Chapter 27

Rosabel La Rouge

“That’ll be twenty-one, seventy.”

I blinked and looked at the cashier, and I could have sworn I had been behind the guy who was paying before me, but now somehow the snacks and drinks I’d bought were on the counter, scanned and ready to go.

Pulling out a fifty-dollar bill, I handed it to him and proceeded to put the stuff in a plastic bag, keeping my head down and my hoodie on all the while. Taland’s charm wasn’t on me anymore; I didn’t want to risk being recognized. That’s why I’d gotten a pair of cheap, clear plastic glasses, and I put those on, too.

Everything was moving at a strange pace. One second my hand was reaching for the door handle in slow motion, and in the next I was by the car. One second I was filling up the tank, and the next I’d stopped by the edge of the driveway of the gas station, and I was eating and drinking water, forcing myself to chew and swallow because I needed the energy. To think—I needed to think. And I needed to make a plan because there was a good chance that Taland was…not having a good time right now. There was a chance that he was hurting, he was in pain, he was wounded—there was a chance, and I needed to get to him asap.

I couldn’t do shit on an empty stomach no matter how hard I wished I could.

So, I ate and eventually, things started to move at normal speed again. Eventually, I began to see everything that surrounded me, the road and the trees and the gas station and the convenience store I’d just come out of—all of it had been kind of blurry until now. I began to hear the thoughts in my head, too, and I began to make a plan.

Where I was going was clear—Silver Spring, Maryland, to find the lair of the Devil. The fucking Devil who was supposed to be in prison and not have a lair out here. The criminal whose people had Taland.

Radock said that’s where I’d find him, but I didn’t have the exact location and I doubted I could search Google for it. That’s why the first thing on my to-do list was to call Cassie in a few hours and ask her to try to find said lair for me as soon as she went to work. It was already three a.m. now, and dawn wasn’t too far away. I’d driven only about an hour from that strip club before I couldn’t make myself drive anymore. Now, I was glad I’d stopped.

My stomach was full and my heartbeat steady and my head clear for once. I couldn’t drive if I didn’t sleep—how could I get to Taland if I died on the road? As much as I hated it, I stayed right there on the driver’s seat, rested my head on the window, and allowed myself to close my eyes.

It would be cold at night, but the car was warm enough right now. When it got too cold, I’d wake up and be on my way.

I slept seconds in—must have been much more exhausted than I’d cared to admit to myself.

The cold didn’t wake me up in the morning, though. The sun on my face did.

I jumped in my seat and nearly slammed onto the steering wheel, completely disoriented because I could have sworn that I had just closed my eyes and the sky had been dark and my phone had said it was three in the morning.

Now, the sky was blue, the sun shining brightly, and my phone said it was just a little after eight a.m. I wasn’t cold, and strangely my neck wasn’t stiff, and I’d rested. A deep, dreamless sleep—exactly what I’d needed.

No time to be glad, though. I grabbed my phone and turned the ignition on and pulled up Cassie’s phone number—all of this without thinking to look around me, out the windows to my sides. To look at the gas station and the convenience store, the cars driving by on the wide road in front of me, the cars parked behind me—no, I didn’t think to do that at all.

Because I’d eaten and slept, and it was already time to call Cassie. She’d have an address for me by the time I made it back to Maryland.

Then there was a knock on the window on the passenger side.

That I didn’t scream was a miracle. I didn’t jump, either, and even my magic was frozen for a second because it was that unexpected. But when my brain functioned again and I recognized the face of the man leaning his shoulder against my car, arms crossed and a grin on his face, I forgot to breathe.

Seth Tivoux was standing there, pointing at the door to tell me to let him in.

My first instinct was to panic—Seth was here, and that meant Kaid and Radock were there, too. They’d followed me. They’d found me because I’d slept in the car at a fucking gas station in the middle of nowhere, and now it was over. Now they were going to kill me, and I’d never even get to see Taland again.

Except I finally looked around with my heart in my throat and my breath held, and I found that there was nobody there.

A black BMW was parked behind me, and other cars were getting gas at the gas station, but none of those people looked like the Tivoux brothers, and none of them was looking my way. The rear-view mirror and the side mirrors said the same—nobody was around my car except Seth.

“C’mon, Rosabel. Just open up.”

My goddess, he spoke.

“I’ve been out here an hour now—it’s really boring watching someone sleep. Just let me in.”

My brain malfunctioned all over again.

An hour. Seth Tivoux had been here an hour and had watched me sleep.

“For fuck’s sake, woman. Open the damn door! I’m not going to hurt you. If I were, you wouldn’t have woken up in your damn car!”

He wasn’t pissed—no, on the contrary. He was laughing.

Seth was laughing, and I couldn’t even think straight. All I could do was look around us and search for Kaid and Radock again and again, expecting them to jump at me any second.

“They’re not here,” Seth called from outside, then knocked again. “I’m on my own. Open the door and we’ll talk, okay?” I met his eyes through the window. “If you don’t, I will open it and get in anyway. I’m trying really hard to be nice here.”

Nice, he said. The same guy who tortured me in his basement weeks ago, and who would have killed me just last night if I hadn’t knocked him down.

I held his eyes, and I didn’t blink, didn’t move at all, waiting for him to start chanting. Waiting for him to turn to his magic, so I could turn to mine. Screw the fact that we were out in the open and anybody could see us, record us. I was not going to let Seth Tivoux kill me.

And he knew it well. That’s why he moved back from the car and lowered his head and sighed deeply, eyes squeezed shut. “I’m here to help you,” he finally said. “I’m here to help. I brought you this, too.” He raised his hand to show me Taland’s charm.

Help . He wanted to help.

I couldn’t tell you what came over me, but I suddenly reached out my hand and I pressed the button to unlock the door.

Seth grinned, and within the second, he was in the passenger seat.

“ Catch! ”

He threw the charm. I instinctively caught it, and I was sure, so sure that he was going to make his move then. He was going to attack me and kill me before my fingers even closed around that charm.

Except he didn’t.

“There you go,” Seth said. “You look nothing like yourself again. I swear, the fucker did a great job in changing your features. I would have never recognized you back at the club.”

I wasn’t dead.

A minute had passed with Seth in the passenger seat, the charm was in my hand, and I was still alive. Not only that, but Seth didn’t look like he planned to attack me anytime soon. He just rubbed his hands together before he reached for the seatbelt and put it on.

“You’re not a slow driver, are you? I’d rather get there in a couple hours. Car rides make me nauseous.” He turned to me—I still hadn’t spoken. “It’s why I don’t do missionary often.”

Heat on my cheeks. My brain finally was able to process that this was really happening, and once more, I turned around to look outside, to the back of the car and the front, the gas station and the convenience store…

“They’re not here—really. I’m alone.”

I turned to Seth. “What the fuck.” It wasn’t a question, just my reaction to this absurd situation.

Seth laughed. “I never would have guessed you say fuck so often, either. I like it.”

If only I had any fucks left to give…

“Explain to me why you’re here, Seth.” Even my voice sounded strange, full of disbelief.

“Because I want to help you get my little brother out of whatever he got himself into.” He blinked his long lashes at me innocently. And even though he looked so much like Taland, and he grinned a lot just like Taland did, he was still different. It wasn’t just the lack of dimples or the short stubble that wrapped around his jaws like a shadow, but the sparkle in his eyes. The energy coming off him, the way he moved.

“Right after you just tried to kill me a few hours ago,” I said, just to remind him that I hadn’t forgotten. The memory was very much vivid in my mind still.

Seth flinched. “Yeah, but that was different.”

“Different, how?”

“That was before .”

I looked at him. “Before?”

“Yes— before .” And his eyes moved down my wrist lightning fast, though he couldn’t really see my bracelet because the sleeve of my jacket was over it.

He meant before they saw what I had and what I could do with it. Before they saw the colorful magic.

“So, let me guess—Radock sent you here to try to steal this from me,” I said, my hand around the jacket over the bracelet. “Really, does he think I’m that stupid?” He thought that Seth could come here and earn my trust with the promise to help me, and I’d let him take my bracelet from me just like that?

“Well, I mean, you did come to the Blue House— and the Diamond Club on your own, so…” Seth shrugged.

My turn to flinch. “That was different.”

Only after I said the words did I realize that he’d said the exact same thing.

That’s why he grinned. “Exactly. Different. ”

Fuck. “You can’t steal my bracelet, Seth. And even if you somehow manage to get it off my wrist, you can’t use it.” He wasn’t Mud.

“I know that. That’s not what I’m here for, I promise.”

I raised a brow. “So, Radock didn’t send you here, but you came on your own?”

“No, no, he did. Radock sent me to make sure that you don’t die and that Taland doesn’t die, either.”

“Oh, so now he cares about my life all of a sudden!” I laughed bitterly. “Why—because he wants to finish me off himself?!”

I still remember the look in his eyes, after I told him everything he wanted to know. The whole fucking truth—and he just said, kill her. With such ease. Without batting a lash. So cold that even Kaid had been shocked.

“No, he doesn’t. I told you, everything is different now. He doesn’t want you dead anymore.”

“Because of my bracelet.”

Seth shook his head, his smile gone. “Because of your magic. Because of what it means for us. For Selem.”

So many things ran through my mind at once. I knew who this guy was, and I remembered how he’d been happy to get his turn at torturing me a few weeks ago, how he’d been about to kill me just now at the order of his brother. I remembered all of it, but I also knew one thing—on my own, the possibility that I could get Taland out from wherever he was right now was weak. Very weak. I had no idea what awaited me there, and if Seth really would tag along, my chances were far greater.

“It means nothing for you because I am not Selem.” I wasn’t the IDD now, either. Not Madeline’s granddaughter, not nothing —I was just me. Just Rosabel.

“But Taland is,” said Seth, and that made my stomach twist violently.

Yes, Taland was part of Selem, and wherever he went, that’s where I’d be, but…

“Then we’ll let Taland decide what to do once he’s safe.” I looked Seth straight in the eye. “If he chooses to use this to help Selem, so be it. If not, we won’t.”

A pause.

“Wouldn’t have pegged you for the submissive type,” Seth finally said. “You look like someone who’d want to… take the lead, you know.”

I raised a brow. “I would with someone like you . But when a man knows what he’s doing and proves that I can trust his leadership, that he’ll keep me safe and look after me first no matter what, submitting’s easy.” I gave him a plastic smile, just because. “I have no problem with obeying then.”

“Oh, damn,” Seth said, bringing a fist to his lips, as if he’d heard the most interesting thing in all his life. “That’s…that’s…fucking hot! ” The guy was genuinely surprised.

“Then be a man and you’ll be just fine.” I turned the ignition on again and looked out the windshield, part of me still having trouble believing that I was actually doing this, that I wasn’t kicking Seth out of the car, but that I intended to drive with him in the passenger seat.

Surreal.

“Wait, wait, what does that mean— be a man? That’s pretty vague. What does being a man mean? Because women nowadays are asking for too much,” he said.

This time I did laugh—how could I not? “No, Seth. Women are just asking to be treated like human beings, like equals, to be loved and respected and protected, just like always. But don’t worry. Once you become a man, everything will come naturally to you.” And I winked.

All of this just to spite him and to mess with him, and I didn’t even know why.

“But how? How do I do that? Sounds so… complicated .” And he was not kidding.

“Well, I’m no pro, but maybe you can start by not torturing a woman when she’s wounded, bleeding, chained to a fucking chair in your basement, Seth?” I batted my lashes at him innocently. “Maybe that’ll be a good start.”

The way he turned pale as he looked ahead but saw nothing, while the wheels in his head turned…

I honestly couldn’t believe this was him.

“Maybe, maybe—we’ll see,” he finally said, shaking his head as if he hoped to clear his thoughts that way. “Anyway—where are we stopping for breakfast?”

He must have thought himself a comedian. I reached for a bag of chips from the backseat that I’d gotten at the store and dropped it on his lap.

I’m doing this. I’m really, really doing this with Seth.

“There’s your breakfast. I assume you know the address?” Because that would save us time and I didn’t even have to bother Cassie at all.

“Are you serious?” He showed me the bag of chips when I drove onto the main road.

“Give me the address, Seth,” I said, and he continued to just stare at me for a good minute.

Then he slammed his hands onto the sides of the bag of chips and it exploded open, making a deafening sound that had my ears whistling. I didn’t want to give him the pleasure of seeing me react, so I just gritted my teeth and kept my eyes on the road.

“Fine. But we’re stopping for breakfast as soon as we get to Silver Spring.” And he started eating.

We really aren’t, I thought. “Sure,” I said.

“So, tell me about yourself, Rosabel. What’s it like growing up with all the riches of the world in the palm of your hand? Did you have butlers and maids? Did they wipe your ass for you?” He stopped, straightened up his shoulders. “Wait—do they still wipe your ass?!”

Really, really hard not to laugh right now, but I managed to keep my expression neutral and ignore him as best as I could, while still keeping my focus on his body, on his hands, on those lips in case he wanted to start chanting out of the blue.

“That a yes?” he said after a minute, the sound of him chewing those chips making goose bumps break all over my arms. “Nothing? You’re not going to give me anything?”

I figured this was his strategy. I figured this was how he planned to get me to stop paying attention to him, so he’d make his move and knock me out cold before I could stop him.

That thought kept me in control.

“Okay, fine. I can tell you plenty about me…” Seth said after a moment.

And he did.

He made himself comfortable and ate my chips. He then reached in the backseat to see what more I had there and grabbed a can of soda, while complaining that I’d gotten diet. He told me about his first crush and his high school sweetheart, and how he used to put cactuses inside Taland’s pillowcases when they were little.

“You should see his face—I actually have the picture. Kaid took it with a polaroid camera. I keep it under my pillow just so I can look at it as soon as I wake up.”

He laughed and laughed.

Not going to lie, I really wanted to see that picture, though I was sure he was exaggerating it a bit. I mean, probably.

Seth then proceeded to tell me about how he once spread a rumor about himself that he was gay because he wanted to have more female friends and know what we talked about when guys weren’t around.

“It wasn’t what I thought it was. Seriously—how much makeup can a girl really have?” He sounded really disappointed, the poor guy. He visibly shivered—I saw it through the corner of my eye, and this time I barely held myself from smiling.

Still, he had to be faking it. A game to distract me, that’s all. And he didn’t plan to stop anytime soon.

He told me how Radock had once saved him from an actual bear when they’d gone hiking, and how his mother had made sure they always said their prayers before bed, and how she’d woken them up every single morning with kisses.

“It was embarrassing. I started cringing at it when I was ten— like, I’m a grown man now, Ma. Grown men don’t want to be kissed by their mothers all the damn time! ”

His mouth did not stop.

“So, then Kaid told her the same thing, and so did Radock, so she eventually stopped kissing us when we were around other people, and just started touching us on the nose every now and again.”

When he said that, my stomach fell all the way to my heels and I almost dropped the fucking wheel.

“She said they were small I-love-yous to carry around when she couldn’t be close to us during the day, but other people didn’t know that,” Seth continued. “Our friends had no idea so none of us complained.”

Tears in my eyes.

“And soon we started to slap each other, too, to express our love for one another—” Seth laughed out loud. “We started slapping our friends, too, and convinced them that it was a sign of af-f-ffection !” He was doubled over on the seat now. “You wouldn’t believe how long that went on…”

Seth continued to tell me all about his friends and his brothers, and my mind spun and spun with every single time Taland had touched me on the nose. That was the first thing he always did when we saw each other—just tap the tip of my nose. I’d asked him about it once but he said, just to make sure that you’re real.

Now, to know that his mother had done the same to him when he was little just broke me. To know that those little touches were small I-love-yous to carry around when he wasn’t close fucking ruined me completely.

I had to turn my head to the side when the tears slid down my cheeks, and casually wipe them before Seth saw. In those moments, I wasn’t focused on him, didn’t mind his hands or his whispers, any of his movements as he ate and drank and talked.

No, I wasn’t focused on him at all, and he could have easily grabbed the wheel or attacked me or killed me— easily . I wouldn’t have been able to stop him on time, wouldn’t have even seen him at all.

But he didn’t.

Seth didn’t attack me.

We made it to Silver Spring safe and sound.

Seth knew exactly where the lair of the guy they called The Devil was—and it was an entire fucking neighborhood.

Tall apartment buildings, some with dark green bricks, some maroon, marked what he called The D Complex, where basically even the IDD didn’t really have any jurisdiction, not in reality. Everybody who lived and worked in there paid the Devil in one way or the other, and how he managed to keep a hold on these people, on the men that made sure things ran smoothly out here while he was in the Tomb, even Seth didn’t know.

“I doubt even Radock knows, and he hung out with the Devil all the time before they locked him in,” he said.

I looked at his profile, curious. We’d been in the car together for the last four hours, and he had rarely stopped talking all the while. I wasn’t sure whether he was always like this, always needed to fill silence with words so desperately, or if he was still trying to distract me. Still trying to attack me and get my bracelet.

It didn’t look like it, though. Never once had he done a single suspicious thing since he sat in that passenger seat. He’d complained an awful lot about pretty much everything, but that was it.

“Do you ever just…not speak?” I asked because I was genuinely curious.

Seth wasn’t offended, though. He shrugged. “You’re a really good listener.”

Except he hadn’t once stopped long enough for me to think of something I would want to talk about, had he?

Of course, I said no such thing.

“So, what’s the plan, agent? You’ve got a plan, right? You got weapons?” he then asked.

I pulled the glove compartment open and took out the 44 Taland had left here. “I have this.” I showed him the barrel. “And I’m not an agent.” Not anymore.

Strangely it didn’t feel like a loss to think that. It felt… relieving instead. Like I’d been filling those shoes just because they’d been the only ones for me to wear for a long time, but now I could take them off.

“That thing is not going to do you any good,” Seth said, shaking his head as he ate my last pop tart. I wasn’t hungry anyway. “Do you have any idea how many people work for him, guard this place?”

“They’re not going to all be with Taland, are they?” I mean, Radock said he’d turned himself in. That alone would tell the Devil that he wasn’t going to try to run away.

At least not until we went in there and took him out.

But Seth threw the wrapper in the backseat without looking, took the seatbelt off, and turned toward me with his whole body.

“I’m going to be very honest with you, Rosabel,” he said. “You seem to be under the impression that it will be easy to get Taland out of there—it won’t. I say this with a heavy heart, but there’s a good chance that Taland is not even alive anymore. The Devil doesn’t play around. He kills first and asks questions later. Do you understand?”

His every word rang true. I couldn’t even breathe until he stopped speaking.

“That…that can’t be.” Taland— dead?

Now , when we finished the Iris Roe and made it out alive and made it out of Headquarters alive, too? Now, when we clearly knew where we stood and there were finally no more secrets between us about the past?

No, no, no, no… I refused to believe it. I refused to accept it. Taland was not dead.

“He’s the Devil. El Diablo . He didn’t get that name for nothing—he really is ruthless. And Taland didn’t deliver on whatever he promised the guy, so now…” Seth shook his head. “If he is alive and if we do find him, I really doubt we’ll be able to get him out.”

“He’ll be there, too. He’ll help us,” I said, and my cheeks felt like they might melt off me even though I was frozen inside, and my eyes felt teary, too, even though I was dry . So fucking dry I could jump in the ocean and you’d still be able to see my cracks.

Seth sighed. For a moment there, I could have sworn that he actually felt sorry for me. He wasn’t smiling, wasn’t talking, just sitting there and feeling sorry for me, which I hated with all my being, because if he was sorry, that meant he really believed that there was something to be sorry about. It meant he really believed that Taland might be dead.

I refuse, I refuse, I refuse ? —

“Well, if he’ll help us, that’ll change things,” he finally said. “He’s a strong fucker.”

“Exactly,” I whispered. Taland was one of the strongest mages I knew. “He can do a fourth-degree and paralyze them until we run away. We can…we can do that,” I insisted. “We can.”

Seth nodded. “Then we will. The three of us against them—It’s doable if you’ll use that rainbow magic. It’s doable.” And he seemed to believe that, too.

I instantly calmed down. It’s doable. We would do it no matter what. We would walk into that neighborhood, and we would find Taland, and when he saw that we’d come for him, he’d fight, too. The three of us could make it back to this car in no time, and then we’d disappear.

“Seth?” I said when we got out of the car.

“Yeah?” he said, and for once he wasn’t talking at all, just looking ahead at the green buildings that began just off the other side of the wide road, built in a circle as if to separate that entire area from the rest of the city, to clearly say that they were their own place.

“If you cross me, if you try something, I won’t die until I kill you first.” I said the words slowly, separately, so he didn’t miss a single one.

Then he looked at me. “Fuck, woman.”

“Let’s go.”

That’s how I ended up entering the lair of the Devil with Seth Tivoux by my side, having no idea that when I came out of there, I would never be the same.