Page 23 of Elven Prince

She turned to face him, automatically craning her neck in preparation to meet his gaze, and found herself staring at thin air six inches higher than the sparkling blue eyes of the giant blond illusion standing in front of her.

“Hey, check you out,” he said. “You’re looking me in the eye.”

Despite his confirmation, Rebecca didn’t knowwhereshe was looking. “All right. Take that shit off.”

“Aw, come on, boss.” His booming chuckle echoed everywhere. “I thought you liked the new look.”

“Not anymore. It’s creeping me out, and I still don’t know where the hell your eyes are.”

“We’re out in public, though…” He gestured behind him toward the double glass doors of the building’s entrance. “Don’t want me drawing attention, right?”

“This is a magical storage unit, Titus. Notout in public.”

“What if somebody sees?”

“You know what?” she quipped as she headed toward the circle of gold painted on the center of the lobby floor, “if any human’s dumb enough to walk in here on their own, they deserve every bit of the shock they’ll get seeingyou, either way. Trust me.”

More laughter followed her across the lobby. A flash of bright silver light bounced off the marble surfaces in every direction, then an intimidatingly massive shadow fell over Rebecca before the vuulbor stopped beside her within the circle.

When she looked up at him, he was grinning.

“Oh, that’s so much better,” she muttered, despite her neck already hurting from looking straight up at his face. “New rule. You only get to wear that when it’s absolutely necessary. Not for fun.”

“Roger that, boss. So how do we get this party started?”

Rebecca whipped out the vault key and returned his flashing grin with one of her own. “Roth-Da’al, party of two?”

The golden pedestal rose from the panel sliding open in the gold-painted floor, just like before, illuminating with the same bright-blue glow emanating from the key in her hand. The number five appeared on each, and Rebecca set the key on the slanted top of the glowing pedestal.

All the lights cut out, plunging them into perfect and complete darkness.

It would have come with complete silence if it wasn’t for Titus’s bone-shattering laughter cutting through the pitch-black. “Holy shit. This is fantastic!”

“Gladsomeone’shaving a good time.” In the dark, he couldn’t see her smiling.

“You know me, boss. It’s the little things.”

The lights cut back on, and they stood in nearly the exact same room.

This one, though, had a gleaming silver number five hanging on the far wall. Instead of a concierge desk and glass doors to the outside, the perimeter of this circular room was lined with nondescript wooden doors, all of them exactly the same at first glance.

“Come on, then.” After a quick glance around level five’s massive lobby, Rebecca stepped off the golden circle and headed for the door in front of her. “And quit screwing around.”

His laughter continued. When she reached the doors, Rebecca was happy to keep her hidden smile to herself.

Every door here looked exactly the same, which made it impossible to tell which one her level-five key opened. Until she approached it and both the door and key glowed with matching electric-blue.

She didn’t trust her own directional orientation within this room yet. There was always a chance the golden circle brought them up to a level five facing a different direction every time.

Rebecca didn’t want to find out what happened when someone tried to open the wrong vault with the wrong key.

That kind of mistake might just be the thing that sent everything else tumbling over the edge.

6

Rebecca moved from door to door, waiting for the telltale glow while Titus lumbered around the room, inspecting the modern decor and the plain doors and even lifting a corner of the heaviest couch in the central sitting area to look underneath—as if the guy had shown up with the intention of buying the place.

“Damn,” he muttered and whistled again. “Swanky kinda place here.”

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