Page 44 of Villains Never Die

“I like your chess set,” he said. I flinched when the weight of his fingertips fell on my hip and drew lazy lines up and down my skin. The motion loosened the tension in my stomach and I relaxed against the bed.

“My father gave it to me when I left school.” He meant the expensive set in the corner of the room opposite the armchair. The board and pieces were carved from amber, and I kept them dust-free and polished, despite not having played in a long time.

“I’ll play you sometime.”

I rolled toward him, but he didn’t withdraw his hand. It rested flat against my side instead. “You play chess?”

He chuckled, some of his cockiness leeching back into his voice. “Three time state champion.”

“Bullshit.”

“Not bullshit, and now you know something else about me, so you owe me one. Why all of this?”

He didn’t gesture at anything, didn’t explain. Did he mean whatever we were playing at? The luxurious penthouse?

“Why all of what?”

“The money, the power…is it something you inherited?”

“My family is still in Britain, and no, it wasn’t.” I inhaled deeply, which encouraged him to move his hand higher until it rested on my chest. My heart thumped under his palm. “I wassearching for something. I traveled a lot. It led me here, and it was easier to keep looking with ‘all of this,’ so I stayed.”

“Did you find it?”

I left England when I was eighteen and traveled Europe for two years seeking information on Death before I ended up in America. There was such a concentration of the supernatural in Ashbruck that I stayed, fighting my way to the top until I had access to everything I could want—books, information, connections, money, and warehouses full of objects that toed the line of legality, when it didn’t outright cross it.

Project Mori had panned out, though. I was so fucking close now.

“No, I’m still looking.”

“Whatever it is must be a bitch to find if you can’t do it with all of the resources you have.”

Oh yes,shewas a bitch to find.

“The sun’s coming up,” I said. Rook was questioning, creeping toward something that wasn’t his to know. “You should go.”

He scooted across the pillows and kissed me, and this time it was tender—it broke a quiet I hadn’t realized had settled in me. When he rose from the bed, a chill spread over my skin. He flicked on a bedside lamp and I squinted against the sudden illumination.

I watched him dress, admiring his body, and tried to ignore the ache that pulsed in my chest at the loss of him.

“I’ll text you,” he said.

As soon as the door closed, the spirits started.

Ooo that was almost romantic.

You’re pouting. Do you miss him?

Did you see the size of his—

“Bunch of nosy Peeping Toms, the lot of you. Stay out of my bedroom when I’m busy.”

He does miss him.

Are you going to let him come over again?

“Maybe, if I ever get some privacy.”

You’re our only entertainment.