by Ann Denton
"We're going to a place I set up," he said, as he opened the cat carrier and gently pulled Tee out to check on her. He set her carefully in his lap and put his index finger on her small neck to check her pulse. "Emergency quarters, if you will. Drake didn't want to use it except as a last resort..."
"Should we drop Tee off at a hospital?" I asked, worry stacking up when I couldn’t see her chest move.
"No!" Bodie and Larry barked at me at the same moment.
"She’s seen too much, babe," Bodie explained.
Larry sighed. "Plus, I think she’s in a coma. And I don’t trust that damn underground hospital to do what’s right for her. I don’t. I did this. And I need to fix it."
His eyes blazed with a very un-Larry-like determination.
"Okay," I agreed. Larry might not be the best mage, but if he said he was going to make things right, I believed him.
The old mage gently placed Tee back inside the plastic carrier and latched it shut as the bus bounced us all around like third graders on a field trip. Somehow, Larry managed to keep her head from smacking the top of the cage each time.
"Why?" I asked.
But just then, the driver called Larry up front. The old mage set Tee's carrier aside and ambled over Easton in order to go give directions. The bus took a sharp left, forcing me to hold on tight as dawn broke.
The sky grew streaked with pink and orange; it was far too pretty for the day I was sure I’d have. My anxiety took hold again, refusing to settle even when Bodie started gently stroking my wings.
Easton was healing, but he was still in bad fucking shape. If we were attacked again, he was as good as dead. And I only had one gun with four shots left. That was just enough to hold out hope long enough to watch it be ripped away like a kite stolen by a breeze.
My eyes scanned from side to side as we bumped along, staring down every street, expecting to see people materialize and attack. Drake was who-knew-where. And the entire fucking Mage Council was gonna be after us like hunting dogs sniffing out a fox. No, something worse. Like serial killers stalking their marks. Shit. That made me want to vomit. No more fucking watching True Detective, Aubry, I scolded myself. I wouldn't put it past the mages to set our bodies out in a field with deer antlers... if murdered bones weren't so valuable, I had a feeling the whole damn council would have a ton of creative ways to display the bodies of their enemies. Like the old medieval lords who put heads on pikes. Maybe they'd create a council museum. Los Angeles had a shit ton of ridiculous ones. Trite had once dragged me to the Museum of Jurassic Technology to see a pair of decaying dice.
It was as if my thoughts had summoned a museum.
We arrived at the putrid La Brea Tar Pits.
The driver pulled into a parking garage down the street. We were all hustled off the bus, bags thrown into our laps as we smooshed into two cars—Bodie, and I in one and Larry (with Tee), Easton and the bus driver in the other—that separated and converged minutes later. The cars parked at the Page Museum near the pits.
Bodie reached into the bag on my lap and said, "Here, put this on."
He grabbed a ballcap and shoved it onto my head then slid a cheap camera around my neck. "Think you’re able to use your glamour?" he asked, petting my shoulder.
I focused hard and was surprised to find that Larry’s spells had faded enough to let me access my magic. It usually took much longer than that. Maybe he’d been having a seriously off-night? I mean, messing up my spell and Tee’s potion? Poor guy.
I was able to use enough glamour to hide my wings so that Bodie could slide off my torn London Fog jacket and slide on a tacky Hawaiian print shirt.
I scratched my arm and watched dully as he donned his own disguise. He tossed on a Halloween store mustache that looked horrid, some thick plastic eyeglasses, and shoved his thick torso into a bowling shirt that was at least two sizes too small. I heard a rip as he buttoned it. I decided that I needed to be in charge of future disguises.
We slid out of our ride and joined Larry and Easton, who leaned on the strange shifter I hadn’t bothered to look at before now. He only drew my eyes this second because he wore a curly haired wig that made him look like he was auditioning for a disco dance competition.
Ugh. Just as disgusting as the wig was the smell of methane, which permeated the air. I had to try not to gag. I glanced at Bodie, and then over at Easton. How were the shifters not puking over this smell? Weren't their noses twice as sensitive as mine?
Their faces twisted in disgust, but everyone followed Larry as he calmly led us around the tar pits.
"This place smells awful," I muttered to Bodie, who threw one arm around my shoulders while using the other hand to carry Tee in her cat carrier. "Why are we here?"
"Because what mage would ever expect shifters to be able to stand this spot?" Bodie responded.
I rolled my eyes. He had a good point. That had been my first thought.
Two humans jogged by, eyeing us and probably wondering what the hell we were doing at that early hour.
Larry held a red flag and a bull horn and spoke way too loudly. "Alright everyone, welcome to the tour. Glad you could make it..." he trailed off after the runners left.
"World’s smallest tour," I snarked. "No need for a bull horn."
"I’d rather have the world’s smallest tour than the world’s smallest…" Larry trailed off.
I was left to follow him, half shocked and half impressed that he could joke at a time like this. My eyes scanned the sky as we walked down the street to the George C. Page Museum. It was a huge modern construction of cement and steel, exactly the kind of architecture I loathed. It definitely had an ostentatious bomb shelter feel to it.
Larry led us to a back door and used a key card on some nondescript employee entrance. He quickly hustled us inside so that no one would see.
I took one last look at the sky for Drake, but he wasn't back yet.
"Come on, hurry," Larry mumbled when Easton and the guy he leaned on weren't fast enough. Bodie gently nudged me inside and then closed the door behind him.
I turned to find myself in a wide atrium, filled with exotic plants and a space frame—a black aluminum web that looked like toppled tower cranes laid sideways across the ceiling. Critiques shot through my mind rapid-fire. How could anyone think this was a good idea? How was this a hiding spot?
Really, Drake? Plan G? There must be a million visitors a day through here.
We're dead.
We were walking skeletons. The Walking Dead. We were about to get canceled—just like the show should have been three seasons ago.
Larry pushed us through a door that showed stripped down and polished skeletons of mammoths and saber tooth tigers.
Bodie leaned over and whispered to me, "Did you know that scientists have it all wrong? Saber tooth tigers aren't animals, they're shifters."
I glared at him in the dim room. "Of course, every supe knows that."
He raised a brow. "But did you know... they're not extinct?"
That little tidbit did catch my attention. The Mage Council only worried about shifters as a whole due to their tendency to draw human attention or those clans that got aggressive. I hadn't heard that saber tooths were still roaming the streets. Interesting.
But then Easton stumbled in front of us and I hurried forward to help prop him up. "Hey!" I looked up at him. "Almost there, Papa Bear. You got this."
Easton gave me a small smile.
He was pale. Too pale. He needed to eat. And he needed time to heal. I looked forward toward Larry. "How long can we stay here?" I was thinking we had an hour tops, before the museum staff arrived and then maybe one more before the general public flooded the place.
Larry glanced back at me with a grin. He waved his little red plastic flag. "The whole back section is under construction for a new exhibit. We've got four luxurious rooms to ourselves for two weeks before construction starts. And, since this is my day job, nobody will question me roaming in and out to get you all what
ever you need."
He had a day job? I blinked, surprised.
The frazzle-haired mage pushed aside some plastic sheeting like a ringmaster welcoming us inside a circus tent. And I realized that's what my life had become. A circus full of car-driving monkeys and flaming bananas where nothing that used to make sense applied anymore.
Behind the circus tent was an unlocked door. The doorway wasn’t wide enough for me to go through with Easton and #thestranger, as I decided to dub the nameless guy, so I stepped back and let them enter first.
I took a deep breath before I walked through the plastic looking glass into this new messed up reality where I was a fucking criminal instead of John Wayne. In the eyes of Mage Law, I was now a black hat. And some mage somewhere was gonna try to collect on my life and cash in on my bones.
Damn. I got why cowboys went to saloons. I needed a drink. I wanted nothing more than to go to Syn right now and get the worry whipped out of me. But that wasn’t going to happen.
Bodie's arm slipped back around me, but I couldn’t stand to have him touch me now that I was thinking clearly. His touch felt like an ice burn because I hadn’t just betrayed the mages, the fae, my fucking kingdom. I’d betrayed him. I had brushed my lips over Easton’s forehead in what I’d thought was an innocent kiss for a dying man... and somehow, fate had twisted that one kindness into the worst cruelty imaginable.
Bodie had been very clear. He did not want to share.
I had to tell him…
But Easton was so hurt, so vulnerable. I needed to wait until he could at least stand on his own two feet to have this conversation, right? Right. That’s what I told myself.
My fingernails dug into my palms and that pain felt better than the fire raging inside. I needed something else to think about, something else to do. We needed something to focus on. Something outside of us.
If we were going to survive what I was sure was now going to be the full-fledged wrath of the MP and the Mage Council, we needed help. I turned to Bodie. "Can I use your phone? I want to call someone who might be able to help."
Bodie's eyes immediately narrowed. "It's not that I don't trust you, Butterfly. But who would you know that would want to help a shifter?"
I grimaced. "The fae princess in Russia. My cousin, Kira Fallton."
Kira and I had never seen eye to eye before. She had always been a rebel. Cast out by her parents at eighteen because she refused to enforce Mage Law, she was the dark fae of the family. But if anyone had ideas about how to subvert the Mage Council and live to tell the tale, Kira would.
Bodie chewed his lip. "We might want to wait until we talk to Drake—"
"She's on our side," Easton cut in from across the room, grimacing from the makeshift pallet Larry and Stranger Danger had set him on.
Apparently, scolding did the trick, because Bodie handed over his phone. I dialed and tapped my foot as I waited for someone to pick up.
"Privet," A deep male voice answered the phone by saying hello in Russian. I heard bar noises in the background—clinking glasses, voices. I’d called a bar in Russia, one run by my cousin’s only friend, a mobster who gave zero fucks about anything or anyone.
I cut to the chase. "Adrian, I need you to get a message to Kira. Tell her that her cousin Aubry needs her help. Tell her... I’m being hunted by the MP out here. I ended up mated to—"
"Shifter!" Adrian's booming voice and Russian accent cut me off. He gave a brutal laugh. "You are mated to shifter! I can tell by your tone. Oh, this news will make Kira so happy. She will find so much humor. Aubry the 'Gandon' —the little sheathe for mage dick."
Bodie must have been able to hear that mage dick part because he grabbed the phone out of my hand and hung up. "That asshole is who you expect to help us?"
"No. My cousin's the asshole I expect to help. He's just the gateway asshole. She’s hard to get ahold of."
From across the room, Easton called out. "What the fuck did that guy call you?"
I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. "Gandon means condom in Russian. He called me a mage condom. Per my cousin, I helped the mages fuck the world."
Both my shifter assholes cracked up at that. In fact, Larry and Stranger Things over there started laughing too.
"That's the best, most true fucking thing I ever heard," Easton crowed before his wounds made him wince.
"What is?" A low growl came from behind us.
I whirled around to find Drake walking into the room. He looked soot-stained and sweaty, but it was all I could do to keep myself from jumping on him and wrapping him up in a huge hug. My chest lightened at the sight of him. I’d been worried but I hadn’t realized just how much that fear had weighed me down.
"Where the fuck were you?" I snarled.
"Saving your ass," he sniped back. But I saw the flash of gold in his eyes as he took me in, ensuring I was okay before striding over to check on Easton.
"You dead yet?" he asked Easton.
"Not today," the blond bear replied.
"Good. Heal up. Because I had to shake off at least fifteen wasps in order to get here. The hive is pissed."
Larry grumbled, running a hand through his wild Einstein hair. "We need back up, Drake. I'm only one mage. And that battle just now took out a ton of my stores."
"Already called in a favor," Drake responded smoothly, his husky voice wrapping around my ears as he walked behind me. The hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention as he passed. But that was just because his predatory animal was so close to the surface.
Drake grabbed Larry's cat carrier, opened it, and pulled a tablet out of the bottom, from underneath Tee, jostling her.
"Watch it!" I hissed at him, not wanting him to hurt her up.
She'd slept through the battle and the bus ride and everything. Maybe she really was in a coma? I stepped closer and put a hand on her shoulder. Tee was breathing—thank god—tiny snorts coming from her upturned nose as a piece of rose-pink hair drifted across her cheek. I brushed it back and turned to Larry.
"What do you think you can do to help her?" I asked.
He grimaced and ran a hand over the back of his neck uncomfortably. "I’m not sure. I don't normally do Memory Wipes. Most humans who see me doing magic just think I'm on dope."
My stomach fell a little. "But some sleeping is normal, right? That does happen? It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a coma. And you have books to tell you how to fix her, right?" I'd skipped that division in Mage Police. Everyone was supposed to do a stint working memory modification, but Trite and Dad had pulled some strings. So I'd never really seen the spell up close.
Larry gave me a very unconvincing nod. But my worry for Tee was shoved aside when Drake pulled up the magical news on the tablet and the sight of all of us destroying Union Station played across the screen in slow motion.
"That lighting is no good for me," Easton joked.
Bodie came to stand next to me. He went pale when he saw his face on the screen. My fingers automatically wrapped around his wrist. He'd just gone from an unknown to one of the Mage Police's most wanted. Even though I knew to expect it, my own throat went as dry as sawdust when my face flashed across the screen and the newscaster called me a rogue fae.
I guessed that was true. I'd chosen a side the second I'd chosen to save Easton. But I didn't regret my decision. Even though it meant turning my back on everything and everyone I knew... and trying to figure out how the fuck I was going to fit in here.
Yeah, Aubry, how the hell are you going to do that? my mind snarked. I wanted to punch myself in the head and shut my brain up.
But the newscaster did that for me when she switched tactics and started interviewing my cousin, the one they’d given my job.
Candace came on screen wearing both her police uniform and a tiara nestled in her brown curls. She was perfection incarnate, down to the lipstick and gloss combo my mother was so often pressing on me. Guess she’d found a surrogate daughter, one who’d kowtow to her every wish. Resentment churned
my stomach to butter.
"What happened last night," Candace began, "is an utter tragedy. It just showcases how unhinged the shifter population, and unfortunately, my cousin, the former Chief—"
Drake flicked the tablet shut.
My fingers clenched in fury. "That bitch."
Nobody responded to me. Drake just gestured at Larry and Stranger in a Strange Land. "Let’s go talk logistics."
My nostrils flared. First my mother. Now fucking Candace. It was one thing for me to choose a side. It was another to know that I could never turn back. There was a finality to that broadcast that threw an iron curtain down between me and the world I’d known. I wanted to punch something. Even though I was bone tired, fury coursed through me. These assholes were publicly shaming me, condemning me, and they didn’t even know.
I yanked on my hair, my wings fluttering behind me. They actually gave me a tiny bit of lift. Larry’s spells must have been wearing off. Just in time to do no damn good.
I started to march off to one of the other open doors, the one that Drake and Larry hadn’t used. I wanted to be fucking alone to stew. And maybe throw things.
But Easton’s voice made me freeze. It was soft and plaintive, each word more desperately sad than the last. "Don’t. Aubry... please. Come back, mate."
3
Bodie
What the mother fuck had Easton just said?
I turned toward Aubry where she stood frozen in the doorway, her back muscles tense.
My brain hadn't really made it past that initial question, so I repeated it, this time out loud. "What the fuck did Easton just say?"
Aubry's fingers tightened on the door frame, her knuckles going white. I turned toward the bear shifter in question, who propped himself into a sitting position. My stomach curdled at his pure and determined look.
"I said, Aubry is my mate, too." His eyes were clear. He wasn’t speaking out of some kind of pain-induced hallucination.
His clarity and Aubry’s stiff posture...
My heart popped like a balloon. It shattered like a potion bottle. It splattered against the wall like the brain matter of any one of the fuckers I’d killed in my life. No fucking way. My mind frazzled like static electricity, jumping from thought to thought and instinct to instinct.