I had managed to avoid thinking about Gracie’s death for weeks now. She had come to Tombstone, Arizona when I needed her—she’d been there to help me fight werewolves—and she had died for it.
Cass hadn’t come out and said it—hadn’t talked to me at all—but I knew she would blame me. Hell, I blamed myself.
Gracie’s death wasn’t my fault. I knew that consciously. All the responsibility for that belonged to the demon. He cursed our families generations earlier, and he killed Gracie. Cass and Gracie and I weren’t really cousins. Our ancestors had simply had the bad luck to be monster-hunting together when they ran across an earth-demon with a sense of humor. The details were fuzzy, but the basics were clear: one member of each family inherited the curse, binding the heir to the southwestern United States, forcing him or her to hunt monsters, and inflicting a metallurgic allergy that made hunting more difficult.
I can’t touch silver, so more often than not, I’m Called to hunt werewolves. Of course. Usually it’s a stabbing sensation in my gut instead of a phone call, though.
Oh. Wait. The phone call from Cass also left me with that gut-stabbed feeling. Great.
Cass is allergic to iron. If her troubles ran true to form, I was pretty sure we would be up against the fae again.
I hated those winged fuckers.
Of course, that would only happen if I could drag my ass out of the van. I reached up and ran one fingertip over the dark circles under my eyes. I was tired, too—the drive was long, but I’d stopped twice for short naps and downed about a gallon of coffee, so I was still functioning. This was grief.
From his spot in the passenger seat, Wolf whined.
“I know,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “But I miss her.” If not for Wolf, I’d be dead, too. He saved me in Tombstone, then again in a tiny town in Colorado, and here I was, about to drag him into some big family drama. I flicked my gaze toward him, and then back to my reflection. “You know we’re going to have to do the leash thing, right? We’re in a city. They’ve got laws and shit.”
That being said, I wondered how a wolf would look next to the French bulldogs these city dwellers were walking when I was looking for a place to park.
Wolf’s low growl probably should have frightened me, but instead I laughed—and a glance at his wolfy grin told me that had been his goal. “You’re the one who doesn’t shift. If you’d turn human, we could skip the whole charade.”
He blew out a snort and shook his head. I’d seen his human form just once, on Christmas Eve, when he’d changed long enough to carry me out of an old silver mine where I’d been dying. I don’t think the change had been on purpose. In fact, I was pretty sure he wasn’t able to change except under extraordinary circumstances.
Someday I’d figure out why.
Not today, though. Today, I was going to introduce him to my prickliest cousin. Also, the prettiest. Squaring my shoulders, I straightened the rearview mirror, so I couldn’t look at myself any longer and hit the button to call her.
“Hello?” Her tired voice filled the speaker, but at the same time, it felt empty and battered.
I smiled, trying to act like everything was all right. “Hey, Cass. It's me. I'm here.”
A pause. "Oh."
I licked my lips nervously. Even though she'd only said two words, she didn't sound right, and it was throwing me off. "Uh, where are you? And how do I get to you?”
Cass still sounded weird, but she gave me her address and instructions for getting up her apartment. We left the van in a nearby garage, and I hooked the leash to Wolf’s collar. That was another fashion statement he had protested in his wolfish way, but one I insisted on. It was bright turquoise with rhinestones, and the unnatural color screamed this one’s a pet. As much as he didn’t like it, I was certain it helped keep him safe—safer than he would’ve been without it, anyway. Safe from hunters of the non-supernatural kind, the ones who might mistake him for a wild animal that needed killing.
I still hadn’t told Cass about him. How could I even bring up something like that? “Hey. I know we’re monster hunters, but I have a werewolf friend now?” No, better to wait and explain it when she could see him for herself, when he could show her he wasn’t a danger to us.
Her apartment building was new, everything light and airy in its construction. I pushed the buzzer, and Cass rang us in. There was an elevator up to her floor, and I checked it out. But we took the stairs. If Cass was in trouble, I didn’t want to get trapped in an elevator.
“Eleven flights of stairs,” I muttered, glancing down at Wolf. He shook his head but started up.
It always amazed me that she could stand to live in the city like San Francisco, given all the ways iron was incorporated into its structures. When I got too close to silver, it set up a kind of hum in my head, a painful buzz that vibrated down into my bones until they ached. I assumed Cassie must feel something similar around the iron that helped make up the steel in buildings.
Then again, I’d never actually asked. With Gracie gone, I was realizing just how much she’d played intermediary for us.
She’d been our peacemaker.
Like Cass, Gracie had always preferred cities to the wilderness, though she’d been comfortable in both. Me and Cass? We hunted in different environments, given our choice. She preferred the city streets at night, claiming that the monsters we stalked preferred to hide among their prey. Sometimes I wondered if she was talking about herself—or maybe me.
I tended to take our demonic curse more literally. We were confined to the southwest, so I hunted as often as possible in the open spaces—the deserts and the small Western towns, places where I could see my enemies coming for miles. In theory, anyway. When it came down to it, there were almost as many places for a monster to hide in a small town, at least for a while, as there were in a city.
I gave myself enough time at the top to catch my breath. I was pretty sure grief still made me ugly, but there wasn’t anything to be done about that at this point.
I shouldn’t have worried. When Cass opened the door at my knock, I gasped. “You look like hell.”
Chapter Six
Blaize
“Gee, thanks.” Cass sounded tired—and I knew those wounds had to hurt. I reached one hand out toward her face, tentatively, then recoiled with a hiss as waves of invisible fire flickered against my fingertips. “Silver? You used silver on yourself?”
“It’s the only thing that heals werewolf bites.” Her tone was defensive. She turned away and walked into the short entry, until a low-pitched growl from behind me stopped her. She froze completely, and I realized she couldn’t have seen Wolf behind me when she opened the door.
He slid out to one side, and I flicked my gaze toward him. “Not now.”
Cassie finally turned, her face completely white, her eyes wide. “That thing is with you?”
“It’s perfectly okay,” I said. “He—”
“You brought one of those monsters into my home?” Her voice shook with suppressed anger. “How dare you?”
“That’s a little melodramatic, don’t you think?” I tried to keep my own tone light, but I didn’t manage it.
“One of your friend’s pack-mates took my boyfriend.” She sneered at the words friend and pack-mates.
I blinked and shook my head. Wait. What? Her boyfriend was missing? Oh, hell. This was bad. Still… “Wolf didn’t have anything to do with that,” I said. “He couldn’t have. He was with me in New Mexico.”
“Wolf? His name is Wolf?”
“What? No. I don’t know what his name is.”
“And yet you think you can trust him?”
“Cass, I think this is a conversation we should have inside.”
She eyed us both, then threw the door open wide. “Come on in. But all my guns are loaded with silver bullets. And if you—either of you—make a move toward me, I’ll shoot you.” She met my eyes. “Without hesitation. I’ve had a really shitty twenty-four hours.”
We followed her into her apartment, and I shut the door firmly behind us, throwing all the bolts into the locked position. The apartment was a single room, dominated by one large bed and a television. The kitchen counter took up one wall, a row of windows another. I sat down in one of the few chairs, next to a small desk piled high with papers. Wolf sat in the corner behind me, attentive but quiet.
“Tell me what happened,” I said, fighting to keep my voice calm and supportive. Truth be told, grief wasn’t the only thing giving me dark circles under my eyes. I was also exhausted from driving flat-out for twenty hours to get here as fast as possible—not to mention spending the first three hours of it fretting about texting her back.
I felt extra-guilty about that delay now that I knew her boyfriend was missing. I needed to give Cass all my attention and be prepared to help in any way I could.
That resolution lasted almost all the way through her story. When she finished, I leaned forward, my elbows on my knees and my hands clasped loosely between them, dangling down. “Three fairy boyfriends.” It wasn’t a question—not exactly. My gaze flickered over to the giant bed as I tried not to speculate too much on its purpose in the apartment. I chewed on the inside of my lip and stared back down at the floor, trying to think what to say next.
“You might as well just come out with it,” Cass said, sounding irritated already. “You won’t be able to concentrate until you do.”
I tapped the toe of one boot against the floor, watched as the movement disturbed a couple of small dust bunnies hiding behind the legs of the desk. When I finally looked up, Cass was glaring at me.
She was also right. We needed to go ahead and have this out now. If we were lucky, it would heal, like a festering wound opened to air.
“Fairies. I thought you were supposed to fight fairies, not fuck them.” It came out harsher even than I had intended, but once the words hung in the air between us, there was no taking them back.
Cass jumped up as if she had been waiting for me to say exactly that. Maybe she had. “This from the woman who comes in dragging a werewolf behind her?”
I stood, too, taking a step closer to her. “But just one. And I’m not fucking him.” Ew. “You don’t have any room to judge. Anyway, when I got here you were drenched in silver. You trying to kill me?”
“Colloidal silver is the only thing that will get into a werewolf bite and clean it. You know that. Unless you want me to go all lupine at the next full moon?”
“It doesn’t work that way,” I said, some cowardly part of me preferring to nitpick the details of her comments instead of dealing with everything underneath them.
“It does, too. The first shift after a human is infected always happens on the full moon. Uncle Ronnie taught us that. What does he think about your new traveling companion, anyway?”
“It’s none of your business what Daddy thinks about Wolf.” We were nose-to-nose now, almost shouting, but we still hadn’t gotten to what was really bothering both of us.
“So, he’s just fine with you running around all over the country with the same kind of monster that killed Gracie?”
There it was. The real reason Cass was so pissed at me. The reason I was so pissed at myself.
When in doubt, deflect. “Yeah, well, at least I’m not rolling around in bed with him—and two others.”
“That’s what you say. Anyway, don’t change the subject.”
“I wasn’t. The subject is you slutting it up with monsters.”
“No, the subject is you getting Gracie killed.”
We shouted the last two sentences. And then we stopped to stare at each other, breathing heavily. The silence fell around us, burying us in all the words we’d just said, all the years of anger underlying them, all the pain of losing Gracie—of losing the person who had tied us together, made us a family.
Part of me wanted to stomp out right then, leave Cass and her fairy problems behind. But I knew I would regret it. Gracie was gone. We might not have the same kind of bond that we used to—and with Gracie gone, we might never have that again—but no matter how stupid she was being, Cass was family.
And if nothing else, the werewolf attack on her proved that there really was something going on in San Francisco—something to do with werewolves, something that endangered Cass.
I slumped back into the desk chair and dropped my head into my hands for a second. Running my fingers through my hair, I twisted it up behind me, then let it fall again. “Okay,” I said with a heavy sigh. “Can we start over? If we’re going to get your boyfriend back from the wolves, I need you to tell me everything you know about the local pack—structure, behavior, local hang-outs, anything.”
After a pause, I asked the one question that had been niggling at the back of my brain ever since she’d told me what had happened.
“Why would the wolves want a fairy?”
Chapter Seven
Cassidy
I glared at the abomination that sat in my apartment, the monster that my cousin called Wolf. I bet she thought it was cute calling him that, like some sort of demon-hunting Breakfast at Tiffany’s thing. If Audrey Hepburn could have a cat named Cat, why wouldn’t Blaize have a werewolf named Wolf?
Why not indeed?
The werewolf was wearing a turquoise rhinestone collar, like it was domesticated or some shit. I wondered what my landlord would think, having a wolf sitting in my four-hundred square foot studio.
I decided I didn’t like Wolf. Especially since he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—speak. Did he know anything about why his kind would kidnap my boyfriend? I hoped—wanted to believe—that he would say something if he knew.
But you never could trust monsters.
“So... three boyfriends?” Blaize asked for the umpteenth time, and I turned my attention toward her.
“Yep.”
“How did you meet them?”
I shrugged. “You hunt one fairy prince and turns into making out. You hunt another, and the same thing happens. Repeat another time and, well, you have three boyfriends.” That was gross over-simplification, because Orin had been the first boyfriend, one that I tangled with across my many, many fairy hunts. Flirting after a fight was always exhilarating, so I think it was just a matter of time before we fell into bed together.
Drake and Avery joined us quickly after that.
Blaize sat forward, and I was struck by how country my cousin looked in that moment, with her gingham shirt tucked into her jeans with her belt buckle flashing in the light, her cowboy hat cocked over her eyebrow. Then again, I wondered how different I looked to her.
We’ve drifted so far apart since we were kids.
She quirked an eyebrow in disbelief. “And they’re okay with sharing you with two other guys?”
I chuckled. “You always told me I was a lot to handle. I guess you were right, and it took three guys. They’re fine with it—a bit of a rivalry because they’re from the different courts. But they behave.” I thought about the fight that Drake and Orin got into. “For the most part,” I amended, feeling the blush in my cheeks.
Blaize took off her hat and combed a hand through her hair. “Wait, you said one was a fairy prince? Was that the one who was kidnapped?”
My blush deepened. “They’re, uh, all princes.”
“You’re fucking three fairy princes?”
I sighed. “I thought we went over this, or do I need to bring up this asshole again?” I thrusted my thumb toward the monster sitting next to her, who growled in warning. I probably had enough colloidal silver in me, that if he bit me, he’d die from poisoning.
Maybe I should piss him off then and kill his mangy ass.
“No, no.” Blaize’s jaw tightened as she considered my words. “Three fairy princes. Can you refresh my memory about the fairy realm again? It’s, uh, been a while.” She motioned with her hand, like she was thinking. “Like about what they’re princes of?”
I smirked. “Been hanging out in the middle of nowhere too long?”
; Blaize rolled her eyes, which was the exact response I was hoping for. “Look, fairies are your expertise,” she said.
I hid my chuckle. “And werewolves aren’t mine, but who knew about colloidal silver?”
Her frown deepened.
“There’s four courts,” I explained. “The Spring Court, the Summer Court, the Autumn Court, and the Winter Court.”
“So, four courts,” Blaize held up four fingers, “and three boyfriends?” She bent her index finger to hold up three.
I crossed my arms and sat back, unsure of what she meant. “You’re saying I need to date the king of the Winter Court?” Not that I would ever date anyone from the Winter Court. The other three courts had their dark sides, sure. Like the Autumn Court had some nasty ogres, and the selkies of the Spring Court would rather drown you than talk. But for the most part, they were lovely places, filled with lovely people.
The Winter Court, however, was pretty much all evil. As Gracie would have said, they were the Dark Side of the Force, and the other three were the Light Side.
Damn, I missed my cousin, and my eyes watered at the sudden memory.
Blaize’s nostrils flared, oblivious to my inner thoughts. “I mean, maybe we found a motive. Maybe the Winter Court has something to do with your boyfriend going missing.”
I thought of Kellan, the king of the Winter Court and all his haughty asshole ways, and I laughed. “What, you think he’s jealous that I’m not dating him?” She let out a low, irritated breath, but I pressed on. “That would be all well and good, except for the fact that it was werewolves who took him, Blaize.”
She stroked her chin in thought. “And there’s never been a history of the Winter Court and werewolves working together?”
I opened my mouth to say something snarky, but I stopped as I remembered something that I stumbled upon weeks ago. “Wait…”
I rolled my chair over to my desk and flipped through all the different papers, trying to think about where I would have seen it. Something about…
Falling for Shifters: A Limited Edition Autumn Shifters Collection Page 127