“Go!” Grimm hissed at me.
But I’d learned my lesson from Crash’s ex, Karissa, screwing me over. No matter who was on the other side of the door, not getting a fae—even a minor one—to sign that they would pay you for services rendered was dumb. I’d done it once. I wouldn’t do it again.
I shoved the pen and napkin at him. “Sign it now saying that you owe me.”
Baring his teeth, he snatched napkin and pen and signed a quick I.O.U with his name at the bottom. I took them both and hurried toward the window.
I quickly followed the others out. Robert waited for me on the fire escape, and he stepped in behind me, guarding the rear once more.
Another boom behind us and then the sound of splintering wood. I hurried down one flight of stairs, peeked in the window of the room beneath Grimm’s—empty—and tried to pull it open. To my surprise, it worked. “Get in!” I hissed at Feish, who had already started down the next flight of the fire escape. She scrambled back up and in, and I slid through behind her and crouched in the dark room. I grabbed Robert and pulled him in after us with a clank of his bones.
I dragged the window almost all the way shut, leaving just the slightest crack so we could hear what was going on. The banging and yelling continued above us for a few minutes, and then footsteps that obviously had no intention of being quiet thundered down the stairwell.
I pressed myself against the wall under the window and Feish did the same. Robert crouched in the shadows of the room, hidden from whoever might look in.
“Davin,” a tenor male voice said, “did you see anyone leave? Could they have gotten it?”
Gotten it? Wouldn’t he have said “them” if he’d been referring to the pages? I clutched the envelope a little tighter, wondering if Grimm had been hiding something beyond his family history. For the next thirty minutes, feet thundered up and down the stairwell and all through Grimm’s room, along with the moving of furniture. Then all the sound abruptly stopped. There had been no sound of Grimm’s voice, no squealing of a goblin being tortured. Had he slipped past them somehow?
“I saw Celia’s granddaughter earlier.” Roderick’s voice was faint as if coming from the open window of the room above us. “Could she have been here for it? Is it possible she understands what it is?”
“No.” Davin’s sneer was obvious, even though I couldn’t see his stupid face. “She’s as useless as the rest of the Hollows Group. And to think she’s got enough balls to go out on her own. She wouldn’t know a powerful item like that if it jumped up and bit her in the ass.”
I frowned and next to me Feish let out a little burbling growl. I put a hand on her, and she quieted. This was not the time to go defending my honor. Besides, I’d rather be underestimated. That gave me a lot of room to maneuver.
“I will pay a visit to her,” Roderick said. “I don’t like the coincidence of her being here.”
I didn’t disagree with him. I also didn’t like the timing—what were the odds that we’d arrived just before the councilmen busted down Grimm’s door? Was it just my luck, or was something pushing us all together? Synchronicity was a true thing, especially in the shadow world.
“Don’t bother,” Davin said, a sneer in his voice. “I need to speak to Corb. He was supposed to gain her confidence, and given how successful he is with the ladies, it should have been no problem. She’ll spill her guts to him if he presses her.”
Son of a bitch. I mouthed the words but kept the sound to myself. Corb’s need to confess suddenly made much more sense. He’d been told to get close to me? To use me? And I’d fallen for it, at least to a degree.
Mother ducking . . . I had to bite my tongue to keep the words inside. The worst part was that he’d apparently told Davin I was useless. And sure, maybe he’d done that to keep the council away from me, but what if he actually thought it was true? Well, whatever his reasons, it was a bunch of hogwash. I was not useless.
Damn it, my own insecurities tried to swallow me whole there in that dark room, and I had to mentally fight them off before I could take another step.
Crash had secrets he didn’t or maybe couldn’t share, and it had been obvious from the beginning that I could be nothing more than a passing fancy for him. While Corb was out of my league, too, I’d thought he was at least honest. Damn it. I was an idiot. I’d let myself believe that maybe one of them—
Nope, I was not going there.
Well, forget Corb. Hell, forget Crash. At this rate, I’d just stick with Robert, thank you very much.
I slowed my breathing and worked to focus on the current predicament I was in. Even if all I had was a sticky napkin as a signed agreement, it would hold up, and I would take it to the bank when I got through the next three days.
I looked at the pages in my lap. Then I pointed to them, drawing Feish’s eyes to the stack. Squishing the edges of the pages with my hands, I could feel something hard buried within the stack. My eyebrows shot up as I peeled the layers back at the edges. There, in the middle of the bunch, was a single piece of silver, a fancy coin with images etched onto it and writing in the middle. More of that same Goblinese I couldn’t read.
I frowned and rolled it in my hand, the silver catching the little bit of light coming in the window. Was this what they were looking for? I was willing to bet at least a dollar on it. Why did I get a feeling that Crash would not only know what it was, but that he might even have been the one to make it?
Which was reason enough to keep it from him. One of the last things he’d made was a knife that would have been used to off Eric.
I stuffed the silver item into my bag, considered the pages, and then put them in too. My bottomless bag was probably one of my favorite magical items—it ate up anything I put into it and didn’t saddle me with the true weight of the item. I pulled my hand out and Black Spells of Savannah and the Undead came out with it, stuck to the side of my fingers.
“Crap,” I whispered. My legs were going numb and tingly, and I slid the rest of the way to the floor.
The book, though . . . it flipped itself open. Yeah, you heard that right.
Flipped itself the duck open.
The pages rippled first one way and then the other, settling on a page with a single line on it.
Of demon skin and angel wing.
That one line had my skin crawling as if it were trying to get off my body on its own.
I closed the book, and shoved it back into my bag, but the thing . . . hell, it fought me. I was wrestling with a damn book. It snapped shut a few times on my finger, and then it grabbed onto the edge of Grimm’s pages and tore them with a terrible ripping sound, like a sticky zipper.
I punched the book in the cover and shoved it to the bottom of my bag. Grimm’s pages were only a little torn, but Jaysus. What the hell had I gotten myself into?
Of demon skin and angel wing. That line, though, it was almost as if I’d heard it before . . .
“How are we going to get out?” Feish whispered into my ear, giving me more than a little spit. “They will be looking for us, and when they find us, they will search us. They will find everything.”
I nodded. “Thinking. Give me a minute.” We needed a way to hide my bag. That way we’d escape with the object and the pages, even if we were frisked. I didn’t dare leave it behind because Roderick and Davin would no doubt search the building.