Ending the call, Midas stared at me until the weight of his scrutiny forced me to sit on the sidewalk.
Unable to stomach looking at him, to see the hurt I had etched onto his features, I stared at the cars whooshing past.
Midas didn’t say another word, just turned and walked away from me.
Not enough, not enough, not enough.
I hated when my mother was right.
Nineteen
No matter how fast he ran, Midas couldn’t escape the truth.
Amelie Pritchard was his mate.
Not Hadley Whitaker.
The implications terrified him for myriad reasons, starting with the first time he set eyes on her.
“Your friend smells wrong.” Nostrils flared, he drew in Amelie’s scent. “The beast is tempted by her.”
“The beast?” Grier looked back at him. “Your beast? You? When you shift?”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “It’s in our nature to put down injured or sick prey.”
Prior to Hadley, he hadn’t let himself be alone with females of any species. He hadn’t known how far to trust his instincts. He’d let his guard down with her, she’d earned it, and he’d begun to believe she was safe with him.
But that was Hadley.
And Hadley didn’t exist.
The scent of Amelie filled his head, and he searched every scarred corner of his soul for signs the beast had marked her as prey. He found nothing, but he didn’t believe himself now that he knew the truth.
Shadow child.
Finally, he understood what others meant when they referenced her shadow. She was a dybbuk, a creature her own kind hunted and executed for good reason. They were killers. Every single one of them, and she was no exception.
Midas hadn’t been in Savannah when Amelie Pritchard went to trial for the murders of several vampires. He hadn’t been there when she was stripped of her family name, inheritance, and personal assets. He hadn’t been there when she was left Amelie Madison, her middle name promoted to surname, and she lost everything. But he had heard about it. The scandal rocked the Society, and it was all anyone talked about for months.
Talk was too polite for what they had done, picking her apart thread by thread until Amelie unraveled.
They fashioned her into a monster, but there had to be more to the story. Grier would have stood for her childhood friend no matter the personal cost, but Linus? He was more brains than heart with anyone but Grier. He wouldn’t have vouched for Amelie, taken her under his wing, if he hadn’t believed in her ability to change for the better and learn control of the thing she had willingly become through one of her kind’s darkest rites.
The beast in him had wanted to hunt Amelie then, and given his violent history, he didn’t trust its silence on the matter. Until he was certain he wouldn’t harm her, in either form, in any form, he couldn’t be near her.
That same inner predator rebelled at the notion he could hurt her, but Midas knew himself better.
He needed to think, and to think, he had to get away from her.
Already he could tell he was making the biggest mistake of his life in walking away, but it was worth it to protect her. She might never forgive him, might hate him forever, but she would be alive, and he would have one less black mark on his soul.
Twenty
“I warned you, kid.” Bishop sat next to me on the curb. “I told you to stay away from him.”
The fae was who he meant, not Midas. I couldn’t put my finger on his name, my thoughts slid away from recalling it, but I had known because I had invoked it. Too bad I couldn’t sweet-talk what’s his name into erasing, say, the last hour of my life too.
Shards of my broken heart scraped against each other while I breathed, and the relentless hurt reminded me that a magical lobotomy wasn’t the solution. It would only delay the inevitable, and I couldn’t live through this again.
“You also told me his name.” I kept staring at the same reflector in the asphalt, waiting, waiting, waiting, but Midas didn’t circle back. Even to yell at me some more. “You knew I would use it.”
“I’ll pay for it too, but I can afford it.” He wrapped a brotherly arm around my shoulders. “It will be worth it, if you find the coven.” He let me rest my head against him. “I’m sorry about Midas.”
“I didn’t expect us to last the whole six weeks.” I shut my eyes to hold in tears. “This is easier.”
“A clean break might be for the best.” He rubbed his cheek against my hair. “I’m still sorry.”
“Yeah.” I barely recognized my voice. “Me too.”
Most of me had gone numb, but enough common sense remained for me to worry how Bishop might appear through my newly opened eyes. Thankfully, when I worked up the nerve to check, he was as always. Unchanged. My hindbrain grasped that didn’t mean I was seeing him for what he was, only that he was powerful enough to keep up appearances.
That wasn’t terrifying at all, really. I didn’t need to change my pants after that revelation. Nope. Not me.
“We’ve got a few hours left until dawn.” He stood and helped me up too. “Might as well get started.”
Grateful to have anything but Midas to think about, I didn’t argue. “We can use the standard grid pattern.”
We used it to locate missing persons mostly, and it covered the entire city as well as the nearest suburbs, should we have to push out our search area.
“The fae,” I said as we walked to our starting point. “He’s Blithe’s son, isn’t he?”
“Yeah.” Bishop massaged his nape, but he only made the reddening splotches worse. “I’m the reason you got into this mess, and I still can’t tell you the half of it. Suffice it to say, he wouldn’t have acted on his impulse to meddle in your affairs if he hadn’t spotted us together.”
“Does he think we’re an item?”
“You’re beautiful, powerful, and deadly.” Bish chuckled under his breath. “You’re definitely my type.” He let his hand drop. “He would have picked up on that when you dropped me off on his doorstep.”
Happy for a chance to shine the spotlight on someone else’s private life, I plowed ahead with a frown. “You’ve never made googly eyes at me.”
“Firstly, I’m not a googly eyes kind of guy.” He elbowed me for insulting his technique. “Secondly, even if I had been interested, I could see what this job meant to you, and what it meant to Linus for you to succeed. That decided it for me before my hormones entered the equation. I made a mental note you were hot when we met, but then I got to know you, and I set it on fire then scattered the ashes.”
“I’m glad you did.”
Smoothing his hair back, he struck a pose. “Is it because I’m not blond?”
Platinum was a shade of blond, but I didn’t correct him. He was being ridiculous for me, and I loved it.
“No.” I threaded my arm through his. “It’s because I really needed a friend, and you’re a good one.”
“Back at you.” He patted my hand. “I didn’t know how much.”
The first grid gave us nothing. The second and third was more of the same. We knocked out the fourth and the fifth as the sun rose, and Bishop ordered me to stop and get some rest. He walked me back to the Faraday, but I couldn’t bear to face Hank or the others. I wasn’t sure if it would be worse if they all hated me on sight or if they acted like nothing was wrong, when absolutely nothing was right.