“He couldn’t make this easy.” She blew out an exhale. “Promise me something? Keep your phone on you?”
“Easily done.” I patted my pocket. “I always do.”
“Just…” She worried her bottom lip between her teeth. “Listen out, okay?”
Worry beat in time with my heart. “Do you have something to tell me?”
Turning on her heel, Ares stomped down the hall muttering under her breath, and I shut the door behind her, more baffled than ever.
“Okay then.”
The whole ordeal was a complicated dance no one had taught me. One step forward, three steps back. I was getting seasick from all the back and forth.
The ball was back in my court, thanks to his response to my ultimatum.
I want you.
Had anyone ever said that to me and meant it? Other than in a panty-dropping way?
No.
But how much of what Midas thought he wanted was me and how much was my Hadley persona?
Ambrose chose to interject himself into my moment of doubt by miming the act of playing the world’s smallest violin.
“Love is harder than it looks on TV, okay?” I kicked the wall where his shadow loomed. “There’s no music for one thing. That always cues the audience in on what’s about to happen.” Ambrose tapped his ear. “How do you know the characters don’t hear it too?”
Inclining his head, he pointed toward the door seconds before a knock rang out.
“That was the quickest shower in the history of showers,” I said, opening the door. On Remy. “What are you doing here? You said dusk.”
“I got a report.” She shoved past me. “Trust me, you’re going to want to hear this.”
“Okay.” I leaned against the door. “What’s up?”
“I sent Two through Six into the club while you were busy smashing the glamour.”
“I didn’t see them.”
“They would suck at their jobs if you did.” She made a face. “You caught us out once. They’ll be more careful around you now.”
That was hours ago. “You’re just telling me this?”
“I explained how it works.” She glowered at me. “I send them out, and I can’t exactly reel them in like fish. They do their thing, and I don’t know squat until they report back. Well, they reported back.”
“It’s a lot to wrap my head around.” I joined her on the futon. “The last few days are lot to wrap my head around.” I remembered I was dirty too late, but I didn’t care. “The world is a lot bigger than it used to be.”
“Fae are older than this world. Our bloodlines were ancient when your kind’s magic flickered into existence.” Sympathy cut through her usual snark. “Your Society raises you in a box, and very few necromancers lift the lid.”
“As of today, my lid is gone.” I stretched out my legs. “Ripped clean off its hinges.”
“Process it or quit.” She mirrored my pose. “You’re doing the POA’s job now. He can’t shield you when he’s not here. This is how his nights look after he tucks you into bed.”
What a terrifying thought. Both the idea of Linus looming over me, black cowl tattered and threadbare, his icy fingers tucking me into bed with his scythe nestled in the crook of his arm. And to a lesser extent that this was the job once the training wheels came off.
“I’m processing.” I smelled smoke, but there were no guarantees it was pouring out of my ears. It could be lingering in the fabric draped over the walls from the night I made naan and set the stovetop on fire. “What did you find out?”
“Two cloned Victor Jessup’s—the troll guy’s—cellphone before the cleaners got their hands on it. Texts between him and the coven corroborates Ford was infected the night he showed up drenched in goo. He was programmed to bring you into the sewers. They wanted an in with the POA and the pack, and you two were the lucky candidates.”
“I got that when the faux gwyllgi led me on a wild-goose chase.” A horrible thought slammed against my skull. “Did they take Ford to get to me?”
Hesitation gave me my answer before she cooked up a deflection. “They wanted an inside man.”
“That’s a yes.” An extra heaping of guilt landed on my shoulders. “Go on.”
“From what Three overheard, they didn’t expect Bishop or Midas to follow you down.” Her eyes grew darker in the low light. “Whatever your buddy Bishop is, whoever he is, they saw him and wanted him more than you. After you and Midas split off, they used their puppet to get their grubby mitts on him.”
Their puppet.
Hearing Ford called that broke me out in a cold sweat.
Had I not overheard the recently deceased coven members taunting Bishop, I would have assumed they wanted him because he was the central nervous system of our office and had been since its inception. Access to him meant access to our HQs, our intel, our staff’s true identities. The whole kit and caboodle.
“The nature of the coven’s magic puts them on par with skinwalkers. Why introduce another element? The Martian Roaches are mutant parasites. Why use them? Why create them? They’ve got a shelf life, and they’re a waste of a host the coven could use indefinitely.”
“I’m just passing on what I was told.”
Or what she thought she heard, depending on how far removed the half was from the original.
“We recovered Ford and Bishop, thwarting the coven’s evil plans.” I gave serious thought to climbing under the covers and never leaving my apartment again. “What’s their next move?”
“The pack is huge.” She rolled her shoulder. “They could snatch a gwyllgi outlier without much effort. The OPA would be the harder nut to crack. There aren’t many of you, and that makes it harder to disappear someone and then reintegrate them without the others noticing.”
“This doesn’t make sense.”
The door swung open, admitting Midas, and he went predator-still when he spotted Remy on the futon.
“You didn’t knock.” She scowled at him. “Rude.”
“Hadley was expecting me.”
“What’s your point?” She bristled under his regard. “That doesn’t give you the right to barge in here like you own the place.”
Uncertain, he glanced out the open door into the hall like he was considering beating a strategic retreat.
“Midas is courting me,” I explained to her. “He gets certain privileges.”
Staring around with new eyes, she recoiled. “You gave him a key to your place?”
Explaining how everyone and their momma had access to my apartment was more fight than I was willing to have at the moment. “Yes.”
“I’ll be back at dusk.” She got to her feet and edged around the room to avoid Midas. “Later.”
Once he and I were alone, he turned the lock, and I laughed at how ridiculous it was to bother.
“You’re very forgiving of attempted murderers.” He cocked an eyebrow. “For a potentate, that’s odd.”
“Not really,” I murmured before catching myself.
More than attempting murder, I had done it, and Linus forgave me. He offered me a hand up, not a handout. I was just paying it forward.
“Are you going to shower?” He reached in his pocket. “I could order dinner.”
“I’m too tired to eat.” I slid sideways until I was lying half on the futon. “I’m too tired to shower.” I rolled onto my back, kicked off my shoes, and threw an arm over my eyes. “I’m too tired to be too tired.”
“We don’t have to eat.” His voice moved closer. “You don’t even have to shower.”
I grunted a grateful, sleepy noise like the lady I was.
“But you do have to get up long enough for me to lower the futon.”
Getting up sounded hard, so I rolled, melting onto the floor at his feet. “Mmph.”
Feet braced to either side of me, he lowered the frame and made up the bed. “Hold still.”
Midas scooped me up and deposited me on the mattress then covered me with a sheet.
Sleep tugged on my lashes, keeping them lowered, but I flung my arm back for him.
“Are you sure?” He sat on the edge. “I could make a pallet on the floor.”
“I refuse to mate a man who won’t spoon me,” I grumbled, yawning. “Little spoon seeking big spoon over here.”
Slowly, he climbed in behind me, his warmth a wave of comfort at my back that soothed me deeper into sleep. He didn’t rest his arm across my waist, but the front of his knees bumped the backs of mine, and his breath huffed across my nape.
The way my heart swelled, pushing against my ribs until they creaked, I lost my courage to say more. To ask him what this meant was to risk him telling me what I didn’t want to hear, or what I did want to hear, and until I could tell those things apart, the quiet was safest.
Ambrose slinked into bed with us, reaching over me to tousle Midas’s shadow’s hair and plant a sloppy kiss on top of his head.
Rolling my eyes, I focused on sleep and drifted off to the comforting beat of another heart behind mine.
Eighteen
For the better part of an hour, Midas put off getting out of bed. The futon was comfortable, better than his own mattress, but he couldn’t sleep with the distraction of Hadley’s scent in his nose and her small form cuddled back against him as tight as she could fit.
But every time he closed his eyes, the view remained unchanged.
The crowd roars, their chants deafening, and they throw raw meat into the arena.
“That’s for you,” the goblin chortles. “Look how they adore you.”
Maggots wriggle in the meat, and the marbling is peculiar, nothing Midas can identify.
“Too good, eh?” He whistles, and cage doors slip open across the arena. “They’ll eat it if you won’t.”
The beast in Midas, the one who bayed at the moon and ran through fields with his sister, remains silent.
“Let me die.” He hadn’t meant to say it, but he wouldn’t take it back, even if he could. “Please.”
“You’re worth too much.” The goblin clucks his tongue and goes back to counting his gold. “You’re too pretty to retire.”
The offhand remark lodges itself in his brain, and he can’t shake it clear. The plan to hold back, to let his face get scratched or bitten, ruined, burns bright in his mind.
“You’re up,” the goblin says sometime later. “There’s your draw.”
But when he steps into the ring, and the crowd screams for him, he loses his grip on his feral half. It only cares about survival, about getting out of this place. It doesn’t care what its actions cost the human part of him.
As usual, a female enters the ring, old blood matting her fur, and Midas grieves.
His inner beast rests a heavy paw on his head and shoves him under, and when he resurfaces, the match has ended. The female is dead. A clean kill. Her neck broken. A mercy.
The patrons roar their approval, more gold changes hands, and Midas’s ranking peaks.
“You were made for this,” the goblin says when he’s returned to his cage. “A born killer.”
I was born for more than this. More than death.
The goblin pairs him with females of all species to keep the matches interesting. Not because they’re competition for him but because the bouts last longer, his feral half unwilling to harm them until given no choice. Its drive for survival is all that’s holding them together, and even that is fraying.
“Hey.” A gentle hand brushes across his forehead. “You okay?”
Ripped from the dream, Midas jerked away from her touch. “Abair aris é, le do thoil.”
“No clue what you said, but it sounded very sexy.” She propped herself up on her elbow. “Bad dream?”
Searching his brain, he found the right language. “Yes.”
“I wonder if Linus has a translation sigil. There’s way too much of whatever you just said happening lately, and I have no time to play catch up. Plus, I failed Spanish two years in a row, and I have a feeling fae lingo is slightly harder to learn.”
“Fae lingo?” The more she talked, the deeper he sank back into himself. “Gaelic?”
“I suspected as much, but who can tell?” A frown puckered her brow. “You were talking in your sleep.”
Muscles in his hands and arms clenched until they burned. “What did I say?”
“I have no idea.” She stroked the high blades of his cheeks, down and across the unforgiving line of his jaw. “I couldn’t understand a word.”
The years of ignoring the past, hiding from it, unable to stomach a female’s touch, hadn’t healed him or prevented him from cracking. Alien as it was to seek comfort, he pushed his face into her caress, the same as he would on four legs. Her delighted laughter told him she had drawn the same comparison as she finger-combed his hair.
“I have to return to the den.” The words came out muffled against her shoulder, but he had no memory of tucking his face there. Instinct, which had remained silent for so long, broken beyond trustworthiness, had done the work for him. “What about you?”
“Remy is stopping by at dusk. She gave her report before dawn, but there might be more. Or she might be using me to get free takeout. It’s hard to tell.” Her fingers kept soothing, kept stroking his hair. “Did I tell you I hired her to work my kiosk? Her first day on the job, she kicked a guy in the balls. Human, of course. He deserved it, but still.”
Tell me about your day, dear.
The normalcy of it humbled him, an intimacy more than skin deep.
“Will you still have room for our dinner date?”
“I’m no gwyllgi, but I can hold my own.” She kissed his cheek, lingered, her breath warm near his ear. “Don’t you worry.”
The uptick in his pulse rang in his ears, and his stomach tightened. She didn’t pull away, and he didn’t want to let her go. Need, sharp and hungry, sank teeth in him. The sensation, at once new and strange, pushed him up onto his elbow to put them at a height with one another.
“You’ve got that look in your eyes.” Hadley’s lips quirked to one side. “Are you going to kiss me?”
Until she asked, he hadn’t been sure. “Will you let me?”
“I suppose I’m willing to let your mouth parts touch my mouth parts.”
“You’re still not funny.” Amusement washed through him. “I don’t know why I laugh anyway.”
“You like me.” She leaned in, her eyes dancing with mischief. “That’s why.”
Holding her gaze, Midas angled his head, let her breath hit his parted lips. He expected her to close the gap, to fit her mouth to his, but she held her ground, a dare. She wanted him to take the lead, and his long dormant instincts blinked awake.
Touch averse, he wasn’t. Never had been. Shifters thrived on sensation, on physical connection. He had been denying himself that pleasure, felt undeserving of it, but Hadley made him crave it, crave her, until he felt starved without his fingers on her skin.
A soft growl tickled the back of his throat when his mouth brushed hers, and her happy sigh spread through him like sunshine, banishing the darkness. He sank his fingers into her hair and deepened the kiss, but she bit his lip and withdrew as far as his fistful of curls allowed.
“Not bad.” Eyes gone drowsy, she wet her lips. “I might consider letting you do that again sometime.”
“You taste like sunshine.” He cringed away from her. “And I sound like an idiot.”
“I’ll admit, as a necromancer, I’m partial to moonlight, but I’ll take what I can get.” She gave him a bright smile. “We can’t lay in bed all day.” She climbed across him. “We need to get a move on.”
The quick slide of her hips over his forced him to swallow a groan. “See you later?”
She hesitated in the doorway to the bathroom. “You’re leaving?”
“I need to grab clothes from upstairs and get to the den.” His escort waited in the hall. He’d heard her arrive and ignored it, unwilling to climb out of bed. “You’ll be here, right?”
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br /> “I should be, for a while anyway. I want to check on Bishop, but I’m not sure that’s possible.”
“I’ll call on my way back,” he promised, fisting the sheets and pulling them onto his lap. “That work?”
“That works.” She grinned. “I cannot believe it.”
The sheet wasn’t enough, so he grabbed the pillow too and hoped she hadn’t noticed his problem. “What?”
Fluttering her lashes, she did a little twirl. “I got kissed by a handsome prince.”
Relief pushed a laugh out of him, and he shook his head. “Go shower.”
Hadley executed a perfect curtsy. “Yes, your highness.”
A different flavor of embarrassment reddened his cheeks, and he pushed out a relieved breath when she shut the door. Tossing the pillow aside, he peeled back the covers and stared at the tent in his shorts like it was his first. It might as well be. He hadn’t been a morning wood guy since…
Blood coats his fingers, lips. Copper fills his mouth, and he tastes death with each swallow.
The erection withered as memories pressed in, but a slow inhale of Hadley’s pillow gave him the clarity to get moving. Feeling ten kinds of fool, he pocketed the fuzzy sock on top of her mountain of laundry to tide him over until he saw her again.
After he dressed for the day, he stepped into the hall to find Ares, her expression tight. She escorted him down to the lobby and indicated her car idling at the curb. She waited until they got in before the dam broke.
“Natisha is here.” Awe and fear and dread braided together. “Why is Natisha here?”
The name was enough to turn his stomach, but he had no choice but to see his decision through.
“Ford can’t recover without her help.” That was the truth. “She’s his only hope.”
“Your mother wouldn’t bargain with Natisha for Ford.”
“You’re right.” Midas tightened his jaw. “But I would.”
“You’re an idiot.” Ares jolted, shocked to have said it out loud, but she didn’t let that slow her down once she got started. “You can’t bargain with her. She’s a monster.”
“She’s not a monster,” he countered, considering himself a pro on the topic. “She’s fae.”
Pack of Lies Page 22
