“It’s legit,” she confirmed. “He’s sealed deals with Cord this way. I recognize the symbols.”
“Okay.” A thrill of hope zinging through me, I followed Miguel. “Let’s do this.”
Still unsure which of us had made the better deal, I consoled myself with the simple truth that I had already promised him blood and exacted an oath as to the limits of how he could use it. What harm had I done by giving him more blood? Magic-imbued blood? I wasn’t sure. But if it helped his wife and got me to Harlow, I wasn’t sure I cared about the ramifications.
I had never been a worry-about-tomorrow-when-it-comes type person, but desperation makes fools of us all.
The three of us followed Miguel down into his basement lab, which resembled a cross between a five-star kitchen and a morgue. He offered me a stool, and I used it to climb onto the stainless-steel table. He urged me to lie down, but I politely declined with a growl in my voice.
The procedures themselves were clinical. I was given a half hour to shift back into my own skin before he drew his control sample. Then, although I didn’t need it, I accepted a drop of blood from Dell to magic-up my veins before he drew his last vial.
The fact Enzo arrived with a glass of orange juice and a small plate with two chocolate chip cookies they forced down me made me wonder how often they did this very thing. Then I decided I probably didn’t want to know.
“Do you need anything else?” I hopped to the floor and rubbed my arms, adrenaline giving me hot-and-cold flashes. “How long will it take you to cast?”
Busy securing his treasures, it took Miguel a minute to answer. “I already have.”
I whirled on him. “What?”
“I did that upstairs.” He tossed me the bracelet without a backward glance. “I had to be sure I could hold up my end of the deal before we finalized the transaction.”
“You’ve known all this time?” I fumed. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
After locking the vials in a metal case and tucking that inside a massive refrigeration unit he also locked, Miguel faced me. “I had to be certain you would honor your side of the bargain too.”
“Are you implying I’m not trustworthy?” I bristled.
“No. Not at all.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “But I knew once I told you, nothing I said or did would keep you here, and I wanted to take my time to ensure I took viable samples.”
A shiver raised hairs down my arms. “Where is she?”
“In the sprite’s den,” he said, and Dell’s eyes rounded.
“The pond.” Her breath caught. “Harlow’s in the cavern beneath the pond.”
The mocking call of gulls echoed through my memory, their poignant cries threatening to nail my feet to the repurposed oak floors. I drifted onto the front porch in a daze and wrapped my arms around my middle to hold myself together.
Dell leaned her shoulder against mine. “This is good news, right?”
“I thought I had it figured out,” I murmured. “The tokens being left on my steps. I thought it was Bessemer or Aisha. He’s alpha, and when he broke the bond I wondered if he had somehow fished those moments I hadn’t told Graeson about out of the residual energy.”
“That’s not how it works.” A sad laugh rocked her. “Not usually.” She exhaled. “Wargs active in the pack bond can only see and hear what is freely shared. We can’t go digging around in each other’s heads. Only the alpha has that power. He can yank whatever he wants out of our heads, but he has to be close, and the bond must be active. There’s no residue. No footprints left behind.” She squeezed my arm. “Bessemer only knows what you told Cord, and Cord would have fought him to the breaking point to protect your secrets.”
Rubbing my arms, I acknowledged, “That’s what I was afraid of.”
“I don’t get it.” She cocked her head. “What am I missing?”
“Ayer,” I said, working out the puzzle. “She said Charybdis was in her head, that he told her what to do, and she had to obey him. She lost control of herself, and he took her over.” That fit with what we had suspected about him using the kelpie as an avatar, but the breadth of his power was that much more terrifying after seeing his effect on a more sentient fae. “She said he taunted her with things that no one knew.” I leaned heavy against Dell. “He was pulling that information out of her head, like what Bessemer did to Graeson.”
“So the Harlow we find won’t be the Harlow we knew. She’ll have to detox away from his influence, like Ayer.” Dell frowned. “It still doesn’t explain the nest and other things. Even if he got in her head, she wouldn’t know about those things, would she?”
“No, she wouldn’t.” Fear tightened around my ribs, a metal band compressing my chest. I hadn’t seen or spoken to my parents in years. That was about to change. “One crisis at the time,” I muttered to myself. “Let’s get Harlow corralled first.” I glanced at Dell. “We can solve the other mystery later.”
She dropped her robe into a chair and jogged down the steps onto the path leading back to the woods.
With a hitch in my step, I followed, Graeson at my side. His whine drew my attention, and I patted his head. “Any insight from the peanut gallery?” Palms slick, I dampened his fur with my touch, but his contribution to the discussion was a lick to my palm. “So we wing it.”
As though my words were the blast of a starting pistol at the beginning of a race, Dell launched herself toward the shade of the trees. Dread pounding in my heart at what we might find, I jogged after her.
Miguel had been wrong to doubt my staying power. Had I known a few hours ago what I knew now, I would have asked for more cookies, another glass of juice, done anything to avoid facing the reality that Harlow was here and every bit as dangerous as Charybdis himself, because she was no more in control of her actions than the kelpie had been.
Chapter 16
Night had fallen during our visit with the Garzas, and clouds hugged the moon, refusing to share even a single beam of her light. Yet I had no trouble tracking the gleam of Graeson’s tail as he bounded ahead of us. I should have stumbled or hesitated, but I didn’t. Magic thrummed in my veins, the swirl of Dell’s blood freshening my recall when I summoned my warg aspect to aid me, and the darkness kept no secrets from me.
I saw as wolves see and glided through the forest as silent as my companions. The hammering of my pulse in my ears deafened me to all but the most persistent crickets. Their song pierced my heart, and I wanted to join them, but I had no song to sing. I was a child of the moon, a creature of twilight, and not myself at all and yet more myself than I had been since the night the ocean swallowed half my soul and left the other half to drown in grief.
“Have you and Isaac been practicing without me?” The warm current of Dell’s voice flowed through my head without effort. “You’ve almost caught up to Cord.”
Running with my wolf flushed my system of fears and doubts and left room only for exhilaration. “Is this how it always feels to be a warg?”
“Reckless? Wild? Free?” She tilted her head back as if she felt the caress of the moon despite it being overcast. “Yes to all of the above.”
We ran until my chest heaved and my legs were noodles made limper with every step. The smell hit me first, sharper, more pungent than ever. Rotting debris. Decaying fish corpses. Moldy leaves. The scents were so pure I tasted them and gagged. The high of running evaporated between one breath and the next as reality set in.
Graeson slowed, glanced over his shoulder. Swollen with recalled magic, I didn’t balk at the caress of a mind against mine. Expecting it would be Dell, I stumbled when a guttural voice rumbled, “Stay put,” before the wolf trotted off to scout the area. It stunned me so much I came to a full stop and stared after him, wondering if I was losing my mind.
“Oh my God.”
I spun toward Dell, heart thumping. “What is it?”
“Your face,” she breathed. “Good Lord, Cam. Have you seen yourself?”
“Is it bad?” Carefu
l of my claws, I rubbed my palms on my throat and sucked in sharp breath as I discovered the elongated curve of my jaw. My fangs weren’t present. I hadn’t realized the shift had altered me to this degree. Each time it came faster, smoother, easier. “Tell me the truth.”
Fingers trembling, she traced the strange hollow of my cheek. “You’re beautiful.” She laughed. “It’s just—wow. You’re like a legend come to life. No one can hold a partial shift. Not even the alphas. We’re wolves or we’re people. There’s no in between.” Her fingers slid through my hair, and she presented a lock of hair out for me to see. Gleaming platinum strands clung to her hand, the ends black as if dipped in ink. “This is amazing.”
“I don’t know what’s happening to me.” I tried to find some part of me that was upset by the change. I discovered none. “I haven’t shifted this easily since…” Not since Lori and I had practiced becoming. The change to her and back had been fluid, easy as breathing, painless. Her aspect had been a comfortable pair of shoes I sometimes slipped on for a walk. “It’s been a long time.”
“Please show this to Meemaw,” she pleaded. “She’ll wet her pants.”
I wrinkled my extended nose. “That’s a good thing?”
“Yes.” She hopped from foot to foot. “Cord will lose his mind when he sees you like this.”
The rush of embarrassment washed over me, and where my skin prickled the fur receded until I was left standing pink and plain and flushed. What would he think? A wolf might see the half-form as an improvement, but would the man? It shouldn’t matter what Graeson thought of my appearance, but it did.
I wanted him to share the same tight-throated, dry-tongued appreciation of me as I had for him.
Realizing that made me want to curl into a ball. I had seen every inch of him nude. No one had seen me naked in, well, ever. I was a lights-off, clothes-on kind of girl. The exact opposite of the man who walked around bare-skinned and conversed with his pack, who were also in various states of undress, while I restrained myself from gawking.
It was the wrong thing to worry about now, but it gave my brain a direction to sprint in that didn’t involve the wolf, the lake or the maybe-mermaid who might be closer than I ever imagined.
“The Garzas are never wrong.” Dell rested a hand on my shoulder. “They’re not always exactly right, but they’re never wrong.”
The wolf arrived before I got to ask what she meant. His paws were damp, and he shook out his fur with a snort.
I wiped mud flecks off my cheeks. “Did you find anything?”
He groan-whined a human-sounding answer that didn’t make sense coming from a wolf’s mouth.
“Nod for yes.” Dell bobbed her head then turned it side to side. “Shake for no.”
Apparently I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed the shift in his cognitive awareness. “Did you find anything?”
Nod.
“Harlow?”
A low whine.
“Charybdis?”
Shake.
“So not Harlow but definitely not Charybdis?” Dell scratched her head. “I don’t get it. Either she’s there or she isn’t.”
As much as I wanted to agree with her, too many possibilities loomed. “Is it safe for us to look around?”
Nod.
Pilcher’s Pond hadn’t changed since our first introduction. The same sense of dread puckered my stomach and dampened my skin as I approached the dry bed where water ought to be. I’d arrived after Graeson had found Marie, after he and Harlow had removed her from the water. She had been curled on a tarp when we met, and I would never forget the look on Graeson’s face that day.
He looked like a man ready to jump. All he needed was a push.
I hadn’t understood then that his whole life was about serving others. Sure, he did it in his own pigheaded way, and the others in question might want to kick him in the shins for it, but he had a good heart. I saw that now. It wasn’t just my stomach talking, even though the man was a fine cook. It was in the way he’d put his life on hold to raise Marie, how he valued and trusted Dell when everyone else overlooked her. It was the stoic acceptance of the six wargs I watched Graeson punish for their loyalty to him, each standing their ground, trusting him even then to take the maulings as far as they had to go but not a bite or scratch further.
And it was me. I had changed or been changed too.
Part of that was the crack in the doorway Harlow had opened with her bright smile and brighter hair. Some of it was the way Dell shouldered through the door and into my life like she had every right to call herself my friend before I even knew what to do with one. But most of it was the man who stood on the threshold with his foot wedging the door wide open, forcing me to let in more than the persistent few, but the rest of the world too.
Knowing all that, it was too easy for my own nightmares to superimpose themselves over memories of Marie. The pond had been brought low by summer drought, the water where she had been found cupped in the center of a cracked bed we had to crunch across to reach. The closer we came to the serene edge of the abyss, the thicker the mud squished.
This was where I’d met Harlow. She had been bobbing in that very puddle, holding a barrette rescued from the silt.
“Maybe this isn’t such a great idea.” Dell cupped my elbow. “You’re as white as chalk.”
Still a coward down to the bone, I nodded and gave myself permission to stand several feet from the moist nexus, where breathing was easier. “Do you smell anything?”
“No.” Nostrils flaring, she expanded her chest several times as she sucked in oxygen. “Do you?”
My sense of smell was stunted compared to theirs, so I let the faintest brush of magic creep up my arm and into my nose. I inhaled through my mouth, over my tongue, braced for the brackish taste/smell of watery decay and got…nothing. A stringent tickle of magic-scoured woods, and that was all. “Someone cast an erasure spell at the water’s edge.”
Erasure spells had been developed by earthbound fae and were meant to restore balance to delicate natural areas that had been saturated in pervasive magic. The idea had been the spell would clean the air and ground all scents—including itself—so that in a few days the natural aromas would prevail and the local wildlife would reclaim the damaged location.
Of course, there were other uses for it too. All good magic could be twisted for evil. Such as the use we faced now. It was a signature of sorts that explained Graeson’s confusion. Harlow couldn’t cast magic. She used magical items, but she was human and was unable to create her own. He must have caught scent of her outside the spell’s perimeter and identified her. Her and not Charybdis. But his spellwork was present so…
“I don’t like this.” Dell wrapped her arms around her middle. “He must have followed us back here after he grabbed Harlow, but why? We’re hunting him. Shouldn’t he be running in the opposite direction?”
“You would think so.” I gazed across the quiet waters. “Hopefully we’re about to get some answers.”
She gave the murky pond her attention too. “How do we find out if she’s down there?”
“I don’t know.” I slid my hands into my pants pockets to hide their trembling. “Without conclave resources, I can’t just pick up a phone and call in a dive team. Everyone I know works for them, so even if I paid out of pocket, the conclave wouldn’t have to dig deep to find out I was disobeying a direct order from a magistrate.”
No matter how valuable my services were to the Earthen Conclave, I didn’t kid myself that there wasn’t someone else out there—not like me, because that was so unlikely as to be impossible—but an eager soul with similar talents looking for a place to belong.
“What would they do to you?”
The frail quality of her voice made me wonder what Bessemer did to those who disobeyed him. The six wargs who went to Graeson’s aid hadn’t disobeyed their alpha as much as vanished without his consent, knowing he would never grant them permission. The savagery of their punishment lurked in my
thoughts as a reminder of the violent nature of wargs, but it was easily banished with the truth that while they had two aspects, mine were infinite. There was no limit to the horrors of what I could become with the right drop of blood and a strong taste of magic.
What separated us—man from monster—was intent. Given these gifts, how would we use them? Bessemer abused his power, and worse was that he forced people like Graeson just as low in order to retain the status quo. Paint Graeson as a villain, and Bessemer appeared less sadistic by comparison.
“Fire me? Lock me up?” Or worse, assign me to Vause as her personal aid to endure unending remedial training. “I’m not sure.”
“That sounds less dire than expected.” Relief breezed through her expression. “Considering you’re privy to sensitive information.”
“The conclave won’t maim or murder me if that’s what you’re worried about. Probably. I’ve made blood oaths to protect the deepest secrets I know, and spilling them would kill me.” I permitted a smile to bend my lips. “They’d sooner sew my lips shut or wipe my mind and leave me an amnesiac. Though if I didn’t remember how to use my powers and killed someone, then, yeah, they’d put me down.”
She swallowed hard. “I think I’d rather get beaten to a pulp than lose my mind.”
“Me too,” I admitted.
Physical wounds healed. Mental ones…not so much. And never when inflicted by the most skilled fae.
Unconcerned with the muck, Graeson came to my side and gazed at the smooth surface of the water for so long I wondered what he was thinking. No, not thinking. Remembering. He had seen his sister’s corpse, found her and hauled her from her watery grave. He had the images burned into his mind that I had fabricated through a career of solving drowning cases.
Which of us held the short end of that stick? The one who knew and didn’t have to imagine, or the one who imagined because she didn’t know? Neither of us would ever know peace on the subject. Each of us would be tormented in a different way. Perhaps that suffering made us equals.
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