“Yes, some can look to mess with ours heads. That’s why I wear this.” Sorsha tugged down the neckline of her blouse to show the silver-and-iron trinket pinned to her undershirt. Probably for the best that she didn’t mention the few times she’d taken it off—and what she’d gotten up to with me and sometimes Snap during those times. “Believe me, I’d like this fight to have a lot less blood in it, but that’s not on us. The shadowkind just want to survive.”
The first of the leaders had raised her pointed chin. “I’m afraid that given the evidence we’ve encountered, none of us feel comfortable pursuing this issue any further. And I think it’d be best if you got yourself out of whatever you’ve become mixed up in too.”
Sorsha’s mouth tightened. You don’t need these putzes, I thought at her, but some part of her seemed to believe she did.
“I’m not willing to walk away from the shadowkind when they’re facing this kind of threat. Did you find out anything else with all the digging you obviously did?”
“Yeah,” Vivi said. “What about the addresses Sorsha passed on—did you get anywhere with those?”
The addresses our hacker had uncovered from us thanks to Vivi’s efforts. The twitch of the older woman’s eyes told me she knew something, all right, but she locked it away with a purse of her lips. “The matter is closed. We’ll resume our regular meets at the usual time and place this weekend. You’re both welcome to join us for our regular business there—it’s up to you.”
“Huyen,” Sorsha protested. “Ellen. Please. I swear—”
The frizzy-haired woman was shaking her head. Sorsha took in their expressions and must have come to the same conclusion I had about ten minutes earlier: this bunch was useless. With a curt sigh, she stalked out of the room.
“Really?” Vivi said, glowering at her colleagues, but the other Fund members held steady. She flounced out after her best friend.
Which was why it was a good thing Sorsha had agreed to let us stake out this place—me inside the rec center and my three companions patrolling the neighborhood around it. You couldn’t get a more perfect spy than a shadowkind lurking in dark corners.
Ellen rubbed her mouth, the only one who looked at all conflicted about what had just gone down. She turned to Leland. “We should keep an eye on the activity around that building in the docklands, as much as we can, just in case. I wouldn’t have thought Sorsha would get involved with anything disturbing. If there is an organization hunting the shadowkind on this scale…”
Leland snorted. “All I found was a record of some trucks arriving at the place ten days ago. No way of knowing what was in them—and it’s not like trucks are a strange sight on Wharf Street.”
Ten days ago—that’d be right after we’d stormed the facility to break Omen out. Exactly when the Company would have needed to move its other captives. And one of the addresses our charmed hacker had matched to the Company’s shell organization was on Wharf Street. Thank you so much for the tip, my glum friend.
A little more muttering followed between the various Fund members, but nothing of much interest. I slipped along through the shadows after them as they left. They wandered off in different directions, Leland heading across the street in the same general direction as the spot where I was supposed to meet up with Sorsha and the others. I followed right beside him, watching for a good moment to send him stumbling.
He rounded the corner—and stopped in his tracks. I peered through the slightly blurred view of the world beyond the shadows to make out what had startled him.
Oh. Sorsha’s red hair was just visible down the alley where we were meant to meet, as were Snap’s golden curls. The devourer had just leaned in to steal a kiss.
Leland’s hands balled into fists at his sides. He couldn’t have known from that glimpse that Snap was shadowkind—but maybe he could guess it, knowing what sort of beings Sorsha had been canoodling with lately.
Before he could move again, the two figures headed deeper into the alley where I’d need to join them. A scowl twisted Leland’s lips. He strode on by with an aura like a storm cloud, fury and betrayal radiating off him so thickly I barely had to reach out my powers to taste it.
As if she owed him anything at all at this point. I had far more reason to wince at the sight than he did, and I barely had any at all. I’d told her to take all possible pleasure wherever she could receive it, after all.
But I did wince a little as I flitted toward the alley. Not because of the kiss with Snap. Not because I’d sensed the closeness between her and Thorn continuing to develop as well. Hell, at this point I didn’t think even Omen was unaffected by her presence.
That would have been fine. She could have been kissing thousands of shadowkind, and I’d have said, “The more the merrier”… If I’d been letting myself kiss her too.
Okay, so I might not have exerted the greatest self-control in that area. My lips had stumbled into hers once or twice despite my best intentions. But every time they did, the deeper longing inside me welled up more potently.
If I couldn’t have the fun without the pain tagging along, I had to go cold turkey on the whole endeavor. Let the longing be just a pang at moments like this rather than a full-out heartache. Who the fuck ever heard of an incubus with an aching heart anyway? Much more of this and I’d be a disgrace to my kind.
If there’d just been a way to enjoy her without those other desires creeping in as well…
I told the little voice in the back of my head to shut up and sped through the alley’s shadows to our meet-up spot. The other four had already reached it. As I materialized next to Thorn, setting my mouth in a triumphant smile at the thought of the news I had to share—and shoving all other feelings down as far as they would go—Sorsha looked up from her phone.
“I just heard back from the shadowkind Jade said might be up for joining the cause. They’re ready to meet us. Why don’t we go see if they’ll be more help than our mortal allies?”
19
Sorsha
The first words Omen muttered when our potential new allies came into sight by the looming wood-and-metal mass of the Finger were, “Fucking tourists. Of course.”
We paused on the opposite side of the street from the courtyard, waiting for Thorn to give us one final signal that the coast was definitely clear. After the Company had managed to find us on the fairgrounds, we weren’t taking any chances even when it came to other shadowkind.
I glanced over at the hellhound shifter. “Tourists?”
The two shadowkind hanging out by the fountain didn’t look like my stereotypical image of tourists: no Hawaiian-print shirts or cameras dangling from neck-straps. They would have fit in pretty well at Jade’s bar, actually. The guy was a burly teddy-bear type with a glossy chestnut mane of hair that spilled over his scalp from a loose mohawk. The girl, slim and doe-eyed, had dyed her spiky bob with streaks of so many hues I couldn’t tell which was the base color. Their casual but well-tailored clothes gleamed with even more color and, in the girl’s case, a heavy dose of glitter.
I suspected she and Luna would have gotten along well. If Thorn hadn’t already identified the two as “equines” when he’d reported back to Omen, I’d have pegged her for a fae like my former guardian.