King for a Day (The King Trilogy #2)(2)
Author: Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

What the hell did that mean? Honestly, I wasn’t sure. I knew very little about being a Seer and had yet to accept the existence of my “gift,” but King had opened my eyes to many, many strange and impossible things. One of which was the reality of sixth senses and abilities that defied logic or science. I, for example, could see colors—emotional impressions, if you will—of people and/or objects even after they’d left a place or passed on. King had thought to use my ability to track down something he’d been hunting for a very, very long time: the Artifact. I had no idea what it did, but I hadn’t proven to be much use helping him find it.

I looked down at my feet, wondering why they refused to move. Apparently, they weren’t as brave as my hands. I sighed and decided to look inside, using my gift.

I relaxed my lids, closing them just a little, and focused on my shallow breaths. When I reopened them and stared into the darkness of King’s warehouse, it was like gazing into a giant kaleidoscope of swirling rainbows. Every color was present, from the lightest to the darkest, not that I understood what they all meant. Red, I knew, was violent pain. Black, death. Blue, sorrow. Green was life. And purple? That was King. He let me see his colors once, only once, and it was the moment my feelings for him began to shift from hate and fear into something else, something I didn’t want to talk about. But maybe those messed-up feelings were really why I was there.

I dropped my head. “Dammit.” I had to go inside. I’d have to persuade the rest of my body to be as brave as my hands.

I turned on my phone’s flashlight app, took three quick breaths, and stepped inside, where I quickly found a bank of light switches on the wall. When I flipped them on, the place lit up like a stadium.

“Holy shit.” My breath left my body. What is this place?

Floor-to-ceiling, heavy-duty racks like you might see at Costco filled the enormous warehouse. But that’s not what shocked me. They were full of…stuff. Antique cars—yes, cars—huge oil paintings, stacks of books, marble sculptures of Roman soldiers and Greek gods, wine barrels, guns, and…I couldn’t begin to take it all in. Crossing aisle after aisle of shelves that had four or five tiers each, I strolled from one end of the room to the other.

There are three levels to this building? I’d seen it from the outside. Three distinct stories. Oh my God. So this is King’s arsenal. These were the things he scoured the earth to find, some I imagined to keep, some to barter away with members of 10 Club—I’d get to the story of those sick bastards in a moment. Right now, however, I needed to answer the hounding question that I simply didn’t want to ask: Why the hell was I really there? Had King wanted me to find this place, anticipating that something bad was going to happen to him?

If yes, did he know I would come? Given how he’d treated me—horribly—it would have been a gamble. On the other hand, he had recently saved the lives of two people—my mother and brother—whom I loved dearly. Did he know that might buy a little loyalty from me?

Probably. The damned evil, beautiful man knows everything. He even knew that a part of me felt drawn to him. He’d said I had an attraction to his darkness but just couldn’t admit it to myself. I was beginning to think he might be right, because it wasn’t my happy side preventing me from running out the door. And I was completely fascinated by this place.

Heading toward a wide staircase I spotted, I walked down one of the long, wide aisles that stretched down the center of the warehouse. I passed crate after crate of objects, some with tags, some with little photos stapled to them. There were vases, an Excalibur (the car, not the sword), and cases of whisky. I wondered if it was the good stuff Mack—King’s pilot and right hand—had told me about once. (I was a whisky fan.)

Hands and knees shaking, sweat creeping down the small of my back underneath my red sweater, I became increasingly nervous as I approached the stairs. What would I find on the second floor? Surely the ominous vibe wasn’t coming from the objects down here. Uh-uh. While they were seemingly pricey or rare, they were innocuous.

I grabbed hold of the railing and crept up a few steps. I leaned forward, attempting to catch a glimpse of whatever was up there. I could practically smell the death and pain…the power.

“Eh-hem.” I heard a woman clear her throat.

I spun and practically fell on my rear but caught myself with the railing. An extremely thin brunette, wearing skintight, white leather pants and a gold silk top, stood just a few feet away at the base of the stairs, with one hand cocked on her boney hip.

“Miss Turner,” she said, “nice to see you again.”

Oh no. What’s she doing here? The woman’s name was Talia. I knew because I’d met her at a 10 Club party King had made me attend a few days before he disappeared. She had a face you couldn’t easily forget, despite really, really wanting to. Because there was such a thing as too much plastic surgery and too much makeup.

“How did you find this place?” I asked.

Ignoring my question, Talia reached into her bag and handed me a folded piece of paper.

“What’s that?” I asked.

Her eyes flickered with abhorrence as they washed over me. “Take it, you moron. It’s a letter.”

I tried not to take offense. After all, the woman looked like her face had been caught in a garbage disposal and then repaired by a wild pack of clowns. She was also insanely jealous of me. Not because of my looks (my blue eyes and shoulder-length, blonde waves were my best features but nothing spectacular). It was because I had been marked by King with a “K” tattoo on the underside of my wrist. I’d been just as shocked, or really more outraged, by it as she had when we first met at that party. Not only did it mean I belonged to King, it made me practically untouchable by anyone in 10 Club. Later, I’d learn that his mark was so much more than that, but in any case, Talia hated me from the very first moment.

I stepped down off the stairs and took the letter from her anorexic hand. I opened it and began to read, but the words made no sense. It was as if they’d been written in Shakespearean English.

“What’s it mean?” I asked.

She slid a cigarette from her white leather handbag and lit it, blowing the smoke into the air like she’d just experienced some great orgasmic satisfaction by giving me that letter. She flicked her ashes on the cement floor and then smiled. “Have you seen King lately?”

Why did I feel as if this was a trick question? “He’s been busy,” I lied, trying to act casual, like I simply hung out at this creepy warehouse all the time, doing work for the man.