Dusk Avenger (Flirting with Monsters #3) - Eva Chase Page 0,6

to him if you make it snappy.”

Through the shadows, he meant. I opened my mouth to protest, but Omen held up his hand. “You don’t need to be involved in every piece of this operation. Wait for us back on Darlene.”

Oh, he was doubling down on the name, was he? I might have had a few choice words about that, but before I could voice any of them, Talon approached me. He peered down at me through his sunglasses, cocking his head. My shoulders stiffened, but you’d better believe I held my ground.

“Can I help you with something?” I asked, raising my chin.

I might not have been able to see his eyes, but I thought I could feel his attention pass over me like a cool draft grazing my skin. His mouth tightened into the kind of smile that ate children’s laughter for breakfast.

“There’s a burning inside you,” he said. “But it might not stay in for long. If you’re not careful, you’re going to sear away with it when you decide to let it loose.”

3

Sorsha

The Company of Light’s main Chicago facility resembled nothing so much as a shoe box—albeit one the size of a city block. That resemblance might have been intentional, because their front wasn’t just any museum. It was a Museum of Footwear.

As we cruised by, I squinted at the pale gray walls from the window over the RV’s sofa. “Why would anyone think you need a building that big just to show off a bunch of shoes?”

Ruse chuckled from the driver’s seat. “You fail to recognize the multitude of items mortals have worn on their feet over the centuries, Miss Blaze.”

I rolled my eyes in his general direction. “I’m sure there are plenty of interesting slippers and sandals and galoshes or whatever, but who wants to spend a day looking at them all?”

“Enough people to keep the Company’s front in business,” Omen said from where he was standing near the door, watching the street through the windshield. “The dwarf said quite a few ordinary-looking humans go in and out on an average day.”

“Well, there’s no accounting for taste, I guess. I don’t see much in the way of security on the outside, at least not right now.” There wasn’t much room for guards to take up posts along the narrow strip of lawn between the building and the sidewalk. I’d spotted a figure just inside the glass front doors, though. “If they mostly stick to lesser shadowkind here, maybe they haven’t felt the need to really lock the place down.”

Thorn appeared across from me so suddenly that Pickle startled where he was curled up on my lap. The warrior must have leapt straight from the shadows along the road into the RV and then into physical form so fast even his fellow shadowkind hadn’t been prepared.

“The building appears to have an inner sanctum,” he reported without preamble. “The galleries form a square around an area that only a single locked door leads into. The door and the walls around that area contained enough noxious metals that I couldn’t slip past while the entrance was shut. No telling how many mortals might be stationed within, but I counted six guards patrolling the outer rooms.”

A thin smile curled Omen’s lips. “They’re definitely not expecting us, then. The Company must not have realized how far we got into their computer system before we burned that last place down. It’ll be simple enough to blaze through this spot to wherever they’re holding Snap.”

His words were enough to set off a flash of heat in my chest. My hands tightened around Pickle.

A couple of days ago, I’d have welcomed the searing power that stirred with my anger. After scalding my fingers and hearing the basilisk’s warning, my body recoiled at the sensation.

I’d only just discovered this power—or acknowledged it, anyway—a week ago. I’d barely scraped the surface of learning how to work it. Which was to say, I didn’t have much of a clue what all I might be capable of, for good or ill.

Besides, did I really want to go charging at every enemy we faced from now until the end of this quest, burning them alive as my opening move? The shrieks of the people I’d sent up in flames in the last facility echoed through my memory, leaving me faintly queasy. Omen and Thorn wouldn’t have batted an eye at that tactic—Ruse and Snap might not have either—but murder was a tad more taboo among humans than it