Page 36

THREE

Sorsha

I was stumbling through the dark hallway of a house. Our house, the one Luna had rented the first floor of—and Luna was there by the door, so tense her skin had broken out in its supernatural sparkle. I could almost see the flutter of her fae wings behind her back.

“My shoes,” I said, clutching the duffel bag I’d kept packed for emergencies, my head full of a sleepy haze. I had no idea what this emergency was, only that my guardian had shaken me awake with an urgent hiss of my name. “I can’t find them?—”

“Never mind that. Someone’s coming, Sorsha. I can feel it. Wear these, and we’ll go.” She grabbed her sparkly sneakers off the shoe rack and shoved them at me. As I tugged them on, they pinched my toes. Her feet were at least a size smaller than mine.

“Are you sure we’re actually in danger?” I whispered as she eased the door open. The only real concern my self-centered sixteen-year-old brain could process was: where the hell were we going to go now ? “We’ve moved how many times already, and no one’s ever?—”

She tugged me with her outside, ignoring my protests. As Luna crossed the lawn, I stopped to try to wriggle my feet more solidly into the shoes. When I looked up, she’d reached the sidewalk—and several figures sprang at her from the night.

Whips that seemed formed of light slashed through the air; a blade flashed; someone hurled a glinting net. Luna whirled around with a shocked squeal. The bindings squeezed tight around her skinny form before I could so much as cry out. Her body shuddered—and then burst into a firework of sparks.

I jolted awake with my shriek still locked in my throat. The air around me was glittering, but it was the gleam of sunlight through crystal, not the sparkly shattering of my guardian’s death. Sunlight through several crystals, actually—there were about a dozen of them dangling from silver chains in front of the window in the little cabin we’d found not too far outside of town.

The clang of horror faded from my nerves. I rubbed my forehead and sat up, but my stomach stayed clenched.

The fae woman I’d called Auntie Luna—the woman who’d saved me from the hunters who’d murdered my parents, who’d given me the best mortal childhood a shadowkind could, who’d never made me feel anything less than unreservedly loved—had died more than eleven years ago. I hadn’t dreamed about that night in ages. It brought the same old questions back to nibble at me: if I’d just moved a little faster, left my own freaking shoes somewhere I could easily put my feet into like she’d reminded me a million times…

But all those what ifs didn’t change the fact that she’d died at the hands of attackers with the same weapons the sword-star crew used, at least one of those weapons marked with that sword-star symbol. I might have screwed up, but they were the ones who’d killed her. While I couldn’t change anything I’d done back then, there was plenty I could do to make them regret their life choices now.

They weren’t going to get away with what they’d done to her or any of the other shadowkind. Including Omen, as big of an asshole as he could be. On the balance of things, I’d take him over the men with whips and nets any day.

Rolling my shoulders carefully to test the injured one, I got up. It appeared the property we’d ended up on had once been used for New Age-y retreats. Along with the crystals, three bunk beds were crammed into the single open-concept room between posters with nature photos and encouraging phrases like, “Believe in the sunshine of your spirit!” We’d found a heap of rolled yoga mats in the shed outside. But based on the dust that had coated nearly every surface and the weeds choking the driveway, no one had made use of the place in months, if not years.

I stepped out into the yard where Omen had parked the Oldsmobile under the shelter of an oak tree hung with fraying dreamcatchers. They swayed in the warm morning breeze. In that first second, it appeared I was alone on the property. Then my four shadowkind friends shimmered from the shadows into the daylight.

They didn’t look all that friendly. Omen’s mouth was set in a tight smile, his gaze holding its usual chill as it came to rest on me. The other three were watching him. Thorn stood with muscles tensed, his frown even deeper than usual, and Ruse’s expression looked uncharacteristically serious. Snap’s eyes had widened with worry.

“There’s no need for all this fuss,” Omen said, clearly picking up the thread of a conversation they’d been having out of my hearing. “If she’s half as competent as you’ve spent so much time trying to convince me she is, she’ll handle this without any trouble at all.”

“But we shouldn’t be trying to make things harder for Sorsha,” Snap protested.

I walked over, raising my eyebrows. “What exactly am I supposed to be handling that’s so very hard?”

Ruse’s lips twitched as the incubus no doubt thought up a few suggestive remarks he could make in response, but he settled for a subdued smirk. Omen lifted his chin with the authoritarian air that was getting on my nerves more each day.

“We’re attempting to turn the tables on our enemies at the hand-off tomorrow evening,” he said. “Enemies who’ve already proven themselves very skilled at overwhelming us. If you’re going to play any part in the ambush, I want to be sure your mortal clumsiness won’t ruin our chances.”

If I was so clumsy, he was lucky I didn’t trip right now and accidentally ram my knee into his junk. But sure, he hadn’t seen me in action—maybe it was understandable for him to be skeptical. I’d just bash that skepticism into the stratosphere, and if he was still being a jerk after that, then we’d see where my knee ended up.

I shrugged. “Fine. Hit me with your best shot.”

Omen swept his arm toward the other men. “You see. She doesn’t require your protection.”

“She does occasionally take on more than even a shadowkind would think is wise,” Thorn muttered. To be fair, it was true that he might not have needed to save me from any bullets if I hadn’t insisted on handling that job alone.

“I’m sure Omen doesn’t have anything too horrifying in mind,” I said, and smiled sweetly at the other guy. “Do you?”

Omen gave me an expression even more openly disdainful than usual. “We’ll start with this: my colleagues and I will take Betsy into the city. You will make your own way there, by whatever means you can come up with. I expect to see you at the Finger no later than noon.”

It was a trip of nearly a hundred miles, and it was already past nine. Ruse tsked with teasing disapproval. “I did hear you like to play hardball with the mortals, Luce.”

“Luce?” I repeated.

“Short for Lucifer.” Ruse cocked his head toward Omen. “Not that the actual prince of Hell actually exists—or Hell itself the way humans conceive of it, for that matter—but from what I understand, our boss here used to make a game out of convincing mortals he held the title.”

Omen cut his icy eyes toward the incubus. “That was a long time ago and is hardly relevant. I’d rather you did away with the nickname.”

“But it suits you so well. You even have the tai?—”

“Enough!” Omen barked. “You’re wasting her time.” His tawny hair rippled, a few tufts rising. So, there were a few topics that could get Bossypants emotional. Interesting.

And what had Ruse been going to say he had? The memory rose up of the tail with the devilish tip I’d caught a glimpse of when Omen had sprung from his prison cell in beastly form. Maybe that was the shadowkind feature he kept even in human form—the slacks he was wearing were loose enough to conceal it.

I yanked my gaze from Omen’s behind to his face before it became too noticeable that I was checking out his ass, as fine an ass as it was. Such a pity it was attached to a massive jerk.

My time to complete his challenge was ticking away. How in holy heathens was I going to make it downtown in less than three hours without a vehicle? Even if taxis came out this far into the middle of nowhere, my phone had no reception here.

Back out now, and I’d never live it down. I waved toward the car. “Go on, then. I’ll see you at the Finger by noon.”

Omen strode toward the station wagon. The others followed more hesitantly, Snap lingering on the lawn until I shot him a smile more confident than I actually felt. He immediately smiled back, beaming back at me with so much certainty in my abilities that I had a spring in my step when I ducked into the cabin to grab my backpack full of my cat-burglar gear.

As I re-emerged, Betsy roared away down the dirt driveway. I slung the straps over my shoulders, careful of the bandaged wound, and set off at a jog. No time for dillydallying, as my Luna would have said.

It was hard to imagine what she’d make of the woman I’d grown into. Would she have been proud of everything I’d done to rescue the mistreated shadowkind in this world so far or horrified by how much I’d stuck my neck out? True to Omen’s comments about shadowkind attitudes, during the time I’d been with her she’d never shown concern for anyone other than the two of us. I could easily imagine her racing past a hundred caged creatures to spare me from a splinter.

She definitely wouldn’t have approved of the all-black outfit I wore for my thievery—I knew that much. Stealth and sparkles really didn’t mix.

I headed down the New-Age retreat’s overgrown driveway to a quiet road bordered by fallow fields, stretches of woodland, and the occasional farm house. As I loped alongside the ditch, I scanned all of those for anything worth putting those thieving skills to use on.

The sun crept up across the sky, and the heat intensified with it. Sweat trickled down my back.

I must have covered at least a couple of miles before I spotted my salvation: a mud-splattered bicycle leaning against a fence post, ratty tassels drooping from the ends of its handlebars. Not my typical plunder—I was more a gems and rare coins kind of gal—but right now I’d take that bike over the Hope Diamond.

No, let’s be real: I’d take the Hope Diamond, but then I’d steal the bicycle too.

It was obviously a kid’s bike, but a big kid’s, at least. I couldn’t have pedaled it while perched on the seat without hitting my chin with my knees. So, I gripped the gritty plastic handlebars and took off with my ass up in the air like I was about to race in the Tour de France.

As methods of transportation go, you’d be better off not following my lead. I bounced along the potholed country roads for the better part of an hour, until my thighs and back ached almost as badly as my wounded shoulder, and my eyes were stinging with sweat. Thankfully, my vision wasn’t so blurry that I missed the delivery truck at the pumps of a gas station up ahead.

The delivery truck with its back door ajar.

There weren’t many places around here that a truck that size would be taking its cargo to. I dropped the bike at the edge of the station and slunk over. The driver had his elbow leaned out the window as he chatted with the attendant who was running his credit card.

“Not my favorite type of load, but you’ve got to take whatever you can get these days. At least it’s a short drive to the city.”

Jackpot. I eased the rear door farther up and squeezed under it.

I found myself in a dim, hot space that smelled like straw and shit. Rustles filled the air all around me, punctuated by an occasional… cluck?

I was surrounded by chickens. A hen in the cage closest to me attempted to peck me through the bars.

“Mind your beak,” I whispered at her, thinking various curses very intently in Omen’s general direction, and hugged my legs to my chest as I prepared for a long ride.

By the time I made out city buildings through the gap under the door, I probably smelled like a chicken coop myself, but I’d made it to my destination with a half an hour to spare. I rolled out when the truck stopped at a red light, summoned an Uber while picking bits of straw off my clothes, and told the driver who showed up to take me to the Finger.

The Finger wasn’t the official name of the gigantic statue that loomed in the middle of one of the largest downtown squares, but good luck finding anyone who could tell you what else it might be called. Erected a few decades ago by some avant-garde artiste, the tower of chunks of varnished wood held together by steel struts looked like nothing so much as a massive hand giving the buildings around it the middle finger. Naturally, it was the city’s most popular landmark.

When I hopped out at the edge of the cobblestone courtyard at ten minutes to noon, several tourists were clustered around the Finger taking selfies. There was no sign of any shadowkind, but I wouldn’t have expected to find them basking in the sunlight. As I strolled over to the structure, the four of them appeared as if they’d simply stepped from around its other side rather than straight out of the shadows.

“You see,” Snap said happily if carefully, to make sure no one around us noticed his forked tongue. “Of course she made it.”

With his baseball cap on to cover his horns in mortals’ view, Ruse sauntered over to pluck something out of my hair. He tapped my cheek with a chicken feather. “I won’t ask.”

Funnily enough, Omen didn’t look remotely pleased. “You cut it close,” he said, as if even making it at the last second wouldn’t have been an incredible feat, and immediately turned away. He jabbed a finger toward a police officer who’d paused to buy a hot dog from a stand at the other end of the square. “I hear you consider yourself some kind of master thief. Steal that cop’s cap for me.”

Oh, he wanted to up the ante now, did he?

Thorn tugged at the fingerless leather gloves that disguised his crystalline knuckles but always seemed to irritate him. “Omen,” he started.

I shook my head to hold off the warrior’s protest. “Not a problem. I’ll just need a moment to prepare.”

Omen crossed his arms, giving me a disbelieving scowl. I ignored him as I took the lay of the land. He was going to find out soon enough that I wouldn’t give up—not until the bastards we were both after met a fate at least as horrible as they’d given to their shadowkind victims.

I could use a strategy I’d seen Auntie Luna turn to more than once when her fae glamours and other spells wouldn’t do the trick. Collide and divert. I wasn’t quite as petite and bubbly as she’d been, but I could pull it off nearly as well.

While the cop chowed down on his street meat, I jogged around the nearby streets until I found a performer with an open case strumming her guitar at an intersection. I held out a twenty and patted my wallet when she grabbed it.

“I’ll give you four more of those if you scream as loud as you can, five minutes from now,” I said, pointing at her watch, and added at her quizzical look, “Set it to music if you want. No scream, no cash.”

There wasn’t going to be any cash anyway, but hey, just the twenty was a lot of money when I’d lost nearly all my earthly possessions last week.

I hoofed it back to the square, watching the minutes tick by on my phone. When there was only one left, I took off across the cobblestones at a breakneck run.

The cop had just finished his hot dog. He dabbed at his mouth rather daintily with a paper napkin—and I slammed right into him, looking back over my shoulder as if I were paying more attention to something behind me than to where I was going. Still, I managed to swing my heel against his ankle to knock him right off his feet.

We both tumbled over, my arm flying up and smacking his cap to ensure it detached from his head. Since I wasn’t a total fiend, I jerked my elbow to the side before it would have rammed him in the throat. We hit the ground with a shared grunt.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry, so so sorry,” I babbled, scrambling up. “It’s just—There was—” I gestured wildly toward the direction I’d come from, widening my eyes as far as they would go.

The cop had barely righted himself when the street musician let out the scream I wouldn’t be paying her for, high and shrill—and maybe with a riff on her guitar, but I didn’t think the cop noticed that. He bolted up faster than anything, too alarmed to bother with his cap, and dashed off to see what devious crime was being committed two blocks away.

I swiped the cap off the cobblestones and ambled back to where Omen and the others were waiting. With a bow, I presented the prick with his prize. “Ta da. Please, don’t hold your applause.”

Ruse chuckled and clapped. Omen glared at me. “If you think this will?—”

“I think,” I said, already backing away, “that you’ve got nothing to complain about in my performance, and I deserve a little break as my reward. I’ll meet you all back here at five—or I’ll hitchhike my way back to the cabin, if you’d prefer.”

I gave Bossypants a cheeky salute, and then I spun on my heel and hailed a passing cab.

Between his knife trick last night and this round of testing, Omen couldn’t have made it clearer how he felt about my presence. I’d just have to show him what humans were capable of when they had allies of their own kind at their back. I needed a shower and a moment to breathe, and then I was going to steal myself a little mortal support.

* * *

Only after I’d already picked the lock to the apartment and snuck inside did it occur to me just how bad my approach to a surprise visit might come across to someone who wasn’t in the habit of breaking and entering on a regular basis.

Ellen and Huyen, the married leaders of the Shadowkind Defense Fund, were film fanatics. They owned a second-run theater just down the street from the apartment, where they usually held the Fund’s meetings to discuss how we could protect the shadowkind creatures in our realm from the humans who preyed on them. So it wasn’t surprising to find their walls adorned with framed vintage movie posters and mounted memorabilia like a Godfather fedora and a license plate from North by Northwest. They even had a literal gun on their mantelpiece.

Based on the movies they’d chosen to display, it looked like suspense flicks and film noir were their favorite genres. Which meant they’d probably watched at least a dozen scenes where a character walked into their darkened home only to find an unexpected intruder waiting, sitting casually in an armchair, perhaps with a dramatic clicking on of a lamp.

I wanted to ask the Fund’s leaders for their help, not give them a heart attack. At least it wasn’t all that dark at three in the afternoon, when I knew they always popped back home for a late lunch break after the first round of matinees. Taking the sneaky route was the only way I could talk to them without any chance someone from the sword-star crew would see me with them and decide to make the two women their next targets.

I might have risked relocking the door and waiting for them in the hall, but before I’d quite decided, their key clicked in the lock. Oh well, I guessed I was stuck doing this the creepy way.

The couple walked in, Ellen in mid-sentence exclaiming about her ideas for new popcorn flavors to inflict on Fund members at upcoming meetings. Seeing me in the living room doorway, they both halted in their tracks. I raised my hand in an apologetic wave of greeting. “Hi?”

Ellen glanced between me and the door and back again, strands of her frizzy, graying hair flying around her face where they’d escaped from her loose bun. “Sorsha, what on earth—How did you?—”

I held up both my hands before she could finish that question. “Let’s not worry about that right now. I’m really sorry to surprise you like this. I just didn’t think it’d be safe to talk anywhere else. There’s something big going on—something that’s hurting a whole lot of shadowkind.”

I’d known that fact would override every other aspect of the situation. Ellen and Huyen were as dedicated to their cause as they were to their love of movies; they just couldn’t show off the former anywhere near as openly. Ellen pursed her lips, but she didn’t dial 911 or even tell me to take a hike, like most sane people would have.

“What’s going on?” she asked in her throaty voice.

Might as well serve up the meat of it before they lost their patience. “I’ve found out that there’s a large, well-organized group that’s hunting not just lesser shadowkind but higher as well—capturing them and keeping them to run experiments. I’ve talked to a higher shadowkind who managed to escape”—no reason to mention that I’d orchestrated that escape; one case of breaking and entering would look bad enough—“and he’s said it’s basically torture. We don’t know what they want to accomplish, but this is too huge and horrible to ignore.”

Ellen’s mouth had tightened too, but with obvious distress. “Hunting higher shadowkind—running experiments on them? Who are these people?”

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “They’re very good at covering their tracks. That’s why I’m hoping the Fund can use our resources to uncover more information and push back. But they—they already know I’m trying to stop them, and they’ve attacked me because of that. I didn’t want to risk them tracing me to the theater. If we’re going to meet to discuss this, it needs to be someplace else, and everyone who comes needs to be careful about it.”

Huyen glanced at her wife, her tan skin graying. “I don’t know. This sounds like it might be too big for us to tackle.”

“Not if we’re smart about it,” I said quickly. “Not if we work fast.”

“What did we even start the Fund for if we’re not going to intervene when there’s a major problem?” Ellen asked.

Huyen didn’t look convinced. I sucked my lower lip under my teeth, my gaze skimming over the posters around us for inspiration.

“If anyone’s prepared to take them on, it’s you.” I motioned to the Hitchcock pictures, to the spy capers and crime dramas. “You can put all the strategies you’ve watched to good use. We’re the underdogs going up against the corrupt conspirators… Don’t turn into one of the complicit wimps who tells the heroes they’re on their own.”

Resolve sparked in Huyen’s dark eyes. “Okay, that’s quite the pitch. I’m not promising anything yet, but why don’t we all sit down, and you can tell us everything you already know.”