Page 93

TWENTY-NINE

Sorsha

If you’ve never partied with shadowkind, I’ve got to say I highly recommend finding an opportunity to do so.

I was running on about three hours of sleep, but the rush of our victory and the energy humming through the air inside the RV from the beings who didn’t need sleep to begin with pepped me up no problem. Ruse and Snap had “liberated” a large amount of snack food and some very nice champagne from a couple of stores downtown. Now we were all full of frothy alcohol and bubbling over with laughter and jubilant remarks.

Ruse had managed to find an ‘80s station on the RV’s radio, sending bouncy notes careening through the narrow space. He spun me around and sent me flying into Snap’s arms, who stole a kiss while he danced with his usual sinuous grace. Thorn and Flint toasted each other—a little carefully after their earlier attempts had resulted in several cracked glasses. Pickle darted around on the table with energetic little hops, managing to stir a smile even from Gloam after he’d sunk into his usual daytime despondency.

“The look on that mortal’s face when I showed him a vision of the destruction his Company would bring about,” Flint said, his thunderous voice sounding almost jovial, and let out a chuckle that vibrated through the room.

Ruse smirked. “He couldn’t demolish his own work fast enough. And we accomplished all that from thousands of miles away. I do enjoy modern mortal technology.”

“There will still be the independent hunters and collectors,” Thorn pointed out, even though he was smiling too.

I dismissed that concern with a wave. “We can deal with them like we always have. No big deal. And with those last tidbits Ruse planted in the big bosses’ heads, they’ll have the Company cracking down on anyone who’s doing business around the shadowkind from now on. After all, who else will they have to blame when the shadowkind don’t vanish completely after the Company is disbanded?”

I paused to take another swig of champagne—and two figures popped from the shadows so abruptly I almost choked.

Antic’s arrival wasn’t a surprise. She’d insisted on being the one to go off and collect some more refreshments, restless after standing back so long after her initial contribution to our plan. But standing next to her, in all his tight-jawed, icy-eyed glory, was our missing hellhound shifter.

With a sputtered cough, I set down my glass, my mouth already stretching into a welcoming grin. My heart had skipped a beat both startled and ecstatic. But as I took in the stern set of Omen’s mouth and the way he was looking at me, as if I’d created some new catastrophe even worse than the ones he’d accused me of before, my pulse hitched again in a much less pleasant way. I found myself glancing around to confirm that I hadn’t somehow burned the Everymobile to the ground without noticing.

Everyone else had fallen momentarily silent. Ruse found his tongue first. “Omen! Very convenient of you to skip out while we did all the work and only return for the victory party.”

The hellhound shifter’s gaze slid from me to the incubus. “The imp told me about your scheme—and that, miracle of all miracles, you pulled it off. So, you managed to topple the Company without me. Not a bad day’s work.”

I folded my arms over my chest. “You don’t sound all that happy about it.” Was he upset that we hadn’t waited for him to show up before taking action, even though we’d accomplished more than he could have even been hoping?

“Oh, I’m very glad to know that particular thorn is no longer in our side. Ecstatic, even. It just hasn’t had time to sink in. And I’ve had more pressing concerns on my mind.”

“More pressing than bringing down a massive organization dedicated to exterminating all shadowkind?”

“They could have been ignored for a few days without total disaster. This might not.” He glanced around, noting the second wingéd in our midst with only the barest flicker of surprise. “Out. All of you except the mortal. Now .”

Antic squeaked and darted into the shadows. Gloam’s mouth dropped open, but a second later he followed her.

Flint stood, his solemn face reaching new levels of stony grimness that Thorn could only have aspired to. “If there is some concern with?—”

“I’m not concerned ,” the hellhound shifter growled. “I just want you all out. I assume you know how to follow orders?”

The warrior winced and vanished. Omen swiveled to consider the three remaining shadowkind, who’d drawn closer around me rather than departing.

“What’s going on, Omen?” Ruse asked.

Thorn inclined his head. “I would prefer to remain and hear the news you’ve brought, given the option.”

Omen glared at them. “I wasn’t giving options. When I said ‘all of you except the mortal,’ I meant the three of you as well. Get going.”

“Hey,” I broke in. “You should know by now that I don’t jump just because you say so. If you make them take off, I’m leaving too. Whatever’s going on, they deserve to know.” And I wanted them here, especially when Omen was looking at me like that.

His cool eyes pierced mine and held there. I stared right back at him, all my celebratory elation fading away behind my defiance.

“Fine,” he muttered. “They’ll end up finding out soon enough anyway.” He made a curt gesture. “Disaster, you’ve mentioned a note your parents wrote to you. Would you let me have a look at that?”

Snap peered at him wide-eyed. “Are you going to tell us where you’ve been first?”

“The Highest called me in for a talk I couldn’t refuse,” Omen said flatly. “They weren’t very prompt about their invitation.” He raised his eyebrows at me. “Well?”

“Yeah, of course, I can get it.” I swiveled, slightly dizzy from both the champagne and the sudden change in atmosphere, and hurried over to the bedroom to grab the pearly trinket box.

Had he found out something else about my parents—from the Highest shadowkind or somewhere else on his way back? What could be so urgent about people who were dead ? And why wouldn’t he have wanted the other shadowkind hearing about it?

When I returned with the box, Ruse and Snap had sat down on the sofa-bench. Omen was leaning against the table, his face the same stern mask it’d been since he’d arrived. Thorn stepped to flank me as I approached, as if to guard me. I’d have felt better about that if I’d had any idea what he might be guarding me from. I didn’t think even he knew that yet.

Omen snapped open the box’s lid and withdrew the folded notepaper. His mouth twisted into a crooked smile. “As I thought.”

“What?” I demanded, leaning closer and ignoring the heat that rose up between our bodies with our arms nearly touching.

The note looked the same to me as it always had with its few lines about how much my parents had loved me and how sorry they were not to be with me now. But Omen flicked his fingers toward my name scrawled at the top of the page.

“What about that?” I started to ask—and the ink shifted before my eyes. The letters wavered and reformed. My back stiffened, and any other words I might have said died in my throat.

There’d been a glamour on the letter, just like whatever ones Luna had fixed in my memories. She’d altered this piece of my past too. Now Omen had broken it, and the name I’d thought was mine had vanished.

In its place, the curving lines of ink formed a new one I couldn’t wrap my head around: Ruby.

My mouth opened and closed and opened again. “I—But—The note wasn’t for me?”

Omen gave me a penetrating look. “Of course it’s for you. Your parents didn’t name you Sorsha. You are Ruby. I’d imagine your fae guardian must have worked some awfully complex glamour repressing all memory of that name from your mind, woven into your thoughts so thoroughly so long ago I couldn’t have picked up on the magic.”

Thorn shifted his weight behind me. “How can this be? Not even Sorsha was aware of her powers until recently. She was a small child the last time she was in Austin. How could she have done something to cause such a hunt from the Highest?”

Very good questions, and I was glad he’d asked, since I was still having trouble formulating full sentences.

Omen grimaced. “The Highest didn’t want people to know what exactly they were looking for or why. Ruby hadn’t done anything except come into existence—and escape their attempt to end that existence.”

He paused and met my eyes again. There might have been something a little sad behind the ice now. “It wasn’t hunters who killed your parents. It was shadowkind. The Highest sent their warrior minions to slaughter the three of you. The fae woman got you out of there and was clever enough to ensure they never caught wind of your location again.”

My parents… had been killed by shadowkind ? Shadowkind who’d meant to kill three-year-old me as well? Just when I thought I was starting to get a grip on his revelations, another one threw me for a loop.

I curled my fingers around the edge of the table to hold myself steady. “Why? I mean, I know a mortal and a shadowkind managing to have a kid is pretty much unheard of, but—is it really such a horrible thing, enough that they’d want us all dead?”

“As far as I could tell, it’s about the most horrible thing the Highest can conceive of.”

“Why should it be?” Snap spoke up, unusually fierce. “If that was what Sorsha’s parents wanted—no harm came out of it?—”

“That’s where you might be wrong,” Omen said. His voice had gone taut. “The Highest believe that a union between a mortal and a shadowkind would create a being of incredibly destructive power—enough power to ruin both this world and ours.” He studied me. “You’ve felt it. I didn’t believe you when you told me, but it seems you might have been right to be wary of what lurks inside you.”

The fire I’d managed to control so well just hours ago? It flared in my chest now, prickling hot and jittering, but I willed it down, swallowing hard. “I just—I just need to practice more, to get a total handle on it, like you’ve always said. I haven’t done anything that awful with it.”

“Not yet. They think you will if you’re allowed to live long enough.” He tucked the notepaper back into the trinket box and set the box down on the table. “Whatever exactly you are, the most ancient and powerful beings among all the shadowkind are absolutely terrified of you.”

The absurdity of that statement left me lost for words again. Pickle crept over and nuzzled my hand, but I couldn’t take a whole lot of comfort from his gesture of solidarity in the face of this discovery. All of the celebratory joy had drained out of me.

The Highest shadowkind wanted me dead. I might contain some kind of world-shattering power. How was I supposed to respond to that? What were we going to do about it?

I might have asked one or both of those things, except before I could recover my voice, Omen’s phone rang.

His head jerked down, and he frowned at his pocket for a second before reaching to answer it. Obviously he hadn’t been expecting a call. Did shadowkind have to deal with spammy telemarketers just like the rest of us? This one couldn’t have had worse timing.

Omen’s frown deepened as he took in the screen. I was standing close enough to him to see no number or name was showing up on the display, not even a note of Unknown Caller —it was totally blank. But his ringtone sounded again.

Cautiously, he hit the answer button and lifted the phone. “Hello? Who is this?”

A sharp laugh pealed from the speaker, so loudly that the hellhound shifter yanked the phone away from his ear. “Omen,” an equally sharp female voice said, as clearly as if he’d put her on speakerphone. “I knew I’d get you.”

Omen’s posture went rigid. He stared at the phone as if he’d suddenly realized he was holding a viper. “Who is this?” he asked again, but with a slight hesitation that suggested he was bracing for an answer he already expected.

“My goodness. I recognize your voice after all this time. Do you really not know your favorite associate in all things havoc-raising? I’m wounded.”

A chill shot down my spine, my own troubles briefly forgotten. What was the name of that formidable shadowkind Omen had said he’d harassed mortals with ages ago?

He offered it up hoarsely, his knuckles whitening where he was gripping the phone. “Tempest. You—I watched a squad of wingéd murder you.”

“You watched them attempt to murder me. I must have put on a very convincing show of being murdered. It was necessary, you know, to get those stuffy windbags that call themselves the Highest off my back, and once I had the freedom of being supposedly dead, I didn’t really want to give it up. I’m sorry if you’ve grieved for me across all these years.”

From the set of Omen’s mouth, I suspected he was more likely to be grieving her return. “You had to do what you had to do,” he said, evening out his tone with his usual strict composure. “Why are you honoring me with the secret now?”

The sphinx tsked. “It seems you’ve been making mischief for the wrong side. Nearly putting all my diligent work to waste. Thankfully I caught on and knocked the delusions out of my good friend’s head before he blew up the entire Company of Light.”

I wouldn’t have thought I could get any more stunned, but that comment smacked me right through speechless and out the other end. “ You’re working with the Company of Light?”

“One of your new friends, Omen? She catches on quick. Although I’m not so much working for them as they’re working for me. Tempest the sphinx bows to no one.”

“If I could interject,” Ruse said, looking as discombobulated as I felt. “I don’t know who you are, but you’re obviously shadowkind. Why in blue blazes are you running a ‘company’ set on destroying the lot of us?”

“Oh, you haven’t told the stories of our glory days, Omen?” Tempest sighed with exaggerated dramatics. “No matter. I can assure you the mortals won’t manage to wipe us out no matter what they do—at least, not those of us smart enough to deserve this life. If you’d like to discuss the matter further, I won’t make it hard to find me. You remember that architectural dream of mine? I got to make it come true.”

Omen froze and then gave a disbelieving chuckle. “You didn’t?—”

“Oh, I did. The king was only too happy to oblige when I nudged him in all the right directions. I suppose I’ll see you there shortly. I’d appreciate it if you’d leave my sycophants alone until then. You’ve already caused me enough of a headache.”

The connection cut off as abruptly as her voice had first blared out. For several seconds, we all just gaped at Omen, who was trying valiantly not to gape at his phone and not entirely succeeding.

A fresh wave of heat swelled inside me. “A shadowkind is convincing people to torture and slay the rest of you?” We’d made that claim to the big bosses just hours ago—but nothing I’d actually heard from any of my companions would have indicated it was true. And the damage the Company had done to untold numbers of shadowkind certainly wasn’t make-believe.

“She always did care more about sowing chaos for her own satisfaction than anything or anyone else,” Omen said in a shell-shocked tone.

A flame broke out across my forearm before I could suppress a surge of anger and betrayal. I slapped it against my side, but the hellhound shifter’s gaze snapped to it.

He shook himself as if shedding all the bewilderment of the last few minutes and pushed himself away from the table. When his eyes met mine, something in them made the bottom drop out of my stomach.

“Dealing with her will have to wait until later. First we have to deal with you. I’m sorry.”

My heart lurched. “Omen?—”

He didn’t give me a chance to plead or protest. As his name slipped from my lips, he lunged at me, his arm swinging faster than I could track.

With the slam of his fist into my temple, my mind spiraled into darkness.