Soraya

 

For the second time in a week, I honestly wondered what I’d gotten myself into. I shouldn’t be going anywhere with Desmond Devoy. We were already getting too close as it was. I couldn’t have him finding out I was Soraya Lafi now.

Especially since it now felt too late to tell him the truth.

I bit my lower lip hard as I hung back in the frostbitten entry of the Hynes train stop, watching as people rushed in and out. Professor Devoy, or Dez, as he’d told me to call him, was waiting somewhere outside. I could still text him and call it off, I thought.

But even as my hand drifted to my pocket, I could see that winsome, eager smile on his face as he offered to tell me about places in Boston he thought I might like. There’d been nothing cocky or self-serving in that smile, only a genuine desire to make sure I saw and experienced his hometown city in full. And I had to admit, I’d never spent much time here.

Pushing myself off the wall, I marched outside and found Dez waiting on the street corner. His face lit up when he saw me and I couldn’t help but smile back. Maybe, I thought, if anyone could forgive an ugly lie like mine, it would be Desmond Devoy.

“Hi, hi,” he said, waving me over. He was wearing a gorgeous blue-gray coat that made his hazel eyes glow and his usual work boots. “Was the train okay?”

“No worse than usual,” I said lightly as we fell into step. My inclination was to take his arm, as I did with most of my friends, but since he was my professor and I a big fat liar, I resisted.

"So, I thought we'd get something to eat, see Newbury and maybe go to the museum afterward if you're not too sick of me, yet," Dez joked.

“Sounds wonderful, thank you for taking the time to do this,” I said, wishing I didn’t feel so stiff and I could relax a bit. I was worried about how to come off to him.

"No problem," Dez said easily, leading the way down a crowded street. Cars were jam packed along the sidewalk, never mind the traffic fighting to get through, and the sidewalks were packed. Lights wrapped around the trees and I gazed from those to the quaint old brownstones lining the street, all of which had been converted into shops.

“Oh, I have to get down here sometime,” I murmured.

“I thought you might like it,” Dez said with a quick grin over at me.

From there, our conversation lapsed into fashion, one that lasted all the way to the restaurant and through the first few courses. I learned that Dez's family had struggled for a while to make ends meet, but eventually, his Grams and father had saved up enough to buy a few rooms in an apartment building, then the entire thing.

Now she was a landlord, while her son was a professor at a local trade school. Both of them, it turned out, still lived in the city, but were currently in Florida for the winter. I glanced up at him as he told me this, wondering where his mom was.

“My mom, she uh, passed away when I was only two,” he said.

“Oh, Dez,” I said, gripping my hands under the table to fight the urge to reach for him. “I am so, so sorry.” I paused. “Was she a fashionista?”

“A little,” he said with a laugh. “But no, it seems to be something more in my generation than my parents or grandparents. We like to dress up because we can.” He tugged on his collar and shot me a wink. “You know, that swag.”

“Oh, I know,” I said with a laugh, leaning forward.

As we left the restaurant, I couldn't quite remember what I'd eaten, only that it had been good. French cuisine was a favorite of mine. It was a little odd, but before I could think about it more, Dez was leading the way to a store he thought I might like. After that, we had wound up spending more time than we meant to and it was suddenly eight p.m.

“I have to go,” Dez said reluctantly. “Sorry about the museum.”

I held up my bag-laden arms. “Don’t worry about it, I did well.”

Suddenly, outside the store, standing there and looking at each other, it became awkward. I’m not sure if it was me or Dez, but I was aware of all the secrets and lies I’d spun throughout the day. And whether it was for his own reasons or he was picking up on my mood, he rubbed the back of his neck and wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“I’ll see you Monday, then,” he said, drifting away and I nodded.

There was a small, bitter tug at my heartstrings as he walked away. One I ignored.

But like I had every time I had boy problems, I suddenly wanted to call Faye. Hear her warm, sunny Australian voice teasing me down the line.

“Honestly, Raya,” she’d say with a snort. “Can’t you take mercy on these poor boys?”

Tears pooled along my eyelids and I hastily grabbed my phone, calling a Lyft. I wasn’t going to fight the trains to get home tonight.

Standing there, waiting for my ride, it began to catch up to me.

The brooding nightmare of the last few months, always on the horizon and trying to pin me down. And again, I futilely wished I could tell Dez who I was. He’d known Faye a little. He’d understand. Hell, he’d probably take it upon himself to make me feel better.

And for a brief moment, something warm flickered in my heart at the thought.

But I couldn’t be that selfish. He’d left the world of Anubis behind for a good reason, I was sure.

As always, as it had to be, I was on my own.

 

Over the next two weeks, I did my best to keep it light and fun with Dez, but always professional. In class, he’d convinced the majority of students to start calling him Dez as well, eschewing any formality. I’d been both glad and a little disappointed, owning that it was kind of nice to be singled out to call him by his nickname.

Then someone found out he went by Uncle Dez and most of them started calling him that. I couldn’t though – he would always be Dez to me. Sweet, understanding and a little mysterious.

There were days I noticed he looked more tired than he should – especially for a guy who didn’t go out at night. Then there were times in the office where I’d catch him staring out the window and brooding. And there was an intense light that came into his eyes sometimes.

Followed, inevitably, by that strange, provoking smile.

What on earth are you thinking about? I’d wonder to myself.

In that same time, I hadn’t heard a peep from King. Though that irritated me to an extent, it had also given me time to comb through his papers and verify what he’d found.

It was a Friday night, pushing somewhere around midnight and I had them spread about me on the floor. He’d found something huge. An intricate operation brushing against the laws of both the inanis and shifter world. One that if you looked close enough would result in lengthy amounts of jail time in both.

For all of its intricacies and fail-safes, however, I could see its weak spots. One was in Boston, where the drugs were both created and shipped out. Unravel either of those strings and the whole thing would come crashing down.

TLO would no longer have a steady stream of income.

Sure, they probably had backups and other ways of getting money, but their number one source would be gone. Adrenaline shot through my veins. I wanted to take them out.

Laying back on the floor, I stared up at the ceiling and contemplated how to get it done. If this was a usual Anubis op, we’d bring in a team, scope it out and conduct a raid. The same way it had gone down in Bear Valley. Only…

Tapping my foot, I thought about how Bear Valley had turned out to be a sham. While some of the information gathered there was invaluable, the most precious of it had been taken from the Foundry underneath. A place that had been destroyed within hours of the Order finding it.

The place where Faye died.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried not to think about that. Instead, I focused on whether to call in a team or trust my new “friend.” He had a point about not trusting the Order.

For the more I’d thought about it in the past two weeks, the more it made sense. Only someone placed inside of the Order could be capable of wreaking this kind of havoc. Hadn’t new security protocols gone into place over the past few months? Hadn’t I seen Mirois and Lhambo looking bent and haggard? Uncle Elias, too, for that matter. Hadn’t Piper herself said something about keeping our assignments to ourselves?

Piper had long suspected there was someone in our ranks who couldn’t be trusted. She called them the liability, but I’d always assumed if she found something, she’d tell me.

That was then, however, when I was a younger agent. Now, I wasn’t so sure. If there were traitors in our midst and they were unknown, it would be better to keep playing along as though there weren’t. To not tip them off, as dangerous a game as that was.

I picked up the phone to call Piper but then stopped. She was on maternity leave. And there was no guarantee she'd tell me even if I asked her.

Instead, I slowly sat up and eyed the documents again. Picking one up, I read the address and plugged it into my phone. I’d thought I was going to stay in tonight, but now I knew I couldn’t.

I had to see King.