I’d seen my life torn down and burned in the space of little more than a day. If there wasn’t something more to the world... if there wasn’t another reality hidden beneath the one I’d known, then I had nothing left.
* * *
After I’d white-knuckled my way through an uneventful landing, we disembarked into a larger and busier airport than the one we’d left behind in St. Louis. I had a flash of paranoia that we would exit the gate to find a group of too-perfect blonde men waiting to jump us and drag me away. In reality, no one paid us much mind.
It took a bit of time for the Suitcase of Stabbiness to catch up to us at the baggage claim. Eventually, it rolled around, showing no sign of having been a victim of any overzealous security screeners. Rans checked his phone and fired off a quick text, then gestured me to follow him toward one of the exits.
A black Escalade was waiting a short distance away, the windows tinted too heavily to catch any sort of glimpse of the interior. As we approached, though, the driver’s door opened and the most striking man I’d ever seen in my life stepped out.
He was tall—easily six-foot-three. Ageless, in the way that distinguished men in their late forties sometimes are. His dark hair—cut short—was just beginning to recede at the temples, where streaks of silver stood out from the shiny black. His face had too much character to be called classically handsome, but it was sure as hell arresting.
Deep-set brown eyes took both of us in with a single quick sweep. He moved with a sort of spare grace—unhurried yet purposeful.
“Ransley,” he greeted, surprising me by pulling my companion into a brief, almost paternal embrace. His voice was not so much deep as resonant. The single word sent a small shiver up my spine.
Rans returned the hug with evident sincerity, patting the newcomer on the back before they parted. “Nigellus,” he said. “I didn’t expect you to play chauffeur for us personally. We could have rented a car and saved you the drive.”
“Nonsense, my dear boy,” Nigellus said, as though offended by the very idea. “I would hardly have delayed the opportunity to meet you and your companion—not after getting such an intriguing message from you.”
I hung back, trying to get a better read on this newcomer who gave off a decided whiff of danger despite his easy urbanity. The fact that I felt drawn to him on some unconscious level was a bit worrying. It wasn’t sexual attraction—though his charisma was undeniable, he just didn’t strike me that way. Honestly, the best way I could describe it was as the opposite of the effect Caspian Werther had on me.
With Golden Boy, as Rans insisted on calling him, I had the overwhelming urge to get out of Dodge as fast as humanly possible. With Nigellus, I was almost desperate to know more about him. And that bothered me, because it implied that my reaction wasn’t natural.
Whether it bothered me or not, though, it looked like I was going to have the opportunity to get to know him better, since he was to be our ride and, presumably, our host. That didn’t stop my heart from giving a little nervous lurch as his attention fell on me.
“Ms. Bright,” he said in that arresting voice. “A pleasure to meet you, even though the circumstances are somewhat regrettable.”
“Nice to meet you, too, Mr.—?” I trailed off, fishing.
A pleasant smile crossed his face. I could easily imagine a panther smiling like that at its prey. Or maybe a shark.
“Nigellus will suffice,” he said. “Anything else would only be a pretense. Now, let’s get out of this public setting, shall we?”
Rans stowed the Suitcase of Doom in the Escalade’s spacious cargo area, and ushered me into the second row of leather-upholstered seats. It seemed rather ironic that I was now jetting across the country in first class seating, only to be whisked away from the airport in a vehicle that cost more than I’d made in the past three years combined. Hadn’t I just lost everything yesterday?
I settled into the luxurious comfort of the oversized Cadillac, with Rans in the second-row seat across from me. The engine purred to life, low strains of some kind of soothing classical music playing through the sound system. Nigellus navigated skillfully through the airport congestion, and within minutes we were pulling onto a freeway heading east.
“Shall I stop somewhere for food?” Nigellus asked. “Or have you eaten?”
It took me a beat to realize I was the only one he could reasonably be addressing. I checked in with my stomach, but even though the East Coast was an hour ahead of St. Louis, it wasn’t yet lunchtime. “I’m fine,” I said. “Let’s just get where we’re going without attracting any more attention than necessary.”
“A wise strategy,” Nigellus replied. “You should probably be taking notes, Ransley.”
Rans raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Are you implying something?”
“Only that a bit of discretion now and again can yield more successful results in the long term than picking the wrong fights at the wrong times.” Nigellus’ dark eyes glanced at us through the rearview mirror.
“You’ve been listening to gossip.” Rans’ voice was flat.
“I always listen to gossip. How else am I to keep a finger on the pulse of current events? Really, though... slicing off the arm of an Unseelie guard in the middle of a populated human city?”
I remembered the wet slap of my captor’s dismembered limb against the pavement, and was glad I’d declined the offer of a meal.
“That was my fault,” I blurted. “Or, rather, it was because of me. He was trying to save me from being kidnapped.”
“I am aware,” Nigellus said. “And while that was clearly a worthy goal, it was also a politically sensitive one that might have been handled with a bit more finesse and a bit less wholesale amputation.”
“I’ll keep that in mind the next time
