Chapter Twenty-Three #2
“Yeah. ‘Cause they came across some of the Relic stuff he’s been peddling. They know he’s out there and what he has, and they’re looking for him. And making preparations for when they find him. But so are we. The Corps has everyone we can spare out hunting—”
“A phantom! We don’t even know what he looks like!”
“Which is another check in the weird magic category,” he pointed out.
“There were other victims going back a while, judging by all the fingerprints we found. But the only people who were there recently enough to for sure show up in a reveal spell were the victim and our guy. Only he didn’t show up.
And while that collapsed ceiling might have eradicated some evidence, someone using the place for as long as he did should have left at least a trace—”
“Fine! You’ve convinced me! Now convince me we’re going to find him before the dark does!”
“We’re going to find him,” Caleb said staunchly. “We know what he’s selling, and where the usual vendors are, ‘cause I doubt he’s peddling it himself out of a stall in Tartarus. He has fences, and we’re after them—”
“And you think the Black Circle isn’t? Not to mention—” I stopped. “Wait. Maybe that’s what he meant—”
“Who?”
“The Black Circle council member, the one who tried to take Sebastian and then Jace. He wanted something—” I’d been staring at the table, trying to think, but at that, I looked up. “He wants the potion. That’s what he intended to get me to steal from HQ, in order to get Sebastian back!”
“Which means they don’t already have it, and they’re getting desperate, if they’re resorting to that kind of shit.”
I abruptly stood up. “We have to find this Reaper—”
“We’re trying,” Caleb repeated, exchanging a look with Cyrus.
“Tell her the rest,” Cyrus rasped.
Caleb suddenly looked even less happy than before, and I hadn’t thought that was possible.
“The way we put it together is this,” he said, as I sat back down.
“The shit-tier ward that asshole was using drew the attention of a group of scavengers, and he got spooked. Maybe he knows he’s being hunted; the Black Circle isn’t usually subtle.
Or maybe he’s just twitchy, which would make sense in his line of work.
And since he was almost done stripping that poor sod anyway, he took off into the wild with his bag of trophies.
“But in the fight with his victim, a vial was broken—one of those vials. And some of it ended up aerosolized. Just in time for you to come along—”
“Me, too! It also hit me,” Sophie said from outside the door, where the guys had been standing guard to allow Cyrus and me to have an uninterrupted dinner for once.
Until she threw off Jace’s hold, ducked under Andy’s arm, and came into the dining room like a force of nature.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” she said. “Shit is happening, Lia!”
“I noticed.”
“I don’t think so!” Kimmie must have gotten hold of her, because the usually wild red locks had been tamed into cornrows tonight. The beads of which clacked together when she shook her head.
“I almost killed Caleb,” I reminded her. “Sorry, by the way,” I told him, which he shrugged off.
It came with the job description.
“But you didn’t,” Sophie said. “You stopped short, which was more than I could do. I wasn’t in control at all, and my leopard was freaking out, because neither was she—”
“What do you mean? She started it.”
But Sophie was already shaking her head again. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all day—no, she didn’t. And neither did your wolf. I know you think they did, just like I thought the same thing about my Cat, but they were innocent in this.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“That’s why we need to talk,” Sophie said. “How much do you remember?”
“Enough.”
“Then you recall turning into a twelve-foot-tall Relic and wrecking the place? A prehistoric, savage, out-of-control Were like hasn’t been seen since the Stone Age?”
“It’s been seen,” Cyrus said roughly, remembering the night that he and some of our boys had taken their ride on the Relic train.
They’d been dosed up by Danny, a guy looking to use Jenkins’ brew for revenge on the Were community, specifically the Clan Council, which he blamed for the death of his father.
The idea had been to spike the drinks at the yearly meeting, wait until everyone started to change, and then sit back and watch the newly made Relics rip each other apart.
The fact that most of the people there weren’t on the council and hadn’t had anything to do with what happened to his father hadn’t bothered him in the slightest. In fact, it had been part of the plan because his vengeance was about more than the death of one man.
He’d wanted to upend the whole system that had relegated him and his family to vargulf status, just because his father wouldn’t sell his profitable restaurant to a Clan leader who had wanted it, precipitating a series of events that ended in tragedy.
I still felt conflicted about him, about the man he might have been, had things been different, and so did Cyrus.
It was why he was working so hard on our clan now.
Otherwise, the Were world was going to be looking at a lot more Dannys.
“Not until recently,” Sophie was saying. “But now the past is back with a vengeance, including a ramped-up version of my Cat, because I got hit with that stuff, too—”
“I’m sorry,” I told her sincerely. “I should have protected you. You shouldn’t have even been there—”
Two furious hands hit the tabletop. “Would you shut up?”
I blinked at her.
“I have been trying,” she said, breathing heavily. “To tell you something all day. Will you listen for one. Freaking. Minute?”
“Listening.”
“Good!” She pulled up a chair and sat at the table. “Okay. So you and I are among the two-natured, as some call us. Human and Other in one package, right?”
“Of course.”
“Well, not anymore. After we got back this morning, I was freaking wiped in a way I can’t ever remember being.
I went right to sleep, and while I was out, my leopard came for a chat in my dream.
It does that sometimes; I think it was the only thing that kept me sane on the inside.
That I could get out in dreams, when it would show me all sorts of things. .. Anyway, this time, it came to talk.
“And what it wanted to talk about is that it’s gotten a lot more crowded in here suddenly.”
“Crowded?” I glanced around the room, but there was no one else there. A bunch of faces at the door, because privacy in a Were household is relative, but I didn’t think that was what Sophie meant.
“Yeah,” she said. “Looks like the stuff that Jenkins guy was brewing isn’t a one-use deal.
‘Cause I don’t think I’m two-natured anymore, and neither does my Cat.
She says there are three of us in here, and yes, she used the present tense.
Not like there was one this morning, and after the drug wore off, it’s gone, but like there’s another now. ”
Blue eyes met mine, and they were as somber as I’ve ever seen them. “I don’t think we’re two-natured anymore, Lia. I think we’re three, and you just met your third.”