FIFTY
Calum had spent the morning since Aly’s departure cleaning his kitchen in an inadequate attempt to distract himself.
The windows gleamed and the room smelled of salt and lavender soap, but it did nothing to drive away the image of her too-pale face and bruised throat the last time she’d seen Grant, nor the way his stomach had dropped when she’d walked into his kitchen covered in blood just days ago.
Footsteps sounded in the parlour and he dropped the cloth, hurrying to the kitchen doorway. He pulled Aly to him, running his hands over her head and torso, checking her for injuries before even realising that was what he was doing.
“I’m fine,” she said, her fingertips soft on his face. “I found them.” A grim smile spread across her face, her cheeks flushing. “They’re in a warehouse down by the harbour. The door’s locked with an iron chain.” Her shoulders shook with tension.
Calum strode over to the door, reaching for his coat and bandolier.
“Wait.” Aly stopped him with a hand on his arm. “It could be a trap.”
She was right. It had barely been two hours since she’d left, and already Grant had shown her where he was imprisoning the salchs—captives he had hidden from Aly because he’d known she would disapprove.
“He said he was going back to the office, but for all we know he’s circled back to the warehouse to wait for us.”
“So we need a distraction.”
Low voices sounded in the parlour, and Calum tensed before he recognised Sorcha’s voice, pitched to carry. “I have an idea about that.” She entered the kitchen, Lewis at her side.
“Have you been eavesdropping again?” Calum asked, suppressing the urge to sigh.
Sorcha shrugged, unrepentant. “Not my fault your house has thin walls.”
Calum eyed Lewis warily. “What’s your idea?”
“Lewis can write an article exposing Grant Mercer. I’m sure Aly has plenty of information.” Sorcha crossed her arms, looking insufferably smug, and with reason. It was a good idea—aside from the fact it put Aly in danger.
“I can get a quote from Edzan, too,” Lewis put in.
Calum frowned. “Are you sure? It doesn’t make her look good.”
“She was in love with Gibson,” Aly said. “And the Wulver was blackmailing her.”
“And she trusts me,” Lewis added. “I’ve been working for her for months now.”
Calum rubbed a hand over his face, leaning against the table. “So what are you thinking?”
“Lewis writes the article—under one of his pen names, so Grant can’t trace it back to him—and Aly makes sure Grant sees it. While he’s busy trying to control the damage, we free the captives.”
Calum’s chest contracted. “‘We’?”
Sorcha rolled her eyes. “Of course ‘we’, you numpty.”
“And what if it doesn’t work?” Calum asked. “Your entire plan hinges on Grant caring that he’s been exposed, and doing something about it despite, we assume, having an appointment with the fae tomorrow.”
“He’ll care.” There was a steely glint in Aly’s eye.
“He’s gone to great lengths to keep Grant Mercer and the Wulver separate.
” Calum recalled how Grant’s lawyers had supposedly proven their client was innocent of the Wulver’s magic regarding the brewery and the pocket space that held the salching market.
“He won’t be able to ignore it when members of the burgh council are saying that Mercer is the Wulver, and that he manipulated their legislation.
Besides”—she gave a vicious grin—“even if it doesn’t work, we’ve still destroyed his reputation.
He’ll be ruined.” She turned to Lewis. “Can you get it in the evening edition?” It had just gone noon.
“Aye,” Lewis said. “I’ll bring you a copy here as soon as it’s printed.”
“And what if he figures out you’re behind it when you show it to him?” Calum asked, his insides writhing at the thought. This was by far the worst part of Sorcha’s plan—the part where it involved Aly being in close contact with Grant again.
“He won’t,” Aly said. “He doesn’t think I have the spine.”
Calum stared at the three faces turned towards him, all prepared to put themselves at risk to save people they didn’t even know from a fate they only understood through him.
He’d been to Faerie, he knew what awaited the salchs that Grant held captive; what did it say about him that he was more concerned about what Grant could do to Aly than he was about the horrors they all faced without Aly’s intervention?
He drew a shuddering breath and reached for the kettle. “I’ll get the tea on.” As he suspended the kettle over the fireplace, the three people he loved most in the world gathered round the table to discuss how to take down a crime lord.
The flat was empty when Aly arrived, cold and gloomy in the dying winter sunlight. She peered at the clock on the mantel. It was just gone five. Grant would be there soon.
Aly tossed the paper Lewis had given her on the sideboard.
He’d managed to get the story on the front page, complete with an illustration of Grant.
He hadn’t disappointed on a quote from Edzan, either, who had reacted with appropriate horror to the revelation that the burgh council had just passed a bill at the urging of a crime lord who had commissioned the murder of one of their own.
It was strange being in that flat again.
The whisky and blood had been cleaned from the carpet below her feet, but the place was otherwise unchanged, the half-full decanter of whisky still sitting next to her hand.
She reached for it to calm her nerves, then snatched her hand back.
The last thing she needed that evening was to dull her senses with alcohol.
Gripping the edge of the sideboard, she looked around her at the flat that had once been her home.
The dark-panelled walls of its generously proportioned rooms closed in on her, stealing away her breath. She leant against the sideboard, dropping her head between her arms, coming face to face with the dark blue wool bodice she’d been wearing since that fateful day.
It was these clothes. He’d bought them for her.
He’d told her when to wear them. They marked her as his.
She shucked off her coat, her beloved coat, laying it over the back of a chair with trembling arms. Her fingers clawed at the closures on the bodice, ripping it off her shoulders as her breath quickened.
Stumbling into the bedroom, she cast the bodice on the bed and threw open the wardrobe doors, rifling through for her waistcoat and kilt. Her clothes. Her fingertips fell on the soft wool, and she drew them out and laid them on the bed.
Heartbeat racing, she twisted her arm behind herself, trying to unlace her stays as fear clawed at her throat.
It had been no accident that Grant had insisted on back-lacing stays in her wardrobe, and while they normally weren’t too much of a faff, she hated him viciously for them at the moment, as she contorted her still-healing shoulder and every moment that the stays still pressed against her ribs made panic rise further in her chest.
The front door clicked open, and Aly blinked in the sudden brightness as the magical lamps flared to life.
“Aly?” Grant called from the hall.
“In here!”
Grant’s lips curved into a smile that was somewhere between fondness and mockery when he saw her, her stays stuck on her hips where she’d tried to shove them down before loosening them enough. “What are you doing?”
Aly swallowed the rising alarm in her throat, forcing her voice into calm. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m trying to get these blasted stays off.”
Grant huffed out a laugh, crossing to her and splaying a palm across her stomach as he turned her around and tugged at the lacing on the stays. His breath was warm on her shoulder, his touch gentle on her abdomen. He pressed a kiss to her shoulder, making her stiffen.
“Stop.” She pulled away as Grant tossed the stays on the bed. “There’s something you need to see.”
She extricated herself from his grasp before he could reply, stalking into the lounge. Grant followed, hands falling to her hips as he kissed her. “It can wait.”
Aly tugged back. “You’ll want to see it.” She slid the paper along the sideboard towards them.
Grant reached for it, one hand still on Aly’s waist, his brow furrowing with fury as he read.
Her pulse raced as his arm tightened around her.
His face betrayed little of his thoughts, of whether he suspected her or was ignorant of her role in the article.
He was still holding her, his arms caging her in as they had done the last time they’d been together in this flat.
Grant threw the paper down on the sideboard, making Aly flinch. “I have to deal with this.” He turned and stalked off, leaving Aly shaking and clutching the sideboard for support.
There was a knot in Calum’s throat as he waited with Sorcha down by the harbour, the sound of waves lapping against the stones doing little to calm him.
“Stop pacing,” Sorcha said, though her tone was gentle. “You’re making us look shifty.” She lowered her voice as a group of dockers walked past. “Probably not a good idea with all these weapons.”
Calum stopped walking, his hand twisting around the handle of his broadsword beneath his coat. He had his bandolier across his chest, but he’d brought the sword as well. They weren’t expecting any trouble, but it would be foolish to go unprepared.
“Sorry,” he muttered to Sorcha. He was filled with nervous energy, his mind whirling with the possibilities: If Grant didn’t read the article at all and Aly couldn’t convince him to or excuse herself, if he did but he blamed Aly, or worse—his heart dropped at the thought—if he saw through her ploy and hurt her.
“Maybe you should—”
“Don’t say, ‘Go and see if everything’s all right’.”
“But—” It was too dangerous for Calum to appear, when Grant knew who he was, but he was sure Grant had never seen Sorcha.
“If he doesn’t suspect anything already, he will if I show up looking for Aly, and if he’s already suspicious, I’ll make it worse.” Sorcha spoke calmly, like she was talking to a child.