Which was why someone else had to act as an Anchor: a beacon, a lifeline, a bungee cord that would snap their companion back up to life once they leapt off the runway. To make the Drop alone was to die—to reach the bottom of one’s power, to have one’s heart stop beating upon hitting that nadir. No one knew if the soul continued living down there, lost forever, or if it died along with the body left in life.
It was why Anchors were usually family—parents or siblings—or trusted friends. Someone who wouldn’t leave you stranded. Or a government employee who had a legal obligation not to do so. Some claimed those six minutes were called the Search—that during that time, you faced the very depths of your soul. But beyond that, there was no hope of survival.
It was only upon making the Ascent and reaching that threshold back to life, brimming with new power, that immortality was attained, the aging process slowed to a glacial drip and the body rendered near-indestructible as it was bathed in all that ensuing firstlight, so bright it could blind the naked eye. And at the end of it, when the Drop Center’s sleek energy panels had siphoned off that firstlight, all any of them were left with to mark the occasion was a mere pinprick of that light in a bottle. A pretty souvenir.
These days, with Drop parties like the one below all the rage, the newly immortal often used their allotment of their own firstlight to make party favors to hand out to their friends. Bryce had planned for glow sticks and key chains that said Kiss My Sparkly Ass! Danika had just wanted shot glasses.
Bryce tucked away that old ache in her chest as Maximus shut the folio with a snap, his reading done. A matching folio appeared in his hand, then he nudged it across the shining gold surface of the bar.
Bryce glanced at the check within—for a mind-boggling sum that he handed over as if passing her an empty gum wrapper—and smiled again. Even as some small part of her cringed at the tiny fact that she wouldn’t receive any part of her commission on the piece. On any art in Jesiba’s gallery. That money went elsewhere.
“A pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Tertian.”
There. Done. Time to go home and climb into bed and snuggle with Syrinx. The best form of celebrating she could think of these days.
But a pale, strong hand landed on the folio. “Going so soon?” Maximus’s smile grew again. “It’d be a shame for a pretty thing like you to leave when I was about to order a bottle of Serat.” The sparkling wine from the south of Valbara started at roughly a hundred gold marks a bottle. And apparently made pricks like him believe they were entitled to female company.
Bryce gave him a wink, trying to pull the folio with the check toward her awaiting purse. “I think you’d be the one feeling sorry if a pretty thing like me left, Mr. Tertian.”
His hand remained on the folio. “For what I paid your boss, I’d think some perks came with this deal.”
Well, it had to be a record: being mistaken for a whore twice within ten minutes. She had no disdain for the world’s oldest profession, only respect and sometimes pity, but being mistaken for one of them had led to more unfortunate incidents than she liked. Yet Bryce managed to say calmly, “I’m afraid I have another meeting.”
Maximus’s hand slipped to her wrist, gripping hard enough to demonstrate that he could snap every bone inside it with barely a thought.
She refused to allow her scent to shift as her stomach hollowed out. She had dealt with his kind and worse. “Take your hand off me, please.”
She added the last word because she owed it to Jesiba to at least sound polite—just once.
But Maximus surveyed her body with all the male, immortal entitlement in the world. “Some like their prey to play hard to get.” He smiled up at her again. “I happen to be one of them. I’ll make it good for you, you know.”
She met his stare, hating that some small part of her wanted to recoil. That it recognized him as a predator and her as his prey and she’d be lucky to even get the chance to run before she was eaten whole. “No, thank you.”
The VIP mezzanine went quiet, the ripple of silence a sure sign that some bigger, badder predator had prowled in. Good.
Maybe it’d distract the vampyr long enough for her to snatch her wrist back. And that check. Jesiba would flay her alive if she left without it.
Indeed, Maximus’s gaze drifted over her shoulder to whoever had entered. His hand tightened on Bryce’s. Just hard enough that Bryce looked.
A dark-haired Fae male stalked up to the other end of the bar. Looking right at her.