“Yeah, ‘course.”
“Apparently, an agent here has been feeding your handler my cases for months.”
“Why the hell would someone do that?”
Bas sighed. “He hates my brother—Ailin, that is—and he wanted to mess with our family.”
I came over and leaned against the desk beside him. “That’s real shitty.”
“Yeah.”
I bumped his shoulder with my arm. After a few seconds, I said, “At least it brought us together, yeah?”
He took a deep breath, and his whole body seemed to release tension. “Yeah, true.”
“Come on, shadow boy, let’s get out of here before Agents Asshole and Dick decide to ask me more questions.”
He snorted and pushed off the desk with me beside him. “You up for finding out who the hell set you up today, dimples?”
“Hell yeah.”
He smirked and walked through the front doors. “Your handler got the tip thirty-five minutes before an anonymous call was made to the BCA to say someone was murdering a girl on the baseball field.”
“So they waited for me to show up before they tipped the agency.” He nodded as he hopped into the driver’s seat, and I got into the passenger seat, Blaze still snuggled in my collar. “Why would they want to set me up?”
“I’m not sure, but my brothers are going to meet us at the park to help out.”
“Sounds good. So ya finally gonna tell me who the hell Armina is?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Basil
I blew out a breath, then started driving back to the park. This day had been a huge clusterfuck and the last thing I wanted to do was talk about this, but Hiro needed to know. “Uh, she was my girlfriend from high school, but she kinda messed me up.”
Hiro began loading all his weapons back on that had been confiscated when he’d been taken in. I’d brought them out to the car earlier. He asked, “How? You’ve hinted at things, but have never said exactly what happened.”
“When I was sixteen and seventeen, Armina hired a mind-bender to mess with my memories and to try and make me her… servant-slave-person, I guess.” Blaze moved from Hiro’s shoulder to mine to offer me comfort, so I gave him a few pats as he nuzzled into my neck.
I felt his gaze on me as I drove, then a flash of anger rushed through our bond. “What the fuck? She did what to you?”
“Yeah, she messed with my memories, made me do some pretty shitty things to Thayer. I guess to, I dunno, split up our family or something. Then once I did the shitty things, she had the mind-bender erase my memory of it so I’d think Thay was the one being an asshole and… I don’t know, it was really messed up. And she did it so many times it sorta backfired, and I started getting confused a lot, even in the middle of conversations. It was… scary, to be honest.”
He paused his movements to lean over the console and tuck my hair behind my ear. “Were you able to get your memories back?” He was trying to keep his anger at bay, but I felt it through our bond, anyway.
“Uh, yeah. My family noticed me being forgetful and acting strange, so Ailin checked me and figured out what was going on. He hunted Armina down, then the mind-bender, and forced him to fix everything. I… I thought the mind-bender was my friend, and I thought Armina loved me, so… yeah… it was really fucked up.”
He was quiet for a moment, then said, “I guess that’s why you didn’t want a commitment before me.”
I sighed. “Yeah. I was kinda shitty about dating and all that crap for a while.”
His jaw clenched. “Armina’s lucky I didn’t know about this sooner or I would’ve hunted her down myself.”
“Not so lucky, since she… uh, you know, since she was murdered.”
“Fuck, baby. I’m sorry. That was such a shitty thing to say. I’m just—”
“It’s fine. It’s… this day has been crazy as hell.”
He asked, “Are you sure you still want to go back?”
“Yes.” I answered without hesitation because someone was messing with my family, and I was done playing games. We were going to catch this guy and end this.
Toby, Thayer, and Jorah were already there when we arrived, so once Hiro and I got out, we all headed into the park where the body was found. Armina’s body had been near the backstop, but it had already been taken away. The area was still blocked off, but no one else was around anymore, which kinda made it easier for us, to be honest.
We started where the body had been, then began searching outward to look for anything that shouldn’t be there or to sense any magic. Hiro and I headed toward the other baseball field while the other three went closer to the surrounding trees.
Hiro squatted down in the dirt, saying, “Does this footprint look weird to you?”
Before I could answer, a strange clicking noise filled the air, and a chill ran through me as dark energy seemed to seep into the park. Hiro and I moved back to back as we searched for the source, and I cursed internally for moving away from my brothers.
What the fuck is that? I asked Hiro and my brothers, somehow tapping into both connections in my panic.
Jorah said, I don’t know. All I see are shadows. Does Hiro know?
What the hell? Hiro said. I can hear you, Jorah.
We can hear you, too, Thayer said.
Basil, how are you doing that? Jorah asked, too curious for his own good sometimes.
Not the fucking issue right now! I yelled.
Hiro said, I dunno what it is, but Bas and I felt the same energy near my old house a few weeks back. It feels close to a Faela creature, but I’ve never felt somethin’ like it before.
Before anything else was said, the energy seemed to thicken and ten feet in front of me a giant… insect-like humanoid seemed to walk out of thin air. It almost looked like a gigantic ant with giant pinchers and antennae, a really freaking gross hard shell-like exterior, and a bunch of skinny, pointy as all hell legs and arms. But this thing was walking on two legs, right toward me with those giant black eyes focused on me.
“What in all hell is that thing?” Hiro asked. “Oh fuck, there’s about twenty of ‘em.”
“Shit,” I muttered before pulling a shield around us. “What is it?”
“It feels like a… fae, but it’s a fuckin’ bug, so I dunno.”
The one in front of me reached the shield and started using two of its arms to feel around the edges. Two more joined it and began doing the same thing.
“What’re they doin’?” Hiro asked.
“I think they’re trying to figure out how to break the shield.”
In our heads, Jorah said, Insectoid fae. I didn’t think they fucking existed!
Thay said, It seems like our Three magic likes to attract rare creatures.
Jorah said, I read about them. They eat magic user’s souls and steal their magic. They collect them for months at a time, then use the stored magic to take out entire communities at once so they can feed on them and lay eggs and… Mother of All, when I read about them, I thought they were a damn horror story.
The insectoid thing in front of me tilted its big head and its mouth opened in what I thought was its version of a smile—totally gross—then its left arm stabbed forward and pierced my shield.