“Oh, gosh.” The boy’s voice was surprisingly high and feminine. “I forgot.” He touched his face, as though checking the arch of his nose, the dimple in his chin, the shape of his cheekbones. “It’s me. I’m in disguise to make it harder for Rhiannon to follow me. Marion made this. Looks pretty good, huh?”
Deirdre still didn’t understand. Not until the boy slid his thumbs underneath the skin on his jaw and lifted it like a hood.
Rylie Gresham’s face appeared underneath.
The Alpha herself.
Anger blazed within Deirdre. “
You
. This is your fault! You almost got me killed!”
“You almost got yourself killed,” Rylie said. “You can’t challenge Rhiannon publicly. An execution was the inevitable outcome.” She let the magical mask fall back over her features again, concealing her golden eyes and pink lips.
“It might have been the inevitable outcome for me, but not for you,” Deirdre said. “You knew there’d been election fraud. Brother Marshall told you. And you did nothing!”
“I told Brother Marshall
not
to tell you,” Rylie said.
She shot a look at the monk, who only shrugged. The gesture wasn’t embarrassed or even apologetic. “Yup,” he said.
“What Brother Marshall did is not the problem here,” Deirdre said. “The problem is your cowardice.”
“The oath might render me immune to Rhiannon for the time being, but it doesn’t spare all of my loved ones. Not everyone I care about is part of my pack. My son, Benjamin—he’s mundane. The oath wouldn’t have protected him. I couldn’t risk Rhiannon retaliating against him.”
“So you decided you’d give Rhiannon the whole country to save one boy?”
“I decided that direct confrontation would be a bad idea, yes,” Rylie said.
“Cowardice.”
“Practicality. I know you think that you can change the world by crossing your fingers and wishing hard enough, but there are real lives on the line, real people who matter, and people who need me to protect them.”
“Gaeans need you to protect them! Thousands of other peoples’ vulnerable sons and daughters,” Deirdre said. “If you couldn’t subvert her safely, then you should have gone big. Gone public. She’s the one whose head should have been on the chopping block for cheating.”
“She won,” Rylie said tightly. “Fairly or not, she
won
. Brother Marshall’s evidence isn’t enough. This is complicated, Deirdre, so much more complicated than you understand. We have to handle it delicately.”
“It didn’t seem real delicate when Rhiannon had me and Vidya hauled on stage to be publicly devoured by the sluagh.”
“Who do you think rallied the vampires to rescue you?” Rylie asked.
“They rallied themselves to save Lucifer.”
Brother Marshall gave a dry laugh. “Vampires couldn’t rally themselves to play a game of dodge ball.” He jerked a thumb at Rylie. “She got them together to save you. And she did it in secret. Delicately, you might say.”
Deirdre supposed that she should have thanked Rylie for it, but her well of gratitude seemed to have run dry.
The Alpha wasn’t going to do anything about Rhiannon. She was too busy playing politics, pulling strings like some damn puppet master hidden backstage while everyone risked their lives in her stead.
She was just as bad as Stark in her own way.
Deirdre was starting to think that they were all as bad as Stark.
“Forget it,” Deirdre said. “I need a way into the Winter Court. I summoned you so that you could take us there, Brother Marshall. And don’t give me any crap about it. I put myself in a lot of danger to present your evidence to the public, and you owe me for it.”
His eyes flicked between Deirdre and Vidya. “I can’t get into the Winter Court. When the sluagh was unleashed, I shut down my access to the ley lines leading between Middle Worlds.”
“So open it again,” Deirdre said.
“Sure, I could do that. But I’ll have to get to the Winter Court to reopen my access points, which means someone over there will have to let me in first.”
“You’ve gotta have unseelie allies over there. Ask them to drag us over.”
“You know that the Summer and Winter Courts are at war, right?” Brother Marshall asked. “All my unseelie contacts are in hiding. I can’t reach anyone.”
Rylie stepped forward, still cloaked in her disguise. “I have a plan. I’m not going to let Rhiannon hurt people. You have to step back and let me handle things before you make it so much worse.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t trust you,” Deirdre said. “You’ve made your priorities clear, and that’s your own damn skin, not the people.” She thumped her fist on her chest. “I’m the only one who cares about them. I’m the only one who’s gonna fix this. And nothing you say can stop me.”
“Or me,” Vidya said.
That was a slightly more intimidating threat, what with the razor feathers.
Rylie sighed, massaging her temples. “There might be another way into the Winter Court. The unseelie wanted to have Stark assassinated while he was still on Earth, and they got in touch with anyone they thought might give him safe haven. They gave them ways to open portals to the Middle Worlds.”
“Like Chadwick Reynolds,” Deirdre said. He’d had a gift from the unseelie when they had killed him.
Rylie frowned. “Who?”
“Never mind. So you mean we have to figure out who among Stark’s former allies would have also sold him out to the unseelie, track them down, and take their portal-opening-device-thing?”
“Actually, I already found one person,” Rylie said. “You can go there directly. It’s near Cumberland.”
“Give me an address,” Vidya said.
Rylie did. The valkyrie’s eyes went blank as she absorbed the information, taking it in with the same chilling calm that came over her when she was acquiring new targets.
“Okay, let’s go,” Deirdre said, grabbing Vidya’s arm. She didn’t want to spend another moment in that cathedral with those people.
“I might as well go with you and see what I can do about my access points to the Winter Court.” Brother Marshall followed them down the aisle. The gargoyle lurched into motion, leaning on its knuckles as it loped behind him, showering granite dust on the runner between the pews.
“Can’t you just teleport the whole cathedral to Cumberland?” Deirdre asked.
“I could, but then we’d be taking Rylie and my brothers there as well.”
And Brother Marshall didn’t want to risk the people he was protecting.
All these people were prioritizing those they cared about above everyone else. Their judgment was fogged with emotion, making them weak and vulnerable.
Didn’t they know that the people they cared about could turn on them at any moment? It wasn’t that long ago that Deirdre would have protected people like Gage and Niamh, but Gage had forced her to kill him, and Niamh had turned around to kill her. Even Stark, strange and twisted as their relationship was, had left her for his ex-wife at the first opportunity.
Rylie would learn soon enough. Life had a way of teaching its ugliest lessons with brutal surety.
Love meant nothing. Trust meant nothing.
Yeah, they’d learn soon.
Brother Marshall tucked his staff under one arm, then reached up to grab the gargoyle’s bicep. It lifted him onto its back, where he sat comfortably between the wings.
Vidya scooped Deirdre into her arms as though she weighed nothing.
“Hey, Deirdre,” Rylie said, lingering by the altar. It seemed like the people painted on the mural had fixed their cool gazes upon the Alpha, though they hadn’t actually moved an inch. “I know you don’t trust me. I don’t blame you. But I want you to know that I
am
going to fix this. I won’t let her win by cheating.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Deirdre said as Vidya carried her through the doorway.
The last thing she saw from Rylie was the disguised Alpha turning to the mural, as if praying to the couple behind the altar.
Vidya was as good as a preternatural GPS. She had once confessed to Deirdre that a valkyrie could track a butterfly across tundra if she had reason to kill that butterfly. She zeroed in on the location near Cumberland with ease.
Not for the first time, Deirdre felt grateful that Vidya had decided they should be friends rather than enemies.
Vidya must have been able to read the signs from the air. She never looked away from the street, not for a moment. They cut through the wet sky, carving a path toward the address that Rylie had given them—a path to Stark.
Over the valkyrie’s shoulder, Deirdre watched Brother Marshall following on his gargoyle mount. The magic rippling from the staff cloaked them in shreds of night. She could only occasionally see the sweep of broad stone wings through the clouds.
Vidya pitched, arms tightening on Deirdre.
They spiraled toward the earth.
Their destination was well north of New York, but the rain seemed to have followed them there. The grass they landed on was spongy. Damp haloes ringed the lights of the manor beyond the gate where Vidya had alighted.
It was an impressive house, like the kind of thing that Deirdre had seen in movies about rich people. She didn’t even know the words for the fancy windows and pillars. Gables? Something like that.
Instead of a yard, the house had pastures. There was also a barn. Some stables. Lots of places for animals to hide, since it was currently too wet for them to be outside.
Brother Marshall and his gargoyle landed. “We should try to be all discreet-like. There’s not a lot of magic around here. I think this place is full of humans.”
“Discreet,” Vidya echoed, looking down at her bare chest. She pulled her wings in tight against her back, but there was no concealing her nudity—normal for shifters, but shocking for mundanes.
“I’m gonna hide Dale Junior in the trees,” Brother Marshall said. “Come with me. I’ll give you my robes.”
“Dale Junior?” Deirdre asked.
Brother Marshall patted the gargoyle’s shoulder.
He didn’t
look
like a Dale Junior.
They moved into the trees, giving Deirdre time to study the gate, searching for a way to open it up. This was something she knew well. She might not have been able to fly around of her own volition, but she’d broken into a lot of places before.
It looked like there was a security box on the inside. She could climb the wall and let the others through.
Deirdre dried her hands on the hips of her jeans, prepared to scale the bars. But then she noticed the sign.
The house was so fancy, it had a damn name.
Deirdre had to step right up to read the sign for the manor in the gloom. She slid her fingers over the engraved letters.
Stark Estates.
“What…?”
“Excuse me! We’re not open yet!”
She turned to see a man jogging across the pastures. He was lean, wearing a polo shirt and khaki slacks.
The last time that she’d seen him, he was wearing a ball cap, which had effectively distracted from his strong features and cutting gaze.
Only now did she realize how much he resembled Everton Stark.
“You’re related,” she said, unable to conceal her surprise.
He stopped a few feet away. “Excuse me? Who are you?”
It was the man that Stark had given Chadwick Reynolds’s surviving horses to. Deirdre had seen Stark giving the sickly victims of the blood factory to this man, along with a rather large wad of cash to take care of them.
This guy ran a charity where he took care of animals rescued from inhumane farming conditions, and judging by his age and eyes, he shared close genetics with Everton Stark.
“I’m Deirdre Tombs,” she said, thrusting her hand at him through the bars of the fence. “I’m Beta to your...cousin?”
“My brother. Ever is my brother.” He hesitated, and then shook her hand. His grip was weak. His muscle wasn’t preternatural, but the kind of strength that came from a mundane man toiling at an animal preserve. “You’re his…his
Beta
? Is he here?”
“No, he’s not,” she said.
He relaxed visibly. “Oh. Okay. How can I help you?”
“I’d like to talk.” Deirdre shook the fence’s bars lightly.
His eyebrows pinched. “Okay.” The man pressed something on the other side and the gate swung open. “I’m Sascha Stark. Pleasure to meet you.” That seemed to be a formality rather than a genuine expression of emotion. Sascha was not happy to meet someone closely aligned with Stark—not happy at all.
The brothers might have sold horses to each other, but they weren’t friends.
“I’m not here to visit your charity,” Deirdre said. “I was sent here because…” She trailed off, remembering what Rylie had said.
Sascha must have sold Stark to the unseelie if he had a device that could create a portal to the Winter Court.
She swallowed around a sudden lump in her throat. “I was hoping you could give me more information about Stark. He’s missing.”
Vidya and Brother Marshall emerged from the trees, the gargoyle nowhere in sight. The valkyrie had donned the monk’s robes, leaving him wearing nothing but jeans and a white t-shirt. Together, they almost passed for normal.
“I’m sure you know him better than I do,” Sascha said. “We don’t speak anymore.”
“You speak enough that he recently gave you horses.”
Sascha flinched. “Ah.”
“Yeah,” Deirdre said. “Can we go inside and talk?”
He nodded stiffly, but he didn’t lead them to the manor. He took them into the stables.
The horses from Chadwick Reynolds’s high-rise occupied most of the stalls, though Deirdre wouldn’t have recognized them if not for the dappled patterns of their hides. In the short time that they had been under the care of Sascha Stark, they had developed a new layer of fat under their skin and much shinier hair.
“I need to do some work while we talk, if you don’t mind,” Sascha said. “The early morning hours are when I get the most done with the animals. I’m scheduled to be in meetings all day.”
“Be my guest,” she said.
Sascha filled a trough with water. It didn’t escape Deirdre’s notice that he stood on the other side of the equipment, as far from them as he could get without obviously trying to escape.
“Do I know you?” he asked, staring hard at Vidya.