Chapter 21
Harper
I’d never flown private before, but I guess if you’re running a paramilitary rescue mission in Europe, you might as well do it in style.
Jess and I took the seats at the back of the main cabin, a window booth set a little apart from the rest. He looked completely at home, legs stretched in the aisle, his arm draped over the seat-back.
The only sign of tension was the way his thumb kept tracing the inside of my wrist, a tiny, circular motion over the skin.
He kept his eyes on the door until the last of our crew was on board, then nodded to the taller flight attendant, who responded with a crisp “Roger that, sir,” and vanished behind the galley curtain.
Across from us, Wrecker and Parker sat next to each other, Parker’s laptop balanced on her knees, Wrecker’s own device open on the tray.
Their heads bent together, pale and dark, a study in opposites.
Parker was talking so fast her words tripped over each other, but her fingers flew even faster, tapping out code or maybe just nervous energy.
Wrecker grunted occasionally, low and deep, but didn’t look up from his screen.
Toward the front, Doc and Big Papa had commandeered the only table in the cabin.
Doc had a binder open, cross-referencing a stack of dossiers, his glasses slipping down his nose as he read.
Papa just sat, arms folded, a serene mountain of muscle and patience, eyes closed like he was already forty thousand feet up and dreaming of the landing.
The last to board was Gwen, and even in this zoo of power, she was hard to miss.
Barely five feet tall, maybe a hundred pounds in heels, with white-blonde hair twisted into a perfect chignon.
She wore an unstructured navy suit; the pants cropped at the ankle to show off blue suede pumps.
She carried a clutch and a slim leather satchel, not a weapon in sight.
The minute she cleared the cabin threshold, the temperature dropped ten degrees.
I felt the goosebumps on my neck before she’d even made it to her seat.
She smiled at us, a little too wide, and slid into a single seat two rows up, nearest the galley door. “Wolfsbane, right?” She called, glancing at Jess. “You always sit where you can see the exits. How delightfully retro!”
He gave her nothing but a nod. She winked and settled in, crossing her legs and tucking her bag under the seat. I tried not to stare, but failed. Even at rest, Gwen hummed with a strange, glassy energy, like her whole body was two seconds away from snapping into a thousand splinters.
The engines spooled up, a vibration that worked its way through my sneakers and up into my jaw.
I looked out the window, watched the tarmac flicker past, the glow of Amarillo’s runway lights retreating in a blur.
Jess leaned in, his lips close to my ear.
“Relax,” he said, a whisper only for me. “No one here wants to see you fall.”
“Easy for you to say,” I muttered. “You’ve done this a hundred times.”
He squeezed my hand, the calluses rough against my palm. “You’ve survived worse than this.”
I had.
The jet rocketed down the runway, the takeoff so smooth I barely felt the nose lift.
The world outside went black, then blue, then nothing at all.
Inside, the lights dimmed to a moody, cinema-level glow.
The flight attendants made their first pass, carrying a tray of white porcelain cups and a glass carafe of coffee so strong I could smell it from ten feet away.
The taller one—Nils, according to his nameplate—smiled at me and poured, not a drop spilled.
“Cream? Sugar?” he offered, voice clipped and efficient.
“Both, please,” I said, and he obliged, folding the paper-wrapped sugar into the mug with the skill of a magician. I took a sip. It tasted of burnt molasses and adrenaline.
Beside me, Jess waved off the service, focused on his phone. He scrolled through encrypted messages, thumb flying. I peeked at the screen and caught a list of logistics: safe houses, contact codes, gun runners in Lyon. It was less a rescue mission and more a small war.
I nursed my coffee and tried to get comfortable. The seat was impossibly soft, but my body wouldn’t settle. Every few minutes, I checked on the others.
Wrecker and Parker argued about some digital dead-end, Parker’s voice rising. “That’s the difference between a real hacker and a script kiddie, Eli. If you’d just let me set the sniffer—”
“No.” Wrecker’s reply was a flat wall. “Last time you ‘set the sniffer’ you bricked the whole firewall for three hours. And then you crashed the pack’s Netflix.”
“Because you wouldn’t give me admin—” She stopped herself, then started again, softer. “It won’t happen again.”
He grunted, but a corner of his mouth quirked. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
I looked to the front, where Doc and Papa had gotten into a low-voiced conversation. Papa spoke first, a rumble like rolling thunder. “What’s your read on the witch?”
Doc answered, calm as ever. “Powerful. Young, but not inexperienced. If she wanted us dead, she could do it a hundred ways without lifting a finger.”
Papa nodded. “So we trust her?”
“No,” Doc said. “But we need her more than she needs us.”
I watched Gwen, wondering if she could hear them. She just sat, legs crossed, reading from a slim paperback whose cover was in Cyrillic. Her lips moved as she read, a silent incantation, or maybe just a nervous habit.
The cabin lights dimmed another notch, and outside, the sky stretched endless and dark. I sipped my coffee, then curled my legs under me, trying to force myself to relax. I reclined in my seat as Jess’s hand found my knee and rested there, a silent anchor.
I closed my eyes. Sleep hovered at the edges, then fled.
Every time I drifted, the darkness filled with images: the club in Houston, the feel of Steiner’s eyes on me, the way Maltraz’s claws had dug into my waist. And then, always, my sister’s face, half-hidden behind a curtain of hair.
I’d barely recognized her in the files: the old softness scrubbed away, replaced by something sharp and metallic.
What if she didn’t want to be saved? What if we made it all the way to Paris and she just spat in my face? The fear settled under my ribs, cold and bright.
I opened my eyes and glanced around. No one was looking at me. Good. Maybe they’d think I was tougher than I really was.
Three hours into the flight, the attendants dimmed the lights entirely and moved through the cabin with water bottles and single-serve pastries.
Parker had collapsed against Wrecker’s side, feet in his lap, asleep and drooling.
Wrecker didn’t move, just scrolled on his phone, eyes bright in the faint glow.
Jess read something on his tablet, his free hand still wrapped around my thigh. His grip never slackened.
Gwen stood and padded silently to the rear bathroom. When she passed, she paused, her eyes on me. “You sleep yet?”
“Trying.”
She crouched beside me, her perfume sweet and chemical. “Nerves?”
I nodded.
She smiled, and for a second she looked much younger, almost my age. “Don’t worry. When we land, I’ll walk you through the next bit. It’ll be like a school field trip, but with guns.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
Her smile widened, flashing even white teeth. “No. But it’s honest. We need you sharp. No one else can get your sister to trust us.”
I swallowed, not trusting myself to speak.
She straightened and turned to Jess. “Wake time is in ninety minutes. Customs will be tight, but I’ll shield you until the cars are ready.”
He nodded. “Appreciate it.”
She vanished into the bathroom, and I let out a deep sigh.
Jess set his tablet down and looked at me. “You okay?”
I shrugged. “Nah, but I’ll fake it.”
He smiled, the rare, crooked one. “Faking it is how the best get through.”
“Is that how you do it?”
His hand slid higher, fingers pressing into the muscle of my thigh. “I used to. Now I just want to get you out alive.”
I turned and watched the sky outside. It was pitch black, but the window reflected us: two scared animals, bracing for whatever came next.
I thought about Paris. I thought about the way they said my mother and Brie had made a life, even if it was only a shadow of one.
I thought about the men who were coming to kill us, and the demon who wanted to buy my sister as a substitute for me.
The world felt so much smaller up here, and the stakes so much larger.
I leaned into Jess and let myself hope, just for a second, that maybe the people who’d risked everything to bring me this far actually knew what they were doing.
But hope was dangerous. It was the thing that got you killed.
So instead, I clung to the familiar: the smell of jet fuel, the weight of Jess’s hand on my body, the faint hum of voices in the dark.
Somewhere over the Atlantic, I finally drifted off. I dreamed of wolves in the snow, howling at a moon they could never reach.
And in the dream, I ran with them beside a beautiful light brown wolf with dark knowing eyes.
The wheels hit French tarmac with a jolt that shook me from the dream. Outside, the lights of Le Bourget–Seine-Saint-Denis glared through a curtain of rain, streaking the glass with long, twitching veins of water. We’d crossed an ocean, and still the world looked the same: wet, cold, and dark.
The flight attendants snapped back into motion, serving bottled water and packages of those dry European biscuits that shatter into sugar dust the second you bite them.
I ignored both, pressing my forehead to the window, watching the plane taxi past the FBO and out to a cluster of black SUVs parked at the far end of the lot.
All around, puddles caught the blue strobe of police lights.
It made the whole runway shimmer, a migraine made physical.