Dangerous Deception (Dangerous Creatures 2)

“Keep telling yourself that,” Nox said. “You still need to cover the other ten months in the year—why stop at April and June? There’s September and October, November and December …”

“Enough.” Sampson swiped the key from beneath a flower-pot on the stoop.

As soon as they got inside, Necro made herself at home and flopped down in a machine-distressed armchair. She picked up a decorative pillow covered with embroidered birds and a fat yellow sun and glanced at Sampson. “It’s official. You win. You have the worst taste in girls.”

Nox just stared at the pillow as if he’d seen a ghost. In a way, he felt like he had.

Is it possible? Could I really be that stupid?

The others hardly noticed.

“Fine. She wasn’t a rocket scientist.” Sampson sounded embarrassed as he opened the refrigerator, hiding behind the door. “At least I found us a place to stay. Nox can’t go back to his apartment. And I can’t go back to ours, not after I put my fist through the window of one of Silas’ cars.”

“And then stole it,” Nox added. He glanced out the window, where the immense black car looked out of place in the condo lot full of silver minivans. Suddenly, he felt like he’d give anything to be out there, instead of stuck inside the cloying apartment.

He had to get his head straight and remember.

Sampson took out a loaf of bread and a mountain of sandwich ingredients, including a whole jar of pickles. “Artisanal mayonnaise? What’s artisanal mayonnaise?” He popped open the jar with the hand-drawn label and smelled the mayo and made a face. “I’m pretty sure it’s not food.”

Nox grabbed his coat. “I’m gonna take a walk. I need some air.”

I have to try to remember.

Necro propped her combat boots up on the arm of the chair and opened a coffee table book about coffee table books. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

As Nox closed the front door behind him, he knew what he needed to do. He’d barely reached the sidewalk before he drew the lighter out of his pocket. Then the world blurred and the vision hit him….

Two men in a car, speeding down the highway with a trail of cigar smoke curling behind them.

“What do you want me to do with her?” the bigger of the two men asks.

“Depends.” His voice … it’s familiar.

Silas.

“Let’s see how she reacts to the infusion. I have a good feeling about this one: lucky Number 13.”

“Don’t get your hopes up. You’ve been working on this for years, and it hasn’t worked yet.”

“Trial and error,” Silas says. “That’s the way science works. The doc thinks we’ve finally perfected the formula, and this girl isn’t your average Caster. She comes from a strong bloodline.”

“And if the infusion doesn’t take?” the hulking man asks. He’s so huge that he must be a Darkborn.

Silas flicks his ash out the window. “You can kill her like the rest of the failures, or keep her. Your choice.”

“After all the trouble you went to to get her? Sure you don’t want the leftovers?”

“I’m not interested in damaged goods,” Silas says.

Nothing but miles of highway stretch in front of the car, until a green sign comes into view: NEW ORLEANS 42 MILES.

“If you pull this off, the Syndicate will be unstoppable,” the Darkborn says.

Silas stops and turns to look at his associate. “No. I’ll be unstoppable.”

The edges of the world bled back into Nox’s peripheral vision, and his heart thudded in his chest as he struggled to push the fog out of his mind.

Damaged goods.

Silas had to be talking about Ridley. He’d gone to enough trouble to take her. But if he was still talking about her now—

She’s alive.

Nox forced himself to be logical, even as the adrenaline pounded in his veins.

Silas could’ve been referring to someone else. But I wouldn’t have a vision about a random girl.

The second conclusion was the one that mattered.

He’s got Ridley. Somewhere in New Orleans or close to it.

It means we still have some time.

Not much.

Nox let himself breathe again, but only for a minute. If he was right and Rid was still alive, the clock was ticking. He wasn’t sure what kind of infusion Silas was talking about, but if it involved one of his experiments, it wasn’t good.

At least I know where Silas has her.

If Silas was headed for New Orleans, it meant he was going to Ravenwood Oaks—Abraham’s plantation. The place where Nox had visited his mom. That must be where the labs were, too.

I should tell Necro and Sam. But I can’t.

They’d bought into Link’s crazy plan to find this John person.

But come on. Who are they kidding?

No friend of Link’s is going to be any help to us. The hybrid is a fool surrounded by fools.

Nox looked back up at the condo complex behind him, hands jammed in his pockets.

I can’t take Necro and Sampson with me. I’ve hurt them enough. Especially Necro—she almost got killed because of me. And Sam’s taken a bullet for me more times than I can count. They’ll only end up getting hurt.

Because the people he cared about always ended up getting hurt.

It was the most painful recognition of all.

I’m the real threat, but I’ve always known that.

Nox was better off on his own. Rid was the only person who understood how it felt to be the reason the people around you were always in pain—even if you didn’t want them to be.

Wishing you could trade places with them.

It was selfish to put them in danger when Nox had collected more than enough talents, favors, and powers at the gambling tables in his clubs. Those TFPs would compensate for going in alone. Not to mention the fact that taking more people only increased the odds of getting caught.

I can get more done by myself. Without risking all of their lives again.

Nox knew where this was all headed—and what was about to happen.

Rid would tell me to do it. She’d understand.

She’d say, quit whining. Get off your butt and go.

Nox made his way down the sidewalk, still sensing Sampson’s eyes on him from the window above. When he turned the corner, he picked up his pace and headed straight for the

commuter train station. It also happened to be the location of the nearest Outer Door, one of the magical doorways that led from the Mortal world into the Caster Tunnels.

He wasn’t waiting around for Link and Floyd to come back. Not now. If Ridley was still alive, she didn’t have that kind of time, and he wasn’t leaving her fate in the hands of her idiot boyfriend or John Breed, another hybrid Nox didn’t know if he could trust.

Damaged goods.

His hands formed fists at the thought of Silas saying it.

And if she’s gone when I get there—or if it isn’t her and she’s already dead—I’ll make Silas pay.

Link was wrong about one thing: John Breed wasn’t the only person who knew the location of Abraham’s labs in New Orleans and the Syndicate.

Nox had known from the minute he first saw the stupid embroidered pillow in the Mortal girl’s apartment—the one that looked like a giant yellow sun.

It had triggered the memory that told him where he needed to go and what he needed to do next.

He tried to silence the voice in his head, shouldering past the commuters on the platform waiting for the train, and slipped through an access door behind the elevators. The hallway was dark, the smell of mold clinging to the air. He passed abandoned electrical panels that hadn’t been used since the city upgraded the station almost a decade ago. At the end of the hall, he spotted the Outer Door.

Nox bent down and touched the top of the manhole cover, whispering the Cast to access it. “Aperi portam.”

In other words, open the damn door.

It slid aside easily, and he lowered himself toward what looked like a deadly drop. But Nox knew that the invisible steps were waiting below. Once his feet touched the first stair, he jumped the rest of them, leaving the Mortal world behind.

The predictability of the Caster world was comforting. The invisible stairs were always where the invisible stairs were supposed to be, and the Casts invariably opened the Caster doors.

Aside from the fact that time and distance operated differently in the Caster Tunnels, most of them weren’t much different from the cities and streets in the Mortal world. Sure, some of them looked like you were walking through the pages of a history book—the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, Victorian London—while others reminded him of the fantasy novels he read as a kid.