All too quickly, the song came to an end, followed by a roar of applause and cheering from the crowd. I couldn’t help but smile as Jenkins walked over, guitar pushed around behind him, and hugged me. A gentle kiss landed on my forehead before he whispered in my ear.
“Guess you’re stuck with me now, half-breed. We make one hell of a team.”
Still smiling, I pulled away from him and nodded. Then my eyes fell to where my brothers, Cooper, TS, and the rest of the family were crowded together at the bar. Their expressions ranged from amusement to shock to pride. With a jump from the stage, I made my way through the crowd to get to them.
When I reached them, Nico was standing in front of the others. His eyes were wide with disbelief and maybe a hint of awe. I couldn’t be sure. But then he threw his arms around my neck and hugged me so tightly I thought I might not be able to inhale. I tapped him on the back, the male signal to let go, and staggered a step away from him once he did.
I looked up to find vibrant green eyes staring back at me. Love rolled off him like crazy. He was so proud: prouder than he’d ever been. It was hard for me to make sense of that, given that I’d done other things far more deserving of his pride, but then I realized why. In recent memory, Nico had only seen me struggle. I’d had no real joy since Little Church. No fun. No life. To see me up on that stage, singing as though my life was carefree and normal, gave him a moment of the same. In so many ways, his life was as serious and heavy as mine had been. He was our leader. Our alpha. And with that came an immense amount of responsibility. What I had once thought was his desire to be a bossy asshole was really his subconscious driving him to keep those he saw as his safe.
And I’d made that job exponentially difficult.
To share a moment of joy with him was better than I ever could have imagined, and the look on his face told me he felt every bit the same, as did the looks on Alek’s and the Fates’ faces. Even Muses seemed to look less irritable, though far from joyous.
And at the end of the line stood TS. His expression held something else entirely. He looked…satisfied.
“So who’s buying me a shot?” I asked. A second later, Cy thrust a tumbler of JD into my hand. “Now that’s service!”
I slammed the drink down in one gulp and placed the empty glass on the bar. The boys went back to drinking and laughing and having what could only be described as a quasi-normal evening out. Our victory in shutting down the fight club murderer fueled our collective energy, but there was something else in the air. A sense of camaraderie. The feeling that we really could put our differences aside and come together for the greater good, no matter what. That was what I’d always hoped for as I grew up hearing about my birthright. That together we would make a difference.
“You’ve slain a few enemies this evening, haven’t you?” TS asked, his voice low in my ear.
I looked up to see him smiling at me, his hazel eyes bright in the dark of the bar.
“Seems that way. Jenkins has a knack for making me do things whether I want to or not.”
The brightness dimmed ever so slightly. “He certainly does.” A beat of hesitation. “He is good for you in that regard—in many, I imagine.”
My heart dropped into my boots. “He’s also pushy and demanding. I think telling him no is impossible.”
“That’s my understanding, according to your uncle.”
“You’re still checking up on Jenks?”
“Of course I am.”
Annoyance started to grow within me until I realized the context of his statement. Then all I felt was sadness.
“You spoke to Cy, didn’t you?” He nodded. “I—I’ve never slept with Jenkins. I know he has quite the reputation, but I’m not interested in that. Not from him.”
His face went blank, taking on that cold, indifferent expression that he so often wore around me when the subject matter we discussed was uncomfortable. And I could no longer feel his energy.
“Who you sleep with is not my business, Sapphira.”
I took a deep breath, steadying myself to overcome yet another fear of mine: telling TS how I felt. Maybe the bar was a shitty location to do it, but I was still riding my high, and I hoped it would give me that bit of courage I needed to put myself out there. To clear the waters that had become so muddy between us.
With eyes soft and wide and full of hope, I looked up at him.
“And if I want it to be?”
A cacophony of clapping and cheering broke out around us, making it impossible to hear anything other than Jenkins announcing an intermission. When the crowd quieted enough to hear, I silently begged TS for an answer as I continued to stare at him. The seconds he took to reply stretched out for an eternity.
When he opened his mouth to finally speak, I felt an arm land around my shoulders, hugging me against its owner’s body.
“You were amazing tonight!” Jenkins said loud enough to be heard over the noise in the bar. He turned his gaze to TS. “Wasn’t she?”
“Phira is always amazing. Never forget that.”
With a hard look at Jenkins, TS turned away, headed toward where the Fates stood talking to a group of twenty-somethings.
“That guy’s intense,” Jenkins said with a shake of his head.
I exhaled hard. “Yep. That’s TS.”
I left out ‘and I love him for it’. I figured Jenkins didn’t really need to know that detail. Probably didn’t care either.
“So are we doing celebratory shots?” He waved to Kent, the bartender that night, and moments later he had a bottle of JD in one hand and two glasses in the other. “To us,” he said with a smile, pouring us each a glass. Even though I knew his toast was innocent, it seemed so ominous.
“To kicking ass,” I added, “and not bothering to take names.”
We threw back our heads and swallowed the amber liquid in one gulp. Then we did it three more times for good measure. By the end of the bottle and the night, all I felt was the warmth of the alcohol in my belly and a fuzziness in my mind that kept it from reading too deeply into anything that had occurred at the bar. I knew in the morning I’d remember what that niggling sensation in the back of my mind was trying to tell me.
But that was a problem for another day.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
By the time we got home, the mood in the group had sobered a little. With the sunrise would come new problems to deal with: namely, tracking down the other stones, and the fallout of Alejandro’s death/disappearance/whatever the rumor mill came up with to explain his sudden absence. We all knew it was inevitable—we just didn’t know how damaging it would be.
Murph’s death wouldn’t help things either.
“Well,” Cooper said, coming into the living room from the stairwell that led upstairs, “I hate to say this, but I need to go. Your mom just texted that they’d be home in an hour or so, and I want to make sure I’m there when they arrive. I messaged Trey, and he’s coming to meet me in a bit.”
My heart sank a little. I loved having Uncle Cooper around.
“Are you sure you have to go?” I asked, giving him a hug.
“I know I’m going to have to tell them where I was eventually—and about all the interesting things that happened while I was here—but I’d rather be the one doing the ambushing, not the other way around.”
I sighed.
“Fair enough. But we’re going to miss you.”
“I’m going to miss you guys too,” he said with a sad smile.
Alek and Nico came over to say their goodbyes, as did TS and the Fates. With my emotions rising—I always had hated goodbyes—I excused myself to head upstairs. I didn’t want to watch him go. I was too afraid I’d break.
I walked upstairs to my room and switched on the light to find an unexpected sight. A smug-looking Muses lounged on my bed. The second I set foot in the room, he rose gracefully, his assessing gaze raking over me as he approached.
“It’s been a long night, Muses—”
“And it will
be longer still if you don’t let me cut to the chase and say what I have to say.”
I exhaled loudly and stared at him, wondering what the hell was so important that he needed to tell me at that moment. When he realized I’d surrendered to his wishes, he smiled and stepped closer.
“Have you ever wondered why TS serves your father as he does, Sapphira?”
Yes. All the time…
It was a benign enough question, but not coming from him. Nothing about Muses’ interrogations was ever benign. “I doubt you have. Maybe a fleeting thought you easily brushed aside, but not an in-depth assessment.”
“Get out, Muses—”
“I find it strange that you seem to know so little about the one you appear to be so close to—growing closer to every day, in fact.”
“Whatever it is you’re up to, I’m not in the mood for it—”
“And you do need to be in the mood to hear the truth, don’t you, Sapphira? It never quite falls well on your ears otherwise.” He shook his head back and forth in irritation. “So much like your father sometimes, even without the physical resemblance. You two have the ability to deny certain realities if it suits your purposes.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about TS. And for once in your life, niece, you might want to listen.”
“Probably not. But at any rate, I know that my dad and TS have some weird arrangement. I’ve asked about it. TS doesn’t seem to want to share that part of his life with me, and that’s fine. Why are you dredging this up?”
“Because I’m trying to help you.”
“That’s highly unlikely.”
His scowl sent the hairs on the back of my neck straight up. He lunged for me, grabbing me by the arm and pulling me toward him.
“I am trying to save you from yourself, Sapphira,” he said, his darkly beautiful features twisted into a snarl, “but it seems that you enjoy the path of pain too much to allow that.”
“If you don’t start making some sense soon, I’m going to let Nyx out and you can try talking to her…I think I’d enjoy watching that.” My eyes shot down to my bicep where his hand enwrapped it, then back up to him. “And I’d move my hand if I were you. Neither of us is in the mood for any of your shenanigans.”
“Fine,” he said, dropping his hand to his side. “If you wish to continue down this road, unaware of where it will lead, misery will be your fate. But you would be wise to contemplate the question I posed to you. You’d also be wise to ask yourself why your father would put his only, beloved daughter in the hands of a man tied to him only by oath and not by blood. Why he had no concerns for your welfare while TS watched over you day and night, never leaving your side.”
“Because my father trusts TS, unlike you,” I said with unfaltering confidence. The quirk of Muses’ brow let me know how amusing he found it.
“So certain she seems,” he muttered to himself, cocking his head, “but how wrong she is.”
With that, he brushed past me, making sure his shoulder bumped me along the way.
“And what exactly am I wrong about, Muses?”
He paused for a moment, his back to me.
“Everything.”
“Care to narrow that down a bit?”
He turned to face me, the glee of knowing he had me hooked shining brightly in his eyes.
“Your father trusts no one, especially not TS. Not with you.”
“Then why the hell would he entrust me to him?”
The smile I always wanted to smack off his face spread wide, his teeth gleaming in the light.
“Because TS had the power to do what needed to be done, and your father had the necessary leverage over him to make sure he behaved himself in the process.”
“Behaved?”
His smile fell. “Honestly, Sapphira, what father would hand over his beautiful young daughter to a being centuries her senior—one who happened to be as handsome and appealing as TS—without a little failsafe?”
I could feel my chest begin to tighten as he spoke. For maybe the second time in my life, I truly believed that Muses wasn’t full of shit. And that scared me.
While I stood there openmouthed, trying to make sense of what he was saying, he turned again to leave. By the time I could force words past my lips, he was almost through the door.
“What failsafe?”
He looked back over his shoulder at me.
“The kind that will inevitably leave you with another doomed love affair,” he replied. My heart fell into my stomach. “Leave him be, niece. You’ll find only heartache at the end of this road. Though I cannot say I wouldn’t delight in your anguish, I don’t wish it upon you. For once in your life, Sapphira, heed my advice.”
He disappeared into the hallway, leaving me alone with my confusion, my disbelief, and my growing sense of fear that there was a truth resonating in his words. TS and I were doomed.
And my father was the reason why.
Epilogue
As was the norm for us, there was no time to let the dust settle after the fight club murderer had been stopped. We needed to find out who Dex’s informant had been and how he’d known what he had. The last thing the PC needed was someone encouraging vigilante behavior, no matter how warranted it might have been. The tension in the city was too high for that.
And it only got worse after the news of Alejandro’s death broke.
Apparently the alpha had contacted his trusted second-in-command after the party, and though we didn’t know exactly what he’d been told, it wasn’t long after the alpha’s disappearance that the rumor spread like wildfire through Chicago that the PC had killed the alpha without just cause. It didn’t seem to matter that Alejandro had used magic to overthrow the leader of the Northside pack. The deaths of Reah and Sasha were overlooked with ease. They weren’t pack. Because of that, they didn’t seem to matter.
The city was a pressure cooker full of disgruntled supernaturals. Every night I spent at the bar was another night I feared for my family and wondered if my anonymity had been compromised. With both packs affected by the PC’s intervention, mayhem was sure to follow. I wondered how long it would take before it hit.
Gabe hadn’t been back since his visit to my rooftop, but I knew he’d return. It was his curse, thanks to Dennis. He’d never leave me alone, not until I was dead and buried. Since I had no intention of letting that happen, I made it a point to start researching a way to reverse what had happened to Gabe. My uncle Pierson gave me the basis of his original hypothesis on how to solve Gabe’s problem without question, for which I was extremely thankful, but it was little more than conjecture. There’d be no way to know if it could work unless I tried it out. And to do that, I’d need help. Yet another dilemma. Who could I rope into helping me without hanging myself in the process? There was a very short list of names that could conceivably help with the task, but I couldn’t risk asking them. Like it or not, I was very much on my own regarding the Gabe situation.
Another issue that still required my attention was PI Danny Bowers. I’d spotted him twice, tailing me when I left the bar. It wasn’t impossible to shake him, but he didn’t make it easy. While I evaded him, I wondered if he was still trying to find out what had happened to Ward, and what, if anything, he knew about the supernatural world. For his sake, I hoped he hadn’t stumbled upon anything he shouldn’t have. That knowledge would put his life in danger. I realized that maybe the best way to find out was to play nice. Maybe we could be of use to one another. I needed someone to keep tabs on Gabe for me.
Maybe Bowers was the perfect man for the job.
With so much going on—so much weighing on my mind—I didn’t have a lot of time to contemplate Muses’ warning about TS. But in the dark of night, lying alone in my bed, it eventually found me, taunting me as I tried to sleep. Questions surrounding my love for him and why it was doomed consumed me in those hours, almost always forcing me from my bed to the roof to stare out at the city.
U
nfortunately she had no answers for me.
But one night, I didn’t make it to the roof. I never got the chance. When my frustration drove me from my bed, I stood up and immediately froze. Standing only inches from me was Reah, pointing at the drawer that held my Ouija board. It took a moment to process that she wanted to tell me something. I thought that, once she’d been avenged, she would have gone wherever it was the other ghosts had when their wrongs had been righted.
I didn’t understand why she was still around.
Once I gathered my wits, I grabbed the board and set it down on my bed, placing the pointer toward the letters. Reah seemed agitated, fidgeting with the hem of her ghostly shirt as though begging me to ask her a question—preferably the right one. As I stood there, trying to think of where to even start, one thing became abundantly clear.
Reah wasn’t finished with me yet.
About the Author
Amber Lynn Natusch is the author of the bestselling Caged, as well as the Light and Shadow series with Shannon Morton. She was born and raised in Winnipeg, and speaks sarcasm fluently because of her Canadian roots. She loves to dance and sing in her kitchen—much to the detriment of those near her—but spends most of her time running a practice with her husband, raising two small children, and attempting to write when she can lock herself in the bathroom for ten minutes of peace and quiet. She has many hidden talents, most of which should not be mentioned but include putting her foot in her mouth, acting inappropriately when nervous, swearing like a sailor when provoked, and not listening when she should. She’s obsessed with home renovation shows, should never be caffeinated, and loves snow. Amber has a deep-seated fear of clowns and deep water…especially clowns swimming in deep water.
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