Page 53 of Too Cursed To Kiss
Maneuvering to grab the cup, I realized my ribs no longer hurt. I pulled the fabric of the catsuit back to check my chest, and the bruises were gone. The curl of Wald’s lips was like he’d been looking down my shirt with me, but he kept his eyes on the road. I threw a peppered chip at him. He plucked it out of the air and tossed it into his mouth.
“Waz rr plon?” I asked with a mouth full of ice pellets.
“We find Devlyn. I expect we’ll find Britannia there as well. The family album needs to be put into safekeeping, and we still need to attempt to repair the ring.”
“Attempt? What happens if we can’t repair it?” I asked, crunching ice and pepper laced with cheese. It worked well together.
He grinned like he’d bought the perfect color of flowers. “That would be unacceptable. We have to find a way, but I’m fairly certain Devlyn will manage it.”
“Why didn’t we go to him first then? If we had, Agatha might still be alive.”
“Because releasing Sert is a bad idea for everyone, and that is the only way Devlyn would do a favor for me.”
“Is there a third choice?” I stuffed a handful of chip crumbs into my mouth as he moved onto the highway.
“Bad choices are all shades of gray. For the moment, this is the easiest one to control.”
“Ah, control freak, I got that already from you, but it’s nice to hear you say it out loud. Where does Devlyn live?” The map showed our destination as one of the eastern seedier parts of LA near Highway 105.
“Watts.”
“Really? I would have thought your brother would bebreathing some rarified air of Beverly Hills or Costa Mesa or have a beach pad at Newport or something.”
“I really don’t think of him as a brother. He’s a half brother to Britannia, and it was an accident.”
“Uh, that kind of thing is never an accident. People kind of know what to expect when flesh meets flesh. They can deny it, but you always know the possibilities,” I said smugly.
“Well, this one definitely wasn’t planned.” His lips pressed together as if he’d sucked a sour candy.
“Hang on, what are you saying?” I shook the ice cup to get a mouthful, and a block of ice smacked me in the lips, a dribble of liquid tracing down my chin and dripping into my cleavage. I bit off a chunk of ice pellets, my saliva breaking it apart.
“Maverick was seduced by a Grigores.”
I spewed ice pellets across the dashboard.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
By the time we finally took the last turn on the map, I was contentedly hydrated and in a grilled cheese stupor.
“This is it.” Wald pulled into the parking lot of a warehouse. The sign said something about a food storage company. I envisioned an edgy renovated pad, perfect for a high-end rave. I was so wrong.
Wald threw open the flimsy metal door with a creak and a clang. The stench hit me before I crossed the threshold.
“Mother of hell, what is that smell?” I asked, covering my nose and mouth with my arm. I grabbed the edge of the leather jacket to breathe through it, and Britannia’s stale pear perfume gagged me. I dropped the leather, sucking in a breath of a cross between old butcher shop and moldy dirt. It was almost a better choice. The grilled cheese rolled in my stomach.
“Devlyn has some interesting hobbies and very creative skills,” Wald said, his jaw flexing like there were extra words he’d not said. I turned and took a deep breath of LA air andfollowed him into the building. The concrete floor was stained dark, and the lighting was only by the filtered daylight from the tiny windows around the top. The sunglasses helped with navigating the gloom.
In the center of the open space was a pit. Around it, symbols or maybe a language were drawn or scratched out in white sand. I still had my arm over my nose, but the sense of dread—I guess that’s what you would call it—froze me solid about twenty feet from the edge of the pit and a foot from the beginning of those lines and concentric circles. There was no chance I was going closer.
I watched in silent terror as Wald walked on the artwork as if it wasn’t there. He was close enough to see whatever was in it but stopped at the edge and looked back at me. His dark hair created a sharp contrast with his pale skin. Hollowed cheeks. Ghostly. Deathly. None of those thoughts helped the current effect.
He beckoned to me with a hand, but my body wasn’t responding. I couldn’t even speak, and my feet were firmly rooted to the ground. I was pretty sure another step forward would send me screaming back to the car, and under no circumstances was I taking my arm away from my nose.
Wald crossed the distance between us at a blur of speed, lifting me and then setting me down a few inches from the edge. I clung on his jacket, closing my eyes to avoid looking down. Panic choked me while I fought with the conflicting desires to control my destiny and shield myself from whatever was in that hole.
Wald tucked me close, but the sensation of descent overcame me, trapping my silent scream in his jacket. I had trust issues and was I ever in deep shit. Every cell in my body was on red alert.Emergency. Run now. I was trusting thatwherever Wald was taking me, he knew what he was doing. Was I ever wrong.
We stopped descending.
