“Hey,” the Butcher protested, holding up a thick finger. “I’m not dealing this Nacht Essentia shit. I don’t dabble in sissy plants. This was all an outsider’s tip.”
Darien looked like he was trying not to laugh. “Right.”
Both of them grew abruptly quiet as a vehicle zipped below the overpass, stirring up blue jacaranda petals that spun through the air. The car, as unremarkable as the van, carried on down the highway and slowed gradually to a halt on the dirt shoulder where the windowless van was parked.
“Get down,” Casen said, gesturing to the cement barricade. They all lowered themselves to the pavement.
Casen passed a camera to Darien. “Here,” he said. When he saw the confusion on Loren’s face, the warlock explained, “In case the buyers are glamouring themselves, which I’m seeing a lot of lately.”
Right. Cameras could not be fooled by glamours, just as the forcefields generated by the anima mundi could not be fooled by Nacht Essentia, nor could they be fooled by the monstrosities the Arcanum Well replica had turned the missing girls into.
The passenger door of the black sedan swung open. Loren held her breath as she waited…
A tall, lean woman with a head of copper-bright hair stepped out of the sedan, the muscles in her golden legs flexing as she walked the short distance to the van, wings rustling behind her with every step.
Recognition twisted Loren’s gut into a fist. Time seemed to still as every thought in her head eddied into nothing.
Casen said, “Is that Taega fucking Bright?” His voice sounded far away, the words echoing in Loren’s dizzy mind like he’d shouted down a hallway.
Darien snapped a photo, and then clicked to enlarge the screen. Loren shuffled closer to him so she could see the photograph, her legs wobbling so hard she nearly had to grab onto him to stay upright. He and Loren were both blinking heavily and quickly, unable to believe what they were seeing.
It was Taega, all right. There was no doubt about it.
Taega was purchasing Nacht Essentia.
No one who was innocent would buy such a thing, not unless they had something to hide.
“We can’t tell her,” Loren whispered. Her heart was slamming in her chest, and bile had rose to coat her tongue., the taste of it bitter and stinging “We can’t tell Dallas—”
“We’ll keep it from her for now,” Darien said. “Until we have more proof.”
They needed more. Purchasing Nacht Essentia didn’t tie her to anything more than the illegal substance trade. It didn’t mean she had anything to do with the Arcanum Well or the missing girls.
Loren clung to these facts like they were an anchor in her storm.
“How are we going to get proof?” Loren asked. When she glanced back at the highway, she saw that the van was gone. And so was the sedan Taega had rolled up in.
“I have Arthur looking into the blueprints he found at Lucent Enterprises,” Darien replied. He pushed to his feet and then helped Loren stand. “Maybe…maybe those will give us something concrete.”
Loren nodded, her stomach roiling.
Darien turned to the Butcher. “You said you have something else for me.”
Casen pushed away from the cement barricade and rose to his feet. “You sure are getting a lot of gifts today. Meet me at the Chopping Block.” He waved a signal at several of his men who were waiting nearby, where they were parked behind another copse of jacaranda trees farther up the hill. The vehicle’s headlights lit up as they started the car and drove down to pick up Casen.
Loren tried to collect her thoughts as she and Darien made their way back to his car. But the more she thought about what she’d just seen, the more her brain hurt.
She would leave it alone for now. She would wait until they had concrete evidence to tie Taega to a crime, just as Darien had suggested. She’d waited this long for answers; she could handle waiting a little longer.
Regardless, she still felt like gagging, like her legs were going to crumple beneath her with every step she took toward the car. To think her guardian was behind this mess, and was possibly one of the people who were looking for Loren, completely unaware that the target she wanted had lived under her roof nearly her entire life…
Was this what betrayal felt like?
48
Loren didn’t make a sound where she sat at Darien’s side in the Butcher’s office at the Umbra Forum.
Spread out on the desk before them were three photos—three grainy black-and-white shots of a blond hellseher half-breed.
