Darker Than Night - Amelia Wilde Page 0,45
choice.”
My father tried to force me into an arranged marriage. He was working with Demeter. I feel no pity. “I’d rather not know,” I tell Poseidon. “As far away as you can get.”
“Sir,” James calls from the SUV. “We’re ready.” Another one is pulling up behind him. The street is beginning to clear. No one seems to notice that a group of men have essentially kidnapped a woman and put her in the trunk.
“Are the police coming?”
Zeus looks down at me, amusement lighting his eyes. “For what?”
“I don’t know—to help?”
“No.” He laughs. “No, they’ll be busy at headquarters.”
“Busy with what?”
“Reorganizing,” he says. “They know I’ll be in soon to clean house, so they’ll try their best to do it for me.” I feel it then, for a minute—the balance of power shifting all over the city. He caught them here, with Demeter, and I don’t doubt that Zeus has collected evidence. It’s not just money that gives him power. It’s all the combined knowledge of everyone who comes through the doors of his businesses. He gives my hip a final squeeze. “Let’s go.”
“Home?” I’d give anything to be in his bed.
“There’s something I have to supervise first.”
We follow the SUV in a separate vehicle all the way to a train station. It’s a secondary one, close to the city limits, and a dark figure waits there for us.
Zeus climbs out of the SUV and calls to him. “Did you miss me this much? I’m only a phone call away, Hades.”
Hades rolls his eyes. “I’m not letting someone else put her on the train.” It’s stopped by the station, idling there. “I’ll take her the rest of the way.”
“You wouldn’t.” Zeus widens his eyes. “For me?”
“Not for you, you self-absorbed prick. For Persephone.”
We ascend to the top of the platform. “She sent you here?”
“For some reason, she didn’t think you were capable of following through. I’m inclined to trust her judgment.”
A muffled raging from inside the first SUV breaks into the open air. It takes three men to drag Demeter out of the trunk, even with her ankles tied, and when she sees Hades her face goes red. She thrashes so much they drop her and she hits her head on the sidewalk.
No one seems very concerned about it.
When they lift her again she’s slightly more subdued. They carry her past us and she spits at Hades, who takes this in with an unflinching gaze.
“A gag was out of your budget?” he says to Zeus.
“I didn’t want to waste the fabric.” But I see the way Zeus looks away when he says it. Away, and down.
Hades has a special train car for when he wants to transport a difficult passenger. A quick glance through the only visible window shows reinforced walls. I’m sure it has other features, too. Hades steps forward at the last moment and presses a hand to a panel by the door, which slides open in response. The three men put her inside and back away, their faces slack with relief. He puts his hand on the panel again and the door closes with a definitive thud. The train hisses, the wheels making a slick protest as it reverses.
“Are you staying in the city?” Hades asks.
“Obviously.” Zeus brushes his hands together as if he’s completed another task in the office. “I have a business to run.” Hades takes this in with a dip of his chin, and then Zeus is leading me down the stairs, back to the SUV. “Home,” he says. “There’s something we need to discuss.”
19
Zeus
I mean to tell Brigit when we arrive at the house, but in a patently unsurprising twist of fate she falls asleep on the way there and bats my hands away when I try to get her to resurface.
It’s just as well. Because the clarity that arrived after that bomb exploded—so many bombs, these days—included a realization about the future that I’ll have no choice but to share with her. I bundle her up into my arms, conscious that this could be the last time I carry her up the stairs. James steps out of the first SUV in our little procession and pushes his hands through his hair.
“I need you in the office,” I tell him. “Bring Cal inside.”
As if the man would leave him behind.
When I’m finished tucking Brigit into bed I find a blanket and toss it over Cal’s prone form, stretched out on my sofa and dead to the world. James waits for me in my office,