This version of Bishop terrified me, and I got the sense he would revert deeper into his true self the longer we remained in this place. It called to him, I could almost hear it, a song of ice and endless hunger.
The mountain turned out not to be a mountain but a cluster of figures, each one frozen solid and arranged equidistant in a circle. There was room for one more, and irrational fear coiled in my belly as we raced toward the gap.
This was not my Bishop. I didn’t know if I could trust him not to slot me into that hole. But I didn’t have much choice. Ambrose herded me there as well. With him pressed against my thigh, I had to stay the course.
Into the macabre ring Bishop sprinted, his light steps no longer disturbing the snow. I stumbled along in his wake, Ambrose urging me onward, and then I got a taste of how it felt to be a thread guided through the eye of a needle.
The warm darkness of shadows welcomed us, and tears of relief froze on my cheeks before they melted. I hit concrete when my knees buckled, and bright fluorescent lights forced my eyes closed against them.
A shiver of fear danced along my spine, an awareness of my vulnerability in the presence of a predator.
Ambrose was a tingle beside me, still in contact with me but no longer real enough to protect me.
“Well, that was an adventure.” I sank onto my butt to rest, putting my back against a wall. “How are you doing over there?”
“Clever.” Bishop chuckled darkly. “Get me talking so you can pinpoint my location.”
“Hey, you fell for it.” I wedged my eyes open. “That’s one ride I don’t want to go on again.”
He tapped the delicate skin beneath my chin, forcing my head back, his fingertip a piercing cold so acute I felt certain he must have rammed a stiletto through the bottom of my jaw into my brain.
“I could make you like it,” he purred. “I could make you want it.”
Mildly shocked to find I wasn’t dead, just partially frozen, I met his snow-white eyes. “This isn’t you.”
“You don’t know me.” He exhaled, and a cloud of his breath formed between us. “You can’t know me.”
“You’re Bishop.” I reached up, so very slowly, and wrapped a hand around his wrist. “You’re my friend.”
The touch or the words thawed the icy veneer that had encased him during our trek. “I’m sorry, kid.”
Not sure it was the smartest thing to do, I drew him into my arms for a hug. “You’re fine.”
Cold radiated through him, frosting his voice as he whispered, “I could have killed you.”
“Nah.” I released him. “You like me too much.”
A laugh that sounded torn from his chest melted him more.
“Midas will be waiting.” He grunted and rose, pulling me up with him. “Still trust me?”
Offering to take me was a show of trust on his part. He knew what would happen to him where we were going, what it would reveal to me of his nature, and he did it anyway. He believed I could handle it, and I wasn’t going to let him down. Not when I had been where he was, so many times, terrified of rejection.
“Always.”
An expression caught between a smile and a grimace twisted his lips. “Back in five.”
“That took five minutes?”
“Not for us, but for everyone else, yeah. One-way is more like two minutes and change.”
Time was elastic in pocket realms, or so I always heard, but experiencing it firsthand was bizarre.
Careful how I phrased it, I fumbled a vague question. “Is it always…like that?”
I might have meant it any number of ways, and he could have answered it with just as many truths without homing in on the pertinent one, but he was in a giving mood today. Or an apologetic one.
“It’s worse when I’ve been with…” He ruffled his hair, but there was no snow to shed. “Vasco brings my nature closer to the surface.”
Yet another reason for me to keep them apart as much as possible, until or unless Bishop wanted to embrace that radical change in himself, which didn’t appear to be the case.
“I don’t have trouble controlling my urges here, but there…” He trailed off again. “I want to be the guy you know, the guy you trust, but I’m not always. It’s good that you learned the difference.”
Stepping into shadows, he vanished from my senses before I could thank him.
Ambrose sat beside me on the floor, in his mostly Hadley shape, staring where Bishop had disappeared. I could tell he wished he could go back. The desire hummed like a live wire between us. Unlike the good old days, he didn’t nudge or cajole or act out. He let the moment pass, picked himself up, and extended his hand toward me.
“Funny.” I laughed under my breath. “Where are we, anyway?”
The room was small, maybe six feet squared, and empty.
A weirdly familiar door stood before us, but it could have belonged in any business I had ever visited.
“Guess there’s only one way to find out.” I opened it and stepped through. “Huh.”
HQ awaited me on the other side. Bishop must have dumped me in one of his many, many, many supply closets that filled and emptied depending on the day of the week, his mood, and how much time he had spent online shopping the day before.
The man was an Amazon addict. Seriously. His one-clicker was downright spastic.
The command center stood to my left, Bishop’s workspace illuminated by Reece and Anca’s screens.
No Milo, but he preferred legwork to deskwork, so his absence wasn’t unusual.
Two rows of monitors were anchored on the wall, which was painted an unrelieved black. The upper row held four screens, each about thirty-four inches, and they were blank. The lower row mirrored the one above it, but those were always on and flashing surveillance mooched off city cameras as well as our own private mounts.
Tonight, they streamed multiple drone feeds and a cartoon about kids with elemental powers on Netflix.
“Hadley?” Anca’s warm voice echoed through the room. “Is that you?”
“It’s me.” I walked over and commandeered Bishop’s seat in the command center. “How’s Milo?”
“Safe,” she assured me. “He checks in every half hour.”
That was protocol, and I was glad he stuck to it like glue when it hit the fan.
Leaning forward, she rubbed the small of her back. “How did you sneak out of the Faraday?”
“I caught a ride with a friend.” I left it at that and trusted her to let it go. “Any news?”
“We estimate one hundred and sixty-eight coven members are scattered throughout the city at present, but we can’t be certain,” she reported. “Based on the frequency of new arrivals, our best guess is they bring groups of twelve through the archive every half hour.”
About the time I digested that unhappy math, Midas exited through the same closet door I had left ajar.
Ten years’ worth of frown lines creased his forehead, and his inner predator stared out through his eyes. Muscles flexed in his jaw as he clamped his teeth together, but I could hear his growl from here. Nostrils flared wide, he located me by scent, and the worst tension flowed out of his shoulders.
Safe to say, based on his ominous expression, his journey hadn’t been a walk in the park either.