Turning instead down the familiar alley, I used the fire escape to climb up to my old apartment. The glass was still missing in the windows, and much of the floor was questionable, but the bathroom was in okay shape.
I climbed into the tub with a towel for a pillow and wished harder than ever I would wake to find my life was nothing but a bad dream.
Twenty-One
“It’s been five days,” Lisbeth said, tucked behind her monitor once again, her true identity safe with me. “We’ve hit the grids hard, repeatedly, but we’re not making any headway.”
Five days since Midas walked away from me.
“They must be shifting locations nightly,” Anca murmured. “How else are they avoiding detection?”
Five days since he saw my true face and couldn’t stomach the truth.
“We’ll have to scan the hot zones again.” Milo rubbed his jaw. “You’ve marked four or five?”
Five days since I discovered I only thought I had hit rock bottom.
“Six,” Reece corrected absently, flicking new reports onto our screens for review. “As of last night.”
Five days since I no longer saw my new life as a second chance but as yet another mistake in a long line of them I suspected began with my birth.
“A day off wouldn’t hurt,” Bishop said, his nose an inch from mine. “You could use a break.”
Blinking him and the room into focus, I struggled to replay the last five minutes of conversation. I had been following along, honest. But I couldn’t have told you a single point we hit up until he called me out.
“Milo’s right.” I worried the silver ring on my finger, a habit I thought I had kicked. “We need to hit the glamoured storefronts again, see if we can shake something loose.”
The Clairmont pack hadn’t lost a single member thanks to their absolute loyalty to Ayla Clairmont and her ban until further notice on recreational activities outside their high-rise den.
The Loup Garous were down five members, that Garou would admit to, which meant there were more.
Three necromancers were dead.
Four gwyllgi were dead, all of them exposed after the drugs hit the streets. As if the teens hooked on life support weren’t enough of a cautionary tale.
The fae were fine, and so were the witches, and so were the humans.
Two vampires were dead because they got high off their food sources, and the frantic humans, who had been taken without their consent, killed the vampires when they came around and found they had been gnawed on like chew toys.
There were other deaths, other hospitalizations, but the coven had yet to swoop in for their coup d’état. Coupé de ville? I seriously ought to sign up for Duolingo.
All in all, it felt like I had torpedoed my new life for absolutely nothing.
Midas left the city the night we gained the sight, and I had yet to spot him at the Faraday since. The pack hadn’t gone out of their way to interact with me, which told me they knew we had broken up, and it was ugly, but their indifference also helped me continue avoiding them.
Linus called a few times, but I had stopped answering. Addie called too. Usually after I missed a call from Linus. I was starting to think the sheer volume of recipes my sister was in dire need of at my new all-time low meant Linus had clued her in to my breakup if nothing else.
Even Midas had texted me. Once. I erased it without reading it and blocked his number. I wasn’t strong enough to hear his voice yet, let alone his reasons for breaking every promise he ever made to me.
I knew them all. All my flaws. All my mistakes. All my shortcomings.
One wrong word from him might tip the balance between Ambrose and me, and that could be far more deadly than a broken heart.
“I’m going with you.” Bishop rose from his squeaky chair. “You shouldn’t be out there alone.”
After he killed the monitors with a frustrated slap of his palm, I confronted the elephant in the room.
“You’re worried—” I couldn’t say his name. “You think he’ll expose me.”
Had he any choice in the matter, he would keep my secret. I truly believed that. He was a good man, and he would do that much for me. But he also had a duty to his people, and he’d just learned what manner of monster ruled the city after the moon rose.
“I bet he ran straight home to his mommy and cried into her skirts.” His jaw flexed as he fought to hold back other comments on Midas. “She’s going to show up at some point, butt hurt her son couldn’t handle a woman with a past—like he’s got room to talk—and if she comes armed, I don’t want you facing her alone.”
“You warned me.” I was force-feeding him the argument I would have had with my mother—how right he had been, how stupid I was, how I should have listened to him—but I couldn’t put down the damn spoon. “I have no one to blame but myself.”
As usual.
That line ought to be my theme song. All I had to do was set it to music.
“You did what you thought was right to save the lives in your charge.” Bishop jabbed me in the shoulder with his pointer. “The rest, as much as I hate to say it, goes with the territory. Sacrifice for the greater good sucks. That’s why there’s not exactly a waitlist to fill Linus’s shoes.”
“I lied to Midas about who I am.”
“No, you lied to him about your name.” He kept poking until he got me out the door. “You watch too many B movies to be a great actress.”
“They’re classics.”
“They’re just old.” He locked up behind us. “Black-and-white doesn’t equal quality.”
The brutal assault on the one thing holding me together struck me mute.
“Besides, no one getting paid as little as you do would do what you do to maintain a cover.” He shepherded me onto the sidewalk. “You’ve got your own reasons for doing this, but so did everyone else who ever held the title.”
“I don’t mind getting outed.” Karma had circled back around for me again, and I had to live with that. “I do mind my family getting dragged through the mud for it.”
The Pritchards had disowned me, so they didn’t have to worry about me bringing shame to the family. I did, however, worry about the Whitakers. Addie wasn’t immune from gossip, and her reputation would take a serious hit if my cover got blown.
The Ambrose-fueled killing spree I went on in Savannah, as Amelie, was the whole reason she wound up engaged to Boaz in the first place. He needed her last name to wash his clean. Now here I was, splashing mud on the Whitakers and endangering Addie’s best shot for an advantageous marriage.
“We’ll shield them as best we can,” he promised. “You’ve got the funds now to take care of yourself and your family, if it comes to that.”
The click in my head as the pieces fit together left me wary. “Do you think Linus knew?”
“That you and Midas would split?” Bishop watched me to see how I took the hit, but I let it slide off me. “I doubt his actions have much to do with that possibility. It’s not how he’s wired. He’s more logical than emotional, which is not to say he doesn’t care. He just thinks linearly for the most part.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “More than likely he anticipated your identity would leak one day, and he wanted to protect you as best he could from the fallout.”