“And Jason needed a payday,” Paris surmised.
“To get us out before tomorrow.”
Paris looped an arm around Kai’s shoulders and pulled him into a sideways hug. Why wouldn’t his friends just let him help? Jason didn’t have to put himself in danger; Kai wouldn’t have to worry about him. Granted, it was more complicated when Vincent had been alive, especially if Kai hadn’t wanted to expose himself, but now... Now, when whatever this was was all over, they were going to have a serious conversation about how to stay alive, all of them, because Paris needed his family.
“I didn’t know where else to go,” Kai said.
“This is why I told you where I was, in case of emergency.” It gave him some hope they could work out an arrangement in the future. Now he just needed Mac’s help in the present. “I’m sorry, but I needed them to have some backup.”
Mac’s gaze held his for a long moment, understanding passing between them, before he leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees. “You said it burns. What did you mean?”
“That they’re connected,” Paris said, and barely bit back thelike ushe wanted to add. Would Mac want that shared with Kai? Did Mac feel the same way?
“There’s connected,” Mac said. “And then there’s ‘it burns.’ Very different.”
“You know what my people did?” Kai asked, and at Mac’s nod, he continued. “I think—” He cut himself off, swallowed hard, then started again. “IknowJason’s a phoenix. And he’s in danger.”
“But Jason’s human,” Paris said, voice rising with panic, the world starting to spin again.
“Not anymore.”
Mac rested a hand on his knee. “Breathe, Paris.” Squeezed. “You did the right thing. We’ll try to help him.” He left his hand there as he glanced back to Kai. “I need to know everything.”
For all of Atlas’s efforts to make sure he was well-read and educated, Paris had gotten a crash course in the supernatural the past twelve days. And as Mac and Kai talked, as Kai divulged more details, Paris tried to suppress how overwhelmed he felt and focus instead on the mundane because that was the only way he could help in this situation.
He zeroed in on certain words from their conversation.
Stash.
Phoenix.
Power.
Staring at the calming blue-green wall, the same color as his friend’s real eyes, Paris put himself in the shoes of the person he had the misfortune to know best in the world.
Vincent Cirillo.
The human who had hunted phoenixes, held them captive in stash houses, and bled them dry in order to replenish his own stolen power.
Fuel stations, his father used to say.I need to visit a fuel station.
Fuel stations that were marked on a map he kept in his private study, a room only he and Atlas had ever been inside.That Paris regularly broke into to steal from his father’s supply of Daylight.
Rocketing off the couch, he grabbed the closest paint brush and the tubes of black and red paint. He squeezed a dollop of each onto the back of his hand, swiped his brush through the black one first, then on the blue-green wall, he began to sketch the outlines of the Canyon Lands. Crumbling stone jetties and canyons of deep, dark water, broken buildings and disintegrating streets, the barbed wire fence that separated what amounted to YB’s haunted house from the rest of the city.
He was so deep in his memories, so focused on translating them correctly onto the wall, that he didn’t notice the conversation behind him quiet or Mac move to stand behind him. He startled when he rocked back on one heel to evaluate his work and ran into him.
“What’s this?” Mac asked, steadying him by the shoulders.
“My father had maps. Lots of them.” He rinsed his brush in the paint water mug, flicked off the excess, then swiped it through the red. “There was this one in his private office. It had red dots on it.” He marked the five spots on the map he’d replicated. “When I asked him what the dots were, he told me they were fuel stations.”
Mac stepped beside him, stared a long moment at the wall, and then a satisfied smirk stretched across his face, the sexiest thing Paris had ever seen. “You’re amazing,” he said, clasping the back of Paris’s head and hauling it closer to press his lips to his temple, searing Paris with the affectionate touch. “Go pack.”
Wait... what? Paris jerked his head back, meeting the raven’s dark eyes. “We’re leaving?”
“I need to go into the city with Kai, but I’ll send Liam for you. If your friend is a phoenix, if he survives, we’ll need to bring him back to the mountain after. I assume you’ll want to be with him.”
“Yes, of course,” Paris said as he tossed aside his brush and wiped his hands on his sweats. “But why are we going back to the ridge?”