It’s a weird relief to watch Drue’s gaze go wide. “You think that’s where he went?”
“I don’t know,” I confess. “It’s just what my gut says. If I were a stranger here and having to pick a direction out the building’s front door, I’d head toward the shady sidewalks and full trees.”
“Beyond which is the craziest place in the city.”
“Where Bastien De Leon will either go equally crazy or drown in five dollar bills from everyone wanting to pose with him.”
I grimace to show how little I enjoy saying that part. At the same time, something urgent, anxious, and protective rises in me.
The man can handle himself physically, that much is obvious. It’s his mental exposure that I can’t stop stressing about. His total rejection of the truth, despite how gently I tried to break it to him. Right after that, his fast flare of aggression—understandable to me but not a great tactic to turn on some tourist who thinks Bastien’s just a cosplayer waiting for his next acting audition. He’s barely wearing more than the Naked Cowboy!
Drue seems to reach the same tension level at the same moment, thanks to the fact that it took me one sentence to sum up the man’s time travel attire when she asked.
“We need to roll,” she states while jabbing at her phone again. “I’ll cover the ride. Pre-tipping to let this guy know we need warp speed.”
This guy turns out to be a gorgeous non-binary human named Dash in a lime-green hybrid, with driving skills to match the rock star exterior. We’re at 42nd and Bryant before I can finish checking my emails. I’m still tapping out a reply to Sylver Savoy, who’s psyched about the updated Belle Epoque stuff, when we make it onto the main flow at 7th.
The stretch of concrete that even now, before noon, feels like the center of the world.
That, for the first time in my life, has me cringing on the verge of panic.
Never has Times Square done this to me. When I was a girl, I thrived on dragging Mom and Dad here once a year, on my birthday. We’d go shopping in one of my favorite toy stores and then out for an equally overpriced lunch. From the age of thirteen on, I was allowed to pick a Broadway show instead. During one of those shows, I certainly fell in love for the first time. I’m not sure if it was with a French Revolution idealist, a masked phantom, a cocky rogue from Oz, or one of the many heroes after that. I only knew they wore shiny clothes and sang with perfect pitch.
Right now, I’d trade all of them just to find one runaway duke.
Drue and I navigate the sea of humanity for six blocks, up to the Red Steps and back again. Nowhere between the tourists, theatergoers, musicians, desnudas, and restaurant flyer guys do we catch even a hopeful glance of a shirtless god with a stunned gawk.
We seem to be the only goggle-eyed ones on every block, peering so hard into the throngs that I’m shocked we haven’t been arrested.
Sure enough, D slumps against one of the barriers between the concourse and the avenue and mutters, “Okay, we’ve got to chill before Officer Stink-Eye over there gets any closer. Either that or line up why we’re casing this crowd like Dickens pickpockets.”
My shoulders slump as I settle next to her. Out of habit I open my phone, as if expecting there’ll be some kind of text update from Bastien. Or at least about him.
“How come nobody told me the hot duke was going to need a tracking tile?”
“Because…hot freaking duke?” Drue whips back. “We’re all human, girl. No shame in basking at the De Leon oasis after being parched in the Desert of Justin for so long.”
Well, that takes my mind way the hell away from Officer Stink-Eye paranoia. “Hold up. You think I went for it with Bastien as just a rebound from Justin?”
“Didn’t you?” She’s wise about averting her stare, choosing to look up at the ribbonlike marquee of the nearby media studios. “Because no way is it anything more, yeah? Because he’s a wolf who’s bonded with another mate. Whose dick didn’t want anything to do with you, after his head branded you as a nasty seductress. I’m getting all that right, aren’t I?”
Her smartass tone gives her real message away. She glances over, watching the deeper tone of my blush as she gets around to paying homage to Bastien’s crotch. I don’t know whether to hug her or hit her for it. I don’t want to remember the man’s resplendent ridge, but its glory consumes my mind all the same. I recall how it looked as he approached me with that accusing glare. After he’d concluded that I was a bad, bad witch. Stalking like he yearned to turn me into his bad, bad girl.
And holy shit, I would’ve let him. So damn readily.
I’ve never had angry sex before. Two seconds more and I would’ve been begging him for it…
But no way am I going to admit that part.
“Are you getting the rest of the story here?” I retort instead. “About how traumatized he looked when bounding out of that armoire in the first place? About how furious he got when I tried telling him the truth?” I lock my hands to the top of the concrete rampart, purposely scraping my fingers to keep them in place. “And about the fact that he might be here…by mistake?”
After a couple of seconds, Drue spills an uncomfortable girl growl. “Pleh. Are we seriously back to that?”
“And are you seriously saying that you’ve ruled it all the way out?” I volley. “Up until last night, every historic record told the world something completely different about Monsieur le Duke De Leon. Who, don’t you think, would be mentioned somewhere if he actually did become a duke of the regime? So what if there’s been a malfunction? What if he’s really not supposed to be here? Maybe the reason we can’t find him is because he’s already been zapped back to the seventeen hundreds, and—”
“Oh, no.”
D looks up like someone’s injected her brilliant blues with liquid silver. It’s one of her prettiest looks but also one of her most unreadable. Has she gotten real now, or am I still being played for fun?
“Oh my God,” I utter, banking on the latter. “Are you even listen—”
She slams a hand over mine. I’m about to swear with some vigor now, but she’s already groaning, “Ohhh, no-no-no.”
“Hunnnh?”
It slurs out with strange emphasis because my chin is a victim of her other hand. Damn it, the woman’s grabbing me like needle-nose pliers.
“Dudette. He hasn’t been zapped back.”
I get it then, that she’s ordering me to focus on something besides the nervous jiggle of my left leg. Up, up, up and to the right, to be exact—at the updated news feed that ripples along the front of the media building, via that artistic electronic strip.
At first I only scowl, thinking she’s merely strapped on her rough and relentless side because of the marketing blurb on a massive billboard above the electric display.
KNOWLEDGE
IS NEVER
A MISTAKE
“Okay, okay. I got it, all right? Shit, D. What on earth are you getting—”
Only now, when the huge video screen is switched from an eyeshadow ad to a breaking-news feature, do I understand that she wants me to be reading the headline ticker that’s thrown in between stock market and weather updates. The words that justify why we’re looking at choppy footage from someone’s cell phone instead of professional camerawork. The sound bite that’s really not. The click bait that’s even worse. The only intention of this line is to stop people in their tracks. Literally.