Pack of Lies

by Edwards, Hailey

  Goddess, my head was such a mess.

  The golden beast nudged my hand with his cool nose, and I twisted the knob.

  The door swung open onto an empty room with solid walls. The simple box might have once been an office or a meeting room. Midas mentioned the previous owners giving factory tours and grilling up samples, so why go windowless? Why not let customers watch the floor in action while they bargained and tasted? Unless weak stomachs concerned them.

  A low growl poured into the room, and I sank my fingers into the coarse fur of Midas’s ruff.

  “Glamour?” I aimed the question at Midas, but Ambrose understood I wanted his opinion.

  Smacking his lips, he sampled the air, sliding across the floor, feeling out the space. He came to rest above a blob of snot, similar to the humming goo, and shivered with delight.

  Midas shook his head, uncertain, and scratched a claw across the threshold, testing for a basic ward.

  Ambrose, noticing this, timed it just right to devour his find before I could intervene, and his power tripled within me, expanding until it stuffed me to the brim.

  Not good. Very not good. Super not good.

  The pressure in the air popped like a cork as the ward fell, and a room different than the one we first saw swam into focus.

  Blood streaked the walls and the floor, dark and coagulated. A window shimmered to my left, giving the view of the factory I had anticipated, and hairline cracks from an impact fanned out from a central point.

  Vision wobbling as reality settled around us, I stepped into the room and gained my bearings.

  Midas kept his side pressed against me, propping me up, and his nose to the ground.

  I wanted to hurl. To hurl and hurl and hurl until I turned myself inside out. Then hurl some more.

  The floor tiles had been ripped out and the concrete slab cut. A pit yawned in the center of the room, the thick metal bars crisscrossing its maw visible from a distance. As I approached, the ragged edge of a growl informed me there was a good reason why this room had been warded so thoroughly.

  We weren’t alone.

  Twelve

  The cobwebs left from the glamour deteriorated on the edges of the room, and Midas avoided them for fear of what else might lurk in them. Toeing a line shouldn’t have broken such an intricate ward, but the magic user had kidnapped a pack member and OPA staff. Neither of those abductions could have been planned, were likely crimes of opportunity, meaning they were impulsive decisions. The abductors hadn’t had long to stash Ford or Bishop. This place must have already been in use. That would explain the sloppy warding done by a faction who were clearly masters of the art.

  The pit bothered him, tugged on his senses, hauling him closer to the edge.

  He smelled who was in there, who the magic users wanted him to believe was in there, but he hesitated.

  “I don’t like it, either.” Hadley absently scratched behind his ear. “This was too easy.”

  Easy access, and the intel had been free too. He wouldn’t buy the Swyft driver’s apology for a penny.

  Midas crowded Hadley out, stepped up to the edge, and peered into the darkness.

  The darkness peered back.

  “Your hair is doing that standing-on-end thing.” Hadley stepped beside him. “Oh, goddess, no.”

  She hit her knees, threaded her fingers through the grate, and yanked, but it didn’t budge.

  “Ford?” Tears too hot to be sad burned down her cheeks. “Hold on. We’re here. We’ll get you out.”

  Gently, Midas took her hand in his mouth and pulled it back, waiting until she removed the other one too before allowing transformative magic to sweep over him, through him, and pull him out the other side.

  “Look at him,” he panted. “Really look.”

  “I see him.” She leaned forward, half her body over the edge. “He’s—”

  A gasp stuck in her throat when Ford charged the grate, his skull ramming the unforgiving metal, and Midas yanked her close.

  “He’s infected.” Midas clutched her arms. “He smells sick.”

  “He’s been used as a chew toy and tossed in a dirty hole. Of course he smells sick.”

  “Look again,” he urged. “What do you see on the wounds?”

  One hand fisted his shirt, trusting him to haul her back to safety, while she leaned forward. “Roaches.”

  “He’s infected.” Midas let it sink in. “We can’t release him until we know what we’re dealing with.”

  “No.” She pressed the back of her wrist against her mouth. “He can’t be.”

  About to argue, to force her to think past her shock, he grasped what she meant, and he tasted bile. The black-brown spots catching the light through the window weren’t patches of wet blood in matted fur as he’d assumed.

  “Those are egg cases.” Midas recoiled. “He’s being used as a host.”

  “Call your healer.” Hadley shot to her feet and backed from the room. “We’re going to need all the help we can get.”

  Ford was beyond reason, foaming at the mouth and snarling, his eyes gone blind with rage.

  Unwilling to leave Hadley on her own in this place, he texted Abbott then went in search of her.

  She had torn through five rooms, all cramped and tight like the one where Ford waited, but her face told him the news before she found her voice. “Bishop isn’t here.”

  How she hammered through that many wards that fast, he knew better than to ask. Just as the pack kept secrets, so did the OPA. Where she showed caution before, she threw it to the wind now that she knew what they were up against.

  “Bishop,” she screamed. “Bishop.”

  “This place is huge.” Midas went to her. “He might still be here.”

  “It’s empty.” She flung herself into his arms. “He’s not here.”

  The uptick of his heart in his ears made him dizzy, but he pulled her close and let her sob.

  “How can you be sure?” He pushed the curtain of blonde curls out of her face. “I can shift and—”

  “No.” Watery eyes blinked up at him. “I need to update Linus.”

  Midas trailed her at a discreet distance, watching to make certain there were no more surprises in store for them. She got into his truck and rested her head against the steering wheel, and he began his search for any signs of Bishop she might have missed.

  Thirteen

  The horror of Ford’s condition left me queasy and desperate for comfort. As good as leaning on Midas felt, he was a temporary solution to my problem. I had to put down roots as Hadley. Hiding out wasn’t working. I was crumbling around the edges. The job was consuming my life, and I was letting it gobble me down bite by bite.

  Now was the time when I needed a friend to call, but Ford and Bishop were the closest thing I had, and neither of them were in any shape to stroke my hair and tell me everything was going to be all right.

  Family was out, thanks to the whole disownment thing. I was banned from calling my brothers and…

  Scrolling through my contacts faster than I could change my mind, I located her number and dialed before I lost my courage.

  “Hadley.” Surprise brightened Adelaide’s voice. “Everything okay, sweetie?”

  The sister card was one I didn’t play often for this exact reason. For a split second, when I called out of the blue, I heard the love and loyalty owed to her sister. The real Hadley. The one who had died in her arms.

  “I…” I swallowed hard. “Never mind. I’m sorry I called. I shouldn’t have bothered you.”

  I hung up before I made an even bigger fool of myself, and when the phone rang, I ignored it for the longest time. Only when Midas padded to the opened bay door did I cave so he wouldn’t worry too.

  “You’re my sister,” she rushed out quickly. “Listen to me.”

  “I’m not…her.”

  “No, you’re not, but I’m engaged to your brother. That makes you my future sister.” She raised her voice over me. “We don’t know each other
well, and that’s both our faults for not making time to bond, but I lost Hadley and then I lost Mom. All I had left was Dad. Just Dad. That was it. And then Boaz, and now you.”

  I cradled the phone tighter to my ear, but I didn’t manage more than that.

  “You call if you need me.” Steel underscored her order. “Understand?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not good enough.”

  “Yes,” I said, stronger. “I understand.”

  “Now, why did you call?”

  “Two of my friends went missing, and we found one but not the other, and I don’t know what to do. I’m going to mess this up, and then I’ll get fired, and then I won’t have anything. I won’t be anything.”

  Except a failure. A total and complete failure. Exactly as my mother predicted.

  “Breathe for me.” She inhaled and exhaled in time with me. “There you go. Good girl.”

  “This is harder than I thought it would be.” I wiped my nose on my shirttail. “That sounds naïve, but it’s a different world here. I thought I understood, but I didn’t. These people depend on me, and I’m just…”

  “Enough.”

  Snapping my mouth shut, I let the chastisement sink in. “Okay.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” She dialed her hard-ass big-sister voice up to ten. “Repeat after me.”

  “Okay?”

  “I am enough.” Adelaide cleared her throat when nothing emerged from my end. “Repeat. After. Me.” She left no room for argument. “I am enough.”

  “I am…enough.”

  “That was weak, but not bad for your first try.”

  “I am enough.”

  “There you go.” She laughed. “You got this.” A loud whirring noise filled the background. “Linus wouldn’t be blending bottomless margaritas otherwise.”

  “You’re at Woolworth House?”

  “Did you miss the bottomless margaritas part?”

  Linus and Grier were having a party, inviting the neighbors over, while I sat covered in snot and self-doubt.

  I am enough.

  Pushing out a deep breath, I kept it brief. “Thanks for the pep talk.”

  “Anytime.”

  We made goodbye noises, and I ended the call to free up my phone for dictation. After a quick email to Linus to update him, I shot one off to Bishop’s phone. Routine made it easier. Pretending Bishop was at HQ, safe in his command center, made it possible for me to keep putting one foot in front of the other. About to step out for some fresh air, I heard my phone and fought not to hope it was Bishop after all. But it was only Reece.

  >>The crawlers are active.

  The creepy crawlers?

  >>Sure.

  That’s good news.

  >>They’ve been in the sewer for three hours and counting. They’ll have to come up for charging soon.

  Anything?

  >>Not yet.

  Keep me posted if that changes.

  >>Will do.

  A familiar SUV rolled to a stop beside the truck, and I waved at Abbott as he stepped onto the gravel.

  “He drove you here in that?” The healer grimaced. “I’m amazed you survived the trip.”

  “It was a near thing,” I confessed. “It gave me a new appreciation for Swyft drivers everywhere.”

  “Where is he?” Abbott slung a pack onto his shoulder before the guard climbing out of the back got his hands on it. Call me crazy, but he seemed to be in a rebellious mood lately. The mantle of healer was clearly starting to make him itch. “He went light on the details.”

  “I’ll show you.” I angled toward the open bay and repeated the update I just finished for my people.

  “Do you think this is the coven’s doing?”

  He had already patched up Midas, Ford, and me after one go-around with the witchborn fae, so he had the inside scoop on their MO.

  “Snowball changed forms with a snap of her fingers. The transition was seamless. Blink and you’d miss it. This is invasive. The bond appears to be parasitic, and the only host we’ve met didn’t survive. The gwyllgi who led me into an ambush was destroyed when the Martian Roach exploded out of it.”

  The cleaners had attempted to identify the gwyllgi I had mistaken for Ford, but they hadn’t had much luck so far. There was too little left of him, and the magic goo was giving their instruments fits.

  “Ford’s truck.” Abbott exhaled through his teeth when he spotted the stained bed. “He’ll go nuclear when he sees this.”

  “We need to wait for cleaners to sweep the area, but I’ll file the paperwork to have it released into pack custody. I’ll take it through the wash and get it detailed before he sees it.”

  The idea of actionable steps made returning to the room where we discovered Ford doable.

  Abbott took one look at him and ordered us all out of the building.

  We left, even the guards, and waited on the healer to join us.

  “Bring the RV,” Abbott commanded his guards. “I’ll have to treat Ford on site. We can’t risk him contaminating the rest of the pack.” He ushered Midas and me over to him. “You two will have to be examined and cleansed before I can allow you to leave.”

  “All right.” Naked didn’t scare me half as much as the thought of infestation. “Where?”

  “A sterile environment would be best.” The healer examined the area, his mouth tightening. “Can you set a warded circle?”

  Wary of giving myself away, I rolled around how much I wanted him to know and decided it was a small thing to set a circle. Ambrose could do it in his sleep, and he was flush with power that had to go somewhere. Might as well start burning the excess.

  “Sure.” I reached for Ambrose and dipped my hand into chilling darkness. “It will only take a minute.”

  I was the conduit for Ambrose’s magic, but he was the spark, and using him while also leashing him, maintaining the balance that kept me in control, made every task ten times harder than it had to be. That was why I didn’t use even simple necromantic magic on a regular basis. Too much hassle.

  “I didn’t know you could work magic.” Midas kept an eye on me. “That’s rare for Low Society necromancers.”

  Crazy rare, but it happened. I could explain it away so easily under different circumstances.

  My big brother has magic too. Just a trickle. It must run in the family. Whodathunkit?

  But the only relative I could publicly claim these days was Adelaide. Her dad too, I suppose, but he would have to leave their house for that to happen, and it was a rare occurrence. The few times I had “gone home” to sign papers, make appearances, whatever, I noticed he got in his steps by walking from his room to the downstairs bar.

  Since he was a sad drunk and not a mean drunk, I pretended not to see him during his nightly treks.

  Alcohol was justification in a bottle, a stamp of approval for whatever came next.

  Skinny-dip in the neighbor’s pool? Start a fire? Run your car off the road? Alcohol was game.

  Stab someone? Shoot someone? Word vomit what you really thought about them? Alcohol approved.

  Mom hadn’t required a shot of liquid courage. She was, or had been, a teetotaler.

  Drunk or sober, the hits still counted, the hurts still ached. Did it matter if the person doing the hurting was clear or glassy-eyed?

  “Only a little.” I cleared my voice to rid it of the past. “And not very well.”

  “Can you manage it twice?” Abbott glanced between us. “That way you can take turns.”

  “Probably not.” On the magic front, I needed to appear as weak as possible. “I’m usually one and done.”

  “We can share,” Midas said roughly. “As long as Hadley doesn’t mind.”

  “Not at all.” I blew out a long breath that rustled my hair. “I’ll just go do magic then.”

  Faking the need for distance, I walked off several paces and crouched as I removed a modified fountain pen from my pocket. Aside from homework, I never used the thing. The cartridge contain
ed a mixture of blood, which Linus had volunteered, and herbs to create the ink used for necromantic magic.

  Ambrose could take control of my hand and guide it, but that was the same as sticking your head into an alligator’s mouth and trusting it not to snap its jaws. The method I was most comfortable with, when I absolutely had to use magic, was the shadow coaching me by drawing with his finger about an inch from mine.

  Careful to follow his instruction, I got the design copied. All that remained was pushing power into it, and that was on him. The others couldn’t know that, so I stood and stepped into the center of the circle.

  “I’m ready,” I called to them, and they joined me. Ambrose slinked in too and shut it behind him. “Now what?”

  “Midas can face away while you remove your shirt. I want to inspect any body parts that leaned over the hole.” His face set into apologetic lines. “We must take every precaution.”

  “It’s no problem.” Thanks to my recent habit of nearly dying, he had already seen me mostly naked. A few times. “Can I keep my bra on?”

  “For now.”

  On my periphery, Midas shifted his weight. He stood as close to the ward as he could get, and I bet if he stuck his tongue out, he could lick it.

  Abbott got to work, smoothing his hands down my arms and across my shoulders, his touch leaving warm tingles in its wake as his healing magic probed me. The physical exam didn’t take long, then he took it to the next level. Eyes closed, he hovered his hand over various parts of my body, humming to himself, and pausing here or there to cluck his tongue at whatever he saw.

  For my part, I really hoped this wasn’t some soul-gaze mess. I did not need someone digging around in there. Aside from Ambrose, I wasn’t the pure-of-heart kind of girl, and I preferred keeping that to myself.

  “You already had these scars?” Abbott touched the small of my back. “This stippling?”

  “Yes.” Though I could see how the pattern might confuse him. “They’re old news.”

  “They’re shaped like—”

  The bristles of a hairbrush, the nylon kind, after the rubber caps had worn away or been picked off the ends. I was never sure which was the case with the wooden brush my mother kept on her dresser. All that mattered was it hurt like a sonofagun, and the pins broke skin when swung with enough force.