Jévon's POV "…I'm sorry, Jévon, but who is this?"I looked back from my boss to see Lord Ingálvur having a very heated conversation with the tropical fish in Mayor Alston's tank. He was speaking low to them in Arabic, but beyond identifying the language, I could not—for the life of me—understand why or what he was saying."…An intern, sir," I finally said for lack of any lie which would be plausible to cover my lord's many…eccentricities. "He's had a hard time getting…accustomed to the city is all.""Ah," and Mayor Ethridge Coolidge Alston Jr. said nothing more on the matter, thinking of Lord Ingálvur as either a fledgling lotus-eater or someone riddled with knock-off enchantments. "Then perhaps we can look over these new proposals the Commissioner sent in this morning about needing more funds allocated from the budget?""Of course, sir."It was easy slipping into the monotony of life as a deputy mayor, the endless paperwork and data entry that I could see in my slee

Jévon's POV Where the fuck was everyone?I clicked my teeth and Hirodeus flew lower over a city we'd been guarding since its infancy.It was rare that I got to enjoy my city at night, my work as a guardian usually kept me busy and grounded, but every now and again I could see what others saw when they first visited. The skyscrapers made out of pure gold, the many rooftop gardens that littered the canopies, and the emerald cobblestoned streets. Cibola City, The City of Imagination, glittered like a gem in the harsh desert it resided in, streets like veins, all flowing back to the golden heart of city hall.And for once, she was quiet."I think we can call it a night, after this last stop."I couldn't use telepathy between the other races and myself, but dullahans had always had a connection with their steads. Hirodeus neighed, great skull-like head opening as he screeched into a wet-looking cloud. Correction—a wet cloud. I was drenched, which wasn't the best of

Veronica's POV I looked at The First National Bank of Atlantis and wanted to pass out.There was no way we were walking away with whatever the hell it was that the AAs wanted the fault.There was only a small group of us—Q, Marcus, and I—that would be leading the charge on the heist. I assumed. From what I was of big movies like the Oceans series and the Italian Job, this seemed like the type of operation that needed a small battalion of highly specialized jewel thieves, techs, and mercenaries to do.Not a college dropout, a man on the verge of an anxiety attack, and a half-burnt chicken nugget."Is anyone else freaking out?" The blueprints from Marcus' bag had been the specs for the vault we needed to get into. It was so old, that the bank had been built around it. Likely, the bank had been built specifically for what was inside the vault. Which wasn't menacing at all. "No, but seriously, I can't stop thinking about all the ways in which we can—""Will you shut the fu

"Veronica…"I was deflecting, I knew that. I didn't want to deal with anything that I was going through right now. Ethridge and his threats, the potential end of the world, how close I'd come to death, or—Or, the bits of colored scrap that would come swirling up through my subconscious in the form of fucked up dreams about what may or may not have happened that fateful day when my parents died.It was all just too much, and could anyone really fault me for wanting to swap all this angst for a moment of feeling good. For feeling held? For security, and maybe even a facsimile of love?I just wanted my life to go back to the way it used to be before things got all messy. Before life got all complicated. Before I had to worry about figuring out all the hard parts.When I'd wake up in a warm bed smelling like that detergent they discontinued last year, the one that smelled like chrysanthemums on a spring morning. Ignoring the buzz of my alarm for a few more lazy moments

"Fuck me!"I was trying not to look down at the city far below me. The cars looked like ants marching along a green pathway through a dark jungle. I screamed, I knew I did, but the rush of the wind over my ears blocked it from reaching me. Brick bit into my raw palms, and the slate roof was surprisingly slippery to walk on when barefoot and like a million stories up. But, I'm pretty sure if I wasn't so batshit terrified, my red dress flowing in the wind would have made me look like one of those high-class models in quality production luxury perfume ad.No. 5 the Film style, ladies and gents!The office of the former Mayor of Cibola City erupted in literal hellfire, taking half the domed glass ceiling and all the stability of what I was standing on with it. A fiend made of an unholy amalgamation of one Duke of Hell and one partially possessed of one Ethridge Coolidge Alston Jr.—sorry, Ethridge Coolidge Alston Sr., as it turned out he was a Faustian contract-having bastard (I ca