evened out, and my footsteps took on the scratchy reverberation I remembered from my last two mental visits in Midheaven. Once I spotted the outline of a pagoda lantern, the haze dissipated and static electricity whipped around me, the fabric of the world being unzipped.
“Home sweet home,” I muttered, each syllable skipping like a stone, my mouth lined in copper.
The saloon was exactly as I remembered. The long, polished bar stretched before me like a lazy feline, the staircase leading to the elemental rooms to the left, and the board with the myriad Most Wanted posters still staring eerily at me from the far right. Closer to the wall of pagoda lanterns, where I was standing, Sleepy Mac’s piano sat in dust-covered silence, waiting for its owner’s return.
As before, the entire room was devoid of color. Instead a sepia-toned coating washed out everything-the glossy bar, the mirrors reflecting back my hard gaze, the dozen poker tables eating up the room’s middle. The sole exception to this ashen uniformity was a bright, glossy red door with a scrolled gold handle, rimmed in a fierce glow. It was the only thing holding back the heat siphoned from the sun’s core on the other side.
Not that it helped much. Even in my dream I began to sweat. The bartender, Bill, was nowhere to be seen, but a single glass of elegantly cut crystal sat brimming with golden liquid on the otherwise empty bar. Even knowing how the liquid slowed actions and thoughts and time, catching it as if in molasses, I still couldn’t help licking my lips.
There was absolutely nobody else in the room. No washed out men curled about the dozen or so poker tables, bartering for chips containing their personal powers-speed, strength, and soul.
You can still cash in the ones you wo… .
Tripp’s words mocked me because I still didn’t know how.
“Back so soon?”
Solange appeared like a Vegas stage magician, absent one moment and there the next, though I didn’t applaud. Her face was what romance novels would term dewy, her hair pulled back into a slick brown plait, revealing the only adornment I’d ever seen her wear-simple gold chandelier earrings, ones she obviously cherished. She wore a long black coat with gold fur at neck and wrists, shining buttons lining the front to land at mid-calf, where black stiletto boots disappeared beneath the soft hem.
“You learn quickly. Already able to move about in the aetheric of your own accord.” She clapped her gloved hands once. “Bravo.”
“Forgive me if I don’t take a bow,” I said evenly. “That would entail taking my eyes off of you.”
Her jaw clenched, prettily of course, and she tapped her chin with a finger. “I distinctly recall telling you, in no uncertain terms, to leave the Rest House and never return. Did I not?”
“Well, you have something that belongs to me.”
She lifted one slim brow then leaned back on the glossy bar, pushed with her palms, and was sitting crosslegged in an instant. “Just as well. We have some accounts that need settling. Join me for a drink?”
She blinked prettily. I crossed my arms and stayed where I was. The last time I drank something this woman provided, I awoke to her holding a sliver of my soul between a jeweler’s tweezers. “I owe you nothing. You’re the one who threw a shit fit and crushed your pretty glass room. Believe me, I had no desire to be there.”
“Of course you did,” she snapped, and her boots hit the floor. Fuck, she was fast…and her fuse as short as ever. I made a point of staying within reach of the pagoda lantern. “Our truest desires are always revealed in Midheaven.”
Exactly what Shen said. Where the hell had the little bastard gotten to anyway? “Yeah? So how many times has Hunter asked to leave?”
She pursed her lips prettily. “You mean my husband? Jaden?” Her face rearranged into a sweet smile. “Joanna, he came here to find me.”
No, he’d come to find Lola, the daughter she’d saved from the Tulpa and stolen from Hunter by destroying another child’s soul. But no reason to allow I knew that much. Solange’s knowledge of me was already too great, and her next words proved it.
“How’re things in Vegas?”
“I think you know,” I said, jerking my head toward the piano, but not taking my eyes from her.
“Jaden and I have been talking about going back. He’s asked me to marry him again, you know.”
“Before, after, or during the waterboarding?”
She put a black-gloved hand to her chest. “You think he’s here against his will? Dear Joanna. Or should I say Olivia? Look at you and then look at me.”
“Looks are deceiving.”
“Sure,” she agreed, eyeing me narrowly. “But I’m talking about power. It’s what attracted him to me in the first place.”
“Hunter’s not driven by the need for power.”
“But Jaden always has been.”
I shook my head. “No, he wants autonomy.”
She smiled beautifully. “He wants to be ridden into the next world.”
My jaw clenched. “I’m not going to argue with you over who knows him better.”
“Good, as you’ve no grounds to.” She lifted her chin. “He’s with me, isn’t he? Crossing over of his own accord?
And don’t forget, I tasted him first.”
Maybe it was the way she said it, her tone as she bit off that final word, or the quick jerk of her chin as she tossed her hair, but by the time I caught my reflection grinning fully from behind Solange’s back, I knew. “But I’m the one who tasted him last, and that’s what’s got your silk thong in a bunch, isn’t it? He doesn’t love you. He doesn’t even want you. Probably the only man in Midheaven who ever turned you down.”
“The only man anywhere,” she corrected, the bite alive in both her gaze and her voice. “And he didn’t turn me down. Not before you. You have a hold on him, a connection the past can’t sever. And it has nothing to do with who he prefers.”
A soul connection. The aureole tying Hunter to the last third of my soul, then-even between worlds. “And that’s why you wanted me dead.”
“And because freeing the rest of your soul will finally finish my sky.”
I thought about leaving then, just calling out to Io and getting the fuck out of the O.K. Corral because Solange wasn’t just batshit crazy-she had the power to back up batshit crazy. “And what does Hunter think of that?”
She didn’t bother to correct his name this time. “He’s going to love the idea. Soon.”
“I’d like to hear it from him.”
The almost beautiful smile visited her face again. “He’s tied up at the moment.”
And there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.
“Jaden told me they believe you are the Kairos in your world,” she said, like she’d never belonged there. Of course, she’d been here a long time, and despite her earlier taunt, had no desire to return to Las Vegas. Why would she? There, she was a rogue, on the run from both Shadow and Light. Here? A goddess. The Goddess. She crossed her feet at the ankles as she leaned back on the bar again. “It’s why you once told me that you and Tripp were natural enemies, though you weren’t exactly an agent of Light.”