“Harlan doesn’t worry me.” He wiped sweat from his brow, let his hand trail down his face.
I nodded, and though my throat was tight, I thought, I can do this. I could let this man go. Everyone should have their greatest desires, right?
But what if he is yours?
I pushed the thought away by pulling on the concrete window. The candle was there, still burning, still appearing newly lit. “But the person you have to be most careful of, Hunter, is the woman you saw when we…when we…” I couldn’t reference the way we’d made love, so instead I referenced our other connection. “In the aureole. She’s beautiful, yes, but so dangerous. Her name is-”
“Solange.”
“That’s right.” My brows drew down. Had that been in the aureole too? “And Jacks will be with her. He’s a big motherfucker, and he’s from here too. He’ll know of you, of course. Solange and he are-”
“Married,” he said softly. “He’s her husband.”
“Yes, he-” I froze, mouth open, all the blood in my body pooling in my toes. Hunter steadied me when I swayed. Regan snorted under my feet. Jaden Jacks…
Is standing right in front of me.
And despite the unearthing of that knowledge, the easy click of nonsensical pieces falling into place, a part of me felt numbed, dumbed. I didn’t believe. “H-How am I able to talk to you about Midheaven? How can I provide all these details now, and not before. I haven’t been able to tell anyone else. How-”
An undercover identity to lure women. One woman in particular. Dark-haired. Dark-eyed. A type. Just like Solange.
“Oh, my God.” He’d returned to her as soon as Warren opened Midheaven, but he’d been plotting it long before that. Woodenly, I looked down. And Regan had been a part of that plot. And despite both those women…
He still made love to you.
“Oh my God,” Regan mimicked, voice muffled. “It just keeps getting better and better.” Hunter kicked her this time. She grunted.
Hunter was Jaden Jacks. Hunter had already been in Midheaven. And I finally knew Hunter’s greatest desire.
Solange.
Had Warren known this?
Solange.
“Look, I’ve been searching for Sola for a long time…”
Sola?
“But I’d changed my mind. I wasn’t going to go. And then last month. You chose Ben.”
I tilted my head, not understanding.
Hunter squinted like he was in pain. “I asked you to forget. To be present and stay with me, and when you left…”
He’d made a deal with this she-devil.
The realization must have blanketed my face. I know the scent of my distress had to be reverberating like aftershocks against the walls of the confined space. Hunter’s head jerked from side to side. “No, it’s not what you think. There’s more. So much more that you don’t know-”
I held up a hand and laughed without humor. “Please, I don’t want to hear any more. And you don’t need to explain. I saw her, remember?” He said nothing. I looked up into his face, forcing him to meet my gaze. He did so somberly. “I mean, it’s where you want to be, right? You still want to go?”
He swallowed hard. “Yes, but-”
“Then go.” I hated how flat my voice sounded, like nothing lived inside of me. I hated the way I used Regan to push away his words and my pain. I grabbed the gauze circling her neck to lift her to her feet-ignoring the way her skin gave unnaturally beneath my grip-and propped her between us.
“Your death,” I muttered to her, “is going to be a relief.” For us all.
Regan didn’t answer, and I realized it was probably as close to an agreement as we’d ever come. I looked into her deadened gaze one last time, inhaled lightly of the rotted scent, and knew that, Tulpa’s touch or not, Regan had been this gone from the first. Dying even while she was being birthed. Wanting to cause destruction because she was destruction, decay, poison…and the enemy of love. She was pure Shadow.
“Here’s your candle.” I handed it to Hunter, though I guess he already knew how this worked, then pushed Regan in front of the small window, though I guess she did as well. She’d already provided him with a third of her soul…at least! “And you blow.”
I looked at Hunter and he stared back over the top of Regan’s ruined head. I still couldn’t put it together. Hunter was Jaden Jacks. Jacks was Hunter.
“One more thing,” he said, as an uneven scrape sounded below and behind us. Warren was getting closer.
“Please. No.” I didn’t think I could take another surprise tonight.
“This is important.” He put his free hand on my arm. I looked down but he didn’t move it, so I looked up and met his gaze. “Don’t believe him,” he said softly, almost like he really cared. “Warren, I mean. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. Not even in the darkest corner of that beautiful soul.”
I was unsure what to say to that, not that it mattered. I’d never get words past the lump in my throat. Besides, there was something wrong with me. Hunter just didn’t know about the pieces of myself I’d left in that other world. I might have told him, but Regan was weary of waiting, of standing…probably of living.
“Enough with the long good-bye,” she said, leaning forward. “Fuck you both.”
It was different than when I’d blown the candle out myself. My arms were dragged forward in the sudden, thickening smoke, like the muscles were being pulled out through my fingertips, causing a terrible tickle to work its way back into my body, but I didn’t release Regan. And she, in turn, grabbed onto me, the bones of her still-tensile fingers digging into my skin, strong enough to pierce skin and draw blood. I imagined its infection as her rotting body clung to mine. Even while trading an opened-mouth kiss with death she was attempting to drag me along. Then a pained gasp fled her mouth, and the smoke hissed like it was alive. Then nothing. An absence beside me, though nothing could actually move in that choking muck. It was like a metro turnstile, making sure only one person passed and paid at a time, and as Regan’s soul wheeled away, yanked from her body to be used as fuel for another world, her scream sounded, like fangs on a chalkboard. Another moment, no more or less, and the smoke cleared. The candle burned anew in the center of the shelf. And Hunter was gone.
I looked down at Regan, limp in my arms.
“You have caused me, and the men I’ve loved, a lot of trouble,” I told her carcass.
It’s what I do, I could practically hear her say as I stared down at what was essentially dust held together by blood and bile, and I knew some of her spirit yet lingered.
“Not anymore,” I told it. And I let her body fall. The kill spot that would forever lay at the entrance to Midheaven wasn’t mine or Hunter’s, but Regan’s. It’s what I’d long wanted. And everyone, I thought, standing alone, should have their greatest desires.
Right?
24
I met Warren fifty yards from Midheaven’s candle, just past another concrete cutout, like the one I’d hid in from the Tulpa and Regan. Though I couldn’t say why, I wrapped Hunter’s whip around that, safely out of sight. Maybe Hunter would return. If so, it was a part of him and would call to him. I cradled my crossbow. At least I had that back.
Warren appeared, another deeper shadow in the dark, and I fired my glyph to let him know where and who I was. He increased his pace, his lopsided gait even more pronounced in the pipeline’s frame, and for a moment it was like looking at him through binoculars. I felt far away and as if I didn’t know him at all. Then he drew closer.