Page 20

Lach

D uty called me from bed in the form of a text message. Cate stirred next to me, the sheets slipping to her waist. I glanced from the phone to her, afraid its light would wake her, but she just sighed and snuggled down into the covers, blissfully unaware of the bad news Roark had just delivered. I studied her—the parted lips, the slight flutter of her lashes, the rise and fall of her perfect breasts—and wished I ’ d turned the fucking phone off. We had so little time left that leaving her in my bed to deal with business felt like a waste, but this simply couldn ’ t wait.

I moved through the room as quietly as possible, grabbing random clothing from the open armoire. But as I reached for my holster, the bedsheets rustled. I glanced over my shoulder as Cate pushed onto her elbow.

“Why are you putting clothes on?” She rubbed her bleary eyes.

“Keep sleeping, princess.” I slipped the holster on before pulling out the 9-millimeter to check the magazine.

She sat up straighter. “What’s going on?”

There was nothing she could do but worry if I told her, so I pasted a grin on my face as I slid the gun back into the holster and reached for a jacket. “Nothing to worry about.”

A frown dragged any lingering sleepy peace from her face. “I’ve never been great at math, but I’m pretty sure that you plus guns plus the middle of the night equals trouble.”

I don’t know why I bothered. Unlike most of the women who’d shared my bed over the centuries, Cate wasn’t going to roll over and go back to sleep. It was one of the reasons I loved her. It was also what made it difficult to keep her from getting involved with the bloodier side of my life. “Just a little issue in the French Quarter. Roark needs a hand.”

“I’m going with you.” She threw the sheets off entirely, swinging her legs out of the bed. “Let me get dressed.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said before she made it to the wardrobe. I didn’t want her anywhere near a murder scene.

“Why?” She crossed her arms, brows lifting as if she was waiting for my excuse.

I stared at the ceiling for a moment, like help might come from above. “Because they found another body.” I stole across the room and hooked an arm around her waist. “And because I prefer that you remain naked whenever possible.”

She rolled her eyes at me. “I know you’re basically immortal, so maybe you don’t know what nurses do for a living, but I’ve seen dead bodies before.”

“Then you aren’t missing anything.” I gave her a swift kiss.

But she didn’t soften. “Is it related to the witch who was killed?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. Roark’s message hadn’t said much. Another body. Meet me in five.

“But you ’ re going out in the middle of the night, so it’s serious.” Cate might not have been born to this life, but she had an uncanny sense for how things worked in our world. She tugged free of my hold, tilting her chin, a defiant glimmer in her eyes. “And I’m going with you.”

I had to force myself to nod. She smiled like she’d won, but she had no idea what battle was raging in my head.

Maybe it was the newness of the mating bond fucking with my common sense, just some primitive reflex to shield her. But trying to protect her from this was pointless. Cate didn’t need my protection. Not from this. But knowing that rationally and accepting it emotionally were two different things.

“I don’t suppose I can convince you to take your gun.” I leaned against the wall, watching as she dressed.

“They’re already dead.” She snorted as she dragged a sweater over her head, emerging with a bemused smile. “Yours aren’t enough?”

I frowned. She’d refused to carry a weapon since she returned, and I wasn’t certain how to make her understand it was a necessary evil. “You forget that someone killed them.”

“Good thing I’ll be with a big, bad fae prince, then.” She disappeared into the bathroom before I could remind her that things might have turned out differently if she’d had one the night Oberon kidnapped her.

The tap turned on as another text arrived from Roark.

Don ’ t make me come in there.

Followed shortly by a perfunctory Please.

“Roark is getting impatient,” I called in after her. “Maybe I should—”

“Ready!” she cut me off as she reappeared and headed straight for the bedroom door. Cate threw it open, skidding to a stop when she came face-to-face with Roark, who was planted across the hall.

His scowl—meant for me—slipped from his face and was replaced by wide-eyed amusement when he saw her. “Joining us?”

“Someone has to keep him in line,” she said with a slight shrug, continuing past him like this was business as usual.

Roark shot me a questioning look as we fell into step behind her. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“It’s not up to me.” A centuries-old sense of self-preservation kept me from adding apparently at the end. At least some of my instincts were intact. And maybe it would take a murder scene to get Cate to see why I wanted her armed when she went out.

“This could be interesting,” he muttered under his breath.

Tell me something I didn’t know.

I clamped down on my concern, but it gnawed at me. All I could see were the ways it might go wrong. How her presence in a crisis might be used against me. How the killer might—even now—just be waiting for us to appear. How she wasn’t ready for a fight between creatures.

It’s how I ’ d get to us. And it’s exactly what Roark meant when he said interesting .

I pushed away the feeling, although my eyes remained glued to Cate’s back. “Is it another witch?”

“No.” His answer surprised me. Cate glanced over her shoulder, clearly listening. “It’s a human.”

Cate stumbled, and I shot toward her, but she righted herself. “I’m okay,” she said, even as the color drained from her face. She shook off my steadying hands. “ Really.”

“Maybe…” Roark started, trailing off as he, like me, failed to find the right combination of tact and forcefulness.

“I wouldn’t finish that thought,” I warned him.

“If you’re both finished protecting me from you-know-not-what,” Cate said, lifting her chin but not quite hiding the tremble in her voice, “I think we should get moving.”

“Come on, princess.” I offered her my hand. “Let’s get this over with.”

St. Roch Campo Santo was young by New Orleans cemetery standards. Built by a priest who supposedly bargained with God himself, it was outside the heart of the city. That meant that unlike Lafayette, Metairie, and New Orleans’s other more famous cemeteries, it wasn’t choked with tourists as soon as the sun set. St. Roch was quiet and a bit out of the way—and ringed by a tall wall covering two whole blocks.

I could feel its eerie, still quiet descend on us as we pulled up in Roark’s G-Wagon. We had ridden in silence the whole way. But as soon as the engine cut off, Cate popped the door open and stepped out in front of the cemetery’s ornate wrought iron gate before Roark or I knew what was happening.

Some of my people were already on site, standing along both sides of Music Street, which bisected the cemetery’s two plots, and trying to look casual as they followed Roark’s earlier orders to keep prying eyes away. They shifted uncomfortably at this strange woman’s sudden appearance, exchanging furtive glances, and the two closest began to walk toward Cate.

Their gaze swiveled to Roark and me as we climbed out of the Mercedes, relaxing when they realized it was us—only to tense up when they realized Cate was with us. One took a step toward her, and she squared her shoulders, waiting for him to make the mistake of speaking. The guard decided it was better to leave well enough alone and shuffled back over to his prior spot, studiously avoiding eye contact.

Cate stood in front of the open cemetery gate, hands on her hips, elbows out, back to us. As I approached, I tried to work out—again—how to convince her to return to the car. But, as with the decision to come at all, I found myself simply overmatched.

She must have sensed another attempt was coming, because she strode confidently through the gates as soon as I drew near.

Gods dammit, she was fearless.

And hot.

And this was happening. Apparently.

The muggy New Orleans air, now shielded from blowing away by the walls, settled over the three of us like a pall as we walked down what passed for the cemetery’s main path. Anyone watching us would assume Cate was in charge, as she walked a few paces ahead and never bothered to look back.

I supposed they’d be right. I glanced at Roark walking beside me, but if he was thinking the same thing, it only made him grin.

The moon hung low in the sky, almost obscured by the high wall, and threw long, oblique shadows both onto and from everything. A macabre chessboard of ornate, moss-eaten burial vaults, coping tombs, and their larger society cousins spilled before us in a mostly ordered grid. A breeze whispered through the graveyard, rustling the dried remains of floral arrangements left by strangers on the graves of those long dead.

I could see through the dark, yet I knew Cate could not. But if she was unnerved—like when Roark mentioned that it was a human who’d been killed—she didn’t show it. She did, however, finally spin toward us when it was clear she had no further instinct about where we were heading.

Her pale skin and slightly unkempt beauty tugged at my soul and took my breath away for a moment. The myrtle-draped bough of a cypress tree swayed in front of the light of the moon over her shoulder, filling my nostrils with a sweet, floral scent that completely defied the cemetery’s normal stink of rich earth and slow decay.

For a moment, anyway.

It was a familiar feeling. Like me, the cemetery was caught between two worlds, both of us bonded by death.

Too bad it wasn’t always clear which was which.

My hand flew to the back of my neck, and it took me a second to realize it wasn’t an itch that had brought it there but the memento mori. How the fuck could it know I was in a cemetery? It burned slightly, a feeling both foreign and familiar, and I began to wonder if it wanted rid of me as much as I wanted rid of it.

Cate cleared her throat pointedly.

“It’s this way,” I said, shaking my dismal thoughts and trying to hide my own fear of what a grisly murder scene might do to my mate.

Cate wasted no time, just pivoted on her heel and strode confidently into the darkness of the far corner of St. Rochs.

This time, I reacted quickly. If there was someone lying in wait, it would be best if I was first in line. If Cate objected, she didn’t show it, and I reached down to hold her hand, trying to walk a half step ahead of her. I pulled out my phone, using its flashlight to guide us safely. It really wouldn’t be long until a statue poked her eye out if I didn’t.

She squeezed my hand slightly—just enough to tell me she was glad I was there.

A moment later, we heard voices up ahead, and I pulled up short with Cate. I didn’t have to tell Roark what to do, even without our link. He slid silently sideways into the utter darkness offered by the eaves of a particularly close-knit group of burial vaults and dashed forward to scout.

It was only a few seconds before I heard his voice cut through the gloom. “You sure you want to be here?” And then, a moment later, “Cate and Lach are right behind me.”

I knew it was safe. Roark was actually warning me, in a way. I pulled Cate forward through the near-total darkness, almost dreading whatever complication had already arrived. And then I saw them.

“You didn’t tell me they found the body,” I muttered to Roark.

He held up his hands in surrender. “Didn’t know. I just got a call to get down here.”

Shaw.

Fucking Shaw.

Dante was with him, and a couple more of our guards, one of whom had turned on his phone’s flashlight and laid it on the top of a headstone, making the five appear, even to me, as a collection of floating heads.

“Get rid of them,” I muttered, nodding at the guards.

“Done.” Roark strode forward, directing the other men toward a nearby mausoleum. One of them spared a glance back at his precious cell phone but thought better of bringing it up.

My grip tightened on Cate’s hand as we came to a stop in front of my brother. Shaw stuffed his hands into his pockets, failing to look casual as he glanced nervously at Dante.

“Don’t lose your shit,” she whispered to me.

But my shit was already lost.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded.

“We found the body,” Shaw began, but I didn’t let him get far.

“That doesn’t explain what you’re doing in a fucking cemetery at three in the morning.” I took a single step in his direction, but Cate held me back.

“I think he’s asking you how you found the body,” she cut in diplomatically.

Shaw huffed, casting his gaze at the crumbling remains of a marble angel. “I was on patrol.”

“With a vampire?” She sounded more confused than accusatory.

But Shaw rolled his eyes. “He’s my friend, and patrol is boring. Maybe you could do it sometime.” His head hung as soon as it was out of his mouth. He was no doubt already filled with regret for directing his irritation with me at her.

But it was too late.

A snarl rattled from my chest. “Watch how you speak to her.”

Cate turned toward me, planting her palm over my heart as if she could leash whatever beast Shaw had summoned from within me. The small act soothed me but didn’t quite defang me. I focused my attention on Dante. My brother was in this city by virtue of shared blood, but the vampire—every vampire in New Orleans—was here because my court allowed it. Normally, that would have been leverage enough, but, for the first time in centuries, I needed the other creatures as much as they needed me.

Still, old habits died hard.

“And what brought you out this far?” Roark asked. “You were supposed to be in Third Parish.”

Shaw’s eyes darted to me. “It’s not like you would believe us.”

I raised my phone, shining its flashlight into his eyes, and found them glassy. I directed its light on Dante next. His were as pitch-black as the space between stars overhead. “Opium or venom?” I ground out. “Or both?”

Dante scrambled for an excuse. “We were just—”

“Bored.” I used Shaw’s own words against him. “Now answer the question.”

Shaw swallowed slightly. “Venom.”

“What the fuck were you thinking?” I was going to kill him. Possibly both of them. I turned to Dante. “Why don’t you take a stab at telling me why you were out in a cemetery, feeding my kid brother your venom? Before I take a guess of my own.”

He winced at my choice of words. Most of what was written about vampires was wrong. But stakes? Stakes were very real.

“We saw a light,” Shaw said, cutting in front of Dante just as he began to speak.

“A light?” I stared at him.

“It was like an orb.” Dante finally spoke up. “Everything was dark, and there was this orb.”

We listened as he described a glowing ball of light floating in the sky, but I couldn’t quite bite my tongue. “And you both thought, ‘Hey, let’s see if it leads us to a pot of gold’?”

“And you wouldn’t?” Shaw asked, glaring at me.

I refrained from groaning. “It never occurred to you that it might be a trap?”

Shaw blinked a few times—the thought now clearly occurring to him—before he frowned. “I guess I’m just as naive as you think I am.”

“So you followed the orb?” Cate jumped in, as if sensing a fight. “That’s how you found the body?”

This had to be one of the dumbest conversations I’d ever been forced to participate in.

“You were supposed to be in Marigny. Do you ever follow orders?” I asked through gritted teeth.

“I’m the screwup, remember?” Shaw spat back. “That’s why you don’t trust me to help with family business.”

“No one thinks that,” Cate said.

If she didn’t, she was a saint.

I was about to tell her just that when she shifted and put two arms around me, almost willing her calm into me. Miraculously, it worked.

“Wait over there and stay out of trouble.” I glared at Dante. “And we’re going to talk later.”

Shaw sulked toward the graveyard’s iron gates, Dante following close behind.

It was the same as last time. Another woman, hands bound behind her back, a crater where the back of her skull should have been, and a memento mori carved into her neck. Her body had fallen like a rag doll in front of a marble mausoleum. I turned away, but Cate took a step toward her, eyes narrowing.

“Have they identified her?” I asked Roark.

“We’re guessing a tourist,” he said.

St. Roch Cemetery was too young to be on many ghost tours, so it wasn’t closed to the public. It was entirely possible that this was a simple case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. “We need to find out if any missing persons reports have been filed.”

“I’ll talk to our guy at the precinct,” Roark said.

Cate’s brows rose. “You actually work with the police?”

“The ones willing to accept a supplementary paycheck.”

She shook her head as she crouched to get a better look at the body, and I wasn’t sure if she was more disappointed in them or me.

“What’s she doing?” Roark muttered.

“No clue.” One of the reasons I loved her was that I never knew quite what to expect. But she’d been telling the truth at the Avalon: the dead body didn’t appear to faze her. She was made of stronger stuff than most of the fae I’d known for centuries. I’d suspected as much when she tried to shoot me within the first forty-eight hours she’d known me.

Cate stood, dusting her hands on her jeans. “She wasn’t killed here.”

“How can you tell?” Roark asked.

But I answered for her. “Not enough blood.”

She nodded. “Do you have pictures of the first scene?”

Roark looked truly impressed as I passed her my phone. She scrolled through, pausing to zoom in on one.

“What?” I asked when she squinted at the screen.

“What’s that written in Theban on the ground?” She pointed at the photo.

I took a step closer. “What are you talking about?”

Cate turned the phone around to both Roark and me. She had zoomed in on the gore surrounding the body, and there, woven into the blood spatter, were symbols written in the witch’s blood.

Roark tugged at his lip ring, shooting an uncomfortable look at me.

“We missed it,” I admitted, the confession coated in frustration.

“Can you read it?” she pressed.

“‘Blood spilled. Blood owed,’” he said quietly.

It was both a warning and a promise. If we had caught it the first time, we might have known to expect more violence.

“That’s uplifting,” Cate muttered. She turned the phone back around, and her brow furrowed as she studied some detail.

“What are you onto now?” I asked gently.

“It’s probably nothing,” she murmured. Glancing up, she held out the phone to show us a photo of the memento mori carved on the witch’s neck. “See how the skin around the mark is red and a little swollen?”

“Yeah.” Roark moved closer.

“And the blood is starting to clot, not just pool?” She looked at each of us in turn. “Thalia was alive when the mark was carved.”

Roark cursed under his breath.

Cate tipped her head to the body on the ground. “Her wound is cleaner, no sign of tissue reaction. The blood didn’t clot. The murderer did this after she was dead.” She leaned against me—the only sign that the murder scene had affected her. “Like I said, it’s probably nothing.”

But it felt like something.

“Why drag her out here?” Roark scanned the graveyard like the answer was hidden somewhere among the tombs.

“Convenience?” Cate suggested without a hint of humor. “Maybe they planned to bury the body and got interrupted.”

“It is a public cemetery.” Roark nodded.

“But Holt Cemetery would have been a better choice,” I said. No one would have blinked at a fresh grave in the former potter’s field, not even the resident gravedigger.

“We need to find out who she is. Maybe that will tell us something,” Roark said.

I doubted it. “Or it’s just another message.”

“Wasn’t killing Thalia message enough?” he asked.

“No one’s safe,” Cate whispered, lifting troubled eyes to find mine as she voiced what I was thinking. “Whoever did this chose a human on purpose. Are we sure it isn’t Oberon?”

I hadn’t thought so before, but two bodies warranted some reconsideration on my end. “Anything’s possible, but if he had a spy in my city, why risk them for something like this?”

“Because he’s mentally unstable,” Roark muttered.

He had a point. I stared at the victim. When word got out, people would panic. “We need to keep this quiet.”

Two deaths in New Orleans—even murders—were hardly noteworthy, but the memento mori changed things. I might not have killed the women myself, but I was responsible for their deaths.

“Ask around, but make sure no one else finds out.” I hesitated, glancing to where my brother loitered with his old friend. “And have Dante compel our guys.”

Roark blinked. “Are you sure that’s necessary?”

Cate’s fingers wove through mine, and she squeezed my hand. A silent question. I bobbed my head. “He knows,” I said under my breath, but while Roark knew I suspected a rat, he didn’t seem convinced it was true. “The fewer people who know about this, the easier it will be to contain. If we have to use magic, so be it.”

“Our men can be trusted,” Roark said, and I wished I had his confidence. He glanced to where Dante stood in the distance. “But how will you keep him from blabbing to Baptiste?”

That was easy. “Do you know what Baptiste will do to him if she finds out he’s feeding a fae his venom recreationally? Or that that fae is my brother? It won’t be good.”

“Wonderful. We’re blackmailing people now,” Cate said flatly.

I pinned her with a stare. “It’s better than killing him to keep him quiet.”

She paled in the moonlight. “He’s your brother’s friend.”

“And that’s keeping him alive.” For now. “You wanted to be part of this. Those are the kind of choices I have to make.”

But something moved on the edge of my mind—a darkness even I couldn’t see through. I’d blackmailed people before. Manipulated before. Chosen war. Chosen to kill the few to save the many. Hell, I’d chosen not to save at all.

I didn’t have to look inside myself to know what length I might go to in order to save my court, my family—and especially my mate. It was any length. It had been that way for so long that I could no longer remember when it wasn ’ t the case. Nothing would change that, not even the memento mori burning on my neck.

At that conviction, the mark quenched itself like a red-hot brand dipped in cool water.

But for how long?