We hit the main drag, lit up like Christmas with flashing signs in every window, and the navigation app took me on a turn-by-turn tour of the zany town comprised of hotels, fast food joints, souvenir stands and mini attractions. A gift shop with an entrance flowing through the maw of a giant plaster shark caught my eye, and I smiled, wishing Zed was here to pose in the jaws with me. Light traffic—and herds of darting pedestrians with no concept of jaywalking—kept my eyes glued on the road. So when the weight of a hand pressed on my shoulder without me registering any movement from the corner of my eye, I squeaked like a mouse and bounced in my seat.
“I’m calling this experiment a success.” Isaac chuckled from behind me as a light drizzle splatted the windshield. “Looks like Tiberius was right about the impact on the weather.”
Considering we were invisible, I imagined a tiny poof of dark cloud zooming down the interstate, taking exits and rumbling at cars that got in its path, maybe zinging a few with lightning bolts. The mental picture made me smile.
“Does that mean you forgive me?” The invisible man nuzzled me, and fresh heat throbbed low in response.
“For scaring the crap out of me?” I shrugged off his hand. “Nope. You owe me for this.” I let my smile widen. “I’ll explain, in great detail, how you can pay me back later.”
That must have revved his engine. He popped back into view with flushed cheeks and a hungry cast to his features.
“You’ll have to focus better than that,” Tiberius chastised him.
“Let’s go over it again.” Isaac trudged to the back, and they delved into a conversation I couldn’t follow.
I veered into the final turn and parked in front of a now-defunct water park that must have been a huge hit in its day. Lit by neighboring attractions, I spotted a few insanely high slides, several fountains, three pools of varying sizes and a lazy river that meandered along the park’s perimeter.
Gone was the rush of water and squeal of excited children. Paint had faded and chipped under the relentless sun. Metal rusted in the briny air. The remaining awning covers fluttered in the coastal breeze. It must have been abandoned for years.
I leaned forward and surveyed the area. Slick attractions hemmed it in on all sides. A mini golf course, a trampoline park, one of those laser tag places. They were all bright, glossy and ready to separate parents from their kids…and their wallets. Yet this place sat here, neglected and forgotten, on prime real estate.
I called bullshit.
Isaac sank into the seat next to me and took in the sights while fiddling with a set of high-tech goggles. “Sloppy work. This would have stood out even if we didn’t know it was one of their former haunts. They should have used glamour to conceal it or at least to repel people.”
“You were onto something when you drew the comparison between these hidey-holes and Faerie.” They must have someone capable of maintaining a complex glamour in addition to whatever space-bending magic pulled square footage out of ether. Suddenly, I felt a whole lot better about letting Isaac handle this first stop alone. “They burned this place. That’s why we can see it for what it is, why there’s no pushback from wards or other protective magics. They aren’t coming back.”
He looked inclined to agree with me. “We still have to clear the area. They might have left clues behind, so I’ll need to search whatever private areas I can access.” A grin overcame his mouth. “It’s a big park.”
“Yeah, yeah. I get the message. Loud and clear.” I huffed at him in mock affront. “I have to give you more than five minutes to explore before mounting a rescue mission.”
“How do you always make me sound like an aimless adventurer about to stroll through a lost temple even when I’m on a mission?”
I studied him and processed his tone. “It really bothers you, doesn’t it?”
“I care about how you see me, and that you think I’m distracted by shiny objects isn’t flattering.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll do better. I promise.” Sure, I might imagine him in a pith helmet for my own amusement upon occasion, but I had known going into this relationship that his was a wanderer’s soul. I just hadn’t realized I had twisted what should have been acceptance into a bitterness unconcealed by my comments. “I guess I do imagine you as a nomadic explorer who drifts from one adventure to the next. The way Cam talked about your lifestyle growing up painted a picture in my head. When you were so eager to hit the road again once she mated Cord, I thought I had you figured out.”
“This early into our mating, I would hope you don’t know all of me, or all my secrets.”
I quirked an eyebrow at him.
“Wolves are inquisitive creatures, yours in particular. Gotta stay mysterious to keep her coming back for more.”
The mention of hidden facets in his personality, in his past, whetted my appetite, just as he’d known it would.
This time he didn’t remind me of his promise to earn my trust. Determination straightened his shoulders, and he appeared to settle under the mantle of my doubt as though testing its balance so that he might cast it off at the first sign of an imbalance that favored him.
I leaned my head against the seat and stared at him. “How do I love you so much?”
“For one thing, your wolf has great taste.” He cupped the side of my face in his warm palm. “For another, she figured things out before we did, so you’ve had longer to cultivate a bond.”
A chill whispered through me at his words. The old fear I might love him too much for my own good, that one day he might be a name carved on my arm, had me tasting bile.
“Stop.” He flipped up my armrest and hauled me unceremoniously across the aisle and onto his lap. “Just stop.” He dared tread on my private shame. “You are not your mother. I am not your father. This bond we have is not the same as theirs. You are a brave, strong woman. A survivor. You have issues. Okay, well, so do I. So does everyone. You can’t internalize every tiny thing, Dell. You can’t hone every mistake you or I make on the path to doing this right to cut yourself to pieces.”
“I was broken before I met you.” I leaned my head against his shoulder, my hand over his heart, and burrowed into his neck. “It’s not on you to fix me. It’s on me.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. We’re in this together, remember? You’ve already seen the ugly parts of my life. Don’t be afraid to show me yours too.” He cuddled me closer. “When Charybdis took me…”
An involuntary shudder ripped through me. I had almost lost him to a serial killer, and then I had lost him anyway.
“You came for me, and for Mom. You never gave up on finding us alive.” He caressed my spine with his fingertips. “You stood by me while my family fell apart. When Cam found out I’d been lying to her face all those years about her sister’s death…I didn’t think she would ever forgive me. I didn’t think she would forgive herself, either. But you stuck by me. I was in the wrong, and I had betrayed one of the people I love most, but you understood.
“Keeping the truth from her gnawed on me every single day. I could have taken the easy way out and said I did it because Mom asked me to, but that would have been a lie. If I had disagreed with it, I would have put up a fight, and I didn’t. Cam will always be my little cousin, and I will never regret taking actions to protect her even if that means she hates me for them.”
“I don’t want that for us.” I breathed him in, and the tension in my chest loosened. Once upon a time, only the alphas had this drugging effect on me when I got strung out, but he was far more addictive. “I want the truth, even when it hurts, even when it’s dangerous. Momma kept it all bottled up until she shattered. I don’t want to go that route. I don’t want to be her, be paranoid about where you are or what you’re doing every second we aren’t together.”
“I would never cheat on you.” He sounded wounded that I would consider the possibility, but there were many ways to be unfaithful. “You don’t believe that, do you?”
“No,” I admitted. “I don’t
think you’d shack up with other women the way my dad did, but I can’t shake the feeling one day you’re going to regret giving up your freedom for the ties of pack. That’s what keeps me up at night.” Tears burned the backs of my eyes. “‘He left you once. He’ll leave you again.’ That’s what I hear on a loop in my head.”
I had expected anger for throwing our past in his face. Another nasty trick I’d learned from Momma. But his touch gentled, and his heart kept its steady beat under my palm.
“I consider myself to be intelligent,” he said at last. “But I am just a man, and I do make mistakes.” He pressed his lips to the top of my head. “What matters is I learn from them. What matters most is I don’t repeat them.” His gentle arms turned to iron and caged me when I tried pushing off him. “I did leave you, but looking back… I can’t regret what I did.” I struggled against him, but he kept going. “Going away gave me the confidence to look you in the eye when you worry that I might regret mating you or setting down roots or starting a family, and say without a doubt that the only thing about you that I could ever regret is not spending every minute of the rest of our lives together.”
The fight drained out of me then, and I melted against him. Silent tears flowed down my cheeks and soaked into the fabric of his shirt. We didn’t talk for a long time. All that fear, doubt, hurt and worry poured in warm streams down my chin and evaporated.
I wasn’t fixed. One good cry hadn’t cured me. Isaac’s talk, as beautiful and heartfelt as it had been, was an echo of his declarations in that cell in Faerie. This wasn’t the first time he had had to repeat himself, and I doubted it would be the last. The fissures in my psyche couldn’t be spackled over with one swipe of the trowel. No, he would be mixing up fresh plaster, slapping it over the deepest cracks, and sanding down the rough edges for the rest of his life. Or the rest of mine. It wouldn’t always be this bad. I had to believe that. But it would take time for me to finish growing into my roles. Mate, beta, pack mate, friend. I was all those things to a host of different people, and each title came with its own set of complications.
“I’m kind of a hot mess,” I mumbled against his collarbone.
“You got the first part right,” he rumbled against my ear. “Life is what’s messy. For all of us.” He bit my earlobe, and I jumped. “The amount of grit on your face at the end is directly proportional to the amount of ass you kicked before life kicked you back.”
Lips curving against his skin, I darted out my tongue to taste him. “You should get moving.”
He groaned beneath me as I nibbled the cords of his throat. “I was just getting comfortable.”
“We can’t sit here forever. The streets are too busy, and the RV takes up too much real estate. Folks will notice when prime parking is available and yet not. It would be smarter if I circled the block while waiting on you.”
Gripping my hips, he lifted me off his lap and set me back in my seat. After adjusting himself, he strapped on the night vision goggles, walked stiffly toward the kitchen where he shifted into his alkonost aspect and then shrouded himself. The door opened and then shut behind him. To calm the wolf, I cracked a window to track him by scent. Much to my amusement, even his footsteps sounded unsatisfied.
Phase one of Operation Payback was complete.
Chapter 18
Isaac returned two hours and twenty-five minutes later. The tang of his sweat announced his arrival, and the wolf howled with glee at his safe return. I’d made several laps around the block to avoid tourists searching for late-night entertainment but managed to pull up to the vacant curb. There was no need to call out or throw open the door. Isaac could see through any illusion, and he had no trouble spotting us.
What must that be like? To see the world as it truly is? All masks ripped away? I suppose for him the sentiment didn’t carry the same meaning. He was used to seeing us bare-faced. I suspected that was part of the reason for his candor. Artifice wasn’t natural to his kind, and it wasn’t a part of his personality. Wargs tended to be practical creatures, excluding matters of the heart, so I appreciated that bluntness about him.
Except when aimed at me. I might be a warg, but I was also a woman, and my heart beat like a raw wound around Isaac.
“All hail the conquering hero,” I called once he was inside with the door—and noise-dampening spells—closed behind him. “What ho from the land of warm spots in the water?”
“A large group of fae were definitely in residence here, and recently. The shops have all been converted into living spaces, but most of the magic is gone. A human might do a double take if they walked into a space that appeared bigger than they expected, but that’s about it. I’d estimate that in another week all traces will have dissipated. The whole thing was designed to collapse after they got out, but slowly. I’m guessing in case of stragglers or if their new bolt-hole was compromised and they had to loop back.”
“This is confirmation the intel is good. That’s positive.” That meant the conclave had been tracking all those half-bloods they so helpfully secreted away on our world. That news surprised exactly no one. “Any clues about where they might have gone?”
“No, not a one. I can tell you they have a pontianak with them. Once you’ve smelled one—” he shuddered, “—you don’t forget. She might give us the trail we need to follow them.”
“Pontianak.” I pulled at my lower lip in thought. “They’re ghosts, right? Or is it zombies? Of women who died during childbirth?”
“No, those are lang suirs.” He washed his hands in the kitchen sink then splashed water on his face and blew his nose. The dust must have been bothering his allergies. What a mundane thing to know about a person. I collected those tidbits like pearls. “Pontianaks died while pregnant. They appear as beautiful women with pale skin and big eyes.”
His description jogged my memory. “They favor disemboweling their victims, and they suck the eyes out of people who catch them in the act.”
“You’re turning into a regular fae encyclopedia.” Pride warmed his voice. “The upside is, if she’s with them, then she must be at least half human. That doesn’t make her less dangerous, but it does make her easier to kill if she doesn’t appreciate us using her to track the others.”
“Plumeria,” I recalled. “Their scents are fresh flowers on one breath and rotting corpses on the next.”
“We need to get you in there so you can catch the scent.” He tapped Tiberius on the head. “Do you mind?”
The prince extended his hand without ungluing his eyes from the screen. Teens.
Juiced up and ready to go again, Isaac crammed a few sticks of jerky from the cupboard not occupied by Bea into his mouth, chewed twice then swallowed. I was impressed. Even I might have choked on those. His body must be screaming for sustenance at the rate he was burning magic.
Going visible for a short distance would allow him to conserve energy, but it was the more dangerous alternative. Still, I made the offer couched as a comment. “This would be easier if I could shift.” Playing dog was humiliating for the wolf, but she was willing to be persuaded, especially by her mate while he was smelling of beef jerky.
“We can’t risk it.” He took me by the hand. “Seven days. Then we’ll find a stretch of woods and run until our legs give out, and we’re so far from home we have to sleep in the mountains under the stars to rest up for the trek back.”
“That sounds like heaven.” My palm slid against his, and a lightness filled my chest. “It’s like you know me or something.”
There he goes again. Reading me like a book. How many unread chapters remained?
There were a few I had glossed over for sure. I hadn’t told Isaac about how Momma ended her life, but he knew. His pain was too great not to have known. Cam probably told him. Or one of the other wolves. Wargs were shameless gossips. But our conversation earlier had shifted a fraction of the weight of the past onto his shoulders, and they were wide and strong, able to support far more than I had given him.
“
Can you vanish me? Are you strong enough?” Eager to banish those gloomy thoughts, I fussed over him. “Or should you take a break?”
“I can cover us long enough to get inside the park. The dark helps. We’ll have to be careful after that not to draw attention from the mortal authorities, but we should be safe otherwise. I didn’t spot any traps or sentries left to stand guard.”
The transformation to alkonost shimmered in a slow wave this time, and Isaac was sweating by the time he managed the invisibility trick. With my hand in his, I felt no different. Everything looked the same to me. Only the pitter-patter of rain on the windshield betrayed the subtle magic at work.
“Well?” I held out my free arm to Tiberius. “Can you see me?”
“Yes.” He didn’t glance up from his game. “But no one else can. Except another Gemini or glamour-breaker fae, of course.”
He didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t press him. I was familiar enough with the ins and outs of Isaac’s magic to appreciate the similarities between his and Tiberius’s gifts. I accepted they understood their limits better than I did.
Figuring the RV was as safe parked here as anywhere, I crossed my fingers Enzo’s charms would hold and that no one would bump into us while there was no driver to pull her out of harm’s way. The only alternative was giving Tiberius the keys and hoping for the best. We had already ruined the cargo bay door. I refused to imagine what terrors awaited us if we let a kid who had never driven but had spent several hours making vroom noises under his breath after discovering one of those shoot-’em-up car games took the wheel.
“Let’s hurry,” Isaac panted, ushering me out the door and down the sidewalk, flipping his night vision goggles back down over his eyes. We reached the chain-link fence surrounding the park, and I wondered how he meant for us to climb it while maintaining contact, then I remembered. Wings. Duh. “Over here.”
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