Lost Vegas Series Page 16

  “No. Just needed some air,” she lied.

  An awkward silence fell between them, ripe with tension and self-consciousness she was unaccustomed to.

  “I must go,” Jose said and cleared his throat. “My apologies. Nothing would please me more than staying to talk, but if I do not return by dusk, my master will grow even madder with worry.”

  Aveline stepped out of his path, wanting to respond without knowing for certain what the right words were. She had seen where Jose worked and lived and yet, realizing he was about to walk away, she experienced the sudden urgency to speak, as if this were the last time they would ever meet.

  “I would be … happy to visit tomorrow, if that’s … happy to you.” She mentally kicked herself. Of all the words to choose, why had happy – which she could not recall ever using – escaped her mouth twice?

  You’re a fool, Aveline! She yelled at herself.

  “That is happy to me.” Jose was grinning.

  Mortified, Aveline nodded and spun, walking away quickly. Only when she had turned a corner did she release a deep sigh.

  Assassins were dutiful, honorable and skilled – but never happy. What was it about Jose that left her stumbling verbally and fevered? For all she knew, he was an assassin, her competition, or some other sort of degenerate.

  Lecturing herself about how dangerous it was to lower her guard around a stranger, however handsome he was, she descended to the basement to walk off the strange tension the run in with Jose caused.

  The halls were quiet and cool. Afternoons were generally inactive until dinnertime, and few slaves passed her in the halls. It was as her senses returned to their normal state of awareness that she noticed the brush of cotton on cotton behind her. The faint sound would have been impossible to distinguish in a crowded market or elsewhere in the inner city. But here, in the near silent hall, it was unmistakable.

  Someone was following her at a safe distance. The women she had bested on her first day as a slave were not likely to be ready to challenge her again any time soon, but it was always possible they had friends who witnessed the exchange who were.

  Aveline navigated the underground maze easily and led whomever followed down a corridor lower and narrower than most, and away from the flow of normal foot traffic, in case she drew blood. The hallway ended in a t-intersection, and she went left, walked four steps and then halted. Pressing her back against the cool wall, she eased a knife free from the small of her back and waited.

  Silence. Her stalker had stopped.

  “Avi?”

  She froze, not expecting the quiet voice.

  “I know you’re there.”

  Rocky could sense her as well as she could him. She lowered her knife and eased to the corner then peered around. He remained a safe distance way, pending her reaction.

  “How … where … Rocky, what’re you doing here?” Uncertain where to start, she put her weapon away and closed the distance between them, slinging her arms around her best friend. Her thoughts raced, a jumbled mix of astonishment that he was alive, incredulity Tiana had really envisioned him, and confusion over how either was possible.

  Rocky hugged her. “Looking for you!” he said with his normal humor.

  Relief washed over her. He was solid and strong in her arms, a reassurance he was indeed free and safe. Recalling the emotion she experienced when she heard he had been captured, she felt the anxious tension within her unravel without realizing it had been coiled in the pit of her stomach since hearing the news.

  She released him and stepped back. Like any good assassin, Rocky was making an attempt to fit in. He wore the clothing of a slave, though the pants legs were too short on his tall frame and the sleeves of his shirt did not quite reach his wrists. He wore a sash, twisted in a way no real slave would wear it. Still, his attempt at dressing like a slave had granted him access to the pyramid.

  “We have an agreement. We’ll always find one another,” he said firmly, though his eyes were warm. “When I heard you were here, I didn’t believe it!”

  “When did Karl get you out? Did he send you?” she asked.

  “Karl?”

  Movement came from down the hall as a slave passed through an intersection.

  Avi glanced past Rocky before taking his arm and tugging him down the vacant hallway where she had been waiting to ambush her stalker. “Yes, Karl! He sent me here on my first mission,” she explained as they rounded the corner.

  “Karl.” This time, coolness was in Rocky’s tone.

  She faced him, searching his features quizzically. “You say his name as if you have never heard of him before. I assume he got you out at some point the past two weeks? Or did he send someone else?”

  “Out of where?”

  “Of prison. Where you were sitting because the Shield caught you that night instead of me!” she exclaimed with a small laugh. “What is with you, Rocky?”

  Rocky was frowning.

  Aveline amusement faded. “What’s wrong?”

  “I wasn’t in prison,” Rocky replied. “After we got separated, I went to our rendezvous point, but you never showed.”

  She blinked, uncertain how to respond.

  “It took me a week to find out where you were,” he added.

  “Why would Karl claim you were in prison?” she asked. “Did he at least tell you where to find me?”

  “Avi, Karl left the Guild the day after your father was killed. He’s working for the Trench,” Rocky said, referring to the Guild’s competition. “He told the Guild you were dead. They held a ceremony for you and your father.”

  She was silent, stunned.

  “I never would’ve known you were alive, or here, if some irate apothecary hadn’t shown up at Guild Main demanding payment for medicines he claimed had been stolen from him by the Devil’s daughter. No one else listened to him, but what he said sounded too much like you for me to ignore.”

  Rocky’s words were moving at the speed of sludge through her mind. If any other person stood before her, she would never believe any of what was said.

  “You’re saying Karl lied about what happened to me to you and lied about you to me,” she stated.

  “It seems that way.”

  “Why?”

  Rocky shrugged. “Rumor has it he was paid off by someone. You say he hired you for a mission?”

  She nodded.

  “Against Guild rules?”

  She nodded again.

  “And that didn’t bother you?”

  “He said he’d get you out of prison if I did it, and he’d sponsor me to become a full assassin,” she whispered. The reality of what Karl had done began to register. She had silently questioned why he was working outside of Guild practices but never suspected he was deceiving her about his intention to help her or flat out lying about Rocky being in trouble.

  Dread sank into her stomach, along with hurt. “There must be an explanation. What reason would he have to lie to me?” she mused aloud.

  “Maybe he heard the Guild wasn’t going to appoint him the leader, as he hoped. You know people’s motivations can be complex.”

  “Karl helped my father raise me. He’s family! If this is true, then he betrayed everything my father stood for, everything I thought he stood for! He would never leave the Guild if my father lived!”

  “Burn me, Avi. I don’t know why it all happened, only that it did happen,” Rocky replied. “I was never in the Shield prison or in any danger at all, and the entire Guild was stunned when he left.”

  Rocky’s presence was too damning for her to deny Karl’s actions had been undertaken with no good intentions towards her. But what was he doing? Why? If his promises to aid her were false, had he been truthful about hiring her because of her demon cursed blood? About wanting Tiana dead? He had known too much about who Aveline was hired to protect for it to be coincidence.

  “Karl is a smart man. He knows your weaknesses,” Rocky said. “He probably knew I’d try to find you, if he didn’t lie about
you being dead.”

  She warred with herself for a moment, wondering who she should trust: Rocky or Karl. When she met Rocky’s gaze again, she knew the answer. Karl had been her father’s advisor – but she knew little about him aside from how close they were and how well he treated her, until her father’s death. In comparison, she understood the depths of Rocky’s loyalty from years of experience.

  She would never doubt Rocky.

  “I’m glad you’re well, Rocky,” she managed.

  “What reason would Karl have to send you here?” he asked, motioning to the pyramid above the basement.

  She did not answer. Of all the emotions Aveline thought she would experience upon learning Karl might have betrayed her, sorrow was an unwelcome surprise. It ran deeper than fury. Even the devil in her blood was subdued. On the night she lost her father, she had lost Karl as well without knowing it.

  The longer the quiet stretched, the more she thought about the assignment Karl had given her. She hated the relief trickling through her sorrow, as if some part of her – an instinct she had not wanted to acknowledge – had never wanted to hurt Tiana in the first place.

  “Avi?” Rocky’s soft voice drew her gaze to his face. “I know Karl was close to your family. We can find him together.”

  “No,” she said and then shook her head. “I mean, yes, I want to find him, but Rocky …” Uncomfortable with expressing emotion, she drifted off.

  “It’s Karl,” he finished for her. “And you just lost your father. You don’t want him dead, even if he has betrayed you.”

  She nodded, grateful Rocky understood without her explaining it. “I want to talk to him before we do anything else.”

  Rocky studied her. “It’ll be dangerous to approach him.”

  “He’s supposed to contact me in two days,” she replied. “I’ll request a meeting in person.”

  “Somewhere in the open where I can observe from the shadows.”

  “I won’t go without you,” she agreed. “I trained with him as well. It would take both of us, if it comes to that.” I hope this is a huge misunderstanding. The longer she considered what Karl had done, though, the less she believed it possible he had done this for a reason other than to serve his own needs, whatever those were.

  “It is good to see you, Avi. I feared you were dead for a week,” Rocky said. “I never felt so alone.”

  Aveline forced herself out of her mind and smiled at her friend. The pain of losing her father remained fresh, and she did not want to know how it would have felt to lose Rocky as well. Orphaned at an early age, he had been mentored by her father and loved by her as a brother from the day they met. His suffering, too, was of Karl’s devising, and Aveline shifted further away from her denial of what Karl had done when she imagined her best friend feeling the pain she did.

  “I’m alive, Rocky,” she said. “We’ll figure this out together. I want to talk to Karl, to hear the truth from his mouth. If justice is needed, we will burn him.”

  “So no Guild until after we meet with him.”

  “I think that’s best. Don’t tell them I’m alive. Maybe bringing in Karl will be enough to win over a new sponsor and make up for taking on an assignment prior to becoming a real assassin,” she said.

  “If Karl hired you under the guise of sponsoring you, the Guild’s council won’t hold you responsible.”

  “I was hired by someone else,” she replied. “I took the position here before Karl assigned me a mission.”

  Rocky’s eyebrows went up.

  “I’d be in trouble either way,” she said. “I can’t explain this all now but I promise I will soon.”

  “You have more allies than you think you do. Come with me to the Guild after we confront Karl. We can explain everything.”

  “Let me make this right or … as right as I can,” she replied, thoughts on her father’s spirit watching her from the sky. Her gut instinct about Karl’s request had been right, and she ignored it. Her father would not be pleased with her for this or for accepting a position guarding Tiana before Aveline was an official assassin. “I broke two rules. I wouldn’t feel right asking the Guild to sponsor me, knowing I’ve disappointed my father.”

  Would her father want her to leave Tiana and return to the Guild or stay and carry out her duty? Aveline had taken an oath to protect the girl, but she had done so before becoming an assassin. The thought of abandoning Tiana, even if she were coerced into accepting the assignment, did not sit well with Aveline. At the very least, she wanted to ensure Matilda was no longer a threat.

  She recalled her father’s lecture about fulfilling one’s vows, no matter what the circumstances, and waffled with her decision before coming to a conclusion. She should not have accepted this assignment, but she did. She was therefore obligated by her promise to Arthur.

  “Is this electricity magic?” Rocky asked, eyes on the bulb overhead.

  Aveline snorted. “Yes. I cannot be gone long from my post. Do you have time to go somewhere with me quickly?”

  He nodded.

  Reeling from all she had learned, she could think of nothing but grabbing a snack. Aveline led him through the hallways to the kitchens, which were always occupied and bustling. As soon as one meal was over, the staff began clean up and preparing for the next. The constant activity meant no one noticed two additional slaves as they slipped in to snag some of the pastries cooling on a wooden table.

  Aveline loaded up a sack with them and led Rocky out of the kitchens and back towards the southern entrance. When they reached the door, she handed him the bag.

  “Will you come back tomorrow afternoon?” she asked.

  “Without a doubt,” he replied and accepted the treats. “You are safe here? You have weapons?”

  “I do,” she confirmed. “I’m safe and overfed.” She patted her belly.

  Rocky nodded in approval. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He turned away and began walking.

  “Rocky,” she called.

  He faced her again.

  “Thank you,” she said with emotion. “For coming to find me. For not giving up on me.”

  “It’s just us now. We have to take care of each other,” he replied. With another quick smile, he left.

  She watched him, too preoccupied by all she had learned to know where to start. The idea Karl had turned against her, against the Guild, was nearly too wild for her to accept. A small part of her continued to deny it, while her instincts whispered everything Rocky said and believed to be true were supported by Karl’s discussion with her.

  Realizing she was standing near the door, staring dumbly outside, Aveline retreated to the elevator and returned to the Hanover’s apartment. She did not want Tiana to suspect she was distressed – or discover anything if she read Aveline’s mind. Aveline went in circles mentally, trying to understand Karl’s betrayal so soon after her father’s death.

  Unable to sort through her tangled thoughts and feelings, she finally ceased pacing through the quiet apartment and went to Tiana’s door.

  It was cracked open.

  Aveline’s guard went up, and she paused to listen. The sound of someone beating on the closet door was muffled. Aveline pushed the door open silently.

  What is this? She thought, startled by the sight before her.

  Matilda was pounding her fists against the closet door hard enough that her hands were bloodied. Her eyes were wild and bloodshot, her nose red, and her hair mussed. She appeared possessed as she smashed the door over and over, impervious to pain.

  Aveline closed the door to Tiana’s room behind her, assessing the situation. Matilda had been quiet and absent the past few days, since Aveline returned from the apothecary. Ghoul’s Fancy, the drug she had mixed in with Matilda’s normal powders, was supposed to elevate moods to the point one did not know what was dream and what was reality any more. Aveline had hoped the euphoric high would prevent Matilda from hurting Tiana or trying to poison her again.

  Matilda sagged against the closet d
oor, breathing hard. A knife was on the vanity near her, and she picked it up after a brief rest and jammed the blade into the lock on the closet.

  What had happened?

  The sound of Tiana crying came from the closet, reassuring Aveline that the Hanover girl had used her brain for once instead of wilting when Matilda hurt her.

  Aveline opened her mouth to speak before recalling Matilda thought her mute. So she opened the door and slammed it closed, as if she had just entered.

  Matilda straightened and faced her, her blue eyes glazed. Her nose was running, and drool leaked from the corner of her mouth. She steadied herself against the wall with one arm outstretched.

  She was high or drunk or otherwise not herself, but this was not the effect of Ghoul’s Fancy. What had the apothecary mixed into the drugs, if not what Aveline requested? Anger slid through her. She added him to the list of those she planned on murdering when this assignment with Tiana was over. The apothecary would share the same fate as those running the brothel and butchering children for meat.

  Possibly the same fate as Karl.

  Aveline was not ready for this thought. She gritted her teeth in response to the pain of betrayal that slid through her and focused on Matilda, who was squinting at her to determine who she was.

  “Slave,” Matilda said finally. She pushed herself away from the closet. “Open this door.”

  Matilda was too far out of her mind to notice Aveline’s shrug. Was she high enough to forget Aveline was mute?

  “I do not have the key,” Aveline ventured.

  “What?” Matilda snapped. “Someone must have it!” She careened towards the vanity and began yanking out drawers and dumping them. When she did not find the key, she went to the wardrobe and did the same.

  Aveline moved to the closet door and knocked softly. “Tiana? Are you hurt?”

  The sniffling stopped. “N… no.”

  Matilda kicked clothing with a loud curse. “Where is the key?” she shrieked.

  Aveline felt the door give behind her. Tiana peered out, her eyes and nose red from crying. Her face showed Matilda had landed a couple blows before the girl ran to hide in the closet.

  “Stay here,” Aveline said. “Hide if she tries to get you again.”