Lords & Thieves: Chapter Eight
The prequel arc of ✨The White City✨ — a weekly serialized urban fantasy series
Previously in The White City:
Tensions build and heat rises after an exhilarating escape
She starts figuring out…he really, truly, undeniably isn’t…human
The numbers on the pages didn’t mean shit to him, no matter how many times he flipped the leaflet back and forth. “Fine. Do it.”
His Right Hand straightened her shoulders. “You’re sure?”
“Yes. No. Fuck.” Cade ran a hand through his hair and considered pulling it all out. Or using the grip to slam his forehead into the nearest brick wall. “I don’t fucking care. Just do it.”
Seka Derringer pressed her lips together, the only other sign of her disagreement with his decision. The fisted hand on her hip was the first tell. “I told you, you should have sent one of my guys in. Hell, one of yours.”
“And I told you, I don’t delegate personal favors.” He shoved himself away from the table and grabbed his mug for another swig of beer, only to frown when he discovered it’d been replaced by a mug of coffee. “Where’s my porter?”
“Where’s your watch? It’s ten o’clock in the morning!”
Cade considered dumping the lukewarm coffee on her head, but there existed the strong probability she’d just throat punch him with the mug. “Whatever.” He chugged the rest of it and made a mental note to stop by the nearest pub for a shot of whiskey to wash it down. “I have errands to run. Shit to do.” Hearts to shatter.
That coffee wasn’t sitting well in his stomach.
“Does any of this happen to involve a certain Latina goddess?” Seka didn’t wait for his response because she already knew the answer. “I told you once and I’m going to keep saying it until you listen to me: You. Are. Making. A. HUGE. Mistake.”
“It won’t be that bad!” Cade threw his hands up in the air, mindful not to chuck the mug through the front window of the restaurant. Yet. “What makes her different from any of the others?”
“For starters?” Seka gave him a quick once-over and smirked. “No one else ever got you riled like this.”
“You do a perfectly fine job crawling under my skin.”
“That’s just it, though. That’s my job. I’m the very loud and irritating voice that keeps you headed in the direction that gets us what we want.”
Cade glanced around and waited for the underlings to clear more boxes out of the room before he lowered his voice and dipped his head to her. “What happens when I don’t know what I want?”
Seka froze. Her voice dropped dangerously low, even for him. “That’s not possible. You always know exactly what you want, where we need to go, who we need to either support or eliminate. The Plan, right? You’ve never diverted from The Plan.”
“I know. And that’s the problem.” He tugged on his hair again, eyeing the table for more head-bashing options if it meant getting rid of this self-imposed headache. “When I’m with her? Shit, when she’s simply breathing the same air as me. It’s distracting. She makes me think about things I don’t…I won’t do. Or have.”
Marriage. The word was a cold bucket from the Arctic depths the moment it passed through Elena’s lips. Those sweet, sugary lips he could have spent the whole night devouring.
She never applied it to him. He knew that. He also knew she held no expectations that even remotely involved him. All she did was let him know her body was off the menu.
Good. Fair.
He could accept that. He respected her decision. Found it honorable, even.
What terrified him was how quickly—and easily—the thought of spending the rest of his life with her entered his mind.
Before she ever uttered the cursed word.
“I need to go.” Cade grabbed his summer coat and slung it over his arm. “You’re in charge of finishing up everything here. Text me when it’s done.”
Seka blew out a low breath. “Alright. You’re the boss. And the girl?”
Again, the coffee churned in his stomach. What he was about to say already tasted bitter on his tongue. “It was fun while it lasted.”
The address Markis scrawled on the note led Cade to a refurbished hotel along Lake Shore Drive. For a brief moment, he wondered if the High Lord was mocking him.
It wasn’t just any “old hotel” now operating as semi-luxury apartments.
Cade helped build the place over a hundred years ago.
It felt strange to walk inside after so many decades had passed since his last visit. When was that? 1967? There’d been a meeting with an ambitious High Lord seeking refuge and establishment in the city after fleeing the Otherworld and his furious wife. He’d wanted Cade to help smuggle him into “better accommodations” than the prison cell she’d bought for him—and set up his human mistress, too.
There were phone booths in the lobby back then. Cade remembered using them a time or two. When he spotted them tucked inside the far wall of the newly restored apartment lobby, he also remembered making out with a sexy brunette receptionist inside one of those phone booths until her moans grew too loud to remain discreet.
No. That wasn’t right.
She was blonde, not brunette. And her hair was straight.
Why was he remembering her with—
Shit.
He needed to make this a very quick drop-off before Elena Martín started taking over any more of his memories.
Cade presented himself as a cordial, pleasant businessman scrolling through his email inbox when in reality he was biding his time until someone slightly too rushed, too distracted, and too self-important opened the security gates to the elevators. The opportunity promptly arrived in the form of a middle-aged woman in designer sweats balancing a box of donuts and a thermos with her hyperactive Yorkie. She sighed with a smile of relief when he held the gate open for her, their “thank you” and cordial chuckles almost in unison.
The eighteenth floor still glistened with gold filigree detailing on the crown moldings, echoes of a time when fae, artistry, and architecture existed in harmony in this part of the Outworld. The carpet was new in terms of not-the-original, but Cade felt pleased to see the current owners seemed to maintain some respect for the original designs.
Nice. Even the original door remained in place. That made it even easier for him to pick the lock, slip inside, and get to work hiding the stupid astrolabe for the new tenant to maybe find.
It was someone else’s gamble to worry about. Far be it from someone like Cade to question the madness of a high lord hellbent on causing chaos. If Ewan felt like stealing and hiding forbidden Fomorian technology in some random apartment was a good investment, fine. All money deposited the same into Cade’s bank account regardless of its origin.
Now…where to hide it?
The kitchen cabinets felt too easy. Same with the closets, the cupboard under the sink, and there was no separate bedroom with more hiding space options. Whoever was moving in here clearly cut a few corners on creature comforts. Probably was broke as hell, too.
He paced around the singular living space/bedroom combo for ideas—and felt one of the floorboards creak more than the others. With a rocking motion and a few hard taps of his foot, Cade confirmed that this board was definitely loose enough to pry open, hide the compass in, and make it look like nothing happened here. A careful jiggle with his switchblade and a few rusty nails pulled later, the opening in the floor proved to be just the right size for hiding the astrolabe.
The moment he reached into his coat pocket for it, he froze.
Elena’s sweater was still wrapped around it.
This presented two distinct problems: one, he didn’t think to bring anything else to wrap the damned thing in, or gloves to handle it with. As powerful as his natural-born fae magic was, to handle something as trigger-happy as a Fomorian compass risked slingshotting him back to the one place he’d rather trade for Hell.
On the other hand, he couldn’t bring himself to leave Elena’s sweater buried in the floor of some rustic old apartment.
It still smelled like her. That’s what drove him crazy every time she moved near him: the way she smelled like honeysuckle and cinnamon without a single drop of manufactured perfume to mask it. Even now, as he carefully lowered the astrolabe into the hole, then shook the fabric by one corner until it loosened and unwrapped, he could still smell the faint traces of her scent.
The soft fabric didn’t contain the same silkiness as cashmere. Cade did not like that something so trivial bothered him.
Not because she was poor.
But because he wanted her to feel the luxurious softness of cashmere against her sun-kissed skin. Imported silks. Satin numbers that he’d slowly peel off her—
No.
That ship sailed.
Hell, that ship never came to port in the first place.
Maybe he stomped the floorboard back in a little too hard. It sure felt good to let out some of his frustration. Now that the job was done, he could go back to stomping other things into the ground, like the faces of corporate execs who tried to cheat him or greedy aldermen who forgot to hold up their end of a campaign promise.
Yes. That sounded like a good plan for the afternoon.
He made sure to lock the old door behind him, adding a quick little ward to ensure only the correct tenant would enter between now and their first official entry with their own key. With the note in one hand and his phone in the other, he pulled up the message thread with Markis and prepared to text him confirmation of the job done.
Wait.
…Fuck.
The handwritten scribble on the piece of paper said, “18s”.
The text reminder from Markis—that Cade never asked for, nor did he bother to read—said, “18e”.
Section E lay on the opposite side of the whole fucking building.
No. He did not have the time for this. The door was already warded, the stupid compass was hidden like the micromanaging asshole demanded, the job was done.
Besides, it would be far easier and more efficient to “rearrange” a few records in the residential computer just by tapping it on the way out. He’d make sure the order of roses Markis placed were rerouted to the new apartment number, of course. Cade Devoy never left a job half finished, even when the task list made zero sense.
The rest would just have to be a mild inconvenience for whoever the hell this Roxanna Lovegood was.
This episode of Lords & Thieves may be over, but the story continues.
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