Free The Gates of Paradise by Melissa de La Cruz

warned.
    “Fine,” Schuyler said. “I just…I worry about you. What’s going on?”
    “There’s nothing to worry about. I’m just having a bit
of fun. You spend time in the underworld, see if you don’t act the same.”
    “Kingsley…”
    “I told you, nothing’s wrong.”
    “Right.”
    “You know, Schuyler, she was right, you are a pain in the—”
    “Martin!” Oliver warned, having walked out of his room to see what the commotion was all about.
    Schuyler stepped aside, and Kingsley went out the door. When he shut it with a bang behind him, she turned to Oliver. “I’m right, you know. He’s not the same. What’s gotten into him? What do we do? We can’t let him just waste himself this way—he’s a Venator! The other teams are—”
    “I’ll try to talk to him,” Oliver said. “Tell him to tone it down. Find out what’s bothering him.”
    Oliver never got the chance to have his tête-à-tête. The next morning, when he and Schuyler walked into the dining room, Kingsley was already at the breakfast table, dressed and ready, reading the morning news on his screen.
    “What’s with the early-bird act?” Schuyler asked, picking up an apple while Oliver appraised the day’s offerings of toad in the hole, kippers, and rashers of bacon.
    “I’m, ah—leaving,” Kingsley replied, putting down the tablet.
    “Where to?” Oliver asked.
    “Can’t say.” He took a drink of orange juice and grimaced, inspecting the glass. “I think this is off. But it could just be that I can’t taste it. Oh well, thought I’d try.” He picked up a doughnut and began to chew with a moody look on his face.
    “Don’t change the subject. Why can’t you tell us where you’re going?” Schuyler demanded.
    “Better if you don’t know. Safer,” he mumbled.
    Schuyler exchanged a worried glance with Oliver. “Kingsley, stop playing MI6. Let us help. This isn’t a game.”
    “No!” he yelled, then looked abashed. “Sorry—but I have to do this alone. I’m not sure it’s even something. It could be nothing, and I don’t want you to get your hopes up.…I don’t have much to go on,” he murmured, fingering something under the table. It looked like a postcard.
    “It’s about Mimi, isn’t it? She’s alive, then? What about Jack…? Kingsley!” Schuyler said, getting up from her seat. “Come back!”
    But the Venator had left the room in a flash, and there was nothing left on his plate but a half-eaten doughnut.
    “Let him go. He’ll come back,” Oliver said, spreading butter on his toast. He regarded his breakfast skeptically. “Wonder why it’s called a toad in the hole. Are the eggs the toad? Or the sausages?”
    Schuyler turned to him. “What if he’s working for the Silver Bloods?”
    “He’s not, Sky. I know he’s not. I trust him. Do you?”
    “I guess I do. I just wish he would tell us what’s going on.” She did trust Kingsley—Oliver was right. He was no longer the slippery Venator who had danced with her at the after-party at the Four Hundred Ball and whispered in her ear. Back then, she’d even wondered if he had been the one who’d kissed her at the dance. It was Kingsley who had called forth the Silver Blood that had attacked the Repository, but he explained that he’d done it on the orders of the Regis—it was Charles Force who had commanded him to do it, to test the strength of the Gates of Hell. As a loyal Venator, Kingsley could only obey. She couldn’t hold that against him. The gates were supposed to hold, but instead they had proved as permeable as a membrane, and the demon had been allowed to escape from the underworld. Only then did Charles finally accept that the Silver Bloods had returned.
    “Kingsley does what he wants, but there’s no changing him,” Oliver said. “Let him go—he’ll work it out.”
    “Do you think he’s gone to see Mimi?” she asked. And if Mimi was alive, what did that mean for Jack? Did it mean then, that—? She felt her heart