I feel Harper’s hand tighten around mine as we both go on high alert. This is what we expected, what we planned for, but somehow I thought we’d have more than a few hours before he made his move.
“This is a public street,” Harper warns. “There are civilians here.”
“Right, there’s no need to cause a scene in such a lovely neighborhood,” Rowan says with that practiced smile of his. “We’re all friends here, after all.”
“How did you find us so soon?” I ask.
Rowan’s smile widens. “Good old-fashioned luck.”
“Bullshit,” Harper counters.
“No, really.” He chuckles like we’re sharing a joke. “Of course, I didpaya small fortune for said luck to go my way. That’s the beauty of Concordia, so many witches with various talents, all eager to make some money. They couldn’t pinpoint you precisely with all the magic in the air interfering, but I significantly increased the odds that our paths would cross.”
“You bought something to bring us together?” I think about the glamor he used to disguise himself, the necromantic tools he thought would make him powerful. Sensing a pattern here. “That’s what you do, isn’t it? You don’t have any real talent, so you buy what you need from witches with actual skills.”
For just a moment, Rowan’s pleasant mask slips. His eyes tighten and I know I’ve hit a nerve.
“Witches only get one craft,” he says after a moment. “What’s the harm in supplementing my arsenal?”
“We know what you did,” Harper says. “How you messed with forces beyond your understanding and pinned the blame on someone else when it went wrong and your pet dragon wouldn’t obey you.”
“You blamed my brother,” I say. “You covered up what you did and pretended to be a victim for years.”
“Do you want to know how I did it?” Rowan asks. “On second thought, maybe we should go somewhere more private.” He eyes people passing by across the street and consults his fancy pocket watch. “I do have places to be.”
“Don’t let us stop you,” Harper says.
Rowan casually angles his watch and opens it and I don’t realize things are going wrong until the watch face pulses with an eerie light, flashing in Harper’s direction.
His whole body goes still. His eyes are fixated on the watch, expression completely slack.
“Harper!” I grab his arm, but he doesn’t respond. “What are you doing? What’s wrong?”
Rowan snaps the watch closed abruptly, clicking another button. Harper stumbles backward, seeming disoriented.
“Quick, Detective Harper!” Rowan voices urgently. “Arrest this criminal!”
Harper turns toward me, confusion written across his face as he tries to focus. “What the... criminal?” He sways, looking unsteady on his feet.
“Ignore the psycho being psychotic. Snap out of it.” I slap his face, not sure how else to wake him up. He reminds me of the confused squirrels Melody and I used her befuddling bark on during another practice session at the cabin. Did Rowan buy something with similar effects?
“Dodger?” Harper murmurs, focusing on me with extreme difficulty. “You aren’t… not a criminal…”
Rowan snaps his fingers. “Yes, I feared that was too much time to steal. No matter.”
While Harper’s still shaking off whatever the hell that watch did to him, Rowan springs into action and lunges toward me. An instinct kicks in and Harper moves instantly, getting between us and intercepting him with supernatural speed. Rowan twists to meet him and they grapple for one terrible moment, bodies pressed together as Rowan jerks his arm upward. Harper goes rigid.
Rowan’s grinning when he backs away, stashing something in his pocket. It starts to sink in what happened, what I’ll see when I get in front of Harper—Rowan attacked him, he had aweapon—but the sight is still horrible and punches the air from my lungs. Blood spreads from a wound on Harper’s abdomen. Oh god.
“Harper!” I clutch him, my hands immediately going to the wound and coming away bloody. He makes a choked little noise that tears into my heart.
“The blade is special,” Rowan shares. “It’ll slow his healing considerably.”
“Oh my god.” Freaking out and trying to support a werewolf twice my size isn’t a good combination, and we both go down to our knees while I babble out reassuring nonsense. “It’s okay, it’s going to be okay.”
“Hurting one of my own detectives is the last thing I wanted,” Rowan says, his voice dripping with false regret. “But he should have minded his own business. This is between you and me, Dodger.”
Through tear-blurred vision, I glare up at Rowan. “You bastard. I’m going to stop you.”
