So he kept it to one. “No.”
Jack got Lark into the car and got the car back on the road. He was not going to let the woman he’d loved and lost in a thousand different ways make him crazy.
No, no, hell no. Denial ran like a chant inside his head as he drove the Escalade back toward the capital city, bumping over back roads to stay out of sight. But try as he might, Lark was irrefutably there, growing increasingly angry with every passing minute. He could tell by the set of her lips.
Jack mentally drew the blinds. He watched for headlights instead, but they were alone on the path that snaked down from the forested hills toward the resorts and beaches at the edge of town. Above the esplanade, he could see the gleaming domes and spires of the palace. His goal was to get to a safe distance from the blast just in case the attackers were picking off survivors, but there was an almost preternatural quiet.
“Jack,” Lark began for the third time, venturing into the chill silence that was all but frosting up the windshield.
“Don’t speak.” He held up a hand. “I don’t want to hear it.”
But of course she didn’t listen. That wasn’t Lark’s way. “I know what the Company means to you. It’s more your home than any of those fancy houses you own.”
“Stop there.” He put steel into the words. “Don’t talk about my feelings. I’m not even human.”
“Jack.” His name was barely a whisper. “That doesn’t matter.”
Her words slid under his guard, wrenching raw places he hadn’t even acknowledged yet. He’d just lost friends whom he’d known for centuries, and after so many years it got harder and harder to share any part of one’s soul. True friends became rare and precious things.
“Jack?”
He didn’t answer. His brain was roiling, too much crashing through it. Destruction. Demons. Loss. But Lark’s presence cut through it all like a bolt of sorrow.
I loved you.
It had been the first green, fresh thing he’d felt for so long. Before she’d come along, he was sure he’d turned to stone—but Lark had taught him how his heart could still rejoice. And bleed.
“What do you want, Jack?” She sounded impatient now.
Jack gripped the steering wheel, glaring at the narrow strip of road. “I want revenge. I want whoever destroyed my...home.”
Lark turned away, speaking to the window of the Escalade. When her voice reached his ears, it was strained. “Then, you should listen to what I have to say. I can help. Whatever else you think, you know I’m as good an agent as any member of your team.”
He almost laughed. “There’s a lot I could say to that. You still count yourself a member of the Company? Then, how about this—good agents don’t go AWOL.”
“I was caught in the fire when my atelier burned down,” she said. “It was bad. Fey heal well, but it takes time. We’re not like vampires or shifters.”
“You could have sent word to the Company that you were still alive.”
He finally looked at her, and she narrowed her eyes. For all its focus, the look was almost sleepy, reminding him of too many bedroom scenes for comfort. Especially with the handcuffs. “I had my reasons. You can believe that or not.”
“Duty doesn’t care about excuses.”
“You’re a fortunate man if you can believe in absolutes.”
He couldn’t read her tone well enough to guess if it was sincere or mocking. He decided to play it straight. “I would have liked to know you were alive.”
“So you could silence me?” She was looking out the window, avoiding his gaze. “Besides, I thought you were dead, remember?”
He pulled the Escalade off the road and killed the engine, but it was a long moment before he could force himself to look at her. They were a few miles from the palace gates, still in the country, and it was dark. For a long moment Lark remained still, the lush fall of her hair a wave of shadow in the surrounding darkness. She looked as she always had in his mind’s eye: lovely and serene. He wanted to stay like that, with only the wind rustling outside the car. But then she turned, moving slowly as if facing him was painful. Moonlight traced the edge of her cheek, turning that thin strip of blood-warmed skin to silver.
“The hospital called my family to come get me from New York,” she said. “I thought you were dead and I didn’t know who’d compromised my cover. The attack was real, Jack, and it was brutal. I just wanted to go home and heal.”
He said nothing, hating the thought of her hurt and alone. And then hating the fact it bothered him so much.
“I missed you, Jack. That was the worst, but there were other things. I missed our friends. The life we had. It was hard, you know, losing the fashion-design business,” she said, her voice oddly brittle. “It was supposed to be just a cover but I liked it. I had a knack.”
Jack sat back, his leather jacket rustling in the silence. “People pay fortunes for a Jessica Lark original, especially now that you’re dead.”
She gave a stifled, bitter laugh. Her features remained in darkness, as if he was gazing at the ghost of his memories. Lark in her jeans and bare feet, sitting cross-legged on the floor of her studio; Lark walking into a room and turning every male head; Lark lying in his arms. In every image, she was bursting with life. He was—not. He was the hollow grave. A vampire, and worse. He swallowed hard, suddenly ravenous.
She saw the look. He caught the surge of adrenaline wafting from her skin. Jack jerked his head away, reining himself in.
“Listen. Very few things can destroy a site that quickly. With any normal blast, there would still be fire and smoke for hours. That’s not what we’ve got here. By all indications, a spell blew up HQ, and it left a stink,” Lark said suddenly, pulling them back to safer ground.
The abrupt change of subject caught him off guard. “A stink?”
“On the magical plane. Whoever wove that spell was Dark Fey.”
Dead leaves swirled across the road. The tick-tick of the cooling motor sounded like an old-fashioned time bomb. “Explain.”
Her voice was brisk, every inch the agent now. “An explosion that big would have rocked the city, and it would’ve been loud and bright. It wasn’t, so it was magic.”
“And the magical, uh, smell?”
“Fresh. Barely hours old.”
“That fits,” Jack agreed. “It’s been long enough for the attackers to get away, but not so long that the shutdown has been detected. Otherwise someone would have noticed HQ was offline. That still doesn’t explain why you think it’s a Dark Fey spell. They’re not the only magic users around.”
She angled
