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  “Lead the way.”

  “We’re running for our lives on a bus?”

  “You were expecting maybe a hotrod getaway car?” he asked. “Public transit will be harder to track. We’ll criss-cross the city, make our way to the train station.” Once there, he could use his abilities to blur their appearance on surveillance cameras while they got out of D.C.

  Traffic had picked up, the commuter crowd making their way home. Ian couldn’t think, couldn’t sift through and keep track of potential danger amid the forest of emotional grids around him. The hunger beat in his blood, further fogging his brain. Yet another detail he hadn’t considered when forming this ill-advised plan. Living as a veritable ascetic the last year hadn’t left him mission ready, a fact he hadn’t had cause to regret until now.

  They made the trek in seven minutes. The bus rumbled down the street as they joined the small crowd waiting at the bus stop. Ian scanned them, then the surrounding area. But beyond Marley, he sensed nothing other than the blue gray fog of depression and disappointment around him. He had to feed.

  Releasing her hand, he unshouldered his bag on the pretense of checking the pockets for his wallet. Eyes to the ground, he opened his senses, drawing the negativity into himself like a scent on the air. It wasn’t as efficient as feeding directly through touch, but it did less damage to the source. The taste of their misery was bitter, but he was long accustomed to the caustic flavors that sustained him. A squeal of brakes jarred him back. He closed himself off again and straightened.

  It was enough. It would have to be.

  They climbed aboard, settling near the emergency exit. In the seat beside him, Marley wrapped both arms around her backpack, her white-knuckled hands and mulberry aura the only outward signs of her anxiety.

  “So do you actually have a plan or are we winging it?” Her voice was admirably calm.

  “I have a plan once we get out of the city.” It wasn’t a great plan, but it was something absolutely no one would expect.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To see somebody who owes me a favor.”

  Chapter 5

  “I’m sorry for bringing you to a place like this, but waiting in the bus station is out of the question. Too out in the open.”

  Marley stood just inside the doorway, her back to the corner, while Ian made a sweep of their dingy room in the no-tell motel across from the bus station in podunk Oklahoma. Impatience simmered beneath her skin, but she held herself still, waiting. She’d gotten good at waiting in the four days since they’d escaped Washington, zigzagging across the country to muddy their trail.

  The thump of his bag to the floor was as good as an “All clear.” Ian turned toward the tiny coffeemaker, carrying the carafe to the sink in the back. More bad coffee. He’d been pouring it down her by the gallon, keeping her awake. He’d stonewalled any and all of her questions, insisting it wasn’t safe to talk in public. Well, thanks to a broken down bus somewhere further up the route, he’d just lost that excuse.

  “I don’t want more coffee.”

  Ian continued to pour water into the machine. “You want the shower first? I’m sure you’ll feel better once you’re cleaned up.”

  “No, I don’t want the goddamned shower. I want answers, Ian.” The reasonable tone she’d intended went out the window when he just stared at her with those dark, unreadable eyes. “I’ve been a good little fugitive, taking direction, doing everything you’ve asked, while we crossed through I don’t know how many states—”

  “Seventeen.”

  Of course, he would know that. She stalked over. “I’m done. I haven’t slept since we left D.C., I’m fresh out of patience, and you’re out of time.” She jabbed at his chest to punctuate the declaration, which hurt her finger way more than it hurt him. “I’m not going anywhere else, doing anything else, until you’re straight with me.”

  “We’re operating on a need-to-know basis. I’ve told you what you need to know.” The statement rolled off his tongue with practiced ease—a ranking military officer to a subordinate.

  “Bullshit! You’ve told me only the barest of details. We’re not on a fucking mission. And I’m not some brainwashed underling who’s going to follow orders without question. I need to know as it’s my life on the line.”

  She could all but see the wheels turning in his brain, trying to analyze and assess, figure out how to put her off again.

  “There are things I can’t tell you. Things that would put your life in even more jeopardy than it already is.”

  “It seems to me dead is dead, so there’s no sense in splitting hairs.”

  His long sigh was the first sign he was every bit as tired as she was. The coffeemaker beeped, and he turned to pour a cup for them both.

  Marley took the mug he offered and tried to find some calm. He was a man of logic and reason. She could appeal to that. “Put yourself in my position. You wouldn’t act without facts. Why should I? I don’t even know who you really are.”

  “I’m someone who wants to help you.”

  “So you keep saying. But why? In my experience, people don’t put their ass on the line for anybody else unless there’s something in it for them.”

  She kept her voice neutral. He’d been very careful not to touch her since the first day. Nothing he’d said or done had made her feel threatened, but she knew better than to take that for granted.

  “I expect nothing from you. I swear on my honor.”

  It should’ve sounded ridiculous, melodramatic. But as the words fell from his lips, they sounded like nothing less than a promise. Despite her better judgment, until he proved otherwise, she was willing to believe he was a man of honor and integrity.

  “Then why?” she asked softly.

  Ian lifted a hand, rubbed it over his short hair and down the back of his neck. "You’re the cherry blossom.”

  Marley blinked, not sure what to make of the unexpected reply. "Sorry?"

  “Collateral damage,” he spat. “Don’t get involved. That’s the fundamental rule I’m supposed to live by. The nature of my work requires I stay under the radar. By all official records, I don’t even exist. I’m supposed to follow orders, and if there are unintended consequences to the public at large, so be it. The mission takes priority. I’ve always been able to do that because they never involved a face. A name. Someone I’d met.” Ian stared her down, begging her to understand.

  Marley’s blood turned to ice as a new fear came to life. “And your orders involved me?” Had she unwittingly gone away with the man sent to kill her?

  “No. No. My orders had nothing to do with you. They didn’t even have anything to do with the Nix--that's what you saw. He wasn’t why I was there. But the point is I was there. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I knew what that meant for you, and I couldn’t just walk away. I couldn’t let them kill you.”

  “And exactly who are they?”

  Ian made another jerky circuit of the room, lacing his hands behind his head and staring at the water-stained ceiling as if it held the answer to how he was supposed to deal with her and her incessant questions. She wondered if he regretted his choice to save her.

  “I have a right to know, Ian.”

  He whirled on her. “Your rights ended the moment the Nix reported you. You are less than nothing to these people. A mosquito to be squashed. The sooner you accept that, the better.”

  Marley found herself edging back, putting both double beds between them.

  “Sit down,” he snarled, turning away to wear further holes in the thin carpet.

  Marley didn’t move. Heart thundering, she considered that pushing him might not have been the smartest thing she’d ever done. Whatever temporary intimacy being on the run had fostered was an illusion. She didn’t know this man.

  He caught sight of her on the return lap and froze, his face spasming with frustrated apology. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—” With visible effort, he reined in his temper, softened his voice. “My qua
rrel is not with you. Sit. Please. I’ll explain what I can.”

  She eased onto the bed but didn’t relax.

  “There is a whole other world existing around us, in the shadows, in plain sight. A society of people who aren’t…human.”

  “Monsters,” she said. Something niggled and pinched in her brain, a thought cut off before it could bloom.

  “Some,” he conceded. “But not all. Not even most. The majority of them want what anyone wants—just to go on and live their lives uninterrupted. And for that to work, the general public can’t know they exist. It is the highest law in the Mirus world.”

  “Mirus?”

  “It’s the collective term for the paranormal races. And not a word you should ever utter in front of other ears.”

  “Why?”

  “Because by decree of the Council of Races, the punishment for the hapless human who happens to stumble across that world is execution. No trial. No questions. Death. It’s an imperfect system, one that’s been in place for centuries to protect the races from the genocide that would undoubtedly result if the human world at large knew they existed. Certainly some have slipped through the cracks over time. You weren’t one of those lucky ones. The Hunter who’s after you works for them.”

  “The punishment is only for the human, not the idiot who got seen?” Marley thought of the sheepish expression on the Nix’s face when he’d seen her.

  “Depends on who the idiot is and how bad the breach was. But generally, the Council considers humans expendable. They outnumber the Mirus population by a thousand to one.”

  “Oh right, being outnumbered is totally a reasonable excuse for unquestioning extermination.”

  “Now you understand my frustration.”

  “What the hell do they think I’m going to do with this information? I saw a dude come out of a fountain like something from X-men. If I told anybody what I saw, I’d be rapidly locked up and put on crazy pills. No one would believe me. How does that make me a credible threat?”

  “It’s not what you specifically would do with the information. It’s what someone, somewhere could do. There are groups in the human world who wouldn’t think twice about locking up Mirus races, using them as lab rats to see what makes them tick. Military, private sector scientists. Maybe those who would be taken seriously by those groups are few and far between, but the Council makes no distinction and isn’t willing to take the risk. So those humans reported are set to be exterminated.”

  “And that’s who that guy at my apartment was? A Hunter?”

  “He wasn’t like any Hunter I’ve ever seen. I’m good, but I’m not that good. I shouldn’t have been able to overpower him so easily.”

  Marley wondered if the hand he rubbed along his bad leg was intentional or instinctive.

  “If he wasn’t a Hunter, who was he?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t like not knowing everything we’re up against.”

  “This is what you do? Deal with this Mirus world? Like some kind of paranormal CIA?”

  “Something like that. That’s one area I won’t compromise. The less you know, the better.”

  “Okay, fine.” She took a breath, let it out slow. “So, to sum up: Hamlet was right and there are more things in heaven and earth. I found out about it, and now their powers that be want me dead and have dispatched some kind of supernatural assassin, who may or may not have anything to do with the dude who magically showed up in my apartment. None of that explains why you won’t let me sleep.”

  “Because the real Hunter won’t be able to readily track you from your apartment, so his next step will be to engage a Dream Walker. They’re…essentially, a special kind of psychic. The Hunter can provide the details of what it is the target has seen, and the Dream Walker can monitor for exactly that. Most people dream of whatever it is they saw. And once the Dream Walker catches wind of it, so to speak, he can track the location of the dreamer, pass it on to the Hunter.”

  Marley stared at him. “Please tell me you have a plan, because if you don’t let me sleep at some point, they won’t have to kill me. I’ll just die of exhaustion.”

  “You won’t die. You’ll lose concentration, coordination, and maybe a little bit of sanity. But people can go for days without sleep. I believe the scientific record is eleven days. It takes six months or more for your body to get into the kind of hypermetabolism that would kill you.”

  “Am I supposed to be comforted by the fact that you even know that?”

  Ian shrugged.

  Marley’s mind reeled to think of the kind of life he must lead, where that kind of knowledge was par for the course. She shook her head to clear it. “You do have a plan, right?”

  “You need a new identity. We’re going to see a contact of mine who can help.”

  “A new identity,” she repeated.

  Ian inclined his head, watching her. Waiting.

  A piece fell into place, and the truth of her situation crashed over her, shattering the foundations of her world. “I can’t ever go home,” she whispered. “You’re telling me that everything I’ve worked for, everything I’ve fought for, is just gone because of someone else’s foolishness?”

  “I know this is difficult—”

  “Difficult? You don’t know the first goddamned thing about difficult. I clawed my way up from nothing, keeping myself off the streets, working my ass off while going to school, to try to make something of myself. And you’re telling me it’s all for nothing. All because of some stupid, selfish creature that shouldn’t even exist. It’s not fair!”

  With a cry of rage, Marley hurled the mug against the wall. It shattered, and coffee dripped down the dingy wallpaper like a bloodstain. Breath heaving, she tried to calm down, think through the choices. Starting over was shitty, but she’d done shitty.

  “Maybe I can transfer my school credits somewhere else.”

  “You can’t keep your name. That’s too easily tracked.”

  “What if I left the country? Surely they wouldn’t—”

  “No.”

  “There has to be some other way.”

  “There isn’t.”

  Tears clogged, hot and heavy in her throat. A scream rose up, fighting for release, and she folded into herself, pressing her face into the bed as some distant, instinctive part of her brain demanded she stay silent, even now. She let the tears come, her sobs spilling out like broken glass against the thin, musty comforter.

  “I’m sorry.” The words were a ragged whisper in her ear as the bed creaked. Ian’s arms came around her, dragging her into his lap. “I’m so sorry.”

  Marley curled into the heat of him, taking the comfort he offered. She was tired, so very tired, of doing everything alone. He held her tightly as she wept, pressing his cheek against her hair as he uttered a litany of useless apologies that only made her cry harder. What good was remorse? It changed nothing.

  “Please don’t cry,” Ian murmured, an edge of desperation in his voice. He cupped her cheek, lifted her face to his. The pad of his thumb was rough against her skin as he brushed the next tears away. “Don’t cry.”

  Closing her eyes, Marley leaned into the touch. So little of her life had been kindness that the gift of it made something inside her crack open and yearn. Another fleeting touch, softer this time. Some of the tightness in her chest eased, and she sighed, her breath mingling with his. His closeness was a comfort. For this moment, she let herself believe she wasn’t alone.

  Ian’s lips settled softly over hers. Marley’s heart kicked hard in her chest, shock stemming the tears, but she didn’t pull away. His mouth was warm, so unexpectedly gentle. An answer to one of her million whys.

  Oh.

  The sensation drew her in, until her hands splayed across his chest. The pulse beneath her palms hammered, but his lips stayed easy, undemanding. She could lose herself to this, forget for a little while. She wanted so much to forget, to escape.

  Tilting her head, Marley fell into the kiss, the taste of him spar
king fireworks behind her eyes. Her blood leapt. She shifted, drawing him closer, as want morphed to something hotter, more potent. A helpless, needy sound escaped her, and the world fell away.

  Marley found herself bouncing on the bed, her hands empty, her body suddenly cold. Reality intruded in a brutal, disorienting rush.

  Ian was on the other side of the room, shoulders heaving. “I…I’m sorry.” He stepped into the bathroom, leaving her alone and breathless.

  The hands Marley scrubbed over her face trembled. Well, that was unexpected. She was too raw, too exhausted to analyze the mix of regret and gratitude swirling inside her. Instead, she wrapped her arms around one of the threadbare pillows and settled in to count the hours until morning.

  ~*~

  Marley tipped her gaze up to the remains of the once beautiful arched ceiling of Peacock Alley inside the decrepit Lee Plaza Hotel in Detroit. The decorative centerpieces of each tiled section were missing now, swiped by vandals and souvenir-seekers. “It’s so sad to see what’s become of this place,” she said. “You can tell it used to be something in its heyday. Are you sure this is safe?”

  As Ian had seen it at the height of its elegance in the early 1930s, he could vouch for that. But he wasn’t about to mention it. “I’m sure there are a thousand and one ways to get tetanus and all manner of other ills in here. But it’s not going to fall down on our heads. One of these days the economy will turn around and somebody will renovate it. In the meantime, it makes for a handy private meeting space for those who know how to actually get in. C’mon.”

  She was still uneasy. Ian started to take her hand, to comfort her, but stopped himself. He had no business offering comfort, no business confusing the situation. He hadn’t intended to kiss her, hadn’t been prepared for what that would stir up in both of them. He hadn’t been prepared for a lot of things with Marley.

  Guilt dogged his heels as he helped steer her around some of the detritus littering the floor and through a set of double doors into the ballroom. It would all be over soon. He’d get her settled on the West Coast—the only part of After they’d discussed—and he’d be off to Wales, as originally planned. By which time, hopefully he’d have an excuse that wouldn’t get him court-martialed.