Page 29 of Vows & Violence
She doesn’t say a word, but I can feel her smile through the leather and smoke as we roar into the night.
Chapter Fourteen
Phoenix
The scent of sweat, stale beer, and fried dough clings to the air like desperation. Music pounds from all directions. Brass bands on balconies, drums in the street, some DJ mixing rap into jazz like it’s some kind of voodoo ritual. Laughter bubbles up, but it’s too high-pitched, too rehearsed. Even the chaos feels curated. I don’t trust it.
Ghost walks beside me, masked in black leather with a silver skull etched across his face. My own mask is bone-white and cracked, paired with a hood and a blade tucked down my spine. We’re just two more shadows in a city that lives in them.
Cheap plastic beads rain from balconies above, thrown by hands we’ll never see. People scramble for them like they’re gold. Flashing lights slice across their faces, giving them the illusion of joy. But the smiles don’t reach their eyes. Too many mirrored masks. Too many grins that don’t move.
I clock every movement. My boots hit the pavement in sync with the bassline, but I’m listening for the off beat, the rustle of steel, the click of a weapon, the footstep that doesn’t match the music. The kind that means I’ll have to draw blood to stay breathing.
Ghost keeps scanning the crowd, eyes darting under the mask. His fingers twitch near his waistband. He’s not armed like I am, but he’s coiled tight. Like he’s waiting for someone to step out of the past and gut him in the middle of Bourbon Street.
“You see something?” I murmur.
He shakes his head once, sharp and fast. “No. Maybe. Faces keep shifting.” His voice is low, barely audible beneath the noise. “I swear I saw Vale a minute ago. Just… standing there.”
My spine goes rigid. “You sure it wasn’t a reflection?”
He doesn’t answer, and he doesn’t have to. I know that look. He’s haunted and hungry. It’s how I used to look at graves.
Then I see it just over Ghost’s shoulder. A mask half-lit by neon. Black feathers curling off the edges, silver painted lips curved into a smirk I’ve memorized too well.
Raven.
My breath snags. A jolt of heat rushes through my chest, rage flaring fast and sharp. I push past a couple in body paint, eyes fixed on the figure, but when I reach the spot, she’s gone. Just air and footsteps and that smile burned behind my eyelids like a ghost brand.
“She was here,” I whisper. Not to Ghost, but to myself.
He turns toward me, all tension and edge. “Who?”
I scan the crowd, heart hammering. “Raven.”
For a second, neither of us moves. Then Ghost shifts his stance, and just like that, we’re back in sync. Whatever this carnival is pretending to be, it’s not joy. It’s a hunting ground dressed in sequins. And someone’s laid out bait with our names on it.
The air thickens the deeper we go, like the heat and bodies are conspiring to drown us. Voices overlap, a cacophony of pleasure and pretense. Stilt walkers in porcelain masks hover above us like wraiths. A brass band parades past with hollow eyes beneath gold-painted faces.
Ghost halts. He doesn’t slow, he stops dead in the middle of the crowd. His body is turned to stone. I nearly collide with him. Then I hear it too, a man’s laugh, high and sharp, just a little too close to Vale’s.
Ghost’s hand tightens around the burner phone in his palm, and I catch the flash of bone-white knuckles. His jaw is clenched so tight I can hear his teeth grinding.
I step closer, my shoulder brushing his. “What is it?”
He doesn’t answer at first. Just scans the street like he’s looking through it, not at it. “It was him. I saw Vale.” Ghost's voice cracks.
My stomach drops. I grab his wrist, not gently. “Where?”
He points to a narrow alleyway between two brick buildings. One of them pulsing with light from an underground club. The other is dark and quiet. Unwatched.
I draw the blade from beneath my jacket and start forward, but he stops me this time. “He was just there. Black mask, red scar across the side. He looked right at me.”
I peer into the alley. It’s empty. No footsteps. No shadow. Just a pile of rotting beads and a lingering smell of sulfur.
Gone. Like smoke.
I bite down on my instinct to call it what it is, impossible. Because Ghost doesn’t lie to me, but something’s not right. His skin’s too pale and clammy. There’s a twitch in his jaw, a far-off glassiness in his eyes I don’t like. Like his mind is glitching, stuttering between now and some nightmare memory that won’t let go.
