Annette Marie [Steel & Stone Chase the Dark (epub)

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.“Would you mind holding onto this for me? I forgot to put it in my room earlier.”He dropped the cube into her palm; it was a tiny velvet ring box.She stared at it curiously.Since he was still watching, she tried to force it into the pocket of her jeans but they were too tight.With a shrug and a smile, she stuck it down the front of her shirt and wedged it between her breasts.Quinn looked vaguely appalled.“I’ll see you in a few hours.Remember—keep your wards upstairs until I say otherwise.”She nodded and he walked away, leaving her alone in the hallway.With no witnesses, she let a scowl take over her face.Top-secret meeting? Nope, she got to babysit instead.Piper turned the gemstone over in her hands, watching the dim light from her bedside lamp gather inside its bluish silver depths.It was the size of the end of her thumb and heavier than it looked.Other than that, it wasn’t anything special—merely a pretty stone.Curiosity nagged at her.Her dad wasn’t a trinkets person.Why would he care about a gemstone? She bit her bottom lip.Had it belonged to her mother? She stoked her fingers across the smooth surface.Her parents had split up when she was eight.Piper remembered her mother departing in a storm of tears and screamed insults.Her father had slammed the door behind his wife, turned to Piper, who was hiding around the corner, and said, “That was goodbye.” Piper had never seen her mother again.One year later, her father had brought home the news that her mother had died in a car accident.He told her this the day after the funeral and cremation.Piper had never gotten to say a final goodbye.Black resentment spread through her but she stuffed it down.Unclenching her hand with effort, she stuck the gem back into the ring box and dropped it on her dresser beside her alarm clock.Ugh, one in the morning.Good thing she didn’t have school tomorrow.Stepping backward until her legs bumped her bed, she let herself fall over the covers and yawned until her jaw popped.The evening had passed without incident.The meeting had gone on for hours and finished twenty minutes ago when the ambassadors left.She hadn’t seen them but she’d heard assorted voices as the group left the building.She might have indulged in self-pity over missing all the fun but she was too worried about her nearby roommates.Of all the guests to stay behind.She would’ve preferred Ether and Gigantor-what’s-his-name, but both of them had taken off after the confrontation downstairs.Instead she got stuck with the dream team: Lyre and Ash.They’d behaved perfectly so far.She probably didn’t need to lose sleep over them.Lyre was annoying as always but she could handle him.Mostly.Then again, she didn’t really know him.He spent a night or two at the Consulate every month or so, but she’d hardly spent enough time with him to judge his integrity and trustworthiness.He only stopped in for their free room and board while travelling from whatever point A to point B he fancied that month.Unlike a lot of their other visitors, he never needed the Consulate’s secondary services as a safe house—a place protected against any outside threat.Whatever he did with his time, at least he stayed out of trouble—probably.Their guests didn’t always admit their real reasons for “visiting.”Ash, on the other hand, was the kind of trouble others came to the Consulate to escape.She knew even less about him than Lyre.She’d only met him a few times and only once when he was travelling without Lyre.Every time he did stop in, she made sure to avoid him.Unlike Lyre, Ash had a reputation—the kind that stopped a raging fight mid-strike by walking into the room.He was real trouble, not like the silly flirting Lyre indulged in.Lyre couldn’t help himself.After all, that’s just what incubi were like.The Consulate served a lot of purposes, but everything they did revolved around daemons.Not demons.Daemons.Big difference.There were three “worlds” for lack of a better term: Earth, where humans lived, the Underworld, and the Overworld.Daemons came from the latter two and Earth was stuck inter-dimensionally between them.The Underworld wasn’t Hell any more than the Overworld was Heaven [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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