I didn’t want him touching anything. In fact, I didn’t ever want to see his face again. “Now or never,” I countered.
“If you want this, you’ll have to play by my rules.”
“Fine,” I said once the elevator doors slid shut. “What do you propose?”
“Just give me a little time. I’ll work something out.”
“And how will I know when you’ve finally got your shit together?”
Deposited back on the reception floor, I stepped out of the elevator and waited. Fallon made no move to follow me but held the doors open. “As I said, I’ll be in touch.” He released his grip and the doors closed, leaving me staring at my own reflection in the silvered surface.
Damn, I hated how supernaturals conducted business.
Chapter 11
I rode home with the helmet secured to the back of the bike. It felt like the damned thing was suffocating me. I’d just have to deal with the ticket if any cop was ballsy enough to pull me over. My hair swirled in a torrent around my face as I weaved in and out of traffic. I couldn’t get away from Fallon fast enough.
Since I’d been gone only a couple of hours, I didn’t return to Tyler’s apartment. Best to let him rest, and besides, I seriously needed to wind down. I parked the bike in front of my building and melted into nothingness. Too anxious for even a quick ride up my own elevator, I became corporeal only once I was safely in my apartment. I paced around the living room for a few quick laps, trying to rid myself of the pent-up energy suspended in my body like a bottled hurricane.
I’d made an unlikely alliance with a perfect stranger. I couldn’t even be sure myself if Delilah spoke the truth. Though her words rang with honesty, it could have been another ploy to twist the knife in Raif’s back and offer payback for a sister killed centuries ago. And though I’d felt compelled to tell Fallon of my plan to find Brakae, I’d never had any intention of letting anyone from the PNT become involved. My knowledge of the Fae was shallow at best. I couldn’t be sure what type of Fae Fallon actually was, or wasn’t, as the case might be. Over the months, I’d learned there were Fae belonging to the night and others to the day. Some that held kinship with water and others with the sky. And I’d heard of Fae who made their homes in the earth, for they took comfort from the dirt and growing things.
But of these many types, I couldn’t be sure to which family Fallon belonged. Maybe he wasn’t Fae at all, but something else. He was powerful, no doubt there. And he had a strange attractive quality that begged to be noticed. I hadn’t been able to help myself. The words spilled out of my mouth like water through a broken dam. Whatever he was, Raif certainly had him pegged. Dangerous. I could ask around to learn more about him, but I didn’t want to further raise suspicion by asking questions. No, I’d have to wait until he contacted me and then decide if his solution to loosening Delilah’s lips was worth finding Brakae. In the meantime, I had to calm the hell down before I wore a path in my rug.
My winding trek brought me to the kitchen, and my pace slowed as I neared the safe hidden in my wall. The bricks came loose with a gentle tug, and I set them on the counter. I gave a quick turn of the dial and pulled the door open. From the back of the safe, bright green pulsed in the darkness. The emerald pendulum hummed with energy, beckoning me with every surge of brilliant light. I’d almost forgotten about my strange gift and its mysterious giver over the past few days. I plucked the bauble from its resting place, the emerald warming my palm. My eyes drawn inexorably to the pendulum, I walked toward the window, the noonday sun nearing its zenith in the sky.
I pinched the silver chain between my thumb and forefinger and let the stone dangle in my line of sight. The sun reflected within its depths, and the sound of time passing within my soul began to slow until the seconds were no longer recognizable as individual beats, but rather, a distant, ominous echo, like thunder rumbling from far away. On its own willpower, the stone swung toward me, enticing me to stare into the fathomless green that devoured everything around me until there was nothing left but me, the silver chain, and the glowing green stone dangling from it. A vibration tickled the air around me, and the landscape of my apartment melted away until I stood atop a knoll, brilliant with spring grass and smelling of fresh rain. The sun had just begun to rise in the east, and moving steadily toward me was a girl in flowing white robes.
Smiling, the adolescent, perhaps thirteen or fourteen, raised a hand in greeting, sauntering through the grass as if she had nothing but time to waste.
“Welcome, Darian!” she called from twenty yards away. “I was wondering when you’d find me.”
I looked around at the vast landscape of rolling green hills, a little more than freaked that I was no longer standing in my apartment. Like the pendulum now bunched in my fist, this place stretched on forever, with neither beginning nor end. “How in the hell did I get here?” I asked as soon as the girl made her way to me.
She simply looked around as if her guess was as good as mine. A soft breeze blew her raven hair, and clear blue eyes swept me from head to toe. She looked familiar, this girl, enough like the child and the woman from my recent dreams to lead me to believe they were all related. But how? Related through a dream? That was a lot to swallow, even for me.
“You’ve been chosen by Fate,” the girl said. “And I’m so happy with the choice. You’re more than capable to serve your purpose.”
Oh joy. Who was I? Anakin fucking Skywalker? “Did you give me this?” I opened my hand to show her the emerald. “By way of a falcon?”
The girl smiled and reached out to close my hand around the stone. “It belongs to you,” she said.
“Not that I don’t appreciate it…” Actually, I didn’t appreciate it. Not a bit. “But I’ve got a lot to deal with right now. And being-ah-transported to wherever this is does not mesh with my already complicated life. So I think you’d better take your jewelry back and go find someone else to play with, okay?”
If the girl noticed my condescending tone, she didn’t let on. An enigmatic smile graced her lips, somehow more menacing than pleasant. “Protect the key, Guardian.” She looked wistfully to the sky as the morning sun broke through the clouds. “Time is a precious thing.”
I felt my body go suddenly slack, the ring at the end of the pendulum’s chain still looped around my finger. It dropped from my palm, jerking as the slack ran out. A peace swept over me as if my upside-down world had been set aright. For the first time since arriving on the knoll, I noticed the absence of time’s cadence. I could no longer feel or hear its steady beat within me. I closed my eyes, absorbed in the bliss of silence, and when I opened them again, I was standing in my apartment, looking out the picture window as the sun dipped into the west and out of sight.
Five minutes. I couldn’t have been gone more than five minutes, but the sun was setting. It had been noon only moments before. How could nine hours have possibly passed in that brief time?
The sound of my elevator grinding to a stop tore me from the shock of the moment. Tyler emerged, panicked and looking for a fight, armed with both a wicked-looking knife and a Glock. He stopped short of storming the kitchen and dropped his weapons at his side, looking just as confused as I felt. “Darian! Thank the gods. Are you all right? What’s going on? Where the hell have you
I stuffed the pendulum in my pocket. Tyler was already about to implode from worry. I didn’t need to give him anything else to freak out about. “I drove out to the PNT building this morning to see if I could get any more information about Raif’s daughter out of Delilah.” No use lying about that. “I didn’t want to wake you, so I borrowed your Buelle. Then I came back here. Must have fallen asleep. I’m sorry. I should have called.”
Tyler’s jaw dropped, and he looked at me as though I’d lost my mind. “Darian, you’ve been gone for two
