Page 1 of A Token of Blood and Betrayal (Kennedy Rain #4)

Tell me I’m wrong, Garion . Tell me this isn’t yours.

We faced each other in the deserted hallway behind The Rain’s kitchen, me holding my breath and hoping, Garion tilting his head and frowning. Until his gaze dropped to the palm-sized black object in my open hand.

All at once, he went rigid.

I became a broken body squeezed in a giant’s fist, caught up in a story I never wanted to be part of.

The only things grounding me to reality were the door-muffled clanks of dishes on the other side of the wall to my right and the rhythmic thump thump of laundry tumbling in a dryer in an alcove to my left.

“You shouldn’t have that.” Garion’s voice was almost inaudible, yet it hit me like a gut punch from a friend, bruising my heart.

And he was right. I shouldn’t have a djinn token in my hand, a token that I’d promised to give to a fey king in exchange for the key to open the magically-sealed envelope my parents left me.

“Nora and I were cleaning out my parents’ room,” I said. “It was hidden in—”

“Did Nora see it?” Garion demanded.

“No.”

“Good.” He folded my fingers around the token. “Tell no one about it.”

“Garion—”

“Pretend you never found it.” His dark eyes were too urgent. Too serious. “It’s nothing. I’m no one.”

“You’re dji—”

He struck fast, slapping his hand over my mouth and pushing me against the wall.

“I am nothing!” he growled, eyes now fierce.

This was even worse than I’d expected. Garion was one of the most steadfast people I knew, his calm confidence respected by everyone.

He wasn’t hurting me, and I wasn’t scared, but I felt the future tilt.

Everything I’d been fighting for, the changes I’d made to the status quo, all of it was being dismantled by one manipulative fey king.

Garion lowered his hand. “Hide it.”

He didn’t understand. I couldn’t fulfill my bargain while keeping Garion and his secret safe. Every scenario flashing through my mind ended one way, with me learning what it felt like to betray a friend.

“I made a bargain with a fey.”

Though my words had been quiet, Garion flinched as if I’d lashed him with a whip. “What?”

“On Beltane,” I said. “I went to the fey’s dimension because my parents left me an envelope sealed with fey magic.

I found the person who gave it to me, but the only way he would tell me how to open it was if I found something for him.

He described…” I lifted the unnaturally heavy token. “…this. I didn’t know what it was.”

“You…” The way his voice broke made me feel like I was twisting a knife in his back.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I agreed. My memory—”

“You agreed to find an artifact you knew nothing about.” His voice remained as quiet as a killing frost.

“I didn’t know it was yours. I didn’t know it was a… a relic. He described it more like a piece of jewelry, a challenge coin. Something belonging to him that he wanted back.”

Garion shook his head as he stared at me, and I remembered what he’d told me only a few days ago.

I’d asked him to defuse tensions if Arcuro took the bait I’d set and descended on The Rain, but Garion had refused to step forward and lead.

When I’d pushed harder, when I demanded to know who he was and what he was hiding, he’d erupted, claiming the knowledge would change our relationship.

Just like it had changed his relationship with my parents.

I looked at the token, blinked, then looked back up at my friend. “My parents used this? Used your magic?”

His mouth tightened. “They didn’t want you tied to The Rain.”

Astrid, my childhood friend who’d disappeared over a decade ago, had said the same thing when I’d tracked her down in Cincinnati. The claim hadn’t made sense then. It made even less now. “I am tied to The Rain. More tied to it than before.”

“I know.”

“That can’t be what they wished for.”

“It was,” he insisted. “A djinn’s magic comes at a cost. The changes we make to reality have to be balanced. Usually the cost is distributed among hundreds to thousands of people, diluting the impact to the point where it’s barely noticeable. My magic is… broken.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He ran a hand through his thick black hair before he turned and walked a few paces away.

“Garion.” I took a step toward him.

Deep lines creased his face when he turned back to me. “You made a bargain?”

“I shouldn’t have,” I said. “I knew that before and after I made the deal. I don’t understand why I agreed to his offer in the moment, but I did.”

His head bowed toward the ground. He looked so…

defeated. So weary and drained. It hurt to see him like that.

Aside from Nora, he was the only paranorm at The Rain who’d known me before college.

He’d always listened when I needed to talk, and he’d been there for me after my parents’ deaths.

His quiet wisdom had always fortified me. I couldn’t betray him.

“Here.” I held out the djinn’s token. “Take it. Hide it. If I can’t find it, I can’t give it away.”

Garion’s hands fisted at his sides. “You made a bargain with a fey, Kennedy. There are consequences if you break it.”

“There are consequences if I don’t. My parents kept your secret for the past five years. I’ve been here three months and all I’ve done is create chaos.” Deliberate chaos for the most part because I’d refused to maintain the status quo.

“Who did you make the bargain with?” Garion asked.

“Canyon.” I grimaced. “That’s not his real name. He’s the king—”

The door at the end of the hall slammed open.

I shoved Garion’s token into my pocket, sure that I’d somehow summoned Canyon, and he was barging in to collect it.

Lightning highlighted the silhouette of a tall figure, a figure who flung something large into the hall.

I didn’t have a chance to see what it was before Garion swung me behind him.

A rumble of thunder followed another flash of lightning. I looked around Garion’s shoulder and saw that the something was a someone. Deagan.

Garion grabbed my arm when I rushed forward to help.

“It’s Deagan,” I told him, attempting to pull free. But Garion wasn’t focused on the unconscious vampire; he was focused on that vampire’s master.

Jared’s chest heaved. The left side of his face glistened with blood, some of it pooling into his eye, the rest disappearing under his collar.

That, coupled with his cold expression and the eerie shadows that seemed to wrap around his torso, made him a menacing and monstrous sight.

There was a reason he had been Arcuro’s enforcer for well over a century.

Jared had the ability to instill bone-deep terror into anyone who crossed his path.

Thank God he was an ally.

After a deep inhale through my nose and a slower exhale out, I erased my instinctive fear and removed Garion’s hand from my arm. He allowed it this time.

Moving cautiously, I kept my attention divided between Jared and Deagan. When I reached the unconscious vampire sprawled out on the cold floor, I knelt down. “He’s not any better?”

“No,” Jared said.

“What have you done for him?” Deagan no longer wore the tattered clothes from when I’d found him in the compound, but this new set was just as bloodstained and ruined.

“I have fed him,” Jared said.

I looked up. “Blood?”

“He is a vampire.”

“Who was abused by vampires,” I said, but Jared’s response didn’t surprise me. He was more of a kill someone than care for someone type of person.

I turned my attention back to Deagan. He still hadn’t moved or opened his eyes. His fingernails were broken, his flesh gouged and scratched, and his dry, cracked lips stuck together. “Why isn’t he healing?”

“He is blood-crazed.” Jared took a step farther inside.

“Delirious. He cannot control himself enough to make up for what he lost. He spills more blood than he ingests. I have fed him from my own veins. I have brought him young and Aged vampires. I have brought him humans, and he has ripped them all to shreds.”

“Have you—” Wait. What? “Are you kidding me?”

“I do not kid.”

I shot back to my feet. “You think Deagan is going to be happy he killed people?”

The skin around Jared’s eyes tightened. “It was a figure of speech, Ms. Rain. They live.”

The tension in my shoulders eased. My irritation, however, did not. “So you exaggerate and use euphemisms, but you don’t kid?”

He answered with a stare so impassive most people would claim he didn’t care about anything, let alone Deagan’s fate.

Those people would be wrong. Jared had suppressed his emotions for so long, and he was so locked into the rules and traditions of the paranormal world, he no longer remembered how to be vulnerable.

“You need to clean him up,” I said, my voice softening. “Give him real food. Treat him like he’s human.”

“That is why I have brought him here.”

Well, damn. I’d walked into that one. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to help Deagan, but I wasn’t sure if I had the capacity to add him to my responsibilities.

I was fighting for The Rain’s independence, and that was pissing off the powerful paranorms who wanted me to just sit down and shut up.

I also had a murderer to identify. Someone had killed Jasmine, the first werewolf to sign her name to my guest list, and left her body in the hallway outside my third-floor residence.

And then I had my new catastrophe. What was I going to do about Canyon and the token?

I looked over my shoulder. Sometime in the past few minutes, Garion had slipped away.

“Deagan is a weakness,” Jared said. “There is nowhere else I can take him.”

Heavy. That’s how I felt lately. Jared’s words draped over my shoulders like a metal shawl. I hadn’t built enough muscle to carry around the weight of my responsibilities.

I turned back to Jared. “Don’t you have dark houses spread across the country?”

“They are outside the Null, and Deagan is the only vampire I would trust to take care of… Deagan.”