19

A quick glance at the timetable posted to the wall of the decaying warehouse told me my guess had been right on the money. The Sunken Ship was an all-night floating party over New York City, and we’d just missed the final boarding call. We were stuck down here on the ground while the thief was up there now, plotting something evil.

“We have to find a way up there,” I told Nero. “Before the thief blows that ship out of the sky. Or poisons everyone on board.” I swallowed hard. “Or both. Maybe we can get a helicopter and—”

“Leda.”

I turned to look at him. “What?”

“I am an angel. I can fly us up there.”

“Both of us?”

“I can lift considerably more than your body weight.”

“Oh, right,” I said, suddenly feeling stupid.

He stepped in closer. “Put your arms around me.”

As I looped my hands around his shoulders, his hands settled on my hips. In that instant, I flipped from feeling mildly stupid to feeling really self-conscious. Magic crackled in the air, and Nero’s wings spread out from his body. Every time I saw that gorgeous blend of black, green, and blue feathers, my breath froze in my chest for a moment, as though my body wanted to freeze time, to give me just one moment to truly appreciate the exquisite perfection of his wings.

Nero bent his knees, then shot up into the air like a rocket. A moment later, we were high over the city, his wings pushing us toward the airship in hard, powerful strokes. We were moving fast—really fast. The night air slid across my face, moving down my body in cool rivulets. I shivered.

“You’re cold,” Nero said.

“No, I’m flying,” I said, grinning. “This is just… I don’t even know what words could describe it.”

His eyes flickered to me. “You feel like it is the most natural thing in the world. You feel like before this moment, some part of you was incomplete.”

“Yes, exactly that. How did you know?”

“Because I felt the same way the first time I flew.” He turned his gaze forward. “We’re almost there. Brace yourself.”

“For what?”

Our feet slammed against the side of the airship so hard that the impact shot vibrations from my feet all the way up to my head. Nero’s arms remained locked around me, which was a good thing because we were standing parallel to a several-hundred-foot drop into New York City. Only Nero’s wings were keeping us in place.

“We will enter there,” he said, pointing to a hatch in the airship’s bronze hull.

It didn’t appear openable from the outside, but that didn’t stop Nero. He waved his hand, and the hatch flung open so hard that it ripped off its hinges. Nero caught the broken door as it flew past us.

“You used too much power,” I told him.

“That was unexpected,” he commented, glancing at the door in his hand. “They’re usually attached better.”

“So you do this often?” I said with a smirk as we moved into the airship.

“On occasion.” He stepped away from me to get a closer look at the spot where the hatch had been mounted just a minute ago. “We are not the first to sneak aboard tonight. They burned their way through, then tried to staple the hatch into place.” He lifted the door to the hole.

“And now you’re going to do the same?” I asked him.

In response, he lifted up his free hand. Flames burst out of his palm. It took him half a minute to seal the hole in the airship.

“You welded the hatch shut,” I said, gaping at his handiwork.

“Yes.”

“But you welded the hatch shut,” I repeated. “You melted through metal. I don’t even know how hot your fire spell had to be to do that.”

“Would you like me to answer that?”

“No.” I tore my eyes away from the wall. “Let’s just focus on finding our thief.”

I walked down the hall toward the door at the end. Rising to my tiptoes, I peeked quickly through the circular window at the top. In the room beyond the door, a party was raging. Men and women dressed in a puzzling but not unpleasant contradiction of materials—ruffles and silk, leather and denim, metal and mesh—danced and drank and shared dignified laughs.

“This is a witch party ship,” I whispered to Nero.

“Do you see the thief?”

“There are no ninjas dancing on the ceiling, but he probably changed clothes.” I glanced back at him. “Even if he is in here, we wouldn’t know it.”

“I can.”

“How?”

“The thief stole Ice Crystals.”

“Another poison?” I asked.

“Yes, a potent one, so strong that it would have left an imprint on his aura. If we get close enough, I can sense that imprint, but we must hurry before it fades.” He reached for the door handle.

I caught his hand. “Wait. We can’t storm into the room dressed like this. We’ll never get close enough to find the thief that way.”

“I can freeze them with my mind.”

“All one hundred people in that room?”

A crinkle formed between his eyes. “No, that’s too many.”

“Then it’s a good thing I have a plan.”

He gave me a wary look. “What kind of plan?”

“A fantastic one, of course.”

* * *

I’d done jobs on a few party airships before, and they all had cabins for the guests to retire to when they needed to sleep off the drugs and fun. The abundance of cabins was good for us because we were going to borrow a new wardrobe. We had to break into three cabins before we had a complete ensemble for each of us. I tossed aside the leather jacket of my Legion uniform but kept the leather bustier I wore below it, as well as my leather boots. I paired them with black tights and a beige ballerina skirt.

“Take these,” I told Nero, handing him a dark vest and a green dress shirt.

He gave them a hard look. “These clothes are ridiculous.”

“Are you challenging the witches’ sense of fashion?”

“Yes.”

I chuckled and tossed him a belt with a wide buckle and funny symbols all over it. “Take that too. You can keep your pants on.”

Silver swirled in his eyes for a brief moment before it faded into the green abyss. He held my gaze as he peeled the leather top off of his body. I didn’t turn away. To do so would have been an admission that I was affected by the sight of his bare chest—by the hard, carved lines of muscle defined to delicious perfection by centuries of hard labor. Not that I was ogling either. Or drooling. Drooling would have given me away too.

Nero quickly pulled on the pilfered parts of his wardrobe. Then, dressed to kill, we walked out of the cabin, following the curving corridor back to the party zone. A soft, sweet ballad spilled out of the room when I opened the door. We navigated around a couple making out against the wall.

All of the interior walls were painted a cheerful shade of sunset. It matched beautifully with the midnight blue and gold of the night sky and city lights beyond the glass windows that encircled the room.

“How close do you need to be to pick up the Ice Crystal imprint?” I whispered to him as we zigzagged past ten people along our way to the bar.

“About three feet.”

We circled around the bar, glancing down at the array of fancy appetizer platters sitting on the counter as we passed seven more witches.

“There are a lot of people here. This will take a while,” I commented.

Nero held out his hand to me. “Dance with me.”

“I thought you didn’t dance,” I said. “Or at least didn’t dance with me.”

In a moment of insanity, I’d once asked him to dance with me in a club. He’d turned me down. Weeks later, it still stung. The reasonable, logical part of me told me I shouldn’t let it bother me, but I’d never been good at doing what I was told.

“There are thirty-two people on the dance floor. Dancing is the most effective way to get us close to all of them,” he said.

“Oh. Ok.”

So this wasn’t really about dancing. Blushing, I took his hand, and he led me onto the dance floor. His skin burned against mine, like he had a fire raging inside of him.

“You’re hot,” I said.

His brows arched as he set his other hand on my back.

“I meant your temperature,” I said quickly.

He shifted his weight in a firm but smooth movement that pivoted us around, moving us closer to another couple. “It’s all the magic I’ve done tonight. It makes me hot.”

I choked down a cough.

“I meant my temperature,” he told me, his lower lip twitching.

I stared past his shoulder. “Another couple just stepped onto the dance floor. We haven’t checked them out yet.”

In response, he pivoted us again, moving us toward the new arrivals. From there, he led us past the others in a search pattern so methodical that I was surprised no one had noticed. Then again, no one came to a party expecting to be aura-scanned by an angel in disguise. And if the thief was here, he hadn’t noticed either. I’d been tracking everyone in the room since we’d arrived, and no one had made a move to leave.

“I wanted to dance with you.”

I paused my tracking for a moment to look at Nero. “What?”

“That time you asked me. I wanted to say yes.”

My heart thundered. “What stopped you?”

“Everything.”

I let out a pitiful laugh. I was trying not to feel anything, not to care, but it was hard when he was dancing so close to me, when his cheek was pressed against mine.

“I’m drawn to you, Leda,” he whispered. His words kissed my ear, fluttering down my spine. “You are a drug—your blood, your magic, your very presence. And you make me human.” He sighed. “I’ve tried to fight it, but it’s no use. You consume my every thought. You invade my dreams.”

I drew in closer, drinking in his words. He was my drug too, but that wasn’t a solid foundation for a relationship. “If this is where you say let’s just have sex so you can get me out of your system, then save your breath. I told you it doesn’t work that way for me.”

Nero’s hand brushed softly down my cheek. “Leda,” he said, his voice sensual, dark, ruthless. He spoke as though he knew he had me, and he was just waiting for me to finally realize it.

His eyes weren’t cold now. They burned like an inferno. I knew that inferno would be the death of me, and the scary thing was I just didn’t care. I wanted nothing more than to bathe in those flames with him.

I looked away from Nero before I did something stupid—and it was a good thing I had. “Two men are staring at us.”

“Where?” he asked. Gone was the dark lover. Only the Legion soldier in him remained.

“By the bar.”

Nero turned us around so he had a clear view of the bar. His eyes flickered to the men before returning to me. The movement was so quick that I barely caught it, and only because I was in front of him. Unless they had angel senses, they couldn’t have seen it from across the room.

“The bald man is Pyralis Carver,” he said to me.

“You know him?”

“He is Morgana Bennet’s predecessor, the former leader of the Scimitar coven.”

“Morgana overthrew him?” I asked.

“With the help of the other covens, yes.”

“What is he doing here?”

“Nothing good,” said Nero. “I don’t recognize the man with him. Whoever he is, he doesn’t belong here. He’s no witch.”

“What is he?”

“From the feel of his magic, a shifter.”

“A werewolf?”

“Yes.”

“You are getting all of this from his aura?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Let’s move in closer to see what else you can sense from those two.” Like Ice Crystals.

“No need. I will bring them to us.”

He let go of me, striding forward. A tendril of electric-blue magic slid out of each of his hands. In a flash of speed, he cracked those magic whips, looping them around the mens’ ankles. Nero heaved on the sizzling whips, and the men flew off their feet, hitting the wood floor with a hollow thump. He pulled again to bring them to rest in front of his feet. He looked down on them, his nostrils flaring as he inhaled deeply.

“You stole something that doesn’t belong to you,” he told the men.

Pyralis Carver’s mouth twisted into a demented smile. “Now I’m going to give it back.”

Everyone in the room dropped to the floor.