Meanwhile, I needed to mollify Tekla-if she’d even talk to me at all-and apologize to Rena for putting her in the middle. Mending ties within the sanctuary would have to take precedence for now.
We adjourned around one in the morning, heading back to the barracks with a semi-plan. Yet as soon as the door to my room snicked shut behind me, I took one look around at the sterile and safe surroundings, and knew I’d spend the rest of the evening wondering about things I didn’t have the power to change.
I was overtired, and the thought of a little something to settle my nerves seemed like a good idea, so I swerved back down the hall and toward the cantina. But if I’d known the response my appearance down that steep stairwell would elicit, if I’d had the power to see what swinging through those doors would do, I wouldn’t have gone in there. Instead I would have run screaming the other way.
19
“…with reports of at least a half dozen other plague-related deaths at one area hospital, though officials have declined to officially comment on that number. Authorities are asking residents to refrain from drinking tap water, saying only bottled water should be consumed until local reserves, including Lake Mead, can be cleared as possible contaminants for the deadly outbreak…”
The television was on when I entered the cantina, and I shot the perfectly coiffed, disease-free anchorwoman a glare as she cheerfully segued into a piece on the secret lives of showgirls. Onscreen, the scene shifted to an explosion of color, brightening the room, playing over the walls so the cantina looked like a movie set. Then the scene shifted again, darker now, so that all the color was stripped from the deep velvet furniture. Music was also playing, clashing with the voice-over onscreen, probably forgotten by whoever had been watching their nightly ration of bad news.
The room was unlike any other in the sanctuary, plush rather than spartan, and similar to the über-lounges on the Strip that charged membership as well as admission before allowing you the privilege of buying a twenty-dollar drink in the confines of their swanky interiors. Velvet couches in cubes of midnight blue were parked around stainless steel tables, matching the appliances in the corner bar, while the table lanterns that could be ignited at a touch were currently off.
The constellations punctured the ceiling in a rendering of the night sky, and the hum of a fish tank, brimming with the exotic, represented the first of the four elements. The others-fire in the candles, air in the sky depicted above, and earth anytime someone clothed in mortal flesh entered the room-gave the room an enclosed feeling. Womblike and safe, it was a place to forget you even had troubles.
“We’re watching that,” someone said as I reached up to switch the television off. I whirled, and their scents hit me as I did, a heady combination of happiness and lust that grew thicker the farther one entered the room.
“Sorry.” I stepped back before I could stop myself, embarrassed for having come upon someone’s make-out session even though this was a patently public area. I wanted to tell the couple to get a room…but then I saw who it was.
“Hi, Olivia.” The voice was unnaturally high, even for a young woman’s, and infused with excitement, nerves, and a bit of womanly pride.
“Hey, Marlo,” I said, swallowing hard, before turning to her partner. “Hunter.”
He inclined his head, a closed, haughty expression on his face, watching me as he let his fingers play across Marlo’s knee. She giggled softly, curling closer into him, while I fought the urge to run from the room.
“I didn’t know anyone was here. I was just…getting a drink.” And I noted he was drinking again too. I refrained from offering him my version of a PSA. He didn’t look like he was interested.
“So. Get a drink,” Hunter said, neither expression nor voice altering as he lifted an ice-filled tumbler to his lips, sipping as he watched me over the rim. Marlo, apparently fascinated, watched him.
Okay, this was awkward. Not to mention obvious, I thought, crossing the room to duck behind the stainless steel bar as more giggles rose up behind me. Hunter was obviously still pissed at me for rejecting him, and probably smug about having to save my ass from Joaquin. Messing around with a beautiful initiate was just his way of getting back at me.
It’s not all about you, Jo, I chided myself, and bent for the ice scoop, loudly filling a glass shaker as whispers rose like gentle steam behind me. Hunter had moved on, as one might expect of a virile, gorgeous superhero in his prime. Marlo was an obvious choice. Young, beautiful, interested…and available.
The scent of lust-citrusy, peppery, and warm as mulled wine-washed over me again, and I swallowed hard to keep my own pheromones locked firmly inside, barely daring to breathe lest the emotion making my face burn hot and my heart squeeze tight be released into the air. Hunter would just love that.
When I thought I was suitably under control, I rose, heart burning like a coal, and grabbed a bottle, pouring the liquor in the tumbler blindly. My back was to the room, and I shook the mixture hard to drown out the sighs behind me. I focused on the television, a commercial now, and tried to breathe in the scent of the alcohol in the bottles around me, and not the spice in the densely packed air, but my hands faltered when I spotted movement through the bar’s mirrored back, and a small wisp from that banked coal inside me escaped.
Hunter’s arm snaked around Marlo’s shoulders, fingers coming to rest just below her earlobe to linger against the sensitive skin on her neck. He pushed the chestnut curls away from her face, and I froze, mesmerized by the sight of that strong hand doing something so gentle and intimate I could practically feel the memory playing across my skin.
Like in the boneyard, I thought, before shaking myself from the memory. Yeah, that oh-so-romantic moment you shared right before you shot him in the ass.
I resumed shaking my drink, telling myself I didn’t care, but I couldn’t tear my eyes from the mirror as Marlo slid her fingers over Hunter’s chest, pressing against the hard contours outlined in his black T-shirt before curling to grasp his neck. The subtle scent of ground anise wafted over to me, smooth like soft licorice melting on the tongue, and Hunter’s eyes flashed my way. I quickly looked away, fumbling for a glass to pour the now pulverized contents from the shaker inside.
I was done here. I could leave now. Yet my limbs wouldn’t respond. My eyes seemed to lift of their own will from the icy glass in my hand to the mirrored scene playing out behind me. I don’t know who reached for whom first-they seemed to draw together simultaneously as all well-matched couples do-and my own mouth parted as their lips met, a sigh like a caressing breeze escaping Marlo, her eyes closing as if going into prayer.
Hunter’s eyes never left mine. I saw the play of his tongue over her mouth, I saw her bite his top lip, the seduction extending into a full-mouth kiss so passionate the air burned around them. I swallowed hard, realizing too late I’d released some of the jealous bile giving me heartburn; I smelled the soured emotion and knew Hunter would too.
I wasn’t going to care about this, I told myself as I brought my drink to my lips, only to find it too strong and harsh and bitter. I drank it anyway. And over the rim of my glass Hunter pulled Marlo against him, his hands and lips demanding on hers, eyes fastened equally hard on mine. A wisp of smoke rose between me and the mirror, my jealousy and the Shadow side of me playing together to lay open my feelings, and Hunter saw it. He kissed Marlo harder, eyes victorious, and-unable to stand it any longer-I whirled away from the mirror to leave.