Page 14

Fourteen

Atlas leaned against the bars of the library cage in the cellar of Mac and Paris’s Monte Corvo villa.

“I like it better on this side.” Two months ago, he’d been on the other side of the bars, pretending to be held captive while trying to convince Mary’s forces to stay out of his way.

No such luck, seeing as he was right back here.

And without a bottle in his hand this time. “Miss the wine, though.”

Jenn growled from where she sat at the retired tasting table in the middle of the room.

Robin strolled around the end of the table to the empty chair beside her, resting his forearms on top of it. “He’s baiting you.”

She twisted in her chair, glaring up at him. “Why aren’t you taking it?”

He straightened off the chair back, and for a moment, Atlas thought he was going to claim it, but he just shrugged and continued walking the length of the table, past the end of it, and to a barrel in the far corner.

He hitched himself onto it and leaned his torso back against the wall, flannel-clad arms crossed over his chest.

The rest of the team made their way down the stairs and into the room, filling up all the seats except the one beside Jenn, and if Atlas figured right, that last one was for Abigail, not Robin.

His friends hadn’t fully forgiven him either, especially not Mac, whose wary violet gaze bounced between them.

Abigail was the last person to enter the room.

“How’s Simon?” Paris asked from his seat at Mac’s side.

“Understandably upset,” Abigail said, as she claimed the open chair. “But Pati and Pax are helping.”

Atlas swung his gaze to Mary at the head of the table. “You shouldn’t all be under one roof.”

“We have less than two weeks to Solstice,” she answered. “We have no time to waste. Jason and Kai have them. Put up more shields if you think it’s necessary.”

He pushed off the bars and slowly circled the room, testing the shields that were in place and reinforcing any weak spots, all while listening to the debrief going on at the table, Adam taking lead.

“These are the three main players on the board.” He opened a folder and withdrew three photos, spreading them out on the table, one by one. “Evan Shaw, Atlas’s twin brother and Chaos’s right hand. Dyami, the pretender eagle, Chumash elder for the tribe in Nipomo. And the hunter.”

“We know who the first two are,” Robin said from his perch. “Who’s the hunter?”

“A human,” Adam answered.

“Erased,” added Icarus, who’d been holed up excavating with his sister all evening.

“He sounds closer to the three of us,” Atlas said, gesturing at himself, Mary, and Icarus, indicating the subtle shift in vocal tone that set folks from the South apart from their Northern neighbors.

“From what I’ve gathered, he lost someone about the time of the Rift, maybe multiple someones, and he’s been on the warpath ever since, targeting the magical and supernatural. ”

“So he’s a religious zealot?” Icarus said, as he cinched his reclaimed robe around himself.

Atlas shook his head. “He blew up a church harboring paranormals. I barely got everyone out of there. Even my zealot father wouldn’t go that far.”

“So he wants what?” Mac asked.

“A normal life.” Atlas flitted a hand in the air. “Free of all this.”

“And he what?” Jenn scoffed. “Thinks if he kills her?—”

“And Chaos.”

“That magic will disappear, and the world will be one where his loved ones would’ve lived?”

“They’ll still be dead,” Abigail said.

“And besides,” Mac picked up, “that’s not how it works. There are no humans either without Nature.”

“And no Nature without Chaos,” Atlas finished.

“It’s a balancing act,” Robin said. He’d been so uncharacteristically quiet that Atlas had almost forgotten he was there, same as everyone else at the table who whipped their gazes his direction. “It always has been.”

Paris was the first to twist back around in his chair toward Mary. “But you’ve been trying to destroy Chaos?”

“Is that what she’s been doing?” Atlas challenged, and the pixie tellingly kept her lips sealed.

Everyone around that table thought he was the master manipulator, and they weren’t wrong, but Nature was in a class by herself.

She was also right, however; there were too few days until Solstice to get into how inconsequential they all were when the poles of their existence went to war.

If he was going to balance their shit so they didn’t all die, he needed the table full of people—distractions—occupied and out of his way.

He finished casting his last spell, then slid into the space between Mac and Paris, because yes, he was an asshole.

And because Adam, the most strategic of the soldiers around the table, was directly across from them.

He pushed the picture of the hunter back toward him.

“You take the hunter. He’ll be making his way north.

I’ll give Icarus and Mary everything I know on him.

Excavate and track until you find him.” He grabbed the picture of Dyami next and pulled it in front of Mac.

“You’re on Dyami. Use your connections with the tribes and your badge.

He’s power hungry. He’s made other mistakes.

I’ll turn over what my excavator found. Investigate the licenses at the casinos and bring him down. ”

Robin hopped off the barrel, his heavy boots thunk ing as they hit the floor. “And you’ll go after Evan?”

He rotated to face the coyote stalking his direction. “He thinks I’m wavering.”

Robin stopped directly in front of him, his golden eyes hard and assessing. “Are you?”

“It’s a balancing act,” Atlas said. “Every day.”

“And if you catch him, will you kill him or use him to bring Chaos through the veil?”

“What if we can do both?” Atlas realized his slip the minute it crossed his lips.

Robin didn’t miss the we either, his stern face cracking into a victorious smirk. “She promised me revenge.”

“You’ll get it.” Of that, Atlas was certain. Whether any of them survived was a whole other question.