“Understood.” Her nostrils flared. “Graeson, so we meet again.”
Scowl pinching his forehead, he circled behind me until he stood in front of her and dipped his chin. “Thierry.”
“I’m going to invite myself in.” She shuffled past us. “I’m being followed.” She peered up at him. “Unless that’s one of your people?”
“Our pack is all accounted for.” He cocked his head. “Why do you ask?”
“The person tailing me is a warg.” Thierry pulled out the task chair and sat. “Black fur if that helps with the ID.”
Graeson and I exchanged a glance. I broke the standoff. “Aisha?”
“It’s possible.” He rubbed his jaw. “She does blame you for her expulsion from the pack.”
“Of course she does.” Me, and not Imogen, the female warg who had claimed her title, and her mate.
“I hate to bring bad news with me.” Thierry crossed her legs. “I’m afraid that’s not the worst of it.”
“The prophecy means something to you?” I sank on the mattress and folded my legs under me.
“Let’s make this private first.” She took a charm from her pocket and crushed it. My ears popped as the spell sealed the room. “Decide amongst yourselves if Graeson is privy to this information. I will require an oath sealed in blood before we go further.”
“I want in,” he said before I could ask him.
“You okay with that?” she asked me. I nodded, and she pulled out a charm resembling a charred bird’s nest and a slender dagger. She pricked her finger and fed it a drop of her blood, the wound sealing before our eyes. “Who wants to go next?”
I volunteered, leaving Graeson for last. My thumb was still bleeding when magic raced up my arms, stinging my throat and pricking my lips, binding us to shared secrets. The charm vanished in a puff of smoke, and Thierry dumped the ashes into the small trash can beneath the desk.
“Okay. Where were we?” She dusted her hands. “Oh yeah. The prophecy. It could mean a great many things to me, personally.” She squinted up at me, lips pursed, debating. “You don’t know who I am, do you?” She laughed. “God that sounds cocky, but you were alone with Mai, and she tends to be overprotective. I wasn’t sure whose names she might have dropped to threaten you if you hurt me.”
In my periphery, Graeson bristled. “She threatened you?”
“We worked it out,” I soothed him. “It’s fine.” Focusing on Thierry, I got butterflies in my stomach, like I was at the top of one of those rickety National Fair coasters, high above a crowd with miles of track in front of me. “All I know about you is what I learned the first time we touched. You’re a legacy, so one of your parents is Faerie-born.” Her expectant look pushed me to continue. “You’re a half-blood fae, a very powerful one.”
Thierry sobered. “My father is Macsen Sullivan.”
My gut rocketed into the soles of my feet, and that rollercoaster sensation blasted it right back up in my throat. “You’re the Black Dog’s daughter?”
“Yeah.” She shrugged like it was no big deal to be the daughter of a legend. “I don’t lead with that, you know? I don’t like to name drop, and I like to keep my private life as private as possible.”
“Who is the Black Dog?” Graeson expected me to answer, but I was too busy scraping my brains back in my head from where her announcement had blown the top off my skull. “Ellis?”
“Let me start at the beginning, okay?” Thierry started cracking her knuckles. “The story is easier to follow that way.”
“All right.” Graeson sat beside me and started rubbing my back.
“The purpose of the Wild Hunt for centuries was to ride through the mortal realm on All Hallows’ Eve, collecting the wayward souls of fae who died on Earth. They returned them to Faerie, where they could sort of evaporate into the afterlife.” She made a slashing gesture. “It’s complicated. Anyway, the story goes that on one such hunt, the Huntsman and his pack of sleek, black hounds crossed a battlefield.” Her voice fell into the cadence of someone used to telling the story. “Their hunger had been temporarily sated, but their noses led them to one last feast. Two souls, one Seelie and one Unseelie, stood with their hands clasped as though unaware the hunt was upon them.”
“The Seelie are light and the Unseelie dark, right?” Graeson leaned forward, listening.
“Yes, well, sort of. Again, it’s complicated. Nothing is black and white.” She gusted out a breath. “Okay, so the pack leader ran ahead of the others. Confused when the spirits stood their ground, he approached them, sniffed them and allowed each to stroke his silky, midnight fur.
“The Seelie held the hound’s gaze while the Unseelie spoke. ‘Only in death have we known peace. If we had raised our voices instead of our swords, much of our grief might have been circumvented. Loyal beast, reaper, it is our final wish that Faerie never endure the misery of another Thousand Years War.’
“‘Mark this day, Black Dog,’ the Seelie intoned. ‘Tonight you are the hunter, but one hundred years hence, you shall become the hunted. One prince from each of our houses will hunt you across Faerie wearing the skins of hounds, goaded by your own Huntsman while you wear the skin of a sidhe noble. Your blood will anoint the new ruler and usher in one hundred more years of prosperity for the fae.’
“Instead of consuming the spirits as the Huntsman had decreed, Black Dog bowed his head to their will. That simple act of defiance shattered the bonds between himself and the Huntsman, and Black Dog gained awareness. As a gift to aid him in the trials ahead, the Unseelie entered his left eye and the Seelie his right, so that Black Dog might always view both sides of any argument with impartiality.
“Black Dog also gained the form of a man so that he might stand toe-to-toe with kings. He named himself Macsen Sullivan and established the Faerie High Court, choosing one Seelie and one Unseelie consul to join him, and instituted the Right of the Hunt.
“Once a century, he was run to ground and torn to pieces. The blood of one man was spilled to determine a king. His sacrifice avoided the slaughter of thousands had the houses gone to war for the crown. For the seven days after he was laid to rest in Faerie’s soil, the realm mourned him. Lore said those tears seeped into the ground and restored him, and he rose at midnight on the seventh day made whole again.”
“Is any of that true?” Graeson wondered out loud.
A shudder rippled through Thierry. “Every word of it is true.” She composed herself. “The Huntsman considers himself my grandfather. Not that I would mind a family reunion, but he shouldn’t be able to cross the thresholds my father set.” Her voice lowered. “I severed the tethers leading into Faerie myself. Only one remains, and it is hidden and guarded.”
“You—?” I choked out.
“Yeah.” She wiggled rune-marked hands at me. “Me.”
Stunned as I was, my brain recovered faster this time. Pieces were clicking together all over the place.
“That’s good news.” Relief coasted through me. “I thought the divination meant the worlds would have to collide for the Wild Hunt to have access to this realm, but it could mean your grandfather came through the tether.”
“The Wild Hunt free in the mortal world is not good news,” she disagreed. “I’m not sure there’s any merit to this divination, and I can’t swear—if this does come to pass—that it won’t be as you say. The Huntsman could use the tether. It’s not outside the realm of possibility.”
“If there is a functional tether, can you get word to Faerie? Find out what reason he might have for coming?” Another thought occurred to me. “What about your father? Can he help?”
“Dad is honeymooning with my mother in Summer.” She grimaced.
So they hadn’t been married when she was born? Or hadn’t been together? She caught my expression and grimaced. I spared her an amused smile. “Let me guess, it’s complicated?”
She huffed out a laugh. “Exactly that. There’s no way to reach them. Not for ten more days when the glamour concealing
their hideaway dissipates.” She rubbed her forehead. “They wanted privacy to reconnect. They’ve been through so much.”
“I get your interest based on your familial connection,” Graeson started, “but Tennessee is a ways from Texas. Did you come in person to extract the oaths? Or did you have something else in mind?”
“I did need the oaths.” She bobbed her head. “But if the Huntsman comes, I need to be here to greet him.” Her lips flatlined. “Gramps hasn’t been to this world in a long time, and his hounds will be ravenous. A little-known fact is parents who tell cautionary tales to naughty children about the hounds ripping souls from the living as easily as they capture the lost ones aren’t wrong.”
I blanched, but Graeson appeared torn on the edge of disbelief. This was not his culture, and Faerie was not his world. How strange it must be for him to accept our bizarre history as truth instead of fairy tale.
“You’re here to stop him,” Graeson said, rolling the implications around his mind.
“Not him so much as what else might follow him through,” she demurred. “I’m more concerned about what the implications are that he was mentioned at all than he himself.” She hesitated. “The rules change as rulers change in Faerie. No one has let the Huntsman off his leash in centuries, and the current king is…” She rolled a hand. “He’s a decent-enough guy. Manipulative as hell, which he gets from his mother, but what fae aren’t?”
I shrugged, not agreeing or disagreeing. Thierry was a protector of humans, most likely because one of her parents was one. Her stance on fae seemed…skewed…to me, but I would have to walk a mile in her shoes to understand her position, and I already had blisters on my heels. All that mattered to me was she was here, she was a powerful ally, and whatever was about to go down had a better chance of ending well with her on our side. “So you’re saying you don’t think he would let slip the hounds?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Not without a direct order.”
“How does this change our plan?” Graeson looked to me.
“It doesn’t.” I patted his thigh. “We still have to press Charybdis, and that means we have to find the clerk.” I frowned, thinking it over. “He gave me permission to summon him when I ‘made my peace.’ I think that means he’ll answer me if I can get near enough to one of his hosts.”
“What does that mean?” Graeson snapped his head toward me. “Made your peace with what?”
“I could be wrong.” I really, really didn’t think I was. “I believe he wants me as his next avatar.” Gold bathed Graeson’s irises, and he snarled. “He wanted to punish me, and he failed. Harlow is all he’s got left, and she’s human. His kind of power will burn her out. She ought to have a higher resistance than most, given she’s been exposed to magic all her life, but she won’t last forever.”
“You’re not trading places with her.” He made it an order, not a question.
“No, I’m not,” I hedged. “But the only way for us to win this is if he thinks I am.”
Thierry threw out a hand to forestall more growling. “No, listen. This could work.” She stood and began pacing. “We isolate Charybdis while he’s riding Harlow. Ask for a meet somewhere remote. You’ll have the upper hand, and he’ll know it. Harlow is his last bargaining chip. Offer to take her place, and before he makes the jump, we take her down.”
I leapt to my feet. “We don’t hurt her.”
“I’ll tranq her. From a safe distance.” Thierry tapped her head. “I’m protected by layers of heavyweight spells these days, mostly to keep fae out of my noggin who might have heard about the tether and want its location. That ought to keep me safe from this guy too.”
“Then why don’t you—?” Graeson started.
“He doesn’t want me.” Thierry faced him. “I’d do this in a heartbeat if I could, because I’m confident I can walk out the other side. My mate is too, or I wouldn’t be here. I’d be tied to a chair in the basement of a building half a world away. But I can’t provide the incentive. He wants Cam. That’s what we have to give him.”
“I don’t like this, Ellis.” All the jumping and pacing must have irritated Graeson’s wolf, because he rose too. “I know you have to do this.” He clenched his fists. “Your sense of honor won’t allow anything less.”
“We’ve tried to catch him for months, and so many lives have been lost in the process.” I didn’t mention Marie, but he flinched the same as if I had. “I have one shot to end this now before anyone else is put at risk. He’s fixated on me.” I kissed him tenderly. “Let it end with me.”
Let the ghosts of all those murdered by his hands be laid to rest. I owed them that peace for my role in their deaths.
He circled my wrists, his grip iron. “You are not ending.”
“Poor choice of words,” I allowed. “That’s not what I meant.” Mostly.
“This can work.” Thierry sounded certain. “I’ve had the same training as Cam. I can handle a gun. They’re just not my favorite thing.”
“What about the tranqs?” Butler was tiny, and I doubted she could root out the supplies she needed locally.
“I’ll put in a call.” She pulled out her cell. “I can have the gun and ammo here by morning.”
A tiny pang of longing zipped through my chest. Once upon a time, I’d had all the conclave’s resources at the tips of my fingers, and it had been a beautiful thing.
“You do that.” I was glad one of us could. “Graeson and I will resume surveillance of the gas station.”
“After you eat.” His tone brooked no argument. “You have to refuel or you won’t have the energy to shift when you need to.”
“He makes a good point.” A haunted expression ribboned across Thierry’s features. “We should both top off before the ball gets rolling.”
I eased closer to her. “Would you like to join us?”
“No.” Her voice went gritty. “I should feed alone.”
Chills swept down my arms. Feed? I didn’t want to know. “If you change your mind, let me know.”
“You kids go have fun.” A faint smile lifted her lips. “I have a date with Shaw.” She waggled her phone. “Whatever passes for Chinese around here and Skype.”
I smiled back, hoping he could shake her grim mood. “Where are you staying?”
“Here. I figured it would be easiest.” She glanced around the room. “I’m one floor up, room two twelve.”
“We’ll leave you to it then.” Graeson held the door for us, pulling it closed behind him and testing it as if not quite convinced he ought to trust Thierry. Or maybe his mistrust had morphed into something else seeing as how she supported my Cam-as-bait plan. “Good night,” he told her, almost managing not to snap. “We’ll plan on meeting across the street at six in the morning.”
“So early?” Thierry groaned. “Okay. Fine. Yeah. Six works.”
We left her to make her calls and went in search of dinner and the patience to wait out Charybdis.
Full of burgers and fries, we resumed our position on the bench in front of the general store. Night had fallen, and a cool breeze whisked away the day’s heat. Light poured through the grimy windows of the gas station, casting slanted rectangles onto the pavement. One of the bulbs had blown over the pumps, but the other valiantly held back the night for wayward drivers in need of fuel.
“There is another option that might net us quicker results,” Graeson rumbled from beside me.
“You mean Bianca?” I sipped at my drink and rechecked my gut. “I can’t do that to her. I can’t invite Charybdis back into her body, not after what he did—what he made her do—last time.”
Tension eased from his shoulders, a sure indication he was relieved I had chosen to spare her more pain.
“By now he must know Aunt Dot and Isaac are gone.” Any hope of getting the drop on him had vanished.
“It might work in our favor.” Graeson crossed his ankle over his knee. “We need him desperate. We need him to make a mistake. We need him to underestimate
us.”
Watching his plans unravel a second time might be all it took. “I agree.”
Shift change came and went, the teen clerk replaced by an older man with a ring full of keys hanging from his belt that screamed supervisor. I’d had enough. I stood and twisted out the kinks. “I say we head back to our room and crash while we can.”
“We do have eight hours before shift changes again.” A smile tipped his lips. “I don’t know about sleep, but I’m definitely ready for bed.”
Flush riding my cheeks, I took his hand and led him back to the hotel.
The night passed too quickly.
Chapter 18
Morning arrived between one blink of my eyes and the next. Confident we had the shift changes down at the gas station, Graeson and I headed out to breakfast. Cheeks flushed and eyes shining, Thierry joined us only ten minutes after six. Feeding, whatever it entailed, agreed with her even if she didn’t agree with it.
“You guys are morning people.” She plunked down on the bench seat across from us. “Ugh.” She gestured to the waitress and indicated she wanted coffee. Lots and lots of it. “Tell me something good.”
“I wish we could.” I toyed with the paper banding my utensils. “We bombed last night.”
“Shift change is in forty-five minutes,” Graeson reminded me.
“How about you?” I asked Thierry. “Tell me your night went better than ours.”
“I suppose it did.” A somber thread wove through her voice, and she flexed her rune-marked fingers. “I do have some good news.” She reached in a pocket and flashed three green postal receipts stamped with a wizard’s hat. “Pointed Hat Deliveries made a pit stop last night around midnight. We’re set on that end.”
“Pointed Hat?” Graeson asked, puzzling over the slips of paper. “As in a witch delivery service?”
“Ha.” She slapped a hand over her mouth. “Um, no. The conclave’s pockets are deep, but they’re not that deep. Pointed Hat is operated by a gremlin couple. Harris is an avid Harry Potter fan. The patch on his shirt says Harris Potter.”
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