Pretty Little Lion by Suleikha Snyder
15
Meghna was numb. Except for the persistent buzzing in her chest. Like a hive of bees had taken refuge inside her rib cage. Not because she had no place to go—she would always have some place to go, whether that was her father’s house, or her family’s haveli in India, or a motel room in the middle of nowhere—but because, for the first time in a long time, she wasn’t the predator but the prey. Aston had moved first. Quickly. While most of the country still slept. While she’d slept, nestled against the window of Elijah Richter’s getaway car. Coke-addled and meth-brained on a two-day bender, her cruel and cunning so-called boyfriend had still managed to best her.
And Chase. Oh, god, Chase. Joaquin had buzzed them with the update just minutes ago. He’d been shot outside a Malibu nightclub just before dawn. Rushed to UCLA Medical Center with GSWs to the shoulder and thigh. “They missed his kill spot on purpose,” she’d told Elijah, voice devoid of emotion. “It was a message. Telling me no one’s beyond their reach.”
“No one’s beyond ours either, Meg.”He was so intense, so very solid, that she’d almost believed him.
It wasn’t even 9:00 a.m. and TMZ had already blasted the news all over social media. So many venerable news institutions had died over the past few years, but the tabloid had survived like a cockroach in the nuclear apocalypse. They still had sources in every ER and morgue and county clerk’s office known to man. Maybe known to supes, too. Perhaps they were staffed by literal ghouls. That would explain so much.
But Meghna couldn’t waste thoughts on trash journalism. Or even on her endearingly earnest ex-husband, fighting for his life in the ICU. Poor, sweet, perpetually stoned Chase. She had to stay here, now, in the present. Looking toward the future. A future where Mirko Aston died at her hands. Where his entire organization fell apart. Where the women he’d victimized were either freed or avenged, depending on what had been done to them.
“You all right, Meg?” Elijah had been good about giving her space after Joaquin’s update, but he spoke now. Gruff but gentle. Wary but worried.
She turned to look at him, pulling the seat belt tight across her chest with the motion. Almost relishing the harsh slide of it against her bare throat. Because it reminded her where and when she was. “Why do you call me ‘Meg’?” she wondered. It wasn’t terrible, as far as nicknames went. Just…odd. It reminded her of the little girl from A Wrinkle in Time. The one who’d gone to the ends of the universe to save her father. Meghna had never felt that particular pull for her own paternal figure. She’d never felt a particular pull toward anything except the Vidrohi.
And the man beside her. The one who took a careful hand off the wheel to brush a wild strand of hair back from her forehead. “Because you haven’t told me to stop,” Elijah said, his fingertips trailing sparks across the delicate whorls of her ear and the soft flesh of her lobe. “I’ll stop if you hate it. If you’d prefer your full name. But I gotta tell you, love, ‘Meghna’ is too unreal and untouchable for the likes of me. Posh. Gorgeous.”
The bees inside her fell painfully silent. As if the only thing left of them was the cavernous space for his words to echo and the slow drip of honey along her bones. Oh. Oh, Elijah. I do not deserve a man like you. “She’s not. She’s really not. I think you might be too unreal for me.” The words tripped from her lips before she could second-guess them. And she twisted back into place, directing her eyes out her window, as if that could erase what she’d confessed.
He let her. Bless the man and the lion under his skin. They didn’t push, didn’t press, didn’t ask for more. Elijah just kept driving along the Belt until he took an exit and directed the car to a small private turnoff. “Welcome to Safe House 13,” he said then.
Meghna’s gaze flickered over the old-fashioned—but clearly expensive—wooden sign. Bergen Beach Equestrian Academy. As they crested the sloping road toward the grounds, the gray stone main house and matching outbuildings came into view. As well as the first of what were no doubt several paddocks. It was the kind of place her father would’ve sent her had she been interested in riding when she was a child. Complete with her own horse. “The existence of a Safe House 13 implies there are at least twelve other safe houses,” she murmured.
“We just like the number thirteen,” Elijah said, which was neither a confirmation nor a denial. “Like you and your closets.”
“Not that again. I think we’ve done that joke to death, don’t you?” But Meghna could hardly complain. If pressed, she would never give up the locations of Vidrohi bases. As it was, she only knew a few—and they might not even exist anymore. It was a security measure employed across the network. Constantly moving. Constantly changing cities and countries. There was no known leader. No one central hub. Nothing to tie anyone together except their common purpose and, among the apsara and the jinn, their supernatural roots. If you were caught, you were on your own—in theory.
Ayesha’s disappearance had been too important to ignore. Too disturbing for the network to disavow. If the wrong person learned her secrets, learned the Vidrohi’s secrets, hundreds of years of resistance work would be for naught and their enemies would have an invaluable weapon at their disposal. Maybe they already did have that weapon at their disposal, if they’d taken possession of Ayesha’s ring. No lamps—they weren’t practical in the twenty-first century and really hadn’t been in the eleventh century either, from what Meghna had heard. All someone would need was the simple bespelled talisman that gave Ayesha her autonomy…and she was in their service until it could be cut from the finger of the thief and returned to its rightful owner. So Meghna, who loved nothing more than a good excuse to cut things, had volunteered to go in after her. She already moved in similar circles to Mirko Aston—better circles, aspirational circles. Her family connections and public persona were a shield many other agents didn’t have the luxury of. She could operate in plain sight. A date with her had cachet, social capital. And she presented as just enough of an airhead that her marks didn’t take her seriously. But she had no safe houses to hide in if things went bad. All she had was her face and her name.
Was she a little envious of Elijah for having Jack Tate and their team on his side? Maybe. Envy was just one of the many uncomfortable emotions she was sitting with now. One of her many deadly sins. Along with pride. And lust. So much lust.
Even now, it was coursing through her. Not like the bee-laden anxiety of losing ground to Mirko. No, this was a low-level awareness of the shape-shifter beside her and all the things they’d done together in less than a week. The places he’d touched. The stretches of skin she’d tasted. He was the only mark who’d marked her, tattooing want into her flesh. And she couldn’t let him know that. Not after the things she’d already let slip. So she straightened in her seat, sliding her fingers along the tight band of the shoulder belt. “Is using an active riding school for a safe house really wise?” she asked, proud of how her tone betrayed none of her lecherous musings.
“It’s not as though we have operatives on premises regularly. We occasionally use the tack house to regroup, hide assets, et cetera.” Elijah said. “Was just there for some business last month.” Then, as if he were confiding some great secret, he dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “But that’s not the real secret bunker. Jack’s got his own setup. And, lucky you and me, we’ve the privilege of using it.”
There was a crackle from the comm resting on the dash next to Elijah’s smartphone. She braced for Joaquin again, for more awful news, but it was a gravel-rough voice she didn’t recognize. “I heard that, asshole. You mean Doc and I didn’t have to sleep on that sofa bed?”
“Sod off, JP,” Elijah returned in kind. “You get the upgrade to the master suite when you’re at my level. Not when you’re faffing about in 3S business as a civvie and making a bloody nuisance of yourself.” He reached over and shut off the device. “Forgot that thing was activated,” he grumbled.
Meghna chuckled. It was…cute to see this powerful man turn so cranky so quickly. This JP was like a thorn in the lion’s paw. “He certainly activated your temper.”
“New operative,” he admitted ruefully. “We don’t quite see eye to eye, but he’s a helluva fighter and an invaluable field medic.”
There was more than grudging respect in the words. It raised Elijah another notch in her esteem. Though she certainly didn’t need to admire him any more than she already did. He’d saved her life more than once. And it was clear how much he cared for his people, even when they annoyed him. He was a good person. A genuine person.
Meghna had gone through the motions of being a “good Indian girl.” She’d attended temple with her dad well into her early twenties, danced to Bollywood songs at annual Diwali and Republic Day functions, and said her respectful namastes to every uncle and auntie she encountered. It had served her well to play the role. Especially as she trained with the Vidrohi and learned to use her apsara powers. No one could mistake the sari-clad sweetheart for a supernatural siren, right? Her teenage protests at the Gandiva headquarters had been waved away as a phase. Even when she got her MBA and made her name as a brand influencer, it had still been acceptable. She was successful, no? Shilling makeup and clothing and trading on her “exotic” South Asian good looks was fine as long as she made money and acted as a representative of the model minority. Her father’s fortune and influence had excused quite a bit.
Eloping with Chase and landing in the tabloids had ended the pretense of normalcy once and for all. It was then that she’d been shifted from “good Indian girl” to “celebrity embarrassment” in the eyes of the northern Virginia Hindu community. She hadn’t cared at the time. The drug-fueled months with Chase had been a welcome respite from her calling. And slicing a predatory producer’s throat in an upscale suite at the Beverly Wilshire had been the ultimate victory. An affirmation that the Vidrohi could trust her to do her job. But, now, she missed the mundane sometimes. In her secret heart. Being valued for her piety or her Hindi proficiency or her Ivy League education instead of her skill at seduction and her penchant for murder. It had been…simpler to be that Meghna Saxena.
Why was being near Elijah Richter bringing up these private, long-stifled feelings? Ugh. She resisted the urge to squirm in her seat, hating the vulnerability that she’d long since learned to put aside. What was it about this man, this shape-shifter, that made her acknowledge just how human she was? That was the last thing she needed when her objectivity was already in question.
* * *
The screens in Command were filled with fire and smoke. LA County firefighters trying to contain the blaze that had spread to two surrounding buildings. The FDNY tackling a no-less-daunting task in securing the four-story brick building that had imploded and was now a pile of cinders and rubble. And there was a third feed running. Maybe the most haunting. Yellow “Caution” tape stretched around the coppery sidewalk stains just outside Malibu’s Blue Elephant club.
Grace had seen her share of gunshot wounds. Patched them up with dispassionate precision on the table and in the field. Sutures. Duct tape. Whatever tools were at her disposal. She still didn’t have the tools to heal emotional wounds. For Ernie’s all-caps texts and crying-face emoji about Chase Saunders being in critical condition. He loved so much louder than she did. Even a celebrity crush was one of his own. All Chase was to her was data points. Intel. A warning. It was all he could be. Because if she lost objectivity…she would lose everything.
Finn. You mean Finn.No. That was a ridiculous thought. Finn was forever. There was no losing him. The very idea was like losing the stars in the sky. Even if he felt just as far away as those stars right now, a million miles removed as he sat beside her. Grace reached for her phone, swiping through her apps as she swiped away the doubts. It was almost 10:00 a.m. Jack had only just crawled off the ceiling—metaphorically, though his sorcery skills made it likely he could do it for real. Elijah and Meghna Saxena had arrived without incident at Safe House 13. No further attacks on Meghna’s known residences or loved ones had taken place. It was the calm before the next storm. And Third Shift needed to use that time to batten down the hatches.
Jackson already knew of her and Finn’s impending meeting with Estrada at a diner near the Empire State Building. They’d filed that before catching a few hours of sleep. But he was making Finn repeat the details out of sheer anal-retentiveness. Grace, for her part, was trying not to analyze the words her partner used. His tone of voice. His posture. How it all spelled “distance.” He wasn’t still in love with Octavio Estrada. She knew that as surely this morning as she’d known last night. But there was unfinished business there. And the lure of his past. A person couldn’t serve two masters—the past and the present. All that did was impede the future.
Grace half listened to the briefing as she thumbed through her day-job email. And as if punctuating her ominous thoughts about serving two masters, a new message appeared in the inbox. URGENT: MEETING WITH CHIEF. All-cap subject lines were never good. It usually meant a Nigerian prince needed her bank account number. Or Ba wanted help with his Alexa device, his laptop, his iPod, and oh did she know he’d met a nice Chinese boy last week at the grocer’s? Grace grimaced and scanned the body of the message. It was no better than the histrionic header. The hospital chief of staff and board required her presence at an emergency conduct hearing tomorrow.
Shit.What conduct? She hadn’t been on the schedule in a week. Not since the aneurysm grab and go that she could do in her sleep—but had done with a flourish while wide awake. There hadn’t been any complications. She’d checked in with the attending on the case twice just to be sure. Jack wasn’t the only anal-retentive one in this conference room. She was Grace Maria Leung, and she’d never made a professional mistake in her life.
There was only one logical explanation. Estrada. He’d done something, arranged a complication for her in the handful of hours between their midnight meet at Hector’s and now. Not as loud a message as Aston’s, but one sent emphatically nonetheless. He’d perceived her as a threat and acted accordingly. She could almost admire it. Almost. “Damn it,” she muttered, just exasperated and energetic enough for all eyes in Command to turn to her.
“I can’t be at the diner tomorrow,” she explained when Jackson raised his eyebrows. She’d been trained by a Black mother. She knew what the tiniest expressions meant—because god forbid she ask for translations when her ass was on the line. “Something’s come up at the clinic. Likely a distraction created by Estrada, but I can’t ignore it. To do so would raise suspicions.”
Jack didn’t even blink. Like Elijah, he’d decided she was always to be trusted. He pivoted, both physically and verbally. “Can you handle the meeting alone, Finn?”
Finian tilted his chair back on two legs, showing off, before he let it hit the ground again with an audible thump. As if to assure everyone, quite literally, that he wasn’t off-balance. “Of course I can,” he scoffed, waving one hand. “Even if Tav thinks I can’t. He doesn’t know Gracie’s with me no matter what.”
Any other woman would probably find such a declaration romantic. But Grace was her Ba and Mama’s child. She’d been raised to be smart, shrewd, cynical, and two steps ahead of everybody else. Honors and AP classes. Double majors. Internships every summer. Med school. Residency. Third Shift. Finn had bled all over her palms barely a month ago. This was nothing. This was his deflection and his charm. “Separating us physically still isn’t optimal. And that is what Estrada is counting on,” she pointed out. “I have no personal connection to him. I’d kill him without a thought if I considered him a real threat. Can you say the same, Finn?”
“I’m not a child, Grace.” His blue eyes turned stormy. Nearly gray in Command’s harsh fluorescent lighting. “I’ve lived more decades on this earth than anyone else in this room will ever see. Just because I haven’t killed Tavi thus far doesn’t mean I won’t.”
It was the most harshly he’d spoken to her in years, but that wasn’t what struck her. No, it was the intensity of his last sentence…as if he was trying to convince himself he was still capable of taking lives. Of taking a lover’s life. And what could she possibly say in response? Nothing came to mind, and the moment stretched between them to the point of discomfort. A rubber band pulled to the limits of its elasticity.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Jackson cut in, snipping the tension.
But Grace was still very much aware of how a gulf had widened even farther between her and Finn. He was a vampire. She was a human. He was emotion. She was reason. And tomorrow they’d head to two very different meetings…the course of which could change both of their lives.
When her gaze flicked back to the surveillance feeds on the monitors, the fires were out. All that was left was ruin.