Eye of the Sh*t Storm by Jackson Ford (most romantic novels .txt) 📕

entire day has turned into what Teagan, with her delightful mouth, would call a clusterfuck. Reggie may not be with China Shop for much longer, but if she’s going to go out, then she’ll go out the right way. Not sitting here, cowering behind a screen.

She steels herself, then picks up the phone. In the past, her regular cab company was one that was specifically friendly to the disabled community, but they’re gone now – another victim of the quake. She doesn’t like having to use someone else, but she doesn’t have a choice right now.

“Hello? Yes, I’d like a cab please. Biggest one you got. Going to Ralph Dills Park. Yes, for right now.”

THIRTYTeagan

Every so often, throughout this whole insane day, I’ve let myself fantasise about what I’d do when it was all over.

A really hot bath, with more bubbles in it than actual water. A beer. No, three beers. All lined up neatly. So cold the glass is frosted over. And a sandwich – nothing too fancy, maybe some pastrami and brown mustard on really good bread. With a pickle. Then sleep. At least twenty hours of deep, dark, dreamless sleep.

The most enticing part of this fantasy? Being alone. I haven’t been by myself since I was flying my makeshift hoverboard around an electrified storage unit, while coming down off a meth high. That did not, shall we say, recharge my introvert batteries.

I’m alone now, and I feel like I should be able to take some pleasure in that. Even just a little. Problem is, I’ve been separated from Nic and Leo, and locked in the grimmest room I’ve ever been in.

I mean that, by the way. It’s a concrete cube with a single bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling, and a single battered wooden chair. The concrete has some very suspicious stains on it. There are metal brackets bolted to the walls, as if this used to be a storeroom, but there are no shelves in sight. A cigarette packet lies crumpled in a corner.

It’s kind of ridiculous, actually. I didn’t exactly expect plush couches and complimentary fruit bowls, but I also didn’t expect Robert and his friends to hang out in a movie cliché. You know the ones I’m talking about, where the bad guys always have their lair in a warehouse filled with hanging chains and flickering lights and grimy, unwashed corridors? Well, the Legends clearly saw those movies and thought, Hey, we should get some of that action!

After they took us, I figured they’d bring us back to the hotel – the one with the meth lab. Turns out they’ve got a few spots, and the one we’re at now is an old train depot in Chinatown. They didn’t bother blindfolding us on the way over.

Which worries me. A lot.

The depot is a cavernous, echoing space, filled with silent train cars and lengths of rotting track. There’s trash everywhere, along with stacks of mouldy crates. There’s a big, rectangular central shed, sets of tracks running in and out of it. On the long sides of the rectangle are storerooms and offices, two floors of them on each side, with grimy windows looking out onto the main part of the shed. There’s a smell to the place, a sick tang: crack smoke and ozone and, weirdly, a hint of jasmine flower.

I didn’t dare fight back. Not even when they separated me from Nic and Leo. We still don’t know where Annie is, if she’s even in the same building.

Leo, thank fuck, was still out of it. Conscious, but super-woozy, and unable to walk. They didn’t make Nic put him down, but they did pull him to a different part of the depot. I told Nic to relax, that we’d figure this out. Charitably: I don’t think he believed me.

And now I’m just sitting here. Trying to figure out what the fuck I’m going to do.

I’ve sent out my PK energy a dozen times, and there are plenty of things I could use it on. Hell, it would take me about half a second to open the door. The lock is a piece of shit.

Problem is, if I do that, then Annie dies. Also Nic.

So I sit. And try not to freak the fuck out. Try not to focus on my hunger and thirst and my leaden, aching tiredness and how deeply fucked I am.

I actually drift off a couple of times – microsleeps, the kind where your dipping head makes you snort yourself awake. Come to think of it, why am I actually staying awake? I’m not doing anything. I could probably take a nap right now, and—

My house has doors that open but never close, and it lies, oh it lies it lies.

I shudder, suddenly fully awake. Fucking Zigzag prick. What the hell does he want? Well, OK, he wants Leo… but why?

And I still can’t shake what he did to me. That fantasy world that he put me in felt so real. Like Jonas Schmidt was right there, ready to take me away from all of this.

He must have pulled that from my subconscious. I guess I really do still hold out hope for a hot German billionaire to swoop in and save the day. I don’t know whether to be appalled or just sad.

Footsteps. Shuffling noises outside the door. Low voices. I snap out of my thoughts, blinking, trying to look both relaxed and supremely pissed off.

The door opens, and a tiny woman comes in.

No, seriously. I thought I was short, but this woman is a good foot shorter than me. She looks like she’d disintegrate if you blew her a kiss. At least, that’s what I think until I see her face, the sour twist of her mouth, the hard lines around her even harder eyes, which look like chips of flint. Blow this woman a kiss, and she’d take your head off your shoulders.

Like the other Legends, she’s wearing a black motorcycle jacket with patches