by Eva Chase
Omen spun to face him, cutting him off with a curt voice. “Don’t be ridiculous. Would you have her lead this group right to my stash? We shouldn’t linger here any longer than we already have.”
Thorn looked so stricken my throat constricted at the sight. It wasn’t an expression that belonged on a man of so much strength. “My apologies,” he said quickly. “I should have thought the matter through more carefully.”
“It seems you haven’t been very careful with your thinking in general these past few months, or I wouldn’t have spent most of those months acting as a lab rat for a coterie of vicious mortals. Why don’t you keep your mouth shut from now on and let me do the thinking?”
I hadn’t realized it was possible for the warrior’s face to fall even more. Bristling on his behalf, I lost control of my tongue.
“You’re the one who got yourself trapped by those mortals,” I said. “You have no idea how much Thorn has been busting his ass trying to get you back. He’s the most dedicated person—being—whatever—I’ve ever met, often to the point of being incredibly irritating about it. So maybe you should shut up about things you apparently know nothing about.”
I could tell Thorn had turned to look at me, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off of Omen to check the warrior’s reaction. I’d given Thorn a hard time about his single-mindedness in the past, but he’d proven he was holding in plenty of real emotion under that strict exterior—and plenty of passion I’d only gotten a taste of so far. He’d beaten himself up enough for failing to prevent Omen’s capture without the very person he’d been obsessively trying to rescue adding to that agony. I wasn’t going to stand around while this jackass laid into him for the one thing he couldn’t possibly be criticized for.
If I’d thought Omen’s gaze was frigid before, now it was cold enough to flay me down to the bones. His carefully slicked-down hair had risen in little tufts as if propelled by a swelling rage. My hands clenched at my sides as I braced myself for an onslaught of anger, but he kept his voice as tartly cool as before.
“If you hadn’t insisted on crashing this party, none of us would need to worry about where you spend the night in the first place. Don’t make yourself too much of a hassle.”
The implied threat sent a shiver down my spine. Why had Omen agreed to keep me around anyway?
It could have been because of the emphatic references I’d gotten from his companions. Snap stepped closer to me, curling his long, slender fingers around my fist in solidarity. “It’s because of Sorsha we managed to find and free you at all. She’s just as important as any of us.”
Pickle let out a chirping sound of what might have been agreement, fluttering his wings anxiously. He lost his hold on Thorn’s tunic and ended up clinging to the warrior’s hair in his panic to hurl himself back onto his perch. Thorn unfastened him with a long-suffering sigh, but a hint of a smile crossed his lips. I hustled over to take my sort-of pet off his hands.
Omen watched all of this with the same detached disdain and then shook his head. “We’ll see,” he said darkly. “For now—all of you, in the car. Let’s discover what’s left of my former prison.”
To my relief, he drove with more care than Ruse did, making it back to the neighborhood of the construction site without prompting a single blared horn. By that time, I’d determined that the middle cushion in the back seat popped out to allow access to the trunk and had let Pickle scuttle through. The little dragon was now soothing himself by constructing a nest out of an old plaid blanket that’d been folded there. I decided I wouldn’t mention to Omen that his beloved Betsy might end up with her felted trunk lining shredded.
The sun had sunk below the roofs of the nearby high-rises, but the summer evening was still warm and relatively bright. Thorn stole through the shadows around the site before giving us the go-ahead: no sign of the sword-star bunch. Around the back of the site, he hefted a section of the barrier wall aside to let me walk in while the others took the shadow route.
The half-finished framework of steel and cinderblocks wasn’t exactly welcoming in the late afternoon light, but it provoked a lot fewer goosebumps than it had in the eerie glow of security lamps through the darkness last night. I suppressed a wince at the creak of the metal beams above in a gust of wind. Then my feet stalled in their tracks as I came into view of the facility we’d stormed last night.
Or rather, didn’t come into view of it—because where the concrete building with its flood lamps had stood less than twenty-four hours ago, there was nothing but bare, packed earth and a shallow pit of rubble.
As I gaped, my shadowkind companions emerged around me. Ruse let out a low whistle.
A disbelieving laugh sputtered out of me. “These people don’t do things by halves, do they?” Just yesterday morning, they’d battered one of their own men beyond identification to cover their tracks. I shouldn’t be surprised.
We ventured closer, Thorn striding ahead to patrol the wreckage, but it didn’t take long to determine that our enemies had left nothing incriminating or useful behind, only smashed concrete. Snap bent over various spots around the pit, flicking his forked tongue into the air just above the chunks to test for impressions that might still be clinging to them, but more hope seeped out of his face with each attempt.
Omen had lingered near me by the edge of the clearing, letting his companions do the work. No trace of emotion showed on his face—not discomfort at returning to the site of his torment, nor satisfaction at seeing the place in pieces, nor frustration at how utterly our enemies had obliterated the evidence of their activities.
There’d been several other shadowkind experimental subjects being held in the facility—beings we hadn’t gotten the chance to free. We hadn’t managed to figure out what exactly their painful experiments were meant to accomplish either.
“We have to find out where they’ve taken the other shadowkind,” I said. “And then shut down the sword-star crew’s operations completely. They can’t keep getting away with this.”
Omen didn’t move. “Obviously.”
That was all he had to say about it? I frowned at the barren stretch of ground. “It was hard enough getting just you out with the four of us working together. There are plenty of shadowkind who come mortal-side regularly or even live in this realm these days. Maybe we could ask around and see if any of them would join—"
Bossypants interrupted me with a dismissive snort. “Have you met many of our kind that linger in this realm? They’re no less self-involved here than they are back in the shadows. All they care about is themselves and perhaps their immediate circle. The greater good of our people means nothing to them if it requires them to lift a finger. Why do you think I was tackling this menace with such a small group to begin with?”
I had seen those selfish attitudes in other shadowkind. The group of humans I worked with to protect the creatures that traveled into our realm had reached out to local shadowkind gangs and the like before, but they rarely opted to get involved unless it affected them directly. Still…
“This is a much bigger deal than solo hunters or small collectives snaring lesser shadowkind for profit. All the higher shadowkind are at risk. Don’t you think that would matter to the others?”
Omen grimaced. “If it did, this ‘sword-star crew’ would never have managed to establish themselves as firmly as they have.”
He vanished into the shadows, putting a definitive end to that discussion. Such a lively conversationalist.
With a grimace of my own, I picked my way along the fringes of the clearing. Maybe a bit of useful debris had blown this way in the midst of the destruction and been missed during the clean-up. I scanned the piles of boards and the interlocking beams to see if anything caught my eye, squinting into the lengthening shadows of the approaching evening.
I’d made it about halfway around the destroyed facility when a warbling sound from above caught my ears.
My head jerked up. I flinched and stumbled backward just in time to dodge a st
reak of fire that plummeted down at me.
The blazing thing whooshed past me close enough to singe a few flyaway strands of my hair before it hit the ground. My pulse lurched. The flames flared higher, and I scrambled farther back, my arms flying up defensively. A bolt of pain shot through my bandaged shoulder. The fire flickered in the opposite direction and then slowly dwindled as its fuel ran out.
As I lowered my arms and edged closer to the now only smoldering object, Thorn charged over with Snap and Ruse close at his heels. I clenched my jaw against the ache still burning in my shoulder, and we all stared at the thing that had nearly landed on me like a flaming toupee.
It was a charred… pair of work jeans? Yep, with a sharp chemical scent that indicated how the fire had caught on them so enthusiastically. The fabric must have been dosed in some kind of lighter fluid and then been tossed down from above.
Thorn sprang back into the shadows, presumably to search for my attacker. Snap checked me over carefully. His eyes stark with concern, he fingered the singed strands of my hair, which he’d admiringly compared to the color of a peach when we’d first met.
I took his hand in mine with a reassuring squeeze. “I’m all right. The jeans, not so much.”
Ruse cocked his head, still considering them. “Well, that is something, all right.”
I peered up at the gridwork and knit my brow. Who would have done that—why would anyone have done that? There were a hell of a lot more deadly things here than discarded construction pants.
A nervous quiver ran through my chest, but I wasn’t going to be shaken by something this ridiculous, not if I could help it. Mangling the lyrics from my favorite ‘80s songs always bolstered my spirits. I waved my hand in front of my nose and sang a little tune: “This is what it smells like when gloves fry.”
While Ruse snickered, Snap knelt down. His tongue flitted through the smoke. “A man was wearing them this morning—he spilled something sticky and black on them, had to change, left them in a waste bin. I can’t sense anything after that.” He frowned.
Omen had returned to join us sometime during the chaos. He contemplated the burnt jeans, the structure around us, and then me, his gaze so penetrating I could almost feel it digging through my skull. “Fire seems to like you.”
“A lot of the time, I like it too, but only when I’m the one setting things up in flames.” I resisted the urge to hug myself. “Someone’s messing with us. Trying to keep us on our toes.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t get the slightest bit burned.”
What was he implying—that I’d been prepared for fiery legwear to fall on my head? “Three cheers for good reflexes,” I said.
Thorn burst out of the shadows so abruptly the air rippled against my skin. “There’s no one else on the site right now. Either it was another shadowkind who slipped away quickly or a trick set to go off automatically.”
Ruse raised his hand. “Seeing as we weren’t getting anything useful out of this ruin anyway, I’d like to vote that we take off before any other ‘tricks’ come at us.”
I expected Omen to argue like he seemed to whenever anyone other than him suggested a course of action. Instead, he nodded. “We aren’t getting any farther here.”
He stared at me for a moment longer before shifting his attention to the incubus. “Why don’t we make use of that computer adept you mentioned? Our enemies will have left a trail somewhere—we just need to pick it up, and quickly.”
2
Sorsha
I was starting to notice that Omen’s station wagon had a particular smell to it. I inhaled deeply where I was sitting in the back seat, trying to place it. A hint of charcoal, a little salt, something a bit chalky, and a note that was maybe… meaty? Brick-oven pizza, I thought, except it was hard to picture Bossypants chowing down on a slice in his beloved Betsy. Anyway, the scent was too dry, no tomato-y juiciness.
While I contemplated the lingering odor, Ruse, who’d kept his physical form, gabbed away at his boss about the hacker he’d worked his charms on.
“Managed it over the phone,” he said, leaning back in his seat with his arms crossed behind his head. “It only took a few minutes before we were such close friends she’d happily delve into an obviously stolen computer. A little internet tracing shouldn’t be any problem at all. The original effect won’t have worn off much yet, so it’ll hardly be any work.”
“Wonderful,” Omen replied in a voice so devoid of emotion I couldn’t tell whether he was truly pleased or being sarcastic, but Ruse’s commentary had reminded me of another responsibility. I owed my one actual close friend a call.
I settled deeper into the worn leather cushioning of the back seat, which I had to admit was pretty comfy, and pulled out my phone. Vivi had inadvertently gotten herself tangled up in our conflict with the sword-star crew despite my efforts to keep her out of the line of fire. Okay, maybe even because of those efforts. My caginess had gotten her so worried about me that she’d tracked me down while we were following the bad guys and blown our cover. Since the baddies would have seen the car she was driving, which belonged to her grandmother, I’d ordered them both to go into hiding.
Vivi picked up on the first ring. “Sorsha?”
Hearing her vibrant voice sent a wash of relief through me. “The one and only. I take it you’re still hanging in there out at that cottage?”
“Yeah, just bored.” A matching relief sparkled through her laugh. “I’m so glad you’re okay. I’ve been spinning out crazier than a cuckoo bird in a blender wondering what’s going on.”
Vivi had a way with metaphors. I cracked a grin. “Well, we solved one bit of the problem, but we’ve got a much bigger part to tackle next. The assholes who murdered Meriden are still on the loose, so you’d better hang tight.”
“Actually…” I could practically see her twirling one of her tight ringlets around her index finger. “All this time cooped up gave me a chance to think about return strategies. I might have figured out a way I could come back—and give you a real hand—without doom raining down on me.”
My chest tightened a little at the idea of my best friend back here in the line of fire, but I’d promised her I wouldn’t keep shutting her out like I had before. And to be fair, staying clammed up hadn’t protected either of us in the end. Vivi had grown up with parents who knew about and wanted to protect the shadowkind. Not the same as being outright raised by a fae woman like I’d been, but while she wasn’t quite as comfortable with supernatural beings as I was, she did have a pretty clear idea of what she was signing up for.
“All right,” I said. “Lay it on me.”
“Well, I figure the main way these people have of identifying me or Gran is through her car. What if I go to the police and report that it was stolen a few days ago? I’ll park it somewhere sketchy but obvious, maybe even call in an anonymous tip too so they’ll find it fast, and then Gran has her car back but it sounds like we weren’t involved in anything it was used for lately. Smooth as butter on a porcelain vase.”
“Hmm.” I kind of wanted to pick that plan apart so I had an excuse to keep Vivi where she was safe, but the truth was it sounded pretty solid. “Are you sure the baddies couldn’t have seen it parked at your Gran’s house in between your scouting missions? Besides the car, what about the questions you were asking Meriden’s neighbors?”
“Nah, I parked it in a paid lot overnight just in case. And when I talked to the few people I spoke to in person, I had my hair covered by my hood and big sunglasses on—I don’t think they could give a very accurate description of me. I can be a little stealthy.”
I hesitated, wavering between the guilt over shutting my best friend out before and the guilt I knew I’d feel if I led her into more danger.
“Come on, Sorsh,” Vivi wheedled. “Let me pitch in. You let me know what you need, and I’ll be there, no other messing around.”
She might be safer here in the city with a cover story for the car than she was staying in hiding with
the sword-star bunch believing she was involved. “Okay. Handle the car thing like you said, and then don’t do anything you wouldn’t normally do until we have a chance to talk more in depth.”
“You’ve got it.” She made an air-kiss sound. “Ditto.”
“Ditto,” I replied, my smile coming back. Our shared love of corny movies included Ghost, which had inspired our trademark farewell.
As I hung up, Omen was just pulling up to the corner on a residential street. He glanced back at me, his gaze as intense as ever. “It never occurred to you that I’d expect you to keep quiet about our activities.”
My shoulders tensed automatically. “That was my best friend—the one who already knows all about the shadowkind and that I’m onto something big?” He’d gotten most of the story in roundtable fashion from the four of us last night. “She’s been advocating for beings like you her whole life through the Shadowkind Defense Fund. There may be ways she can help. After what she saw yesterday, she knows how serious the situation is.”
“Having one mortal in the mix is bad enough.”
“Well, she’s involved now, so you’re shit out of luck.”
I kept my tone flippant, but Omen’s eyes narrowed anyway. “If she compromises our mission, I’ll ensure she can’t interfere anymore.”
My whole back stiffened. “You don’t have to worry about that.” And if you lay one hand on my bestie, you’d better believe the next place you’ll find that hand is rammed up your ass.
Ruse cleared his throat and pointed to a house on the far corner of the block. “That’s the place. Basement apartment, separate entrance. We want to encourage our hacker friend to dig up anything she can about the sword-star group’s activities, right?”
“Particularly anything that could tell us where they’re operating from,” Omen said. “Any regular hunting groups or meet-up spots for their business dealings. But you don’t need to remember all that. I’m coming with you. After everything that’s happened, I think each of you could use plenty of supervision.”