Dangerous Dream (Dangerous Creatures 0.5)

“You don’t have to be so tough all the time. Not around me, Rid.” He got up after her.

Her hands were against the glass door of the restaurant. “I am tough. It’s everything else that I’m faking.”

“See that? You’re a liar. A big fat liar.” He leaned against the wall next to her.

“I’m none of those things. Not big. Not fat. Not a liar.” She was like a cornered polecat, and he’d never seen her so panicked.

“Yeah? Then what are you?” He raised an eyebrow, waiting. He could wait all night.

“Out of here. That’s what I am.”

True to her word, she wasn’t lying. Before Link could say anything, Ridley was gone.

AFTERMATH

Ridley

There were lots of ways to forget about a guy. Especially a mostly Mortal guy. Especially one who was only part Incubus, and not even the good part. Especially a dumb guy who kept trying to force you to be something you’re not. Something you couldn’t possibly live up to…

Ridley tried to forget every way she knew how.

She bounced her way through Europe with a broken heart, country hopping the way some guys go barhopping.

She met a handsome Italian football player on a train to Otranto and stayed in a castle for the next two weeks. The Florence of the South, Marco had said.

No more dinners with your mother, Ridley had said. Not even in a castle.

She had cruised down the Dalmatian coast with Bela, a handsome sailor in an even more handsome yacht, from Split to Brac to Hvar to the walled city of Dubrovnik. The orange-red tiles against the blue-blue sky had seemed romantic at first. Then they just reminded her of Link with his Lake Moultrie sunburn.

In Paris, she had grown tired of champagne and oysters, and of Etienne, who had come with them. There were only so many baguettes you could break at Ernest Hemingway’s former table or F. Scott Fitzgerald’s afternoon bar. And the café Les Deux Magots probably meant something about two maggots, so what was that about, anyway?

Berlin was arty; Ridley was not. Moscow liked salty; Ridley liked sweet.

By the time she finally felt like she had left Gatlin behind, it wasn’t just Gatlin that was over.

The whole summer was behind her.

Ridley didn’t know why she’d come back here—to New York or to Suffer. The Dark Caster club didn’t have enough alcohol or enough sugar to keep her mind off all the things she had spent the summer trying to forget.

The one thing—or the one person.

Nothing had helped. Ridley was beginning to think that nothing would, which scared her more than she was willing to admit to anyone, including herself.

The Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil”—the personal sound track that Rid had adopted after the deliciously disastrous winter formal at Jackson High—blasted from her clutch.

Ah! She never gives up.

It was her phone. Her perfect half-Light, half-Dark cousin, Lena, had spent the last two months trying to convince Ridley to put a cork in her champagne bottle and come back to Gatlin.

Ridley was tired of being lectured. “I texted you a hundred times and told you I’m not coming back there.”

“Wow. I was expecting, ‘Hi, Lena. It’s nice to hear from you,’ ” her cousin said. “ ‘I’m sorry I ignored your texts and never returned your calls.’ ”

“You don’t have to be so dramatic,” Ridley said. “I’ve been busy. And I know he put you up to this. But I’m not coming back there.”

I can’t, Rid thought.

“Link didn’t put me up to anything. He’s online all the time looking for an apartment in New York. I called because it’s the end of the summer. Ethan and I are leaving for college next week, and Liv and John are heading to London. I thought you might want to see us before we go.”

“What do you mean, he’s looking for an apartment?” Ridley knew what it meant. He was going without her. As if he’d survive a week here by himself.

Lena sighed. “Leave it alone, Rid. You broke Link’s heart, and he was miserable all summer. I think he’s finally accepted that things would never have worked out between you two. Let it go.”

Ridley felt like someone had kicked her in the stomach. “How do you know he’s accepted it? What did he say?”

“Rid, please—”

“What did he say?” Ridley repeated, her voice growing louder.

“Just that some things aren’t meant to be.”

The words hit Ridley harder than she ever would’ve thought possible. “I gotta go, Cuz.”

“Rid—”

Ridley hung up before Lena had a chance to say anything else. There was no way she was going back to that wretched town. She had stayed there too long. That was the problem.

There was always something—John Breed taking off with her cousin back when he was still one of the bad guys. Ethan jumping off a water tower to save the world, then being trapped in the Otherworld. Ridley coming home to take on Abraham Ravenwood and save Ethan. Then Lena had begged her to stay for graduation. “It won’t be the same if you aren’t there,” she’d said.

Whatever.

Ridley had pretended that she didn’t want to go, but secretly she’d wanted to see her cousin graduate. At least one of them had made it through the mind-numbing Mortal high school experience without being burned at the stake. Ridley had always known it would be Lena. Rid wasn’t cut out for all that insecurity and angst and BFF crap. Best friends forever? As far as she was concerned, it was more like bitches, frenemies, and freaks.

But Lena wasn’t the only reason she had stayed. She’d stayed because of Link, something she would never admit to a single soul.

Wesley Lincoln.

Rid never called him that to his face, or in front of anyone else. But it was the way she thought of him—with his cocky grin, rock and roll dreams, and drumsticks in his back pocket. Wearing a faded Black Sabbath T-shirt and driving the piece of crap Beater—he was the guy who had gotten under her skin.

Apparently, he was the one guy who had let her walk away.

Some things aren’t meant to be. Ridley stiffened at the thought of him saying those words. After tonight, they won’t be.

She planned to make sure of it.

The line in front of Suffer snaked around the block. It was the Dark Caster club of the moment, outranking Exile in terms of music (live bands instead of an aging Incubus DJ), clientele (the unattractive need not apply), and trouble (the more, the better). Not that Ridley cared about the line, since she had no intention of standing in it… until she noticed a few delicious guys waiting behind the black velvet ropes. A little window-shopping before she went in couldn’t hurt.

Ridley ran her hands through her blond hair, with its signature pink streak, to give it that I-could-have-just-rolled-out-of-your-bed look. She zeroed in on a dangerous-looking Incubus at the front of the line.

Rid took one last lick of her cherry lollipop and tossed it into a Dumpster. She didn’t need her Siren’s Power of Persuasion to turn heads. Tonight, she was doing it old-school, platform heels and mile-long legs, with a little pink lip gloss and something to prove.

Bring it.

“Let me get that for you.” The Incubus practically tripped over himself trying to unhook one of the velvet ropes so that Ridley could slip in line beside him.

“Aren’t you sweet. What do I owe you?” She put one hand on her hip and leaned toward him just enough.

“I’ll have to think about it,” he said.

“Blond in the black leather skirt.” The doorman pointed at Rid. “You’re in.”

Ridley smiled and tossed her hair over her shoulder. The Incubus started to follow her, but the doorman shook his head. “Just the lady.”

She tapped a long silver nail against the Incubus’ chest. “Sorry, Tall, Dark, and Dangerous. Maybe I’ll see you inside.

”

Or not, she thought.

She shimmied past the doorman and stopped at the brick wall in front of her.

“Nice trick,” Rid said, glancing back at him before she stepped right through it. The wall was a test. The doorman was an Illusionist, and if you weren’t smart enough to know it, then you didn’t belong at Suffer.

Inside the club, spotlights suspended from the ceiling tinted everything a deadly shade of red. The crowd pulsed on the dance floor that hovered in the air, three stories above Ridley’s head.

“You’re just going to leave me here?” a girl whined, a few feet away.

The guy—who was probably her boyfriend, judging by the guilty expression on his face—caught her arm as she started to turn away. Ridley smiled. The girl obviously wasn’t a Siren, like Ridley, but at least she knew how to get her boyfriend to do what she wanted.

“I have to set up the game, Baby,” the guy said. “It’s the last night. Winner takes all.”

Ridley moved closer to the bar, and the couple’s conversation. Now things were getting interesting.

“What do you care?” she snapped. “It’s not like they’re going to let you play. They treat you like an indentured servant.”

The guy stiffened. That’s when Ridley noticed his eyes. They weren’t the gold eyes of a Dark Caster or the black eyes of an Incubus. His eyes were blue—Mortal blue.

“It’s not like that,” he said. “I’m part of the band.”

The girl laughed. “You’re their roadie. You can’t even get yourself in the game.”

“No one can get in the game!” he shouted.

As amused as Ridley was by the argument, she was more intrigued by this mystery game. It sounded exclusive. Why hadn’t she heard about it?

Before she had a chance to find out more, the Mortal’s Caster girlfriend stormed off. He slumped against the polished metal bar. The bartender reached over the Mortal’s shoulder, handing Blood Incubuses tall glasses of the club’s signature drink, O Positive.

The Mortal must have been telling the truth about being with the band, or those glasses would’ve been filled with his blood. Mortals weren’t welcome at Suffer unless they were payment for one of the dozens of illicit substances available in the Underground, the darkest part of the Caster world.