Page 67 of The Darkest Night

Home sweet home.

Nikolai, Violet, and Miles piled into the foyer behind her. Mae eyed them with a jaundiced air as she dropped her keys on the console table in the hallway.

“I told you guys I’d be okay,” she repeated for the tenth time.

“And like we said, you can never be too safe,” Nikolai replied.

He moved past her and crossed the open-plan living area to the windows. He checked the street outside before tugging the curtains closed.

“Oscar and the Dark Council are still out there,” Violet said sternly. “We should stick with you until things die down.”

Miles dropped the overnight bags he and Violet had picked up from their penthouse in Midtown in the middle of the living room.

Mae sighed.

Great. Now I know what it feels like to be in a witness protection program.

Luckily, her place was just about big enough to accommodate all four of them. Located above the oldest cinema in Ridgewood, her apartment was a nine-hundred-square-feet, two-bedroom unit. The building itself stood at a five-way intersection on Forest Avenue and made up the cornerstone of two adjoining streets of flat, front-brick rowhouses. Though Mae could afford a place closer to her family home in Flushing or where Rose had lived in Long Island City, she loved the quaint feel of this area of Queens with its historic architecture and eclectic community.

Most people would have shied away from renting an apartment above a cinema. Mae, however, had fallen in love with the building the first time she saw it, when her father had brought them to watch one of Ye-Seul’s favorite movies, on her sixty-fifth birthday. It had become their favorite place for special family outings after that.

It was Ryu who’d alerted her that Mr. Seong was looking for a reliable tenant for the two-bed unit above the cinema; the old couple who’d lived there had relocated to Kansas to be closer to their daughter and her family. Mae had taken one look at the exposed-brick walls, parquet floors, and tin ceiling that characterized so many of the early 20th century brownstone properties in Ridgewood and signed the lease that day.

The apartment had a crooked layout due to its location, which only added to its charm. The hallway was long and cut across the unit diagonally, the two bedrooms and main bathroom opening off it. The rest of the floor was taken up by the living space, the once narrow galley kitchen given a breath of life after the previous tenants knocked down a wall when they refurbished the place. The large windows let in light from the north and the east and a small balcony outside her bedroom gave rise to a fire escape that led to a private rooftop garden. It was Mae’s oasis in her hectic life and somewhere she and Rose often had barbecues.

Mae’s chest ached as she thought of her best friend. She still hadn’t come to terms with the fact that Barquiel now possessed Rose’s physical form and was walking around New York doing God knew what with her body. She clenched her teeth.

The sooner I accept she’s gone, the better it will be for me when I have to deal with her again.

Mae didn’t doubt that their paths would cross in the future. With the Dark Council seemingly determined to capture her, and Barquiel supporting Oscar and the Sorcerer King, it was inevitable.

Vlad’s request flitted through her mind.

“You want us to do what?” Bryony had said flintily.

“I want Mae and your coven to stop Vedran’s influence in the New York underworld,” he’d stated succinctly. “It’s in your best interests that you do so.” He’d tilted his head at Mae. “They are going to keep coming after our queen.”

Mae couldn’t help but shiver as she recalled the smoldering heat in his eyes. In need of a distraction, she headed into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator to grab a drink, and stopped dead in her tracks.

The shelves were empty bar three bottles of beer, a carton of milk, and a jar of pickled gherkins.

Mae closed the refrigerator and eyeballed Violet and Miles. “I could have sworn this was full of food the last time I was here.”

They met her accusing stare with shrugs.

“Hey, don’t blame us,” Violet said. “Your familiar is a pig.”

“We even had to order pizza on top of everything he ate,” Miles complained.

Intuition had Mae checking her cupboards. They were bereft of edible contents, as if a Hunger Fairy had swept through the apartment and swooped up everything fit for human consumption.

The ‘Hunger Fairy’ returned from where he’d been proudly showing his new domain to Trixie, Millie, and Alastair.

He sat on his haunches, his tail swishing languidly across the parquet floor, and looked expectantly at Mae.

What is for dinner?

Mae swallowed a curse.

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