“No.” I stabbed a fork through the back of her hand. “He won’t.”
The waitress’s expression didn’t change as she ripped out the fork and tucked her hand in her pocket before we created a scene. More of a scene. “There is something to be said for mated wargs,” she mused, voice losing its modern edge. “Once I claim you, his mind will shatter.” She grinned at him. “She has no idea how close you are to the edge. How losing her would shove you over it.”
A cold ache took root in my belly. Graeson was healing. He was moving on from his sister’s death. He loved me. Losing me to the same killer, especially if my physical body were still viable, might force him back several dangerous steps in his recovery.
Unless I told him the truth, that Charybdis had been hunting me all along. That Marie was a casualty of his greed, that her blood was on my hands. Once I told him that, he might not care what the murderous fae had in store for me.
Coward that I was, I caged that admission behind my teeth. I wanted to enjoy Graeson for as long as I had him. It was selfish and wrong of me, but there it was. There would be time enough for him to hate me later, once this was done.
His warm hand covered mine where my nails dug into his thigh. “She’s trying to get under your skin. Don’t let her.”
“So we have a deal?” I forced her attention back on me.
“I would shake hands—” her grin flashed dimples, “—but I might get too eager.” Fetching her order pad out of her front pocket, she flipped to a clean page and brought out her bloody hand with a pencil gripped between those fingers. “Meet me here, at midnight.” She scribbled. “You have the rest of the day to say your goodbyes.” She tore off the top sheaf and slapped it on the table. “Come alone, or the changeling will be a gibbering fool by the time you wrest her from me.”
“Understood.” I tucked the paper with precise coordinates into my pocket.
Spinning on her heel, the waitress crossed the room and entered the kitchen. I tossed a handful of bills on the table to cover the food we hadn’t ordered, and we exited the building before the police got called. Assaulting an innocent woman in a restaurant was not my brightest move ever, but my she-wolf had been a whisper away from bursting from my skin since Charybdis revealed himself.
The three of us hotfooted it back to the hotel. Thierry had work to do, so she left us to spend the final hours together while she figured out logistics of the area the coordinates indicated.
With more than twelve hours to go until midnight, I made phone calls to Mom and Dad and then to Dr. Wayne to check on Aunt Dot, Isaac and Theo. Too antsy to stay cooped up in our rooms a minute longer, Graeson and I went for a drive to visit the pack. He needed to see his people, and I did too. Dell had been blowing up my mind wanting details on Isaac, and I hoped reporting in person might help the details stick. She had managed to slip in jabs of concern for me too, but when I was in her head, the walls were painted the clear blue of his eyes.
Stone’s Throw RV Park was cramped and lacked the polish of the site the pack had abandoned in Chattanooga. But it was quiet, and the view was spectacular if mountains and forest were your thing. Needless to say, for a warg pack it was exactly their thing.
The pack, minus Bianca and Zed, who was pulling guard duty, met us in the parking lot. Graeson took my hand and led me forward when my knees threatened to lock with uncertainty. A transient childhood meant I feared absence hadn’t made their hearts fonder but forgetful. He guided me through the gauntlet of hugs, and I ignored when the guys sniffed my hair or exhaled their relief against my skin that I was home.
Home.
Muscles relaxing, heart lightening, I breathed out my own blissful sigh. This place did feel like home. The familiar trailers had nothing to do with it. These people made it—made me—feel that way.
“Cam.” Dell smashed into me, squeezing me until my eyes bulged. “I’m so glad you came.” She pushed me back to better read my expression. “You are staying, right?”
“I can’t.” Tension met my announcement, crackling in the air. “I have a meeting tonight. After that, if all goes well, we can put this behind us.”
Several faces turned toward the trailer where Bianca rested. Point taken. We would never move past Jensen’s absence, never look at Bianca without remembering it all over again. We would have to address her care and the baby’s when this was finished, when she was truly safe and could begin healing.
“This meeting sounds serious.” Dell studied me. “Do you need extra eyes or ears or…” she peeled back her upper lip, “…teeth?”
“I can’t risk you.” I glanced around the tightly packed gathering. “Any of you.”
“You’re alpha,” Abram rumbled. “We can’t risk you, either.”
Graeson slung his arm around my waist and anchored us together at the hips. “We’ve brought in outside help that’s not susceptible to the tricks this fae employs.” He kissed my temple. “Ellis won’t be alone.”
I heard a deeper meaning in his voice and pondered it, deciding I would have to extract a promise that, no matter how sure he was that his idea was better than mine, that he was in the right to protect me, he had to trust me to handle business this time.
Behind us a horn honked. We turned as one to greet a pickup with a lit sign decorated with a pizza slice on top.
“Come to momma.” Dell rubbed her hands together. “We decided to have a welcome-home feast in your honor.”
“That was generous of you.” I aimed the remark at Graeson, who appeared as innocent as a lamb among wolves. I got the feeling he was so intent on stuffing me that I would have to waddle out to meet Charybdis.
The guys rushed the delivery driver, who did a double take at being crowded by such large men with a singular interest. He shoved the boxes into their hands and retreated a few steps, until his back pressed against the side of his car. Cash was shoved into his trembling palms, and the guy hopped in his ride and left without a backward glance.
Graeson and I passed several hours in the company of friends, eating and joking and eating some more. We ran together to burn off the jitters making us all antsy. By the time we finished, the tightness in my shoulders had lessened. I was leaning against Graeson’s side, hand resting over his steady heart, when my phone pinged.
“I don’t want to get that,” I confided in him.
“We can’t afford not to.” He tipped my head back with his finger under my chin and kissed me. “Thierry might need us.”
Knowing he was right, I checked my messages. “She’s got the location mapped.” I swiped my thumb over the attached graphic. “She wants to meet and discuss strategy.”
“Then we should go.” He stood and pulled me up with him. “I want tonight to go off without a hitch.”
“Me too.”
I wanted tonight to be the end of Charybdis’s reign and the start of our new beginning.
* * *
Thierry met us at the door of her hotel room with her hair in a bun, a pencil clamped between her teeth and a gas station map folded in her hand. Vindication. I wished Theo was here to see her going paper versus digital. It sprung to mind that perhaps since we’d had the same training we gravitated toward using the same means of deductive reasoning, but I took victories where I could find them.
“We have about two hours until go time.” She tucked the pencil behind her ear. “It takes about thirty minutes to reach our destination, so that cuts us down to an hour and a half.” She ushered us inside and gestured toward her bed, which was covered in electronics and scribbled-on paper maps. “He wants to meet in this area, on Watauga Lake. I mean literally on the lake.” She indicated the map at the foot of the mattress. “The coordinates are for a section of pier at the marina.”
Graeson tapped a few buttons on the laptop and switched from the road map to earth view. “This limits Thierry’s line of sight.” Sailboats and pontoon boats crowded the dock, making it difficult to isolate the exact spot Charybdis had specified. “This tells me he�
�s been out there before and knows the lay of the land.” He straightened with a scowl. “He could hide a dozen hosts in those boats, and we would never know.” He shook his head. “This is too dangerous. There are too many unknowns.”
“I know you wanted to end this tonight,” Thierry chimed in, “but he’s got a point.”
“This is why he agreed so easily.” The first phase of my plan had backfired. Instead of making him sweat, I had tipped our hand. “He used that extra time while we were staking out the gas station last night to set this up.”
“We’ll have other opportunities.” Graeson reached for me.
“At what cost?” I skirted his grasp. “Who will be next?”
The flattening of his lips before he glanced aside confirmed he suspected it would be him. Me? I knew it would be. He was the most precious thing I had left.
“Please,” I begged him. “We can do this. We can still turn this in our favor.”
“Thierry?” That he looked to her for advice cut me.
“We have an hour.” She cleared off room for us to sit. “No promises, but let’s put our heads together, and see what we come up with.”
“I debated giving this to you.” He removed a crumpled foil ball from the back pocket of his jeans. The imprint on the material told me it was a used gum wrapper. “I’m not sure why you asked your parents for some of these, but maybe one is enough?”
The thin metal crinkled as I folded back the edges, revealing a gem the size of my thumb. “I thought this was lost.” It was the stone I had found in Aunt Dot’s pocket. “You’re sneaky.” No wonder he hadn’t reacted to the dryad’s news. “Very sneaky.” The metal dampened its magic to a bearable level, unlike the porous fabric I’d used. “You told me to leave this.”
“I didn’t want you to get hurt.” He covered the gem again before I got a good look at it. “An opportunity presented itself, and I took it.” He crimped the foil shut. “Keep it wrapped up tight, or the magic leaks.”
A single gem wasn’t what I’d had in mind when I asked my parents to procure them for me. Actually I’d had no specific application in mind. Maybe that’s why the deal had fallen through. Karmic retribution. I had gotten greedy. I was grasping, adding weapons to my arsenal while the thought continued to tickle the back of my mind that all this preparation might not be enough.
“I appreciate this.” I kissed his cheek.
“Sorry to break up the moment, but time is ticking.” Thierry checked her phone. “If we’re not solid and all in agreement by eleven fifteen, then we abort the mission. Deal?”
“Deal.” Graeson almost spoke over her in his haste to lock down his vote.
Trapped between a warg and a hard place, I clutched the gem as an idea formed. “Deal.”
Chapter 19
I wore my jogging clothes and tennis shoes to the meeting. The tag in my shorts had never itched me before, but it urged me to scratch my lower back now. Psychosomatic irritation was my self-diagnosis. Thierry had crafted a hodgepodge privacy spell designed to keep the wargs out of my head, and clear of Charybdis’s influence, then cast it in a place no one would think to search.
I arrived ten minutes early and scouted the area in person. The marina was well lit, but shadows prowled the corners of my vision. Reflections off the water. Probably. The pier was long, portions of it covered by tin roofs. Dozens of boats were moored in their slips. Their bright colors glinted, cheering me up despite myself. Even the punny names earned a huff of amusement from me despite the circumstances. Or maybe because of them.
“Camille Ellis, you’re early.” The cultured tone came from Harlow’s throat, her natural voice a faint memory at this point. “I hope that is a sign of your willingness to submit and not one of rebellion.”
Even with her blacked-out eyes and stiff posture, Harlow’s presence lifted my mood. Her cotton-candy-pink hair had grown out so the roots showed blonde. Charybdis had dressed and styled her like a doll, in the image of the woman who was now a pale echo of her former self.
“Did you show the same faith?” I kept several planks between us. “Did you come alone?”
A smile played on her lips. “Those were not the terms we negotiated.”
I rolled my shoulder like I had expected as much, and I had. The double standard didn’t surprise me. This location was all about secreting away hosts or whatever other supplies he required.
“What proof do I have that you’ll release Harlow once I submit?”
“Her body is failing,” she admitted. “Soon I would have no use for her, so why not sacrifice her for you?” Her expression turned wistful. “Your form pleases me greatly. I look forward to wearing your skin.” That wasn’t creepy at all. “Pity it won’t survive the night.” She laughed. “That is the marvelous thing about Geminis, is it not? There is always a spare.”
“What does my sister have to do with this?” I took a careful step back. “I want your word you won’t harm her or my family. That includes the pack.”
“That I cannot do.” She cocked her head at me. “The magistrate’s warrior visited you. I thought…but she didn’t tell you, did she?”
Aware I was taking the bait, I couldn’t help biting. “Tell me what?”
“All of this was for you.” She twirled a strand of hair around her finger. “The drownings. The sex of the victims. The loving families. I selected them based on Lori’s profile. On your profile. I used twofold magic to protect my investment. I anchored the circle using their pain, their misery, their anguish, but I made certain Ayer put a bug in Magistrate Vause’s ear. I made sure you were positioned to lead the investigation so that every echo of your grief, remorse, pity wove its own filament in the spell. So that even if one layer was broken, the other would survive.”
Acid stung the back of my throat, and a familiar wave of self-loathing crested in me. Hearing Vause pontificate was nothing compared to Charybdis confirming that I was the cause of so much death. So many lives lost, and for what?
“Your Marshal Ayer was the first contact I had in this world. I had to cross the portal in my natural state, incorporeally, a gamble that might have cost me my life had not she appeared.” Her gaze went glassy as she absorbed the grief spinning off me. “She held so much private knowledge about the inner workings of this world, but the item in the forefront of her mind was a girl, Lori Grace Ellis. She was fresh from visiting your sister, on her way to speak with Magistrate Vause, and her memories astounded me. Gemini are legend in Faerie. They no longer exist. I had not dared hope I would find such a match in this realm, but she offered up not one but two such morsels with the promise of more.”
“Why fixate on her—on us?” Revenge aside, it made no sense. “We aren’t the strongest or the most powerful fae.”
“No, but you have other redeeming qualities.” She took one calculated step nearer. “Do you know the reason why my kind exhaust our hosts in Faerie? They lack emotion. We’re forced to feed on their magic instead. Most have a finite supply and no means of tapping into power outside their own. We devour that spark, and they die. We keep several hosts tapped for such occasions so that we might minimize the amount of time we are exposed as we claim a new primary, a true avatar.”
“You want a Gemini host so that when the magic runs dry, we can tap into someone else’s.” I inched back a foot. “You realize that fix is temporary, right?”
The fact was, I had traded on this very bit of Gemini biology not a week ago. My ability to filter magic from others and claim aspects of their power as my own had led Miguel Garza to theorize my blood was a universal donor. Charybdis was hinting that same ability would enable him to sustain himself off the magic of others while my body acted as a filtration system.
“Perhaps the issue is not you, but the weak stock available to you.” Her eyes gleamed with malice. “I would drink rivers of fae blood to quench my thirst, but earthborn are watered down, near flavorless. Their excess of emotion is their only saving grace.” She wet her lips. “What this world
needs is an infusion. Fresh blood.”
The prophecy tickled the back of my mind. What was his endgame? “Why burn me up in one night if I’m that valuable?”
“I have no choice.” She frowned, seeming unhappy at the prospect. “All that remains of your sister is a shell, which suits my purpose, as sharing one body with two minds gets rather tiresome. My hungers are aroused by an active mind, by emotion, the darker the better, and she possesses neither.”
“Leave her out of this.” Hearing him dismiss my sister raised my hackles.
“That is an impossibility, I’m afraid.” She studied the star-studded sky. “Your pain, your anger—your self-loathing—will enable me to salvage what you cost me when you ended the kelpie too soon. I would have taken you once completing the circle, but perhaps this was all for the best.” She gave a decisive nod. “The sterility of Lori’s shell will make claiming her much simpler than my possession of you.” She pressed me back another step. “You’ll fight me. I can read it in the set of your shoulders and that smoldering fury in your gaze. Eating you from the inside out would sate me for some time.”
“It would?” Nothing she said made sense. “Why not it will?”
Harlow advanced another step on me, and I eased back only to realize I had run out of pier. The only escape now, if I took it, was the water.
“I might have been hasty allowing you the full credit for my actions.” She traced a finger down my forearm. “I came to this world with a goal. Marshal Ayer granted me a gift beyond compare, the knowledge of your species, and evidence the gods were rewarding my efforts by granting me that which none of my kind have ever possessed.”
Hell or High Water (Gemini Book 3) Page 20
