Dead Man’s Deal. Jocelynn Drake

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СКАЧАТЬ felt my knees start to give out. Somehow I stumbled backward, so that I ended up sitting on the bench that ran the length of the back wall rather than sitting on the floor. Shadybrooke was one of the suburban outskirts of Low Town near the north side of the city. Nice if you don’t mind bland and monotonous.

      “Here? Why? They loved Vermont.”

      Robert plopped down next to me on the bench and clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. They’re here and they like Shadybrooke.” He then cocked his head to the side as he looked at me. “I’m guessing you haven’t seen them.”

      “No, not since I left.” I shook my head, lost in a sad memory for a moment, when my brain checked in with a thought. “Wait! When did you last see them?”

      Robert grimaced, looking down at the hardwood floor. “Been a few years.”

      I bit my tongue hard to hold in the questions. I had a feeling that I wouldn’t like the answers and I didn’t want to start a fight within five minutes of seeing my brother for the first time in ten years. I’d save the fight for when I was sure there was going to be a later. “What about Meggie?” Inwardly, I prayed our younger sister was a safe topic.

      Robert’s smile returned, softening his features. “She’s in Romania, teaching English and French.” His hands dropped into his lap, where he loosely threaded his fingers together.

      “She didn’t go vampire, did she?” I asked hesitantly. Romania was heavy vampire territory.

      “No!” he said with a laugh. “Well, not since I last heard from her, which was about six months ago, and she didn’t sound like she had any plans to. She’s teaching a couple night classes for the vamps.” His smile faded and a frown returned to his eyes. “Though it does sound like she’s fallen in with some Gypsies. In her last e-mail, she was bragging about getting good with her hands. I thought it was best not to ask too many questions.”

      I chuckled, scratching the back of my head. Yeah, that was our mom’s influence on us. She always seemed to know when it was best to pry into our lives with questions to put us back on the straight and narrow and when to let us run wild. “How’d she end up in Romania?” When I had last seen Megan, she had been twelve years old with blond pigtails, freckles, and a glare.

      Robert relaxed on the bench beside me, stretching his legs out while rolling his eyes toward the ceiling. “How do you think? Some guy.” I laughed at the disgust in his voice, but he wasn’t serious. “You know, our sister didn’t turn out half-bad-looking. Good thing she was the one in the family that also ended up with the brains. As soon as she finished college and got her teaching certificate, she ran off to Germany with this guy she met.”

      “She still with him?”

      Robert snorted. “Lasted three months.”

      “And she didn’t come home after that?”

      “Would you?” He arched one brow at me, mocking. I shrugged. Truth was, the Ivory Tower I had lived in was in Europe and I’d seen most of the hot spots in Europe by the age of fifteen. They were nice, but I liked living in Low Town.

      “She lasted in Germany for another few months, then ran off to Austria, Croatia, Uzbekistan—don’t ask me why—and then Romania. I doubt that’s everywhere, but our dear sister has been kind enough to censor her e-mails to me.”

      I smiled at his tortured expression, leading me to believe that our dear sister wasn’t censoring her letters enough for Robert’s comfort. I held on to the smile, pushing down a nagging feeling. By my guess, Megan had been traveling Europe for a couple years and Robert hadn’t seen our parents in a few years, so who was watching over them? When I left my family the second time after escaping the Ivory Towers, I had consoled myself with the thought that my parents still had my siblings.

      There was one other bothersome question nagging me. Why had they left Vermont? It could have been nothing, but I doubted it. I pushed the question down with the other and looked at my older brother. It could wait. He was living in Low Town. We had found each other again, and if I was careful, we could safely stay in contact without the Towers ever getting wind of it.

      “You know that leaves only one important question,” I said.

      Robert stiffened a little as he looked at me. “What’s that?”

      “What the hell are you doing here? I mean, of all the tattoo parlors in Low Town, how did you end up here?” I laughed.

      The tension instantly flowed out of his body and he lounged against the bench again. He waved one hand at me and smiled. “Oh, that. Reave sent me.”

      6

      I DON’T RECALL getting to my feet, but I suddenly found myself standing in the middle of the lobby, barely holding together the rage that was burning through my brain. That fucking bastard! Reave had my brother. My older brother was working for that low-life Mafia scum. The dark elf had found a way to get even with me. I thought it was over when he had ordered Bronx’s beating. I had been punished and I thought we would be starting fresh, but Reave had shoved the knife a little deeper into my gut.

      The Svartálfar was using my brother for whatever horrible job he needed done, putting him in danger. It was the perfect way to force me to do exactly what he wanted. I had to protect my brother. No matter what he was doing or how he was involved, I had to protect my brother.

      “Reave?” I demanded in a rough voice when I could get my teeth to unclench enough so I could speak. “You work for the fucking Svartálfar bastard Reave?”

      Robert pushed to his feet and pointed one finger at me, his expression losing all its earlier lightness. “Watch what you say about Reave,” he warned. “He’s my boss and he’s been good to me.”

      I pressed my hands to my temples, my fingers threading through my hair as I swallowed a scream of frustration. It had suddenly become hard to breathe, as if the air had been sucked from the room. Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to block out the sound of blood pounding in my ears like a tribal drum. Energy sizzled against my skin. The magic was building, pressing against the seams of the walls. With a push, I could blow the entire building down. I could rip it apart like a twister blowing through a trailer park.

      Trixie’s voice was suddenly there. Soft, breathless, and desperate. Her pleading penetrated the fog, so that I could feel her gentle hand on my cheek and the other arm wrapped around my back, her slim fingers digging into the side of my waist.

      “You have to breathe, Gage. Just let it go,” she was saying. “Let go of the magic. If they catch you, they’re going to kill you. They’ll kill us all.”

      Another, larger hand landed on my shoulder opposite to where Trixie was pressed against me. Strong and firm. Bronx. “Let it go, Gage.”

      Overhead, soft popping followed by the tinkle of glass echoed through the shop. The lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling were exploding and the glass was falling inside the protective containers that surrounded them. I opened my eyes to find that the parlor was black except for the light coming in the front window and door from the street. Robert was standing with his back pressed against the far wall. There was no missing the terror on his face.

      Fresh pain lanced through me. I flinched and Trixie pressed closer, holding СКАЧАТЬ