Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen

LYRE

“We need to get to the safe inside the Consulate,” Piper said, her green eyes blazing with determination, “and we need to do it now. We can’t wait for Ash to get his strength back.”

Lyre drummed his fingers on the steering wheel of their stolen sedan. He’d parked the vehicle in a dense patch of trees on the Consulate grounds, far enough from the manor that they wouldn’t easily be discovered. It was still too close for comfort.

“We have to move quickly,” Piper continued emphatically from the passenger seat. “This won’t be like the medical center. No one will expect us to go back to the scene of the crime.”

“Isn’t it the other way around?” Lyre asked skeptically. “I thought criminals did go back to the scene of the crime.”

“Well, we are, but only because we need the information in that safe.”

“But without Ash …”

Lyre glanced over his shoulder, and Piper mirrored him. Ash lay comatose on the back seat. Dried blood covered the leg of his dark pants, disguising the ragged tears where he’d been gouged with knives. Zwi was curled in a ball on his chest, watching them with wary golden eyes.

As far as Piper knew, Ash was fast asleep due to exhaustion from the fight and his subsequent healing. But Ash was actually fast asleep because Lyre had put a sleep spell on him the moment he’d drifted off.

A little underhanded, yes, but Lyre knew Ash well. The draconian wouldn’t give himself time to recover, and everything about their current predicament was too dangerous for him to be at anything less than his best.

The Sahar Stone. Of all the messes Lyre could’ve gotten dragged into, this was pretty close to the bottom of his list.

“Look,” Piper said, drawing Lyre’s attention back to her. “Sitting here for hours is way riskier than getting what we need and leaving. Aside from the information in the safe, we also need clean clothes, food, and water. The Consulate is the easiest way to get everything at once.”

Lyre didn’t disagree, but he wasn’t keen to make any moves without knowing what Ash was really up to—and what exactly was on the line. Something more than the Sahar, of that much he was certain.

Piper shifted restlessly in her seat. “Even if Ash woke this minute, he’d need more time to recover. He probably used a lot of magic in that fight.”

“A lot of magic for most daemons,” Lyre said dryly, “but a lot of magic for Ash?”

Considering the medical center was still standing, Lyre could confidently assume Ash had plenty of magic left to burn. Lyre wasn’t jealous at all.

“Does Ash have any lodestones?” she asked. “Would charging them help him recover faster?”

Ash had lodestones under his glamour, but Lyre didn’t say that. “If he does, how are you planning to charge them?”

“Uh, you would charge them? Isn’t that what you do for a living?”

He propped an elbow on the steering wheel and gave her a slow, sultry smile. “Are you volunteering to charge a lodestone with me?”

A pink flush stained her cheeks. “If… necessary.”

His eyebrows crept up. She sounded distinctly unenthusiastic about the idea. It was a rare day when someone cringed at the thought of sleeping with him.

He held up a finger. “First, I can siphon a woman’s energy without getting her naked. Arousal is enough.”

Piper’s whole face was glowing now. “I know that.”

Uh-huh. He held up another finger. “Second, daemons can only steal energy from humans. For daemons—or haemons—their energy is already tied to their magic.”

“I know that too,” she muttered.

“So,” he drawled, “you, being a haemon, can’t donate your energy to Ash’s lodestones. Though”—he dropped his voice into a purr—“I’m willing to try if you want to experiment.”

She scoffed. Her eyes darted from his to the windshield and back in clear conflict.

“I’m a haemon,” she repeated as though he hadn’t just said that. “But I don’t have any magic. So… I’m basically a human.”

The last few words sounded like she’d peeled them off her tongue with great reluctance. Lyre had heard that the Head Consul’s daughter was magicless, but it wasn’t something he’d discussed with her—not that they’d ever discussed any personal topics in the years he’d been visiting the Consulate.

He reached across the center console and touched two fingertips to her chin. Lifting her face so that their eyes met, he let a whisper of his aphrodesia unfurl. The invisible power saturated the car, and Piper’s eyes lost focus. Her lips parted, her breath quickened, and her pupils dilated. Her hazy focus dropped to his mouth, and she leaned closer.

He pulled his hand back and reclined in his seat. “Nope.”

She blinked slowly. “Huh?”

“I can’t siphon energy from you.”

Her body went rigid, and she gave her head a sharp shake as though the motion would throw his aphrodesia off her. “Did you just seduce me?”

Fury burned in her glare, but beneath it was a cold gleam of fear.

“Just a little,” he admitted with a small shrug. “But you’re more haemon than human as far as your energy goes.”

Her glower shifted into a frown. “But how is that possible when I don’t have any magic?”

“No idea. Either way, we can’t charge Ash’s lodestones.” Lyre glanced at the draconian in the back. “I think you’re right that waiting is too risky. Let’s get in and out as quickly as we can.”

Distracted from his brief “seduction,” Piper shoved her door open. She hopped out at top speed, as though he might change his mind if she delayed.

Lyre twisted to look at Zwi. “Keep an eye on him.”

The dragonet chirped an affirmative, and Lyre climbed out of his seat and stretched his arms over his head. He didn’t miss Piper surreptitiously checking him out where she waited at the nose of the car.

Grinning, he strolled over to her. “So, change your mind about letting me touch you?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?” he teased, following as she strode into the trees. “You don’t even know what you’re missing out on.”

“Actually, I do, and it’s a hard pass—so don’t ever use your aphrodesia on me again.”

He narrowed his eyes at the back of her head as she marched ahead of him. Her acerbic tone was hiding something else. He’d playfully flirted with her dozens of times while visiting the Consulate without triggering this defensive reaction. What had changed? Had he made her feel unsafe? He had no intention of seducing or sleeping with her, but he may have leaned too hard into his flirtatious womanizer persona.

Lengthening his stride, he fell into step beside her. She kept her attention on the trees, avoiding his gaze. In silence, they approached the edge of the Consulate grounds. A span of wide-open lawn stretched between them and their destination.

The sprawling manor appeared empty, its windows dark, but he didn’t trust the apparent lack of life. Enough time had passed for news of the Sahar’s presence in the city to spread and for all kinds of unpleasant daemons to show up and start hunting for it.

The most obvious point of entry was the demolished front door, but someone had boarded up the opening. They could smash a window to get in, but if his suspicion about the Consulate’s abandonment—or lack thereof—was correct, a noisy break-in would draw attention.

Piper seemed to be thinking the same thing. Keeping to the trees, she led the way around the edge of the lawn until they could see the second, much larger breach in the Consulate’s exterior.

The exploded meeting room looked more or less as he remembered it, but some overly diligent person had gone and boarded up the doorway that led into the hall.

“Walking straight in doesn’t appear to be an option,” he observed in a whisper. “Any other ideas?”

Piper pointed toward the far end of the building’s south wing, where a tall maple rose above the peaked roof.

“You want to climb a tree?”

“Yep. My bedroom window is right there, and I always leave it unlocked.”

Crossing the lawn and scaling a tree would leave them dangerously exposed for too long. Reaching behind her, Lyre lightly pinched the back of her shirt. Magic spun out from his fingers and slid over her, unnoticed.

“There are plenty of windows on the ground level,” he pointed out, buying himself another moment to finish the cloaking spell. “Should we check if any of them are unlocked first?”

It was tricky to weave a spell over her clothes instead of into her body, but that she would have noticed. The list of daemons who knew what Lyre could or couldn’t do with magic was very small and didn’t include any haemons, humans, or apprentice consuls. He planned to keep it that way.

“I used to get in and out of my room all the time using that tree,” Piper told him impatiently. “Let’s go.”

She launched forward, her shirt pulling out from his fingers just as he activated the weaving. She didn’t notice the rush of magic over her skin, indistinguishable from a cool breeze.

Grumbling about her impetuousness, he cast a much faster cloaking spell over himself and rushed out after her. She grabbed the lowest branch of the maple and swung onto it. He followed as she hauled herself into the upper boughs. When she paused at roof height and glanced down at him, he grimaced at the ground, not liking the drop all that much.

“How will this get us inside?” he asked. “We’re too high.”

She gestured toward her bedroom window. “We have to jump onto the roof.”

“Oh, of course.” He rolled his eyes. “That makes perfect sense.”

She sprang onto the eaves. He jumped after her and shuffled down the roof, then waited as she popped out the window screen and climbed inside. He swung in after her.

She stood beside her bed, taking in the scene.

The room was a disaster. All of her worldly belongings were strewn around in various states of destruction.

Her face tightened with pain, but she said nothing. At every step of this oh-so-fun adventure, Lyre had expected Piper to melt down—hysterical tears or vacant stares or trembling anxiety attacks. She was a magicless teenage girl who’d probably never seen a dead body before all this. But the only tears she’d shed had been in the meeting room, surrounded by corpses and her wounded uncle. Everything since she’d endured with steely determination.

“The choronzon didn’t do all this,” she whispered.

He refocused on the room. “I imagine it was the prefects searching for the Sahar.”

With a rough exhalation, she gave him a small push toward the doorway. “Go get your and Ash’s things. I’ll change and pack some stuff.”

Lyre cautiously entered the hallway and scanned for signs of life before hastening to his room. It had been ransacked almost as thoroughly as Piper’s, his pack dumped out and his clothing thrown around.

Grabbing a black t-shirt, jeans, and his shoes, he stripped down and redressed. He stuffed the rest of his clothes into his pack—minus the garments he’d just removed. No need to add dirt and blood to the mix.

Slinging his bag over one shoulder, he crossed the hall to Ash’s room and found it in a similar state. He crouched beside the bed and checked underneath it, then tugged the mattress away from the wooden headboard and ran his fingers across the gap.

Magic buzzed against his skin in warning. He smirked. Those useless prefects probably hadn’t even discovered Ash’s wards, let alone broken them.

Lyre disarmed the protections with a press of his fingers, then pulled out a pair of curved daggers, two smaller knives, and a leather wristband with charged lodestones hidden in the inner lining.

Lyre threw them into Ash’s pack along with his clothes. He was about to zip it shut when he spotted the heavy black boots in the corner. He shoved those in too. He was pretty sure Ash, like him, would’ve rather escaped the Consulate buck naked with just his boots on than have to wear the crap shoes they’d stolen.

With the two packs in hand, Lyre ventured back into the hall. Halfway across the sitting room, he paused and held his breath. A muffled, almost inaudible rumble reached his ears. Someone speaking? It definitely wasn’t Piper.

At Piper’s bedroom door, he reached for the handle. It swung open before he could touch it, and she waved him inside. A new dark umber top with long sleeves covered her lean form, and it looked like she’d layered on several shirts—presumably in case she lost the backpack she held in one hand.

“Got everything?” she asked, pretending she wasn’t checking out his new clothes. When she realized he’d noticed her noticing him, she hastily grabbed his and Ash’s bags and unceremoniously shoved all three out the window.

He winced at the muffled crash of their belongings hitting the ground. Whoever was talking on the main level had probably heard that.

“Any sign of people?” she asked.

“There are at least two downstairs.”

Her mouth thinned. “We can’t quit now. We’ll just have to be careful.”

He didn’t argue, letting her take the lead back across the south wing toward the stairs. Slipping two fingers under the neckline of his shirt, he touched one of the gemstones hanging from a silver chain. A spark of magic activated the weaving embedded in it. A skintight shield against magical attacks enveloped his body, invisible to Piper and difficult for other daemons to spot.

After a cautious pause at the top of the stairs, they descended to the foyer, which was adorned with pieces of the shattered front doors and smears of Ash’s blood. Lyre’s nostrils flared. He didn’t have a draconian’s sense of smell, but he could pick out an alarming number of scents crisscrossing the space—including some distinctly daemon ones.

Then he heard more voices, these ones much closer.

“Piper,” he warned in an undertone.

Her eyes widened as she heard it too—a man and a woman talking. And they were heading this way.

“Quick,” Piper hissed. “In here.”

Seizing his arm, she shoved him into the front closet and backed in after him, forcing him into the farthest corner from the open door.

“… imagining things,” a male voice complained.

“I definitely heard something,” a woman shot back.

“There hasn’t been a single sign of anyone in here since the prefects left.”

Their voices grew louder as they entered the foyer and stopped. Piper pressed back against Lyre, and he put his hands on her hips, holding her still before he got too distracted.

“This is a complete waste of time,” the man continued crankily. “I should have turned this assignment down.”

“You can leave,” the woman grunted. “Then I won’t have to listen to you whine nonstop.” She turned her back on him. “I’m going to stand watch for a bit.”

“Suit yourself.”

Lyre listened as the two interlopers shifted around. Then the woman passed close enough to the closet door that he could sense the faint presence of magic. Too weak for a daemon, which meant she was a haemon.

Why would a haemon be watching the Consulate as an “assignment”?

Piper leaned back into Lyre. Did she realize where she was pressing her ass? Not that he would ever complain, but this wasn’t a great time.

“Not daemons,” she whispered. “Not prefects either. The woman is standing by the window right beside us. The man is sitting on the stairs.”

Lyre didn’t tell her the two strangers were haemons. No need to advertise daemons’ enhanced senses. Tightening his grip on her hips, he put his lips to her ear. “Do they look like they’ll be leaving soon?”

She shook her head.

“Damn,” he grumbled.

“What do we do?”

He considered their options. Cloaking spells or not, if he and Piper waltzed out of the closet, the two haemons would notice them. And those two haemons might swiftly multiply depending on who else was on “assignment” here. There were also the daemon scents he’d picked up. He didn’t want to draw any attention.

He could simply kill the haemons, but that fell into the “drawing attention” category. So that left…

“I have an idea,” he whispered.

“What is it?”

“Umm.” He pursed his lips. “Well, she’s female.”

“So?”

“Aphrodesia will work on her.”

A moment of silence.

“You want to seduce her ?” Piper whispered incredulously. “How does that keep them from discovering us?”

“You don’t understand.” He absently massaged her waist. “If I hit that woman with aphrodesia, at the very least she won’t keep standing there. And with her male companion five feet away…” He smirked in the darkness.

“Oh,” Piper breathed in understanding.

Realizing he was still caressing her waist, he stopped the movement. “There’s a catch, though.”

“What’s that?”

“I can’t really aim my aphrodesia. So…” He smiled with grim humor. “I suggest you think unsexy thoughts.”

She stiffened in realization, and he hoped she had good self-control—because he was about to test his own.