Night Scourge: A gothic urban fantasy (Daybreaker Book 2), page 21
“Something wrong?” he asked.
The swirling marks on his arm were the same as those in the book.
He smiled into his drink.
“What does it say, then?” I shoved the book at him. Of course he could read it. Damn him.
“It says…” He cleared his throat. “‘This book is not for prying human eyes.’”
I rolled my eyes. “Is it yours?”
He reclined in the chair and rested his drink on his bent knee, looking all Mister Casual.
“Is it a diary, a manual… what?” I asked.
“I doubt anyone could have escaped Raphael.”
The switch in topic tripped me up. Rafe’s whispered pleas to stab him proved he hadn’t been there to hurt me, but he’d wanted everyone else in that ballroom to think he would have, especially the angel Mastema, his father, I assumed. They looked too alike. No doubt Rafe would suffer for his apparent failure in capturing me, but I’d stabbed him in the heart, so our ruse had looked convincing. I wished I could tell him I still loved him, I still believed in him, and I didn’t believe all the things they’d said about him. Raphael was complicated, but he was family, and I wasn’t giving up on him.
I picked up the paper butterfly, unscrewed the jar lid, popped it inside, then screwed the lid on. It was safe now.
“You would have resisted him,” I told Jack, waiting to see if he asked why I’d trapped a paper butterfly in a glass jar.
He didn’t, although, from the curious way he admired the jar, he wanted to. “Let me rephrase… No human can escape him.”
The present tense told me Jack suspected Rafe still lived. I’d have to be careful around Jack. He’d always been astute. He’d figure out I didn’t hate Rafe, and then he’d know Rafe was lying to everyone but me, and Jack already had too much power here.
“He lied with his every breath… for years. He showed up a few days ago with a sword in his chest, and I believed it.” I suspected the sword had been Mastema’s and the result of Rafe taking too long to seduce the station out of me. But until I spoke with him, I wouldn’t know for certain. “I’m such a fucking idiot.”
The irony of my lies to cover up Rafe’s honesty was not lost on me. Rafe was a warrior, built to survive, but he had a soft heart. He’d shown me that. I’d see him again soon, when it was safe.
“Yes, you are.” He lifted a hand. “But you’re a self-aware idiot, which is progress.”
“From you, that almost sounds like a compliment.”
Look at us, talking like two people who didn’t try to kill each other every five minutes. Although there was time for that. Jack and me… I did not know where we stood or how we fit together, but I could no longer deny his importance.
“Father Angelo,” I began, “mentioned some things… about Gerome.” And about my origins.
Jack stiffened and lifted his chin, waiting for the question to begin. He’d tell me the truth, I realized. He’d tell me everything, and gods, I was afraid of what he knew. Afraid that Gerome wasn’t the man I’d thought him to be, and if he wasn’t good, what did that make me? I’d ask soon, but I wasn’t ready to hear it now, not yet. Some of it I feared I already knew.
“Why are you here, talking with me?” I asked instead, and his shoulders loosened, relieved that I’d saved those questions for another time. “Why do you care about me or the station? Why did you fight for us when you could have joined the Dark Ones?”
“Well, for one, demons and I don’t get along. I no more want them here than you do. And two, you’re in denial about how you need my help.”
“This station was yours. Gerome somehow stole your key. I’m just… a caretaker. Why didn’t you leave me in the bloodfarm? Or kill me a hundred times since then? You don’t need me.” He pondered his answer. “And don’t lie. I can’t take any more lies.”
He considered his answer carefully. “This station adores you. It watched you grow, and it kept you safe, as much as it could. You and your brother have kept it strong all these years during my absence. You’re more than a caretaker. You’re a host.”
That was not what I’d expected him to say. I’d expected him to use Kensey and I, like most Dark Ones would. But he really did care? “How can you know that?”
“The same way you know it.” He touched his shirt, over his heart. “The station and I… It’s a part of me like it’s a part of you. Something my queen never understood…”
He looked at the faded mark on his wrist, thoughts drifting. Was his the first mark? He’d told me once that the queen didn’t know the station had marked him. What else did the queen not know about her Chosen?
“I can’t trust you,” I said. “I can’t trust anyone. I don’t even trust Kensey anymore. I trust a fae changeling more than my own brother, and that’s saying something, considering Etienne shut me in a carriage with you.”
I was beginning to come around to the idea that Just Jack didn’t want me dead, and that maybe he had saved me from Caine and multiple times these past few weeks. Maybe he didn’t lie with his every breath. Maybe he was the only one who had been entirely honest this whole time?
I sighed, and he sat there and waited and listened in a way that shouldn’t have felt comfortable but did.
“I can help you…” he said. “Stop fighting me. Imagine what you and I could accomplish if we worked together.”
“Jack… the queen brought you from her world and put you in charge of this station and all the Dark Ones who travel through it. You said her will was yours. I saw her… In your eyes, I saw what she could do to you from a distance. The jinn said you’re her first vampire. How can I ever trust you?”
He picked up the notebook, opened it to a random page, and blew onto the paper. Then he set it down on the desktop and stood. “The queen will learn of what happened with the demons, and soon, she’ll learn of my survival. It’s just a matter of time. The demons believe they have a foothold in this station, which is indeed the queen’s doorway between worlds. I will do what I must, with or without your help, but I’d prefer to have your daggers beside me than buried in my back. You, Miss Aris, need to pick a side, and you do not have long.” He tapped the book’s cover. “This will help convince you.” He limped to the door and paused to add, “Don’t take too long. I hear there’s a train due at midday.”
Only after he’d left and the door had locked behind him did I pick up the book and open its front cover. The strange swirls had vanished, and in their place rich, swirling words revealed their secrets.
Day 9 of the New World…
This world is strange, filled with color, even in darkness. She says it’s ours to take.
She lies.
I’ve seen her work. I am her work. There is nothing but darkness before the memory of her. I fear I have forgotten my purpose, if I ever had one. Her madness has become my own. I feed but am never sated; I am home but always lost. And I know she is the same. Her insatiable hunger will destroy this world and all those within it, including me.
I am her Chosen, but I did not choose to be.
~ Her faithful servant, Lassiter.
Jack’s diary.
All his secrets lay open and exposed in my hands. How he’d come to this world and his relationship with the queen and the Night Station.
Jack’s life was an open book.
I hastily refilled my glass and settled down to devour every single page.
What to read next by Pippa DaCosta
More fae in space?
Read the Messenger Chronicles
More urban fantasy fae?
Read The London Fae series
More demons?
Read the Veil Series
More anti-hero fantasy action?
Read the Soul Eater series
More gritty sci-fi?
Read the 1000 Revolution series
More dark fantasy?
Read The Heartstone Thief
Pippa DaCosta, Night Scourge: A gothic urban fantasy (Daybreaker Book 2)
