As the faint throbbing in my shoulder fell away with the dryad’s magic, a prickling sensation rose up from my gut. The frustration spilled onto my tongue before I could hold back the impulse.
“You know what happens when all you think about is looking after yourself and your friends? You look around one day when everyone who could have used your help has been killed or caged, and guess what, there’s no one left to help you. But sure, go ahead and ignore the people who’ve actually dealt with the threat you’re dismissing. I’m sure you know so much more about what we’re up against than we do while you’re sitting here in your titty bar playing gangster.”
“I’ll have you know we’ve got a lot more than just titties,” the succubus said in a wry tone, but Rex whirled on me.
“You are just a hanger-on playing at being part of something special and supernatural,” he snarled. “I don’t need lectures on politics from a mortal.”
I stared right back at him. “This mortal hanger-on survived being shot with a silver bullet. Think you could do the same, wolfie?”
Ruse raised his hand to his mouth to cover a snicker.
Omen sighed and shook his head. “Don’t mind her. She doesn’t know when to shut her mouth. I’ve still got more favors to call in. We need something to drive and someplace to stay that won’t call attention to who or what we are. I assume you can offer that much?”
Rex turned to him without bothering to answer my last question. “Yes, that much I can do for you. In fact, I’ve got something that’ll count for both.” He snapped his fingers at Laz. “Quit playing with that little beasty and get me the key to the Ford.”
The troll poked tentatively at Pickle, who merely nuzzled his fingers, probably wondering when the bacon was coming. Thorn stepped in to lift the dragon off the troll’s shoulder. With visible relief, the big guy hustled away and returned with a key on a leather fob.
Rex motioned for him to hand the key over to Omen. “It’s yours, and we’re square. You can pick it up in the back left corner of the lot at King and Washington.”
Omen palmed the keys and glanced around at the others. “You all relax here while I collect our new ride. You might as well get a breather in after the night we just had. Except you.” His gaze settled on me. “You’re coming with me before you burn any bridges all the way down.”
I didn’t have any interest in hanging out with these jackasses anyway. “Thank you,” I said only to Birch, because I could be polite and an ungrateful bitch. As I tramped after Omen out of the strip club, I reveled at the easy roll of my shoulders. The dryad had some magic, all right. The numbness was already wearing off around my wrist, but that joint moved with only a slight ache now too.
I waited until we’d traveled another block before I said anything in response to Omen’s cold silence. “I mostly kept quiet. Don’t pretend I didn’t say exactly what you were thinking anyway.”
The corner of his mouth curled upward. Was that a hint of a real smile?
“You did,” he said. “If I minded, I’d be reaming you out right now. You saved me having to say it myself. Not that it made any difference—which is why I wouldn’t have said it.”
All right then. I would have left it there, the silence feeling less tense if not quite companionable, but Omen shot a penetrating look my way. “If you’re willing to say all that to a bunch of supernatural gangsters, when are you going to tell me about your fire powers?”
I blinked at him, struck by both confusion and something deeper, something more chilling than his eyes—because I wasn’t totally confused. “What are you talking about?”
That slight smile came back, but I didn’t like it this time. “You know. I wasn’t so caught up in the fight last night that I would miss you lighting that candle with nothing but strength of will. You hide it well—I started to think I’d imagined the wave of heat you sent at the pricks in the Company’s facility—but the cat’s out of the bag. You’re obviously not a shadowkind, or you couldn’t handle the metals in their armor. Is it sorcery?”
Wave of heat… I remembered the way the one guard had flinched that night as if burned, but I’d put that out of my mind as just a weird random happening. Like the weird way the fires I set when taking my leave of the collector houses I’d raided sometimes behaved too. Because assuming those incidents were anything other than random, that they had anything to do with me, would mean something was very, very wrong.
“For it to be sorcery, I’d have to be a sorcerer, wouldn’t I?” I said. “I don’t have the faintest idea how to summon shadowkind to do my bidding. I’ve never even known a sorcerer. So, sorry, I think you’re just imagining things. But while we’re talking about interesting powers, what’s the deal with the whole hellhound thing? Are you going to rain down hellfire on me the next time I piss you off?”
I didn’t really believe he would, but changing the subject made for excellent deflection. Usually. Omen was rather dogged…
Forgive me the horrible pun. Could you have resisted?
“No,” he said. “Although if you try to touch me in that state, I will sear your skin off. But you know one power I do have? I can smell fear. You don’t actually think your connection to fire is nothing. You’re terrified of the fact that it’s something.”
I folded my arms over my chest. “For your information, the only things I’m terrified of are sharks and being forced to go into witness protection someplace with no decent Thai restaurants.”
“Say whatever you like. But if you deny it, you’re being nearly as bad as Rex and the rest. You could use that power to help our cause.”
“I don’t have any power,” I said, tamping down on the icy jolt his words had provoked in my gut. I couldn’t have any sort of supernatural skills. It was impossible by any measure I knew of, and I knew more about the shadowkind and magical goings-on than just about any mortal alive, so it simply… couldn’t be true. “And look, here’s the parking lot Rex mentioned. Let’s get on with more important, real concerns like what we’re going to be driving.”
“You’re not going to dodge the subject that— Oh, boils and brimstone.”
Omen stopped dead halfway across the lot, which was the point when it’d become obvious what “Ford” Rex had meant and how it was going to serve as both vehicle and home. Parked in the far corner was a vehicle even dorkier than his station wagon had been: the patchy blue shell of a squat camper van.
13
Omen
I could always feel a rift between the mortal realm and our own, even before it came into sight. There was a quiver in the air and a subtle flavor that tasted like salty steam. Here in the docklands, it mingled with the warble of the evening breeze over the river and the marshy scent of algae.
Rex had done me one better than handing over his clunky camper van. He might not want to stick his neck out for the rest of shadowkind, but he always had his people keeping their ears to the ground for potential threats, and he’d gotten a few reports of odd activity near this particular rift that sounded very much like the ambush I’d been caught in. The Company of Light had a few clear patterns, including that they liked to hunt near the rifts, presumably hoping to catch shadowkind who were still disoriented from the transition and so easier to disarm.