Jessica Shirvington - Empower

Because once will never be enough.

A lifetime would fall short.

For now, Barley Mow in East London was my home and place of non-Grigori work. Despite Mum’s attempts to give me piles of cash and Dad’s insistence that I at least keep hold of the Amex card that connected to his bank account. After everything that had happened, I needed to do this alone, to be independent, and that meant paying my own way. Even when I was down to my last twenty pounds. Somehow, I’d always found a way. And now I had a pretty good set-up. Although tonight’s earlier escapades had no doubt cost me a chunk of next week’s rent.

Walking into the small dark bar with Gray, neither one of us was surprised to see that Carter, Milo and Turk had beaten us there. We’d left the scene at the construction site by the time the clean-up crew had arrived, and although Gray had the advantage of a motorcycle – and rode like a madman – Carter simply didn’t acknowledge that there was a speed between parked and flooring it.

Ryan and Taxi were there too, Ryan’s full-belly laughter sounding out across the small pub, all of them sitting at our usual table in the back corner. Of all the Rogues I’d met since I’d stumbled across Gray one night by chance – and luck – this wayward group made up the ones I saw the most. Looking at the faces around the table, I guess you could call this dysfunctional, slightly bizarre group my friends. It wasn’t like my friendships with Steph or Spence, though I barely saw them any more, it was different. What I had with these guys allowed me a comfortable distance.

And it was thanks to our frequent late nights at Barley Mow that I had found my job in the bar and my apartment upstairs.

As I approached, Carter was giving Ryan a foul look – clearly he had been the butt of some joke – but on seeing me his expression morphed into a smirk. He held up his half-finished Guinness. ‘Karen’s started a tab.’

Milo winked at me over the rim of his beer. And I knew that Ryan and Taxi would have included themselves in the free-round offer simply by association. I quickly tried to decipher just how many drinks they had managed to put away before we arrived.

Crap.

I narrowed my eyes at Carter as I went to the small bar to collect drinks for Gray and me and to explain to Karen, my boss and landlady, that the tab would be closing after the next round. The guys would drink the place dry if they didn’t have to worry about the bill at the end.

Karen smiled warmly at me, her yellowed teeth noticeable even in the dim pub lighting. She’d been a pack-a-day smoker since she was thirteen, and at fifty-three she had no intention of stopping now. She passed me two beers, her bright orange nails so long they curled around the glasses like claws.

‘Honey, you look like you walked into the wrong neighbourhood. Again,’ she said in her husky voice, raising her eyebrows at the last.

I grimaced, realising how I must look. I probably should have gone straight upstairs to change first, but after everything that had happened at the tournament, plus being distracted by my overactive imagination at the meat market, I’d forgotten that I’d got a little messy earlier in the night. The guys, of course, barely sported a mark.

‘Does it help that I also walked my way out?’ I tried.

She shook her head slightly. ‘The better question is: did anyone else?’

I couldn’t help the small smile. Karen saw us all enough to know that there was … stuff going on around town that normal people had no business knowing about.

I grabbed my drinks. ‘Trust me, that neighbourhood is now a safer place for us all.’

‘Uh-huh,’ I heard her murmur as I walked away.

I placed Gray’s drink in front of him and sat down. I could tell he was talking business, and whatever it was, I already knew I’d want in. We all brought in the odd job, but it was Gray and his vast list of mysterious contacts who really kept us on the go.

Carter glared at me as if reading my mind. ‘I think we should wait till Miss Steal-a-guy’s-limelight has gone to bed for the night before we discuss this.’

‘God, are you still whingeing? You got a fight tonight. You got paid, and,’ I motioned towards his half-empty glass, ‘in more ways than one. Move on,’ I said, exhausted more by him than by the night’s activities.

And you’re all still alive.

‘I’ll take her to bed for you, if it helps out,’ Taxi jokingly offered.

‘Remind me why you’re called Taxi again?’ I asked.

He smiled so widely it was impossible not to smile in return. Turk had given him the nickname about forty years ago. They’d been living in apartments next door to one another in Islington – the same ones where they still lived now – and whenever Taxi picked up a girl Turk would know about it because he’d hear some poor now-sober woman hailing a taxi at the top of her lungs at the crack of dawn the following day.

‘Violet, I promise I’ll give you a ride home in the morning myself.’ Taxi waggled his eyebrows.

Ryan hit Taxi on the head. ‘Leave her be,’ he said, giving me a nod.

Apart from me, Ryan, at thirty-three, was the youngest of the group – though like everyone else he looked barely a couple of years out of his teens. He was also the one whose dimples gave him a look of innocence, which was the exact opposite of Taxi and Carter, whose more angular features and lack of care towards personal maintenance made them seen menacing.

But it was Milo who always caught my eye and reluctant curiosity. While looking Grigori-young, he had a darkness surrounding him that was more than just his tall, slim figure, always-black attire and long jet-black hair. His eyes told a haunting tale, one that as a Rogue he had every right to never share. But we all knew that it had something to do with his particular gift. He was a Darkener – he had the ability to plunge someone into darkness, momentarily blinding them before launching his attack. It was a great defensive weapon against exiles, but it had left its mark on him in the depths of his sad eyes.

Like me.

Looking away from Milo and back to Taxi and Ryan, I recognised their slightly bloodshot eyes and lazy smiles. They had clearly been at the bar for a while and looked as if they had passed the one-too-many point a few drinks back. For Taxi, this meant crudeness. For Ryan, it meant genuine flirting.

I glanced at Gray and caught his subtle wink of understanding. Then he got on with business. And this was the way it was with Rogues. We didn’t sit around rehashing the events of the night – we moved on to the next job. Gray had already reported to our employer about tonight’s events at the meat market. The money had been transferred to us and the clients were having their own people deliver the news to the human in charge. Fine by us.

The Academy Grigori had stayed behind at the construction site to help the humans who had survived, bring in the clean-up crew and mourn the loss of Clive and Annette. We’d done our job, scouted the immediate area and cleared the rooftop, then taken our payment, shaken hands and bailed.

Now Gray had moved on to the details of the new job that had come in from his contact in Rome. An exile they’d been trying to find had fled Italy after taking out an entire church load of people during a single Sunday Mass in a small village just outside Florence.

The exile had posed as a priest.

I was still undecided when it came to my beliefs. I knew there was a place where souls were sent to suffer – my mother had been locked in the pits of Hell since the day she gave birth to me until the day I unwittingly freed her – and there were definitely stories out there with elements of truth. But God? One entity responsible for it all? Heaven? Peace? No, I wasn’t sure about that.