Cutting through the crowd to Ford’s pickup, I reached it as Midas was shutting the door on his conversation with Bonnie.

  “Can we talk?” I ignored the corgi pressing her nose to the glass. “Privately?”

  He started walking, and I fell in beside him.

  “Bishop has a theory I didn’t want to believe, but I think he’s on to something.”

  “Bonnie,” he said simply.

  “Where did you find her? Specifically? What do you know about her?”

  “At the shelter on University Drive Northeast.” He guided us down a well-lit but mostly empty sidewalk. “I was teaching a women’s self-defense class there, and she watched. She wouldn’t participate, and I didn’t push her. The room got hot, and I scented her on the way to get a drink of water.”

  “How did you know what she was so fast?”

  “She’s not the first of her kind I’ve come across, and that’s all I’ll say about that.”

  So much for teasing out information on how many of their fae cousins they were hiding.

  Twisting the interrogation, I chose a less prickly course. “You’re three for three in the tip department.”

  “I’ve only spoken to him once.”

  “That doesn’t change the fact our killer is contacting the den each time he kills. He asked for you this time. Did he request you for the others as well?”

  “Yes,” he said softly, and I could tell I had gotten him thinking.

  “We can’t discount the fact the killer wants you personally informed of his accomplishments.” I took a half step to catch up with his longer strides. “You found Bonnie. You brought her home. A week later, bodies started piling up.” I kept going, hashing it out. “There must be a connection.”

  “He’s a warg.” Midas puckered his brow. “I’m gwyllgi, and so is Bonnie.”

  “You’re descended from gwyllgi and wargs, so your species are compatible.”

  Midas slowed his pace. “Do you think Bonnie was in a relationship with the killer?”

  Magic aside, she would hardly be the first woman to run from an abusive boyfriend or husband.

  “We have to question her.” There was no easy way to ask, so I spit it out. “Can you alpha mojo her into shifting?” The color washed from his face, and he glanced away from me. “I’ve heard pack can’t disobey a direct order from their alpha…or their beta. Bonnie is new, and she’s fae. I’m not sure if those things cancel out one another.”

  “I’ll talk to her.”

  “Midas…”

  “I don’t use my influence that way.” A dangerous thread wound through his voice, an edge that would garrote me if I kept pushing against it. “Don’t ask me to again.”

  Holding up my hands in a peacemaking gesture, I let it go. “All right, all right.”

  “You’re not what I expected in a successor for Linus.”

  “I could behead you with my swords. Then you might see the resemblance.”

  His dark laughter enticed as much as it repelled. “You’re fire. He’s ice. You’re passion. He’s calculation.”

  “You can call me hotheaded. It’s okay. I get that a lot.”

  Passion as a descriptor made me uncomfortable.

  “You’re opposites.”

  “Don’t worry, we don’t attract.”

  Midas stared at me, right in the eyes, and I could tell I had shocked and/or horrified him.

  Too bad I couldn’t manifest the fire he accused me of having to burn the look off his face.

  “Humor is my preferred coping mechanism too.” I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry I subjected you to it.”

  “Linus would never cheat on Grier.”

  “I’m not suggesting—” I groaned long and low. “I don’t have a thing for the POA.” Thinking of him as Linus, even if we did sort of grow up together, made our working relationship too personal. “It was a joke. Obviously a bad one. A terrible one. One I will never make again if you could only please stop staring at me like I drowned a bag of puppies in front of you.” I bit my tongue until it hurt. “That wasn’t a dig at you being gwyllgi. The puppy thing. Goddess. I’m going to shut up now.”

  We walked another five minutes before he broke the silence, with a laugh of all things.

  “You’re not very funny.”

  “I’m not the one laughing.” I risked a glance at him from the corner of my eye. “I owned up to it being a bad joke, but you’re over there snickering. What does that say about you?”

  “That I’m laughing at you and not at your warped sense of humor?”

  “That’s just cold,” I grumped, relieved he didn’t actually think I wanted to get horizontal with the POA.

  A shiver rippled through me as my brain supplied an image of how that would go, not with the man, because that would be mildly appealing, but with the embodiment of the wraiths he commanded, which almost made me wet my pants.

  “You can’t be cold.”

  “What?” I shivered again. “Oh, no. I gave myself a fright is all.”

  “You were thinking about Linus,” he surmised. “About how it might go if you did attract.”

  Busted.

  A flash of heat blasted into my cheeks. “You have no proof.”

  “Your scent changed,” he observed, “but you weren’t aroused. You were…afraid.”

  The heat in my face seeped into a biting chill.

  “So, as I was saying—” I laid the cheer on thick, “—you need to coax Bonnie into shifting back and answering a few questions. I’ll talk to her when we get home, soften her up, get her primed for you, but you’ll have to convince her cooperating is in her best interest.”

  Fae magic and necromantic magic weren’t compatible on a lot of levels, but I could convince Ambrose to help me smash through her block if she wouldn’t relinquish it otherwise. I would hate to do it, and we would be the opposite of friends afterward, if that’s what we were now, but potential victims outweighed potential friendship every time.

  “He hurt you,” he said slowly.

  Clearly, he was having trouble picturing a world where his buddy Linus went around hurting innocent women to get his jollies. Problem being, I wasn’t innocent. The POA ran on order, and I had been a creature of chaos. He was right to put me down when he did. The miracle was that he helped me back up, gave me a second chance. Miracle wasn’t the right word. I knew that, and I knew why he had done it, but it still humbled me.

  Bent, not broken. That was me. I hoped it was me. I wanted it to be.

  “The POA has never raised a hand against me unless it was warranted.” I spotted Midas’s temper rising in the crimson flicker of his eyes. “Women aren’t inherently good. My gender doesn’t mean I can’t do evil. It doesn’t mean I’m worthier than a man. It only means I can lactate and reproduce.”

  Once again, my sense of humor had robbed him of speech.

  “You’re right,” he admitted after he recovered. “I have trouble…”

  He didn’t finish the sentence, and it made me doubt that was all he’d meant to say in the first place.

  “You have a thing for abuse survivors.” I did not look at the scarring up his arms, but he must have sensed my thoughts sway in that direction, because he rubbed a hand over them. “I can respect that. Careful it doesn’t blind you to the bigger picture. The abused can be abusers too.”

  The statistics for abuse survivors repeating what was done to them was stark.

  I would never have kids. Never. Not in a million years, and not for a million dollars.

  I was too afraid.

  Midas was right. I had fire, I had passion. I had a temper.

  That didn’t make me a monster, but my mother had been one. Was one. I worried how much of my mother’s daughter I was after all those years of tiny pinches, hard slaps, and kicks delivered when I was already down.

  I had proven I was capable of committing evil. I didn’t want to prove I was capable of birthing it too.

  “Hadley.”

  “I should get back.” I turned and started walking away, from him and those grim thoughts. “Ford is my ride home.”

  “I’ll stop by your apartment at dusk,” he called to my retreating back.

  I raised a hand to show I heard and would be ready, but I was halfway to running to put distance between myself and thoughts of her.

  Maybe the POA was nuts for letting me step into his shoes, or at least try them on.

  Then again, who better to hunt monsters than one of their own?

  Ahead of me, my shadow walked backward across the pavement, craning his neck to stare at Midas.

  “Shut up.” I stomped past him. “No one asked you.”

  Ten

  Midas kept walking after Hadley fled, eventually breaking into a punishing jog. The predator in him was affronted she had discovered his weakness after knowing him for such a short time. The primal urge to dominate heated his blood, but she wasn’t pack, she wasn’t gwyllgi. She owed him no allegiance and no submission.

  Part of him worried that might be the reason he kept dropping in where he wasn’t needed when he had already tasked Ford with acting in the pack’s best interest.

  “Midas.”

  Eyes closing, he had no choice but to stop and listen. “Yes?”

  Ford was out of breath from running flat out to catch him, his chest heaving and his hair damp with sweat. “You didn’t have to come tonight. I could have handled it.”

  “I know that.”

  “Tell me it’s not Lee.”

  Lee.

  The familiar ring of it itched the far corners of his brain, but he couldn’t quite scratch it.

  Yet.

  The question shot out of his mouth without permission. “Are you pursuing her?”

  “I… Hell. I like her.” He rolled his shoulders. “That’s hardly breaking news.”

  Ford had developed a dangerous crush on her, and Midas had hoped working together would cure him. So far, exposure therapy was only deepening his infatuation.

  “Damn it.” Ford cursed under his breath. “I can still do the job.”

  “You can’t keep her in check if you’re dating her, Ford. You’re good, but you’re not that good.”

  “Lee is a smart woman. This investigation is an excuse for me to get a read on her, and she knows it.” Amusement bounced in his shoulders. “She’s called me out more than once.”

  Midas grunted, expecting nothing less. Linus wouldn’t have trained her if she wasn’t diamond sharp. The past year had done nothing but polish what was there.

  “I don’t think she’s into me,” Ford admitted. “That doesn’t mean I won’t try, with your blessing.”

  “You two seemed chummy enough when you arrived.” He wished he could blame the growl roughening his voice on the scarring, but Ford knew him too well. “You have a date set, right? A movie night?”

  “Yeah, but it’s not a real date. She knows I want to snoop around her place.” He laughed a little to diffuse the tension. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she turned up at my place with a DVD—or, god forbid, a VHS—with some black-and-white cheesefest to avoid having me in her space.”

  “I thought you liked science fiction.”

  “I enjoy the futuristic aspect of it, the looking forward. Her tastes run toward looking back.”

  There was comfort in the soft lines of black-and-white movies, where the good guys always won, and death never happened on screen. How she swallowed the shrinking violets so often cast as heroines, he had no clue. Lately he’d found himself watching movies he thought she might enjoy, curious what she saw in them, what comfort she found in them, and why she needed comfort in the first place.

  But he couldn’t ask without reciprocating.

  Show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.

  His past was written in the crosshatch scars marring his forearms. He didn’t cover them, didn’t hide them. They were a warning sign, an indicator that he was broken. Not bent. Broken. It was easier for everyone if they got that sorted upfront without him having to say a word.

  “She ran to you.” Ford ruffled a hand through his hair. “She didn’t gut-check herself against her team, or Bishop, or Lawson. Or me. We visited Mendelsohn, and she wanted you after.”

  “You just finished telling me she’s smart. Hadley saw I have a soft spot for abuse cases, and she brought me one. End of story.”

  “Your mother would rip out her throat before she let Hadley steal her heir,” Ford said quietly.

  “She would try.” Midas almost found a smile for the mental picture of his mother going toe-to-toe with Hadley. “There’s more to Hadley than meets the eye.” He shook his head. “That’s why I keep turning up, why I keep getting involved. There’s something about her. She’s dangerous, more dangerous than a well-trained woman with swords ought to be.”

  “Tonight Ayla mentioned Lee’s shadow. Do you know what that’s about?”

  Midas tugged on his ear, thinking. “Are you sure she wasn’t talking about you?”

  “I don’t think so.” He shrugged. “No one else is following her that I can tell.”

  “Bishop might be the face of the POA’s team, but there are more of them. Some who patrol the streets the same as Hadley.” Midas gave up on shaking loose whatever thought was slowly forming and left it to simmer in the back of his mind. “Do you think Ayla meant one of them? Linus might want tabs kept on her while he’s out of town. Who better than one of their own?”

  “Maybe,” Ford allowed. “I’ll pay closer attention, see if I can figure it out one way or another.”

  “You should go.” Midas checked the time on his phone. “She’s ready to call it a night.”

  “I won’t ask her out if you don’t want me to, for whatever reason.” Ford glanced back the way he’d come but hesitated before turning. “Any reason at all.”

  “Try your luck.” Midas ignored the vibration tickling the back of his throat. “Just let me know if you need to step down from your position. I need an impartial witness, not rose-colored updates.”

  “I’ll do that.” Ford reached for the keys in his pocket. “You’ve got time, if you change your mind.”

  “I won’t.” Midas pivoted on his heel and walked away before Ford made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

  Eleven

  I gave Ford fifteen minutes, and when he still didn’t show, I collected the grumpy corgi and left him a note pinned under a windshield wiper explaining I had called for a Swyft. I was tired of waiting, tired in general, and all I wanted to do was sleep for a few years and wake to find the case had been solved while I was unconscious.

  The Swyft driver, who rolled up in a bland white sedan and not the racy lime-green number I hoped to continue avoiding, didn’t speak a word to me, even when I asked permission to bring my dog, so that was nice.

  Less nice was how the doorman ran his eyes over us as we entered through the front door of the Faraday, his attention lingering on Bonnie then jerking back to me when he felt my stare.

  “What?” I stopped on the threshold. “Do I have something stuck in my teeth?”

  Maybe I was a tad irked Ford had ghosted on me, or maybe this confrontation had been a long time coming.

  “Midas asked me to let him know when you got home. Just checking to see if you’re intact.”

  “Oh.” All my righteous anger evaporated in a blink. “Well, here I am. Two arms, two legs, so forth. Unless you count the dog. Then it’s six legs—or maybe six arms? Either way, all limbs are accounted for.”

  At least he waited until I was through the door before reaching for his phone to tattle.

  Goddess knows, I had enough keepers. What was one more? Midas must be worried about Bonnie. As soon as she got herself unstuck, she would be out of my hair, and so would he.

  The elevator had been repaired since Bonnie took a bite out of it, but that was magic for you.

  Since I refused to carry her up the stairs, we stepped into the booth and rode it up to my floor.

  A tiny part of me expected Midas to be standing there, waiting to spark our next argument.

  I wasn’t sorry to be wrong.

  Rubbing a hand over my breastbone, I let us into the apartment and hit the lights.

  Bonnie shimmered on the edge of my vision before exploding into her gwyllgi form. The appearance of a pony where a corgi had been knocked me out of the doorway, into the hall, and onto my butt.

  “What’s gotten into you?” I got to my feet and leaned around her. “Oh no.”

  The canopy over the bed, shredded to ribbons. The fabric draping the walls, ripped down. The futon was flipped over, stuffing everywhere, the TV—goddess, the TV—was torn clean off the wall and smashed to bits.

  Sinking onto the floor in the carpeted hallway, I pulled out my phone and dialed Bishop.

  “No luck with the surveillance so far. Whatever did this tricks the eye. I’m cleaning up the footage. I ought to have something by dusk.”

  “I need a room for tonight.” I cut into his update. “Which base is empty?”

  “Base One and Six,” he said automatically. “What’s wrong?”

  “Call the cleaners for me, will you? Send them to my apartment at the Faraday. Someone tossed it while I was out. We need to find out if that person is our killer.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Shut the hell up,” he snapped. “I’m not leaving you to deal with this alone.”

  He ended the call, and I just sat there while Bonnie reapplied her glamour and crawled into my lap.

  The response time for cleaners never ceased to amaze me. I discovered five minutes after hanging up with Bishop that a few lived in the building next door, as they were first to arrive. I didn’t have to wait much longer for Bishop himself to storm through the door. I expected him to keep going until he shoved through the cleaners to see what had been done, but he gathered me in his arms.

  The offer of unsolicited comfort caused my brain to skip and my knees to go weak with gratitude.

  “Thank the old gods,” he breathed into my hair. “I’m glad you’re all right.”

 

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