“What do you mean, the right push?”

  “Didn’t you wonder what the amplifier charm does? They’re marvelous things, subtle, and potent when used on the right mark.” Her smile soured my stomach. “I crafted the Bonnie persona for Midas. She fit his profile to a T. Though I made tweaks here and there to appeal to your protective instincts as well.” The air glimmered around her, sparking in her hair. “Midas saw a wounded bird and returned with her to his nest, and you? You couldn’t tuck me under your wing fast enough.”

  Anger warmed my cheeks at having my past turned against me, the old shame rising like a tidal wave, like bile up the back of my throat.

  The scars my childhood left on me hadn’t prompted me to perform outreach programs the way it had Midas. He wore his scars boldly, where anyone could see them. I hoarded mine, kept them hidden. He might be willing to bear the cross of his past, but I wanted to break the shackles chaining me to mine.

  However we chose to cope, it was our choice, and she had no right to turn our struggles against us.

  “Your resilience was laudable, but Midas? He’s so broken his mother won’t let him out of her sight for fear he might shatter. He’s the heir to a dynasty, and he will be its downfall.” Bonnie, whoever she was, strolled out to greet me with none of the cowering timidity that had roused my protective instincts. “Why do you think she wants him mated so badly? The pack won’t follow weakness, and she wants him paired with a strong leader who can step into her role.”

  “Compassion isn’t weakness.”

  “Yes,” she said without blinking. “It is.”

  “Midas is a good man.”

  “Good men aren’t fit to rule.”

  “Agree to disagree.”

  “He’s marked you, several times now.” A cruel smile flirted with her lips. “Have you asked yourself why? What about you, more than any other, appeals to him?” She dipped a hand in her shirt and came up with an amplifier charm identical to the one I found in the backpack in the woods. “He doesn’t care about you, Hadley. All he feels or thinks he feels is a result of this. You’ll see that soon enough. You can’t believe what you see reflected back at you in those pretty blue eyes. Magic took his kernel of fascination with you and expanded it tenfold. Without this amping him up, he’ll lose interest in you within the day.”

  The sudden, wrenching hurt made me question if she had ripped out my heart and stomped on it.

  How stupid was that? He already confessed he hadn’t meant to mark me. Now I knew why he had.

  Closure was supposed to make you feel better and not worse, right?

  “Who are you?” I gritted my teeth, tugging harder on Ambrose. “What are you?”

  “I am Iliana.” Her lean features plumped before my eyes, her brittle hair growing softer and darker, until nothing remained of Bonnie Diaz except for her scars. “I’m a witchborn fae, as was Siemen.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means…” She snapped her fingers, and the doorman from the Faraday, the one who hated me, stood before me. “I can be anyone.” Another snap, and she was Jessica. “I can be anything.” Snap, and she was the white gwyllgi no pack in its right mind would pass on. “We collect identities like clothes to fill our covens’ closets.” Snap. The nightshift doorman at the Faraday. Snap. A gorgeous Indian woman with henna covering her bare feet and hands. Snap. Back to where she started. “We have a suit for every occasion.”

  “Witchborn fae is starting to sound a whole lot like a skinwalker.”

  “We are not so lowborn.” Her hands curled into fists at her sides. “Parading around in another’s flesh is a cheap parlor trick any fool with an ounce of magic and a corpse can perform. We capture the essence, the magic. We preserve the soul.”

  “You kill people to assume their lives.”

  Talk about the ultimate identity theft.

  “Sacrifices must be made.”

  Ambrose was nearby, which meant my swords were close, but he wasn’t here yet. So help me, if he was dragging his heels to get more chocolate out of me, I was going to shove my stash down his throat and hope he choked on them. I had to keep the killer chameleon talking until he arrived. “That explains how Siemen got into my apartment.”

  Talk about the ultimate inside job. No wonder he knew where the cameras were located. He killed the nightshift doorman to infiltrate the staff, which gained him full access to the building, to my schedule, and to Bonnie. The position put him outside, which proved he thought along the same lines as me in regards to allowing Mother Nature to cover his tracks.

  More troubling was learning they had killed the doorman to take his place, meaning the choice of victims shown to us was a statement, not a predilection. They had tailored their dead to hurt Midas, yes, but I was still missing the purpose of dragging the warg packs into the fray. “Why bother with the charade?”

  “Atlanta has belonged to the dogs for long enough.”

  “There’s plenty of room for a new faction. There are already dozens.”

  “Share with them?” She touched her ruined cheek. “Never.”

  “Your people can share, or they can leave.”

  “Who are you to issue orders to me? You’re a parasite. You share your life essence with a being of pure darkness.”

  The truth hurt, but that wasn’t my whole truth anymore. “I’m the future POA.”

  “You won’t survive on your own.”

  “I’m still standing. That’s more than Siemen can say.”

  “This city will be mine.” Her irises flared blue with power as her temper spiked. “You can’t hold it, not against me.”

  “I can hold plenty against you.” A patch of velvet shadow darker than the rest brushed against the back of my hand. “Starting with this.” I dipped my hand into his icy core and wrapped my fingers around the hilt of my right-hand blade. “You killed almost a dozen women for no reason but to further your own agenda.”

  “The mongrels were meant to turn on themselves.”

  “You wanted to pit the gwyllgi against the wargs.”

  That explained the diversity of the victims’ species. The coven had been ensuring every pack in the area had a stake in the outcome of this investigation. Had Siemen not made a mistake with Jessica, he would have kept killing until tempers boiled over and fights broke out between grieving gwyllgi and wargs. Once that happened, turning them against each other would be as simple as donning a new identity.

  “The gwyllgi are the power in this city. They are the ones who must stumble before the others will fall. All Midas needs is a little push.”

  Interesting that the OPA didn’t rate a mention. “Did you think I would sit back and let that happen?”

  “I didn’t expect them to involve you. This was a pack matter. It should have stayed a pack matter. The gwyllgi would have taken one look at the cleaners’ reports and demanded justice.” Her lip curled over her teeth. “Mendelsohn is an incompetent alpha, and the Loups will run their course once Garou’s heir is in power. Clairmont is sly, but she’s too cautious. She would let a crime go unpunished before she lost more of her miniscule number. The Kinases are our strongest rival, but they would have fallen without Midas now that Lethe has defected.”

  “The city would experience a power vacuum if the gwyllgi were taken out, leaving it ripe for the plucking. That makes it a city matter.” I tested my grip, readying myself. “That makes it mine.”

  “I am willing to let you live,” she bargained. “My coven and I have no quarrel with the Society.”

  The fae part of her ancestry must carry more weight than her witch blood if her plan was to avoid the Society altogether. Its agreement with the Earthen Conclave, the ruling body for fae this side of Faerie, meant there would be harsh repercussions for her actions if civilian necromancers got killed or harmed.

  The Society wouldn’t be thrilled with losing a potentate, or his protégé, either. Still, she had wiggle room there. The job was dangerous, and accidents happened. Especially to potentates-in-training while their boss was out of town.

  “Siemen must not have gotten the memo.” I grimaced as my left arm reminded me I was fighting at half-strength. “Did you not catch the part where he tried to kill me? You were standing a few feet away from him. Did you blink and miss it?”

  “A truce then,” she said, extending her arm toward me, and I noticed her nails had sharpened into metallic, silvery claws. “Will you accept?”

  “I can’t stand aside while you systematically murder innocents, no.”

  “How many innocents have you killed?”

  “Enough to know even one is too many.”

  “Your soft heart will be your downfall.”

  Blue sparks crackled in her hair when she lunged for me. I whirled aside, raising my blade to deflect her claws. With my left arm going numb, I was stuck using one sword when I had trained with two. The POA had warned me not to depend on them, that swords got knocked out of hands during a real fight, but I hadn’t stepped up my practice with singles, and that meant I left my already useless side open for her to rake me from breast to hip with her claws.

  The stinging burn left me breathless, but I ignored the pain. Twisting aside, I blocked her, but she met me blow for blow. She had lost more blood, but I only had the use of one arm. I knew who would tire first, and what it would cost me.

  A throaty baying noise lifted the fine hairs down my nape, the sweet sound of backup en route, and Bonnie—Iliana?—hesitated.

  I ducked under her guard while she was distracted and plunged my blade into her heart.

  Beside me, Ambrose licked his lips, and I rewarded him for his good behavior.

  Given permission, he pounced on her chest, knocking her back, and began feeding on the dying magic in her veins.

  Certain he couldn’t overdo it now that her heart had stopped beating, helpful information I didn’t want to know how I knew, I sat down to wait on my backup to arrive.

  That was the plan anyway, but darkness scooped me into its arms and carried me away.

  Eighteen

  Midas tore across the distance between him and Hadley on all fours, but he shifted as her knees buckled and caught her against him. Pain shot through him, radiating across his tender abdomen. The healer had sealed the wound, so he wouldn’t die from the strain of supporting her. It just felt that way.

  Blood soaked her left arm, and bone glinted through exposed flesh. Her right arm twitched, her fingers flexing around the blade she clutched in her hand, the one that had ended a fae life.

  “Hadley?”

  A moan parted her lips.

  “I’ll take her,” Ford said, coming up behind him. “You’re weaving on your feet.”

  “No.” Midas hissed out a ragged breath from between gritted teeth, unable to let her go. “I’ve got her.”

  “Suit yourself.” He shook his head. “At least let me get the sword in case she wakes up swinging.”

  “No,” she protested, a barely there whisper.

  “She must not be dead if she can complain about us taking her weapon.”

  Her eyelids fluttered. “Ambrose.”

  “Who is Ambrose?” Midas fought the instinct to clutch her tighter against him, like this Ambrose might walk up and yank her out of his arms. “I don’t remember anyone at the OPA with that name.”

  Black edged his vision, but he put one foot in front of the other on his way back to the healer.

  “I’ll find out.” Ford rubbed a hand over his face. “Goddamn it, Midas.”

  Grim determination hardened on his face. “What now?”

  “That you care? Changes things.”

  “The case is closed.” Midas blinked away the tunnel vision. “Our involvement with the OPA is done.”

  “You’re going to let her go? Just like that?” Ford kept a wary eye on the foliage. “You marked her, Midas. Multiple times. Once is an accident, twice is intent.”

  “Marks wear off in time.”

  “You know as well as I do that the more layered and nuanced they become, the more difficult they are to erase.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “I want you to admit you did it on purpose. That it was a conscious decision.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “The hell you can’t. You won’t. Big difference.”

  “There is no difference, not when it comes to this.” Midas tensed when Hadley made a soft noise then buried her face in his shirt. “I can’t be what she needs, so what I want or don’t want doesn’t matter.”

  “I’m going to pursue her.”

  Claws punching through his fingertips, Midas kept walking, afraid of what he might say if he opened his mouth.

  The healer waited where they left him. One look at Midas sparked red annoyance in his eyes. The guards were quick to pluck Hadley from his arms, thankfully before he embarrassed himself by hitting his knees.

  “Growl all you want,” the healer said to Midas curtly. “Just do it over there.”

  Healers occupied a peculiar niche in the pack hierarchy that set them on equal footing with alphas in a way. Their high non-rank was the only reason they could treat wounded dominants without serious injury to their patients or to themselves. Even though Midas was a beta, the healer had no trouble staring him down or bossing him around when he felt it was needed.

  Ford horned in on them, his brow pinched with worry. “Will she be okay?”

  “Shoo” was his answer, which did nothing to unknot the tension coiling in Midas’s gut.

  “I’ve seen her take worse.” Smiling all the while, Ford launched an elaborate story about Hadley culling a rabid chupacabra from the herd. “She shook that off, she’ll walk away from this too.”

  Midas vaguely remembered the incident from months earlier, and he scowled at his friend for glorifying her near-death experience, but Ford just belly-laughed until he lost his breath.

  “You have no idea how bad you’ve got it.” Ford whistled through his teeth. “This is going to be fun.”

  That was the point when Midas realized the growl he had dismissed as Ford’s had been coming from him, was still coming from him, and only got worse when he comprehended the scope of his meaning.

  Whether Midas participated or not, Ford had decided they were competing for Hadley.

  Nineteen

  Popcorn pinged against the lid of my Dutch oven while I melted butter in another pot on my tiny stove. I had sweet tea, beer, lemonade, and chocolate milk in the fridge. I had a pizza on the way with a side of tongue-torching buffalo wings, and I had an old favorite cued up for when my guest arrived.

  I was as ready as I would ever be.

  When the knock came, five minutes after my last outfit change, I didn’t have to look hard to find a smile. Ford was running early, but that was okay by me. I opened the door and…got a shock.

  “Linus.” I didn’t know what to do with my hands, my feet, my face. “Hi.”

  “I won’t keep you long.” His gaze slid past my shoulder. “Can I come in?”

  “Oh, sure. Yeah. Come on in. Definitely.” I tripped getting out of his way. “What’s up?”

  “I came to oversee the movers.” He chuckled at my shock. “You knew this day was coming.”

  “I just closed my first case.” I smelled the burnt stench of popcorn and rushed to rescue what I could, giving me a second to compose myself. “I have eleven months and change left.”

  Hands preternaturally cool, he took the pot from me. A snap of his fingers brought Ambrose running, and the POA dumped the blackened kernels into his dark maw before handwashing the pot, turning on the vent over the stove, and starting a fresh batch.

  Cooking was one of his many hobbies, and he was better at it than anyone else I knew, so I wasn’t going to turn my nose up at his offer of help. My nerves had been jangled before his arrival. They were audibly jingling at this point.

  “You don’t need me looking over your shoulder.” After the first kernel popped, he adjusted the heat and began shaking the pot to agitate the rest. “As you said, you closed this case on your own.”

  “I didn’t picture you as the momma-bird type who shoves her baby out of the nest the second it grows a feather.”

  “You have the team to rely on, and I’ll be three hours away.” He dumped the perfect popcorn into a ridiculously gigantic bowl I bought for less worthy snacks, and he managed to evenly coat it with butter and salt without leaving it a soggy mess. “This is the test.” He set the bowl aside then loaded the pot into the dishwasher. “You have to prove you can stand alone, and that will be made clear if I’m not in the city.”

  “What about the coup Iliana was planning? She mentioned a coven. That means there are more of them.” Unable to resist, I savored a single buttery kernel. “Did you miss the part in my report where I mentioned they can look and smell like anyone?” Not even buttery perfection could calm me. “Did I mention her kind can hurt Ambrose?” In corgi form, she had done serious damage to Ambrose. “How can I combat their magic without exposing myself?”

  “Hadley.” He rested a hip against the counter and tucked his hands into his pockets. “There will always be a faction who wants more than what they have and are willing to kill innocents to get it. I’ve never come up against witchborn fae. I’m not sure what they are, aside from what the name implies—a child born of a witch mother and fae father. You’ll have to hit the books, do your research.”

  “Always with the homework.” The gripe reminded of his other potentate-in-training student, and I asked after his fiancée. “How is Grier?” The history we three shared made it awkward, but that had never stopped me. “Doing well, I hope?”

  The slightest hitch in his graceful movements told me he was just as uneasy answering as I was asking.

  I had tried to kill her once, after all. Ambrose would again, given the opportunity.

 

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