Any Port in a Storm Read Online Free

though it was fifty hours long, and even though four in the morning is still pretty early for me, I feel heavy with exhaustion, my eyes sandy and my head buzzing and dizzy.
    "How was your day?" he asks. His voice is deep and rich, like Bela Lugosi as Dracula. Sometimes I think Carrick wishes vampires were real so he could pretend to be one. He's the type I could imagine swishing around and sweeping swoon-prone young women into a world of lust and blood.
    Have I mentioned how sexy that's not? I've been around things that look at me as lunch. No, thank you.
    "My day was long," I say.  
    I tell him what happened to Saturn, and his laconic slouch perks up into an attentive, upright position on the couch.  
    "But he'll live?" To his credit, Carrick manages to sound like he cares. He and Saturn have a weird relationship. It probably has to do with the fact that Carrick just up and decided to live with me, and Saturn thinks I'm going to sleep with Carrick or something.  
    Again, I say no, thank you.
    "He'll live. Won't be winning any reality show singing competitions any time soon most likely, but he'll live."
    My apartment feels strangely chill and empty. The air conditioning is still on, but the outside air is cooler with the onset of autumn, and I can't shake the hollow feeling of my home.  
    Instead of dwelling on it, I change the subject.  
    "Have you heard from Gregor?" I ask.
    Carrick nods at that. "He would like us to take them out hunting tomorrow night."
    I rub my palm over my face, which carries a sheen of end-of-day grease. We've been running little hunting expeditions with the shades for a while now, taking them out to take out hellkin and learn how they move together to hone their training. Nothing new there.
    It's been almost three months since Carrick moved in here, and I still don't know what to do with him. "Do you really think all this will help?" I ask.
    "Help what?"
    I gesture toward my balcony, feeling a pang again at the memory of how Mason used to sit out there, dangling his legs over the edge from seven stories up. "Help them. The shades. Help the Mediators or the norms or whatever."
    Instead of a flippant dismissal, Carrick turns my words over in his head. I can see him considering and wonder if he really feels connected to these Tennessean shades at all. He's the only one left of his batch of shades from four hundred years ago, and while the shades we work with have formed their own circles and groups, Carrick seems like he's just punching the clock most of the time.
    "I think having purpose is helpful," he says finally.
    "For the shades?"
    "For everyone. You have it, with the Mediators. Gregor has it."  
    "Fair enough."
    I notice he leaves himself off that list, but I don't push.  
    I even think I agree with him. The shades we work with seem to want to work with us. There's a nebulous sort of relief I see in Miles and Rade and Jax and Hanu and all the others, that whatever it is we're doing is somehow legitimizing their existence so the Mediators won't just kill them.
    That's a depressing thought.
    I hear Nana Bunny in my room, and I get up to let her out. The leather sofa creaks under my movement. After a moment, Carrick gets up too.
    Nana hops out of her corral and immediately hurries into the living room to check out the smells, ears twitching. If the scent of so   many predators bothers her, she doesn't let on, only makes a frenzied circuit of the living room before coming to rest by my feet where I stand in the doorway to my room. I take a knee to scratch between her felty ears, glad for her little bunny existence.  
    Standing back up takes more effort than I like, and I give Carrick a wave. "Tomorrow night. Are they coming here, or are we meeting them somewhere?"
    "Gregor said to meet at the Opry at midnight." Whenever Carrick says Opry , he gives it an ironic sort of eye roll as if it lowers his social class to even say the word.  
    I ignore his classier-than-thou attitude and nod. The